Reason #4,593 why Rupert Murdoch is a cancer on society.
As usual, there is some brilliant commentary by Septic Isle on this.
Latest Updates: Society RSS
-
thabet
-
thabet
I found this on a thread at DeenPort:
“Civil society is the deodorant of kufr.”
It is a ‘contention’ (see #70) by Timothy Winter. Sadly, there wasn’t much of a follow up discussion at DeenPort to the initial posting.
What do readers of Talk Islam make of this? The implications seem quite severe on the face of it, if you follow through on the argument being proposed.
-
thabet
The National Secular Society has lodged a complaint after a decision by Cherie Booth (the wife of Tony Blair) to spare a man jail ‘because of his religious beliefs’:
Shamso Miah, 25, of Redbridge, east London, broke a man’s jaw following a row in a bank queue.
Sitting as a judge, Ms Booth – wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair – said she would suspend his sentence on the basis of his religious belief.[...]
Ms Booth told Miah that violence had to be taken seriously, but said she would suspend his prison sentence because he was a religious person and had not been in trouble before.
She added: “You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour.”
The National Secular Society has complained to the Office for Judicial Complaints, suggesting that Mrs Blair acted in an unjust and discriminatory way, and suggesting that she might have treated a non-religious person less leniently.
-
thabet
The British Social Attitudes survey shows how ‘perceptions’ are just as important as ‘reality’:
A large proportion of the country believes that the multicultural experiment has failed, with 52 per cent considering that Britain is deeply divided along religious lines and 45 per cent saying that religious diversity has had a negative impact.
Around 3% of the population in England and Wales, less than 1% of the population in Scotland, and barely 0.1% of the population in Northern Ireland, would be call themselves Muslim (and all these people must be considered ‘nominally’ Muslim for the purposes of statistics, unless the census is accompanied with a detailed checklist on what these individuals believe). How then can Britain be even remotely ‘divided’ along ‘religious’ lines? Where are these ‘divisions’? There is nothing even close to genuine religious divides that are part of Britain’s history. There are other, far more pressing divisions, which threaten the country; it is a shame these are not fully debated (especially not by politicians who want to have ‘debates’ on cheap political scoring points).
The attitudes identified by the BSA are not new though, and that might be most alarming aspect. How much of these attitudes are related to the drip-feed of stories about ‘cultural backwardness’ of Muslims, or magnifying problems their context, or even just outright lies?
As Andrew Brown notes, while ‘freedom of speech’ is trumpeted as a ‘core value’ by numerous liberal pundits, especially an act of faith which distinguishes ‘us’ from ‘them’, the survey shows many Britons don’t buy into that argument:
This makes odd reading in the face of continuing propaganda about how freedom of speech is one of the core values we defend against Islamists.
This might seem odd given the BSA also show Britons are also becoming socially liberal on issues such as homosexuality and cohabitation.
Or it may just be that liberals, like their ‘enemies’, are forced into adopting cultural protectionism when they feel under threat?
(The two newspapers I link to above also highlight their editorial biases. The Daily Telegraph concentrates on the suspicion towards religious groups, especially Muslims. The Guardian meanwhile sticks with reporting the views on social liberalism.)
-
johnpi
A video game called Modern Warfare 2 will be released next week that includes a scenario putting the player in the role of a terrorist carrying out an attack on unarmed civilians at an airport. The player joins a team of four terrorists who use automatic weapons and explosives to massacre civilians as they move through the terminal. Unusually, it’s receiving as much criticism and rejection from with the gaming community as from without. One reviewer speculated that it was partially based on the Mumbai terror attacks last year.
i just saw the video. there’s “a line”, and i think that line has been crossed with this inclusion. morally, there is an enormous difference between trained combatant vs. combatant and combatant vs. innocent civilians. so this is not just like D-Day or Pearl Harbor scenes. i realize this is reality, and yes, it happens in the world every day, but it’s cruel, gutless and sickening, and i think putting players behind the gun in this situation is going too far.
Activism games has been very aggressive about forcing websites to remove the leaked clip of the attack, though I did find a link that I’ll put below the fold, along with still shots of some of the carnage represented in the game (warning, very explicit).
-
thabet
The police will not seek a ban for another protest Stop Islamisation of Europe are planning to hold outside Harrow mosque.
-
thabet
Inayat Bunglawala writes on a topic which will get him panned amongst most Muslims:
The ongoing change of Bunglawala is quite interesting (consider his admission that he was wrong about the publication of The Satanic Verses). I wonder how the hierarchy in the Muslim Council of Britain see him?
-
thabet
Back in 2005, Atif Imtiaz wrotes a series of essays (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). It’s a very rich series of essays, and while he talks about Muslims in the UK, I think his point about the communicating with others would of interest to all:
-
thabet
Midwinterspring has a post on Islam, the Ottomans and the Turkish republic:
What would have been the impact of Turkey’s modernisation efforts, but with the office of sultan in place as a kind of figurehead? Would that even have been possible?
-
thabet
There’s a discussion at Pickled Politics across a handful of posts on government’s CONTEST strategy. It relates well to another thread on the report about young Muslims feeling alienated.
Sunny also links to a report by Yahya on the Prevent strand of CONTEST, and its failings, which has also come under scrutiny from a parliamentary committee. Yahya’s report criticises the unfocused approach of current initiatives, which mix supporting communities with tackling terrorism.
I think it is always worth putting so-called ‘Muslim problems’ should always be placed in wider context, because when we look closer we may find poverty, a sense of alienation, political apathy, distrust of our ruling classes, etc are not really ‘Muslim problems’ at all (i.e. Muslims are human, and are not immune to social currents, trends, fashions, problems, etc).
-
thabet
The Taliban find a champion in the mayor of Doncaster:
Peter Davies, who has made it his personal mission to rid Doncaster of political correctness, said that under the Taliban, Afghanistan had an “ordered system of family life”.
By contrast he said social policies which disregarded the importance of the traditional family had “created mayhem” in Britain.
Peter Davies is a member of English Democrats, a right-wing party committed to federalism and a devolved English parliament. (Interesting idea, appalling execution.)
-
thabet
More protests in western China:
A witness told the BBC that as many as 2,000 ethnic Han Chinese have been demonstrating in the capital Urumqi.
-
thabet
Christopher Caldwell’s new book continues to generate more reviews and responses: one from Bruce Lawrence; another from The Economist; a review of a review at Mondoweiss; and a review of the entire debate in the US and Europe at Religion Dispatches.
-
thabet
I quite enjoyed this article on class and race:
Thus the primacy of anti-discrimination not only performs the economic function of making markets more efficient, it also performs the therapeutic function of making those of us who have benefited from those markets sleep better at night. And, perhaps more important, it has, ‘for a long time’, as Wendy Bottero says in her contribution to the recent Runnymede Trust collection Who Cares about the White Working Class?, also performed the intellectual function of focusing social analysis on what she calls ‘questions of racial or sexual identity’ and on ‘cultural differences’ instead of on ‘the way in which capitalist economies create large numbers of low-wage, low-skill jobs with poor job security’.
Race and socioeconomics intersect, and sometimes liberals don’t pay enough attention to this.
Life on the bottom of the pile is hard, no matter if you’re black, or white; Muslim or not (I mention Muslims because often reports like this on the state of Muslims unnecessarily ‘Islamise’ the problem).
-
thabet
Online social networking sites are bad for young children, says Britain’s highest ranked Catholic clergyman:
Archbishop Vincent Nichols said the sites are leading teenagers to build “transient relationships” which leave them unable to cope when their social networks collapse. He said the internet and mobile phones were “dehumanising” community life.
(Via Ruth Gledhill.)
-
thabet
I have been sent information about an event in London this Friday. It’s is about the gender relationships amongst Muslims. One of the questions posed is as follows:
Is it women who are now “wearing the trousers” in modern day relationships?
But what if neither men nor women wear trousers?
-
thabet
Britain’s new political landscape: liberalism versus communitarianism. (So, in some ways, similar to its old political landscape…)
-
thabet
“What is the deal with Western men’s erotic obsession with the East?”
A book review of The East, the West and Sex.
-
thabet
-
thabet
Britain’s crisis of democracy explored at OurKingdom.
(It’s a really long essay, which basically says we have never had a ‘real’ democracy, and what we have now is, simply, rubbish.)
-
thabet
Channel 4/YouGov has some numbers on the people who voted for the BNP. Interesting, but not too surprising. White people suffer from identity crises too.
One view that comes across from the poll is that people genuinely believe immigrants and/or ‘non-whites’ (‘Muslims’ is the current code word) receive more help than ‘white’ people from the state. This is no doubt fanned by the tabloid press (drip feeding stories about ‘Muslim demands’ on the state which are usually lies or non-controversial), and even picked up by Labour politicians like this odious prick.
I have taken a closer look at the poll. Page seven has the following question (answer split by voting EU poll voting intention: Total/Con/Lab/Lib Dem/Greens/UKIP/BNP):
Q: [W]hich if any of these groups do you often think benefit from UNFAIR ADVANTAGES in Britain these days?
[groups available to be selected as an answer:]
Muslims 39/44/27/26/22/61/70
Non-white people 36/41/25/26/22/53/62
People educated at public schools 32/19/43/40/50/27/25
Gay and lesbian men and women 23/27/16/15/13/39/36
Women 11/11/9/9/9/14/16
White people 7/6/10/8/12/5/8
Jews 6/5/5/5/5/6/12
People educated at state comprehensive schools 5/6/4/5/4/5/6
None of these 12/14/12/15/15/6/5
Don’t know 13/12/13/12/10/8/5 -
thabet
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there is something that connects the countrywide reaction to Rowan Williams’ comments on sharia to the outrage being expressed over MPs expenses (and maybe even initial anti-war demonstrations, or as far back as the death of Diana Spencer).
Compare those moments of anger with the general silence over numerous other scandals and crimes which, in simple terms, have cost more money and lives, been far more corrupt, or just plainly unfair.
-
thabet
I notice this ‘course’ is being promoted on DeenPort:
Hmmm…
One of the (Muslim) ‘trainers’ on this course says the following:
The [Surrendered Wife] principles essentially apply to married women of the West, which automatically excludes widows. You will find the women of the East are much more ’surrendered’ to the will of Divine decree – they bloom and thrive where they are planted rather than constantly fighting the way things are… The women of the East tend to put up with a lot more, are more hospitable and tolerant of their folk. Which is perhaps why it is more common to see thriving family systems back there.
These observations about families in the East and West appear to me to be nothing more than trite generalisations, based on zero evidence.
-
thabet
I found this interesting Scott McConnell article (via Daniel Larison) on the role ethnic groups play in determining America’s foreign policy:
The views of the Americans posting on here would be welcome.
-
thabet
The UAE is worried about its divorce rate, which is one of the highest in Muslim-majority nations.
Some 60% of those getting divorced are Emirati nationals.
-
thabet
Chris Dillow links to some research (pdf) which tries to explain how slavery impacted upon the economic development of some African countries.
Dillow also notes:
Any individual who thinks their wealth is the result of their own effort is just an idiot.
-
thabet
The growing political and social clout of atheists in the US.
And via Tariq, The Root has an article discussing growing ‘black atheism’ (or at least not affiliating with a religion).
-
thabet
If only the poor in Britain’s towns and cities had celebrity ‘friends’ to highlight their plight.
-
thabet
The problems of Pakistan explored by Jason Burke and a lengthy article at UN Dispatch.
Seopy has some pictures of the recent march.
-
thabet
The BBC has two views on whether the caste system is a problem for Hindus in the UK.
Probably worth asking the same question about South Asian Muslims in the UK too.
