UK multi-culturism under spotlight, by Roger Hardy, BBC “Islamic Affairs Analyst”, but didn’t have the energy to get stuck into it at the time. Thankfully, Dumbjon has been on the case, and has done a remarkably good demolition job, Beeb Bandwagon Hits Clue Tree, Reverses, Steers Round It, in his own inimitable style. The post below it is rather funny as well.
I saw this BBC News Online story last week,
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Don’t “engage” with TVLA letters, it’s amusing to see the number and variety they send.
In the interests of balance (and lively radio), Ken Livingstone should be invited into the R4 Today studio to ‘discuss’ with Naughtie his thoughts on the “Iraq connection”.
I doubt it will happen but it would be a novely to hear Naughtie to put the alternative view. Ken’s given us plenty of material….
Mayor blames Middle East policy
“…the attacks would not have happened had Western powers left Arab nations free to decide their own affairs after World War I.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4698963.stm
Naughtie should be giving Livingstone ‘hard balls’ though, along the lines of the ‘pro-war’ arguments. Not giving him soft airtime e.g. “Do you think we were right to go to war with Iraq?”
R4 should get Forsyth in to join Naughtie. Wasn’t there a US prog called “Crossfire” where polititians got hard balls thrown at them whatever their political persuasion?
Oh, and you will be assimilated:
“Ms Jowell also told the committee the government was looking at introducing fixed penalty notices to those who did not pay their licence fee.”
“We are looking at alternative to the present criminal sanctions, particularly the use of fixed penalty notices which have pretty high rates of compliance,” she said.
Jowell: BBC Trust is here to stay
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4700129.stm
Jeremy Bowen’s name was mentioned a good while ago for this post, after major complaints about bias. What has he done so far in this post = SFA ? And what has he done before that could cause worries : Any links, please ?
Rob Read
Oh yes, they seem to have an endless variety of letters, from sugary sweet to the diest of warnings.
Like the TVLA, Tessa Jawohl can shove her compliance notices (compliance! ha!) up her arse. Not a penny.
england
“I’m endlessly fascinated by the way that unrest and criminal behaviour amongst the minority communities must always be explained, excused and ‘root causes’ addressed whilst similar actions in sections of the majority are to be inevitably challenged, condemned and fought.”
I have pondered this many times myself.
Richard
On having to stay “engaged” to solve the world’s problems, that sounds like the stuff Blair always says. I’m sure I heard him say that in a speech a while back. When referring to marriage, maybe someone should think of something else to call it!:lol:
BNP looking attractive as a protest vote, I think it would be a shame but the lefties need to face a backlash for thier fecklesness.
> BNP looking attractive as a protest > vote
One problem with this rather bizarre rose-tinted-glasses approach to the fascist parties, as ‘attractive’ as it may seem to some, is that when fascist parties in the Uk gain power, physical violence against anyone not ‘of their kind’ increases.
btw, that includes all manner of white foreigners, as well as the obvious non-white Brits.
The best way for you to show a ‘backlash’ against ‘lefties’ (Ken Clarke? the LibDems?) for their ‘fecklesness’ is to vote against them, or join your Union, or Church group, or whatever takes your fancy
Voting for fascist scum, even by some of the increasingly bizarre standards on here, is surely beyond the pale.
Exactly why I`ve never voted BNP.
With UKIP a joke and the Tories in open competition to wear Blairs clothes, whats left ?
If you shout at someone that you will kill him,it is not an offence.If you put it in writing,or video it an send it,it becomes an offence.
I dont know how illegal these Fatwas will be deemed if issued in the UK,but has come to a pretty bad pass if we feel they`ve become a “good thing”
Quite right Robin, we should refuse to play “Fatwa”.
Boy, 15, wins curfew legal battle:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4699095.stm
Well, so parents have fewer and fewer rights to deal with the bad behaviour of their children. Whose idea was it to “empower” children – the lefties… obviously.
What has happened is these children / teenagers are out of control. Suddenly our lefty friends notice that something’s wrong and what do they do … pass a law. Now this law has been thrown out – surprise, surprise.
This is what happens if you criminalise parents for giving their child a slap – we all know that respect is a dead virtue, thanks to our rose-tinted spectacle wearing friends on the left. No wonder you want Sharia law to sort out the mess you created, John B. and your comrades.
It is correct that this silly law was overturned, typical of lefties to think that banning symptoms removes the cause. How lazy. How stupid. How unwise. How childlike.
Stupid laws must be overturned until the correct solutions are arrived at, in this case proper discipline of children by parents, schools, figures of authority and police.
Joerg
Notice how he said his rights were breached under the “European Convention on Human Rights.” Not British. So Europe has control over the British children now, not Britain and certainly not British parents. I guess it would be a “breach” of human rights to get an unaccompanied 12 year old off the street after 9pm as well. While we’re at it, why not make it a 10 year old. Now that this was thrown out, there will be no age line drawn, I’ll bet. After all, children of all ages are empowered by the left.
In reply to the_camp_commandant I think the reason non-whites are overrepresented on our BBC screens is to help fill quotas. The ‘hideously white’ BBC preaches multiculturalism to the rest of us, but needs to reserve those plum, behind the scenes jobs, ‘prestige’ presenting jobs like wildlife and history programs or junk daytime TV presenting jobs about antiques, house decorating etc where a minority presenter might frighten away the retired white middle class viewer for Henry and Sophie when they come down from Oxbridge. The proportion of non-white staff is boosted by the presenters and actors on childrens programs and the trash dramas. Of course it is important to have minority presnters and it would be absurd to have 24 white Blue Peter presenters and 1 non-white to maintain a true picture, but I’d be a lot more convinced of the BBC’s commitment to equality if minority staff occupied more senior BBC positions. But as with most ‘liberals’, it’s a case of do as I say, not as I do. I never remember them coming clean with us and saying ‘Look, we’re hideously white, but you shouldn’t be’.
Denise:
Yes, and who’s picking up the pieces… society as a whole. And in the mean-time our streets are full of children who are allowed to do whatever they want (including committing crimes) because they know exactly that little will happen to them if they break the law. What the lefties tell them is: “You’ve got all the rights in the world but no responsibilities.”
Visitor
You’re right. If good parents were allowed to properly discipline their children, there would be no need for such laws. Unfortunately, there would still be those parents who don’t disipline their children, letting them do whatever they want. There will always be some parents like that and their children really shouldn’t be out all hours of the night. But if most children were disciplined right, this wouldn’t be a problem.
Denise
Although you’re right that there will always be plenty of parents who will not discipline their children, you must still what you think is right with your own. How you bring up your children is none of the state’s business. If you think a smack id appropriate, you smack. Laws regulating how you may bring up your own children, in my view, are illegitimate.
Roy Hattersley, ex Deputy Leader of the ruling Labour elite here lays bare the left’s view of your own children:
Children do not belong to their parents
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1361615,00.html
In their view your children are as much the property of the state as being your own flesh and blood. The left regards it as wholly right that your children are tagged, stamped, indoctrinated, fed, formed and raised by the state. They are not your own.
Leftism is a mental illness.
Ken Livingstone was on both Radio 4 and Newsnight in the past couple of days and explicitly did not condemn suicide bombing in principle. Because (he believes) it is justifiable in Israel, then he is advocating a case-by-case review of its acceptability. This Mayor of London has appeared on podiums with Gerry Adams and Yusuf al-Qaradawi, both of whom are on record as supporting bombing of civilians. And on neither program was he seriously challenged about his associates.
Here in Germany it’s mainly people who live from benefits who can afford to have children. Unless you’re earning very good money you’ll be hard pressed to create a suitable environment for a family. And then, when you think you have raised your children properly, you have to send them to a school where multiculturalism rules. In some schools 90 percent of the pupils are from a foreign background. Actually there’s one school in Berlin where there no longer are any German children. Multicultural? Hardly. We need to stop this crap.
Pete:
Children aren’t anyone’s property but I can tell you I won’t let the nanny-state nanny my children because I know betst what they need in order to become good people. They’re not going to have moral values if they’re brought up by the Hatterley standards.
But, as I stated above, as soon as you send them to school you can wave good-bye to that because left-wing teacher will indoctrinate them accordingly. That’s one reason why I’m not going to raise any kids over here.
Joerg
Exactly! Here in Georgia, parents are still allowed to spank their children. If it’s against the law in any other state, I haven’t heard about it. It is, however, against the law for a teacher to do it, in Georgia that is. I remember when I was a kid, if a student misbehaved, they were sent out into the hallway where the teacher would give them a few swats on the behind with a paddle. It hurt nothing but their pride, which is what they deserved. But by the time I was in the 5th or 6th grade, the law against this was passed. I also remember an increase of disruptions in classes after that and kids saying, “they can’t do anything to me now, nah, nah!” So of course, lack of discipline all the more encourages anti-social behavior. And it shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.
Denise:
But then you have quite a bit more personal freedom in the US than you have on the old continent… I like the fact that over there the Liberals / Leftists are really having a hard time at the moment. Don’t get me wrong… I like people with “progressive” attitudes but not in the true leftist sense.
Read this piece (Life After the Left) that just appeared on FrontPage Mag today: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18661
Extremely interesting.
Paul Reynolds
THE FATWA
This thread had a series of exchanges yesterday and this morning between me and Paul Reynolds of the BBC about their mixup over the “Fatwa” issued by a large group of UK Islamic scholars and imams on 18 July, which is to be read out in most mosques in Britain on Friday. The BBC initially ran a report quoting from an entirely different document, the 15 July political statement issued through the MCB. I had queried this serious discrepancy, and also stressed that it was essential that the FULL text of the REAL fatwa should be available because there was already concern that there could be loopholes. Indeed such concern had been predicted by Shirhad Manji on BBC Five Live and I believe elsewhere.
Paul Reynolds posted that he had fixed for the original BBC report to be altered to reflect the REAL fatwa; eventually this new report on the BBC site linked to the full text of the fatwa.
At 7.55am today Mr Reynolds posted here that the main issue was the general thrust of the fatwa, which strongly condemnned the London bombings as terrorism and murder – to that extent the close contextual analysis was less important. I responded at 9.31am that if there were major loopholes or exceptions in the text of the fatwa, it was essential that these should at least be flagged. My brief advice from a couple of people overseas had been that the summary wording they had seen had very serious drawbacks. Some were described as deliberate evasions by the scholars and imams. One said that the BBC was in effect putting out PR on the fatwa without comment. I think that to the extent that the fatwa might be questioned as being seriously deficient or contradictory, the BBC was in effect misleading its audience. And indeed maybe misleading itself.
I saw no response on this from Mr Reynolds. But can we assume that he MUST have logged these concerns as our exchanges had spread across many hours? Can we assume that at least the home news staff at the BBC were now aware of the issues ?
I have just seen a post by Melanie Phillips at her site – she reckons there really are MAJOR weaknesses and implicit contradictions in the fatwa.
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001351.html
This adds to the feeling of serious unease I was repeatedly trying to put to Mr Reynolds.
So let me pitch up here and to Mr Reynolds how I now feel, although I am of course not a scholar of the Koran :
ANYONE COULD DRIVE A COACH AND HORSES THROUGH THE GAPS IN THE FATWA TO JUSTIFY TERRORISM IN IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN, ISRAEL AND ALL OVER THE WORLD EXCEPT HERE.
I think we are in danger of being taken for a ride. By the imams and scholars and ALSO BY THE BBC who have failed to address the crucial details. But the devil always lies in the details, the BBC knows that double standards on all this is already a hot issue (eg the criticism of Ken Livingston and others).
The BBC has a core Charter duty to INFORM. On this matter, are they once again giving a seriously incomplete story ? Is the BBC more concerned to inform us – or to avoid rocking the boat with the Muslim community ?
Their report on the fatwa is simply PR if they do not tell us the whole story. Alternatively it is incomplete and sloppy journalism. Tomorrow and Friday the BBC is probably set to trumpet the reading of the fatwa. As if it is all fine and dandy. It is not – on highly important aspects of terrorism the fatwa looks like a bit like a three-card-trick.
My post at 12.30am was aimed to focus on the BBC’s handling of the fatwa issue. Is there bias involved ? Who knows ? But there has often been reserve in BBC broadcasting in pressing the Muslim community hard on questions such as this. The time for smothering the real concerns is gone. It is time for hard analysis, no more waffle.
Evidently the imams and scholars cannot bring themselves to condemn the deliberate murder of ALL “innocents” – eg the murder of the 2 dozen candy children in Baghdad, the murder of hundreds and thousands of civilians (including journalists and photographers). The BBC should be telling us this, not glossing over it.
And I still maintain that the publishing of a fatwa which is an article of sharia law, not British law, is both irrelevent and an insult to this country. By entering or residing in this land one undertakes an implicit obligation to abide by its laws and customs. That has to be irreduceable and not subject to the interpretation of the whims of a deity because by their very nature these interpretations can be argued or reversed.(Which is exactly the situation we’re getting into.) Part and parcel of accepting a society with freedom of religion and worship is the tacit agreement that religious convictions have to be subject to those conditions.
A simple reminder of those. obligations would have sufficed.
As I stated before, England… the left are so out of their depth that they can no longer rely on their own law-making. That’s why they need members of the stone-age death cult to issue a “fatwa”. We’re going to be subjected to Sharia law very soon if we’re not extremely careful.
Joerg
Thanks for the link. I found it interesting also.
Pete
You’re right. The state has no business telling people how to raise their children. As for my statement that kids shouldn’t be out past a certain hour, that is my personal belief that I think parents should enforce and unfortunately some don’t. If they did, there wouldn’t be as much of a crime problem amongst young people. But really it’s not for the government to decide, I agree. The left will try what they will and over here they are trying so hard. But fortunately, I see people fighting back. And yes, leftism is a mental illness. I’ve come to that conclusion myself.
JiL
Good work. The BBC made a song and dance over the fact of the Fatwa but it will be interesting to see if the full text is made available by the BBC.
england is right in any case. Islamic groups should be told unequivocably that only law is relevent here, though please observe customs and traditions of the land you now live in. To issue a Fatwa is an extreme impertinence, reveals an arrogance for the law and shows the disdain that adherents to Islam have for the land they live in.
Re: Fatwa
On the one hand it’s irrelevant and on the other hand Melanie Phillips is poring over it a though it’s the holy grail?? As has correctly been pointed out, it has no force in law. If it enocourages people to behave then great, if it’s an incitement to breaching the peace or worse then prosecute, if it’s a load of incoherent b*llocks then ignore it.
Re: kids.
The key issue is education. Intelligent kids aren’t disrespectful and find more stimulating things to do than chuck bricks at cars. Intelligent parents keep an eye on what their kids are up to. Kids are getting worse because they and their parents are getting more stupid. The core problem is an unholy alliance of b*llshit lefty teaching methods and Thatcher’s education cuts. Until that’s sorted out, and it’ll take 20 years, all of the Daily Mail editorialising in the world won’t help.
The absence of a fatwa by Islamic clerics condemning terrorism has been a bone of contention on the right for a long time (Melanie Philips included).
Now there is one (weasel hypocrisy that it is), its very existence is dismissed as arrogance.
Strangely, I have sympathy with both views.
.
Pete_London
“Leftism is a mental illness…”
Isn`t it ever!
Cockney
“if it’s a load of incoherent b*llocks then ignore it.”
The problem with your point of view is that once you’ve accepted its validity to suit your purposes the third option is no longer available.
In passing Melanie Phillips is essentially conducting an Israel/Islam debate which she is quite free to do. Muslims are free to do the same. There is no obligation on residents of this country to support either side although those who do can expect a slanging from their opponents.
The only real issue is if it’s incitement to break British law.
If Muslims want to accept it as having some quasi legal force then it’s none of our business as long as it doesn’t incite them to break British law. I can’t see how you can stop people making statements attempting to influence people into adopting (legal) behaviour.
If you think that it’s impertinent then write to them or tell the next Muslim you see or something, but you can’t seriously expect official condemnation. Next time the Pope tells Catholics not to use contraception is Tony supposed to remind him that Catholic doctrine has no place in British law and that he should stop being so cheeky?
Melanie Phillips can of course do what she likes. It would take a complete pillock to suggest otherwise, although I’m a bit bemused by those who slavishly hang on newspaper columnists every word and seem to believe that linking to their articles ‘proves’ a point. What happened to studying facts and coming up with your own opinion?
I agree with England that there are shades of Sharia law here. But that is a somewhat separate argument.
Can we please stick to the question most relevant to this site – is the BBC reporting the fatwa properly ? THEY think it is important – it has been on their website for days, they will be making a big fuss about the fatwa being read out tomorrow in mosques. I say their reporting has been shown to be slipshod. And also VERY INCOMPLETE.
It looks just like PR, NOT like reporting and analysis. If the CoE Synod issues a decision, the BBC reports the decision AND all the controversy around it.
Fatwas ARE very important in the Muslim world. Equivalent to Papal encyclicals to Catholics, to decisions of the CofE Synod eg on women bishops. Fatwas are a JUDGMENT.
If fatwas were merely discussion documents, position papers, why was Salman Rushdie under guard for years and years ?
The BBC is once again skating over the serious issues. The deliberate evasions and moral equivalence in the fatwa, especially its failure to condemn terrorism overseas, are being ignored by the BBC.
Net result – more BBC spin. Spin by omission, spin by turning a blind eye.
Cockney
I have not simply posted Melanie Phillips article. Days before I posted it I was giving my OWN view on the fatwa and why it looks very dodgy. True or true ?
Cockney, england.
My reading of the fatwa is that it does NOT tell British Muslims not to go on suicide-bombing missions in Iraq or Afghanistan. Nor to stop chopping journalists heads off in Pakistan or anywhere else. Nor to blow up nightclubs in Bali if they want to, or trains in Madrid. Nor to get on a plane with a shoe bomb. Some of those examples have already occurred or been attempted. Thr 7/7 four are NOT the first home-grown Muslim terrorists from the UK.
And you think this is of no concern to us ?
Pete
The full text of the fatwa is linked to on the BBC’s report.
I described the fatwa as a curate’s egg. Over at Harry’s Place – an essntially left-wing blog -someone has capped my desciption.
They say it is “a curate’s egg gone off” Nice one.
They added that mass murder is not enough to get a clear, unqualified and unambiguous fatwa.
You have to do something really wicked like write a a bad novel.
Can the BBC not see this ?
My opinion is that the reporting is doesn’t provide sufficient background on the nature of what a fatwa is and how it applies, its geographical reach etc etc. Personally I find it hard to believe that someone in Palestine or Iraq is going to be swayed by the opinion of a bloke living in a semi in Leicester, but it would be nice to know the theory. Frankly I do care more about what happens in the UK where there are decidedly less issues clouding the moral waters and where I live.
Can’t tell from the text whether the intention is to leave loopholes or if that’s paranioa – it does unequivocably condemn ‘terrorism’ and I think one would struggle to find a definition that didn’t include deliberately harming civilians for political ends which would include Israel, Iraq etc. The best thing would be to ask for clarification from one of the authors which the Beeb doesn’t seem to have done??
I thought the Satanic Verses was pretty good, if a little too deliberately obscure at times.
Cockney
Are youi deliberately missing the point ? The murderer of Daniel Pearl the US journalist in Pakistan was BRITIH. Both shoebombers were BRITISH. Two BRITISH guys went bar-bombing in Israel. How many BRITISH men may have been involved or may contemplate getting involved in Iraq or Afghanistan ?
I really think you are being blase on this one. Flippant even. The interpretation of the fatwa may seem esoteric to you – but it could be life or death to a lot of other people.
Let’s be honest, any Fatwa will be stuffed with caveats and loopholes. Where terrorism is mentioned, you have to ask muslims what they define as terrorism. When civilians are mentioned, you must do the same. One of those Imam types popped up the other day explaining why Jewish women aren’t actually civilians. Words will mean what they want them to mean. It’s nothing more than an insulting PR stunt.
Explosion incidents being reported.
Fat lot of good, the fatwa ?
lefties like cockney remain in denial as to the nature of the threat.
Mate, I’m far from leftie and far from in denial. The nature of the threat is Islamic extremism insufficiently opposed by a large proportion of the unextreme Islamic population and unhindered by politically correct and abysmally funded police and immigration services.
What we need to do in my opinion is hack through all PC barriers to ‘disproportionately’ monitoring Muslims and Muslim institutions, ensure that British law is strictly imposed irrespective of ‘cultural’ values, give the immigration authorities sufficient funding to swiftly locate and repatriate people here illegally and aggressively prosecute anyone provoking illegal behaviour.
The BBC should report the facts without PC inspired censorship and should vigorously challenge everyone voicing opinions one way or the other – I’ve never questioned that. It certainly shouldn’t be terrifying people with stories of massed Arab forces in the Bristol channel about to unleash jihad on us or an undercover Muslim breeding plan to outnumber ‘us’ by Christmas as some seem to suggest.
The point on which ‘righties’ are in denial on is that most of the above will cost money, (gulp) taxpayers money, possibly in excess of that which could be reclaimed by slashing grants to black lesbian dwarf support groups. There’s not much point in making up a load of hardcore new laws if nobody can afford to enforce them.
That’s my view anyway, presumably you’d kick ’em all out, make Mel Phillips PM and then bomb Saudi Arabia?
Can we all issue fatwas against people we dont like or agree with.Can we pay someone to do it?
My new business is contract killing.
Cockney,
I think we can easily find 2.8Billion somewhere to help.
Sounds like Cockney has been reading my thoughts. You only missed out Peter Hitchens for Home Secretary and Richard Littlejohn for the Foreign Office.
Finally you say something about what YOU would recommend.
Normally you do your highandmighty superiority stuff to us plebs. You sit on the fence – and have fun needling other people and hard ideas.
Please stay on the track of stating your ideas and recommendations. The slippery stuff really does not work, and it demeans you.