Christopher Hitchens in 2007  said in relation to the Danish cartoons that the ‘Barbarians’ are not at the gates they are inside them…gates held open by the other religions who condemned not the murderous violence but the cartoons. ..get used to this he said…you may be living in the last few years where you can complain about religion….we’re heading back to the stone age he forecast.

A thought Charlie Hebdo also recognised…all three religions demanding Charlie Hebdo be ‘veiled’…

See how the cartoons relate to real life and are not mere ‘insults’…they have a point to make.

Nothing has changed.

Delighted to see the Pope upholding Christian virtues…he is after all the supreme head of the Catholic cult that supposedly says ‘Turn the other cheek…love thy neighbour…thou shalt not kill’…or as one commenter said...’Considering the history of Catholicism, what a hypocrite.’

Paris attacks: Pope Francis says freedom of speech has limits

Pope Francis has defended freedom of expression following last week’s attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo – but also stressed its limits.

The pontiff said religions had to be treated with respect, so that people’s faiths were not insulted or ridiculed.

To illustrate his point, he told journalists that his assistant could expect a punch if he cursed his mother.

[He said] such horrific violence in God’s name could not be justified.

He staunchly defended freedom of expression, but then he said there were limits, especially when people mocked religion.

“If my good friend Doctor Gasparri [who organises the Pope’s trips] speaks badly of my mother, he can expect to get punched,” he said, throwing a pretend punch at the doctor, who was standing beside him.

“You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others. There is a limit.”

 

Kinda sounds like he is saying ‘I don’t really give a s**t about those dead cartoonists’…or as Muhammed said about the poet Asma Bint Marwan, whom some say he had murdered for her criticism of him,“Two goats won’t butt their heads about her”.

The Pope has rushed out an explanation…he didn’t mean that at all…..

Vatican: Pope’s Charlie Hebdo Comments Didn’t Condone Violence

Pope Francis’ press office on Thursday issued a clarification following his comment that there is a limit on the freedom of expression when it insults someone’s faith, saying the pope’s words did not advocate the violence seen in the Paris terror attacks.

“The pope’s expression is in no way intended to be interpreted as a justification for the violence and terror that took place in Paris last week,” Rev. Thomas Rosica, an English language assistant to the Holy See Press Office, said in a statement sent to reporters. “His words mean that there are limits to humor and satire particularly in the ways that we speak about matters of faith and belief.”

 

Sure…but then what?

Back to Asma Bint Marwan and the BBC.

Douglas Murray in the Spectator reports that the BBC has issued its own little fatwa and banned him from saying anything that Muslims don’t like:

There may be some positive things to be said about Mohammed, but I thought this was pushing things too far and mentioned just one occasion when Mohammed didn’t welcome a critic. Asma bint Marwan was a female poetess who mocked the ‘Prophet’ and who, as a result, Mohammed had killed. It is in the texts. It is not a problem for me. But I can understand why it is a problem for decent Muslims. The moment I said this, my Muslim colleague went berserk. How dare I say this? I replied that it was in the Hadith and had a respectable chain of transmission (an important debate). He said it was a fabrication which he would not allow to stand. The upshot was that he refused to continue unless all mention of this was wiped from the recording. The BBC team agreed and I was left trying to find another way to express the same point. The broadcast had this ‘offensive’ fact left out.

So much for reporting without fear or favour…what about journalistic integrity…what about the duty to investigate all sides to an argument rather than present the one favourable to the most violent?  Reminds me of this….Humane Bullfighting in Costa Rica – No one Can Hurt the Bull but the Bull Can Kill Anyone

Many Muslims do object to the story…but many use it to justify killing….the story is ‘politicised’…or ‘weaponised’ if you like….as it reflects badly upon the prophet….

It is alleged that Prophet Muhammad reportedly had a number of non-Muslims killed in Medina. Many non-Muslims use these alleged incidents to argue that the Prophet promoted violence against his critics while many Muslims view these incidents a justification to demand death for those who insult the Prophet and blaspheme Allah.

….having said that they admit Muhammed did have critics killed ….here it just happens to be two Jews who also published poems criticising him…any policeman might look at the coincidences there, poets who criticise Muhammed being killed, and conclude maybe the Asma Bint Marwan story has some legs:

The scholars are unanimously agreed that a Muslim who insults the Prophet (Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam) becomes a Kaafir and an apostate who is to be executed. This consensus was narrated by more than one of the scholars, such as Imaam Ishaaq ibn Raahawayh, Ibn al-Mundhir, al-Qaadi ?Iyaad, al-Khattaabi and others. (Al-Saarim al-Maslool, 2/13-16)

However, the stories of Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf and Abu Rafi’, due to speaking ill against and insulting the Prophet (Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam) are found authentic in Bukhari.

 

In this Muslim source it is accepted Marwan was killed on the orders of Muhammed…well, it was Allah what done it really…..

The killing of Asma bint Marwan, who ridiculed the prophet.

Asma bint Marwan used to ridicule the prophet, alaihisslaam, in her poetry. Although the prophet always forgave all people who attempted to cause harm to him through their words or deeds, don’t forget that he was not an ordinary person but Rasulullah (the messenger of God).

The Quran is unmistakably clear about this law, which the Almighty declares as Sunnatallahi (the way Allah deals). See 17:77, for instance. Asma bint Marwan was therefore killed not by the prophet but by Allah. As a general principle, the prophet, alaihissalaam, always forgave people who caused harm to him. However, when he was asked by the Almighty to get certain people killed through His own law, which He has clearly mentioned in Quran, then he implemented what his God desired of him.

 

 

There is definitely an argument to be had…and as many Muslims use it to justify their violence perhaps the BBC should have run with it, if only to expose any errors in the tale….but regardless of the truth of the Asma Bint Marwan story Muslims have to admit other similar tales as mentioned above.

The BBC is censoring anything they deem uncomfortable for Muslims to hear…in essence it is little different to  Salman Rushdie and the ‘Satanic Verses’ when verses inconvenient to the Muslm narrative being published resulted in a death warrant for Rushdie…Murray is probably lucky the BBC decided to shut him up….he’d probably need police protection now…judging by the reaction of his fellow interviewee.

Peace man!

Catherine Guilyardi puts the BBC’s Christian Fraser in his place:

Lord Hall has spoken.… The BBC will not change, it will not respond to criticism, it will not bow to naked bullying of those who demand accountability, transparency and reporting of a balanced and impartial nature.

He also says his reporters will report ‘without fear or favour’….really?

Publish this then:

Not this….

Hall says…

“There may be some – I hope only a few – who try to use the impending Charter Review to influence our coverage of politics in this most sensitive of political years,” he said. “We will never let that happen, because to do so would betray the public and the ideals of the BBC.”

 

Just what did Miliband say in his ‘secret meeting with top BBC executives last November…apart from revealing his plan to ‘weaponise’ the NHS for his election campaign?

He went on:

‘… the independence of the BBC would be challenged “like never before”, with its coverage carefully scrutinised in a manner some staff might find “rather unappealing”.’

 

Ah yes, can’t have any of that unappealing scrutiny.

It does seem that Tony Hall doesn’t like the BBC having to be accountable to anyone….believing presumably in the inherent professionalism and fairminded nature of his staff to rein in the impulse to act as the Labuor Party’s media arm.

He says:

“Our confidence will never be arrogance, our pride will never be complacency, our determination will never be defensiveness.”

I’m sure he’s got that entirely right….arrogant, too proud to accept criticism, complacent and defensive?….no, no one would ever, ever, think that about the BBC.

Love the idea of naked bullying….all those Tory Eton toffs, butt naked, chasing Hall around the dorm slapping him with their mobile phones that are playing jazz s&m style…..should have a cartoon of that.

Personally, I’ve never quite understood why so many of my co-religionists are so keen to kill or maim those who ‘insult’ Islam, Prophet Muhammad or the Quran.

Media Hasan 2012

 

Errrr…scrub that……

 

Good old Media Hasan, that Islamist opportunistic chancer…thought we’d lost him for a while but he’s crawled out from  under his stone to make a comment, finally, about Charlie Hebdo.

Of course he was in a difficult position….support Charlie Hebdo and burnish his liberal, progressive, secular credentials as he is prone to do and really upset the Brothers, or support the killers and he’d be discredited and finished, he’d be sharing taxis with Nicky Campbell’s ex-mate Mo Ansar.  Islam or Free Speech?  Islam or Free Speech?  One had to go.  ‘fraid it was the Free Speech.  Just as the choice he made with homophobia…he chose Islam whilst also paradoxically claiming not to be homophobic.

Amusing that he is so ‘tired’ of all the media attention asking for his comments…so unlike him…wonder why he doesn’t really want to comment.

Actually you know it’s Muslim news story week when Muslims slaughter cartoonists and Jews….never mind what is happening in the rest of the world….good old Boko Haram eh…2000 people massacred.  Muhammed, forgiving and merciful, and peaceful, must be crying now.

Remember, the now media shy Media Hasan, once urged his fellow Muslims to become fellow media junkies and join the profession…in order to further the interests of Islam in the West, to push the Muslim point of view…to win the battle.

Guess he just doesn’t want to talk about this story too much.

And 4 BBC outlets?  Why bother?  Hasan is a charlatan and an Islamist….he’s about as trustworthy as David Cameron.

For example…here he is expressing his moral outrage at one of Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons:

Trouble is this is the man who said, not as satire, not using the analogy as some form of anti-racist critique, but as the truth from his God…that non-Muslims are ignorant cattle, immoral animals, kufir….  Unbelief is an infirmity, an illness,  a disease of the human mind.   Divisive, racist, demonising language?  ‘us and them’ eh?

I just don’t buy your outrage Hasan…I think you are a fraud….it was you that said this wasn’t it?…

 “No faith or community should be protected from criticism and even ridicule”.

 

Consider this…his latest piece now that he has worked out his ‘position’ on Charlie Hebdo…not so keen on all that free speech and blasphemy now…..

As a Muslim, I’m Fed Up With the Hypocrisy of the Free Speech Fundamentalists

 

Dear liberal pundit, [No longer he then]

I’m writing to you to make a simple request: please stop. You think you’re defying the terrorists when, in reality, you’re playing into their bloodstained hands by dividing and demonising. Us and them. The enlightened and liberal west v the backward, barbaric Muslims.

Yours faithfully,

Mehdi

 

Hasan says:

Has your publication, for example, run cartoons mocking the Holocaust? No? How about caricatures of the 9/11 victims falling from the twin towers?

 

The Holocaust or 9/11 being the goto ‘taboo’ subjects for defenders of the indefensible to make comparisons with cartoons of Muhammed or Islam.  Mocking the Holocaust is mocking 6 million dead and mocking the actual victims of 9/11 as Hasan makes a comparison to would be highly inappropriate but  mocking Islam is mocking an idea..spot the difference between mocking the mass murder of people and an ideology…one that caused the death of so many people itself…..and having said that Charlie Hebdo did do a cartoon of 9/11 the following November after it happened showing Bin Laden saying ‘Look no hands’…as with all Charlie Hebdo cartoons there will be a context for that image and it should not be taken at face value as joking about 9/11…it is obviously a comment of some kind playing off events in November…perhaps a comment on the investigation into who committed the crime:

In fact here’s a cartoon that does mention the victims in  a political comment showing how, just because it’s a cartoon, it doesn’t mean the victims or the subjects are being mocked or insulted:

And no one gets shot.

And as far as I can see Media Hasan has absolutely nothing to say about Dieudonné and his Muslim and Far Right friends who have adopted his anti-Semitic salute…La Quennelle…

Dieudonné not mocking Jews or ‘Zionism’ but inciting violence against them:

Hasan complains of ‘ crude caricatures of bulbous-nosed Arabs’…..get over it……Le Rosbif  turn the other cheek…..But I guess that’s a Christian virtue….

‘Who wants the English in Europe?

Curiously in 2012 Hasan took the opposite stance to today’s rant denouncing those ‘non-existent’ ‘backward, barbaric Muslims’…in fact this is the article that the BBC’s Mishal Husain linked to after the Charlie Hebdo attack to persuade us that Muslims can be restrained and civilised…curiously the New Statesman republished the article after the attack but rapidly withdrew it…could Media Hasan have had other plans, a different stance on ‘blasphemy’,  and didn’t want to be shown up as a hypocrite? (see Daily Mail also!)

Mehdi Hasan on Islam and blasphemy: Muhammad survived Dante’s Inferno. He’ll survive a YouTube clip

 

Dear Muslim protester,

Where do I begin? Having watched you shout and scream in front of the world’s television cameras, throw petrol bombs and smash windows, I reluctantly decided to write this open letter to you.

Let me be blunt: you and I have little in common other than our shared Islamic faith, our common belief that there is no God but God and Muhammad is His Messenger.

If I’m honest, I have to say that, listening to your belligerent rhetoric and watching your violent behaviour, I struggle to recognise the Islam in which you profess to believe.

Like freedom, tolerance is not a western invention or innovation; it is an Islamic virtue. As the great Muslim caliph Ali ibn Abu Talib once wrote: “Remember that people are of two kinds: they are either your brothers in religion or your brothers in mankind.”

Yours faithfully, Mehdi.

 

Yours faithfully eh?  LOL.

Oh, here he is again denouncing blasphemy laws….

Not In My Name: Islam, Pakistan and the Blasphemy Laws

Personally, I’ve never quite understood why so many of my co-religionists are so keen to kill or maim those who ‘insult’ Islam, Prophet Muhammad or the Quran.

I,  for one, am fed up with politicians, mullahs and mobs using my religion to further their own vicious and sectarian agendas. So here’s my own very simple message to the bigots, fanatics and reactionaries of the Islamic world: whatever intellectual or theological disagreements we may have with them, the fact is that Christians (and, for that matter, Jews) are our brethren; the Quran respectfully refers to them as the “People of the Book“.

 

 

‘I,  for one, am fed up with politicians, mullahs and mobs using my religion to further their own vicious and sectarian agendas.’?

Yep never see Media Hasan exploiting situations to further the Islamic cause and his own agenda….and just think on…Hasan tells Muslims that Islam should not bend to fit in with other societies.

Still the BBC seems to like him and think he has something of worth to say.

Watch out you dog lovers, music lovers, beer drinkers and people in same-sex relationships, you non-believers…Islam says you are transgressors….you are out and out Kafirs….watch the video.

Ok, time for a new one of these. Have the comrades at the BBC been bothering you? Detail the bias here!

The Telegraph tells us [The BBC website doesn’t]:

Survey shows anti-Semitic views are common among Britons

Antisemitic views have been shown to be rampant among British people according to the results of a new polls.

Of course it doesn’t say which ‘British People’ are the ones who predominantly hold such views.

Of course one of the factors in generating antipathy towards the Jews in those surveyed must be the media reporting from Gaza, one powerful media group in particular.

As Tony Hall said he wanted to be completely honest, transparent, open and accountable perhaps he should now disclose what the Balen Report said concerning BBC reporting from the the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

If it is completely anodyne why hide it?

If it is utterly damning then it must be laid open to inspection.

If the BBC’s reporting has resulted in the creation of an anti-Semitic ‘backlash’, to coin a phrase, then it should be held to account.

If the BBC fails to publish the report then perhaps it is time for government to force an inquiry into the BBC’s behaviour if it has had such seriously detrimental consequences for a particular community in the UK, and around the world.

BBC News kills Jews?

Let’s find out.

The BBC has been warning us for years of the huge threat posed by the ‘Far Right’, battalions of whom were ready to strike at any moment with panzers rolling down the Mall and stormtroopers rounding up undocumented citizens for deportation.

Seems it was all a bit far fetched.

Far right in UK ‘weakest for 20 years’

Interesting to note how they conflate the BNP, the EDL and UKIP all into one ‘Far Right’ group.

Not all Muslims are terrorists remember but all people who talk about immigration are Nazis according to the BBC.

Having a mooch around looking at various Muslim reactions to recent events and I came across this letter from the Home Office to one of these so called ‘interfaith’ groups…..whether you believe in the genuine good intentions of those who set it up others can better inform you than me.

If you cannot read that here it is:

Home office
James Brokenshire MP
PARLIAMENTARY UNDER SECRETARY FOR CRIME AND SECURITY
2 Marsham Street, London SWlP 4DF

www.homeoffice.gov.uk
Mehri Niknam MBE
Executive Director
Council of lmams and Rabbis
The Joseph lnterfaith Foundation
Suite 2, Savant House
63-65 Camden High Street
NW1 7JL

CTS Reference: M1919811 1 2 1 NOV 2011

Thank you for your letter of 31 October informing the Home Secretary that the
Council of lmams and Rabbis of the Joseph lnterfaith Foundation has sought to
dispel the false perception that the Jewish Community supports the English
Defence League (EDL). I am responding as the Home Office Minister
responsible for policy in this area.
Although community cohesion is primarily the responsibility of the Department for
Communities and Local Government your letter has been noted at the Home
Office. We welcome your positive action to counter the divisive influence and
minimise the impact of EDL activity.

As a Government our position is clear, we will not tolerate groups like the EDL
who spread hate, seek to divide us and deliberately raise community fears and
tensions.

We will:

• Speak out and condemn their views and actions where appropriate;
• Continue to develop an effective public order policing response;
• Engage with local areas to support local action to tackle the EDL;
• And develop our knowledge base so that we better understand the drivers of
  EDL support and can develop successful approaches to deal with the
  problem.

Local agencies know their communities best and we trust them to put in place
suitable local measures to counter the influence and minimise the impact of EDL
activity. We stand ready to provide advice and support where it is requested.

Signed James Brokenshire

I wonder if the BBC received a letter along similar lines as part of an orchestrated media campaign against the EDL?

Quite clearly the government set out to crush the EDL…despite it merely being an organistaion that spoke out about extremist Islam…..in fact it said what the BBC’s John Ware said on Panorama last night….only they were decried as Islamophobes and racists ‘polluting’ people’s minds if I remember correctly what Sarah Montague said…..the interview that Mehdi Hasan thought too easy going, so much so that he created his own list of questions that the BBC should ask Tommy Robinson….and you know what the BBC obliged, Andrew Neil, of all people, being Hasan’s stooge sent in to do his dirty work a couple of days later.  Fast movers when they want to be in reaction to certain ‘listener’s complaints’!

No doubt the German government has learnt much from the British on how to malign, discredit and sideline such groups…groups like Pegida are in the firing line whilst Islamist groups like the MCB get handouts and knighthoods and extremists like Tariq Ramadan actually advise the government on Islam and freedom of religion!    But then we did have the rather dodgy Baroness Warsi in charge of that….the same Baroness who wanted to disarm Israel and arm Hamas!

Couldn’t make it up could you?

Look forward to a John Ware investigation into that web of intrigue and betrayal.

Throw in Fox News and it’s too much for BBC political correspondent Ross Hawkins to resist:

Farage tells Fox there hasn't been prosecution for FGM in UK. CPS tells me trial of 2 men for FGM offences begins Mon. Both plead not guilty

— Ross Hawkins (@rosschawkins) January 13, 2015

Desperate stuff.

There is that old joke about ‘Hoping you’ll be in Heaven half an hour before the Devil knows you’re there’…..and comes to collect you.

Reminded of it by this cartoon: