Total Freedom, If You Bow to Caesar

Deceit, Damned Self-Deceit, and Secularism

Self-aware Christians know that, “there ain’t no neutral ground”.  Christians are epistemologically self-aware.  They know that all truth is pre-interpreted truth.  It is pre-interpreted by God the creator and sustainer of all things.  Anyone who argues there can be such a thing as a neutral zone–a secular public square, for example–where all views are held with equal respect is either self-deceived, childishly credulous or a snake. 

The same reality holds in schools.  Secular schools that are even-handed, and tolerant towards all beliefs and religions, gods, and speculations are a nonsense.  At base, the secularists who make such claims, know it is spurious.  But it feels good.  It is a just-so story they tell themselves to maintain a veneer of self-respect and to fool their opponents.

Christians are liberated from such self-deceits.  If all truth is pre-interpreted truth, as the Christian faith insists is the case, then everyone is pre-committed and biased to a particular world-view from the outset–either Christian or otherwise.  When it comes to schooling, Christians want schools that are independent of the secularist world-view and able fully to reflect the authority of the Word of God to pre-interpret all truth, reality, and knowledge.  In New Zealand, the only way to achieve this is to have truly private schools, self-funded.  If the secularist government pays, eventually the secularist government will control the music its hired piper plays. 

When the Conservative government in the UK set about to reform British schools, it adopted a quasi-market model which was designed to introduce competition into the education market place.
  This in turn led to an opening up of the competitive marketplace.  A thousand flowers would be allowed to bloom.  Some would succeed, some would fail.  The good schools would end up putting competitive pressure on the establishment schools, resulting in raising standards for all. 

There was one slight problem.  Free schools could do anything they liked, teach anything they liked–provided it conformed to the prevailing secularist anti-Christian ideology.  Consequently, the government inspection agency is now actively closing down Christian schools.  Here are a couple of examples:

Christian School Forced to Close 

As Inspectors Brand Children ‘Bigots’ for Not Knowing What a Muslim Is

by Donna Rachel Edmunds
BreitbartNews
21 January, 2015 

Inspectors have labelled pupils at a Christian school bigots and forced it to close after a young boy gave the wrong answer when asked what a Muslim was. Teachers at the school say he referenced terrorism in his answer, but argued that one child’s throwaway answer was no ground for closing the whole school.

Durham Free School, which currently educates 94 pupils aged between 11 and 13, was praised by former education secretary Michael Gove when it opened in September 2013, the Daily Mail has reported.

But inspectors visiting the school last November, after the new guidelines encouraging inspectors to rate schools on how they promote ‘British values’, deemed the school to have failed on a wide range of factors. “Standards are low and progress is inadequate. Students’ achievement is weak”, inspectors wrote.

The school will now close at Easter as the current education secretary, Nicky Morgan has withdrawn funding. But teachers say that they were unfairly penalized for placing a Christian ethos at the heart of the school by inspectors who wanted to demonstrate that they were promoting the Government’s diversity agenda.  In their report, the schools inspectors concluded: “Leaders are failing to prepare students for life in modern Britain. Some students hold discriminatory views of other people who have different faiths, values or beliefs from themselves.”

The government’s “diversity agenda” is pop-speak for multi-culturalism, which, in its turn, is pop-speak for secularism in its post-modern phase of the spin cycle.  All truths are relative and a legitimate perspective of the holder. Consequently, a tolerant society is one which holds no prejudicial views on any other competing perspective.  Except, that the secularist definition of tolerance most certainly cannot be challenged; it is absolutely correct and to ignore it is Verboten. Behold the self-deceit and hypocrisy of  secularism.

The secularist establishment is declaring it will tolerate all views, except the Christian faith.  The only kind of “Christianity” the secular establishment will tolerate is one which submits itself, and conforms to, the overarching ethical imperialism of the secular world.  This is the same dynamic which led successive Roman emperors to say, “Of course you can worship Jesus, if only you first bow in adoration to Caesar and offer  incense to him.” 

Here is another example of a militant secularist religion producing persecution of a UK Christian school:

Meanwhile, nearby Grindon Hall, another Christian school, has been placed in special measures despite achieving the best school leaving exam results in the area. The school’s head, Chris Gray, made an official complaint to inspection group Ofsted following their most recent inspection, in which pupils were asked whether they knew what lesbians did, and whether their friends felt trapped in the wrong body.  The line of questioning angered parents, with one mother reporting that her daughter was “disturbed” and “upset” by the “wholly inappropriate” manner of questions asked.

Mr Gray also drew attention to a paragraph present in the draft report, which was subsequently omitted from the final report issued, which read: “The Christian ethos of the school permeates much of the school’s provision. This has restricted the development of a broad and balanced approach to the curriculum.”  He said the statement revealed “unwarrented skepticism on the part of the inspection team” regarding the Christian ethos of the school. . . .

Colin Hart, Director of The Christian Institute, responded to Mr Gray’s statement saying: “For Ofsted to give the best performing state school in the area its worst possible rating defies common sense. Removing a statement slamming the school’s Christian ethos from their final report tells us all we need to know about what is really behind the downgrading of the school.”  His colleague Simon Calvert added: “The Government’s British values regime is twisting Ofsted’s priorities out of all proportion. Inspectors are asking all kinds of invasive questions and then issuing reports that the parents whose children attend the school don’t recognise.”

The “British values” regime is actually a front for militant secular atheism.  We Christians will not be surprised.  It’s expected.  Militant secular atheism has naturally pre-interpreted all reality after its own image–as all creatures do.  The only “Christianity” that will be tolerated and accepted is a hollowed out religion which has likewise pre-interpreted reality in terms of the secularist worldview.   And that is just not going to happen.  Christians fear God, who can destroy both body and soul in hell, before they fear the State, which can merely kill the body. 

When the pagans control just about everything it’s time to hear the advice of the great Abraham Kuyper: “our isolation is our strength”.  Christians in the UK need to forget government-controlled Free Schools.  They will only ever be a front for secular humanism. 

The only Free School is an independent, self-funded school.  We, the believing Christian community, will have to bear its costs. 

The Madness of the UK Elites

Culturally Sensitive Policing

In the United Kingdom this past year systemic abuse and extreme criminal acts over a long period of time have come to light, yet the police and local council officials have turned a blind eye and ignored them.  Some have warned darkly that what has come to light is the tip of a vast iceberg.  If you have not caught up with the explosive revelations, take a look at reports about Rotherham. 

The question is, how could this come to pass?  While the causes are always multi-form it would appear that a large contributing factor is the sea-change that took place in the UK police force fifteen or so years ago.  As a result of the Macpherson Report into the apparently racially motivated slaying of  Stephen Lawrence the police were officially required to become racist in their approach to community policing and crime.  We mean, of course, they were required to apply a filter of “multi-cultural sensitivities” to crime.  Race was mandated as a filter in apprehending and detecting crime.

First of all, let’s define racism.  The Macpherson Report helpfully provided its definition:

A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person. [Maitland Report, p.376]

No doubt, dear reader, you have just fallen off your chair. Racist incidents take place whenever anyone perceives they have.  This bizarre claim was to become part of police and government procedures.  But worse, the police had to take race (that is, the cultures of different races) into account when policing.

A new atmosphere of mutual confidence and trust must be created. The onus to begin the process which will create that new atmosphere lies firmly and clearly with the police. The Police Services must examine every aspect of their policies and practices to assess whether the outcome of their actions creates or sustains patterns of discrimination. The provision of policing services to a diverse public must be appropriate and professional in every case. Every individual must be treated with respect. “Colour-blind” policing must be outlawed. The police must deliver a service which recognises the different experiences, perceptions and needs of a diverse society. [Maitland, s.45.24]

Colour blind policing is outlawed.  Instead the police had to recognise “the different experiences, perceptions and needs of a diverse society”.  “Recognising” has to do with acknowledging in a positive light.

From that time onwards, the police were not allowed to be “colour-blind”, but they had to be culturally sensitive.  Putting it baldly, since it was a long established cultural practice for Pakistani youth to prey upon young girls and boys, groom them for sex, and systematically rape them, the police clapped the proverbial telescope to the Nelsonian blind eye and saw no evil.  Its just what they do, and police needed to recognise “the different experiences, perceptions and needs of a diverse society.”  Behold the mandated and required racism of the modern UK police force.

Consequently, since many of the horrendous crimes being perpetrated in our day can be linked to historical cultural practices, the Police are, therefore, expected to see no evil, hear no evil.  Crimes such as female genital mutilation, honour killings, paedophilia, compulsorily arranged marriages are all wonderful manifestations (don’t you know) of a diverse rich multi-cultural society which the Police must welcome, endorse, and celebrate–along with all the vast machinery of state and its army of bureaucratic functionaries–or, if not, risk being charged with racism.  At the least, this is not the most enlightened career move one could make. 

Peter Hitchens comments:

The Macpherson Report is one of the most extraordinary documents ever to be published by any British government.  Its language, tone and style are quite unlike anything else ever printed by the austere presses of the state.  Its accusation of “institutional racism” against the police is by definition impossible to prove and therefore impossible to refute.  Yet it has highly disreputable origins.  The inventor of this idea and expression was the American black radical Stokely Carmichael, an anti-Semite who was at one time banned from this country and who proclaimed that Hitler was a genius. . . . Despite this tainted source, it has been difficult for anyone to combat the new ideology presumably for fear of being damned as institutionally racist themselves. [Peter Hitchens, The Abolition of Liberty: the Decline of Order and Justice in England (London: Atlantic Books, 2003),   p. 209f.]

When secularism overthrew the Christian faith, it did not introduce a wonderfully tolerant society.  Rather, it made room for the re-introduction of idols (secular idols, to be sure, but idols nonetheless).  As will always the case, these particular idols are ruthless, bloody, primitive and benighted as were Bel, Nebo, and Molech.  

Multi-Culturalism has Limits

14 Somali Men Convicted of Running Prostitute Ring

[Thankfully there are limits still in place against the claims and prerogatives of multi-culturalism.  Thankfully the police in the south of  England appear to be more vigilant and effective and less of the “see no evil, hear no evil” policing that had operated in places in the north of England.  Ed.]

by A.B. Sanderson  

27 Nov 2014

BreitbartLondon

A court in Bristol has heard about a sickening gang of Somali men who groomed underage girls and forced them into a life of rape and sexual abuse. The thirteen men abused girls as young as 13 and tricked them into thinking they were their girlfriends.

In total, the men have been convicted of 31 sex crimes against seven vulnerable girls and have been handed prison sentences totalling more than 75 years, the Bristol Post reports. Some of the men told the girls that it was a Somali cultural practice for girlfriends to sleep with their boyfriend’s friends.

There were two trials, the last of which finished yesterday when a jury deliberated for 32 hours, which were brought as a result if a two year investigation by Avon and Somerset Police called ‘Operation Brooke’. Prosecutor Anna Vigars told the jury during the case: “It is about the defendants simply using the girls to satisfy them whenever they felt like it, doing it so often that, no doubt, it began to feel normal so far as these girls were concerned.  “There are elements of exhibitionism, with sex taking place in front of other people in the group. Much of it sordid, none of it is romantic.”

The jury heard how one girl was trafficked across the city to a Premier Inn hotel where she was raped four times, by three different men.  Speaking about the event, Ms Vigars said: “Sadly, by that point in her young life, it was simply one of the things that happened to her from time to time. She got raped, she moved on.”
After she was raped and abused the girl told the police she felt “nasty” and “just wanted to disappear”.

The girl considered one of the men, Deeq, to be her boyfriend. He told her that she needed to have sex with his brother or he would go to hell, because he “wanted to turn gay”. She was persuaded to go ahead with the abuse under a bridge near a DIY store.  Deeq – who was also abusing another teenager – first claimed he had never met the girl. Later he admitted knowing her, but claimed they had never done anything more than kissing and cuddling.

The same girl was incited into prostitution by another of the gang, Kamal aged 22, at his flat in Easton, Bristol.  One victim was raped by another man in the same block of flats after he blocked a bedroom door so there was no escape while another resorted to raping a girl in a bathroom. She told police that because she was trapped by the man she “just did it” even though she did not want to take part in any sexual activity.
The men from the second trial are expected to be sentenced tomorrow by a judge and experts say their convictions are likely to be of some duration.

Life in the Beeb-Hive

Islamophobia: the Greatest of All Evils

We have been following the scandal of Rotherham in the UK.  Thousands of young girls were preyed upon by predatory Pakistani men.  They did it not only to feed and satiate their own lusts, but because their religion, Islam both condones and commends such acts.  Virtually any depravity is permissible in the conduct of jihad, or holy war.  And jihad against infidels is a perpetual state of Islam.  But the scandal has been exacerbated by the authorities having a very bad case of Nelson’s eye.  They saw no evil.  Why, one asks?  Were the police and welfare authorities in the pay of the Pakistani/Islamic gangs?  No.  Were they too busy elsewhere?  Only by their own design.  Were they understaffed?  Not at all.

Why did the authorities turn a blind eye?  And, why did the media hush the whole thing up by a “hear no evil, see no evil” editorial stance?  It turns out that the ideologies of multi-culturalism and political correctness saw a greater minatory evil threatening to consume all.  The evil of a right-wing fanatical reaction.  Therefore, it was better to ignore the plight of the young girls, the rape, and the murders, lest the right-wing hear of it and be provoked to the most horrible of all evils–Islamophobic discrimination and intolerance, which, it turns out, are cardinal, blasphemous violations of the cult of multi-culturalism.

James Delingpole, writing in Breitbart News, provides a case study of an actual evil stalking the land, an evil which matches that of predatory Islam, as manifested by the Beeb.

Memo to the BBC: The ‘Far Right’ Did Not Decapitate David Haines nor Rape 1400 Girls in Rotherham

By James Delingpole  

18 Sep 2014

Bretibart London

Here is the news: in Australia, a plot by Islamic State sympathisers to capture random members of the public and chop their heads off has been foiled by security services; in Syria, two Americans and a British hostage have been beheaded by an Islamist nicknamed Jihadi John – and another innocent Briton (a taxi driver captured while working for an aid convoy) has been told he is next on the list; across Britain, in the aftermath of the Rotherham enquiry, more and more evidence is emerging that in towns and cities all over the country mostly underage white girls have been systematically groomed, raped and trafficked by organised Muslim gangs, with the complicity of local government authorities, charity workers, police officers and the broader Muslim community.

Luckily, thanks to the BBC, we know what the real problem is here. It is, of course, our old friends, “Islamophobia” and “the spectre of a far right” backlash.

Both of these alleged threats featured prominently on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, including an interview with a former, self-confessed “far right” thug who revealed – presumably to no listener’s especial surprise – that the organisation to which he had belonged was racist, prone to violence, and likely to react strongly to issues like the Rotherham rape gangs.

Today also ran an interview with Tell Mama – the one-man activist organisation run by Fiyaz Mughal which has long since been exposed for its exaggerations and its threadbare methodology in cooking up an alleged spate of “anti-Muslim” hate crimes.   When, for example, last year Tell Mama reported that there had been 212 anti-Muslim incidents, it turned out that 57 per cent of these comprised disobliging comments on Twitter or Facebook, many of them emanating from outside Britain.

And the BBC Today show rounded off with a Muslim spokeswoman who was given space to assure listeners that mosques around Britain were already doing a great deal to combat extremism but hadn’t been given credit for it.

Phew. So that’s all right then.  Except, of course, it’s really not all right.

If the “Far Right” really is the pre-eminent menace in Britain today, though, it has a funny way of showing it. How many schoolgirls has it raped, recently? How many people has it killed or maimed? How many bombs has it exploded? The grand total for all the above, I believe, is as near as makes no difference to zero.

Perhaps it wouldn’t matter so much if this BBC feature were a rare aberration. But it’s not. It’s long-term house policy. Barely were the bodies of the 52 victims of the 7/7 London bus and tube suicide bombings cold than the BBC’s reporters were out pounding the streets looking for evidence of the real issue of concern – not Islamist extremism and its numerous fellow-travellers, of course, but yes, for the spectre of Islamophobia and an anti-Muslim backlash by “the far right.” It responded in the same way after the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby – complete, of course, with an interview about the “cycle of violence against Muslims” and the “underlying Islamophobia in our society” by our friend Fiyaz Mughal of Tell Mama.

It’s not just the BBC which plays this game. Earlier this week Sky News afforded a similar indulgence to convicted terrorist Shahid Butt, allowing him to justify the atrocities being committed by Islamic State by blaming them on the alleged culture of violence created by video games.  The left wing Daily Mirror meanwhile decided to hail the northern Muslim stronghold of Bradford the “second-most peaceful of Britain’s top ten cities” – in contradiction of a survey which suggested quite the opposite.  

A scandal like this on so epic a scale ought to be meat and drink to any half-way decent reporter, even in an organisation as ideologically-blinkered as the BBC. How can it not be a major story that over a period of 25 years communities across the country have been terrorised by gangs operating with near impunity, for all the world as if they were bandits on the lawless North West Frontier, not citizens of a liberal democracy?

But the BBC is the worst. For as long as I can remember, it has been talking up the “Far Right” threat, not just in its news bulletins but even in its dramas with neo-Nazis and their ilk often being invoked as the sinister bad guys in thriller series from The Professionals to Bonekickers and Spooks.

If the “Far Right” really is the pre-eminent menace in Britain today, though, it has a funny way of showing it. How many schoolgirls has it raped, recently? How many people has it killed or maimed? How many bombs has it exploded?  The grand total for all the above, I believe, is as near as makes no difference to zero.

Now this isn’t to say that the boot-boys who join these fascistic organisations are the loveliest of people nor that they don’t hold racist views. But it seems to me that if we are to use our limited resources to address the most pressing problems of our time, we ought to bend our attentions to those dangers which are most clear and present rather than to politically correct chimeras like “Islamophobia” and the “spectre of the Far Right”. (The clue for the latter is in the name: a spectre is, by nature, ghostly, insubstantial).

Otherwise what will happen is what is already happening now: you get the police turning a blind eye to antisocial behaviour by the Muslim “community”, the better to concentrate on arresting louts from the English Defence League or dads (both white and Sikh) who have had the temerity to try to take action against the gangs which have been raping their daughters. And you get a media culture which fails in its duty to expose, without fear or favour, corruption and wrongdoing wherever they are found.

As we have reported before, those 1400 victims of the Rotherham rape gangs are just the tip of the iceberg. The first case involved girls trafficked and raped by Muslim gangs dates as far back as 1989. We also know that this has been going on in towns and cities across Britain, from genteel Henley-on-Thames to Telford to parts of Norfolk.

A scandal like this on so epic a scale ought to be meat and drink to any half-way decent reporter, even in an organisation as ideologically-blinkered as the BBC. How can it not be a major story that over a period of 25 years communities across the country have been terrorised by gangs operating with near impunity, for all the world as if they were bandits on the lawless North West Frontier, not citizens of a liberal democracy? Why is not the BBC devoting its still fairly lavish resources to harrying all the bent councillors and police chiefs who have turned a blind eye to the problem and who have yet refused to resign?

And how, in all conscience, can it be so insensitive as to insult its licence-fee-paying listeners by preaching to them a gospel which most of them know not to be true: that a “far right backlash” that might happen is more worthy of our attention than a spate of rapes, bombings and murders that actually has happened, is continuing to happen, and will go on happening for as long as our politically correct establishment (of which the BBC is chief Cultural Commissar) goes on ducking the issue for fear of sounding “Islamophobic”?

 

 

Islam and Sexual Predation

Muslims Sexually Enslaving Children: A Global Phenomenon

by Raymond Ibrahim
FrontPage Magazine
September 3, 2014

As shocking as the Muslim-run sex ring in Rotherham, England may seem to some—1,400 British children as young as 11 plied with drugs before being passed around and sexually abused in cabs and kabob shops—the fact is that this phenomenon is immensely widespread. In the United Kingdom alone, it’s the fifth sex abuse ring led by Muslims to be uncovered.

Some years back in Australia, a group of “Lebanese Muslim youths” were responsible for a “series of brutal gang rapes” of “Anglo-Celtic teenage girls.” A few years later in the same country, four Muslim Pakistani brothers raped at least 18 Australian women, some as young as 13. Even in the United States, a gang of Somalis—Somalia being a Muslim nation where non-Muslims, primarily Christians, are ruthlessly persecuted—was responsible for abducting, buying, selling, raping and torturing young American girls as young as 12.

. . . we must call it Muslim rape since Islam is the common denominator in all these cases from otherwise diverse nations that have little in common except for large numbers of Muslims.

The question begs itself: If Muslim minorities have no fear of exploiting “infidel” women and children in non-Muslim countries—that is, where Muslims themselves are potentially vulnerable minorities—how are Muslims throughout the Islamic world, where they are dominant, treating their vulnerable, non-Muslim minorities?

The answer is a centuries-long, continents-wide account of nonstop sexual predation. Boko Haram’s recent abduction and enslavement of nearly 300, mostly Christian, schoolgirls last April in Nigeria is but the tip of the iceberg.

The difference between what happens in Nigeria and what happens in Western nations is based on what I call “Islam’s Rule of Numbers.” Wherever Muslims grow in numbers, Islamic phenomena intrinsic to the Muslim world—in this case, the sexual abuse of “infidel” children and teenagers—comes along with them.
Thus in the United Kingdom, where Muslims make for a sizeable—and notable—minority, the systematic rape of “subhuman infidels” naturally takes place. But when caught, Muslim minorities, being under “infidel” authority, cry “Islamophobia” and feign innocence.

In Nigeria, however, which is roughly 50 percent Islamic, such “apologetics” are unnecessary. After seizing the nearly 300 schoolgirls, the leader of Boko Haram appeared on videotape boasting that “I abducted your girls. I will sell them on the market, by Allah…. There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell.”

It’s the same in Pakistan—the nation where many of the United Kingdom’s Muslims, including the majority involved in the Rotherham sex ring, come from. See this article for a long list of Christian children—as young as 2-years-old—who were targeted by Muslim men for abduction, enslavement, and rape. In every single case, police do nothing except sometimes side with the Muslim rapists against their “infidel” victims.

For example, last Easter Sunday, four Muslim men gang-raped a 7-year-old Christian girl named Sara, leaving her in “critical condition.” According to Asia News, “the police, instead of arresting the culprits, helped the local clan to kidnap the girl’s father… to ‘force the family not to report the story, to reach an agreement with the criminals and to avoid a dispute of a religious background.'”

As for systematic child grooming, in 2010, Kiran George, a Christian girl who was “enslaved by a woman, Sama, a dealer of youth to be sold as prostitutes or slaves to wealthy Muslim families,” was doused with gasoline by a police officer involved in the sex ring, set on fire, and burned to death.

And a recent report confirms that “an estimated 700 cases [of abduction, enslavement, and/or rape in Pakistan] per year involve Christian women, 300 Hindu girls”—very large numbers when one considers that Christians and Hindus each make for one percent of the population of Pakistan, which is about 97 percent Muslim.

One can go on and on. In 2011 a Christian group in Muslim-majority Egypt

exposed a highly organized Muslim ring centered in the Fatah Mosque in Alexandria. The investigation also uncovered a systematic “religious call” plan, where young Muslim males in high school and university are urged to approach Coptic girls in the 9-15 age group and manipulate them through sexual exploitation and blackmail. The plan … aims at sexually compromising Christian girls, defiling them and humiliating them in front of their parents, thereby forcing them to flee their homes, and use conversion to Islam as a “solution” for their problems.

Approximately 550 Coptic Christian girls have been abducted and sexually abused by Muslim men during the last three years—especially under the Muslim Brotherhood’s aegis, when sexual crimes were particularly widespread.

Even Dr. Taj Hargey, a British imam, just confirmed that the majority of the UK’s “imams promote grooming rings.” He said Muslim men are taught that women are “second-class citizens, little more than chattels or possessions over whom they have absolute authority” and that the imams preach a doctrine “that denigrates all women, but treats whites with particular contempt.”

So what animates this phenomenon of Muslim on non-Muslim rape? And we must call it Muslim rape since Islam is the common denominator in all these cases from otherwise diverse nations that have little in common except for large numbers of Muslims.

As for the pedophilia aspect, Muhammad—the prophet of Islam whom the Koran exhorts Muslims to emulate in every possible way—was “betrothed” to a six-year-old girl, Aisha, “consummating” their marriage when she was nine-years-old. Accordingly, Islam’s clerics routinely defend child “marriage”—sometimes even if the girl is still in the cradle—based on the example of the prophet.

As for the subhuman treatment of “infidel” children, this is seen as a right by supremacist Muslims. Discussing the 2010 rape of a 9-year-old Christian girl, local sources in Pakistan put it well: “It is shameful. Such incidents occur frequently. Christian girls are considered goods to be damaged at leisure. Abusing them is a right.

According to the [Muslim] community’s mentality it is not even a crime. Muslims regard them as spoils of war.”
“Spoils of war” is quite correct. Here is how the late Majid Khadduri, “internationally recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on Islamic law and jurisprudence,” explained the idea of “spoils” in his War and Peace in the Law of Islam:

The term spoil (ghanima) is applied specifically to property acquired by force from non-Muslims. It includes, however, not only property (movable and immovable) but also persons, whether in the capacity of asra (prisoners of war) or sabi (women and children). … If the slave were a woman, the master was permitted to have sexual connection with her as a concubine.

Nor is this limited to academic talk. Last year, Jordanian Sheikh Yasir al-‘Ajlawni said Muslims fighting to topple “infidel” president Bashar Assad in Syria are permitted to “capture and have sex with” all non-Sunni women, including Shia Muslims, Alawites, Christians, Druze, and Yazidis.

Before him, Egyptian Sheikh Ishaq Huwaini lamented how during the heydays of Islam, “You [could] go to the market and buy her [enslaved, infidel concubines for sale]…. In other words, when I want a sex-slave, I go to the market and pick whichever female I desire and buy her.”

In order to eliminate sexual immorality from among male Muslim youth, Kuwaiti political activist Salwa al-Mutairi suggested the formal reinstitution of sex-slavery—not unlike what was recently exposed in Rotherham. She said on video that Islam’s greatest authorities from Mecca, the city of Islam, all confirmed the legality of sex-slavery to her. According to the Kuwaiti woman:

A Muslim state must [first] attack a Christian state—sorry, I mean any non-Muslim state—and they [the women, the future sex-slaves] must be captives of the raid. Is this forbidden? Not at all; according to Islam, sex slaves are not at all forbidden. Quite the contrary, the rules regulating sex-slaves differ from those for free women [i.e., Muslim women]: the latter’s body must be covered entirely, except for her face and hands, whereas the sex-slave is kept naked from the bellybutton on up—she is different from the free woman; the free woman has to be married properly to her husband, but the sex-slave—he just buys her and that’s that…. For example, in the Chechnya war, surely there are female Russian captives. So go and buy those and sell them here in Kuwait; better that than have our men engage in forbidden sexual relations. I don’t see any problem in this, no problem at all.

What happened in Rotherham is hardly an aberration. Rather, it is Islam coming to town, Muslims growing in numbers. Even Dr. Taj Hargey, a British imam, just confirmed that the majority of the UK’s “imams promote grooming rings.” He said Muslim men are taught that women are “second-class citizens, little more than chattels or possessions over whom they have absolute authority” and that the imams preach a doctrine “that denigrates all women, but treats whites with particular contempt.”

Change “whites” to “non-Muslims”—this is not about race but religion—and the experiences of those 1,400 children in Rotherham is one with the experiences of countless non-Muslim minorities throughout the Islamic world.

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a Judith Friedman Rosen Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum and a CBN News contributor. He is the author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (2013) and The Al Qaeda Reader (2007).

Industrialised Crime Meets Multi-Cultural Self-Loathing

Let God Arise

A retired senior policewoman involved in the Rotherham crime scandal in the UK has gone public, exposing more of the terrible state of affairs which permissively tolerated the rape and slavery of thousands of young girls.  Yes, this is the UK we are speaking about.  (A couple of pieces addressing this evil can be found here, and here.)

There are two main points which come out of this new piece.  The first is the potential of police targeting to be perverted by venal, time-serving, careerist police bureaucrats.  The second point she makes reinforces one already made in the media–that is, the terrible fruits of political correctness and the political and social ideology multi-culturalism.  In this light, the worst thing we could do is shrug our shoulders at the outrage and conclude that Rotherham is an extreme outlier, not an avatar of a perverse trend. 

Firstly, the background:

Speaking to the Mail on Sunday, retired Detective Inspector Merial Buglass said she had had “many sleepless nights” knowing that the abuse was ongoing but lacking permission from her superiors to investigate further. . . .

In April 2010, whilst in her role as head of Rochdale Police’s public protection unit, Ms Buglass compiled a report detailing how predominantly white children, some as young as 12, were being groomed by gangs of Asian men as sex-slaves, and were violently abused. It has since emerged that some of the girls who were attacked in Rochdale between 1997 and 2013 were murdered at the hands of the men. The report included the details of 35 children, ten perpetrators and a further 40 suspects, and contained a plea for more resources to be granted to further investigate the heinous crimes.

It transpired that these crimes were not top of the priority list for Rochdale Police at the time.  Other, less severe, crimes were.  Police had become fixated with burnishing their crime fighting statistics.  Property crimes were believed to provide the biggest bang for their bucks.  It was relatively low-hanging fruit. Rape and murder took up too many resources, the cases were too complex, results were hard to come by.  

We believe that police targeting is an unavoidable necessity and can be extremely effective when administered by senior police officers with a dedicated and proven passion to fight, detect, and prosecute crime, rather than burnish their cv’s with falling crime statistics.  An organisation which is unable to focus its resources becomes wretchedly inefficient.  But, targeting can be a double edged sword in the wrong hands.  Far too often the “wrong hands” are senior police officers who have long ago left the front line for lard accumulating desk jobs which amount to little more than an endless cycle of “management meetings”.   Undue political pressure to “get results” for reason of making the politicians look good is also usually a major factor.

The force claims that it came under pressure from the Home Office five years ago to cut acquisitive crimes such as car theft and burglary, although the targets were removed in 2012.

 The second problem is the evil consequences of the ideology of multi-culturalism and its “attendant lord”, political correctness.

“Management appeared not to be interested, they were only interested in targets, it was a completely target-driven culture,” she said. “The main priorities were acquisitive crime – robbery, burglary and car theft. Money was being piled into [the investigation of] these crimes.  They didn’t want to class the abuse as Asian [Pakistani] on white girls. They didn’t want to cause a fuss. I took the view that this wasn’t about racism, it was about child abuse – but political correctness and cultural sensitivities were important to management.”

The ideology of multi-culturalism  elevates racism into the list cardinal sins, more important than murder and rape.  If police arrest a black person or focus on offending by a group which just happens to be Pakistani or Indian, the multi-culturalists and political correctors cry, “racism”.  Sadly, the police do not appear to have the corporate moral fibre to confront this slur head on and shame everyone who voices it.  Possibly it may be due to the police being guilty of actual racism in the past.  The upshot, however, is that organised crime in non-white communities gets an easy pass.

The day after the report was filed, Buglass met with Superintendent Martin Greenhalgh. During the meeting, she alleges he essentially told her “If I choose to investigate it, we will,” and that she replied “This is huge, there are massive threats and it will come back to bite us if you don’t do something!”

The response of the multi-culturalist infected police has been to say, yes, mistakes were made, but they are in the past.  We are no longer what we once were. But others reject that:

Commenting on the scandal, Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk said “The scandal of how police and other agencies failed children being raped on an industrial scale is getting worse every week. Police leadership have completely lost touch with ordinary people’s values.”  In 2012, nine men from Oldham and Rochdale were convicted of running a child sexual exploitation ring and were sentenced to between four and 19 years for their parts in the crimes. However, it is now clear that many responsible have still not be brought to justice. 

The police now say that they are planning to arrest hundreds of suspects in a “day of reckoning.”

Ms Buglass told reporters “I had many sleepless nights over this. We tried our best but the fact is the police failed those girls. I could not have been more vocal about the threats and risks… but I was appalled at the response.”

The idea that all cultures are equally valid and good, and that political correctors and multi-cultuaralists decry anyone who makes well reasoned distinctions between the good and bad in cultures, bears rotting fruit.  As always, it is the most vulnerable and easily preyed upon that suffer.

There are two tap-roots of these evils.  The first is a pervasive doubt and uncertainty about one’s own culture that verges on self-loathing.  Stripped from a Christian foundation, modern secularism predominantly sees the cultural values of the West as a factory of evil.   It is so consumed with the huge log of doubt and uncertainty in its own eye that it knows itself to be myopic and blinded–and hating itself all the while.

The second tap-root is like it: the self-loathing leads to a militant demand that no criticism should be made of other cultures and their values and traditions. Thou shalt affirm all cultures and their values and deny none.  Behold the wondrous works of postmodernism.

When these two tap roots become institutionalised to the extent that they shape the classrooms, the community authorities, the universities, the police, the law courts, the media, the churches, and the Parliament  then evil itself becomes institutionalised and “industrialised” whilst the community becomes riven with double standards and a wretched “hear no evil, speak no evil” cowardice.

May the Lord Jesus arise to break the arms of predatory Pakistani gangs and extend mercy and compassion to the young girls preyed upon by such evil men.  May the blood of those murdered children and young women cry out to Him from the ground.  May the respective UK authorities humble themselves in the dust before Him.

God shall arise, his enemies shall be scattered;
and those who hate him shall flee before him! . . .
Father of the fatherless and protector of widows
is God in his holy habitation.
(Psalm 68: 1, 5)

The Evils of Multi-Culturalism Take Shape

How Britain Became a Global Exporter of Terrorism

CBN News

Dale Hurd

August 29, 2014

LONDON – No one who has been paying attention to the growth of radical Islam in Britain should have been surprised that the terrorist who stood over murdered American journalist James Foley had a London accent.

Over a thousand British Muslims are now fighting for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. And more are joining every day. 

“The key thing to realize about British fighters in Syria is they’re not there to take a back seat role. They are very much at the forefront of this conflict,” Shiraz Maher, an expert at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, said.

Exporter of Terror

Britain is now a major exporter of terrorists, the result of multiculturalism. There have been warning signs for years.   Eight years ago, CBN News showed viewers Muslims protesting in London against the Mohammed cartoons and chanting “Jihad is on its way.” Today, Britain has functioning Sharia courts and Sharia patrols enforcing Islamic law on the streets.

Islamic halal food is everywhere. And Islam is today the fastest growing religion in the United Kingdom.

YouTube video shows a young white English woman in Muslim dress saying, “I gave up a successful modeling career to become a Muslim and I’m very happy.”

Even though Muslims are still a relatively small minority in Britain, many Britons feel as if their nation is being handed over to Islam, that the government doesn’t care about promoting or protecting traditional British, Judeo-Christian values either because it doesn’t believe in them anymore, or because it doesn’t want to be labeled as “intolerant.”

British civilization has been a gift to the world. But the British elites don’t care so much about their own civilization anymore. And it is into this vacuum that Islam is advancing.  Sure, the British still care about their queen and tradition, but radical Muslims have been allowed and even encouraged to build a parallel society within this officially Christian nation.  It’s a problem in several European countries. 

The West’s Sin of Self-Hatred

“The reason we have capitulated in the West so much to Islam is self-hatred,” said Anne Marie Waters, a former leftist who runs Shariawatch UK, and a rising star within the UK Independence Party (UKIP).

“There’s an underlying self-hatred of our own societies, of our own cultures,” she explained. “It’s perpetuated by the Left. We’ve got this multiculturalism, this dangerous multiculturalism in Britain, which is killing women, killing girls.”

“And the Left not only doesn’t say anything about it, but continues to push for it, even though it knows, even though it can see that it’s killing girls,” Waters continued. “We know for a fact there are mosques in this country where little girls of 8,9,10 years of age are being married and being raped.”

When British soldier Lee Rigby was decapitated in the streets of London, one of the first things Prime Minister David Cameron said was that the murder was not because of Islam.  After the Foley decapitation, Cameron said it again.  

And to be sure, many Muslims have condemned the murder.  Shuman Khan, a London Muslim, said, “As a Muslim, I feel this shouldn’t be. You shouldn’t do bad things.”  “I think it’s disgusting. I think a lot of extremists have taken over and hijacked Islam,” Qaiser Iqbal, a London Muslim, said. But Waters said that while peaceful Muslims are not to blame for the violence of radicals against women and non-Muslims, she said the religion of Islam is to blame. “We come back to this ‘It’s only a tiny minority of extremists. It’s got nothing to do with Islam.’ But the point is, this stuff is coming directly from the Quran, from the Hadith,” Waters told CBN News.

Enough Is Enough

The British government’s weak response to radical Islam has led to the formation of citizen groups and protest movements like the English Defence League and BritainFirst.  BritainFirst confronts Sharia patrols and has horrified the British establishment by having the nerve to go into mosques to pass out Bibles to Muslims.

Video shows Britain First Chairman Paul Golding giving a Muslim a Bible and saying, “There is a nice British Army Bible, spreading the word of Jesus Christ around Bradford. Reject the false prophet Mohammed and accept Jesus Christ.”

Golding defends the actions.  “This is a Christian country. Our heritage is Christian. We hold it dear,” he said. “So, giving out Christian Bibles in a Christian country on British streets to people who are British citizens – we don’t see anything wrong with that.”  But when CBN News was with Golding, he was dodging the police, who seem to view him as a troublemaker.  The British government is going to have to decide whether it cares more about being viewed as tolerant, or about stopping terrorism because the whole world is now paying the bill for Britain’s experiment in multiculturalism.

“We’ve got to start dealing with this,” Waters said. “We’ve got to say, ‘Look, we have freedom of speech. You can’t beat up women. We don’t stone people to death for their sex lives. You have to accept that or you can’t live here.'”

See the video, here.

Euro-Scepticism on the Rise in the UK

Euro-Philes a Vanishing Species

We have long been Euro-sceptics.  The wider arc of history had been showing the continent of Europe to be in terminal, irrevocable decline.  Getting together into a federation or union, we believed, would end up  exacerbating the decline, not reverse it. It is falling out as we expected. 

The basis for European comity once lay in  the shared Christian belief structures of the Continent.  But the wars of kings, and of religion, and of struggles over absolute versus limited constitutional government, together with the rapid rise of Enlightenment rationalism meant that the Europe of the twentieth century was as divided as it had ever been.  The French hated the English and vice versa.  The Germans and French maintained a reciprocal antipathy.  The Mediterranean belt was hopelessly servile to corruption.

Post-war European federalism was an elite-driven, top down attempt to paper over these realities to make Europe (that is, European elites) really important in a global sense.  Europe as an economic bloc would rival the United States, Japan, China and the emerging economies of Asia.  Its currency would become the default currency of trade for the European bloc, possibly even eclipsing the US dollar as the world default currency.  These millenarian utopian dreams required a real unity of culture, world-view, and purpose to have any hope of success, but it simply did not exist, and never has–at least in the modern period.

It seems almost inevitable now that the UK will move away from these European federal ambitions.
  Whilst euro-philes have pronounced great doom if this were to occur, the reality is likely to be very different.  It is highly likely that moving out of the EU will be the best thing for the UK by a country mile.  Daniel Hannan explains why, by fisking some of the standard arguments put forward to keep the UK in the European Union:

1. “We need to be in the EU to export”.
Ever noticed that you can buy Nescafé in the EU? Or a Swatch or a Rolex or a Toblerone? Switzerland manages to sell four-and-a-half times as much per head to the EU as Britain. Norway sells two-and-a-half times as much. Now that Ukraine is signing an Association Agreement with Brussels, there is only one state in Europe that does not enjoy free trade with the EU: Belarus.

The point Hannan is making is that non-EU states in Europe, such as Switzerland and Norway export huge volumes of goods and services to the EU.  Therefore, Britain’s exit will likely increase UK exports to the EU rather than the opposite.  

2. “Three million British jobs depend on our trade with Europe”
Right: on our trade with Europe, not on our membership of the EU. And absolutely no one in Brussels is suggesting that our withdrawal from the political aspects of membership – the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the European Arrest Warrant and so on – would prejudice our commercial links. We run a significant trade deficit with the EU (and, incidentally, a surplus with the rest of the world): salesmen generally don’t threaten their customers. Totting up the number of Britons who work in EU institutions, I reckon the actual number of job losses would be around 14,000 – mine included. Of course, releasing us into the private sector might stimulate the UK economy.

Hannan’s point is that were Britain to leave the union, EU exports to Britain are likely to continue because the EU cannot afford to do anything but continue to promote and support its member states exporting to one of its largest markets.
 

3. “The EU takes half our exports”
No it doesn’t. Even on the raw data, the proportion has fallen over the past eight years from 54 per cent to 46 per cent. But that figure is distorted by two factors. First, many UK exports to non-EU markets are routed through the massive ports at Rotterdam and Antwerp, and so show up in the statistics as exports to the EU. Second, goods from around the world that are destined for the Republic of Ireland are often shipped through Belfast, again showing up in the raw figures as UK exports to the EU.

The EU is simply not the global economic powerhouse that Euro-philes actually imagine it to be.  In fact, it is a languishing economic zone–a malaise not unrelated to the distortions caused by its conflicting monetary policies and its debt mountain, coupled with its congenital protectionist instincts, and its  bizarre bureaucratic regulation of all goods and services.  We are reminded of Reginald Perrin’s complaints about Euro-rhubarb– the product of European specification of rhubarb standards for the entire continent. 

4. “We’re part of the world’s biggest market”
Every continent in the world is now experiencing economic growth except Europe. More to the point, as a recent analysis of OECD data carried out by Civitas showed, there is absolutely no correlation between EU membership and sales to the EU.

5. “The EU-US trade deal will create an even bigger free trade area”
Outside the EU’s Common External Tariff, Britain would have signed a bilateral free trade agreement with the United States decades ago. And not only the United States. EFTA members, such as Iceland and Switzerland, have signed FTAs with China. As an EU member, Britain can’t. EFTA is currently negotiating an FTA with India, but the EU has shelved its trade talks with Delhi. Never mind our linguistic and legal ties, never mind the 1.4 million Britons of Indian origin, never mind that India is the fourth largest investor here – EU membership prevents us enjoying unrestricted commerce with that rising giant.

Globalists have long sought after universal treaties and conventions.  It’s part of the incipient utopianism of those who lust for a Babelesque heaven upon earth.  The World Trade Organization wants global trade agreements.  We are now in WTO negotiation round number 6034 and it’s as far away as ever.  Meanwhile, bi-lateral and tri-lateral agreements between nations are everywhere in place, and bringing the benefits to their respective signatory nations that free-trade inevitably produces.  Leaving the EU would allow the UK to negotiate bilateral agreements.

6. “Outside the EU, we’d have to obey rules over which we have no say”
Swiss companies must meet EU standards when exporting to the EU, just as they must meet Japanese standards when exporting to Japan. But they don’t have to apply those standards to their non-EU trade nor – except in a few special cases – to their domestic economy. The current deal may not be perfect, but 80 per cent of Swiss voters prefer it to EU membership.

Businesses realise that the costs of being part of the EU bloc outweigh the benefits of being a member.  Were Britain to pull out, expect a huge increase in investment and economic activity in the UK over the next ten years. 

7. “Businesses will disinvest if we pull out”
Nissan, for example, has said jobs might go if we leave the EU. Oops, sorry, my mistake: that was what it said about keeping the pound. We kept the pound and are now selling more cars than ever before. Business is not represented only the multi-nationals which pour money into lobbying Brussels for rules that advantage them at the expense of their smaller rivals. When businesses are neutrally polled, rather than selectively asked, most say that the costs of EU regulation outweigh the benefits of the single market.

Hannan’s final point is that the claim that the EU helps maintain continent wide peace is spurious also.  In reality, it has inflamed nationalist tensions.

8. “The EU keeps the peace in Europe”
The EU is not a cause, but a consequence, of a European peace based on the defeat of fascism, the spread of democracy and the Nato alliance. If anything, jamming disparate countries into common policies has served to stoke national antagonisms.

The upshot is that there is very little real downside, and lots of potential benefits to be exploited were the UK to leave the EU. 

Daniel Hannan blogs at The Telegraph

Defence of Britain Hangs on Skyhooks

Trojan Horse debate: We were wrong, all cultures are not equal

For years, we all turned a blind eye to the segregation of Muslim pupils. Now it is time to stand up to propagators of barbarism and ignorance 

We have been following the “Trojan Horse” issue Birmingham where a group of dedicated, consistent Islamic activists have sought to take control of some public schools by means of infiltration, subterfuge, and dissembling, until it is too late.  They regard this attempt as jihad–a manifestation of holy war.  The matter has become exposed, the government has reacted, and for now, it seems, the effort has failed.  We said at the time that this would shake the British establishment, for two reasons.

Firstly, the establishment for years has told itself and everyone else that Britain is a multi-cultural, tolerant nation.  Thou shalt not judge.  Thou shalt not offend.  Thou shalt accept each and all in good faith–etc. etc.  Secondly, the establishment has chosen to adopt the view that underneath all cultures and religions everyone really is a thoroughly good chap.  Therefore, all cultures are benign, positive, and fundamentally humanist in their ideological framework.  

In this view, Islamic schools would basically be schools where teachers and pupils dressed quaintly, but apart from that delightful oddity, would be champions of secular humanism.  

The Trojan Horse project of an attempted Islamic takeover of some public schools has shaken the toleranzistas up a good deal.  But, ideologically the establishment has nowhere to go.  Long ago it threw out the Christian faith in favour of secular rationalistic jibberish.  It’s between a rock and a hard place.  It does not want Islamic schools, but the grounds of its opposition are tenuous indeed.  

Allison Pearson, writing in the Telegraph provides us with an example of the confused melee now on display.

Let me quote Myriam Francois-Cerrah, a writer and Muslim convert, who told Channel 4 News on Tuesday that she rejected calls by the Prime Minister and Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, for schools to promote British values. “In many ways, the problem is creating a hierarchy of cultures when you say you need to promote British values,” she objected. “What does that say to children in a classroom whose heritage harks from outside the British Isles? It says this country has superior moral values and you are coming from some backward culture whose values you … must not consider equal to our own.”

Funnily enough, that’s exactly what we are saying, Myriam. Spot on! A Muslim girl who winds up in Bolton or Luton should thank her lucky stars she doesn’t live in Sudan – or Pakistan, where, only last month, a woman was stoned to death by her family for the crime of marrying a man of whom they disapproved. Farzana Parveen’s father explained: “I killed my daughter as she had insulted all of our family by marrying a man without our consent, and I have no regret over it.”

Are British values superior to Mr Parveen’s? I do hope so. 

Yes, but here’s the rub.  By what standard are British values superior?  Rigorously remove the consideration of the command of God, Thou shalt not kill–as Britain has done, on what basis does one prove conclusively and certainly that Mr Parveen’s values are wrong, or evil. 

Ah, yes, we cannot say that–for to speak of evil implies there are ultimate standards by which things are to be judged, which in turn requires, or presupposes a holy eternal, ultimate God.  The best that the establishment can intone is that such things are not British.  But Britain has already committed itself to the ultimacy of multi-culturalism.  It’s a bit late now to raise objections.  Despite this, Pearson makes the attempt:

Unfortunately, the great lie underpinning the creed of multiculturalism, as spouted by Francois‑Cerrah and her ilk, is that all cultures are “equally valid”. Well, patently, they’re not. The reason irate Pakistani patriarchs are not chucking bricks at their errant daughters in the Birmingham Bull Ring is because Britain has a basically uncorrupt police force, a robust judiciary and an enlightened, hard-won system of liberal values that regards women and girls as equals, not third-class citizens.

But instead of standing up to barbarism and ignorance, too often we have looked away in embarrassment or fear. How many teachers have averted their gaze when 13-year-old Muslim girls suddenly disappear from the classroom to be taken “home” for a forced marriage, because this would present unwelcome evidence that some cultures are less valid than others?

How many health professionals in Bradford are concerned, but never say so, that intermarriage in the Muslim community – 75 per cent of Pakistanis in the city are married to their first cousin – is causing babies to be born blind, deaf and with other disabilities? Back in 2008, when Labour environment minister Phil Woolas said that British Pakistanis were fuelling the rate of birth defects, he was slapped down by Downing Street, with a spokesman for prime minister Gordon Brown saying the issue was not one for ministers to comment on. Government after government has filed this thorny issue in “The Too Difficult Box”, the title of a timely new book edited by former Cabinet minister Charles Clarke. . . .

Already reactionary forces are emerging.  Since Islamic faith schools appear unacceptable, let’s not discriminate against them.  Let’s get rid of all faith schools so that we can prove non-discrimination and even-handedness. 

Growing suggestions that all faith schools should be banned because some Muslims cannot be trusted to prepare their children for life in contemporary society are simply outrageous. Why should Catholic, Jewish and Church of England schools, which provide a terrific, disciplined learning environment for millions of children, be forced to cease their good work and shut down? Why must the tolerant be made to carry the can for the intolerable? 

But it’s secular humanism that gave us the relativistic framework in the first place–a world-view which preached the equality of all views ancillary to a secularist core, which all men of good will would embrace (unless they were reactionary primitives).   

The crisis in Birmingham made me look up Ray Honeyford. The headmaster of a school in Bradford, Honeyford published an article highly critical of multiculturalism around the same time that I was wondering why Muslim girls in west London weren’t allowed to learn how to swim. Honeyford was damned as a racist and forced to take early retirement, but how prophetic his words seem now. The alarmed headmaster referred to a “growing number of Asians whose aim is to preserve as intact as possible the values of the Indian subcontinent within a framework of British social and political privilege”. Honeyford questioned the wisdom of the local education authority in allowing such practices as the withdrawal of children from school for months at a time, in order to go “home” to Pakistan, on the grounds that this was appropriate to the children’s native culture.

“Those of us working in Asian areas,” he wrote, “are encouraged, officially, to ‘celebrate linguistic diversity’ – ie, applaud the rapidly mounting linguistic confusion in these growing number of city schools in which British-born Asian children begin their mastery of English by being taught in Urdu.”

Ray Honeyford died in 2012, so he didn’t live to see the Leeds secondary school where every single pupil, including a handful of white ones, is being taught English as a foreign language. He didn’t need to see it. He knew it would happen, and what the cost would be, and his warnings were shouted down or put away in the Too Difficult Box. 

Pearson’s naivete leads her to think that if children are really exposed to British values they will experience a gravitational pull.  What on earth is that, you ask.  Is she suggesting that the human heart is bent instinctively and natively to “British values”?  How parochial.  How quaint.  How Victorian.  How unChristian!  And there lies the rub.  We have arrived at the real problem.  Britain is not God-which doubtless will come as a bit of a shock to some.   It’s this kind of thinking which implies that Britain will not win this battle. 

I think the battle we must fight now really has very little to do with sincere religious belief. It’s about social control, repression, misogyny and cruelty. The battle is about Kamaljit, a 14-year-old girl I once taught, who chided me when I read the class a story about snakes in India, like the good, clueless multiculturalist that I was. “Please, Miss, we don’t like that stuff,” she said. “We’re English. We like ice skating.”

We have to expose Muslim children to as wide a range of experiences as possible so they will feel the gravitational pull of British values. . . . But there is another song, and a better one, and children will learn it if they are only given the chance: Belong, belong, belong.

Good luck with that.  

Standing for Nothing; Falling for Everything

Secularist Paper Tigers Confront Islam

The prevailing view of religion in the West can be characterised as one of condescending ignorance.  Religion is something belonging to a primitive past.  It is made up of superstitions, myths, and fanciful errors without any basis in truth or reality.  To extend tolerance and civic freedom to religions is considered an act of indulgence–putting up with childish notions, ideas, and behaviour until those involved in a religion grow up and become true moderns–that is, materialistic, atheistic, and humanistic.

This world-view has two Achilles heels.  The first is the failure to understand that Western secularism is indeed a religion in its own right.  A religious anti-religion.  It is a cosmology, and ultimate belief system, with no authentication outside of itself.  This places Western secularism in a vulnerable position.  It is founded on rationalism, but its rationalism cannot defend or authenticate its own position.  It is ultimately, therefore, an irrational system that is viciously circular.  It can collapse more quickly than Ukrainian Defence Forces in the Donetsk.  Because its protagonists and defenders remain unaware of its vulnerability at this point, it constantly leaves itself open to ridicule and rejection–which, given the vaunting arrogance and pride of the secular humanist religion, hurts.  That’s the first Achilles heel.

The second is its befuddled, double-minded attitude towards other religions.
  One the one hand, it condescendingly slurs all other religions as ignorance reified.  On the other, it wants to maintain a condescending acceptance or tolerance of all religions, since some of the core commandments of secular humanism involve acceptance, tolerance, and respect of another’s identity.

In the UK, it is the application of acceptance, tolerance and respect for another’s identity which is landing the secularist establishment in deep water when it comes to Islam.  That religion constantly orientates its compass needle toward intolerant militance.  Secular humanism struggles to cope.

Conservative and consistent Muslims are actively working and conspiring to take control of certain government schools in the UK.  Their objective is to transform the schools into Islamic schools, reflecting and applying Islamic social mores, rules, and cultural conventions.  They also demand that the UK taxpayers fund their schools.

This has discombobulated the secular establishment.  Firstly, no-one in his right mind would take his own religion that seriously.  Such ignorance and prejudice is hard to fathom in our modern world.  Who would believe such stuff in the twenty-first century. They can’t be serious.  Secondly, if they are serious, then they threatens the core commandments of secularism: tolerance, acceptance, and respect of another’s identity.  Secularists, in resisting, might be forced to avow Muslim beliefs and historical praxis as ignorant, backward, and benighted–which does not fit secularism’s public self-narrative at all.

Thirdly, secularism fears the kind of confrontation where Islamic believers will insist their position is right, and will damn the secularist view, forcing secularism to defend its own ethics, standards, and practice–thereby exposing that it is an emperor without clothes.  Its own belief systems lack foundation.  Islam says that Female Genital Mutilation is a core practice of its religion, long authenticated by Islamic tradition.  The secularists reject it.  But–and here comes the killer– the Islamists in turn reject the secularist position as the position of “infidels”, and the secularists are left gasping, since beyond all the bluster and brouhaha, there is no objective or normative foundation for any morality, ethics, or values within secularism.  By what objective or normative law might secularism condemn Female Genital Mutilation?  Secularism struggles when its opponents adopt its own mien of condescending dismissiveness towards outsiders.

For those not yet up with the play, Birmingham schools are being infilatrated, then subjected to a conspiracy to effect an Islamic takeover.  The authorities are struggling, and secular humanist ideology is faltering.  It will be entertaining to watch it play out.  Secular humanism is not in a strong position.  It arrogant condescension has left it vulnerable and exposed.

Here is a summary of what’s going down:

Head teachers raise ‘serious concerns’ over Islamic school take-over

Concern of ‘Trojan Horse’ plot spreads to three more state primaries as head teachers’ leaders voice concerns for the first time over the Islamic infiltration at schools in Birmingham

The Telegraph
Monday 5th May, 2014

Schools across Britain are likely to have been targeted in an alleged Islamist plot to take over classrooms, head teachers have warned. The National Association of Head Teachers said it had found “concerted efforts” to infiltrate at least six schools in Birmingham. But the union also said that the scandal had “connections” to other large cities.

The Telegraph understands that there are growing concerns about the possible infiltration of schools in Bradford, Manchester and parts of east London.The acknowledgement from the professional body follows a series of exposés by The Telegraph which disclosed how a “Trojan Horse” plot in Birmingham had put schools under pressure illegally to segregate classrooms and change teaching to reflect radical Islamic beliefs.
 

On Friday, Ofsted confirmed that its investigation had spread from 18 to 21 schools in the city. The three additional schools are primaries.  In a statement, the head teachers’ association said attempts had been made to “alter their character in line with the Islamic faith”, including sidelining parts of the curriculum and attempting to influence the appointment of Muslim staff.

Russell Hobby, its general secretary, warned that the action was unlikely to be “limited to Birmingham”, adding: “I think it is connected into the large cities around the country.”  It is the first time a major teachers’ organisation has confirmed that such concerns exist. The plot involves the alleged takeover of secular state schools and the removal of secular head teachers by radical Muslim staff and governors.

Five non-Muslim heads have left their posts in a tiny area of the city over the past six months. Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has ordered an inquiry into Birmingham schools.  An inspection report by the Department for Education, leaked to The Telegraph, found that girls at Park View school were made to sit at the back of the class, GCSE syllabuses were “restricted to comply with a conservative Islamic teaching” and an extremist preacher was invited to speak to children.

Last week it emerged that Tahir Alam, the alleged ringleader of the plot and chairman of governors at Park View, wrote a detailed blueprint for the “Islamisation” of state schools in 2007.

Mr Alam has form.  In a further article in The Telegraph, Andrew Gilligan reports:

The alleged ringleader of the Trojan Horse plot wrote a detailed blueprint for the radical “Islamisation” of secular state schools which closely resembles what appears to be happening in Birmingham. Tahir Alam, chairman of governors at Park View school in the city, called for “girls [to] be covered except for their hands and faces”, advocated gender segregation in some school activities, and attacked a “multicultural approach” to collective worship.

He described how state schools must be changed to “take account of Muslim sensitivities and sensibilities with respect to sexual morality” with “girlfriend/boyfriend as well as homosexual relationships” treated as “not acceptable practices according to Islamic teachings”.

The disclosure comes as teachers at Park View said a boy and a girl in their GCSE year have been suspended after being spotted holding hands, only weeks before they were due to take their exams. “They have done this to quite a few students in Year 11,” said one member of staff. “That they should continue with it, even with all the scrutiny we are under, just beggars belief.”

The secularists are scrambling.  They are faced with ardent Islamic believers who just don’t accept secularism, but regard it as “kaffir”.  In their belief, Islam conveys a definite culture of personal, family, and community life.  The community is sacrosanct; the individual is nothing, if he or she does not conform.  The One drives out the Many.  Therefore, Islamic faith is an authoritarian communal faith.  Secularism is just one of the infidel things to be driven out.

Secularism will likely prove to be a paper tiger.  Without any ethical foundations and irrational at its root it will end up standing for nothing and falling for everything. 

Letter from the US (About Sharia Law in London)

Islamists Threaten British Shop Owners with 40 Lashes for Selling Alcohol

By Mary Chastain  

14 Dec 2013

Breitbart News

Whitechapel is on the outskirts of London, but it is an area where Muslims enforce Sharia law without any interference from British officials. On Saturday, they took it a step further and told shop owners in the area they will face 40 lashes if they continue to sell alcohol.

The protesters, including Anjem Choudary, the former leader of the Al-Muhajiroun group which was banned under terrorism laws, delivered warning letters to Muslim-owned businesses. “The shops are run by Muslims and they know they are selling alcohol and they know the sale and consumption of alcohol is completely prohibited,” he said. “We cannot live among the non-Muslims and see this evil take place.”

Mizanur Rahman, organiser of the protest, said it had urged business owners to stop selling alcohol in breach of Muslim laws. Mr Rahman said: “We want Sharia law to be enforced in Britain,” before adding that many of the Muslim owners had been “embarrassed and ashamed” when confronted about their alcohol sales, but had argued that it was an economic necessity.

In 2011, The Daily Mail did an exposé on these “Muslim patrols” and how the English government has not done anything to stop. Women are targeted if they do not wear a headscarf.

An Asian woman who works in a pharmacy in east London was told to dress more modestly and wear a veil or the shop would be boycotted.  When she went to the media to talk about the abuse she suffered, a man later entered the pharmacy and told her: ‘If you keep doing these things, we are going to kill you’.

These patrols plastered the area with posters to remind citizens it is a Sharia zone. Choudary was linked to these posters and claimed they had 50,000 people who would even pass out stickers to people with the reminders. However, no one received any severe punishment. Mohammed Hasneth, 18, was fined £100 for distributing the stickers. The Tower Hamlets Council said they would look into the matter, but only removed the posters.

On January 17, 2013, a YouTube video was released, believed to be taped on January 12 and 13 and showed Muslims harassing citizens in the area. One man told a woman she could not wear her skirt because it is a Muslim area. Another woman told the men she could not believe them when they told her they enforce Sharia Law in the area.

The Muslims respond: We do not care if you believe it or not.

In other clips, gang members accost people for simply walking in front of a mosque and they also harass a man they perceive to be gay. They throw slurs at him and he is frightened for his life before he is able to leave unharmed.  

On October 24, an American student was beaten and slashed by gangs in Whitechapel because he was drinking. The gang attacked Francesco Houyne, 22, and smashed a bottle of beer in his face. He suffered deep slash wounds and a chipped tooth. His face is permanently scarred and he did not know if he wanted to stay in London.

Green Energy and Dirty Money

A Good-News Story

As we read the account below, we could barely repress a chuckle.  They say that necessity is the mother of invention and it appears to be true in the UK.  A recession, coupled with a desperate need to restrain wasteful, profligate, debt-driven public spending have forced the government to turn to the private sector to fund much needed infrastructure spending.  At the edge of the dark cloud is a burnished silver lining.

This from the Telegraph:

Ministers have previously been accused of cutting government spending on major capital projects too sharply as part of their austerity programme. They have responded by trying to encourage private investors, such as insurance companies and pension funds, to invest in large projects, offering government guarantees as incentives. . . .

Mr Alexander [the Chief Secretary to the Treasury] will say: “The announcement today that six major insurers will invest £25 billion over the next five years is a massive vote of confidence in the UK economy. It supports the wider £100 billion public investment to rebuild Britain over the next seven years that I announced at the Spending Round 2013.  Underground, overground, onshore, offshore, wired or wireless, tarmac or train track. You name it, we’re building it right now. This is great news for the people of the UK.”

In New Zealand, amongst the Commentariat, private capital funding is usually regarded as dirty money, filthy lucre.  The only good money is government money, extracted from the public via taxes, or their children via burgeoning public debt.  On this matter, New Zealand is positively antediluvian, lost in the Dark Ages. 

But to add cruel insult to mortal injury, part of that dirty private money in the UK is going to be used to build nuclear power stations.

The second of a new wave of nuclear power stations will be built by private investors with government support, the Treasury will announce on Wednesday. The power station, at Wylfa on Anglesey in Wales, is among the major infrastructure projects that will go ahead after ministers promised to support commercial interests.

The station, to be built by Hitachi and Horizon, follows an agreement earlier this year for French and Chinese investors to build a nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Suffolk. Ministers have suggested that as many as a dozen nuclear reactors will be built in the coming years as fossil fuels are phased out and public hostility to renewables such as wind turbines mounts.

Now, there are some enlightened greenists in the UK (such as George Monbiot) who strongly advocate for nuclear power.  No doubt he and his ilk will be pleased, whilst regretting that it is not beatific gummint money being put to such holy work. 

But Greenists in New Zealand are so far in the Dark Ages they regard nuclear energy to be equivalent to the Black Death.  For them, Chernobyl and Fukushima and Three Mile Island collectively represent an actual, literal Armageddon.  We acknowledge these historical debacles to be serious, albeit it due to human error, malfeasance, and neglect.  Which is to say, of course, that such debacles are preventable and rectifiable.  Such is the necessary and appropriate rebuke of these melt-downs to us all.  The orthodox Christian view is that nuclear energy is a wonderful, divine gift from a generous, beneficent Creator.  It is our responsibility   to manage it properly in the way He intends and requires of His stewards.  

We await the howls of outrage from the Luddite left. Some things are boringly predictable.

Hat Tip: Whaleoil

Stakes in the Heart

Limitations of Public Health Exposed

A debate is taking place in the UK about public health.  The cold hard reality is that the UK government has run out of money and its debt levels are worrying.  It has consequently put the squeeze on the public health system.  It now has a duty to raise more money by providing health services to the more wealthy, to those who can pay for medical services and procedures. 

This from The Guardian:

Hospitals are seeking a radical increase in revenue from the treatment of private patients as their budgets come under pressure from the needs of an ageing population, according to new figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.  Great Ormond Street children’s hospital has budgeted for an extra £11m from treating private patients in the financial year ending in 2013 compared with 2010 – a 34% increase. The Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust is also expecting to boost revenues by £9m over the same period – a 42% rise. The Royal Marsden is expecting an extra 28% increase on 2010 revenues, equating to about £12.7m. Across all trusts an 8% increase in revenues from private patients is expected to be posted for 2012-13 compared with 2010-11.

Previously, successive governments have decried and rejected the idea that state funded health services should generate any money from the more wealthy.  It was a rationing system that was a bridge too far for socialists.
  Now the government has no choice.  Socialism, as the Thatcherite adage has it, eventually runs out of other people’s money.

The increase in revenues (from private patients) follows the government’s controversial decision to allow foundation trusts to earn 49% of their income from treating private patients. They were previously capped at earning about 2% from private sources. 

The Achilles heel of all public health systems is that, as one NZ Treasury official put it, they are a fiscal black hole.  You can never have enough of other people’s money to satisfy the its demands.  Aging demographics and shrinking population bases are one thing.  But equally relentless is the wonderful expansion of health care itself.  As medical science and technology advances the number of cures and medical procedures rises exponentially.  All these new, wonderful procedures and treatments cost money to provide.

Critics of the new policy warn that a two-tier system will develop in the public health system.

Ministers, who want trusts to act more like businesses, will celebrate the latest figures. However, critics fear that NHS resources are being disproportionately directed at patients with money and that a two-tier system is emerging. Gareth Thomas MP, who obtained the figures, said: “The huge expected rise in income from private patients is a further sign of an underfunded NHS. These figures confirm that the NHS under David Cameron is increasingly offering a two-tier service: pay privately and you’ll be seen quickly; don’t pay privately and join an increasingly long waiting list.”

The retort is that all the private patient income is directed back into the public health system.  But the cavil over a preferential priority for paying patients remains.  The critics will be proven right.

To our mind the only fundamental solution is one which is even more of an anathema to socialist ideology: the encouragement of charity.  Socialists hate charity with a passion.  Welfare is a right, a demand right in socialist dogma.  Charity is an anathema because it drives a stake into the ideological status of public health demand rights.  That aside, it remains the only viable solution to the withering of public health under fiscal constraints.

Charities raise a great deal of money for the needy and the indigent.  They would raise a great deal more if the government were more up front and honest about the inadequacy of its socialist welfare services.  It’s long past due for the state to acknowledge its severe limitations and to welcome participation from charities.  We have one qualification: what the UK, nor NZ needs, is more charities which are really a front for government funded welfare.  Many charities have turned to government funding to support their operations.  Governments have agreed: the fee for service model in delivering welfare can work well up to a point.  But it does not plug the gap in public funding.  It merely shift services from one provider to another, both alike publicly funded.  The crisis we are talking of is a fiscal crisis due to socialist money running out.  That is the fundamental issue.

We expect that this UK initiative will continue to be opposed by socialist ideologues.  The introduction of charitable funds into the public system will be even more resisted. It represents a strike at the very heart of socialist dogma.  But it remains the only viable way forward.

The Iron Lady

Not For Turning

The tributes are flowing for Margaret Thatcher.  British Prime Minister, David Cameron said that she would be remembered as Britain’s greatest peace time Prime Minister.  Maybe.  Possibly the greatest of the twentieth century.  The Daily Mail cites the former Prime Minister, John Major:

Former Conservative prime minister Sir John Major described Baroness Thatcher as a ‘true force of nature’ and a ‘political phenomenon’.  He said: ‘In government, the UK was turned around under – and in large measure because of – her leadership.  ‘Her reforms of the economy, trades union law, and her recovery of the Falkland Islands elevated her above normal politics, and may not have been achieved under any other leader.  ‘Her outstanding characteristics will always be remembered by those who worked closely with her: courage and determination in politics, and humanity and generosity of spirit in private.’

Thatcher was an Establishment outsider, which meant that she owned few favours, had made few compromises on her way to the top.
  She was unencumbered and free to do what she wanted in reforming Great Britain.  Secondly, she had a solid heart-felt commitment to conservative ideology.  She really did believe in small government, in lower taxes, in private property and private enterprise.  She also passionately opposed Communism. 

We always enjoyed the way she was hated by “feminists”–those who arrogantly thought they understood and represented what women actually think and achieve.  We well remember overhearing a conversation between two of the “sisters” in a university bookshop celebrating the ascension of a woman to the highest political office in the UK.  How exciting.  A new age was dawning.  But then the conversation turned darker.  How could this woman be in favour of nuclear weapons?  Inexplicable.  That’s not what women believed.  She was being traitorous to her sex–and so forth.  It was an amusing conservation upon which to eavesdrop.  Thatcher shattered feminist stereotypes: it was uproarious to watch the sisterhood progressively come to view her as a traitor.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man, they say.  Britain was pretty much on its knees economically.  The Conservative party was so wedded to Fabian socialism that it was powerless to deal with the problems. Not Thatcher.  She, being outside the Establishment, had views and convictions that meant she would chart a different, better course.  Moreover, the strength of her convictions and personality meant that she was not for turning.  Remarkable in many ways. 

There have been none in the Conservative party to fill her shoes and walk in them.   In that sense she was truly a phenomenon.

 

Taking Stock

Refiner’s Fire

Homosexual “marriage” is now well on its way to being legal in the UK.  It passed in the UK Parliament by a wide margin we are told.  This is unsurprising, yet damnably culpable nonetheless. 

It is time to take stock.  Here is our take:

1. When a people turn away from God, strange things issue forth.  Good is called evil and evil is called good. Homosexual “marriage” is just one more example.

2. The legalisation of a perverse evil does not make it righteous or ethical.  Just as abortion has been legal for some time, its perversity and grossly immoral nature remain.  The extermination of six million Jews under the Nazis was legal at the time; it was then, and remains, a profoundly wicked act.  Homosexual “marriage” is and will remain an institution of wickedness.

3.  As the darkness deepens the light shines more brightly.
  Paradoxically, Belief has an opportunity both to display the glory of true marriage and the eternal law which binds it in the light.  One of the reasons the early Church became so culturally powerful and influential is that people living under Rome became cynical, jaded, and despairing as classical culture integrated into the void.  Homosexual “marriage” is just one more step into the void; the godly alternative will become more bright eventually in the eyes of the cynical, the jaded, and the despairing.  Let us pray that it would be so. 

4. Amongst Adam’s fallen race there is no such thing as natural morality.  Even the most depraved acts can become norms because the heart of man is “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” 

5.  Homosexual culture is a death culture; it is impotent to reproduce.  Doubtless it will make an attempt–engaging in all kinds of desperate measures to conceive, bear, and raise children.  The attendant quasi-scientific engineering required to make it happen will luridly highlight its moral perversity–just as abortion does now.

6.  More and more homosexual people will face the emptiness of their existence.  The homosexual culture has buoyed its hope on an “if only . . . ” eschatology.  “We would be truly fulfilled if we had full legal rights, if we were “married”, if we were accepted , etc.”  If it pleases the Sovereign Lord, this growing realisation of emptiness will open opportunities for the Gospel to be heard amongst homosexuals.  The Church must be open, ready, and engaged. 

7.  It is precisely because homosexuality is a sin that anyone ensnared by it can be freed, delivered, and redeemed from it.  Thankfully and mercifully the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ atones for homosexual sin as well all other sins. 

8.  To modify an old adage, Hell hath no fury like disappointed hope.  As Christians remain faithful to our Lord, we can expect a vehement backlash from the homosexual lobby.  The bitter disappointment of thwarted hopes when homosexual “marriage” does not deliver their hoped nirvana will goad them on.  The next target will be those who criticise their cherished idol of homosexuality.  “We would be able to be happily ‘married’ if Christians would be silenced.  Our rights are being thwarted.  The Government must suppress all such hate speech”, etc.    

9.  A multitude of unintended consequences will cascade down: markets and commercial exchanges for homosexual “marriages” seeking children; the persecution of Christians and others who refuse to accept that homosexuality is moral; the eventual rejection of homosexuality by large numbers of children raised in such pseudo families; the eventual lawsuits by bitter adult children raised in such arrangements–and so on. 

10.  The chasm between homosexuality and the Christian faith is never more clearly displayed than in the words of Romans 1: 26ff

For this reason God gave them (mankind) over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire towards one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

There are plenty of poorly taught Christians and never-to-be-taught fellow-travellers who, when confronted with this Word of God, would attempt to explain it away and avoid its teaching.  In such attempts they display a commitment to an ultimate authority above and beyond the Living God.  They have an idol above God.

11.  Bold and irrepressible Christians will develop all kinds of ministries to help those taken in sexual sins, including homosexuality.  Now Christians and churches will be able to develop counselling centres particularly focused upon helping, assisting, and supporting homosexual spouses going through divorces, even as they have for women wanting alternatives to the evil of abortion.  

12.  Homosexual “marriage” will join abortion as one of the touchstone issues of our day which separate light from darkness, truth from error, Belief from Unbelief.  It represents the Rule of Man versus the Rule of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Limping between the two has never been an option. 

The Great Recantation

Sounding a Cautionary Note

In idle moments we have sometimes wondered what the “great recantation” would look like.  When the Commentariat comes finally to realize that man-made global warming is a myth, how will the easily duped, the hoodwinked respond?  With anger?  Cynicism?  Disgust?  Will they blame the system?  Will they blame the global warming sceptics for not speaking out more clearly and forcefully? 

This week we have a harbinger of how the great recantation might look.  Boris Johnson, Mayor of London–as venal as any politician courting votes–has been a cheer leader for the great crusade to save the world from mankind’s nefarious warming of the planet.  Now he’s not so sure.  We may have seen already what shape the great recantation will take.  Let’s hope that Boris is not some whacky outlier (which may well turn out to be the case), but the harbinger of a new realism (his genuflections to the sun as his god and creator notwithstanding). 

This is what he wrote in a column in the Daily Telegraph this week:

It’s snowing, and it really feels like the start of a mini ice age

Something is up with our winter weather. Could it be the Sun is having a slow patch? 

Boris Johnson
20 January, 2013 

“The Sun is god!” cried JMW Turner as he died, and plenty of other people have thought there was much in his analysis. The Aztecs agreed, and so did the pharaohs of Egypt. We are an arrogant lot these days, and we tend to underestimate the importance of our governor and creator.

We forget that we were once just a clod of cooled-down solar dust; we forget that without the Sun there would have been no photosynthesis, no hydrocarbons — and that it was the great celestial orb that effectively called life into being on Earth. In so far as we are able to heat our homes or turn on our computers or drive to work it is thanks to the unlocking of energy from the Sun.

As a species, we human beings have become so blind with conceit and self-love that we genuinely believe that the fate of the planet is in our hands — when the reality is that everything, or almost everything, depends on the behaviour and caprice of the gigantic thermonuclear fireball around which we revolve.

I say all this because I am sitting here staring through the window at the flowerpot and the bashed-up barbecue, and I am starting to think this series of winters is not a coincidence. The snow on the flowerpot, since I have been staring, has got about an inch thicker. The barbecue is all but invisible. By my calculations, this is now the fifth year in a row that we have had an unusual amount of snow; and by unusual I mean snow of a kind that I don’t remember from my childhood: snow that comes one day, and then sticks around for a couple of days, followed by more.

I remember snow that used to come and settle for just long enough for a single decent snowball fight before turning to slush; I don’t remember winters like this. Two days ago I was cycling through Trafalgar Square and saw icicles on the traffic lights; and though I am sure plenty of readers will say I am just unobservant, I don’t think I have seen that before. I am all for theories about climate change, and would not for a moment dispute the wisdom or good intentions of the vast majority of scientists.

But I am also an empiricist; and I observe that something appears to be up with our winter weather, and to call it “warming” is obviously to strain the language. I see from the BBC website that there are scientists who say that “global warming” is indeed the cause of the cold and snowy winters we seem to be having. A team of Americans and Chinese experts have postulated that the melting of the Arctic ice means that the whole North Atlantic is being chilled as the floes start to break off — like a Martini refrigerated by ice cubes.

I do not have the expertise to comment on the Martini theory; I merely observe that there are at least some other reputable scientists who say that it is complete tosh, or at least that there is no evidence to support it. We are expecting the snow and cold to go on for several days, and though London transport has coped very well so far, with few delays or cancellations, I can’t help brooding on my own amateur meteorological observations. I wish I knew more about what is going on, and why. It is time to consult once again the learned astrophysicist, Piers Corbyn.

Now Piers has a very good record of forecasting the weather. He has been bang on about these cold winters. Like JMW Turner and the Aztecs he thinks we should be paying more attention to the Sun. According to Piers, global temperature depends not on concentrations of CO2 but on the mood of our celestial orb. Sometime too bright the eye of heaven shines, said Shakespeare, and often is his gold complexion dimmed. That is more or less right. There are times in astronomical history when the Sun has been churning out more stuff — protons and electrons and what have you — than at other times. When the Sun has plenty of sunspots, he bathes the Earth in abundant rays.

When the solar acne diminishes, it seems that the Earth gets colder. No one contests that when the planet palpably cooled from 1645 to 1715 — the Maunder minimum, which saw the freezing of the Thames — there was a diminution of solar activity. The same point is made about the so-called Dalton minimum, from 1790 to 1830. And it is the view of Piers Corbyn that we are now seeing exactly the same phenomenon today.

Lower solar activity means – broadly speaking – that there is less agitation of the warm currents of air from the tropical to the temperate zones, so that a place like Britain can expect to be colder and damper in summer, and colder and snowier in winter. “There is every indication that we are at the beginning of a mini ice age,” he says. “The general decline in solar activity is lower than Nasa’s lowest prediction of five years ago. That could be very bad news for our climate. We are in for a prolonged cold period. Indeed, we could have 30 years of general cooling.”

Now I am not for a second saying that I am convinced Piers is right; and to all those scientists and environmentalists who will go wild with indignation on the publication of this article, I say, relax. I certainly support reducing CO2 by retrofitting homes and offices – not least since that reduces fuel bills. I want cleaner vehicles.

I am speaking only as a layman who observes that there is plenty of snow in our winters these days, and who wonders whether it might be time for government to start taking seriously the possibility — however remote — that Corbyn is right. If he is, that will have big implications for agriculture, tourism, transport, aviation policy and the economy as a whole. Of course it still seems a bit nuts to talk of the encroachment of a mini ice age.

But it doesn’t seem as nuts as it did five years ago. I look at the snowy waste outside, and I have an open mind.

 

A Victory for Our Dominant Religion

Minatory Developments

A dominant religion progressively builds the prevailing culture in its own image.  As secularism is the dominant religion in the West, it is building progressively a secularist culture that excludes genuine Christians to an ever greater degree.  Christians and the Christian faith are being ghettoised. 

A salient manifestation of this phenomenon is the increasingly strident demand that one’s Christian faith remain a silent and private affair.  Society demands that one must restrict one’s faith to the space between one’s ears.  As soon as a Christian steps out of bed he is expected to act and think and worship like a secular humanist.  To the extent that he does not, he will be progressively excluded from participation in the community. 

Here is an example from the UK and Europe.
  Three cases have just been heard in the European Court of Human Rights.  All involved Christians resisting rules and regulations and judgments in the UK which denied the expression and application of their faith to the way they lived.  The Daily Telegraph takes up the issue:

Campaigners claimed that “millions” of people who hold traditional “politically incorrect” views could now face new restrictions because of rulings against three other Christians involved in the European Court of Human Rights case. They claimed that the judgment actively increases the risk that those who dissent on the issue of same-sex marriage will not be free to voice their dissent.

So the first thing to go is freedom of speech.  There are some things which one can no longer aver because the law–mandating the dominant secular humanist culture–forbids it.  This is the secular humanist version of blasphemy laws.  One of these is the denial of free speech against homosexual “marriage”.  That’s the implication of the rulings of the court.

But it is not just free speech.  A further implication of the rulings is that if anyone works in the marriage or counselling “industry” and conscientiously objects to homosexual “marriage” because they are Christians they can legitimately be fired, fined, or even imprisoned, depending on the local and particular statutes on the books.   

Significantly, [the Court] also threw out parallel challenges brought by two other Christians who lost their jobs for taking a stand on what they saw as a matter of conscience.  Gary McFarlane, a Relate counsellor, and Lillian Ladele, a marriage registrar, both resisted performing tasks at work they believed would amount to condoning homosexuality.  Miss Ladele was disciplined by Islington Council for asking to be excused from conducting civil partnership ceremonies.

Gary McFarlane indicated during a training course that if the situation ever arose he might have a conscientious objection to providing sex therapy to a same-sex couple on account of his Christian faith. He was dismissed for gross misconduct for discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.

Christian need not apply!  It’s beginning to look like the old Soviet Union when non-communist Party members were semi-ghottoised, kept from jobs, made unemployable, and reduced to second-class citizens.  The marginalisation of Christians is an inevitable consequence of the dominant secular humanist religion conforming all culture and social interaction to its own doctrines and image.

Paul Lambdin, partner in the employment department at Stevens & Bolton said: “Those with religious faith will take scant comfort from the ECHR’s decision to allow the wearing of a religious symbol at work (when there is no health and safety risk). “It appears that those Christians, Muslims and others who disagree with same sex marriage and/or civil partnerships will be excluded from certain jobs. He added: “These cases demonstrate the difficulty of divorcing a belief from its practice. “The practical effect is that Ms Ladele, Mr McFarlane and others with similar religious convictions may be lawfully excluded from certain jobs.”

 A spokesman for the Christian Institute painted the picture of the broader implications:

Mike Judge, spokesman for The Christian Institute, which supported Miss Ladele, said: “What this case shows is that Christians with traditional beliefs about marriage are at risk of being left out in the cold. “If the Government steamrollers ahead with its plans to redefine marriage, then hundreds of thousands of people could be thrown out of their jobs unless they agree to endorse gay marriage.”

Andrea Williams, director of the Christian Legal Centre, which supported Mr McFarlane and Mrs Chaplin, said: “If the Government redefines marriage in the next days and weeks we are going to see more and more cases like this because there are millions of Christians that believe that marriage is between a man and a woman and will have conscientious objections to facilitating that.”

This is but one issue.  There will be more, many more issues where secular humanism will drive to conform society to its dogma and doctrines.  It is pretty clear that in the shorter term it will be successful.  This is what it means when a formerly Christian society falls under the judgement of the Almighty.  God turns His face away and dominion is given to the Devil for a time.  One of the first targets of oppression, punishing those who refuse to accept the doctrines of secular humanism, is always the Christian Church.  As Peter puts it: “For it is time for judgement to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?”  (I Peter 4:17)

One consequence of the oppression and suffering is always the purification of the Church itself.  When the fiery trials fall, fellow-travellers within the Church lapse and depart.  Those truly born of the Spirit reconfirm and recommit their loyalty to the Saviour.  Oppression radicalises belief, in the sense that it drives it more deeply into the heart.  The Church is made more pure as a result. 

But Unbelief can only remain regnant for a time.  It ultimately gnaws upon itself and destroys itself.  God’s judgment thus falls upon Unbelief, bringing to nothing.  But let no Christian amongst us be unclear or blind to what is happening in the West and what the implications are for us all.  Again, the words of Peter are becoming more and more relevant to our days:

In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ.  (I Peter 1: 6,7)

The times are a’ changing–and our faith will be proved by fiery trials.  It’s time for all Christian parents to be thus warning, preparing, and encouraging their children and grandchildren for what they will most likely have to face. 

Letter From America (About the UK and Australia and Guns)

Joyce Lee Malcolm: Two Cautionary Tales of Gun Control

After a school massacre, the U.K. banned handguns in 1998. A decade later, handgun crime had doubled.

By JOYCE LEE MALCOLM

Wall Street Journal

Americans are determined that massacres such as happened in Newtown, Conn., never happen again. But how? Many advocate more effective treatment of mentally-ill people or armed protection in so-called gun-free zones. Many others demand stricter control of firearms.

We aren’t alone in facing this problem. Great Britain and Australia, for example, suffered mass shootings in the 1980s and 1990s. Both countries had very stringent gun laws when they occurred. Nevertheless, both decided that even stricter control of guns was the answer. Their experiences can be instructive.

In 1987, Michael Ryan went on a shooting spree in his small town of Hungerford, England, killing 16 people (including his mother) and wounding another 14 before shooting himself. Since the public was unarmed—as were the police—Ryan wandered the streets for eight hours with two semiautomatic rifles and a handgun before anyone with a firearm was able to come to the rescue.

Nine years later, in March 1996, Thomas Hamilton, a man known to be mentally unstable, walked into a primary school in the Scottish town of Dunblane and shot 16 young children and their teacher. He wounded 10 other children and three other teachers before taking his own life. In 1920, anyone in Britain wanting a handgun had to obtain a certificate from his local police stating he was fit to own a weapon and had good reason to have one. Over the years, the definition of “good reason” gradually narrowed. By 1969, self-defense was never a good reason for a permit.

After Hungerford, the British government banned semiautomatic rifles and brought shotguns—the last type of firearm that could be purchased with a simple show of fitness—under controls similar to those in place for pistols and rifles. Magazines were limited to two shells with a third in the chamber.

Dunblane had a more dramatic impact. Hamilton had a firearm certificate, although according to the rules he should not have been granted one. A media frenzy coupled with an emotional campaign by parents of Dunblane resulted in the Firearms Act of 1998, which instituted a nearly complete ban on handguns. Owners of pistols were required to turn them in. The penalty for illegal possession of a pistol is up to 10 years in prison.

The results have not been what proponents of the act wanted. Within a decade of the handgun ban and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had doubled according to British government crime reports. Gun crime, not a serious problem in the past, now is. Armed street gangs have some British police carrying guns for the first time. Moreover, another massacre occurred in June 2010. Derrick Bird, a taxi driver in Cumbria, shot his brother and a colleague then drove off through rural villages killing 12 people and injuring 11 more before killing himself.

Meanwhile, law-abiding citizens who have come into the possession of a firearm, even accidentally, have been harshly treated. In 2009 a former soldier, Paul Clarke, found a bag in his garden containing a shotgun. He brought it to the police station and was immediately handcuffed and charged with possession of the gun. At his trial the judge noted: “In law there is no dispute that Mr. Clarke has no defence to this charge. The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant.” Mr. Clarke was sentenced to five years in prison. A public outcry eventually won his release.

In November of this year, Danny Nightingale, member of a British special forces unit in Iraq and Afghanistan, was sentenced to 18 months in military prison for possession of a pistol and ammunition. Sgt. Nightingale was given the Glock pistol as a gift by Iraqi forces he had been training. It was packed up with his possessions and returned to him by colleagues in Iraq after he left the country to organize a funeral for two close friends killed in action. Mr. Nightingale pleaded guilty to avoid a five-year sentence and was in prison until an appeal and public outcry freed him on Nov. 29.

***

Six weeks after the Dunblane massacre in 1996, Martin Bryant, an Australian with a lifelong history of violence, attacked tourists at a Port Arthur prison site in Tasmania with two semiautomatic rifles. He killed 35 people and wounded 21 others.

At the time, Australia’s guns laws were stricter than the United Kingdom’s. In lieu of the requirement in Britain that an applicant for permission to purchase a gun have a “good reason,” Australia required a “genuine reason.” Hunting and protecting crops from feral animals were genuine reasons—personal protection wasn’t.

With new Prime Minister John Howard in the lead, Australia passed the National Firearms Agreement, banning all semiautomatic rifles and semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns and imposing a more restrictive licensing system on other firearms. The government also launched a forced buyback scheme to remove thousands of firearms from private hands. Between Oct. 1, 1996, and Sept. 30, 1997, the government purchased and destroyed more than 631,000 of the banned guns at a cost of $500 million.

To what end? While there has been much controversy over the result of the law and buyback, Peter Reuter and Jenny Mouzos, in a 2003 study published by the Brookings Institution, found homicides “continued a modest decline” since 1997. They concluded that the impact of the National Firearms Agreement was “relatively small,” with the daily rate of firearms homicides declining 3.2%.

According to their study, the use of handguns rather than long guns (rifles and shotguns) went up sharply, but only one out of 117 gun homicides in the two years following the 1996 National Firearms Agreement used a registered gun. Suicides with firearms went down but suicides by other means went up. They reported “a modest reduction in the severity” of massacres (four or more indiscriminate homicides) in the five years since the government weapons buyback. These involved knives, gas and arson rather than firearms.

In 2008, the Australian Institute of Criminology reported a decrease of 9% in homicides and a one-third decrease in armed robbery since the 1990s, but an increase of over 40% in assaults and 20% in sexual assaults.

What to conclude? Strict gun laws in Great Britain and Australia haven’t made their people noticeably safer, nor have they prevented massacres. The two major countries held up as models for the U.S. don’t provide much evidence that strict gun laws will solve our problems.

Ms. Malcolm, a professor of law at George Mason University Law School, is the author of several books including “Guns and Violence: The English Experience,” (Harvard, 2002).

Letter From America (About the UK)

‘I Genuinely Believe This Is a Marxist Revolution’ 

British Lawmakers Revolt Against E.U.

Erica Ritz Posted on November 26, 2012
The Blaze

The Los Angeles Times published an article Sunday exploring Britain’s shifting place within the European Union.  While the subject is noteworthy in its own right, intentionally or not, the article highlights a number of striking parallels between the United Kingdom and the United States.

It has been said that as goes California, so goes America.  It is a harbinger of things to come.  The United Kingdom is a similar marker, but much further down the road of big government and rule by unelected bureaucrats.  And Britons are starting to object.

The L.A. Times relates:

Looking at Europe from this side of the English Channel, Peter Reeve doesn’t see a “cuddly” continent of biscotti, Burgundy and BMWs. He sees the evil specter of Soviet Russia.  Only this time, it’s Brussels, not Moscow, at the center of an expanding, metastasizing super-government bent on turning independent nations like France and Germany into vassal states.  Instead of the Soviet Union, it’s the European Union that scares him.

Reeve, a local councilor with the UK Independence Party, wants Britain to pull out of the EU while it still can, before it’s trapped in such a thick web of European regulation and control that escape becomes impossible and the country winds up as an offshore outpost of a totalitarian EU regime.  “I genuinely believe this is a Marxist revolution happening,” said Reeve. “This country is part of it, but balking on it” — an impulse he heartily encourages.  

Sound familiar?  Only in our case, it would be collusion with giant bodies like the United Nations, rather than the E.U., that many object to.  So what exactly has changed in the years since Britain joined the E.U.?  Though it can only be described as a reluctant member — they refused to adopt the Euro, most significantly — the European Union has quickly superseded authority from Britain’s elected officials.

British Prime Minister David Cameron gives a press conference at the EU Headquarters, on November 23, 2012 in Brussels, after a two-day European Union leaders summit called to agree a hotly-contested trillion-euro budget through 2020. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

The L.A. Times explains, adding Prime Minister David Cameron’s response:

Upset at EU court rulings that trump British ones, health-and-safety regulations viewed as ridiculously onerous and Eastern European migrants “stealing” local jobs, many Britons feel that EU membership is now more a liability than an asset. At best, they say, Britain is being held back from achieving its economic potential; at worst, it’s been stripped of sovereignty and placed at the mercy of unfriendly, unelected “Eurocrats” at EU headquarters in Brussels.

Polls increasingly show more Britons in favor of leaving the EU than staying in. Anti-EU sentiment pervades British politics, with some Cabinet ministers openly calling for Britain to pull out, or at least for the question to be put to voters in a referendum.

All this has thrown the government of Prime Minister David Cameron into a tricky position. He must weigh growing public disenchantment with the EU against the pro-Europe interests of big business, a natural constituency of his Conservative Party, which fears being shut out of the EU’s single market. Some political analysts warn that outside the EU, Britain’s global influence would sharply diminish, especially its role as a transatlantic bridge for the U.S.

“The Americans have always told the Brits that ‘you guys are important for us because you have a big influence in Europe,’” said Philip Whyte, a research fellow at the London-based Center for European Reform. “If Britain left the EU, you [in the U.S.] won’t be necessarily picking up the phone to London. Britain won’t be the first country you’d be calling; the first country you’d be calling would be Germany.”  

 But if they’re not being stifled by regulation and Soviet-style bureaucracy, many in the U.K. believe they can overcome the potential losses that would arise from pulling out of the E.U.  “The sun never set” on the British Empire roughly a century ago, and while no one expects England to return to a fraction of its former size, they’re not keen on spending their lives in compliance with menial orders from faceless unelected officials in Brussels.

Who can forget the epic rant of Nigel Farage, an anti-European Union member of the EU Parliament, against the president of the EU Council in 2010?  Fined $4,000 for expressing his opinion, Farage said the president had the “charisma of a damp rag” but was a “competent, capable, and dangerous assassin” of democracy and British sovereignty.

“We don’t know you, we don’t want you, and the sooner you’re put out to grass, the better,” he concluded.
Watch it, below:

The L.A. Times concludes with an overview of Farage’s recent activities, his party’s message echoing that of American conservatives across the Atlantic.

Interestingly, one of the primary verbal assaults hurled their way is that they are “xenophobic” (read: racist).  But they explain that — while they love visiting Paris and now know the difference “between a latte and a macchiato” (in the words of previously-mentioned researcher Philip Whyte) — they’re simply not interested in the stifling, gray life of big government.

The L.A. Times writes:

To broaden its appeal, [U.K. Independence Party] has begun preaching a libertarian message of self-help and small government. But at its core remains the drive to remove Britain from the clutches of an EU monster state that, by Farage’s reckoning, now accounts for 75% of the laws that Britons must obey.

“You can always argue that dictators do the odd good thing. Whether the EU makes a good law or a bad law, the fact is that the electors of this country cannot do a single thing to change any of it,” said Farage.
He is adamant that the government call an “in-or-out” plebiscite on the EU, which would probably decide the question for at least a generation.

“If a majority of my fellow electors in a free and fair referendum opt for us to become Province 17 of the European Union, I won’t be happy about it,” Farage said. “But at least it’ll be the decision of the British people.” ​

Death Panels

Bureaucrats With the Power of Life and Death

Theodore Dalrymple, writing in City Journal, analyzes the UK’s National Health Service (NHS).   He discusses the strange phenomenon of the UK public believing that the NHS delivers high quality health care, despite a steadily growing number of horror stories about its practice.  It’s almost as if the public is in denial, not daring to face the truth lest their god appear before them naked and puny.

But eventually truth will out.  Dalrymple describes how the devastating effects of nationalised health in the beginning are often subtle and not obvious.  By the time the cracks start to show up the first response of governments is to throw more money at it, thereby contributing to the general fiscal debt crisis.

The end game of socialised medicine is bureaucratic rationing of healthcare–which is to say the government and its functionaries decide who will live and who will die.  Not a pleasant thought.  But if you believe the government is a demi-god it’s an inevitable outcome.  Soft despotism in the end is just as crushing and destructive as hard despotism.

Dalrymple summarises the inequities and the iniquities of the system: