ACT for Australia has the story:

Australians are becoming increasingly aware that many Muslims refugees:

• Abuse our hospitality. E.g., Mansor Almaribe threatened to sue the Australian Government after they had lobbied the Saudi Government when he was arrested on charges of blasphemy, helping to get his sentence drastically reduced .
• Import barbaric sharia. E.g., the man who strangled his wife with her veil, because she ‘shamed’ him by leaving him after many years of abuse.

So when growing public anger forces our government to restrict Islamic immigration, Islamic countries will have to think of new strategies to gain entry. It won’t be easy, as evidence of the repressive nature of Islamic countries is continually being exposed.

The Barnabas Fund reports:

• The media is banned from producing or broadcasting any programme “that humiliates Allah or his prophets or the holy Quran”.
• Foreign workers and tourists can practise their faith only in private. It is also illegal to carry or display in public books on religions other than Islam.
• In October 2011 a Christian teacher from India working in a school on Raa Atoll was imprisoned for transferring Christian songs on to a school laptop and keeping a Bible in his home.

In 2010, it was reported that legislation was planned to ban all non-Muslim places of worship in the Maldives:

• … the bill would make it illegal to build non-Muslim places of worship or to practise non-Muslim faiths in public… Punishment would be a jail term of three to five years or a fine of between US$2,800 and US$4,700.
• … Muttalib, MP… said that the purpose of the legislation was to maintain Islamic principles and to prevent the spread of non-Muslim faiths. He mentioned too the phenomenon of “wedding tourism” , which would “indirectly set up churches in this country”.
• Sheikh Mohamed Shaheem Ali Saeed… commented that non-Muslim places of worship are necessary only in countries where there is religious diversity. This did not apply in the Maldives… whose constitution does not permit Maldivians to follow a non-Islamic faith.
• Nazam Rashid MP agreed the bill was important because human rights organisations were trying to impose freedom of religion on the Maldives.

The Maldives has no freedom of religion, and denigrates and oppresses any who follow another religion.

Its pretense of being moderate in order to attract tourists has resulted in some bizarre situations, as when a wedding celebrant was caught out insulting tourists:

• The celebrant, who conducted the ceremony in the local language at an upmarket resort fringed by white sand and turquoise water, had been arrested …
• A video of the ceremony, during which the hapless couple are taunted and subjected to a series of insulting and religious-tinged abuse, was posted on YouTube and has sparked fears for the country’s tourism-dependent economy.
• President Mohamed Nasheed announced his government would introduce strict guidelines on conducting wedding ceremonies … he expressed “disgust” at the incident … saying “bad behaviour, such as that depicted in the YouTube video, can cause enormous damage to the country’s tourism industry”.
• The Vilu Reef hotel… said it was “unforgivable” that a staff member had read out the sexual and religious slurs in the Dhivehi language.“You are swine,” the couple were told. “The children that you bear from this marriage will all be bastard swine.”

Muslims are encouraged to denigrate and curse other religions, so Nasheed would have been shocked, not by the celebrant’s behaviour, but that this story leaked out.

That’s the problem with deceit: sooner or later the mask slips, and the perception that the Maldives is just like any other luxury resort, with alcohol aplenty and people in skimpy clothing relaxing by the pool, is shattered by the reality of Islam, as when the government tried to close down all spas:

• The Maldives government is looking to rethink a decision to close down all spas after the tourism industry threatened protests if the decision was not reversed.
• A protest was called by the opposition Justice Party and several other groups that accuse President Nasheed’s government of compromising principles of Islam and want strict Islamic law.
• The protesters also have called on authorities to stop the sale of alcohol, shut down brothels operating in the guise of what they said are “massage parlors” and demolish monuments gifted by other countries marking a South Asian summit because they are “idols.”
• An angry protest also followed a call by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay for the Maldives to end floggings of women being punished for adultery.

Some Maldivians are aware of the contradictions:

Lured by the exotic brochures they come to visit the Maldives. Sun. Sand. Sea. holiday. Paradise.

The visiting tourist knows he is going to a 100% Muslim Nation. But he is unaware that his Paradise package that mustached man sold him at the travel fair is going to land him in Hell.

Mamduh Waheed explains it all at Minivan News:

…the Maldivian constitution…clearly states that a Maldivian citizen can only be a Muslim. And from this follows other laws and regulations which prohibit Maldivians from consumption of alcohol and any other behavior that is deemed outside of the Muslim moral code. And tourism regulation in the country is perhaps a good example of this. We facilitate tourists to travel thousands of miles and spend as much dollars to travel to the beautiful islands of the Maldives (of which we are the inhabitants) and do things we believe will only take them closer to hell; drink alcohol, engage in sex outside marriage, wear revealing clothes in public, etc. So we have a situation where we ourselves refrain from the bad things but actually help others who do not belong to our community to do these very sinful things. The same laws of the land has different provisions to different persons, and while some laws describe us as having certain unalienable rights, others deny us those very same rights.

For many centuries, the Maldives were populated by Buddhists from Sri Lanka. They were converted to Sunni Islam in 1153, and, in true Islamic fashion, virtually all traces of the indigenous culture have been obliterated.

Under the Constitution, Islam is the basis of all laws in the Maldives and no laws contrary to any tenet of Islam can be enacted. Only Muslims can be citizens or own land. Non-Muslims may not vote or hold public positions.

Eventually, this must put an end to the wedding and other tourism: in the meantime, there are still many wealthy/naïve tourists who are drawn to the luxury resorts.

But no worries: when tourism dries up, they can always invade neighbouring countries and plunder their wealth. Luckily, President Nasheed is on the ball, using the climate change pretext to announce his plans to use tourism money to purchase land in Australia, for his people to relocate should rising sea levels due to climate change inundate the country.

We know Muslims would get a welcome from the Greens:

The Greens have pledged that they will:

“Establish a new climate refugee visa to help those displaced by climate change.”

Our elite media is also on their side.

An editorial published in The Age and elsewhere lectured us on our obligations:

THE idea of government ministers donning scuba gear to attend an underwater cabinet meeting seems to conjure up a scene from surrealist drama, but in the Maldives it really happened. In 2009 President Mohamed Nasheed and his cabinet did just that to draw attention to the fact that their country might literally disappear beneath the waves… If the sea level rises by 59 cms in the course of the century… most of the republic’s 200 inhabited islands will have to be abandoned.

Rising sea levels are one of the key indicators of human-induced global warming, which is perhaps why skeptics contest the evidence for it so vigorously… But the inhabitants of the Maldives… have no doubt that the IPCC’s predictions are a pointer to their future…

Australians tend to think about the Maldives, Tuvalu and Kiribati…as paradisal holiday destinations…The islands’ proximity, however, is a reminder that the threat to the low-lying states’ existence is not only a problem for the islanders themselves.

If the Maldives were to vanish, their 350,000 human inhabitants would have to go somewhere…Australia, Sri Lanka and India, would be their most likely destinations.

These islanders would not be asylum seekers in the strict sense, because they would not be fleeing persecution. But as victims of a catastrophe not of their making they would certainly have a claim on the rest of humanity. Two of the most divisive issues in Australian politics in the past two decades, climate change and immigration, would have coalesced.

At last year’s UN climate-change conference in Durban… delegates agreed to begin work on a new global treaty…on carbon emissions, to come into force by 2020.

To Nasheed, 2020 will be too late. He wants world leaders to bring the date forward, but he is also keenly aware that the Maldives… lacks diplomatic clout. That may well doom his plea, and ultimately his nation, too. But Australia should remember that our neighbours’ interests are also our interests.

How can our neighbours’ interests also be our interests when Australia is a democracy, with egalitarian values and freedom of religion, whereas, behind a façade of an idyllic holiday destination, The Maldives is a totalitarian Islamic state?

Fairfax’s Sydney Morning Herald are also on side:

THE Maldives will begin to divert a portion of the country’s billion-dollar annual tourist revenue into buying a new homeland – possibly in Australia – as an insurance policy against climate change that threatens to turn the 300,000 islanders into environmental refugees, the country’s first democratically elected president has said.

Mohamed Nasheed… said the chain of 1200 islands and coral atolls… is likely to disappear under the waves if the current pace of climate change continues to raise sea levels.

“We can do nothing to stop climate change on our own and so we have to buy land elsewhere. It’s an insurance policy for the worst possible outcome. After all, the Israelis [began by buying] land in Palestine.”

The President – a human rights activist who swept to power in elections by ousting Maumoon Abdul Gayoom…said he had broached the idea with a number of countries and found them to be receptive.

He said Sri Lanka and India were targets because they had similar cultures, cuisines and climates. Australia was being considered because of the amount of unoccupied land available.

Environmentalists say the issue raises the question of what rights citizens have if their homeland no longer exists.

“It’s an unprecedented wake-up call,” Tom Picken, head of international climate change at Friends of the Earth, said. “The Maldives is left to fend for itself. It is a victim of climate change caused by rich countries.”

Nasheed is a rising star in Asia, where he has been compared to Nelson Mandela. Before taking office the President asked Maldivians to move forward without rancour or retribution – an astonishing call, given that Nasheed had gone to jail 23 times, been tortured and spent 18 months in solitary confinement.

The Maldives is one of the few Muslim nations to make a relatively peaceful transition from autocracy to democracy. The Gayoom “sultanate” was an iron-fisted regime that ran the police, army and courts and which banned rival parties.

Public flogging, banishment to island gulags and torture were routinely used to suppress dissent and the fledging pro-democracy movement… However, public pressure grew and last year Gayoom conceded that democracy was inevitable.

Nasheed said that without an emergency bail-out from the international community, the future of the Maldives as a democracy would be in doubt.

“It’s desperate. We are a 100 per cent Islamic country and democracy came from within. Do you want to lose that because we were denied the money to deal with the poverty created by the dictatorship?”

Amazing that an Australian newspaper can publish an article which claims that The Maldives is a democracy, Nasheed a Human Rights Activist, climate change is the fault of rich countries and if we don’t let them in, we will be destroying their ‘democracy’.

Come to think of it, aren’t the Arab countries rich? Plus they have “they had similar cultures, cuisines and climates”. Moreover, the Emirates are the biggest environmental vandals, so surely it’s their fault too! Maldivians would feel right at home in Dubai or Saudi Arabia, both of which have sharia and despise human rights and democracy.

Mind you, The Age recently published a revealing article on The Maldives, so I guess that’s pretty even-handed!

WHEN the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay visited the Maldives, she urged that the practice of flogging women for having sex outside marriage – and very rarely punishing men in the same way – should be abolished.

“This practice constitutes one of the most inhumane and degrading forms of violence against women,” she told local reporters.

The response was as vicious as it was unexpected.

The next day protestors rallied outside the UN building, carrying placards that read “Ban UN”, “Islam is not a toy” and threatened to “Flog Pillay”. A website promised to “slaughter anyone against Islam”.

Anecdotal reports suggest female circumcision is undergoing a resurgence in the Maldives, particularly on the outer islands.

Maldives President Nasheed conceded an emergent religious fundamentalism had changed the way women were viewed, and were treated, in his country.

He said he was distressed by groups who campaigned for girls to be circumcised [FGM] or to be kept home from school.

“We were a matriarchal society, our inheritance, also, in the past was from women. But with a new kind of radical Islam, the perceptions some of them have on women are not familiar to many Maldivians.”

Sadly, our Government promotes the idea of a moderate Islam.

Journalist Peter Day writes:

In 2004, the Australian Government produced a glossy promotional booklet on Islam – Muslim Australians: Their Beliefs, Practices and Institutions… authored by Professor Abdullah Saeed, the Sultan of Oman Professor of Islamic Studies and Director of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Islam at Melbourne University.

… the booklet’s treatment of the right of Muslims to leave Islam (apostasy) is … an example of the booklet’s overall approach to explaining Islam. This topic is dealt with in a section headed ‘Stereotypes and Misconceptions,’ where the proposition that ‘People who leave Islam (apostates) will be killed’ is listed as one of the ‘misconceptions’. The text that addresses this explains Muslim teaching on the matter as follows:

From a religious point of view, the Qur’an stipulates that ‘there is no compulsion in religion (2:256), and a person can neither be forced to become a Muslim nor to stay in the religion.

It is also stated that in the time of the Prophet, if a person left Islam because of their own religious choice, then in general there were no repercussions. This is because the Qur’an instructed the Prophet that his duty was to preach the message of Islam but that ‘If then they turn away, We have not sent thee as a guard over them. Thy duty is but to convey [the Message].

It seems fair for a reader to conclude from this that Islamic teaching is summed up in the words… ‘a person can neither be forced to become a Muslim nor to stay in the religion’. But Professor Saeed, is also co-author of a major book on this very topic, Freedom of Religion, Apostasy and Islam, which takes a very different view. His book … will be an eye-opener to anyone who has gleaned what they know of the religion from his Muslim Australians… he summarises the consensus position on apostasy among Muslim religious scholars as follows:

While there is general consensus that coercion should not be used to convert anyone to any religion … the right of religious freedom is not extended to a Muslim who wants to change his or her religion to another.

He goes on to tell us that, according to ‘the majority of Muslim jurists’, to flout the prohibition on leaving Islam ‘is to commit the crime of apostasy, and a person so doing should be put to death.’

Based purely on the information presented in Professor Saeed’s Freedom of Religion book, it is clear that the Muslim Australians booklet falls well short of an accurate presentation of contemporary Muslim teaching on this issue.

It is clear… that most current Muslim teaching and practice in this area is in direct contravention of both Article 18 and Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Maldives rather neatly exemplifies current trends on human rights in the Muslim world generally. A revised Maldivian constitution …makes it a formal requirement for all citizens of that country to be Muslims; and that explicitly subordinates all of its citizens’ human rights to Sharia. Notwithstanding this, the Maldivian foreign ministry announced in 2008 that it was joining other members of the UN… to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). There the country’s UN representative unblushingly stated: ‘In today’s Maldives, the ideals and principles contained in the Universal Declaration have found real-world form in our proud new Constitution.

As in the Maldives, so elsewhere in much of the Islamic world: there are greater restrictions on freedom of thought and expression, including the continuing threat of punishment for apostasy; and greater enforcement of Sharia, accompanied by an ever more strident insistence that ‘human rights’ are being fully respected.

So the question must be asked: should our government, media and leaders be promoting an illusory moderate Islam which is perfectly compatible with democratic values?

Or should they tell the truth, and risk offending those determined to suppress criticism of Islam?

Related reading: Seems the Maldives is flavour of the month – The Age has a piece on it and surprisingly, not a complimentary one!

By Cassandra

Also see:

• Vlad Tepes Blog: MPs approve bill to outlaw places of worship for non-Muslims: Maldives
• Maldives government highlights the impact of climate change… by meeting underwater
• Islamic coup of Maldives? President resigns

Originally posted on ACT for Australia.

Reprinted with permission.

What better way to welcome 2012 than with a new museum:

…a hidden trove of performing arts treasures – a $26 million collection featuring items as diverse as Nick Cave’s notebooks, Peter Allen’s maracas, Dame Edna Everage’s extravagant outfits, and, of course, Kylie Minogue’s impossibly tiny and impeccably lavish costumes.

Begun in 1975, the Performing Arts Collection has expanded to 450,000 items. The problem is, only a tiny fraction of the collection can ever be shown…But Arts Centre chief executive Judith Isherwood wants to end the collection’s days in the bunker and give it the prominence it deserves – housing it in a big, new museum, that would become another significant cultural building for Melbourne and could cost up to $100 million. She has been lobbying governments, state and federal, to persuade them of the collection’s national significance, and of its need for a permanent home, a stand-alone building that would be the world’s first dedicated performing arts museum.

A spokesman for Premier Baillieu said that the Victorian government was aware of the proposal for a performing arts museum, but had “no plans to proceed”.

“Any future consideration of this proposal would be made in the context of a number of many competing budget demands,” the spokesman said.

Link here.

So don’t go popping the champagne corks, as this Museum is unlikely to get off the ground, given the State Government’s lacklustre response to the project.

But if one Museum might never see the light of day, another – the Islamic Museum of Australia – is surging ahead, with an agenda to persuade the public that Islam had a prior presence in Australia and made a vital contribution to this country:

Muslim fishermen and traders first came to our shores in the seventeenth century, or even earlier, from the eastern islands of modern Indonesia. They sailed their prahus along our north and north-western coast fishing for trepang and trading with the Aborigines; a cross-cultural interaction that carried on for more than three centuries.

Between 1870 and 1920 approximately 20,000 camels and 2,000-3,000 cameleers landed at ports around Australia…and proved invaluable on numerous expeditions hastening to map the continent, carted wool to ports, and water to drought ridden areas, and transported mail, equipment and stores at a time when railway construction was in its infancy. They played a significant role in facilitating the construction of the Overland Telegraph Line by carting equipment, material and supplies. Without their services Australia’s inland development would have lagged behind…

In the wake of the Afghan and Indian cameleers came the hawkers and later the Malay pearl divers; they in turn were followed by the early Albanians and Turks, and other Muslims from many different countries who were all part of early Australian history…at last this hidden history…can be told.

AUSTRALIAN MUSLIM STORIES

Living as Muslims in Australia today provides fresh and unique insights to be shared with all. A host of Australian Muslim authors, comics, media personalities and charity workers have written books, made TV shows and led interesting lives which highlight the Australian Muslim experience.

This gallery will also profile a number of prominent Muslim Australian sports stars and business identities such as, Ahmed Fahour, John Ilhan, footballer Hazem Masri and cricketer Uthman Khawaja.

Australian Muslims

Indoctrinating our young people is firmly on the agenda:

The Islamic Museum will conduct educational tours for School groups. These interactive and informative tours will provide a fascinating insight into Australian Muslim life, art, history & civilisation.

The tours will be led by Sherene Hassan, who has addressed over 500 primary and secondary school groups over the last 10 years…Education Kits will be prepared by our team of registered teachers with years of experience in Australian schools.

Sherene Hassan is part of the Hamas and Hezbollah-supporting ICV, and a master of taqiya, like when she said she “deplores that Islam is often linked with misogyny and is doing her utmost to confront this belief”. Scary to think that our government is funding the spread of false reassurance about Islam.

The museum’s Mission is to:

• …provide educational and cross-cultural experiences and showcase the artistic and cultural heritage of Muslims in Australia and in Muslim societies abroad.
• …foster community harmony and facilitate an understanding of the values and contributions of Muslims to Australian society.

Al Age enthuses:

Maysaa and Moustafa Fahour, founders of the Islamic Museum of Australia…hope it can break down misunderstandings…and dispel stereotypes of the often misunderstood religious minority.

…the idea for a precinct emphasising heritage and art drawn from the more than 60 ethnicities who identify as Muslim here was developed by Macquarie banker Moustafa Fahour and his wife Maysaa.

The venture has been granted charity status by the ATO and has the personal endorsement of Victoria’s Multicultural Affairs Minister Nick Kotsiras.

Land has been acquired at a Thornbury industrial site…Darebin Council had signalled that an Islamic museum would be welcome in the neighbourhood.

The museum will include a permanent exhibition featuring basic information about Muslims’ religious beliefs provided in a digestible form to the public.

School groups are also expected to tour on a daily basis.

“As a mother, I love the NGV and Scienceworks and have my kids participate in knowledgeable activities. Nowhere was there something about Islam …It struck me as something to really strive for,” said Mrs Fahour.

Apart from a six-member board…an advisory committee includes SBS board member Hass Dellal, Immigration Museum manager Padmini Sebastian and ABC personality and politics lecturer Waleed Aly.

Alarmingly, the Victorian Government follows the Islamic narrative:

Nicholas Kotsiras welcomed the establishment of the Islamic Museum of Australia…saying that world cultures, traditions, religions, arts and crafts were the bridge linking civilisation and humanity.

“This brings people together and helps build Victoria’s reputation as a thriving, cohesive and cosmopolitan State. It will educate all Victorians on the complexity and diversity of Muslim identities. It will dispel myths and misconceptions, and work towards creating an understanding, compassionate and cohesive society. It is a noble vision; it is a worthy vision.”

Victorian Premier welcomes it!

Disturbing that our Government welcomes an Islamic museum, which will undermine our free society, yet refuses to consider a Performing Arts museum, which would celebrate the fruits of our freedom and creativity.

The Islamic Museum plans to host visiting exhibitions, such as “The 1001 Islamic Inventions exhibition currently touring the U.S.A.”

Sadly, apart from suicide belts, I can’t think of too many other Islamic inventions!

“The recent Australia’s Muslim Cameleers exhibition at the Immigration Museum is another example of the type of exhibition the Islamic Museum aims to attract.”

I went to this exhibition, which perpetuated the myth of Muslims’ huge contribution to Australia.

It came with an education kit, ensuring our kids were indoctrinated, as well as the teacher Personal Development programme, explaining how to brainwash young minds:

“The exhibition offers an opportunity for students to engage with the diversity of individual experiences in our nation’s history and the contribution to the Australian identity and values in relation to issues of respect, tolerance and social harmony.”

Philip Jones eulogised these “pioneers”, suggesting that our failure to appreciate them was due to our ‘Islamophobia’:

The cameleers pioneered a network of camel-pads and tracks that later became roads across outback Australia. The homesteads, mines, missions and townships linked by this network depended upon the cameleers for their viability.

One thinks of the energy and resources directed towards preserving the records and memory of Australia’s Chinese pioneers who provided commercial infrastructure for the Victorian goldfields, or the heritage associated with the contribution made by the post-war migrants to the Snowy River Scheme. How is it that the legacy of the cameleers has been so neglected?

It would be easy to suggest the oversight had to do with the cameleers’ adherence to Islam… But the cameleers did not come to Australia to proselytize…their religious observances rarely impinged on their remarkable capacity to deliver goods intact across vast distances of the Australian interior. For these achievements they earned the general respect of their European neighbours.

Little remains of the heritage of Australia’s Muslim cameleers. Many of these fine men ‘died in the jungle’ with little recognition or understanding from the wider community.

Bill Seager, curator of South Australia’s Museum, continues this theme:

…This exhibition leaves no doubt that camels, cameleers and Australia’s first Muslim community helped shape Australia’s outback.

Their stories…integrate a history of Indigenous Australians that is interpreted outside of the typically marginalised and violent confines of the colonial frontier.

If we don’t get the message that Muslims share with Aborigines the claim to be the indigenous people – unlike the White colonial invaders – a bit of visual art should do the trick:

“The exhibition ends with a 2003 work by Aboriginal/Afghan artist Ian Abdulla titled Afghanistan Blood in Him like Me.

It is a work that seeks to reconnect Abdulla with his Afghan past.

The image reminds us of the exhibition’s relevance for Australian visitors today.”

Our dhimmi Government reinforces this message:

Muslims in Australia have a long and varied history that is thought to pre-date European settlement. Some of Australia’s earliest visitors were Muslim, from the east Indonesian archipelago. They made contact with mainland Australia as early as the 16th and 17th centuries.

…Afghan camel drivers…were vital in the early exploration of inland Australia and in the establishment of service links.

Since the 1970s, Muslim communities have developed many mosques and Islamic schools and made vibrant contributions to the multicultural fabric of Australian society.

Vibrant contributions indeed – vicious gang rapes of teenage girls, criminalizing free speech, and the push for sharia law, including polygamous marriages!

Perhaps the most astonishing feature of the exhibition was the whitewash of the first terror attack in Australia, with a display of the 2 firearms used by Gool Mahamed and Mullah Abdullah in their attack on the picnic train passengers near Broken Hill.

But lest we think they were terrorists (they were!), we are told:

After Federation in 1901, negative sentiment towards ‘coloured races’ was expressed in the White Australia Policy….

These factors, and the alignment of Ottoman Turkey against Britain during the First World War, help to explain the extraordinary events at Broken Hill on New Year’s Day, 1915. On that morning, two cameleers flying the Turkish flag fired on a picnic train as it left the town. At the close of the resultant gun battle, six people, including the two assailants, lay dead.

So our racism caused them to feel alienated and kill people!

The exhibition described some colourful Muslim characters:

Mohammad Bux built up a successful business career in Western Australia…he was able to call his father and cousin to join him in Perth. The process of facilitating the arrival of his extended family members did not cease…Mohammad remained the most successful of the Bux family due to his sharp business acumen and high standards of business ethics.

He brought his wife and a seven years old daughter to live with him…As a practicing Muslim woman…his wife observed purdah and did not come out in public. The practice got him into trouble when some neighbours reported him to the police for imprisoning a woman. Only when an English man well versed in Islamic law explained to the court did the judge dismiss the case. The judge ordered that Bux take his wife daily for a walk at night!

Throughout the three decades of his life in Perth, Mohammad Bux retained his Muslim identity…The spirit of serving the community also helped his country of origin.

When back in Lahore, he helped build the Australia Mosque…

Shocking to hear that even then a judge ignored the law in favour of sharia.

Purdah must NEVER become acceptable in Australia!

No woman ‘observes’ purdah, just as she doesn’t ‘observe’ honour killing or fgm.

These Islamic barbarities are an affront to our egalitarian values and to civilised norms.

And if Bux came here to make money, then took it back to Lahore, how did this help Australia? He came here illegally, but instead of being deported, he brought hordes of his relatives here.

Both museums portray fantasy: the Museum of Performing Arts would have showcased our vibrant arts scene and been a great tourist attraction, while the Islamic Museum will portray a fantasy that Islam is benign and shares our values.

Mind you, there is a precedent for ‘Museum jihad’.

Atlas Shrugs comments on New York City’s Muslim Program in its Children’s Museum:

“Thousands of years of cultural heritage that has come from the Muslim world.” Will the Children’s Museum have exhibits on the hundreds of millions of victims of over a millennium of jihadi wars, land appropriations, cultural annihilations and enslavements? Will it have video on the over 18,000 Islamic jihad attacks since 911, each one done with the imprimatur of a Muslim cleric? Will it showcase the ongoing jihad against the Jews and Christians and Hindus and Sikhs?

And “Muslims in America”? I look forward to seeing the profiles of the 9/11 hijackers, explaining how they were motivated to kill by the quran…

There could be more exhibits dedicated to the stealth jihad — to exposing, for example, grifter Gamal, radical Rauf and Daisy the Con, and their sinister and deceptive Ground Zero Mosque project, and all the Islamic supremacist initiatives to assert Islamic law over American law all over the country.

All this could serve as a warning to non-Muslims to be resolute in defense of freedom against jihad.

But you and I know this exhibit will showcase none of that. Instead, it will be another Hamas-tied CAIR attempt to portray Muslims as the victims of “Islamophobia.” At the taxpayers’ expense.

A glance at those behind the Australian museum gives cause for concern: those involved with ICV are not moderate, nor are any who advocate sharia law.

The Board includes Maysaa and Moustafa Fahour, Sherene Hassan, Anisa Buckley, with Ahmed Fahour as Patron. ICV’s Hass Dellal and Waleed Aly are part of the advisory committee. Could Anisa Buckley be a moderate? To those claiming sharia oppresses women, she replies:

This argument (against sharia) is also misguided for several reasons, mainly that the absence of such a system hurts Muslim women more than the presence of it.

Whatever reservations we may have of religious laws, people in liberal democracies will turn to them if they think it is to their benefit.

And there are many helpful and beneficial aspects to Sharia law.

As for the Fahours, Ahmed was CEO of Bahrain’s Islamic investment bank Gulf Finance House, and cooperated with Macquarie Group to offer a broad range of wholesale Shariah compliant financial services.

Moustafa Fahour is a Board member of Crescent Wealth, which recently launched a sharia-compliant superannuation option. Last month, a Sydney legal firm co-hosted an event with The Crescent Club, with Ahmed Fahour, as the guest speaker:

Sounds to me that the Islamic Museum has an awful lot of sharia connections!

An Age opinion piece laments the lack of support for cultural, as opposed to sporting, endeavours:

The Performing Arts Museum would cost an estimated $100 million – not even a third of the cost of reconditioning Melbourne Park. Ms Isherwood, along with the collection’s patron, Barry Humphries, and actor and long-time Melbourne resident Geoffrey Rush have been lobbying Ted Baillieu, in his Arts Minister costume, and his federal counterpart, Simon Crean, to attract support.

In truth, the proposal…would bring hundreds of thousands of examples of cultural memorabilia out of storage…and up into the light, where they belong. This wide-ranging collection, an intrinsic part of Melbourne’s heritage, is of priceless national and international significance.

But it seems not all culture is neglected.

If it’s Islamic, our governments will rush to help!

By Cassandra

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary Feminism is defined thus:

Date: 1895

1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes
2 : organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests

Who can ever forget the iconic cover of “The Female Eunuch”, by Germaine Greer?

It was everywhere when it was first published in 1970.

It was virtually the next best thing that had happened to women since Emmeline Pankhurst and her Suffragettes worked to get women the vote. So we were told.

And certainly you cannot deny the benefits and progress that have come from these two women, and the many others who have taken over the baton and changed the lives of millions.

Many of today’s other famous feminists are living very comfortably on self-earned wealth: fine with me, it’s well-deserved.

They have turned their politics and activism into income sources by working in journalism and other media.

People listen to them.

They have power, enormous power.

Camille Paglia is but one of many whose opinions are highly respected, and it is easy to see why.

Germaine Greer is still going on strongly about all kinds of issues.

Gloria Steinem is another member of this esteemed crowd and there are also very many not-so-famous feminists.

These feminists are in almost all professions from politics to pianists, parents and yes, prostitutes – the oldest “profession” of them all!

Then of course there are the other women in the world who don’t occupy this rarefied space but who have decided, and yes, it is a decision now, to become homemakers and mothers. Some of them decide to resume successful careers and some chose not to.

But I wonder if we all really received so many benefits from all these feminists? Some of us didn’t.

With all that is good and liberating in human progress there are often side effects and “unintended consequences”.

Sadly there are goals that have not, and will not, be achieved.

Certainly many of us get equal work for equal pay nowadays, but not all of us.

Then there are those who chose to be wives and mothers, who are often scorned, or looked down upon, for their choices.

“They had jobs, but feminists weren’t satisfied; every other woman had to get one too. So they opened fire on homemakers with a savagery that still echoes throughout our culture. A housewife is a “parasite,” [Betty] Friedan writes; such women are “less than fully human” insofar as they “have never known a commitment to an idea.”

And….

Housewives, not men, were the prey in feminism’s sights when Kate Millett decreed in 1969 that the family must go. Feminists do not speak for traditional women. Men cannot know this, however, unless we tell them how we feel about them, our children, and our role in the home.

Men must understand that our feelings towards them and our children are derided by feminists and have earned us their enmity. Whether or not this understanding garners men’s support, traditional women must defend ourselves because the feminist offensive is, most essentially, a breach of solidarity with us, a disavowel [sic] of the obligation to honor the Women’s Pact [that religious celibates, professional women, and homemakers respect each other] that women in the movement owed to us” (Source).

Oh yes, this site has more. Feminism today goes on and on, intellectualising and re-defining feminism to the extent where it is almost too difficult to follow, let alone comprehend.

Quite frankly I am more interested in the practical day-to-day realities.

I take the two definitions at face value and I note it doesn’t specify any nationality, political allegiance or religion.

1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes
2 : organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests

It is true a lot of this has happened in the West but rather than have Greer et al espouse “intellectual yada yada” I would rather see these women get militant again and do something to help their long-suffering sisters who live in Islamic countries, and who can but only dream of the lifestyle many of their famous feminist sisters enjoy.

All too often I see stories of honour killings, rape, female genital mutilation, subservience, domestic (and other) violence, forced marriage and utter discrimination perpetrated against women in Muslim countries and now also in the West.

Some women are getting hymenoplasties and buying repair kits before they marry.

Some are being recruited as homicide bombers.

One is punished for drinking beer, others face lashings or stonings.

Recall the recent case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. Fate not yet known, but not looking promising. Here I admit many westerners got under the skin of the Iranian Mullahs. At least they tried.

An Australian Islamist tries to justify poligamy for everyone. Why not? Let’s normalise this situation, let’s legitimise it. How do you suppose women would fare in such a relationship that is so one-sided in favour of the male gender?

There are women who suffer terribly from acid attacks quite frequently.

Women in Gaza are not allowed to ride motorcycles, and Somali women are being scrutinised for wearing a bra!

Where’s Germaine when you need her, or would this make her happy I wonder?

Yet in spite of these incidents feminists like Naomi Wolfe manage to defend discrimination towards women in Islam and it then takes a compassionate feminist, Phyllis Chesler, who has actually lived in a Muslim country, to sort it out for her!

I know many feminists, and women in general, can be fearless fighters.

Code Pink, for example, have gone to Iraq and Afghanistan. True, they are an anti-war movement, but perhaps, just perhaps, they could have drawn some attention to the women who live and suffer in the war zones they are so adamantly against.

They could have easily added one more mission statement to what is on their website which mentions “social justice” – an insidious phrase which bears investigating.

How about some “equal justice” instead?

Indeed, any other anti-war group could easily have done the same. I know they do not define themselves as feminists per se, but why not do more?

Could they not have met with Malalai Joya and offered some help?

Now of course, in hindsight, one knows far more about Code Pink. They are not an anti-war movement at all. They have been helping orchestrate the “Arab Spring” in Egypt.

Together with Bill Ayres and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn they are political activists of a rather nasty kind – and I am being polite here!

And they have the full backing of the Obama Administration.

When I read about the case of Sahar Gul, 15 years of age, I wonder how these feminists can sleep at night.

(Warning – very graphic images.)

Not to mention the wife of Rafiqi Islam who had her fingers chopped off because she wanted an eduction!

I would like to see some of our famous feminists, female politicians and celebrities who spend so much time choking on their own venom over Sarah Palin instead do something useful for the women in Islam.

Are they afraid? “You betcha!” as Sarah Palin would say. Afraid and gutless!

Or are they simply not interested in the women’s issues of today because they think it is another culture and therefore they shouldn’t interfere when they often stick their noses where they may not be wanted.

They know it isn’t right but they can turn a blind eye to it, even as it happens under their noses, and in their own backyards.

How can one respect these women anymore?

It’s a cop-out.

The improvement of the condition of women in Islam is, to me, a far loftier goal than getting to wear trousers, getting equal pay, getting an abortion on demand, and having a man treat a woman more like a man!

This was definitely an “unintended consequence” for me: trivial as it may seem.

I am much heartened by the fact that progress is being made, albeit in small steps.

Kuwati women in parliament refuse to wear the veil. How long will they be able to keep it up?

An Egyptian Cleric wanted to ban burquas and other facial coverings.

Not going to happen anymore with the Muslim Brotherhood in charge!

The women in any country controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood are going to have it worse than ever before.

Strict Sharia Law will prevail.

Honour killing or Honourcide is getting more attention. The tragedy of this is that we are seeing it in the West more and more and little is being done about it.

Lubna Hussein got a lot of media attention over her sentence for wearing trousers.

Najwa Bin Laden and her son, Omar, wrote a book about their now late husband and father, Osama, and seem to be fearless about it. They have provided a fascinating insight into this man as well.

I think the real “feminist”heroines now are the ones who have literally put their lives on the line, not only for women in Islam but for the world in general.

Their goals and commitment are what is truly deserving of our respect and support.

I am referring to women like Dr Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nonie Darwish, Irshad Manji and women like them.

Although Ms Manji has not left Islam it is still worth noting she has put herself out there and for this she deserves credit.

There is another one who would have possibly made it to this list – the face of the Iranian Green Movement: – Neda Soltan -

Tragically she cannot, but in spirit she can inspire so much. I feel she deserves a mention among these brave, dedicated and fascinating women.

This is my challenge to today’s feminists. Use your power again.

I am not a celebrity, a journalist or a politician. I do not have your platform and power.

Justice and equality for women in Islam is indeed a most worthy cause to support and fight for now more than ever.

First Published on “Muslims Against Sharia”.

This is the updated version with permission from the author.

NineMSN: Convert feared kidnapped by Muslim hardliners

The husband and friends of an Iranian refugee missing since last month fear she has been kidnapped by Islamic extremists because of her efforts to convert Muslims to Christianity.

Melbourne woman Mandy Ahmadi disappeared from her Dandenong home on December 16, leaving behind her handbag, money and credit cards, The Age reported.

Moving to Australia in 1999, Mrs Ahmadi became a Christian five years ago, and her husband Nathan converted from Islam a year later.

Mrs Ahmadi became active in the migrant community, helping Muslims leaving detention centres through an agency she co-founded at a local church.

“It is so painful. My heart and my brain are frozen,” Mr Ahmadi was quoted as saying.

Pastor Daniel Nalliah expressed his concerns in an email sent out yesterday.

“I was able to give some very important insight as to how under Islamic Sharia law, Muslims converts are sentenced to long terms in jail, torture and in places like Iran and some other Muslim countries, they are executed,” Mr Nalliah wrote.

“If this is an abduction, then we are really fighting against time, as to whether Mandy is still alive is a very big question.”

Under a hardline interpretation of Sharia law, Muslims who leave the religion can be sentenced to death.

Mr Nalliah, who worked as a missionary in Saudi Arabia before founding the controversial Catch the Fire Ministries, successfully defended a lawsuit from the Islamic Council of Victoria after being accused of religious vilification in 2002.

Photo here.

Update:

Husband charged with wife’s murder

Looks like this “religion” isn’t going away any time soon, unfortunately. People are already talking about another global financial collapse. How is this going to work out? It can’t be good.

Andrew Bolt:The Durban Bible: you pay so they may pray

This is freaky – and it sure isn’t science. The planet savers at the IPCC summit in Durban – attended by Climate Change Minister Greg Combet – are working on a document that reads in part like the Bible of a new green faith:

Rights of mother earth
74. Ensure respect for the intrinsic laws of nature.
75. The recognition and defence of the rights of Mother Earth to ensure harmony
between humanity and nature, and that their will be no commodification of the functions of
nature, therefore no carbon market will be developed with that purpose.

Who is “Mother Earth”? What are the “intrinsic laws of nature” and who passed them? Why do they need “respect”? What is the “harmony” between “humanity and nature”? Discuss using, say, smallpox as an example. Define “commodification of the functions of nature”. Explain using the example of dams and farms.

And tell us who wrote this garbage and how they go through the door.

Lord Christopher Monckton reads through the rest.

Here’s his summary, in an important article that should be read in full:

The contents of this document, turgidly drafted with all the UN’s skill at what the former head of its documentation center used to call “transparent impenetrability”, are not just off the wall – they are lunatic.

Main points:

Ø A new International Climate Court will have the power to compel Western nations to pay ever-larger sums to third-world countries in the name of making reparation for supposed “climate debt”. The Court will have no power over third-world countries. Here and throughout the draft, the West is the sole target. “The process” is now irredeemably anti-Western.

Ø “Rights of Mother Earth”: The draft, which seems to have been written by feeble-minded green activists and environmental extremists…

Ø “Right to survive”: The draft childishly asserts that “The rights of some Parties to survive are threatened by the adverse impacts of climate change, including sea level rise.” At 2 inches per century, according to eight years’ data from the Envisat satellite? Oh, come off it! The Jason 2 satellite, the new kid on the block, shows that sea-level has actually dropped over the past three years.

Ø War and the maintenance of defence forces and equipment are to cease – just like that – because they contribute to climate change…

Ø A new global temperature target will aim, Canute-like, to limit “global warming” to as little as 1 C° above pre-industrial levels. Since temperature is already 3 C° above those levels, what is in effect being proposed is a 2 C° cut in today’s temperatures. This would take us halfway back towards the last Ice Age, and would kill hundreds of millions. Colder is far more dangerous than warmer.

Ø The new CO2 emissions target, for Western countries only, will be a reduction of up to 50% in emissions over the next eight years and of “more than 100%” [these words actually appear in the text] by 2050. So, no motor cars, no coal-fired or gas-fired power stations, no aircraft, no trains. Back to the Stone Age, but without even the right to light a carbon-emitting fire in your caves. Windmills, solar panels and other “renewables” are the only alternatives suggested in the draft. There is no mention of the immediate and rapid expansion of nuclear power worldwide to prevent near-total economic destruction.

Ø The new CO2 concentration target could be as low as 300 ppmv CO2 equivalent (i.e., including all other greenhouse gases as well as CO2 itself). That is a cut of almost half compared with the 560 ppmv CO2 equivalent today. It implies just 210 ppmv of CO2 itself, with 90 ppmv CO2 equivalent from other greenhouse gases. But at 210 ppmv, plants and trees begin to die. CO2 is plant food. They need a lot more of it than 210 ppmv…

Ø The West will pay for everything, because of its “historical responsibility” for causing “global warming”. Third-world countries will not be obliged to pay anything. But it is the UN, not the third-world countries, that will get the money from the West, taking nearly all of it for itself as usual. There is no provision anywhere in the draft for the UN to publish accounts of how it has spent the $100 billion a year the draft demands that the West should stump up from now on.

This – seriously – is the manifesto being worked on by your government and dozens of ones similarly maddened by global warming fervor and green mysticism. The next time someone tells you global warming alarmism is just about “the science”, wave this manifesto in their face.

Cross-posted at Act for Australia

Act For Australia

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From ACT for Australia:

Thanks to Colonel Neville for the footage and Nilk for the files and the Q society for bringing Mr. Spencer to Oz.
Further links:
Robert Spencer takes questions from Muslim callers on 2GB radio in Australia

Q&A session after Robert Spencer speech, Melbourne, Nov 26 2011

Typically after an event like this, the Q&A session is a bunch of people who grab the mic and give their own mini-lectures, often forgetting to even up-talk at the end to make it appear like a question.

Not in this case. The questions are interesting, important, and I’m sure, questions that most of us have wondered at one point or another.

Thanks again to the Q Society of Australia for this opportunity.

With thanks to Vlad Tepes

From ACT For Australia

Multicultural Madness Part 1, Defining Culture

Sometime between the early Nineteen Seventies and the early Nineteen Nineties, every “Western” nation around the world (and this did not include wealthy “non Western” countries such as Japan) decided to implement a previously unheard of doctrine known as multiculturalism.

This policy had no groundswell of public support, and in most cases considerable opposition (anti-immigrationist Le Pen was polling 10% in France at the time). Clearly this was no coincidence.

In the interests of keeping this as brief as possible this is not a comprehensive examination of all of the flaws and likely consequences of multiculturalism but only a few of the most basic ones.

Almost all of the problems and contradictions which have arisen from this policy can be traced back to a single misconception on which the whole charade is based, namely the refusal of the supporters of this doctrine to adequately define the concept of culture itself. After all, how can you possibly debate the subject of “multiculturalism if you cannot correctly define what culture actually is?

If you have ever been to a “cultural” festival or celebration, you would most likely have found it full of exotic spicy foods, ethnic people doing lively, interesting dances and wearing unusual and brightly colored clothing etc. When we hear the term “culture,” these days, this is what immediately springs to most people’s minds. If this were all that was meant by the term “culture,” then it is quite possible (although given human nature, not necessarily certain) that a multicultural human society could exist in peace and harmony (and with great Thai restaurants open till late.)

The flaw in this line of reasoning comes into stark relief however, when we understand and articulate the deeper meaning of the word “Culture”.

This meaning is far less visible and will never be on display at any “cultural” festival, but is in fact far more important at a more fundamental level. The word “culture,” in its deepest sense, refers to the set of values which are used by a society to determine its ethics. In simpler terms, it is those things which a society, as a whole, considers to be right or wrong.

As a simple example, Hindus consider it to be very wrong to kill a cow whereas; most Westerners are happy to enjoy a nice rump steak. Therefore India may have a law outlawing the killing of cows, whilst the UK has no such law.

This has nothing to do with ethnicity or race.

Pakistanis who were Hindu before being conquered by Islam will now happily eat beef. If you or I had grown up in a Hindu family in India then we would probably also consider killing a cow to be morally wrong. This is the basis of any culture, a set of shared beliefs in what constitutes right and wrong which are shared by one group but not another. These values are passed on from one generation to the next by parents and/or religious institutions and schools.

This is what is meant by the term “different cultures”, i.e. they are not the same.

Each culture has a different concept of what constitutes right and what constitutes wrong. Although there is often some overlap there are no universal golden rules. I will just repeat that for emphasis

“There is no universal definition of what is right and what is wrong”.

We in the West tend to rather arrogantly assume that the principles of the Ten Commandments not to kill, steal, cheat, lie etc. exist in every culture but this is in fact, not true. In the past (and probably even today in remote areas) there have been warrior societies where killing was considered a rite of passage for all males.

The Vikings were somewhat famous for glorifying rape, pillage and plunder and there are numerous examples of societies which considered particular Western (Judeo/Christian based) “Sins” to be virtues.

The fact that today, few cultures deviate too far from Western values is due to the enormous power that Western nations have enjoyed in the last few centuries relative to the rest of the world. Nations which were not actually invaded by Western nations were still pressured by threats of military force, trade embargoes, diplomatic pressure or a combination of all three.

Before this pressure was brought to bear, widows were being burned alive in India, cannibalism was commonplace in New Guinea and Slavery was rife all over the Islamic world (as it had been in parts of the Western world before abolition).

Going back to our original example, we cannot say that all Westerners will agree with killing cows to eat or that no Hindus will ever have a sneaky spare rib. What it does mean is that the majority of Hindu’s would consider eating beef is “Wrong” even if they were to indulge in it. Conversely, until recent times, most “Westerners” would not see eating beef as a wrong or “Sinful” act.

Politically correct doctrine deals with this fact by completely ignoring it. It insists that because some people do not always do what their culture believes to be the “right” thing, that any attempt at stereotyping people is not just wrong, but pointless and grossly unfair.

Now it’s true that stereotyping cannot tell us with 100% accuracy how a person will behave, and in some circumstances can in fact have no basis in fact. It is also true however that in a statistical sense, we can make predictions with a reasonable degree of accuracy about how individuals from different cultures will behave.

For instance, I’m sure that if we look up the figures we would find that Indians consumes far less beef per capita than Texans or Israelis consume far less pork than Danes. In other words, most people consider these cultural norms as important and make an effort to adhere to these rules, even if they are not set down in law

Now this is all fine and dandy when Indians are living in India and English people are living in England but when people of different cultures start living in one country, we run into a number of problems. I don’t intend to examine them all right now but there are a couple of fundamental flaws which have, amazingly, never had any discussion of which I am aware and this is where the point of this article lies.

The doctrine of “multiculturalism” as opposed to “multi ethnicity,” is that groups of people with different cultures will live in one society and retain their culture, rather than trying to assimilate into the culture of the host (invariably “Western”) nation. The first problem with this lies in the fact that the laws which a society makes, and agrees to be governed by, are simply an extension of the culture of that society.

This is obviously true of a democracy, but even holds true in a dictatorship to a point since even a dictator needs to retain a degree of support to hold power. If he goes too far against what the culture of the time considers to be right, then he will face hostility and possibly revolt from his subjects. This was why Henry the Eighth went to so much trouble to try to obtain an annulment for his marriages rather than simply declaring himself divorced.

So what happens when two separate cultures live under a single set of laws? It’s hard enough to make laws that suit everyone when you have a homogenous “monoculture”. Unfortunately when you have a nation with more than one culture it becomes impossible. How can you keep the Hindus happy if you allow the killing of cows and yet how can you ban it without upsetting the westerners?

So what are the options in this situation?

1. Override the Hindus and upset the Westerners.
2. Override the Westerners and upset the Hindus.
3. Persuade the Hindus to accept the culture of their new place of residence.
4. Make two or more sets of laws for people depending on their particular culture.
5. Separate the two groups and put a border between them with separate rules for each.

Now the first two options are really only one, the majority overrides the minority in a democracy, although whilst there is a huge majority of one particular culture the smaller one has to “fit in” or “assimilate” into the host culture. In other words, the culture of the group with the most political power will be enforced and members of the “weaker” culture just have to grin and bear it (hopefully).

Option three is the doctrine of assimilation which used to hold sway in most Western countries and still does in the rest of the world. The reasoning behind it is that if someone wishes to be a part of your society, then they should be willing to make an effort to adopt the culture which has shaped that society. If they do not wish to do so then they should not have come in the first place (assuming that they were not coerced to do so)

The doctrine of “multiculturalism” however views this as wrong. It insists that migrants into a nation should not be compelled to abandon their original culture, but should instead be encouraged to retain it (and any costs for doing so should be borne by citizens of the host country)

The inevitable consequence of this approach is that the law of the land will need to be altered in some way to accommodate the culture of the new migrants. This could either be a whole new set of laws, or a series of exemptions based upon the cultural preferences of different citizens.

This second option is the route which the UK has embraced with all sorts of special exemptions, particularly for Muslims who now have Sharia courts all over the UK. The problem with this “solution” is that it violates two of the most important principles which are the bedrock of our entire society, namely the rule of law, i.e. one law for all, and the principle of equality which goes with it.

Before the doctrine of Multiculturalism came along, Western Governments were compelled to treat each of their citizens equally. Nowadays, the way judges apply the law to you depends to varying extent on such things as what color skin you have, where you were born, even what culture or ethnicity you would like to belong to.

It is difficult enough to persuade people to follow the law at the best of times but without the rule of law, how can a society gain respect for its laws. When people look around and see others being allowed to break laws by which they are bound they will naturally lose respect for the whole legal process and society degenerates into a kind of tribal free for all.

This seems to be the way that the UK is heading with areas in London and other cities being declared as being under Islamic (Sharia) Law. In effect, we are defaulting to option four, reverting to separate mini nations with their own borders and laws, but isn’t that where we started from?

All we will have achieved will be the “Balkanization” of what were once powerful, prosperous and peaceful societies. It is hard to say for sure but you would have to wonder if this isn’t the ultimate goal of those who are behind the whole “multicultural” experiment.

The amazing thing is that the people who are paid to (and expected to) question and debate policies such as these have all been intimidated into silence or sycophantic agreement by the threat of being branded as racists (and then subsequently losing their jobs and being vilified for the rest of their days). In order for this to happen, an even more important principle had to be breached, namely freedom of speech, which we will look at in more detail in Part Two.

Multicultural Madness Part 2

 Ant caps and other principles

Traditional Australian homes are built almost entirely of wood and consequently need to be protected against termites (white ants). The usual way is to build the house high up on posts and to put a thin steel ant cap on top of the post. Since white ants cannot live in the light and cannot bore through steel, this keeps them out of the house. Now it is not uncommon for home handymen to build a wall around the underside of the house, in order to create an extra room underneath. Unfortunately, many of them just don’t understand the danger posed by termites. Once the wall has been built, termites are able to bore straight up inside the wall and into the house where they eat it from the inside out.

For a long time this goes completely unnoticed and people enjoy the new living space they have created, Eventually of course little cracks and creaks and groans begin to appear. If these are ignored for long enough the home owner realizes his mistake when he falls through the floor boards by which time the house is probably only fit for demolition.

If you think about a society as being like a giant house, then the principles of a society are like the ant caps. They were put in place when the society was built and then sat there, largely forgotten, quietly getting on with the job of protecting the society. Then one day, some bright spark with no understanding of their function decides that they are just an inconvenient impediment to progress and improvement. Next thing you know, your principles have been compromised and your society is being eaten from within by every type of corruption you can imagine.

In part one, I wrote about how we had breached the principles of equality and the rule of law in order to accommodate the new doctrine of multiculturalism but before this was even possible, a far more important principle had to be violated, the principle of free speech.

Before I get into how this happened, I’d like to explain the importance of free speech because, shockingly, this is not something that is taught in schools and is consequently ridiculously underappreciated.

When the founding fathers sat down to write the Constitution of the newly formed United States, foremost in their minds was the protection of religious and other minorities. These were people who had fled persecution in Europe of the worst possible kind. This was not the persecution which minorities today complain of, such as not getting government assistance to build their places of worship, or having to submit to body searches at airports like everyone else. This persecution was more like being tied to a stake whilst an angry mob lit a bonfire underneath you and then danced on the ashes once you were burned to a crisp.

With this in mind, you might have expected the founders to have banned criticism of religious minorities but instead they did the opposite. The very first amendment of the US constitution demands the right for any and all citizens to say pretty much whatever they dam well please.

Of course there are a few important exceptions to this. It is illegal to incite people to violence or to damage someone’s reputation with a lie but other than this, free speech is totally protected. The reason the founding fathers chose to do this (and all Western nations more or less followed) was that they understood that the right to defend one’s self through reasoned argument is the greatest protection anyone can have.

When a person or group loses this right, they become powerless and are at the mercy of others. Can you imagine being in court, accused of a crime but not having a defence lawyer or being allowed to say anything in your defense? If the prosecution tells all sorts of lies or half truths about you then you will have no way to defend yourself. These are the situations which people without freedom of speech can, and often do, find themselves in.

In this situation, the only option is to try to live without offending those in power, which amounts to a form of semi-slavery. Free speech is the greatest protection anyone can have against this, and any other form of tyranny and is the basis of all other freedoms. When dictators wrest power the first thing they do is to ban the right of people to criticize them. This is why any attempt at removing free speech should be treated as an attack on the freedom of the entire society.

It is important to understand that free speech is not the right to tell people what they want to hear, it is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

No one in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was ever imprisoned for saying what a great guy Saddam was, despite the fact that free speech was not a right for Iraqis.

In fact, there were lots of things which Iraqis were allowed to talk about in Saddam’s Iraq. They were allowed to talk about the weather or what a bad job the mechanic had done on their car etc. In fact, when you think about it, they were able to say almost as much as a person in a “Free” country could.

This is the point about free speech, it is not the ability to say “most” things, it is the ability to say absolutely anything (outside of the exceptions noted above) without fear of retribution.

If you give up that right and hand the power to limit free speech in any way to your ruling class, then you have removed any obstacle to their quest for absolute power and the question becomes not “if” but “when” they will use it. Sooner or later the temptation to use their power to criminalize criticism of themselves will be too great and society begins a slide towards dictatorship and totalitarianism.

Free speech is therefore an all or nothing concept. You either have it all, or you don’t have it at all. You see the “problem” with free speech, is that people will invariably say things which you don’t like. Some people will say that the holocaust never happened or that heroin and slavery should be legalized, some will say that they don’t like Germans or that French people all smell of garlic. Other examples may be that all Scotsmen are mean or black people are all thieves. Unfortunately, if you want to have free speech, this is what comes with it.

Votaire realized the importance of this when he declared, “I may not agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.”

Whatever the opinion, no matter how much you want to stop people from denying the holocaust or advocating rights for child molesters, you cannot do this without destroying freedom of speech.

Like ant caps, the protection is all or nothing.

Once a single ant cap is breached, termites can get in and you might as well remove all of the rest of the caps for what good they will do you. Likewise, once you make a single free speech exception, the foundation of freedom in your society has been breached and you can expect to see a gradual erosion of your freedom over time. It is like making a single small hole in the ant caps of your house and expecting that you will be 99% protected against termites.

The reason for this is simple. As soon as you hand the power to limit free speech to a ruler, be they despotic or democratic, they will use that power to silence opposition to their rule. They may not do this overnight, but it is in the nature of all rulers to try to consolidate their power by any means possible and the denial of free speech is the easiest way to take control of a society and gradually impose your will upon it. Therefore, sooner or later it will become illegal to criticize government policies and laws and you will then be living in a totalitarian state.

What you must realize is that if you don’t like an idea then you have the right to stand up and give good reasons why these ideas stink. If these ideas are indeed lousy, then it should be easy to rubbish them, if you can’t, then maybe the idea isn’t as bad as you first thought. Remember, once in a while, someone will come along with an idea that seems awful, like for instance, “hey, maybe the world isn’t flat” or “maybe it’s the earth that goes around the sun and not the other way around,” which, on examination turns out to be not such a bad idea after all.

This is not however the main reason for protecting free speech, important as it is.

The main reason is, and will always remain the protection of the ordinary people in a society, like an ant cap, remove it at your peril. When you hear people clamoring for the removal of free speech for a particular cause, these people are probably being unwittingly manipulated by individuals or groups whose aim is not to protect you from child molesters or holocaust deniers, but to remove the protection which your parents and grandparents fought so hard to wrap around you and your children. When a group tries to remove your right to criticize them, you need to be afraid, be very afraid.

Multicultural Madness Part 3

Before the advent of multiculturalism there existed in the United Kingdom a system for the making of new laws and the changing of old ones. I am using the UK as an example although most other Western democracies have gone through similar changes.

When a new law was proposed by the Government, it would be debated in the Parliament.

The Members of Parliament conducting the debate each represented a constituency of roughly equal size. Each and every person in the UK was therefore represented by a member of the parliament in which every UK law was passed (until 1972 when the UK joined the EEC and gave up part of its sovereignty to unelected bureaucrats in Brussels). Therefore, at this time any UK citizen had the right to see his MP to voice concerns about any laws which affected them.

Whilst no political system is perfect the Westminster System is widely regarded as one of the best political systems ever and is the basis for most other successful systems around the world

Although free speech was protected at this time, there were (as previously mentioned) some sensible exceptions concerning defamation and incitement to violence, etc.

The founders of the parliamentary system understood the importance of free speech in determining the best outcomes and protections and made the parliamentary debates exempt from any and all restrictions on free speech. With the ever present threat of losing power at the next election, MP’s had to take voters’ wishes into consideration to some degree and citizens were free to voice any concerns they had.

The advent of multiculturalism marked a dramatic shift from this situation. The argument of the pro-multiculturalists was that if anyone challenged multiculturalism it would stir up the bubbling, latent racism which (apparently) exists just below the surface of all “white” societies.

Anyone attempting to question any part of this doctrine was immediately branded a racist of the worst order (akin to a Nazi or KKK member). No study or analysis which showed any negative side to multiculturalism was allowed, as it may have stirred up this racism and consequently all dissent was silenced. Whilst the Government and media went along with this, the really scary part is how the schools and particularly the universities embraced this whole new way of doing things.

So now, instead of an idea being freely debated to see whether it had merit, as it had been for centuries in the UK, an idea was put forward by the Government and the people were forced to accept this idea without being allowed to question it.

Whether you are for or against multiculturalism, this turn of events should send shivers down your spine.

This is not “progress” this is a reversion to how things were done in pre-democratic times and how they are done today in repressive and totalitarian regimes. This step itself marked a turning point in our culture, not towards a more enlightened, freer and more open and honest society. It was instead a step backwards towards a more repressive, totalitarian, authoritarian regime.

At the same time as this change was happening to Western Governments, something similar was happening in our education establishments. Western universities are founded on the principle that each and every idea is up for question. This is known as “Critical Thinking” and has been the mainstay of Western scientific and sociological advancement pretty well since the reformation many centuries ago.

Ideas and theories are proposed by people and are then subject to (often furious) debate. People on both sides of an argument try to prove or disprove theories using whatever facts and observations they can muster to determine as best they can, what is correct and what is not. Whilst this may not always produce perfect outcomes it is still the best method for determining the truth that humans have ever devised.

Under the new doctrine however, whether an idea was correct or otherwise was decided by the political powers that be, with no dissent allowed. This doctrine became known, appropriately as “Political Correctness” and broke a centuries old tradition of academic freedom.

I don’t want to get into a serious debate about the reasons for this sudden abandonment of centuries old bedrock principles by universities at this stage but I will just note that during the same period, Western universities have been the recipients of massive amounts of cash from oil rich Gulf States (particularly Saudi Arabia).

These are nations which have never been known to be supportive of Western values of freedom of speech, expression and conscience etc. It is also worth noting that they donated so generously to Western education institutions despite having some of the lowest rates of literacy and education in the world.

So today, across the Western World, ideas are introduced into universities which nobody is allowed to question. These ideas then become the basis of new laws which nobody is allowed to question and if these laws lead to disastrous consequences, guess what… nobody is allowed to question them.

Around the world, Islamic groups, often through control of UN bodies have been sponsoring “Hate Speech Laws” which have effectively criminalized criticism of Islam. In practice these laws criminalize speech which the state deems to be “hateful”.

The state of Victoria passed such laws sometime around 2004 and immediately used them to prosecute a Christian pastor named Daniel Scott who was warning people of the dangers of Political Islam.

Daniel was convicted of hate speech and amazingly the Supreme Court of Victoria upheld this conviction despite the fact that no one could prove that anything which Pastor Scott had spoken, was untrue. Fortunately for Daniel he had both the means and the intelligence to pursue his case to the Australian Supreme Court who overturned the ruling. In a stinging rebuke of the Victorian decision they found that (lo and behold!) truth is a valid defense in an Australian Court.

This case highlights how close we all are to losing our precious freedoms and waking up to find ourselves living in fear of the whims of our political masters and whoever may be influencing them (in this case Political Islam) Some may think this is a tradeoff worth making in order to protect the vulnerable ethnic minorities in our society from the power of the thuggish white majority. I would like to point out however, that Daniel Scott is a slightly built, dark skinned, Pakistani professor who fled totalitarian oppression in his home country. That he had to face it here should be a source of shame for all Australians.

Is it any wonder then, that societies around the Western world are degenerating?

Sweden, which was once known as one of the most peaceful and law abiding countries in the world, is now the rape capital of Europe. Formerly peaceful and homogenous France now has over seven hundred no go zones for non Muslims where the government has no control and no ability to enforce French Law. London and several other English cities have areas which are being declared under Sharia Law by determined and well funded Islamic groups.

Finally however, some people are beginning to wake up to the fact that their once cherished freedom has been taken away and see the way that their futures are headed.

The Dutch Government in particular is beginning to clamp down on the once untouchable doctrine of Multiculturalism. The British Prime Minister and the German Chancellor have both recently declared that Multiculturalism has been a failure. Had the citizens of these countries not had their rights to free speech denied, they might have come to this conclusion decades earlier.

Act for Australia believes that the Australian people have the right to freedom.

This freedom was paid for by the blood of past generations. Whilst we can never repay those who fought and died for those freedoms we believe we have an obligation to ensure that our next generation has them too. We ask that Australians from all social, political, ethnic and religious backgrounds join with us to use every peaceful method to protect our principles and cherished way of life.

We believe your children will thank you for it.

by Harry R.

I have said before that I wouldn’t be surprised if the USA and Australia never have any more elections.

I base this on the fact that neither of these governments seem to care about their poll numbers, nor about what their constituents think.

They are far too busy pushing their own agendas.

I hope I live to see the day when they will be held to account in an appropriate manner!

Oddly enough there is nothing similar going on here to counter the BDS demonstrations at the Max Brenner Chocolate stores, nor is much being done about the attacks on Hindu cab drivers!

It is always the same group of people who get special treatment, and the more special treatment they get the more people are going to get irritated!

Talk about the Law of Unintended Consequences!

MUSLIMS are being urged to report hate crimes under a special disaster plan to deal with the fallout from terrorist attacks.

Under the Muslim Emergency Management Plan, backed by the state and federal governments, Victorians will be given advice on how to react to anti-Muslim incidents, even if they are considered minor.

Muslim victims of abuse are encouraged to save evidence, take photos and report any incident to police and their local mosque or Islamic organisation.

And in another initiative, Victoria Police is introducing new strategy to deal with violence and threats motivated by prejudice.

It comes amid growing concern over inter-racial tensions in Melbourne’s suburbs and against the backdrop of fears of further terrorist attacks that could strain relations further.

Police are being asked to develop databases on crime motivated by race or religion, so that offenders can be prosecuted.

The “prejudice-motivated crime strategy” focuses on crimes linked to race, religion, sex, age, disability or homelessness.

Muslims told the Herald Sun they faced increasing abuse on the streets because of their religion.

“A lot of women get yelled at and told ‘Go home’, or ‘There’s no place for you here’, especially women wearing the burqa,” a Muslim source said.

“It happens in shopping centres, at the park or just when you are walking along in the street.”

Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria director Ross Barnett said the new police initiative was needed.

He said judges had the power to take into account hate-related issues in sentencing, but police were not equipped to provide the evidence.

“The elements of the strategy include training for officers, capacity to start collecting data so they’ve got a sense of what is happening, how often it happens, and what the extent of it is,” he said.

The Muslim Emergency Management Plan, financed by the state and federal governments, was devised by the Islamic Council of Victoria with support from the Department of Premier and Cabinet’s Office of Multicultural Affairs and Citizenship.

Islamic Council general manager Nail Aykan said there was no doubt Muslims would suffer a backlash in the event of a terrorist attack.

“Hate crimes can originate from a multitude of matters but in the case of, God forbid, a terrorist attack, of course, you end up with repercussions,” Mr Aykan said.

State Multicultural and Citizenship Minister Nick Kotsiras said the emergency plan arose from a deal struck by the former Bracks and Howard governments.

By John Masanauskas

masanauskasj@heraldsun.com.au

With thanks to The Herald Sun

Cross-posted at Act For Australia

From Blazing Cat Fur:

h/t Vlad & Sheik

Eloquent as ever!

I would say he had a very sympathetic interviewer, which is unusual for the ABC. This is the taxpayer-funded broadcaster that is essentially an arm of the government propaganda machine.

Click here to listen!

Also see:

• The Q Society
• Winds of Jihad: The Great Spencer Schlep Around Australia

Actually, it would be great if the ‘other one’ would suffer a similar fate. Maybe the facts will help its demise as with this ‘religion’?

In these days of 24/7 news, blogs, and the internet people are waking up and no longer relying on the 6 o’clock news.

They know they can’t trust the MSM any longer.

And they know they can’t trust their own elected officials!

WSJ: Stephens: The Great Global Warming Fizzle

How do religions die? Generally they don’t, which probably explains why there’s so little literature on the subject. Zoroastrianism, for instance, lost many of its sacred texts when Alexander sacked Persepolis in 330 B.C., and most Zoroastrians converted to Islam over 1,000 years ago. Yet today old Zoroaster still counts as many as 210,000 followers, including 11,000 in the U.S. Christopher Hitchens might say you can’t kill what wasn’t there to begin with.

Still, Zeus and Apollo are no longer with us, and neither are Odin and Thor. Among the secular gods, Marx is mostly dead and Freud is totally so. Something did away with them, and it’s worth asking what.

Consider the case of global warming, another system of doomsaying prophecy and faith in things unseen.

As with religion, it is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people pretending to an obscure form of knowledge that promises to make the seas retreat and the winds abate. As with religion, it comes with an elaborate list of virtues, vices and indulgences. As with religion, its claims are often non-falsifiable, hence the convenience of the term “climate change” when thermometers don’t oblige the expected trend lines. As with religion, it is harsh toward skeptics, heretics and other “deniers.” And as with religion, it is susceptible to the earthly temptations of money, power, politics, arrogance and deceit.

This week, the conclave of global warming’s cardinals are meeting in Durban, South Africa, for their 17th conference in as many years. The idea is to come up with a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which is set to expire next year, and to require rich countries to pony up $100 billion a year to help poor countries cope with the alleged effects of climate change. This is said to be essential because in 2017 global warming becomes “catastrophic and irreversible,” according to a recent report by the International Energy Agency.

Yet a funny thing happened on the way to the climate apocalypse. Namely, the financial apocalypse.

The U.S., Russia, Japan, Canada and the EU have all but confirmed they won’t be signing on to a new Kyoto. The Chinese and Indians won’t make a move unless the West does. The notion that rich (or formerly rich) countries are going to ship $100 billion every year to the Micronesias of the world is risible, especially after they’ve spent it all on Greece.

Cap and trade is a dead letter in the U.S. Even Europe is having second thoughts about carbon-reduction targets that are decimating the continent’s heavy industries and cost an estimated $67 billion a year. “Green” technologies have all proved expensive, environmentally hazardous and wildly unpopular duds.

All this has been enough to put the Durban political agenda on hold for the time being. But religions don’t die, and often thrive, when put to the political sidelines. A religion, when not physically extinguished, only dies when it loses faith in itself.

That’s where the Climategate emails come in. First released on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit two years ago and recently updated by a fresh batch, the “hide the decline” emails were an endless source of fun and lurid fascination for those of us who had never been convinced by the global-warming thesis in the first place.

But the real reason they mattered is that they introduced a note of caution into an enterprise whose motivating appeal resided in its increasingly frantic forecasts of catastrophe. Papers were withdrawn; source material re-examined. The Himalayan glaciers, it turned out, weren’t going to melt in 30 years. Nobody can say for sure how high the seas are likely to rise—if much at all. Greenland isn’t turning green. Florida isn’t going anywhere.

The reply global warming alarmists have made to these dislosures is that they did nothing to change the underlying science, and only improved it in particulars. So what to make of the U.N.’s latest supposedly authoritative report on extreme weather events, which is tinged with admissions of doubt and uncertainty? Oddly, the report has left climate activists stuttering with rage at what they call its “watered down” predictions. If nothing else, they understand that any belief system, particularly ones as young as global warming, cannot easily survive more than a few ounces of self-doubt.

Meanwhile, the world marches on. On Sunday, 2,232 days will have elapsed since a category 3 hurricane made landfall in the U.S., the longest period in more than a century that the U.S. has been spared a devastating storm. Great religions are wise enough to avoid marking down the exact date when the world comes to an end. Not so for the foolish religions. Expect Mayan cosmology to take a hit to its reputation when the world doesn’t end on Dec. 21, 2012. Expect likewise when global warming turns out to be neither catastrophic nor irreversible come 2017.

And there is this: Religions are sustained in the long run by the consolations of their teachings and the charisma of their leaders. With global warming, we have a religion whose leaders are prone to spasms of anger and whose followers are beginning to twitch with boredom. Perhaps that’s another way religions die.

Write to bstephens@wsj.com

The worldwide jihad is heating up. It’s time to make an assessment on all of your country’s current and potential strategic assets. Figure out what you need to do to make the most of those assets. Once you have determined never to give up anything without a fight, and you have prepared accordingly, your enemies will get the message.

Joint ventures are sometimes worthwhile, but never rely on the US or anybody else to carry most of your defensive burden for you. As any Serb can tell you, the US has not been a reliable ally!

Let’s take a look at the Cocos Archipelago, which is part of the Australian Indian Ocean Territories.

History repeating: Australian military power in the Cocos Islands

In the earliest days of World War I, Australia recorded its first major naval victory when HMAS Sydney sank the German light cruiser Emden off the Cocos Islands.

Nearly a century later, the remote island and atoll group off the northwestern coast is again an area of major military importance.

In late November 2011, Australian Defence Minister Stephen Smith confirmed that the Force Posture Review (FPR) will consider the future strategic role of the Cocos and Christmas Islands.

Mr Smith suggested that while no formal proposal existed, the Cocos Islands could, in the future, host joint US-Australian naval and air forces.

The plan has significant merit and would dramatically increase Australian power projection on the long-neglected Indian Ocean flank. This latest development, coupled with an increased American posture in northern Australia, must be accompanied by regional engagement, or risk alienating regional states.

Remote but strategically vital

The Cocos Island group consists of two atolls and 27 islands and is located in the Indian Ocean, some 2,950 kilometres north-west of Perth, Western Australia and 1,272 kilometres south-west of Jakarta, Indonesia.

Currently, the islands serve as a refuelling stop for the Royal Australian Air Force’s Orion surveillance fleet. The extended range of the forthcoming Orion replacement, the Boeing P8 Poseidon, will provide increased opportunities for the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and, potentially, US Defence assets.

While requiring substantial infrastructure changes, the Cocos bases could potentially serve to meet joint strategic objectives in the region.

Read it all.

It was a great night! Spencer shone!

We really loved it.

It was terrific to meet up with some fellow Aussie bloggers and to be able to speak freely as mentioned in the article below. Looking forward to seeing the video.

by PJG (longtime Jihad Watch commenter)

On a day of relentless spring rain, Melbourne – or a select contingent thereof – welcomed Robert Spencer for his first talk in his first ever visit to Australia, courtesy of the Q Society of Australia. The 250-seat room was full to capacity, booked out well in advance of the day.

For a change I decided to put aside my old habit of taking notes. After all, the event was being filmed, and I would have access to the film. But afterwards, Robert asked me to write about the event for Jihad Watch, so what follows is a brief snatch of snippets.

Vickie Janson, Vice-President of the Q Society and candidate for the Christian Democratic Party, led off with a sobering disclaimer, mindful as we all are now of local laws restricting free speech, and – with a winning smile – invited anyone with ultra-sensitive feelings or a plot to use those laws against us to kindly leave. She then gave us a run-down on what is happening vis a vis the encroachment of Islamic laws and norms, that is, the steady road to control of us by them, here in Australia in schools, universities, workplaces and elsewhere. As keeping up with Islamic advancement and its enabling and funding by our government is now virtually a full-time job, much of what she informed us in her inimitably cheerful style shocked the audience.

Vickie quoted a Muslim cleric who said that there was no “clash of civilizations, but instead a rise and fall of civilizations.” It is clear that to many Muslims here and abroad their religion constitutes the “rising civilization” and ours the falling (not that they would prefer to stop at ours; Hindu and Buddhist civilizations are in their sights for being given a helping hand to disappear…)

Another member of Q called Warren then gave a talk about what he has seen in recent years in Europe, including the car-burning in France and a memorial (!) devoted to the young Muslim car thieves who were accidentally killed when they hid from pursuing police in an electricity compound and whose deaths were “avenged” by Muslim anti-police rioting. These were stories of immigration-related events our government smugly believes cannot happen in sunny Australia, where it is constantly proclaimed that multiculturalism is an outstanding success story and caution is brushed aside.

When Robert Spencer took the floor, it was clear from the enthusiastic atmosphere that few in the room were new to his views and that his message was seen as acutely urgent. He talked of the responsibility of Western people to learn and respond to the Islamic perspectives which are giving rise to Muslims’ so-frequently misinterpreted words and actions, and expanded on the theme that terrorism and da’wa (the call to Islam) are but two sides of the same coin and directed at the same result, the imposition of Shari’a law. Quoting from Maududi’s commentary in a Koran given to him by the Finsbury Park mosque and using Koran 9:5 as an example, Spencer demonstrated that what Muslim apologists claim to be a misleading absence of “context” proves to be from their own side a misleadingly invalid argument, “context” being at least as alarming as verse and backed up by respected Muslim commentary.

He spoke of many topics which will be familiar to JW readers: the Mafia-like dhimma pact, the absence of the “clash” factor as we in the West politely accede to Muslim demands, the campaign of erosion of our free speech which is central to the Islamic agenda, the existence of self-protective Western laws which are being ignored or under-utilized in the interests of political correctness, and the highly successful phenomenon of contrived Muslim victimhood which has the effect of causing us to rush to make further accommodation for them after every terrorist attack and every expression of grievance.

This last aspect was in reply to one of the many spirited questions asked of him in the latter half of the evening. Many questions reflected the helpless frustration people felt in the face of the plethora of tactics employed by Islamic organizations and individuals and shameful capitulation by our own political parties. Spencer advised not only being persistent in our efforts to inform governments and fellow citizens, but to emulate his colleague Pamela Geller’s creativity, for example her “copycat” bus and taxi advertisements which forced public enquiry into Islamic human rights abuses such as death for apostasy and honour killings.

When pressed as to the vexing question of whether President Obama is a Muslim, Spencer could only surmise that if he were, he would not be doing anything differently; the outcomes of Obama’s policies have been extraordinarily helpful to zealots in the Muslim world – both outside and inside America.

As for Iran, it is important that we understand the Iranian Shi’ite view about the Twelfth Imam and about how Muslim “victimhood” can exist in a most threatening and sinister form on a national level as a tactic of war.

And lastly, about “moderate’ or “secular” Muslims about whom so many nurture great hope, Spencer wasted little time. Of course there are many, many Muslims who pose no threat and are not determined to impose the supremacist aspect over us their religion demands they do, but he did caution, in view of fatally naïve exercises of US soldiers teaching Afghani soldiers, against playing with guns with Muslims.

We may not all be able to dazzle people with erudition and quickness of wit the way Spencer can, but at events such as this one we can develop arguments and tactics based on stated intentions of Muslims which are derived from their texts and their own tactics based on principles within those same texts. Robert Spencer and the Q Society on this night helped and encouraged us to work harder, and to devise means in the vital job of defending the uniquely free and prosperous civilization we have inherited through the blood, sweat and inspiration of others before us and which it is our sacred duty to deliver untarnished to our descendants. They will have their own battles, as we have had ours; let us at least spare them the vice-like grip of Islam.

Oh, and a good time was had by all before and after the talks. So many conversations with so many people; the freedom to speak one’s mind; not once being glared at or called a racist/bigot/Islamophobe…!

Thank you, Q and Mr Spencer!