As you may have guessed, our server crashed on Monday, again! This is so annoying and worse still, some posts and comments have yet to be retrieved and indeed some won’t be. Please bear with us, this is so frustrating for me. In the meantime, here is a new Open Thread, approved by Harriet Harman for being breast-free.

Have you seen the reports of ISIS executing people for being gay?  Not on the BBC….nor it might be added has the caring Media Hasan made any comment despite his opportunistic and disengenuous little tweet here:

And he is outraged at blood being spilled in the name of the prophet….

….Just, it seems, not ‘gay blood’.

Perhaps he’s not got over his youthful homophobia….

As a Muslim, I struggle with the idea of homosexuality

I’m sure he’s on his knees right now praying for gay people.

Still, good to see the BBC still have room for the odd comic charlatan to bring a bit of light relief to Question Time….no time though to report on the horrific killings of these gay people.  Why not?

Hasan gets a free ride on the BBC.  Outside the BBC he has a reputation for hypocrisy and lies as well as for his Islamist rants denouncing the Kafir.  About time the BBC did some due diligence and started to question just what does Hasan really believe as a devout, fully believing Muslim and allow people to see him for what he really is rather than letting him pose as the reasonable voice of the ‘alienated’ Muslim community…and think about this…Hasan is a Shi’ite…Shias do produce images of Muhammed….so his public stance against the cartoons is pure show biz…or blatant hypocrisy and political opportunism…..

When it suits the BBC doesn’t like to raise difficult subjects if it shows their favoured groups in a bad light…remember when Hamas slaughtered Fatah members in Gaza, some thrown off buildings?  The BBC dismissed the massacre as Hamas merely ‘flushing out the corrupt and violent Fatah’.  

Then there is this guy, long time convert, Dr Abdal Hakim Murad…what does a respected Islamic scholar have to say about homosexuality?:

“INEXPLICABLE ABERRATION”: Cam Lecturer Slates Homosexuality
1st May 2013
Divinity Faculty lecturer Tim Winter labels homosexuality an “inexplicable aberration” in a hastily removed YouTube video.
An eight-minute clip of [Dr Abdal Hakim Murad] ‘Tim Winter’, a Cambridge lecturer and a Director of Studies at Wolfson College, has gone viral on Facebook after he referred to homosexuality as an “inexplicable aberration”. 

The clip appears to have been taken from his recent DVD, Al-Ghazali on Disciplining the Soul, in which Winter, a practicing Sufi Muslim, discusses at length the Sharia’s  “emphatic, unqualified condemnation and prohibition of all forms of homosexual behaviour”.

From the Daily Mail:

Drawing from the Sharia but expressing his own personal opinion, Winter, also known as Abdal Hakim Murad, refers to homosexuality as a “denial of [our] manifest creative purpose”, labelling it the “ultimate inversion”.
He goes on to refer to homosexuals as “ignorant people…[who] don’t understand what their bodies are for”.
He adds, “How ignorant can you get? Even the animals know”.

[He said] homosexual acts were an ‘extreme defiance of Allah’.
He went on to compare gay people to smokers, affirming that practising homosexuality is more dangerous than smoking.
‘There is a great war against cigarette smoking but there is no campaign at all against the vice of the people of Lut [ie people of Sodom, or homosexuals]’

 

 

The good Dr Abdal Hakim Murad also, of course, has something to say about recent events…apparently the killing of cartoonists who offend him and his fellow ideologists is, well, uncontroversial…but sanctioned by, not the Koran, but the Bible!…

Scorning the Prophet goes beyond free speech – it’s an act of violence

He invokes the Bible, it’s second Commandment, as a defence for the killers….

Muslims believe in every jot and tittle of the Second Commandment. We are to make no graven images of any living thing, irrespective of whether such images might or might not lure the unwary into idolatry. Orthodox Judaism and many Protestant churches have been similarly direct in following this biblical injunction.

Funny thing…can’t find any mention of the second Commandment in the Koran….indeed no injunction on making graven images of the prophet at all.

It is an irony that a Muslim has to invoke the Bible to defend Islam…and telling porkies in the process to do so…..below are the verses in the Koran that mention the Ten Commandments…or rather some of the Commandments…notably missing is the second one….

The Quran speaks of them in verses 6:151-153 and verses 17:23-39….it commands you to worship one God only but it says nothing about graven images.  Sorry about that.

Now Muslims may or may not ‘ believe in every jot and tittle of the Second Commandment’  but it ain’t in the Koran.

Ironically the Islamic scholar that he is dismisses the murders as…‘ the acts of criminals with troubled pasts and little religious knowledge, and have been condemned by a rare show of unity among Muslim leaders in France and worldwide. ‘  Can’t say much for his own knowledge.

But, again, ironically,  he says this…‘ it would be easy to dismiss this as yet another tragic case of fringe elements trampling on the teachings of the mosques.’

And yet that is exactly what he does.

And then he really gets on the victim bandwagon telling us that the cartoons were outrageous, an act of war he implies,  just another log on the fire stoked under long suffering Muslims by rampant Islamophobes who stalk Europe hunting down Muslims…

It was received, and rightly so, as a deliberate insult to an already maligned and vulnerable community.

Mosque burnings and a raft of legal disadvantages are increasingly a fact of life for Muslims in Europe.

er..hang on…who just killed 10 cartoonists and 4 Jews, and 3 police officers?  And just where do the Jews fit into this ‘rampant Islamophobic’ atmosphere that needs such a violent response from Muslims?  What exactly did those Jews do to French Muslims?  Oh, you know what, he doesn’t mention them at all.

Here’s the funny equation….Muslims launch terrorist attacks on Europe in the name of Allah, the response by Charlie Hebdo is to draw some cartoons….the Muslims claim this is Islamophobic and kill them.  Islamic scholar implies this is justified and complains of endemic Islamophobia.  Fair one.

Sorry don’t quite see where Islamophobia fits in….it isn’t as if criticisms of Islam, this alleged Islamophobia, came from nowhere …it arose as a response to Islamic terror.  Is it not merely a justified questioning of an ideology that patently is at the heart of so much violence around the world?  ‘Islamophobia’ is the ‘backlash’ to Muslim anti-Western attacks.  If it is OK for Muslims to kill 10 cartoonists as a ‘backlash’  for some drawings then it is OK to do a bit of Islamophobic backlashing for the murders no?  That’s the logic….and remember, most of this so-called Islamophobia is in fact entirely peaceful articles and news reports looking at the terrorism and the ideology that spawned it.  Murad thinks Muslim ‘anger’ justifies their actions but anyone elses anger is unreasonable and some sort of hate crime.

Murad then goes full tilt [Remember this is the guy who said Gays were a perverse aberration, lower than animals] making out Muslims are the ‘new Jews’…how ironic..when Muslims just killed Jews for being Jewish:

Scorn towards despised minorities is a hazardous business. During the days of Nazi terror, cartoons supplied a key weapon of anti-Jewish polemic. To laugh at the Prophet, the repository of all that Muslims revere and find precious, to reduce him to the level of the scabrous and comedic, is something very different from “free speech” as usually understood. It is a violent act surely conscious of its capacity to cause distress, ratchet up prejudice and damage social cohesion.

 

Finally he recommends that Muslims launch a war of legal attrition against the secular democracy….the good old Islamist tactic of ‘lawfare’…

It is for the many Muslims who now populate the Inns of Court to discover whether these legal precepts can in practice be used to protect non-Christians from abuse. A series of complex cases would trigger an overdue national and perhaps Europe-wide discussion on the right to protection from hate speech. Not all the lawsuits would succeed, but the community would have shown that it is determined to enjoy the protection of our country’s laws.

 

 

One day Muslims will admit the truth and take responsibility for their own action and stop blaming others.

And the BBC will start to raise a few questions themselves about Islam….and perhaps take a more questioning approach to who they invite on as speakers on Question Time.

The BBC is going full tilt themselves with the Muslim grievance narrative…time they drew a breath and started to look at what is being said and who is saying it…and the logic, or lack of logic, behind the claims.

Here is a particularly good example of the genre from ‘Is the BBC biased?’ where Islam isn’t to blame…and of course UKIP manages to be invoked and compared to the Jihadis….!!!!   Is the BBC biased? has many more such examples from recent programmes…have a read and despair.

But before you do have a read of this…..some more ‘context’….

What does Islam say?, as taught by the moderate and respected Yusuf Qaradawi [Ken’s old mate]:

“Whoever you find committing the sin of the people of Lut, kill them, both the one who does it and the one to whom it is done.”
(At-Tirmidhi: 1376)

 

Sexual Perversion: A Major Sin
We must be aware that in regulating the sexual drive Islam has prohibited not only illicit sexual relations and all ways which lead to them, but also the sexual deviation known as homosexuality. This perverted act is a reversal of the natural order, a corruption of man’s sexuality, and a crime against the rights of females.
The jurists of Islam have held differing opinions concerning the punishment for this abominable practice. Should it be the same as the punishment for fornication, or should both the active and passive participants be put to death?   [This line should be in the text but was cut out ……“How should they both be killed? By the sword? Or by fire? Or by throwing them from a wall?”]  While such punishments may seem cruel, they have been suggested to maintain the purity of the Islamic society and to keep it clean of perverted elements.

And what about the fair sex?  How about that respect we are so often told they get?…

Marital rape?

Your wives are a tillage to you, so go in to your tillage as you will, and send (ahead something) for your souls; and fear Allah and know that you will (one day) meet Him, and give glad tidings to the Believers. (2:223)

Wives are ‘filth’?

It is not a function of religion to define the postures of sexual intercourse. However, a Muslim who fears Allah in his relationship with his wife and possesses the certainty that he will meet Him avoids the anus because the Prophet (peace be on him) said, “Do not approach women from the anus.” (Reported by Ahmad, al-Tirmidhi, al-Nisai, and Ibn Majah.)
Again, he referred to such an act as “minor sodomy.” (Reported by Ahmad and al-Nisai.) A woman of the Ansar asked him concerning vaginal intercourse from the back; he then recited to her, ‘Your wives are a filth to you, so go in to your filth as you will,’ but with only one receptacle.

Obey the Master

Because of his natural ability and his responsibility for providing for his family, the man is the head of the house and of the family. He is entitled to the obedience and cooperation of his wife, and accordingly it is not permissible for her to rebel against his authority, causing disruption. Without a captain the ship of the household will flounder and sink. If the husband senses that feelings of disobedience and rebelliousness are rising against him in his wife, he should try his best to rectify her attitude by kind words, gentle persuasion, and reasoning with her. If this is not helpful, he should sleep apart from her, trying to awaken her agreeable feminine nature so that serenity may be restored and she may respond to him in a harmonious fashion. If this approach fails, it is permissible for him to beat her lightly with his hands, avoiding her face and other sensitive areas. In no case should he resort to using a stick or any other instrument which might cause pain and injury.

 

Charming.

The BBC has betrayed the boy blunder down under….he has long campaigned for Hamas denying that they had anything to do with the murder of three Israeli teens.

Seems the BBC doesn’t agree in this report about the Israelis being dragged through the International Criminal Court…..

The Palestinians’ starting point begins a day after the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers, who were subsequently murdered, by Hamas militants in the West Bank on 12 June.

 

I must assume he has seen the report as it came out yesterday….why has the eagle eyed Donnison not mentioned it and linked to it as per usual with any ‘bad news’ for Israel?

The BBC looks to be letting bad news go under the radar where Labour is concerned.

The Telegraph reports, it’s their top story just now, that Labour activists were told  ‘Don’t mention the economy’ on the doorstep when out campaigning….saying ‘It’s not our strong point.’

Cecil Jenkins, a Labour Party member from Hampstead, asked Mr Miliband, following the leader’s keynote speech at the Fabian Society’s New Year Conference, why the ban on talking to the economy had been introduced.

He told him that local Labour activists have been advised by the London regional party not to talk to voters about the economy “as its not our strong point”.

Nothing is written…..you are free to choose.

All the events surrounding Charlie Hebdo, the Danish cartoons and Salman Rushdie, Fitna and Theo Van Gogh, and many many more, relate to Islam, the Koran and Muhammed and many Muslims’ ferocious, frenzied and often barabaric refusal to accept any criticism or ridicule for their ideology.

‘Take the lesson of Theo Van Gogh…you will pay with your blood’ British Muslim

They demand respect and a virtual obeyance to their religion from all regardless of others  religious or otherwise beliefs….in effect forcing them to become Muslims by default.

The question that should be asked, but isn’t by the BBC, is on what authority?

The Koran isn’t a revelation from God, but the BBC refuses to explore that, its contents do command its adherents to further the interests of the ideology with force but again the BBC will not countenance that narrative, and the BBC will not question the pedigree of Muhammed…in fact doing the opposite burnishing his reputation with a hagiography which only reinforces the attitudes and actions that bring so much trouble to the world….telling us Muhammed’s life is known in every detail…..when in fact almost nothing is really known about him….Islam was not, as claimed, ‘Born in the full light of history’.

In light of that here is a short look at Islam, some of its claims and the BBC’s refusal to rock the foundations with its irresolute and unconvincing explanations and its apologia for terror.

The BBC and the various apologists for Islam have a little mantra they like to hold tight to…‘There is no compulsion in religion’ ….they tell us this is an Islamic virtue.

Curious that we are now told, even as non-Muslims, that we have to respect this ideology, that we are not allowed to draw any images of the ideology’s prophet on pain of death, forbidden as it is by this religion of peace that compels no one to do, say or believe anything they don’t want to.

However I’d say someone, somewhere was trying to compel non-Believers to prostrate themselves before what is to them, a false God.  Are they being compelled to be ‘Muslim’?  It seems so.  And there-in lies the whole problem with creeping Islamisation…it’s not just the direct threat of violence but the imposed ‘respect’ we have to pay to Islam making us virtual Muslims by default.

And let me remind you of the rank hypocrisy of the Muslim position, theologically speaking, and one that is central to the debate about Muhammed and ‘insulting’ his memory.

Muhammed smashed the idols, the religious icons that represented the Gods other people worshipped.  He didn’t respect them one jot.

For all its talk of respecting the People of the Book Islam has a funny way of showing it….perhaps Muslims are making the mistake of taking the teachings of the Koran, which seems, to say the least, on the whole to not respect the People of the Book and their religion, calling them blasphemers and so on, too seriously.

Muslims say they live by the example of Muhammed, who seems to have attained the forbidden status of a God in Muslim eyes almost up alongside Allah.  If Muhammed’s actions are to be held up as an example then iconoclasm, smashing other people’s idols, must be an accepted part of that.

In other words Charlie Hebdo was acting in accordance with Muslim, or rather Muhammed’s, own behaviour by ‘smashing’ Muhammed and his teachings.

Live by the sword you die by the sword….smash other people’s icons, they can smash yours.

Commentators who thoughtlessly parade the Muslim narrative are in effect setting a very dangerous precedent for the future.

Digging their own graves.

Those who support Muslims’ right to be somewhat more than offended about cartoons depicting Muhammed dig themselves a very big hole for how can they then, should they wish to, take Islam to task for its homophobia, its anti-Semitism, its Christianophobia, its misogyny?  For all these are given divine sanction by the Koran, the Muslim holy book, the veritable, unchangeable word of God. They would be saying the Koran is wrong, that God is wrong.

Blasphemous stuff surely…much more so than merely drawing the prophet.

But just how ‘divine’ is Muhammed and how reliable his booky wooky?  Couldn’t Russell Brand stake a claim to be the new Messiah, his new book the latest revelation?  It is after all as comprehensible as the Koran with just as many conflicting, unresolved issues and unsavoury messages.  Who knows in 600 years he could be a God.  Why not?

The Forging of Islam.

Tom Holland in his book, ‘In The Shadow Of The Sword’, laid out a scholarly case that said Islam is man-made and much of it fabricated in order to provide divine sanction for those coming after Muhammed who would exploit other’s belief for their own ends.

‘The dry rot of fabrication, in short, was endemic throughout the Sunna.’

He tells us not much is really known about Muhammed, indeed hardly anything was set down on paper that mentioned him or ‘Muslims’ until many years after his death.

The idea that anything Muhammed said or did was guided by God and was therefore an example of a just life or the correct way to do things was a license to do anything you liked as long as you could ‘prove’ Muhammed had done it or approved of something similar himself….control the history and define what Muhammed ‘said’ and you’re away…..much as today the BBC et al try to define Islam as ‘The Religion of Peace’…thereby controlling everyone’s response when Muslims launch attacks on things they don’t like….much as the BBC reinterpreted the Koran for its own ends as shown later in this article.
Tom Holland states….

So it was that a novel and fateful message was coined….

‘In the name of God, Muhammed is the Messenger of God.’

The potency of this slogan was self evident.

Not only had Muhammed claimed to be a medium for divine revelation, but he was also safely dead.  Ram home the point that he had authentically been a Messenger of God, and anything that could be attributed to him would perforce have to be accepted by the faithful as a truth descended from heaven.  ‘Those who offend the prophet,’ so it had been revealed to Muhammed ‘ are cursed by God in this life and in the hereafter.’ 

Here for any warlord looking to damn his enemies, was a literal godsend.

 

And who controls what is written about the past controls the future…

The Ulama, by tightly controlling what went into the history books, were able to propagate an understanding of their own dazzlingly rich and complex civilisation that attributed almost every single thing of value within it to the prophet, and the prophet alone.  There was no question of acknowledging the momentous roles played in the forging of Islam by countless others.
Submission to God was definitely cast as submission to Sunna.

 

Ironically the last words of Holland’s book are ‘The pen, it seems, is indeed mightier than the sword’.

However Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn tells us that it is the sword that provides the secure environment for those who write or continue to propagate the ‘lie’…propaganda and terror make fine bedfellows…

‘Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.’

 

Tom Holland tells us that the Koran was designed as blueprint for conquest and colonisation, it was a device that could be used to claim the authority of God to conquer and plunder the lands as a reward for their efforts on God’s behalf…

‘The Arab tribes had grown much impoverished….the message proclaimed by the prophet, that he had a licence from God to plunder unbelievers, [would  have] met with an enthusiastic uptake.’

Some authority from God for that…

‘It was God who made you [Muslims] inherit their[ non-Muslims] lands, their homes and their wealth.’
[33:27]

or to put it bluntly…

‘Booty belongs to God and His Messenger.’
[ibid 8.1-2]

‘Allah has promised you much booty that you will take [in the future] and has hastened for you this [victory] and withheld the hands of people from you – that it may be a sign for the believers and [that] He may guide you to a straight path.’
[48:20]

When people tell you that Islam is a religion of peace and then back that up with violence to defend that claim, ie cast doubt on its word or insult its Messenger and you will be killed,  and  then use the Koran to sanction the same violence you see the neat little paradox…defending the lie that Islam is not violent by using violence sanctioned by the same lie.
However, Muslims are offended, grievously insulted in fact, by the depiction of their prophet Muhammed in some cartoons.

Charlie Hebdo did not produce cartoons of Muhammed in order to insult or offend Muslims.  They had a point to make, several points in fact, about the religion started so long ago by Muhammed.

They are not nihilists intent only on destroying, the opposite in fact , they intended to reform or to at least encourage the reform of Islam by questioning its less attractive tenets.

‘Out of love for the truth and from desire to elucidate it‘

Charlie Hebdo could be looked upon as a less reverent Martin Luther who also posted ‘offensive’ writings and got himself excommunicated…

In 31 October 1517, Luther posted the ninety-five theses, which he had composed in Latin, on the door of the church in Wittenberg.

‘Out of love for the truth and from desire to elucidate it, the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology, and ordinary lecturer therein at Wittenberg, intends to defend the following statements and to dispute on them in that place. Therefore he asks that those who cannot be present and dispute with him orally shall do so in their absence by letter. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.’

Placing his theses on a door as Luther did was emblematic of the paradigmatic shift that took place throughout Europe, where matters of the church became less an internal matter, and more open to extramural debate on issues that had previously been taken as Papal-business only..

Note that last bit where Luther’s theses opened up the Church to debate not just by the Church itself but from without…and changed the world.

It is convenient for the BBC to dodge the whys and wherefores of the cartoon’s meaning and look solely at the alleged ‘offence’ caused just by their existence.    The BBC similarly ducks the real aims of the terrorists who killed the cartoonists…they also are not anarcho nihilists looking to kill for the hell of it.  They have a very determined plan that aims to impose Islam upon Europe and beyond…..the BBC isn’t keen to point that out as it is also the aim of many peaceful, ‘conservative’ Muslims, and non-Muslims may start asking difficult questions to which the answers might be even more difficult to swallow.

The Koran is Blasphemous

Next point is that the Koran is itself a ‘toxic arsenal’ of  blasphemous utterings from a Jewish and Christian point of view.  Throughout its pages it disparages and discredits the Christian faith and its beliefs…here telling us that Christians are ‘blasphemers’, despite having existed long before Islam…..

“They do blaspheme who say: Allah is one of three in a Trinity, for there is no god except One God.” (Qur’an 5:73)

The Koran also denies Christ is the Son of God reducing him to a mere prophet….for obvious reasons…can’t have a Christian ‘Son of God’ who would outrank the Muslim prophet and cast doubt on his ramblings.

And never mind all those exhortations in the Koran about Christians being unbelievers, unclean and unworthy…never mind the commands not to make friends with Jews and Christians, never mind the order to kill the unbelievers and to make Islam reign supreme.

And yet Muslims are apparently offended by a ‘blasphemous’ cartoon!

And why, you have probably asked, is it blasphemous to produce images of Muhammed?

You may well ask.

Supposedly there should be no images of any living thing in Islamic art hence there  are no figurative artworks, just decorative patterns, on Mosques….of course there are many exceptions to the general rule which was  intended to prevent idolatry.

For Muhammed in particular there should be no images thus reducing the temptation to worship him.

This is why the allegedly very unIslamic ISIS give you the Islamic finger….

                 One God, One Religion, One Mosque.

The one mosque refers to the fact that there can be no divisions in Islam, no sects, no different interpretations of Islam…it’s in the Koran……so when someone from the BBC tells you that you cannot group all Muslims into one group, you can, you should.  The BBC are wrong.  There can only be one interpretation of the Koran….hence Shia and Ahmadis are not considered Muslims having left the true religion…hence ISIS (and others) kills them as apostates.

The BBC and many, many others…love to tell us that there is no compulsion of religion in Islam…..certainly you don’t have to convert but there is a price to pay, literally…an ‘infidel’s’ tax to pay for protection from the Muslim ruler…..and then there are the numerous verses that suggest an element of compulsion…

‘Make war on them until idolatry shall cease and God’s religion shall reign supreme’     [8:39]

or this

“If anyone desires a religion other than Islam never will It be accepted of Him”    [3:85]

Pretty conclusive huh?  And then there is God’s wrath at being ignored…

We sent them [the prophets] to those who had denied our signs, and utterly destroyed them.
As for Noah’s people, We drowned them when they denied their apostles and made them an example to all mankind.   [25:34]

So you can choose not to do God’s bidding…but he’ll destroy you, utterly…if he hasn’t drowned you first.

And of course if you wish to leave Islam….good luck with that….

Who has any right to contradict the Prophet of Allah, salla-llahu `alaihi wa-sallam, who says,

“He who reverts from his religion, then kill him”
[as-Silsilah as-Sahihah 487]

 

And if there is only one God you cannot then worship God and his prophet Muhammed….or the Holy Trinity or Jesus.

Which you might think is somewhat of a paradox.   Muhammed shouldn’t be worshipped and yet he is… Muslims are prepared to kill to defend the Prophet and stop him being ‘insulted’ and Muhammed is the most popular boys name in the UK, undoubtedly a serious case of hero worship.
Here is the hypocritical MCB complaining about the cartoons…by extolling their own very unIslamic worship of Muhammed…

To Defend Our Beloved Prophet, Let Us Exemplify His True Ideals Say Imams

Following the shocking murders in Paris, condemned by Muslims all over the world, and subsequent moves to depict the Prophet Muhammad ? once again, Imams from the UK and abroad have come together to issue the following advice to those concerned about the depiction.

For Muslims, love of the Prophet (  peace be upon him) is a NECESSARY part of our FAITH. He is dearer to us than our parents and children. We prefer him to our own self.

 

But it isn’t just Muhammed that shouldn’t be drawn or sculpted…or worshipped….none of the prophets should be, including Jesus….something Media Hasan ignores in a blasphemous article in which he declares Jesus was a Muslim…..ironically here he relates a story about Muhammed smashing all the other idols but preserving a picture of Jesus…

The veneration of Jesus by Muslims began during the lifetime of the Prophet of Islam. Perhaps most telling is the story in the classical biographies of Muhammad, who, entering the city of Mecca in triumph in 630AD, proceeded at once to the Kaaba to cleanse the holy shrine of its idols. As he walked around, ordering the destruction of the pictures and statues of the 360 or so pagan deities, he came across a fresco on the wall depicting the Virgin and Child. He is said to have covered it reverently with his cloak and decreed that all other paintings be washed away except that one.

 

Note that ‘veneration of Jesus’….veneration is worship and that’s blasphemy….as contradictorily Hasan in a later paragraph proves…

‘The Quran castigates Christianity for the widespread practice among its sects of worshipping Jesus and Mary’

And yet he feels he can safely use a picture of Jesus to illustrate his piece….what Hasan doesn’t tell you is that he is a Shia, and Shias frequently portray Muhammed in artwork…as well as the other prophets….is Hasan also ‘offended’ by that?  Clearly not.  Dodgy little fellow.

The story about Muhammed and Jesus’ picture is almost certainly invented, or rather plagiarised from Biblical stories as you will see below.

Others object to the cartoons not just on grounds of blasphemy or ‘insulted feelings’ but because they claim they are racist…here Islamist Myriam Francois-Cerrah suggesting that the drawing is stereotypically ‘hook-nosed’…

Today’s front cover bothers me only in one regard and that is in the racial stereotypes employed in the depiction of the prophet Muhammad, a shorthand here for Arabs and Muslims more broadly. We (thankfully!) wouldn’t accept an image of a hooked-nose Jew, so it is unclear to me why images of hooked-nose Arabs – because forget who the prophet Muhammad is to Muslims, he is an Arab man being depicted in racially stereotypical terms – isn’t more disturbing to others.

Paradoxically Media Hasan complains of  ‘ crude caricatures of bulbous-nosed Arabs’

However, many Arabs are in possession of large or ‘hooked’ noses…and are drawn that way by Arab cartoonists…

That one was drawn by Arab/Brazilian cartoonist Latuff whose work was used by ex-Guardianista Glenn Greenwald in his own tract denouncing Charlie Hebdo as racist for its ‘stereotypes’…an irony perhaps  if a ‘hooked nose’ is racial stereotyping.

Myriam Francois-Cerrah then does a double take after denouncing Charlie Hebdo for publishing cartoons of Muhammed saying this…..

One of my favourite caricatures by Charlie Hebdo was one featuring the prophet Muhammad being beheaded by an extremist. That image perfectly captures the hijacking of the faith by radicals and the truth that Muslims are the primary victims of terrorism and the main target of retaliatory violence.

 

So, is she insulted or pleased to see the cartoons?…..by her description it shows that Charlie Hebdo were right to raise ‘offensive’ questions and as mentioned above were intent, not an insult, but on reform and genuine satire.

The BBC and Muhammed
Then we get to the BBC…..it reports that the Koran alludes to a ban on images of Allah……

There is no specific, or explicit ban in the Koran on images of Allah or the Prophet Muhammad – be they carved, painted or drawn.
However, chapter 42, verse 11 of the Koran does say: “[Allah is] the originator of the heavens and the earth… [there is] nothing like a likeness of Him.”

This is taken by Muslims to mean that Allah cannot be captured in an image by human hand, such is his beauty and grandeur. To attempt such a thing is seen as an insult to Allah.

The same is believed to apply to Muhammad.

 

First note that ‘is believed to apply to Muhammed‘…kinda sketchy that…still, worth killing people for…get a good lawyer, Phil Shiner?, and he might be able to swing that in court.

Then there is the rather less than honest cut and paste job of the Koranic verses, selecting parts that suit and missing out those that don’t.

Look at this quote again from the BBC to justify a ban…

Chapter 42, verse 11 of the Koran does say: “[Allah is] the originator of the heavens and the earth… [there is] nothing like a likeness of Him.“

There is indeed one interpretation of that verse that says that….

The Originator of the heavens and the earth; He made mates for you from among yourselves, and mates of the cattle too, multiplying you thereby; nothing like a likeness of Him; and He is the Hearing, the Seeing.

However ‘nothing like a likeness of him’ can more sensibly be interpreted as meaning there is no one who compares to God [not Muhammed]……and this is the way that every other interpretation has gone……and there are many of them…..for example…

[He is] Creator of the heavens and the earth. He has made for you from yourselves, mates, and among the cattle, mates; He multiplies you thereby. There is nothing like unto Him, and He is the Hearing, the Seeing.

And some other interpretations all  saying the same:

There is no other like Him

There is nothing whatever like Him

Naught is as His likeness

Nothing is like Him

There is nothing whatever like unto Him

There is nothing whatever like Him

Naught is as His exegesis, (He is beyond all comparison)

 

The BBC seems to have cherry picked the one verse, out of so many that say different, that could marginally be used to support the Muslim case….however the verse is about Allah not Muhammed, so already a significant degree of separation, and then as I said the verse could more readily be interpreted in the same way other interpretations took it to mean…that there is no one comparable to God.

Why would the BBC do that?

The BBC also quotes this……

Chapter 21, verses 52-54 of the Koran read: “[Abraham] said to his father and his people: ‘What are these images to whose worship you cleave?’ They said: ‘We found our fathers worshipping them.’ He said: ‘Certainly you have been, you and your fathers, in manifest error.'”

What they miss out is the following verse…….

And then he broke those [idols] to pieces, [all] save their supreme god, so that they might [be able to] turn to it.
21:58

 

The BBC takes that ‘in manifest error’ to mean they were wrong to worship the ‘graven images’, thus supporting the idea that graven images are forbidden by the Koran …however that’s not what it means…it means they were wrong to worship those particular Gods…Abraham was saying worship the one true God, his God.

Ironic…arguing that Muhammed should not be shown in figurative form or insulted or abused but illustrate that with a story about other peoples’ gods being smashed because Abraham didn’t like them….it’s OK to smash other’s Gods but not to draw Muhammed.

If iconoclasm was good enough for the ‘Muslim’ Abraham then it must be good enough for other religions too….and atheist cartoonists.

At the end of the day Muslim’s anger at cartoons of Muhammed smacks of the rankest hypocrisy ever ready as they are to blaspheme about other religions and co-opt their prophets and gods for Islam in order to give Islam a back story, some history, some authority and credibility.

The acceptance of this narrative, the refusal to challenge it, the refusal to condemn the violence sanctioned by it, means nothing will change.

The BBC paddles around in the shallow waters of some dissident thought such as when David Goodhart was allowed to voice some very strong criticisms of the religion and the consequences of ignoring the realities of having large communities of people who cleave to the conservative, fundamentalist version of that religion.  But when push comes to shove the BBC quickly backs off and sides with the bigots, the men of violence, the religious fanatics who impose their ideology upon all, Muslim and non-Muslim, at the point of a gun.

But hey, there’s no compulsion in religion…just a lack of backbone in those who should know better.

Others do raise the subject...and, as with the new Lutherans of Charlie Hebdo seek change, a revolution in Islam…a genuine one not the Islamist phoney version peddled by Tariq Ramadan….

At last, on New Year’s Day, the president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, did what no other leader of the Muslim world has done to date: he named Islam’s real enemy.

In a gathering of religious clerics at Cairo’s ancient Al Azhar University, he called for the rescue of Islam from ‘ideology’. His speech was given little coverage in the western press, but it is worth repeating at some length.

‘We are in need of a religious revolution,’ he said. ‘You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move because the Islamic world is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost. And it is being lost by our own hands.’ It is inconceivable, he said, that ‘this thinking — and I am not saying religion — should cause the entire Islamic world to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world.’ The remedy, said al-Sisi, was for Islam to recognise and talk about its mutant strain. ‘Religious discourse is the greatest battle and challenge facing the Egyptian people,’ he said. ‘We need a modern, comprehensive understanding of the religion of Islam,’ rather than ‘relying on a discourse that has not changed for 800 years’.

Sisi’s speech is significant because the Islamic world has precious little record of leaders discussing Muslims’ collective responsibility for the toxic ideologies within our midst.

 

 

OK folks, here is a new thread to see us off into the weekend! Detail the bias here…

How many of these people were arrested as they peacefully protested in the heart of London?  How many were shot?

What if some small nosed Anglo-Saxon Freedom of Speech fundamentalists (h/t Media Hasan) had shot them all, and a couple of coppers who were protecting their right to free speech?

Any thoughts on what the BBC headlines would be?  What would Tim Wilcox say?

Anyway…here’s a reminder for the media, politicians, police officers and Popes about freedom of speech……

The BBC has a policy to discriminate against older women and forces them to cover it up with gagging orders…..

BBC had an ‘informal policy’ to discriminate against older women, say peers

The BBC had a policy of discriminating against older woman and covered it up with gagging orders, a House of Lords reports has concluded.

Peers were handed private evidence that showed older women being “coerced” into leaving the broadcaster and made to sign “improperly used” confidentiality agreements restricting them from speaking about their treatment.

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

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

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

Nothing has changed.

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

Paris attacks: Pope Francis says freedom of speech has limits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

Sure…but then what?

Back to Asma Bint Marwan and the BBC.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

Peace man!

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