The last thread about Hamza ?

[AlfredJPruffock]

Don't be obtuse, Alf. He was exhorting people to commit crimes. There is a not very subtle difference between that and other people taking offense and rioting at something you have legally done.

If he stood up there and said "I think Judaism is a nasty, evil religion because they forcibly mutilate male babies", that's fine by me and I would defend his right to have that point of view. However he said, "we should kill the Jews because Judaism is a nasty, evil religion", and that's very naughty indeed.

Good to acknowledege that there are limits to so called free speech.

If he did mention comments against the Jews as you said, they then why would a rabbi come to his defence ?

For the unlimited free speech camp, whom I was dismayed at yesterday posting comments inciting hatred (you know who you are) let this be a grave lesson to you, in the words of the presiding judge ...

Contrasting the right to free speech with the cleric's criminal behaviour, Mr Justice Hughes said: "You are entitled to your views and in this country you are entitled to expressthem up to the point where you incite murder or incite racial hatred. That, however, is what you did.

So we have now created a Martyr in Prison, I do suspect this was his political goal , just as Hitler was imprisoned.


Lawyers for Abu Hamza,said he would appeal against his conviction. His solicitor, Muddassar Arani, said: "Sheikh Abu Hamza considers himself to be a prisoner of faith and he has been subjected to a slow martyrdom."


No doubt he will be writing his equivalent to Mein Kampf as I write this.


On a lighter note I found his following comments , judging by the tone of the posts on this board would probably would be endorsed by most of the board members here ...

ON WOMEN:

"Bring up your daughters to that manners [not answering back to her husband] otherwise they going to be divorced in the first week of their marriage, or slapped in the face.


ON HOMOSEXUALS:

"They have a common punishment amongst them and they have the virus [Aids] to run after them wherever they go."

[Lucifer Box]

Alf, mate, you are all over the place this morning.

In the US, for instance, there are no limits to free speech. The first amendment to the constitution guarantees your right to say anything you like, no matter how hateful. Only in unwritten constitution land here in the UK do we get this sort of confusion where someone has to decide what you are allowed to say.

You raise doubt that he encouraged others to kill by saying a Rabbi defended him and then quote the judge saying that he was exhorting people to commit murder. Are you saying the judge was possibly wrong, or misunderstood?

And as to your lighter notes, I hope that was a joke of some sort. Of course, I defend your absolute right to make jokes in poor taste.

Anyways, enough of such jovial banter. What do you think should have happened?

[darmstadt]

Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a woman with an Islamic death sentence hanging over her head, speaks to Germany’s Spiegel Online:

Hirsi Ali: That’s exactly the reflex I was just talking about: offering the other cheek. Not a day passes, in Europe and elsewhere, when radical imams aren’t preaching hatred in their mosques. They call Jews and Christians inferior, and we say they’re just exercising their freedom of speech. When will the Europeans realize that the Islamists don’t allow their critics the same right? After the West prostrates itself, they’ll be more than happy to say that Allah has made the infidels spineless.

SPIEGEL: What will be the upshot of the storm of protests against the cartoons?

Hirsi Ali: We could see the same thing happening that has happened in the Netherlands, where writers, journalists and artists have felt intimidated ever since the van Gogh murder. Everyone is afraid to criticize Islam. Significantly, “Submission” still isn’t being shown in theaters.

+++++++++++

Muslim apostate writer Ibn Warraq defends the West:

The great British philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty, “Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being ‘pushed to an extreme’; not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case.”

The cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten raise the most important question of our times: freedom of expression. Are we in the west going to cave into pressure from societies with a medieval mindset, or are we going to defend our most precious freedom — freedom of expression, a freedom for which thousands of people sacrificed their lives?

A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. Without this fundamental freedom, Islam will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality; originality and truth.

Unless, we show some solidarity, unashamed, noisy, public solidarity with the Danish cartoonists, then the forces that are trying to impose on the Free West a totalitarian ideology will have won; the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest. Do not apologize.

+++++++++++++++

One day, years from now, as archaeologists sift through the ruins of an ancient civilization for clues to its downfall, they’ll marvel at how easy it all was. You don’t need to fly jets into skyscrapers and kill thousands of people. As a matter of fact, that’s a bad strategy, because even the wimpiest state will feel obliged to respond. But if you frame the issue in terms of multicultural “sensitivity,” the wimp state will bend over backward to give you everything you want — including, eventually, the keys to those skyscrapers. Thus, Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, hailed the “sensitivity” of Fleet Street in not reprinting the offending cartoons.

No doubt he’s similarly impressed by the “sensitivity” of Anne Owers, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, for prohibiting the flying of the English national flag in English prisons on the grounds that it shows the cross of St. George, which was used by the Crusaders and thus is offensive to Muslims. And no doubt he’s impressed by the “sensitivity” of Burger King, which withdrew its ice cream cones from its British menus because Rashad Akhtar of High Wycombe complained that the creamy swirl shown on the lid looked like the word “Allah” in Arabic script. I don’t know which sura in the Koran says don’t forget, folks, it’s not just physical representations of God or the Prophet but also chocolate ice cream squiggly representations of the name, but ixnay on both just to be “sensitive.”

And doubtless the British foreign secretary also appreciates the “sensitivity” of the owner of France-Soir, who fired his editor for republishing the Danish cartoons. And the “sensitivity” of the Dutch film director Albert Ter Heerdt, who canceled the sequel to his hit multicultural comedy ”Shouf Shouf Habibi!” on the grounds that “I don’t want a knife in my chest” — which is what happened to the last Dutch film director to make a movie about Islam: Theo van Gogh, on whose ”right to dissent” all those Hollywood blowhards are strangely silent. Perhaps they’re just being “sensitive,” too.

And perhaps the British foreign secretary also admires the ”sensitivity" of those Dutch public figures who once spoke out against the intimidatory aspects of Islam and have now opted for diplomatic silence and life under 24-hour armed guard.

+++++++++++++

It’s some time since I visited Palestine, so I may be out of date, but I don’t remember seeing many Danish flags on sale there. Not much demand, I suppose. I raise the question because, as soon as the row about the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in Jyllands-Posten broke, angry Muslims popped up in Gaza City, and many other places, well supplied with Danish flags ready to burn. (In doing so, by the way, they offered a mortal insult to the most sacred symbol of my own religion, Christianity, since the Danish flag has a cross on it, but let that pass.)

Why were those Danish flags to hand? Who built up the stockpile so that they could be quickly dragged out right across the Muslim world and burnt where television cameras would come and look? The more you study this story of “spontaneous” Muslim rage, the odder it seems.

The complained-of cartoons first appeared in October; they have provoked such fury only now. As reported in this newspaper yesterday, it turns out that a group of Danish imams circulated the images to brethren in Muslim countries. When they did so, they included in their package three other, much more offensive cartoons which had not appeared in Jyllands-Posten but were lumped together so that many thought they had.

It rather looks as if the anger with which all Muslims are said to be burning needed some pretty determined stoking. Peter Mandelson, who seems to think that his job as European Trade Commissioner entitles him to pronounce on matters of faith and morals, accuses the papers that republished the cartoons of “adding fuel to the flames”; but those flames were lit (literally, as well as figuratively) by well-organised, radical Muslims who wanted other Muslims to get furious. How this network has operated would make a cracking piece of investigative journalism.

++++++++++++

[eternalnomad]

ON WOMEN:

"Bring up your daughters to that manners [not answering back to her husband] otherwise they going to be divorced in the first week of their marriage, or slapped in the face.

ON HOMOSEXUALS:

"They have a common punishment amongst them and they have the virus [Aids] to run after them wherever they go."

Alf,

I certainly dont endorse the slapping of women or believe that AIDS is a common punishment for homosexuals (and nor do I think there is any of a "lighter note" about either points)

Contrary to what you have stated, I doubt most of the contributors here would endorse them either.

Where do YOU stand on these two issues ?

[Lucifer Box]

Alf, have you got anything to say on questions raised about your apparent approval of the muslim attitude to women and gays, or are you going to trip from thread to thread posting rhymes all day?

Something seems to have tipped you over the edge, Alf. You have been a well-respected member of the board for a long time (even with your tendency to fall for every wacky conspiracy theory going) but you seem to be in some state of distress at the moment. Is everything okay?

[Dundeegeorge]

It's alright LB, it's life and life only

as Alf would probably post

[Lucifer Box]

as Alf would probably post

[AlfredJPruffock]

Alf, have you got anything to say on questions raised about your apparent approval of the muslim attitude to women and gays, or are you going to trip from thread to thread posting rhymes all day?

Something seems to have tipped you over the edge, Alf. You have been a well-respected member of the board for a long time (even with your tendency to fall for every wacky conspiracy theory going) but you seem to be in some state of distress at the moment. Is everything okay?

So I have been twice accused as being Anti Semitic and now its anti gay.

How absurd.

Whatever next ?

And yet you dont criticise those who promote violence and intolerance, those who have been depicting vile cartoons of Jews and advocating hate against Muslims.

So be it.


I shall leave you all to contemplate the wisdom of the Dali Lama

Sometimes the best response is silence .

[sasguru]

I understand what Alf is going through. I, too, once had a Belgian liquid lunch.
At 9% a beer, I didn't make sense till the next day ...

[darmstadt]

Sometimes the best response is silence .

Sometimes silence is more deadly than a bullet:

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.