Harry's Place

I want to do a Ph.d on the violent up rooting of the more indigenous natural religions of Mecca and Medina and the consequences in relation to UN. laws and charters.

Sounds like Prof. David Miller will have me mapped then…

Israelis, Jews and anyone who thinks that Islamists consume too much bandwidth above their representation in society – need not apply!

I want to study how the most vicious regimes on Earth call a democracy “racist” and get away with it by exploiting other people’s fear of a terrorist reaction by the “desperate” community of believers.

…and the blackmailing power of the oil weapon.

What do they need three supervisors for?

So, kilted Sayeed, supporter of would be suicide bomber Tamimi and one-time assistant to SNP Salmond, is to help supervise at taxpayers expence PhD candidates in Scotland. This tests me to breaking point.

So you can now get a Phd in rewriting history. I suppose it was only a matter of time. I was at a lecture recently at Strathclyde when a speaker said that she taught history from the perspective of a late 20th century working class, feminist, Irish Catholic immigrant.

She asked me to leave when I suggested she might be better teaching it from the perspective of an early 21st century historian.

You have to hand it to Osama; anyone who can insist there is no radicalisation in Scotland and then get half a million quid of taxpayers money from the SNP to fight radicalisation is clearly an astute politician.

It will be interesting to see who gets the grants; Sohaib will be finished his masters just in time for a Phd course, Gail Lythgoe must be a candidate as must be Esther Sassman.

Then there’s the SSP squad.

social science disciplines

An oxymoron, if ever there was! This post being as more grist to that mill.

David Miller published the following article written by Alan Hart especially for his site:

The Biggest, Most Successful and Most Dangerous Spin of All

Alan Hart, 17 April, 2006

Miller goes on to write:

By author and former ITN and Panorama reporter Alan Hart who, with his latest book, ZIONISM: THE REAL ENEMY OF THE JEWS, is engaged in what he calls a “titanic struggle” to tell the whole and unexpurgated truth about how the Palestine problem became the cancer at the heart of international affairs, and who must do what and why if this cancer is to be cured before it consumes us all.

http://www.spinwatch.org/-articles-by-category-mainmenu-8/62-international-politics/235-the-biggest-most-successful-and-most-dangerous-spin-of-all

In Miller’s defence, he does not actually write himself that Zionism is “the biggest, most successful and most dangerous spin of all”. But it hardly looks as if he substantially disagrees with it, either.

Tangential but related, this is both funny and nice:

Israel national anthem going for world record – again

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1081512.html

It evokes for me the South Park 4 000 000 recorders’ playing My County ‘Tis of Thee episode:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgLla-qFGKI

Also, I vote for a dedicated South Park thread, where afficionados may discuss their favourite episodes and moments.

And it was my second nephew’s bris yesterday.

http://www.dmiller.info/component/content/article/15-projects/85-neocon-europe-database

laughably inaccurate wiki which claims to map the British “neocon” scene: I see what you mean. At random, I note Vaclav Havel and Sunder Katwala of Fabian soc on the neocon list.

The other point is, if this goes through, will it not tend to lend credentials to SIF to be an academic institution with eventual accreditation?

Who knows, it might even become the Muslim Brotherhood University of the West of Scotland, with PhDs supervised by Dr Kemal Helbawy.

Or Dr Azzam Tamimi, who has already attended ‘academic’ events at Glasgow Caledonian University on Muslim education, to discuss Osama Saeed’s father 2001 Strathclyde University PhD on that topic.

He has also addressed SIF ‘youth training’ events.

Colin, I am glad you are waking up and smelling the coffee. It’s real, man.

How about a PhD in the incestuous relationship between the SNP and SIF:

some preliminary research:

Humza Yousaf (SIF – Chair Public Affairs Working Group)

Humza Yousaf, 23, is the Public Affairs Director for the Scottish-Islamic Foundation. He was involved in the setup and launch of the organisation, sitting on the board since its formation.

Professionally, Humza works as an advisor to Scotland’s Deputy First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon MSP and Scotland’s first Muslim Member of the Scottish Parliament Bashir Ahmad.

Gail Lythgoe (SIF – Member of three working groups: Dialogue and Education; Media, Marketing and Research; Public Affairs)- National Secretary of SNP Students.

Osman Mehmood (SIF- Member Public Affairs Working Group):

Osman is a dedicated supporter of the SNP and used to work with the late Bashir Ahmad – he hopes to stand for Political office, either as a Councillor or as an MSP in the next few years. Through various projects and campaigns he has built strong links with many local Councillors, MSPs and MPs across the Political spectrum. He has experience in campaigning as he stood as a Member of the Scottish Youth Parliament for his local area. He recently played an important role in the recent Glasgow East By-election, won by the SNP, and had the chance to liaise with Alex Salmond, the First Minister and discuss the possible outcome.

Sohaib Saeed (brother of Osama Saeed) runs the Qaradawi Appreciation Society on facebook. Qaradawi is the wife-beatin’, clitoris-choppin’, Jew-hatin’ Islamist bigot who is the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/04/08/the-qaradawi-appreciation-society/

>>> He’s a professional paranoiac

And you are a very black pot, David T.

>>> …and the blackmailing power of the oil weapon.

Our oil is STILL under their sand. Annoying, isn’t it?

>>> Israelis, Jews and anyone who thinks that Islamists consume too much bandwidth above their representation in society – need not apply!

Exactly the same was once said about Jews. That’s no longer PC so people can choose between “zionists” and “islamists” as the new hate figures. Nudge nudge, wink wink, we know who you mean.

>>> So you can now get a Phd in rewriting history.

What do you mean “now”? Historical research always involves a certain amount of “rewriting” otherwise the subject would never move forward. Why was Pitt ever admitted to a history course when he exhibits such ignorance of the subject?

AS USUAL this post is just the usual invitation to tribe members to vent their hatred towards another tribe.

Still, at least it means they get to lift their knuckles off the ground now and again.

Clive, You forgot that Qaradawi is also quite a fan of Hitler:

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/02/03/qaradawi-and-hitler/

A classically dishonest response.

Are you capable of distinguishing between (a) Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood and (b) all Muslims?

Are there any other political parties that you think it is racist to object to?

Yes – you are right – the little jingle should of course go:

Qaradawi is the wife-beatin’, clitoris-choppin’, Jew-hatin’, Hitler-supportin’ Islamist bigot who is the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Pitt, Osama is a philosophy graduate, but I thought Sohaib was a pharmacology student.

Has anyone mentioned Kemal El-Helbawy, who argues that Israeli/Jewish down to the age of two are legitimate targets, being entertained at S.I.F. shindigs with U.K. tax-money?

Saeed’s aim is no doubt to get SIF eventually accredited as an academic institution to produce ‘Muslim education’ with accredited courses.

A Muslim Brotherhood Ministry of Propaganda. All paid for by the UK tax-payer.

Isn’t this one for Campus Watch? Or is that too awful?

Internationalist, David has already addressed your innate racial prejudice in which you’re scared of Muslims and believe they’re all like that other Osama. Next, I think you could be done under the Trade Description Act if you’re arguing there’s such a thing as nations and “Arab/Muslim” lands.

Change you posting handle.

Our oil is STILL under their sand. Annoying, isn’t it?

For which ‘they’ receive immense amounts of money. Ain’t we a bunch of thieving bar-stewards?

Internationalist:

Rewriting history as a result of new information has always been acceptable. Rewriting it to fit the orthodoxy of a left wing – Islamist belief system is not.

The SIF are funding a PhD to:

“Systematically map the policy initiatives launched by the UK and Scottish Government (formerly Scottish Executive) intended to deal with the issues arising from the attacks in the US on 11 September 2001 and those in the UK including most notably on 7 July 2005″

This, when published, will show that the SIF has been wonderfully successful in achieving its aims. It will be published by Strathclyde giving it a slight veneer of academic acceptability, and then feed back into the funding system as evidence of money well spent.

So an institution set up by an SNP member/ candidate will fund and supervise the research designed to measure its own success, with a veil of academic acceptability provided by a professor whose political motivations are sympathetic to the cause in the first place.

I have no doubt the candidate has already been selected.

It is another wonderful example of SNP/SIF creating yet another self validating, self perpetuating bureaucracy.

Alec, I believe Osama is a politics graduate of Glasgow University; Sohaib studies philosophy at Edinburgh.

Their Dad, Akhtar, a science teacher at Abronhill, already completed a PhD in Muslim Education at Strathclyde about 2000 or 2002. This was to create an Islamic state school, the first in Scotland.

The findings were the subject of an ‘academic’ conference at Glasgow Caledonian University at which Azzam Tamimi was a speaker. This was about 2003.

Isn’t it surreal that this sort of politics has become mainstream in Scotland?

“What do they need three supervisors for?”

One can read, one can write, and the third keeps an eye on the two intellectuals.

Internationalist’s reference to ‘the tribe’ is a dead giveaway, BTW.

Incidentally, talking of PhDs, I wonder what people think of Omar Barghouti – the main spokesman for the academic boycott of Israel – doing his doctorate at Tel Aviv?

Ta’, Dev.

Systematically map the policy initiatives launched by the UK and Scottish Government (formerly Scottish Executive)

This, itself, is potentially actionable, unless the meedja can also start calling Saeed the Rolled-Up Trouser Snake and Salmond, Fish-heid McMoonface.

That he’s a gobby-twat and self-serving freeloader, Sackcloth?

David T – I have been worrying about this for some time. Our press in Scotland is moribund. Only Eddie Barnes at Scotland on Sunday has been writing anything critical until told to shut up by his editor unless he had anything more than ‘associations’.

This is the bit that gets me:

‘…the extent to which differing arms of government may be unwittingly undermining each other by operating in varying policy arenas such as for example the alleged conflict between and the Foreign Office and the Department for Communities…’

I.e. take on Hazel Blears and support Mockbul Ali.

David:

This is past surreal. The process of how this has happened should be compulsory reading for anyone studying Islamist influence.

The lesson here for the rest of us is how well organised this has been.

The Saeed clan has been fronting the MAB for years, gradually building a power base in teh Muslim community in Scotland. They then got a cleric to advise Muslims to ask the MAB who they should vote for.

Saeed, having worked for Salmond found that by joining forces with the SNP he could tap into the anti-colonialist ethos and offer Salmond a block vote.

Salmond doles out £400,000 to Saeed and manages to do so legally by writing the tender to fit the organisation they have in mind, and then setting up the organisation so that it fits the legal requirements perfectly. In the SNP head office, witnessed by the SNP’s solicitor!

£400,000 of taxpayers money to one of his own candidates, and it is legal.

Anyone who can do that is a force to be reckoned with.

This PhD will become the way in which the SIF’s success is measured. They are not so much as rewriting history as pre-writing it.

And they will get away with it.

>>> Israelis, Jews and anyone who thinks that Islamists consume too much bandwidth above their representation in society – need not apply!

Exactly the same was once said about Jews. That’s no longer PC so people can choose between “zionists” and “islamists” as the new hate figures. Nudge nudge, wink wink, we know who you mean.

the same was NEVER said about Jews. Jews didn’t demand anything for their host country, didn’t protest at the drop of a hat, didn’t try to impose changes to laws and culture to accommodate them and never bombed the transport system – or threatened bombs unless Foreign Policy changed.

All of those things have different degrees of truth amongst Islamists. Muslims are 2% of the UK population but seem to command a higher bandwidth of articles and comments in the media.

Perhaps you can qualify your “Just like the Jews” with “For example, last week, Jews in the UK …………………….”

And the irony is that Jews in the UK are under greater attack than any time in recent histry for absolutely zero reason.

There isn’t a single Islamic Studies department anywhere in The West where the rewriting islam’s sordid history isn’t demanded.

The dishonesty represented by the likes of O. Saeed is pretty much the norm in these faculties.

But to be fair to Mr Saeed, the man just can’t help himself.

For he is, you see, a light-skinned Arab Muslim trapped in a Hindu’s body, and so must read the Koran to brighten himself up.

But what’s worse about all this is the fact that the more prestigous the university, the more intense the islamist propaganda.

Your petrol pennies at work.

Everything said about Islam has to be carefully controlled, and it is controlled in a mannner that can only be described as obsessive/compulsive.

How else, except through a process of simultaneous ’suck ‘n blow’, could such a monstrous lie ever be maintained?

And if any here have some extra time, it’s be well worth your while to do an overview of works published about Islam 50, 60 and 70 years ago, and to compare and compare those tight, disciplined works with the deceitful and dishonest puff-pieces now being churned out by islamic “academics”.

Although, I’m sure David T. would find such an exercise just a bit too ‘Robert Spencer’.

Pitt the incredulous:

You are right on some things. This has been incredibly well organised and has been going on under the radar for years.

However I’m not sure how much traction the Saeed clan actually has with the Muslim community in Scotland.

For instance in 2006 Osama was roundly rejected by Muslims in Dundee when he suggested they don’t co-operate with Special Branch.

The more alarming thing is that they have achieved influence inside government – just like Mockbul Ali and the likes of Sacranie have.

That’s their real power base – Stupid White People.

Here, Internationalist, here are certain tribe-members who’d like to discuss matters with you, and John Wight, personally.

I sent this to David Miller:

“Osama Sayeed has spoken approvingly of the would-be suicide bomber Tamimi. How can you possibly include him on the team of consultants for the PhD on Islamic studies? Ridiculous, or is the ridiculous normal now in Scotland?”

So will JohnG finally finish his thesis now?

Good luck Colin, but these people have a self-righteousness that beggers belief.

The main strategy is to end the influence of Islamism inside government, to disabuse the credulous political class and to make this discussion more mainstream in the media.

Most people in Scotland are decents like John Smeaton who have an instinctive sharp reaction to people who want ‘to destroy our way of life’.

Here, even

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ko4eZTPC6o

I’m just amazed though.

It is as if the Tories had appointed Mark Collett to help set up an institute on British Christian identity, had successfully attacked as racist anybody who objected, and nobody really commented on it at all.

There is evidently absolutely no downside at all for the SNP to be pursuing this politics.

The fact that there seems to be no internal dissent within the party about this policy – which seems to have little to do with Scottish independence – indicates to me at least that the SNP must stand for absolutely nothing, or alternatively, have bought wholly into the sort of zaniness that we are always assured only exists in the far reaches of the Socialist Workers Party.

I suspect that this will be picked up and amplified most likely by the US ‘Right wing’ blogosphere, no doubt driven by the same dynamic that provided a home for Ayan Hirsi Ali at the American Enterprise Institute.

According to David Miller’s website he is an authority on “terrorism” (in italics). Is that like “the Holocaust” or “the massacre” at Srebrenica? Paranoiac sounds about right.

Got it in one, David T.

See for instance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFDRLtTfe0M&feature=related

This is what I mean by a dangerous radical political culture having taken hold of Scotland via the SNP and other far lefties such as the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign. Whilst there’s generally a more left of centre political culture in Scotland, most people are decents who find the likes of Galloway a disgrace. (We all wish he would do us a favour and lose his Scottish accent).

But it’s important to point out certain limitations and qualifiers too: the SNP were voted in, not because of their associations with Islamists (which went under the radar with the hoi polloi) but because Labour were so crap; and because Westminster just used them as puppets and there was no change: the purpose of Labour in Scotland has always been to manage Scottish expectations – keep them low.

Most people in Scotland are simply blissfully unaware of this Faustian bargain Salmond is constructing. That’s why HP is so important. Look how long it took for Islamism to get through to Hazel Blears. Whilst Jacqui Smith still doesn’t get it.

>>> Rewriting history as a result of new information has always been acceptable. Rewriting it to fit the orthodoxy of a left wing – Islamist belief system is not.

I’m not sure that it quite qualifies as an “orthodoxy” let alone a belief system. More a coincidence of interest between some left wingers who have given up on the western working class and disaffected muslims. This is especially true of the SWP, which is always engaged on a hopeless quest for a new mass market / membership fodder.

From what I have seen, the orthodox view of history is presented from the point of view of the ruling class, whereas islamists and leftists are on the frince.

The less mainstream views of history are generally intended to bring the disaffected on board e.g. with islamic studies, women’s studies, black studies etc. “Look, there is more to history than white generals and more to literature than dead white men.”

I’m not sure this really challenges anything. But it goes on all over the place. T

Singling out a course that appears to be designed to help understand and contain radical islamism, and interpreting it as – on the contrary – a course designed to increase the risk radical islamism, says more about David T’s prejudices than anything else.

“What do they need three supervisors for?”

One can read, one can write and the third’s to check up on those two intellectuals.

It’s not just the SNP either. Here is Pauline McNeill, (Labour) a key member of the Cross-party committee on Palestine at the Scottish Parliament and veteran of umpteen StoptheWarCoalition demos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r-7EQirQMY&feature=related

And before her, it is important to point out that the initial overtures to IslamExpo, which SIF took up in January 2008, were actually started under the previous Labour administration of Jack McConnell.

Singling out a course that appears to be designed to help understand and contain radical islamism, and interpreting it as – on the contrary – a course designed to increase the risk radical islamism, says more about David T’s prejudices than anything else.

Yeah, but Osama Saeed is an extremist whose politics are that of Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood.

So, why not set up an institute to celebrate British Culture and study Patriotism in Britain, and let somebody from the BNP supervise it?

What?

You disagree?

You’ve got a problem with British culture and Patriotism?

Are you a racist?

ect ect ect

One of the themes that Saeed & Company Limited are currently exploiting is the presentation of Scotland as the first victim of colonialisation. This has been a theme sold by the SSP/SWP SWP of Scotland, and allows the Saeeds to sell Scotland to Dar ul Islam as the Palestine on England’s doorstep.

It goes some way to explaining the relationship.

Have a listen to at this prat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQg1caenuuo

PS He registered the domain http://www.islamophobiawatch.

What I want to know is, why does everyone think acronyms are so cool?

Phd, SWP, SSP, SIF, MSP…

What did people do before the invention of acronyms? As the SWp wuld say, there must be an alternative.

O Devorgilla
Is that the same Jack McConnell who has such nice things to say about the sacrifices made by IRA Active Service volunteers or someone totally different?

And, yes, Labour in Scotland – as on Merseyside and parts of NE England – are/were awful crap, as you say. But that was, in part, because so few normal people can endure the utter hell of attending ward meetings, city party meeting, constituency party meetings – listening to the considered opinions of ill-informed bores – and all that sort of energy-draining shite rather than doing 101 other things like sane normal people greatly prefer to do.

This stuff about the SNP-Islamist Faustian Pact is about the most depressing stuff to have been on this discussion site in ages. An Al Qaida atom bomb capability doesn’t come close by comparison.

Doomed and suicidally-inclined societies rot from within; it seems possible that Scotland is headed that way. Hope I’m wrong!

I hope so too Bill but there are so many of these dubious institutes now, like the Markfield Institute (Leicester); then Kelbawy’s Centre for Terrorism Studies (London) and Tamimi has an ‘academic’ post somewhere in England. Then Quardawi has his European Centre for Fatwa Research (Dublin). Near Dundee there’s the Al Makhtoum Institute, (but that seems harmless enough). But Markfield has Ayataulla Siddiqi; Oxford has Tariq Ramadam. You see they have commandeered that field now and this has happenned in less than a decade. Recently HP featured a post about a large grant given to Durham University by Iran for Islamic Studies.

Dev, here Pauline McNeill is spreading then-unfounded and since-refuted allegations in Holyrood.

And the aforesaid Jack McConnell and praising the I.R.A. or did I dream it?

On a cheerier note, there’s hope that the Al Makhtoum Institute of Dundee concerns itself with the turf.

Bill I’m not aware of ‘our’ Jack McConnell praising the IRA but I could have missed that. He’s from Islay and had been active in addressing sectarianism in Scotland (and doing a darn good job) so I don’t think it’s him, or else it was misreported.

Let’s try not to be too despondent. There are plenty of decent people in Scotland who would have no truck with any of this.

It’s all about politicians’ egos. They can’t do anything about domestic affairs in Scotland so they busy themselves looking important on the international scene, like Pauline McNeill and Alex Salmond.

Pitt these self-pitying narcisstic whiners need to be shown the door. They represent nobody. Don’t let them get you down. Do you think a nurse or a teacher has any time for this? Scotland needs to get over its ‘colonial’ victim status these charlatans peddle. We need to re-activate the ‘can do’ civic tradition of our forefathers and start pulling together.

Bill I’m not aware of ‘our’ Jack McConnell praising the IRA but I could have missed that. He’s from Islay and had been active in addressing sectarianism in Scotland (and doing a darn good job) so I don’t think it’s him, or else it was misreported.

You seem particuarly uninformed about the man. McConnell seems to have the same relationship to the IRA that Galloway has to various Arab dictatorships.

2002: “JACK McCONNELL, the first minister, intervened to help leading IRA-aligned activists stage a sectarian march in his Lanarkshire constituency”
2003: “A REPUBLICAN march timed to mark the 31st anniversary of the Bloody Sunday massacre is expected to take place in Wishaw next week after the personal intervention of Jack McConnell.”
2005: THE first minister has been criticised for inviting an IRA supporter, who has been jailed for inciting people to attack police officers, to tomorrow’s summit on sectarianism in Scotland.”

Did Salmond, when addressing Stormont, not sing the praises of those Scots Irish who’d helped build the U.S.A? Yes, Ulster Protestants!

Similar confusion in when the lambaste bid bad America-pants can be seen in his fondness for those Scots who gravitated towards the Antebellum South (yes, and what commodity was it based on), and those freed slaves in the Postbellum South taking on the names of their ‘masters’ who took on Scottish names. Not to mention Empire in general: there’s a reason why Scottish-names predominate in regions where the previous populations were supplanted!

Thanks for the info Salty. I never like the man so I guess I wasn’t paying attention.

I cant say Im surprised, as the Internationalist pointed out this is the same crap invented by the New Left, with victimhood studies departments.

Perhaps culminating in “whiteness studies.”

You reap what you sow.

The less mainstream views of history are generally intended to bring the disaffected on board e.g. with islamic studies, women’s studies, black studies etc.

This might have appeared true thirty years ago, but it certainly isn’t since the cultural turn and the fact that women, black people etc did women’s and black history. No one was co-opted or ‘brought on board.’ All these forms of history are very much part of the historian’s trade. But there is a proviso – all work that is done in these fields must be backed with sound scholarship and proper archival work. It must be unsentimental and be prepared to reach conclusions that are uncomfortable, particularly if they are uncomfortable to one’s own way of thinking.

From what I can see, David Miller’s wiki, uniting Vlaams Belang, the Communist Party of Spain, the Guardian (employer of Seamus Milne) and King’s College London (employer of Alex Calinnicos) is just a way of name-calling people who piss him off under the pretext of scholarship. Bizarre and shameful.

Here’s what one of the leading SNP bloggers has to say about criticisms of Osama Saeed.
“The days of a select few white men making decisions for the rest of the world needs to come to a close and if a Caliphate is the best way to bring that forward then I, for one, am perfectly relaxed about that. ”

http://snptacticalvoting.blogspot.com/2009/04/disgraceful-smear.html

Numpty.

http://snptacticalvoting.blogspot.com/2009/04/disgraceful-smear.html

It’s certainly a new take on the infamous ‘Scottish Cringe’.