Harry's Place

Bum in a jock-strap.

“What is it with Quakers and Jihadism?”

God only knows!

AlecM: I have never had the courtesy of a response from Paul, the lettings manager at Friends, to the email I sent him with my report of my meeting with him regarding their lettings policy. I will send it to him again, just in case he didn’t get it. Then, if still no response, after a busy time I hope to be able to turn my attention next week on taking this report to the other Jewish women’s groups I am affiliated to, who hire rooms from Friends.

Why has this post been tagged “The left”?

I seem to remember Friends House banning a previous meeting of Islamofascists. Perhaps contact can be re-established with the person who dealt with this last time.

No good insulting and slandering each other!

There needs to be dialogue and more understanding you won’t find peace by turning them away!

I telephone’d FH (Paul was unavailable, Amie) and left details. Hizb doesn’t appear to be on the bookings list, only a regular client which I hadn’t heard of… my guess is that they are trying to slip in un-noticed.

The staff member I spoke to *had* heard of Hizb, and had generally unsupportive views.

I telephone’d FH (Paul was unavailable, Amie) and left details. Hizb doesn’t appear to be on the bookings list, only a regular client which I hadn’t heard of… my guess is that they are trying to slip in un-noticed.

The staff member I spoke to *had* heard of Hizb, and had generally unsupportive views of them.

Having a go at quakers now, who you going to go after next re being muslim extremists, the salvation army? You lot have lost any sense of balance or common decency has clearly detailed here. http://www.thesamosa.co.uk

“What is it with Quakers and Jihadism?”

What’s really strange is that there are no Quaker meeting houses in Somalia. I mean, that’s where they are really needed right?

I bet Bas Bas also takes the OBL line that true Muslims can only hate the West.

Interesting fact:
http://www.quakerinfo.org/resources/worldstats.html

Distribution worldwide of Friends:

Africa = 43%
North America = 30%
Caribbean and Latin America = 17%
Europe and Middle East = 6%
Asia-West Pacific = 4%.

See also
http://www.fwccamericas.org/publications/images/fwcc_map_2007_sm.gif

Kenya a particular “hotbed” of Quakerism: who knew?
Rwanda, Burundi, the DR Congo, Tanzania and Uganda all have relatively large presences too.

And The Quakers most certainly have been active in relief work in Somalia in the relatively recent past.

The piece that Bas Bas links to contains this claim –

Not content with hosting frothing wingnuts, however, Harry’s Place has pursued what has been seen as a ‘witch-hunt’ against any Muslim or Muslim-ally who does not fit the site editors’ strict definitions of ‘moderation’; to whit, near non-involvement in politics.

Oh dear. Did someone just say Student Union Debating Society?

http://www.thesamosa.co.uk

Since Pakistan is the main importer/exporter of Islamic terrorism in the world I guess it’s no surprise that a Pakistani blog would have a problem with a pro-democracy site like HP.

>> Kenya a particular “hotbed” of Quakerism: who knew?
Rwanda, Burundi, the DR Congo, Tanzania and Uganda all have relatively large presences too.

Although I’m not too sure about the second group, Kenyan Friends are predominately from the whittled-down Methodist-style Friends Churches from American missionarism and their positions on same-sex marriages and other social matters have caused a great deal of consternation amongst FWCC.

That said, Christian Peace Maker teams do have a presence in the Great Lakes Region, even if Muzungis ain’t in too great a personal danger.

>> And The Quakers most certainly have been active in relief work in Somalia in the relatively recent past.

Yes, and Georgia as well. This ain’t necessarily the same as a establishing Meetings or sending out EAs.

Oh dear, Lucy Lips

I do not know whether to agree with you – and condemn the Quakers for renting out their space to jihadists – or disagree entirely, as the Quakers are being “unbiased”.

Many moons ago, I used to be a member of a certain Buddhist group. We frequently had our lectures in the Friend’s House in Euston, and at that time I developed a soft spot for Quakers. I thought their allowing us mumbo-jumbo-chanting Buddhists to use their space was progressive, egalitarian.

At that time (the 1980s) few other religious groups would have opened their doors to other faiths, particularly “semi-atheistic” faiths like Buddhism.

So now – even though I think Hizb ut-Tahrir are a bunch of phobic hatemongers – I have to still admire the Quakers’ open-door tolerance of other’s differing opinions.

I just wonder if the jihadists appreciate the Quakers’ tolerance as much as I did, or do they think they are just a bunch of soft mugs to be used?

Wilfred Alexander Garnett
13 November 2009, 11:54 am

No good insulting and slandering each other!

There needs to be dialogue and more understanding you won’t find peace by turning them away!

Unless, of course “them” are pro-Israel to any extent.

>> So now – even though I think Hizb ut-Tahrir are a bunch of phobic hatemongers – I have to still admire the Quakers’ open-door tolerance of other’s differing opinions.

To be fair to Adrian, his comments on my fellow tribesman, Osama Saeed show that he’s definitely not naive to the danger from these politics. Anyone who thinks the Society has an open door on this should try to book a Trident Crew Welcome Home party at FH.

>> I just wonder if the jihadists appreciate the Quakers’ tolerance as much as I did, or do they think they are just a bunch of soft mugs to be used?

I incline to Option B.

“What is it with Quakers and Jihadism?”

If you were a regular reader of a Mrs. Helena Cobban’s blog (and of the comments her supporters post), you wouldn’t have to ask.

“And The Quakers most certainly have been active in relief work in Somalia in the relatively recent past.”

While it’s very nice that Quakers from stable, well-protected, western democracies donate a portion of their surplus wealth to needy Somalians, I’m not sure that it validates their dogmatic pacifism which I believe to be remarkably hypocritical.

But I guess I “win” either way. The fact that their is a large Quaker population in Rwanda rather proves that pacifism is no anecdote to pure evil.

Oops, I meant “antidote.”

Those defending the Quakers on this: when the BNP want to hold their conference at Friends House, that will also be welcomed as a great opportunity for dialogue, will it?

The British Quakers are now definitely “post-Christian” to judge by the posters on display last time I was in FH. They also seem to be increasingly post-pacifist. The new pacifism is called “peace activism”. That’s where you take sides in an armed conflict, but instead of being open about it you do it by denouncing the other side’s violence while keeping silent about what your side does. This used to be known as “war propaganda”, and good progressive folk like the Quakers thought it was a Bad Thing. But the times they are a-changing.

Shmuel:

There are Quakers and there are Quakers. I have a very dear 84 year old friend who served in the British Army in WW II as a decoder and a number of years in Lebanon as a nurse after the war, under the auspices of the Society of Friends before coming to Canada as the wife of a Maronite whose family left Haifa during the War of Independence.

She has little sympathy for followers of Hamas and would be utterly disgusted by the use of Quaker property as a venue for any kind of fascists.

The Quakers, I believe, are organized on a pretty loose basis and what one or some of their Meeting Houses may do, does not reflect all or even a majority of them. It is clear that some British Quakers are doing via Hamas/Hezbollah what, during the cold war via the Communists, was called Fellow Traveling or Sympathizing. No doubt this is a continuation of the support some of the Quakers gave during the Vietnam War to the communist Viet Cong and North Vietnamese and then latter on to various “progressive” liberation movements in southern Africa and Central America.

My own problem is with what Guenter Lewy referred to as the “moral crisis” of pacifism. Prima facie, pacifism may sound like a noble ideal, but in practice there can be substantial moral failures.

George Orwell recognised this in a 1942 article forPartisan Review:

Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’.

I have sympathy with the 1956 argument on pacifism made by the British philosopher, Elizabeth Anscombe. Pacifism is not only a “false doctrine” but a “harmful doctrine.” If one’s neighbour is unjustly attacked, to stand by and let it happen and believe that is the right thing to do does not seem to me the quality of someone with ideal morals but of someone who is a moral failure. The right to self defence must be upheld and pacifists reject this.

The controversial “objectivist”, Ayn Rand, made the point very clearly and I can only concur:

The necessary consequence of man’s right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.

If some “pacifist” society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it.

I’m not even going to begin to list the unsubstantiated statements that have been made in this thread to support previously-held views rather than to actually contribute to the issue that was raised, but at a quick glance I can see twenty or thirty.

Could someone please tell me who exactly are the Quakers?

Joe Muggs, please tell us what your insight is.

Michael Ezra: “My own problem is with what Guenter Lewy referred to as the “moral crisis” of pacifism.”

There is a moral problem with pacifism and George Orwell pointed it out although his statement that “Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist” is over the top. It’s true that a pacifist society is at the mercy of any thug – unless it is protected by someone else’s army. However that was also the case when Elizabeth Fry was visiting Newgate prison and promoting prison reform.

The real problem today is that religion is being used as a cover for decadence – which was NOT the case in Fry’s time. The process began in Britain with the career of the Red Dean of Canterbury, the Rev Hewlett Johnson who never met a Communist butcher that he didn’t like. (Just before he died in 1966, he became a honorary member of Mao’s Red Guard). In Ireland we have a couple of Catholic Bishops who cuddle up to people who falsely accuse their priests of child abuse. It’s not even due to fear, more like moral nihilism combined with a taste for self-publicity.

I don’t know what their views are on Jihadism but I suspect that they will support its victims as the rope supports a hanged man.

Not content with hosting frothing wingnuts, however, Harry’s Place has pursued what has been seen as a ‘witch-hunt’ against any Muslim or Muslim-ally who does not fit the site editors’ strict definitions of ‘moderation’; to whit, near non-involvement in politics.

Where “politics” = “Death to America”.

FAIL

Ironically, perhaps, it was partly the amount of unfounded statements about the Society of Friends posted on previous threads here that made me reasess my relationship with the Society (I was brought up attending Quaker meetings) and realise I was more in sympathy with them than ever. Almost all these claims that Quakers are “decadent” “fellow travellers” with extremism, or as was suggested on a previous thread, “cowards” and “traitors” never seem to come with very much evidence or knowledge of the SoF.

Anyway, as I remember, the last time a similar situation to this arose, once the right people at Friends House had actually been contacted the event was cancelled. And all the evidence we have in this case so far seems to suggest that this event may have been booked under false pretenses. So before the same old suggestions are reeled out that the SoF is somehow in sympathy with terrorism, perhaps we should find out the facts in this case for certain.

@Kilbarry1

Thank you for your comment. In the 1930’s Britain, the best known pacifist organisation was the Peace Pledge Union. David C. Lukowitz made some very insightful observations in his essay, “British Pacifists and Appeasement: The Peace Pledge Union”, published in the Journal of Contemporary History in 1974. He stated that in the summer and Autumn 1938:

Peace News gave fairly strong support to Germany’s case. In August and September it ran a series of articles disparaging the Czech people and state, while the anonymous author of the weekly column on ’Public Affairs’ consistently took a strong line against the Czechs. He maintained that the German Government had a ’moral case’, that the boundaries of Czechoslovakia were unjust, and that the country had ignored its minority problem; he praised Hitler’s work for peace and asked for ’some appreciation of Germany’s contribution’.

An examination of Peace News in 1939 showed Lukowitz the following:

Sympathy for Germany’s position on Poland was expressed to some extent in the editorial columns, but even more strongly in two columns called ’The Plain Man’ and ’A Pacifist Commentary’, which by and large took the view that the Poles were too aggressive in defending their national sovereignty, that the disputed lands were probably more German than Polish, and that there was a danger that the Poles would drag Europe into a conflict over their parochial claims. There was no suggestion that perhaps the crisis was largely due to the territorial ambitions of Hitler.

The PPU promoted “The Link”, a pro-German organisation and the Nazi backed journal, Anglo-German Review. It therefore should come as no surprise that:

In July [1939] the Research Department of the Economic League issued a memorandum, published in the Daily Telegraph, asserting that the PPU was being used, consciously or unconsciously, as a channel for Nazi propaganda.

At the extreme end, On August 11, 1939, News Chronicle published an interview with Stuart Morris, Chairman of the PPU where he stated:

’I am all for giving a great deal more away [to Hitler]. I don’t think that Mr. Chamberlain has really started yet on any serious appeasement.’

Morris later claimed that this was in a personal capacity but at the same time claimed that PPU was was prepared to make sacrifices in order “to meet legitimate German needs.”

Mark Gilbert added further interesting information about the Peace Pledge Union in his article, “Pacifist Attitudes to Nazi Germany, 1936-45″ published in the Journal of Contemporary History in 1992.

Around 1938, the Peace Pledge Union, published a pamphlet entitled Warmongers. The “warmongers” were not Hitler and Mussolini but those such as Winston Churchill and Labour and Liberal MPs who were openly criticising Nazi Germany:

Liberal and Labour members m Parliament bombard ministers with questions which can have no conceivable purpose except to irritate the Germans and provoke war fever in England. If these persons really desired peace obviously they would censor themselves. The fact that they do not convicts them of being warmongers.

Gilbert commented that after Munich:

Peace News persistently printed flattering accounts of life in the Third Reich by pacifists – usually unnamed – who were alleged to have recently visited Germany, or to be experts on German life and culture.

One of these reports in June 1939 was from “R.L.W.” who had returned from Germany and said he saw:

no scowls, but many smiles in the villages, much waving, few swastika flags, no postcards of Hitler so far as I could see, no militarism, no airplanes [sic], no searchlights and in fact no trace of the war-mindedness there is here, either outwardly or in conversation.

Gilbert commented:

In November 1938, [Peace News] had reported the Kristallnacht riots in a manner calculated to minimize the gravity of the pogrom unleashed by the authorities against the Jewish community in Germany. Peace News’s 26 November edition assiduously echoed the nazi press’s claims that far worse offences than the Kristallnacht events were a regular feature of British colonial rule and appealed to its readers not to be too ’unctuous’ in their judgments of Hitlerite Germany.

Gilbert continued to explain that that the PPU printed a bunch of letters from Germans in the June 16, 1939 issue of Peace News of which some of them “contained violently anti-semitic material and material which transparently owed its origin to nazi propaganda.” Despite a handful of complaints “Pacifists appeared to find the PPU’s decision to publish antisemitic comments unsurprising.”

By January 1941, Peace News could declare:

National Socialism relative to any other form of society is a good thing.

Gilbert commenced his article by stating:

With the exception of Action, the journal of the British Union of Fascists, it is hard to think of another British newspaper which was so consistent an apologist for nazi Germany as Peace News, the PPU’s official mouthpiece.

He had very good reason to conclude:

It is not an exaggeration to say that between 1938 and 1943, the PPU offered the most bizarre intellectual spectacle witnessed during the second world war: an avowedly pacifist movement whose public statements, more often than not, excused, or even exalted, the most ruthless user of military force known to modern man.

>> Anyway, as I remember, the last time a similar situation to this arose, once the right people at Friends House had actually been contacted the event was cancelled.

You remember only partially.

You remember only partially

Ain’t that the truth. It was a hard slog, Joe, even when Djab Abou Jahjah was a guest. And here we are again, with Hizb ut Tahrir due on Sunday.

Friends House London will also host a bunch of Hamasniks this December, including Daud Abdullah. Hungarian fascist Krisztina Morvai was also invited. She has since been disappeared from the list. Without a nasty white fascist, the event may well go ahead.

Unless Friends House sorts itself out, that is.

This is the cancelled event which Joe refers to:

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/06/26/more-hezbollox-in-london/

Note, this was not the first event which the self-confessed liar, member of Hezbollah and professional pogromist Abou Jahjah had been an honoured guest at. Observe the comment at 1913 hrs on 28 June.

Maybe Joe would excuse John McFarlane ‘cos he didn’t turn the bolt gun on Mary Griffiths’ daughters:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/suffolk/8357977.stm

Joe Muggs: I attended a long and intensive meeting with the lettings officer some months ago in my capacity as the leader of a Jewish woman’s organisation to discuss our concerns. In the interests of bridge building, I chose till now to keep my report of the meeting confined to those it affected, and those who had been instrumental in facilitating the meeting, and not to post online about it. I sent a copy of my report to the lettings officer and invited him to comment if he had anything to say about my conclusions. I concluded on a note of hope that although there was still a lot of work to be done as there were aspects in the discussion which I and my colleague found disturbing, this was a beginning. I have had no response whatever to that email. I was asked by the officer to keep one, to me particularly unpalatable issue confidential, and I have till now kept this aspect confidential from even the people to whom I have distributed a copy, and will continue to keep it confidential for now.

However, this issue aside, in the light of your impression that all would be well if only the right people are contacted, I cannot leave this unrefuted. The main, but not only, unsatisfactory aspect of the meeting was the express message that it is unQuakerly to listen to outside voices conveying even factual information about speakers, let alone modifying the lettings in recognition of outside concerns expressed by e.g affected Jewish orgs. I give permission to a recipient of my report to share it with you offline (at this stage) should he think this would be productive.

I do feel less hopeful now about a good outcome.

Amie
Some religious organisations are not only betraying their own principles but their own members as well. The following is an extract from a Wikipedia article on Nora Wall, a former nun who was falsely accused of raping a child. Her own congregation – the Sisters of Mercy- joined in the chorus of condemnation and apologised to her false accusers. When the case against her (and her co-accused Pablo McCabe) collapsed, the nuns neither apologised to Wall nor criticised her accusers.

The behaviour of the Quakers and the Sisters of Mercy can be more repulsive than outright fascists. “Normal” extremists will at least defend their own members – especially against FALSE allegations. The religious people will lick the boots of their enemies and congratulate themselves on their superior moral code that enables them to transcend normal ethical considerations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nora_Wall

Reaction of Kevin Myers, July 1999
On Saturday 31 July, the Irish Times published an article by writer and journalist Kevin Myers. He was one of the very few to speak out in favour of Wall and McCabe at the time. He originally wrote a column on Monday 26 July to be published on Wednesday but it was withdrawn because what he sought to achieve was already happening – the release of the two accused. He was the first person to describe the trial at a witch-hunt.

“We should always beware the deeds of good men and women when there is a public war against vice of any kind. The “witches” of Salem were not persecuted by bad men or women; people then genuinely lived in fear of witchcraft, just as they did of communism in the 1950s. In the witch-hunt to remove it from public life in the US, innocent people’s lives were ruined, yet through often honourable motives (apart from those of Joe McCarthy).[14]

Kevin Myers has himself been a fierce critic of the Catholic Church – one of his more moderate comments being: “The Sisters of Mercy have no charity and the Sisters of Charity have no mercy”.

Reaction of Sisters of Mercy
After their conviction, the Sisters of Mercy issued a statement which read:

“We are all devastated by the revolting crimes which resulted in these verdicts. Our hearts go out to this young woman who, as a child, was placed in our care. Her courage in coming forward was heroic. We beg anyone who was abused whilst in our care to go to the Gardai (police.)

Even after the collapse of the case against the two accused, the Sisters of Mercy made no effort to apologise to Wall or to withdraw their statement of support for Walsh. One commentator [15] remarked: “The young woman their hearts were going out to, was the false accuser, not their own innocent nun. Our absolutist system had seduced them into identifying with the accuser and betraying their own sister.”

MY SUMMARY: The Irish Sisters of Mercy are as decadent as the English Quakers.

Re my comment:
“The religious people will lick the boots of their enemies and congratulate themselves on their superior moral code that enables them to transcend normal ethical considerations.

In this context “religious people” means Christians only of course. Also they tend to be “liberal” Christians not traditionalists. Even fundamentalist Christians will be normal enough to defend their own principles and their own members against overt enemies.

the Quakers are being “unbiased”

Yes, why should they or anyone else presume to make moral distinctions? Who is to say that there is anything wrong with terrorism, paedophilia, racism, rape and so on? That’s so arrogant, so last year …

Pathetic, Joe. Really pathetic. I have spoken to all the right people at the Euston FMH on previous similar occasions (at least two in the past year) – both on the phone and by email. Some of them never kept their categorical promises to get back to me. The others admitted variously that they were in charge of lettings policy or deputies to such persons, but essentially told me to fuck off and mind my own business (all in the nicest possible way, of course).

As a result, I feel nothing but utter contempt for the whole rotten, hypocritical, pretentious, holier-than-thou, lying and cowardly edifice of the saintly Quakers.

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Amie / Gordon Bennett you have misread what I said. And Killbarry1 you are also making some fairly bold statements without backup.

The small amount of evidence that we have here suggests that the booking was not made under the name of this organisation – i.e. that Friends House were misled.

You have no evidence as far as I can see that Friends House IS knowingly allowing extremist groups, or groups in conflict with Quaker principles, to book meetings there. If you do, please present it, otherwise I shall have to assume that you are deliberately seeking to find enemies where there are none – especially some of you are showing a distinct willingness to tarnish an entire faith group with your opinions of the action of a single booking clerk.

Amie, please do send me your report – joe.muggs@gmail.com

And Gordon, I must ask if you took anything like the tone you are using here with the people you contacted.

I think also one of the key points that is being missed here is that Friends House is a very large building with very many rooms that are let out every day of the week.

This booking, if it was even real, was just one among hundreds each month. Yet from some of the reactions you would think that the Quakers had put out an invitation to this group to come and break bread with them.

If you start to imagine that anyone who breathes the same air as extremists is your enemy, you end up with very few people being sympathetic to your cause.

Oh, stop it, Joe. Even if this were an anteroom, it still required approval by FH staff to go ahead. But, it was the main hall.

From Hizb’s site, here’s a report of the meeting:

http://www.hizb.org.uk/hizb/press-centre/press-release/london-conference-calls-for-zardari-to-go-and-a-new-leadership-and-system-for-pakistan.html

>> He said that Pakistan’s nuclear assets, which America and India wanted to neutralise, were a vital deterrent to hostile threats.

You absolute tit.

>> This booking, if it was even real,

You absolute tit ^ 2.

>> Yet from some of the reactions you would think that the Quakers had put out an invitation to this group to come and break bread with them.

Why would that be? ‘Cos both Hezbollah was allowed to meet there in March, despite FH being forewarned… then the next month, Hamasniks. Then, two months later, Hezbollah came within a cat’s whisker of getting back in again?

Stick to posting in the Arts section.