Harry's Place

Who says they missed the obvious links? Maybe they turned a blind eye?

Because the Hundals of this world that infest the public sector would scream “racist!” and “islamophobe!”?

What’s with the Tories and West Yorkshire – Philip Davies, MP, Shipley – sharing a platform with Hizb ut Tahrir media spokesman, and Kris Hopkins, leader Bradford Council supporting the Open Madrasah Network?

Perhaps Cameroonian writ does not extend north of Watford Gap?

I am always suspicious when obsessives demand the government should act, as if government is the fairy godmother.

The UK operates under the rule of law, not the rule of politicians. These two schools have passed OFSTED inspections, which make it very difficult for the govt to cut off funding, close the schools, or change the management; moreover, and from what I hear it will be difficult to ban HuT, and even more so its numerous fronts.

Perhaps HP would like to look at the realities, rather than pounding the table.

How did OFSTED miss what was obvious to anybody with any knowledge of this dangerous jihadist cult?

Surely Ofsted would not have been looking because they’re not charged with that responsibility.

The DFSC should have checked out the background of those setting up the school when they processed their application to register.

Ofsted has picked up on dodgy Muslim and other faith schools in the past – there was this in 2005:

Inspectors found 42.5% of independent evangelical Christian schools were failing to help pupils learn to respect other cultures and promote “tolerance and harmony”.

But figures from Ofsted showed that 36% of independent Muslim schools were judged to be failing in this duty, the Times Educational Supplement reported

I am not surprised, Richard.

Cameron proved himself lacking judgment by seeking to make this an issue for point scoring at PMQs: all he had to do was write to the PM first. But he didn’t because he saw it as too juicy.

Of course, Ed Balls also showed his lack of judgment in rising to the bait. But no change there then.

Having watched all that, though, I am not clear about several things: how much taxpayers money were they getting? And is it only the school in Slough that’s the issue?

What I found of interest is that there were a variety of Muslim voices in this piece. Once it used to only be Abu Hamza, or Anjem Choudary, or Bung that would appear on Newsnight. So Muslims would be represented by beardy dudes spouting Islamism or insulting crap – one called the UK a “toilet”. You got the dodgy headmistress and the weasly HUT members but then you got another bunch.

I don’t know if Houriya Ahmed from the Centre for Social Cohesion is Muslim. But anyway she, Tehmina Kazi from BMSD and Shiraz Maher are much more personable faces to have on telly talking about Muslim stuff. The first bunch weren’t shown as the only and ugly faces of Muslimhood.

Also, Farah Ahmed – as well as calling her membership to HUT an “irrelevant question” is the typical ideological puritan when talking about Shakespeare.

“Romeo and Juliet which advocates disobeying parents and premarital relations. . . Macbeth which questions the concepts of fate and destiny . . . There are obvious dangers to anyone who watches or reads these plays.”

Romeo and Juliet does not advocate premarital relations. Juliet says quite specifically that they must marry and at once. So they do. Far too young, of course, but they don’t premarital.

I think her lack of reading skills alone should get her sacked as headmistress, never mind her membership of a theocratic movement.

You can’t get a license to run a public house unless you can demonstrate that you are a fit and proper person to do so. Fair enough. But surely a much higher standard must be applied to those who wish to run or govern a school. Any track record of sectarianism should be grounds for banning individuals or organisations from governing bodies. From what I have read, the headmistress at one of the schools has previously declared her opposition to the teaching of English Language, and English Literature, to muslim pupils, on the grounds that this increases the risk of integration. Such a person should never have been allowed anywhere near a school.

And so far as the response from Ed Balls, it just looks sneaky and evasive to me. They got taxpayer funding to promote an anti-social agenda to children. I don’t care which funding stream it came from, it was our money and the govt. gave it to these creeps.

Ed Balls..sneaky and evasive?

How very dare you??

Incidentally, for all those who obsess about Mohammed having had sex with Aisha at 9 or 13 or what have you, here’s a little Shakespeare:

LADY CAPULET:Thou know’st my daughter’s of a pretty age.
NURSE: Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.
LADY CAPULET She’s not fourteen.
NURSE: I’ll lay fourteen of my teeth,– And yet, to my teeth be it spoken, I have but four– She is not fourteen.

I think the reason people get so cheesed off about all of this, is that the government has imposed so much centralised control and interference, supposedly on all of the schools. And they persecute the schools which are struggling to meet the standards. But they create back-door exemptions to those schools which never had any intention of trying to comply.
They only ever go for the easy targets and people hate double standards. And even more they hate finding out, after the fact, that they have been funding something shady and dirty.

If we may continue our Shakesperean theme, these sentiments seem apropos for Ed Balls:

“A most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker, the owner of no one good quality. ”

“Methink’st thou art a general offence and every man should beat thee.”

Both courtesy of “Alls Well That Ends Well.”

As an aside, I wonder what insightful analysis Farah Ahmed could offer us on “The Merchant of Venice”?
Something along the lines of “It woz the Jew wot dunnit!” perhaps?

I am always suspicious when obsessives demand the government should act, as if government is the fairy godmother.
The UK operates under the rule of law, not the rule of politicians.

I am always suspicious when obsessives like you find excuses for the law to be flouted.
Where schools have links to racist organisations, the law IS being broken.
In any event, overseeing schools is the responsibility of the Dept of Ed, or whatever fancy and weasely name they have these days under this spinning government – and that IS a government dept., even if you didn’t realise this.

Cameron proved himself lacking judgment by seeking to make this an issue for point scoring at PMQs: all he had to do was write to the PM first.

I can’t believe that a grown-up wrote this nonsense. Brown does not respond rationally to sensible arguments or to letters from the oppostion, which he hates with pathological passion.

You can’t get a license to run a public house unless you can demonstrate that you are a fit and proper person to do so. Fair enough. But surely a much higher standard must be applied to those who wish to run or govern a school. Any track record of sectarianism should be grounds for banning individuals or organisations from governing bodies. From what I have read, the headmistress at one of the schools has previously declared her opposition to the teaching of English Language, and English Literature, to muslim pupils, on the grounds that this increases the risk of integration. Such a person should never have been allowed anywhere near a school.

Probably the most sensible post so far.

Except … calling Balls sneaky and evasive is several orders of magniture too generous.

Jim,
True, but that would apply in spades to Straw – and in double-spades to Brown.

OFSTED inspections would certainly not be equipped or competent to undertake investigations or checks that would reveal the nature of the links. All they could do would be to check whether the school promotes cultural/community understanding & cohesion. Token stuff such as evidence of some visits to or a ritual shared project with other schools (football matches or shared litterpicking or some such would count). Inspections are done on a 3 day notice basis. Plenty of time to prepare appropriately. Inspections of independent schools would include a few lesson observations, plus some discussions with pupils and parents. My knowledge of such events is that pupils will instinctively sense what it is important to say and not to say as of course will parents.

It’s very similar to trying to discover instances of gross neglect or mismanagement in local authorities’ child care services. Most unlikely to yield results on such fleeting visits unless you are on a specially convened inspection designed to investigate particular issues. The Haringey Social Services debacle is a direct parallel. On the basis of the standard inspection, they got graded “good”. Sent to investigate why a child had died after 60 social services visits, they dug in the right places and found the buried bodies. Ditto Billericay Hospital.

The initial registration by OFSTED should look at the constitution, trustees, instruments of government. Unless these overtly declared the anti-democratic and jhadist aims of Hizb, they would not find anything that would enable them to take action. The initial reg process does not empower OFSTED to investigate the bona fides and track records and links of the funding/trustee organizations and individuals. It’s built on the assumptions of good bona fides and basic integrity. This is one area which needs to be made much more like MI5 positive vetting. And that holds true for any community group that wants to set up a school, nursery or elder care facility. Especially given current Tory proposals to move services from the state to the voluntary sector.

The “pattern” continues….

Live long…and keep fighting fascism.

How did OFSTED miss what was obvious to anybody with any knowledge of this dangerous jihadist cult?

The headteacher of one of the schools, Farah Ahmed, who remains a trustee to this day, refuses to deny that she was a Hizb member and has written in a Hizb journal condemning the “corrupt western concepts of materialism and freedom.”
And Ofsted – far from “satisfying themselves that there were no problems” – actually condemned one of the two schools as “inadequate,” questioned the suitability of the staff, and said that it could do more “to promote cultural tolerance and harmony.” That was in November 2007.

By May 2008, according to a follow-up report, the school had been magically transformed, and was now “good”. That second report, however, was written by an inspector with, at the very least, personal connections to Islamic groups.

It’s interesting that both Farah Ahmed (ISF Slough) and Michele Messaoudi (OFSTED) appeared together at this event:

* Michele Messaoudi, Ofsted Inspector, on Promoting Children’s Spirituality at Home and School

* Farah Ahmed, co-founder of the Islamic Shakhsiyyah Schools, on Nurturing and Assessing the Pupil’s Developing Islamic Personality

Gordon Bennet:

Re: Gordon Brown:

“Thou art a flesh-monger, a fool and a coward”
Measure for Measure

“Fit to govern? No, not fit to live!”
Macbeth

Re: Jack Straw:

“He has everything that an honest man should not have; what an honest man should have, he has nothing.”
Alls Well That Ends Well

Re: Peter Mandelson:

“You villainous abominable misleader of youth!”
Henry VI Pt 1.

And just for good measure:

Re: Farah Ahmed:

“Female Bastard!”
The Winters Tale

That’s probably enough for now, but we could go on & on!

Amen to all that, Jim.
And yes, we could … Forsooth, I’d fain for this villainous misrule to end!

“This land of such dear souls,this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out,I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm,
England,bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege,
of watery Neptune,is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds,
That England that was want to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.”

Richard II

It’s striking to contrast the current intense investigation of individuals vis a vis fitness to work in schools & childcare institutions (checks on convictions and even police/social services investigations/reports which did not lead to investigations) with the entirely token and limited investigations of groups or collectives–I’m not even sure whether they routinely investigate Companies’ House records.

In neither case, as far as I know, do they give any serious consideration to the compatibility of societal/political campaign records with those required for schools (eg must include commitment to democratic society, community cohesion).

Over the last couple of days, I’ve caught up with the utterly tragic death–through massive drugs overdose– of Tim Guest, author of “My Life in Orange” which is his account of his childhood spent in Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s communes, including commune schools in this country. It’s a horrendous story of a supposed childhood paradise which was in fact a hell-hole of abuse in the name of permissiveness. There was even a suicide by an adolescent boy at one of the schools, complete with inquest. But nothing was ever done to shut the schools down– it was anyway before OFSTED was in existence, although the then inspection regime was responsible for ensuring that schools were safe and adequate places for children to learn in.

If you read the book (which is a wonderful account), and the obits, it will be clear that Guest’s experiences as a child devastated his life. And drugs were one of the ways he tried to cope with the resultant despair.

I think we are still much too complacent about what goes on in schools, particularly ones which promote a libertarian or countercultural ideology.

Liberty if it means anything… should include the provisions of the Universal Convention on Human Rights on the freedom to educate your children according to your beliefs– it’s always the practice of totalitarian regimes of all stripes to wipe out education outside state controlled provision– but it also has to include an accompanying commitment to education provision which abjures undermining and replacing those Human Rights.

There’s an extra irony in a Muslim headmistress railing against R&J, (mis-)reading it as a supporter of pre-marital sex. Although a naive reading is to see the tragic heroes (it is, after all, a tragedy) as Romeo and Juliet, their deaths are in a sense by-the-by. The real tragic heroes, at least in the context of when it was written, are Old Capulet and Old Montague. Their desire to see their children married to suitable, approved spouses, rather matched by love, leads inexorably to the death of their offspring. And their insistence on continuing a long-running family feud from generation to generation based on honour doesn’t help. Hmm, I wonder what resonates…?

Yes, why didn’t the state organisation Ofsted investigate extremists who might vote Labour if they don’t? And why is the millionaire Paul Daniels so attractive to women?

And re the government doing something about Hizb ut Tahrir, and indeed not confusing and compromising its Prevent strategy by engaging with Ikhwan offshoots:

“If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well / It were done quickly”

The government shouldn’t fund or provide tax breaks to anyone ideologically opposed to a tolerant, secular, democratic society.

This also implies abandoning the principle that whenever the government acts against an Islamist, it has to be balanced by finding a random Jew to act against too: and likewise, that Saqranie and supporters should not be ennobled just because the Chief Rabbi, who fundamentally supports a tolerant, secular democratic society, has been.

“How did OFSTED miss what was obvious to anybody with any knowledge of this dangerous jihadist cult?”

Fear of being labelled with the ubiquitous R word perhaps?

Maybe they were too busy celebrating diversity and acknowledging its strength giving properties?

Or maybe the recently made up I word would have been the feared reaction?

They’d probably react in the same way were the BNP found to be running a school.
Wouldn’t they?

Cat Stevens aka Josef Islam, knowing that it is a wild world openly says he gets his teachers from the market place. Why would a Christian Physics teacher work in such schools. It is the discipline stupid!

Hamlet, on the other hand, must surely meet with the full approval of those who claim that “We love death more than you love life.” The onstage killings alone include three deaths from a poisoned sword, as well as another stabbing (Polonius) and another poisoning (Gertrude) …

One reason why they couldn’t remotely justify “even-handedly” banning Hizb schools by hitting some strictly orthodox Jewish schools–however separatist–is that orthodox Jewish law dating from Talmudic times has a very clear stance on the law of any nation in which a Jewish community exists: “Dina d’Machulta dina” (literally, the law of the kingdom is the law), thus overriding all halachic laws except those for which a Jew should die rather than obey. Even then, taking up violent or illegitimate methods to overthrow the regime is not permitted.

That law goes back to the early days of Rabbinic law. The Jews historically had to try to survive under many horrendous and vindictive legal systems, some aimed directly at destroying their community–but the ruling was always adhered to.

Juliet to Romeo:-

If that thy bent of love be honourable,
Thy purpose marriage, send me word to-morrow,
By one that I’ll procure to come to thee,
Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite;
And all my fortunes at thy foot I’ll lay
And follow thee my lord throughout the world.

It’s probably the passion in the last two lines that scared the hitz headmistress.

There were intellectuals like Matthew Arnold who when they saw the Christian religion was dying were hoping to replace it with English literature as a spiritual force. It’s fitting that the hitz headmistress saw Eng Lit & Lang in opposition to her own kind of religion and religious nationaism.

Oh, and Matthew Arnold was an inspector of schools.

Joe Camel – you mean a piece of literary inter-family power feud fiction should be equated with the suicide truck bomber that blows himself up in the pet marketplace or book marketplace in Baghdad and who dispatches 300 innocents at a time?

Are you trying to be serious – or are you talking out of douchebag postmodern equivalence?

This sorry state of affairs will continue until at least the next election. Broon is clearing out the islamic moderates, and courting the extremists with taxpayers money, and government jobs. Peerages also. He knows how to capture the islamic vote in the UK.

The situation is liable to get even worse though, if NuLab get in again. They will have such a small majority that they will promise the sectarians absolutely anything they want. What they want will be unlimited islamic immigration, and greater influence over foreign policy. And it will become so obvious that there will be an enormous public backlash.

I think a similar situation will prevail if we have a hung parliament, or a small Tory majority.

Things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better.

David T: Incidentally, for all those who obsess about Mohammed having had sex with Aisha at 9 or 13 or what have you, here’s a little Shakespeare:

First off, its not 9 or 13, it is 9 lunar years or 8.5 solar years when Aisha was raped.

Second, Shakespeare did not call himself the most “perfect” human being who had a telephone to god – and who MUST BE OBEYED and EMULATED to this day and unto eternity at the risk of the sword (or nowadays at the risk of the motorcycle Basiji death squad with a revolver).

How you could even compare the two, is beyond my imagination.

May Mohammed the mass murderer founder of Islam be raped by his camel in hell.

Monty,

Dead right. Muslims have a lot of influence with
the Scot Nats already, & use it.

I heard Alex Salmon on a radio interview clearly
say “Muslims must be consulted about whether we
have nuclear weapons or not”.

Interestingly, the Electoral Commission described
the election that brought Salmon & his allies to power
as “unworthy of a banana republic”

Members of Hizb ut-Tahrir threatened to kill me in 1994 when I and five other activists from OutRage! picketed its 6,000-strong rally at Wembley Arena. We were protesting against HUT’s call for the execution of gays and unchaste women and its anti-Hindu and anti-Jewish incitements. For our peaceful protest, we were arrested by the police. No police action was taken against the HUT members who threatened to kill us.

Incidentally, for all those who obsess about Mohammed having had sex with Aisha at 9 or 13 or what have you, here’s a little Shakespeare:yet, to m

Tell you what, David T, when one billion people hold Shakespeare up as the perfect man, to be emulated in thought, word, action and dead for all time, then I will be happy to have a go at him.

Are these the same one billion people who know who George Galloway is, Moggie?

Judy: in case you missed mettaculture’s post on this from the other thread, I thought this so important that although long, I am copying it here in full. It seems it goes beyond the inadequacy of an Osted inspection to pick up this kind of problem: it seems these schools are subject to a different and even less rigourous inspection body than Ofsted:

mettaculture
27 November 2009, 8:48 pm

There is a truly shoddy backstory to all this.

There has long been a disaster waiting to happen in relation to Muslim faith schools.

The possibility of extremist focus in some schools that we see now was warned of in 2005 by the Chief Education Inspector David Bell.

Of course he was accused of Islamophobia;

David Bell said his organisation had identified a significant growth in the number of independent faith schools.

He singled out Muslim schools for criticism.

“This growth needs to be carefully but sensitively monitored by government to ensure that pupils at all schools receive an understanding of not only their own faith but other faiths and the wider tenets of British society,” he said.

“We must not allow recognition of diversity to become apathy in the face of any challenge to our coherence as a nation. We must be intolerant of intolerance.”………..

Mr Bell’s speech had included an extract……saying many new Muslim schools must adapt their curriculum “to ensure that it provides pupils with a broad general knowledge of public institutions and services in England and helps them to acquire an appreciation of and respect for other cultures in a way that promotes tolerance and harmony.”

Even though this assessment was fully based in a rigorous Ofsted assessment and follow up of Evangelical Christian and Muslim schools, David Bell was pilloried and briefed against by another Staff member of Ofsted.

The regulations stated that faith schools were required to ensure that they ;

2(d) provide pupils with a broad general knowledge of public institutions and services in England

2(e) assist pupils to acquire an appreciation of and respect for their own and other cultures in a way that promotes tolerance and harmony between different cultural traditions.

The data for 2003-2004 showed that:

there were 50 Muslim schools and 40 Christian schools – eight Evangelical and most Christian Brethren – in the transitional phase of reaching acceptable educational standards.

In the 2003-04 inspection year, almost all of the Christian schools were assessed on whether they were meeting the two regulations at issue.

Of the Muslim schools, 41 of the 50 were assessed on the “English institutions” rule and 33 on the “other cultures” rule

A quarter of the Christian schools and two thirds of the Muslim schools did not meet the first requirement.

Forty-six per cent of Christian schools and 54% of Muslim schools did not meet the second.

….. the data available so far showed that half the Christian Brethren schools had been revisited and all were meeting the requirements.

About two fifths of the Muslim schools had been revisited, and about a quarter of those which previously did not meet the regulations were doing so.

So about a dozen were not.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4215517.stm

So in 2005 it was perfectly apparent that some Muslim faith schools were seriously under performing in terms of their commitment to conform to the required regulations

I don’t know what happened to David Bell, he is no longer Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, the post is currently held by Christine Gilbert.

I do know what happened to the mainstream Ofsted inspection of faith schools however; it was nobbled.

The goal posts were moved, the rules changed and the referees became largely self selected.

These, and only these, faith schools were given a new name ‘Bridge Schools’ and an entirely new inspectorate, with special faith based criteria, was established for them.

The Bridge Schools Inspectorate was approved in 2008 as a body for the purposes of inspecting selected registered independent schools in membership of the Association of Muslim Schools UK (AMSUK) and the Christian Schools’ Trust (CST), under section
162A(1) of the Education Act 2002 as amended from September 2005.

There are currently 55 schools confirmed to be in the inspection remit of The Bridge Schools Inspectorate.

The schools are evangelical Christian or Muslim schools, serving faith
communities, which provide a distinctive religious curriculum alongside secular studies.

In effect this Inspectorate is independent from the mainstream Ofsted and is described as being ’similar’ to the Ofsted to the Independent schools Inspectorate.

The first report for the new segregated faith based ‘Bridge schools Inspectorate’ has now been produced and is available for view.

I think the legitimate question rather than accepting the ‘fait accompli’ is to ask why?, notwithstanding the fact that some wilfully blind commenters will still seek to find Islamophobia in any systematic and perfectly fair questioning of whether certain faith schools are meeting basic criteria applicable to all other schools in the mainstream.

I see nothing Islamophobic in opposing the de facto independence of some Christian and Muslim faith schools, that in the very criteria of their Inspectorate are revealed to have quite a different set of concerns and thus criteria for evaluation than mainstream schools.

The Bridge Schools Inspectorate was established to provide an opportunity for cooperation between faith groups and to enable them to come together to form an independent inspectorate with specialist expertise in schools with a distinctive religious ethos.

The inspectorate gained approval from the Secretary of State for
Education to inspect schools belonging to the Christian Schools’ Trust and the Association of Muslim Schools UK throughout England and it began its work in October 2008.

The Bridge Schools Inspectorate’s model of inspection has been agreed with the DCSF and is set out clearly in the Inspectorate’s Framework for Inspection.

The inspection model is similar to Ofsted’s, in ensuring that schools meet the regulations for independent schools.

It also reports on whether the schools continue to meet the
expectations of the Christian Schools’ Trust and the Association of Muslim Schools UK.

Schools are given approximately five days notice of inspection and are inspected on a three yearly cycle.

Inspection teams are led by experienced former HMI who understand the distinctive characteristics of faith based education and have had
substantial experience of leading independent school inspections.

Team inspectors are drawn from the staff of schools involved. Each association puts forward candidates with substantial experience of teaching, leadership and management to be trained as inspectors.

Candidates are trained by the Bridge Schools Inspectorate
as team inspectors and become accredited Bridge Schools Inspectorate inspectors.

In order to remain accredited, inspectors need to participate in at least one inspection a year and to inspect at least one school from outside their own association once every four years.

http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/content/download/…/200809_BSI_AnnualReport.pd

In other words Evangelical Christian and Christian Bretheren and Muslim Schools get to Inspect themselves and create and manage their own Inspectorate under the fig leaf of a National Schools Inspectorate.

What the hell is an Orwellian titled ‘Bridge School’ if it is not a recently constructed bridge leading away from a universally underpinned consensus of education as the foundation for a shared civic identity and towards an ethno-religiously perceived communal identity?

It is a scandal that these schools have effectively been left to pursue their own faith agenda at the expense of a shared civically minded national experience of education.

Islamophobia has nothing to do with it. The current debacle of Hizb ut Tahir’s involvement in running schools is hardly surprising given the irresponsibility of the deliberate ‘arms length’ and entirely self serving inspectorate.

What is more unacceptable perhaps, is the arrogance of a Government that has by ’sleight of hand’ created a new sectarian faction in education by acting as if these matters are purely a private one of faith, rather than a national and constitutional matter that should be at the heart of the democratic process.

Tatchell: Members of Hizb ut-Tahrir threatened to kill me in 1994 when I and five other activists from OutRage! picketed its 6,000-strong rally at Wembley Arena. We were protesting against HUT’s call for the execution of gays and unchaste women and its anti-Hindu and anti-Jewish incitements. For our peaceful protest, we were arrested by the police. No police action was taken against the HUT members who threatened to kill us.

Thanks Peter for all your tireless work in defense of enlightenment values.

Hamid – a proud Muslim apostate.

amie: I see nothing Islamophobic in opposing the de facto independence of some Christian and Muslim faith schools,…

Thanks for the good work amie, but I happen to be an Islamophobe because I hate the racist and mass murdering founder of Islam – Mohammed. Why do I hate him? Well I just happen to hate Mohammed – a public historic figure and NOT a private person, and I hate the ideology of Islam – and its really no one’s business. Really nothing to do with the fact that I am a former Muslim.

Now could you tell me what is wrong with me being an Islamophobe?

Hamid – a proud Muslim apostate.

“No police action was taken against the HUT members who threatened to kill us.”

Oh please .

Next you’ll be telling us that programme makers who expose racism,misogyny,and homphobia get accused of distortion by the police too.

As if.

Hamid, I’m glad you have shaken him off. He wasn’t a very decent man.

The older I get, the more convinced I get that none of us can attain either enlightenment, or spirituality, without getting rid of the established religions. We have wandered into this philosophical territory on an earlier thread, but I think our ancestors only invented the idea of a spirit world to cope with their children’s terror of death. It was the only way they could banish “dead forever”. They unknowingly laid themselves open to charlatans claiming to have a special relationship with the god or gods. And the result is laying trails of terrorism, war, and cruelty all over the planet. All of it’s victims are dead, maimed, disfigured, blinded, forever.

The last time Tony Blair wanted to ban Hizb he had no evidence so he arranged for his spy Richard Watson to promote the frauds and liars of the Vigil Network who conducted a highly unprofessional investigation with anonymous informers. Since that time Vigil has been caught out planting fake terror stories in the UK press. The credibility of the anti Hizb campaigners is in tatters. We think former members of Vigil should be immediately arrested for the Granny bomber scandal and the Alan Sugar story.

I strongly suspecy that “andrew” is yet another sockpuppet of a very tedious and annoying HT suporter, who infests this and other sites. He thinks that giving himself “Anglo”-sounding nicknames increases his credibility.

Just so you know.

I strongly suspect that “andrew” is yet another sockpuppet of a very tedious and annoying HT supporter, who infests this and other sites. He thinks that giving himself “Anglo”-sounding nicknames increases his credibility.

Just so you know.

Encouraging news on various threads this morning.

BETWEEN THE ACTS
I want an opportunity to apologise for my attack, recently, on Harry’s Place. I believe I just got into state about some of the more crazy posts. I went into a kind of trance and hardly knew what I was writing. That letter was more a pouring out of anguish about the world we are living in and this was the content rather than particular things I wrote. There are enough good and informative commenters and I sometimes envy their knowledge. Leading articles always good. HP has been educative for me, an education sometimes into despair about baddies and their actions, but it is kind of good to know the worst, to know what hostorical point you have reached. – Yesterday I had a Venezuelan woman in my house and it was a visible comfort and relief to her that I knew about Chavez – from HP. She told me more spine chilling stories about him.

Back to thread. I like the quotations from Shakespeare! For the rest, I’m reading attentively.

For our peaceful protest, we were arrested by the police.

I hope you sued them for unlawful arrest, Peter.

Hamid,
Thanks for that. I share your position entirely, never having been a Moslem.

Felix,
Oh, please. Your attack was not only on HP but on individual posters too. Now you are trying to excuse it by claiming you were possessed by a dibuk and were not responsible for your actions, hoping to come out of this looking all noble and a great human being. At least have the decency to apologise to said individuals.

Whenever I see the name Gordon Bennet I step over it.

I rest my case.

‘We have wandered into this philosophical territory on an earlier thread, but I think our ancestors only invented the idea of a spirit world to cope with their children’s terror of death.’

Religion is pre-scientific societies way of coping with unpredictable weather.

Forget evolution – meteorology is science’s biggest threat to religion.

To David T

‘……….Incidentally, for all those who obsess about Mohammed having had sex with Aisha at 9 or 13 or what have you, here’s a little Shakespeare:

LADY CAPULET:Thou know’st my daughter’s of a pretty age.
NURSE: Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.
LADY CAPULET She’s not fourteen.
NURSE: I’ll lay fourteen of my teeth,– And yet, to my teeth be it spoken, I have but four– She is not fourteen. …..’

Dear chap, surely there’s a difference between two teenagers having sex, and Mohammed well into adulthood screwing a 9 year old girl?

And no-one says Romeo was an exemplary human being who should be emulated, let alone the one true messanger of god.

To David T

‘……….Incidentally, for all those who obsess about Mohammed having had sex with Aisha at 9 or 13 or what have you, here’s a little Shakespeare:

LADY CAPULET:Thou know’st my daughter’s of a pretty age.
NURSE: Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.
LADY CAPULET She’s not fourteen.
NURSE: I’ll lay fourteen of my teeth,– And yet, to my teeth be it spoken, I have but four– She is not fourteen. …..’

Dear chap, surely there’s a difference between two teenagers having sex, and Mohammed well into adulthood screwing a 9 year old girl?

And no-one says Romeo was an exemplary human being who should be emulated, let alone the one true messanger of god.

To Abu Faris

..Yes why does ‘Andrew’ say

‘…we think’ instead of ‘I’..?

I can stand about two minutes of the intensely annoying Michael Gove, max.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGerVRR5ycM&feature=related

newsnight debate.

This thread is petering out. But I have nevertheless decided to make some comments on Mr. Gordon Bennet’s attack on me. So you will rest your case, will you? Well I have decided not to let it rest.

He says:
“At least have the decency to apologise to said individuals.” (meaning commenters). As though the commenters were noit attacking each other all the time. Foremost among the vicious, Mr. Bennet.

Do you want me to apologise to John Lee Barnes? Some of the comments are not all that far removed from him, whatever ideological position they come from. I will certainly not apologise to them.

You were a prime mover in stirring up mobbing attacks on me, on a really ridiculous subject, and you were trying to do it again in the above missive. Who’s attacking whom? Your comments and those you inspired went beyond the occasional swear word; they were attempts at mobbing, which, if they occur on the street, you call the police. This time the vermin have not come out of the woodwork to join you -so far.

When I told my friends about the palaver aboiut he Wicked Jew who got a taste of pork juice on his lips, they said, they couldn’t believe their ears and asked, “But Felix, what ARE you doing writing to a blog like that?” I replied that I liked the moderators and some of the commenters and that I learn a lot from HP.

Who the hell are you to talk about attacking posters?

You have cooked your goose for me, and I want nothing more to do with you, and will ignore your posts in the future.

Monty – certainly have to agree with you.

The tragedy is not so much religion – but an irrational and belief-based system of values and associated discourse.

Irrational and ideological belief systems are not exclusive to the religious. There are secular forms of it as well.

Extreme environmentalism is another form of belief system where the “god” is mother nature, the birds and the fish.

Postmodern leftism is another form of “religion” where the god is the monetary poor and the permanently aggrieved.

Then communism and fascism are other forms of secular belief systems that have everything religious about them except for the supernatural.

Any wonder why the postmodern left loves Islam and its rapist founder Mohammed?

“Extreme environmentalism is another form of belief system where the “god” is mother nature, the birds and the fish.”

If only God was mother nature! Environmentalism cannot be extreme enough. The problem is that environmentalists go in for politics, absorb other ideologies, thus abandoning their cause.

I spoke to one of the leading environmentalists in Verona after chernobyl. I soon found out he was not interested and was lookiing for politicals status.

“This thread is petering out. But I have nevertheless decided to make some comments on Mr. Gordon Bennet’s attack on me. So you will rest your case, will you? Well I have decided not to let it rest.” Felix 29th November 8.39 p.m.

Dear Felix. Please do continue to post here.

Gordon Bennett I am almost certain used to post under another name and was equally unpleasant. She or he specialises in deliberate misrepresentation of others views and delights in sophistry i order to show themself in as flattering a light as possible. My own brushes with this person led me to decide to ’step over’ these posts and not respond. There are in any case some exceptional people who do have something to write which even when one disagrees with it results in an exchange of views rather than hate mail.

Best Wishes.

Thanks Larkers.

My previous post was a bit dim-witted, all the same! Mother nature is a Romantic notion. Nature can be violent and cruel, like human nature that is distorted by the derailment of nature. The arts have been trying for centuries to work through the dialectic of reason and nature in order to reconcile them, even provocatively at times.

“My previous post was a bit dim-witted, all the same! Mother nature is a Romantic notion. Nature can be violent and cruel, like human nature that is distorted by the derailment of nature. The arts have been trying for centuries to work through the dialectic of reason and nature in order to reconcile them, even provocatively at times.” – Felix 8.52 p.m.

In light of your thoughtful observations you may be interested to view this –

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00p6tsd/Why_Beauty_Matters/

I find much to argue with Scruton’s views as expressed in this programme, but as I wrote above, intelligent criticism makes us think in turn. Philosophy or theology should never become a stick with which to beat others but a constant goad to ourselves.