Mustaqim - Musings of a flying Imam

Terrorising the laws of physics

2009-09-08T09:48:00.001+01:00

What do 9/11 and the liquid bomb plot have in common? They both replace reality with make-belief by seriously violating the laws of physics. And they represent a propaganda effort by today's war governments Joseph Goebbels would be proud of, thereby demonstrating that the masses in a democratic society can be easily fooled through the repeated use of media and are thus unable to make informed choices - dictatorship by consent.

Let's start with 9/11: According to the propaganda the heat of burning kerosene fuel from the aircraft which hit the high-rise buildings melted the steel reinforcements and made the steel/concrete structure collapse. This is an impossibility unless all the teachings of physics are going to be more radically revised than ever before: the hottest possible temperature of burning kerosene is 825°C, whilst steel starts melting at 1510°C. If burning kerosene melted steel or other metals (such as aluminium, with a lower melting point), airo engines would arrive liquidised before any jet plane ever made a safe landing. Even if the steel melted, the collapse of the building would have been gradual and not immediate; instead it simply disappeared into its own footprint with all the concrete being pulverised and none of the lower floors putting up resistance to the collapsing upper ones. According to the current state of the art of physics, this can only be achieved by a controlled demolition, and recent finds of thermite in the rubble support this claim. Yet, the myth wins over the facts.

Likewise with the liquid bomb plot for which three alleged Muslim terrorists have just been convicted of plotting mass murder in the sky. According to the official propaganda story, the key ingredient was hydrogen peroxide, readily available as hair bleach or medicated mouthwash, albeit at low concentrations. To buy it at the high concentrations needed for manufacturing an explosive would spark an immediate detection. But as the story goes, this was to be mixed with sulphuric acid and acetone (also known as nail polish remover) and smuggled in drinks bottles onto an aircraft together with detonators. Fantastic! Here's the physics of it: if you mix high-strength hydrogen peroxide with sulphuric acid it gets very hot, so you do get some kind of a mini explosion, or more likely a big splash. It would also soon melt through the plastic drinks bottle you were going to carry it in. To turn it into a potent explosive you still have to mix in the acetone, which has to be done at below zero temperatures, typically around -78°C, if you want an explosive you can ignite later. Now it does get very cold in the upper airways, but not inside the pressurised aircraft cabin. The very best our wannabe terrorist could achieve is to injure himself in the airplane's bathroom. The wild stories of ripping open the fuselage of the aircraft are pure imagination. By the way, airport security were not at all bothered about the potency of the liquids: On the day John Reid announced the discovery of the plot, they simply poured all liquids confiscated from the travelling public into one big container, and nothing went bang. Of course, the foul smell of sulphuric acid and acetone would immediately have revealed any harmful chemicals from amongst the gallons of harmful water and body shampoo taken of the unsuspecting public.

The stuff described makes for a nice chemical experiment with the potential to cause serious injury to the experimenter. It does not make a liquid explosive with the potential to blow a hole in an airliner, such as e.g. nitroglycerine. There are no ready-to-mix liquid explosive components out there, which detonate when mixed together, and any self-respecting chemical scientist knows that. All the whole saga tells us is that the teaching of physics and chemistry in American and British schools is very poor. And that the jury members were schooled in Britain.

Ramadan confusion

2009-08-22T16:20:00.002+01:00

It is satisfying that this year's Ramadan got off to an almost uniform start. With the exception of socialist Libya and secular Turkey, there were no countries this year who saw the moon long before it could even make an appearance or used calculated astronomical data whilst confusing the birth of the moon with the time when it might possibly be seen by the naked eye. Maybe the disquiet amongst rank and file Muslims about lack of unity and leadership has finally reached those declaring the start and end dates of Ramadan - we'll have to wait and see when it comes to the end of the month, of course.
Meanwhile, we can turn our attention to more detailed timing issues. Gone are the days when mosques turned to the experts (such as the Royal Observatory or the Met Office in the UK) to obtain their prayer times. A proliferation of online prayer time calculators means every mosque and association can now publish their own time table for Ramadan, and sadly they hardly ever agree with each other. One of the reasons is that you only get out what you put in, of course, and few mosque secretaries know how to handle the options when, for example, choosing between civil, nautical or astronomical twilight. For the observant Muslim following their timetable, this can make all the difference of starting to fast an hour earlier or later in the morning.
But the problem goes a little deeper. Most of the online prayer time calculators, such as at Islamicity.com, only go by the longitude and latitude of a geographical location, ignoring elevation data. Other, non-Muslim, sunrise and sunset calculators do the same, e.g. the world clock calculator at timeanddate.com, but at least they provide a disclaimer: "The times for sunrise and sunset are based on the ideal situation, where no hills or mountains obscure the view and the flat horizon is at the same altitude as the observer... on a high mountain with the horizon below the observer, the sunrise will be earlier and sunset later than listed." Some even state that the data are for guidance only and not fit for any particular purpose.
No such disclaimer is given with the online Muslim prayer calculators which, by definition, are meant to be for a particular purpose, namely to determine when to pray and when to fast. Yet, most only provide "flat" data without correction for altitude. Here is an example: Cranfield airport has a published sunrise on the first of Ramadan (22 August 2009) of 5:55 and a sunset of 20:15; because these figures are used for aeronautical purposes they are accurate and authoritative for the location. The prayer calculator at Islamicity.com returns a sunrise time of 5:58 and sunset time of 20:12, three minutes out at either end, because it assumes that this central England location is at sea level when its actual elevation is 358 feet. For higher level locations the error would be quite substantial.
There are prayer calculating programs which allow for the input of elevation data, such as the extremely useful DOS program written many years ago by Dr. Monzur Ahmed whose essay on the subject would be a useful primer for mosques wanting to publish their DIY timetables. Essentially, what is required in order to start and break the daily fast at the same time within the same location is exactly the same as what is required to have a uniform start and end date of Ramadan - education and leadership, or: a proper understanding of the issues involved coupled with the willingness by Muslim leaders to put their own self-interest aside for the benefit of wider unity.

When a terrorist is not a terrorist

2009-08-08T10:06:00.000+01:00

Thank goodness, British justice is consistent - unfair, unequal, but consistent. Prosecutors and judges make sure that the lines don't get blurred. Nowhere is this more important than when it comes to what defines who is with us and who is against us: terrorism is an exclusively Muslim hallmark, and it must stay this way.

Prosecutors and the bench at Glasgow Sheriff Court knew the distinction. There was a man before them who had threatened to blow up Glasgow Central mosque, called himself a "proud racist" and promised to execute one Muslim a day until all mosques in Scotland would be closed. A man with a problem, but definitely not a terrorist. To be a terrorist you have to confess Islam. MacGregor hates Islam and Muslims, and his patriotic choice is reflected in the leniency of his sentence. Three years probation provided he seeks occasional psychriatric help.

Contrast this with Isa Ibrahim, a disturbed convert to Islam, who was also a heroin addict and fancied to blow up Bristol shopping centre. He didn't have the capability and in his first experiment with explosives promptly injured himself. He was a lot more in need for psychriatric help than the proud racist MacGregor, but judges at Winchester Crown court knew that the moment he had converted to Islam he had crossed the line to becoming a terrorist and awarded him a life sentence. Ironically, it was his local mosque who reported him to the police, thus giving the media another frenzy to feed on about the dangerous Muslims in our midst.

Or take the "lyrical terrorist" Samina Malik. Her crime was to write poetry. She didn't plan or threaten to kill anybody. Her poetry was tasteless, but no more so than being a proud racist. At the Old Bailey, judges knew the difference, and gave her a nine months suspended jail sentence under terrorism legislation.

Take Peter Stephen Hill from Skipton in Yorkshire, a former territorial army soldier who had amassed a large amount of explosives. A risk analyst by trade, he knew he would not be branded a terrorist if found out. He was charged at Leeds Magistrates court under the "Explosive Substances Act 1883". By the time the matter was due in the Crown Court the prosecution withdrew from the case.

Or former British National Party candidate Robert Cottage from Lancashire who kept all kinds of chemicals for the purpose of making explosives in preparation of a civil war and who also wanted to shoot the then prime minister Tony Blair (many Brits did, but he meant it) - he also was charged only under laws relating to explosives. Sure, it's naughty wanting to take out the prime minister, but at least he had the right reasons. There was no doubt he wanted an Islamic State to emerge from the civil war he was preparing for. He was jailed for a mere two-and-a-half years and the media kept it all low key.

One could give many more examples. But more telling is that the terrorism charge is usually not brought to court but used as a blunt bludgeon to hit innocent Muslims with. Like the Pakistani students rounded up and expelled without evidence when an anti-terrorist police chief Bob Quick cocked up by showing an open dossier to press photographers. Or the Bengali Kalam brothers in East London who had there house raided and got seriously injured in the process, followed by a media smear campaign, all on the basis of unreliable police "intelligence". Or Barbar Ahmed, brutally assaulted by police and still fighting a US extradition warrant. Or the thousands of Muslims who get stopped and searched going about their ordinary daily business. And thousands of Muslims have been arrested and held under terrorism legislation to date only to be released without charge. The police would love to hold them all indefinitely.

You can say what you like about the British justice system. It may be antiquated, slow, expensive, inefficient. But the charge of ambiguity in distinguishing those who are with us from those who are against us cannot be levied against it: British injustice remains consistent.

Iran - lessons in democracy

2009-06-24T11:06:00.001+01:00

The streets of Tehran are quiet for the moment, not because the UN secretary general and US president Obama spoke openly in support of the Iranian people against the Iranian government, but because the Mousavi opposition realised that they were unable to back up those words with anything else.
Now, after the Iranian version of the Ukrainian orange revolution didn't succeed in bringing down a government that has long been an eye-sore to Israel, the United States and their followers, foremost Britain, it may be time for some comparisons.

First of all, if any administration can be said to be out of tune with public opinion, the US and UK must come amongst the first. Obama is still riding a wave of support, but only because his predecessor was so immensely unpopular. When actions won't follow his words, the honeymoon will soon be over. In the UK, during the recent local and European elections the party of the yet unelected British prime minister just about received 15% of the votes cast, with the turnout being around 35%, in other words, only just over 5% of those eligible to vote supported him. Hardly a strong position from which to lecture the world on democracy. In contrast, the turnout at Iran's presidential elections was around 80% and president Ahmedinejad secured 63% of the votes cast, so more than half the country supports him. I know, it's hard to believe, how can the Iranians support somebody we, the self-styled champions of democracy, don't like.

To put it all down to electoral fraud is ludicrous. Iran is not as advanced in pulling off the kind of scheme that saw George W. Bush junior elected against all the odds. They don't use electronic counting machines sponsored by the office holder. They still do a hand count, closely watched but numerous monitors. If the elections in Iran had been fraudulent, the figures would have been of the kind we regularly see from Egypt, that other "democratic" haven beloved by America. Instead, Iran has been very open about the results, and those published about Iranians casting their votes from abroad are most instructive. Whilst one would expect Iranians in Europe or Australia to vote for Mousavi, it comes as a surprise that he also carried the vote in such suspected Islamic strongholds as Islamabad, Quetta, Lahore or even Kabul. Even in Jerusalem Ahmedinejad, no matter how vociferously he champions the Palestinian cause, fared poorly amongst his compatriots. On the other hand, he has support in Saudi Arabia. No-one in their right mind, if tasked with engineering a result, could have come up with these figures. And the votes cast abroad would have been a lot easier to edit than those cast under the watchful eyes of monitors inside Iran.

The simple fact is that if Ahmedinejad only presided over a country made up of the capital Tehran and expatriate communities scattered around the world, he would have lost. But in Iran's hinterland he is immensely popular because, unlike Western prime ministers and presidents, he remains in touch with them and their aspirations. And like it or not, they are also deeply religious. It is true that the Iranian economy is doing just as badly as, let's say, the British. Inflation is rampant, because the Islamic reforms of the revolution never extended to the financial system and interest has never been abolished. The economy remains strongly in the hands of a few powerful family oligarchies, and there is a high level of corruption. But that corruption does not extend to the personage of the president who has an integrity that would make British MPs or the Italian prime minister Berlusconi blush in spite of their lack of shame generally. Ahmedinejad refuses to be caught by the trappings of high office, does not wear a suit nor live in a luxury home paid for by the tax payer. Nobody could accuse him of excesses of the kind which recently pushed British politics into a deep crisis.

The US and UK may not like Ahmedinejad and prefer Mousavi, but in doing so they cannot claim to speak for the Iranian people. Western governments have a long history of viewing the world through their tinted spectacles and committing severe blunders by failing to understand other cultures. They expected to be welcomed by Iraqis as liberators and thought the indiscriminate bombing of Pakistani villagers should create stability in the region. Shouldn't Obama be mourning those innocent lives lost before turning his attention to Iran? It is too early to prove whether US clandestine operations were behind the opposition protests in the first place, hoping to unseat the Iranian government after having lost the appetite for another war, although it is telling that the protesters always seem to have English placards to hand, as if they want to be seen by those outside rather than by their own people. Be that as it may, I still lay the blame for the heavy price Iranians paid in innocent lives during those unrests at the doorstep of Western governments and media for having hyped up the loser's hopes of getting the vote annulled.

One could now talk about the heavy-handed response of the Iranian security forces in dealing with what were not merely peaceful demonstrations but an attempt to bring down the elected government. Here, too, Western hypocrisy abounds. The death of "Neda" does the rounds of Youtube and Twitter because she was an innocent bystander caught up in the fray. But doesn't that equally apply to Ian Tomlinson whose death the Metropolitan police caused at the G20 summit? In response to that revelation British police arrested a dozen Pakistani students under pretended terrorist charges to divert attention. The charges were subsequently dropped, but the students told they would be deported anyway as a security risk, although they had done nothing wrong. I don't remember UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon offering similar advice to the British government as he did to the Iranians about use of force against civilians or a call for an immediate stop to politically motivated arrests.

What we have, in sum total, is another political blunder by Western governments and media, who by believing their own delusions and openly showing their cards and bias destroyed the goodwill extended to them by the Iranian government after Obama's election. I guess from here it's politics as usual.

Europe speaks Arabic

2009-06-09T13:22:00.000+01:00

A book under this title by Dr. V. Abdur Rahim deserves wider circulation as a potential bridge-builder. The book's key achievement is to popularise the subject of the influence of the Arabic language in those of Europe for lay readers. It is in no way as detailed and comprehensive as the most thorough work on the subject so far, the doctoral thesis by T.A Ismail entitled "Classic Arabic as the Ancestor of Indo-European Languages and Origin of Speech" which, sadly, will be hard to find even in the best stocked library. In that book, Ismail compares Classical Arabic with Latin and Old English and tries to establish a sequential relationship. Rahim makes no such claim. He is content with showing that Arabic, due to the great influence of Islam throughout European history, left its indelible mark. The book, published by Goodword (ISBN 978-81-7898-639-5) does not attempt to ascribe any kind of superiority to Arabic. And whilst well researched, it is not aimed at the linguist. Its stated intention is and understanding of "our common cultural heritage". In his preface the author gives ample credit to European achievements by saying that "in many cases Arabic provided the name and the raw material, and Europe developed it into a highly sophisticated finished product". He also cites numerous examples where European words of Arabic origin re-entered the Arabic language with a new meaning, for example the French "bougie d'allumage" or spark plug, which traces its history to the city of Bijayah in Algeria, famous for the candle-wax it exported.
Europe speaks Arabic makes reference to English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian as well as German, Dutch, Danish and Swedish, plus Russian, Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian and Greek and Albanian. Of course, many English readers are aware that Arabic has given them words for stars, mathematics, exotic foodstuffs, such as coffee, and seafaring, such as admiral, but they would be well surprised in learning that that most English location of Trafalgar Square takes its name from the Arabic al-taraf al-agharr, or that the exchequer takes his name from the chequered cloth covering the table on which the accounts were reckoned, and that in turn via Arabic from the Persian Shah, the title of the king in chess. The word subsequently denoted a monetary instrument (check/cheque) and was re-imported with this meaning into the Arabic language.
Some of the book's quotes of Shakespearean and other old English writings in support of the lineage of a word are an absolute delight. My only criticism is the way the author chose to present his subject. The artificially contrived dialogue between Ahmad and Eric, the former teaching the latter about the Arabic origins of English terms, a form very popular in Arabic language school books, strikes me as most unsuitable for a European audience. A straight-forward running narrative would have served the purpose better.

Does God do politics?

2009-05-05T10:31:00.002+01:00

Does God do Politics? This is, of course, a rhetorical question forming the subject of a debate I will be having with Prof. John White of the Institute of Education, a secularist for whom God does not exist, and Peter Hitchens of the Daily Mail, who believes in God but accepts the fallacy that secularism can provide a neutral playing field for both believers and non-believers. The debate has been organised by the dialoguewithislam.org for Thursday 21st May at Ebrahim Community College, 80 Greenfield Road (rear of East London Mosque), London E1 1EJ, and is chaired by al-Jazeera news presenter Hamish MacDonald. Kick-off is at 6.30 pm.

Purpose of the debate, followed by questions from the floor, is to explore both the way politicians use religion as well as the way adherents of religion use politics. The key question is not merely whether God exists or interferes in human affairs, but rather to what extent the believes of those who either affirm or deny his existence should have the right for the public engagement to be governed by those believes. When it comes to peaceful coexistence, will a secular framework provide a more tolerant environment or a religious one. Does the degree of tolerance differ between religions? Should there be limits to what can be tolerated? Is the separation of religious practice and public life workable or even desirable? If man becomes the sovereign instead of God, will inevitably abuse his power?

The two ex-leaders, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, both headed secular states yet repeatedly made references to God whom they claimed to have on their side. At the same time Bishops are criticised when they comment on social and political issues, and Islam is seen as a radical threat to Western liberal values. How can it be explained that exponents of the secular establishment appeal to religious sentiments whilst adherents of religions are told not to allow their faith to colour or govern their politics? Is the rift between the church and science a purely Western phenomenon that blinds Europe and America when dealing with the contribution religion has to make towards the progress of society? Or is the animosity against Islam a natural response from a secular elite seeing its power base threatened after having wrestled it at high cost from the Christian churches? Has liberalism become illiberal the moment it took the reigns of power?

Expect a lively debate. Advance tickets are available for £2 at dialoguewithislam.org; tickets at the door are £3.

Police policy of criminalising dissent

2009-04-25T15:10:00.004+01:00

"That's what the police do", commented former Flying Squad chief John O'Connor to the BBC who picked up a report by the Guardian that Strathclyde police were paying informers considerable sums to act as moles within protest movements. Similar contacts were often made with individuals in protest groups and in the criminal world, he observed.

That last remark is the crucial part of the statement. It betrays the mindset of the police forces in the UK which produced such shocking results as the killing of an innocent news vendor and the beating of a demonstrating lady: the police place protesters within the criminal world. The transgressions by the police, recently looked at by a select committee in parliament, are not the excesses of rogue individuals, they are a matter of policy.

Notwithstanding the oft-repeated mantra of freedom of speech and the democratic right of protest, managing protest in today's subtle police state is about ensuring by all means, fair or foul, that it remains at the periphery, invisible and inaudible, incapable of interrupting business as usual. The justification is usual the need to maintain public order. However, in reality the ends appear to justify the means, and the ends are not merely public safety. Ultimately, it is about power and remaining in charge.

The revelations that have come to light with secret tape recordings of Strathclyde police officers trying to recruit new informers raise serious questions about the nature of policing and the already frail trust between the police and the public. The blunder of police chief Bob Quick aside, where the arrests of eleven Pakistani Muslims under terror legislation merely an attempt to shift the focus of public scrutiny away from the methods the police used against protesters during the G20 summit and the question of whether their tactics were governed by a desire to protect the powerful from the voice of the people rather than to protect the people from harm? Those arrested were subsequently released without charge, as is usually the case with most people held for prolonged periods of time under terrorism legislation. On the assumption of "innocent unless proven Muslim" it was, however, suggested, that they should be deported anyway.

This is also the fate destined for Barbar Ahmed who is imprisoned in the UK on the basis of a US extradition request. He was brutally assaulted by police in his own home, sustaining multiple severe injuries, and mocked about his religion, then released without charge. When he complained to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC - which might as well stand for Indemnify the Police against Criminal Conduct), the carried out a whitewash investigation and found that there was no case to answer for the police. However, during the private proceedings his lawyers initiated, the police eventually admitted culpability.

Even more damning than the revelation that the police are actively recruiting activitsts to spy for them on legitimate protesters is the admission by a police officer on one of the tapes that "we work with lots of people from terrorist organisations right through to whatever". Maybe the "conspiracy theory" that there was police collusion during the 7/7 bombings are not so far-fetched after all. Some of the alleged suspects were well known to the police and the alleged mastermind, Haroon Aswat, was previously an informer for British intelligence. Was he also paid tens of thousands of pounds, the sums available according to the Guardian tape, in order to organise a few naive Muslims with rucksacks to travel down to London whilst intelligence experts did the rest, including letting him ecape and covering his tracks?

At the same time as these revelations about police tactics a report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary finds that police are failing to tackle the rising thread of criminal gangs in England and Wales. This report was kept secret until it was forced out by a Freedom of Information request by the Times. So whilst the police focus on those exercising their right to protest and on Pakistani students hyped up as terrorists for political convenience, the public are at the mercy of an increasing number of organised crime networks unchecked by police interference. Likewise, motorists are increasingly criminalised through revenue-generating speed enforcement action, whilst officers shy away from confronting the violence of drug and people traffickers and armed gangs.

If the Home Office Select Committee is serious about restoring public confidence in the police, their enquiries need to go a lot deeper than simple asking why officers were allowed to cover up their identity numbers, a practice commonly found in those police states our self-righteous government frequently moralises about. They would need to address the whole can of worms of the illicit relationship between policing and power politics. And it goes without saying that they need to scrap the farcical "Independent" Police Complaints Commission and replace it with a body representing the interest of the people, equipped with powers of enforcing policy changes.

Scottish Islam - does it exist?

2009-04-11T19:47:00.001+01:00

A few months ago I took a new Scottish Muslim convert to the mosque in Dumfries for Friday prayers. The address before prayer was entirely in Urdu, except for a few incoherent English words thrown in whilst glancing at the unexpected white faces in the small crowd, never as much as even half a sentence though, making the content completely incomprehensible for the non-Urdu speaker. Having said that, understanding Urdu did not help much either, since the subject matter was almost completely irrelevant to living in Britain. This was followed by a brief sermon in "Arabic", made up only of standard phrases commonly used as a framework for this purpose over the centuries and fleshed out with nothing else. The experience felt very foreign and, except for the compulsory nature of attendance at Friday prayers, a complete waste of time.

Having visited again over Easter I suggested we try Glasgow Central Mosque instead who could not possibly be as backwards as this. We were in for a major surprise. The experience was not only foreign, but completely outlandish. Sure enough, the purpose-built mosque has all the modern fittings and is kept meticulously clean. Nonetheless, we wished afterwards we hadn't made the journey. The service started with an address in Urdu, as if that was the lingua franca of Scotland. Part of this was then translated into English, none of which contained any references to the lives the attending worshippers live in Britain. Then followed a run-of-the-mill Arabic sermon read from a script which, whilst coined in flowery poetic language, made no reference whatsoever to current affairs or the situation of Muslims locally or anywhere else in the world. It was what followed after the prayer, however, that made the event memorable.

During prayer a couple of babies could be heard crying from the sisters' gallery at the back. Of course, nobody likes to hear children cry, but they do. I find it infinitely more bearable than the various musical tunes emanating from mobile phones during prayer at most mosques around the world. But for the Imam it was just too much. After completing the prayers he made an announcement that it was an outrage for women to bring children to the mosque and let them cry in order to disturb the brothers' prayers. I am told this wasn't the first time such an announcement was made. But for the first time there was an unexpected response: instead of bashfully dropping their heads and feeling guilty for having come to the mosque, one of the sisters made her way right through the crowd of male worshippers leaving the mosque in order to question the Imam on his wisdom. Imported Imams, even the younger ones, do not like their perceived authority undermined, and she was eventually persuaded to leave the men's prayer hall. Together with an entourage of other women and their male relatives, who had since caught up with them, she made her way to the Imam's office, demanding to speak to him and challenge him on having so publicly insulted the mothers of the crying children without first bothering to establish what might have happened to cause the little ones to cry. After all, mothers don't delight in their children's tears. Nor would they mind if the mosque's concern for their children extended to providing creche facilities, which would immediately solve the problem.

Outside the Imam's office the mosque administration sprang into action. It would not be possible to speak to the Imam. He was too important to be summoned, you would have to go to him. She tried, she said. No, not her, a man would have to speak to him on her behalf, it was not acceptable for a woman to speak to him. Just like in Pakistan, said another young woman, and hastily added for not wanting to be perceived as racist that she was of Pakistani origin herself. Then why don't you go back to Pakistan retorted a bouncer guarding the Imam's office, looking not much over twenty in age. I suggested he join the BNP, they love young Asians arguing their case.

Much of what was said during the continuing discussions made me wonder whether time had stood still for this insular mosque over the past few decades. Islam may have made progress in Britain and Muslims may have come of age with regard to facing up to the modern world, but all this must have happened outside the mosque. The saddest thing was that the mosque did not try to preserve some pristine version of ancient Islam but a distorted form of Pakistani male chauvinism dressed up as religion. In spite of being turban-clad they did not follow the example of the prophet Muhammad, peace be with him, in any respect. Numerous authentic reports about his actions and words (Ahadith) indicate that he displayed a caring attitude towards both children and women, which was betrayed by those who thought to take his place in defining Islam in Glasgow. He prolonged his prostration because one of his grandsons had climbed onto his back. At his mosque in Madinah men formed the first row and women the back row, with children placed in the middle, so they did attend. It was reported that any slave girl of Madinah could take him by his hand to ask him about any concern of hers and he would not move on until her request was fulfilled. And what about the old woman who got up in the middle of a public meeting to challenge the caliph Umar for wanting to restrict the amount of dowry given for marriage. She did not send her husband or brother to have a quiet word with the ruler of the Muslims, she confronted him in public with her understanding of the Qur'an, and he immediately conceded at having made an error of judgment. No such humility in the Glasgow Imam - his staff eventually suggested a later appointment could be made, one woman only, accompanied by a man through whom she would speak.

In his admonition to the attending mothers he had also misinterpreted the Hadith that the prophet had shortened congregational prayer on account of a child crying. According to the Imam and a Pakistani scholar he quoted the child had not been at the mosque but at a nearby home and the prophet had shortened the prayer to allow the mother to return home early. Should I suppose it was customary in those barbaric days to leave little children alone at home whilst going to the mosque to pray? And what about the prophet's advice to bear in mind when leading prayer that there are weak, ill and old people in the congregation, how should we twist this message to get rid of the nuisance of children?

Maybe we should bar women altogether from attending mosques, although there is a Hadith forbidding this. And also bar the ill and the disabled. And young people. And anybody with their own opinion. And non-Urdu speakers. To leave only old first-generation Pakistani men. That way Islam will have a bright future undisturbed by dissenting voices or crying children. And it will grow firm roots in Scotland and last forever. Or maybe we should give up on the mosques and take our Islam elsewhere. Both, of course, would negatively affect the size of the mosque donations after Friday prayers, a problem the Imam and his protective team still need to resolve somehow before they can pray in peace.

Challenging Darwinism: Interview with Harun Yahya

2009-03-10T14:39:00.004Z

Known to millions of readers under the pen name of Harun Yahya, the success of Turkish writer Adnan Oktar has a simple recipe for success: explain Islam in simple scientific terms coupled with high-quality presentation. His key topic has been to prove that Darwin’s theory of evolution is seriously flawed. In his magnificently crafted Atlas of Creation he takes on the evolutionist at their own game, the fossil record. At the time of the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s “On the origin of species” which soon became European dogma Oktar is the chief antagonist of the evolutionists. In their fight against revealed religion with its firm belief in a Creator they tried to discredit religion as unscientific for too long. Now he has turned the tables. Oktar's writings did not just earn him the praise of readers all over the world, they also lead to a vicious campaign of vilification against him, especially in Turkey, a nation state proud to be secular and having shaken off the burden of the Islamic caliphate - on the behest of the then European powers, one might add. The Darwin anniversary coincides with the 20th anniversary of the Rushdie affair in the UK, also intended to make religion look bad, and the only serious rebuttal ever published, Islamic Party leader David Pidcock's "Satanic Voices Ancient and Modern" has a whole chapter on how Turkey was carved up by the masonic Dönme Young Turk movement of Salonica, as well as exposing the character assassination tactics of Satanic Purses and the monetary fraud of Satanic Purses. By taking on the evolutionist ideology of the secularists, Adnan Oktar automatically entered politics. In this exclusive interview Dr. Sahib Mustaqim Bleher asks him about his views on evolution, secularism, religion, politics and the future of Turkey as well as the wider Muslim world.

Sahib Mustaqim Bleher: Given the bicentenary celebrations of Darwin, let me first of all ask you about the theory of evolution by natural selection which you describe as more of a sinister dogma than a mere theory: What do you think are its political objectives?

ADNAN OKTAR: If a theory that is claimed to be scientific, despite having been disproved by all branches of science with hundreds of pieces of scientific evidence, is determinedly imposed on people across the world and kept on its feet despite reason and science, then this is obviously something that does not concern scientists alone. Even when I was still in high school I realized that all this bloodshed, world wars, the ruthless exploitation of people and revolutions could not all have happened spontaneously, and that there had to be a cause behind them. Because human beings cannot become that heartless on their own. They cannot be neighbours having good relations one day and then start slaughtering one another the next. As I researched the question I saw that all these troubles were organized by freemasonry and that Darwinism was the religion of freemasonry.

There is no materialism without Darwinism, and no communism, fascism, savage capitalism or terror without materialism. But Muslims are in general unable to see that. They see that they are up against a terrible scourge, but they do not look into the cause behind it. The fact is that Muslims have been attacked from behind, but they can only see straight in front of them. What lies behind these events? What lies behind such strife and evil? They do not look to see that. Why do people attack religious commandments, Islam? They do not investigate that. They just say “It stems from irreligiousness, from lack of faith” and leave it at that. But they do not ask why those people have turned out like this. When one looks, one is confronted by just one thing – the superstitious religion of Darwinism. So long as the false religion survives they remain loyal to it. The invalidity of that religion must first be proved. What I am doing is to explain to people that this terrible corruption, this terrible lie, is all a deliberate ruse.

Muslims have to date been unable to imagine the cunning power and influence of Darwinism. No Islamic scholar has ever waged the kind of struggle against Darwinism that I am, that we are. They have either written a few lines on the subject in their works or else not have mentioned it at all. They have never made a statement on the subject. I regard this as a blessing, thanks be to Allah. I regard the way that Allah has given this duty to my colleagues and me as a blessing.

Sahib Mustaqim Bleher: Why do you think a public debate between evolutionists and creationists, which can be observed in the United States of America, is mostly absent in Europe?

ADNAN OKTAR: There is a one-sided imposition of Darwinism across the world. Around 95% of states officially protect Darwinism and impose the theory of evolution. They seek to impose this false theory with an unbelievable shamelessness and audacity, even though it is obviously false and a lie and even though we have proved that to be the case. This is a disgrace, anti-democratic and something against human rights. There are 100 million fossils in existence, for instance. All of these hundred million fossils all prove creation. But one is forbidden to say that. It is forbidden to say that proteins cannot come into being by chance. There are no transitional fossils, but one is forbidden to say so or to describe the false nature of the skulls concerned. So what about freedom of thought and freedom of expression? This means the imposition of a false idea and a lie. That only happens in dictatorships. That means there is a Darwinist dictatorship. Europe has been crushed under the feet of that dictatorship for some 150 years. Look, there is even pressure on the Vatican; that much is obvious. The Pope has to give the impression he supports evolution. How terrible this is. But Europe has now begun to be enlightened, insha’Allah. The earth moved when my Atlas of Creation arrived in Europe, and there is now a huge change of mind taking place. You can see that belief in Creation is growing stronger by the day in Britain and many people, teachers included, say that Creation should be taught in schools. Surveys in Denmark, Sweden and France show that people are no longer being taken in by Darwinism, and this is all major progress. Insha’Allah that progress will pick up even more pace in the future and the Darwinist dictatorship will be eliminated entirely.

Sahib Mustaqim Bleher: Another European dogma, often taken to extremes in Turkey, is the separation of religion and politics. In your writings and interviews both religion and politics seem to go hand in hand. What is, in your opinion, the proper role of religion in politics?

ADNAN OKTAR: Belief in Allah and religious moral values are great blessings, great comforts. But Darwinists and materialists have sought to deprive the people of Europe of these blessings, though that tyranny is now coming to an end, insha’Allah. It is a great guarantee and blessing for a political leader to have spiritual values and to love and fear Allah. But one must not, of course, seek to use religious values for political ends. The public do not want that and will spurn anyone who tries to do that.

Some people in Europe misinterpret laicism. They imagine that laicism means atheism and suggest it is a shield to protect their own atheism. Some fail to comprehend the Muslim view of laicism, and that is where the problem stems from. Laicism is a comfort for Muslims, too. There is no hypocrisy where there is laicism, and that is a great blessing. People openly express their ideas. If someone is an atheist he says he is an atheist, honestly and openly. Hypocrisy flourishes where there is no laicism, which is when people with no faith say they are religious, and even very devout, misleading the people around them like an actor playing a role. And who wants that? It is very ugly. The following point is also very important, humanity has in any case learned about laicism, democracy and freedom of ideas from Islam, and these values lie at the heart of Islam. Democratic thought, plurality and laicism also prevail in the Qur’an. In other words, members of other faiths have recognized freedoms, there is love, affection and compassion, freedom of thought for them. There is the concept of republic. The peace of the public and their security is essential. These are all to be found in the faith. For that reason, giving the idea that religion conflicts with science or politics is a tactic used by freemasons and materialists, and true Muslims must thwart it.

Sahib Mustaqim Bleher: You have come under repeated attacks within Turkey. Recently the Turkish prime minister was welcomed back as a hero by Muslims for walking out of Davos in protest of European support for Israel after its attack on Gaza. Likewise, the success of your books both inside and outside Turkey shows that Muslims want to debate and defeat materialist dogma. Which way do you think the pendulum will swing in Turkey and what sort of timescale are we talking about?

ADNAN OKTAR: I was first detained when I wrote my book Judaism and Freemasonry. I was held in solitary confinement for 9 months and then for 10 months in a ward full of seriously deranged patients in a mental hospital for saying, during a press statement, “I am from the Turkish people, from the nation of Islam.” I was held with 300 mental patients in an old, run-down stone building left over from the time of Sultan Abdulhamid. These were the most seriously deranged patients, unfit to stand trial, who constantly attacked one another and were generally covered in blood. They were unable to meet even their most basic needs, and the place stank to death. Seven killings took place during my time there. They killed each other with food trays. I was not allowed visits from my friends, nor even allowed to talk to the nurses, doctors or interns. After keeping me there for 10 months the military hospital then issued a report saying I was healthy in mind and body. I do not go into too much detail, but it was a tough environment. Yet for me it was a very excellent and honourable time, insha’Allah.

After that there was an endless series of attacks. But after each one, as a blessing, Allah increased the efficacy of my work many times over, and my circle kept expanding. For example, my time in the mental hospital was when the number of my friends grew most of all. There has been huge progress in Turkey over the last 30 years. The Turkish nation has always been devoted to national values and religious faith; but there has been a huge rise in consciousness and awareness over the last 30 years. A very moderate but powerful conception of Islam has settled in the country. The public’s devotion has increased many times over. Belief in Darwinism has declined so far as to be almost non-existent. Turkey is the country with the lowest level of belief in Darwinism anywhere in the world. A bright future now awaits Turkey, insha’Allah.

Turkey will play the role of older brother, leader to the Turkish-Islamic world and ensure their protection. It will ensure the salvation of all Muslims by establishing the Turkish-Islamic Union. The West supports Turkey assuming such a role, and it is excitedly anticipated by the Muslim world. That expectation has become even sharper after the event at Davos. The people of the Middle East are openly saying they want to see Turkey as leader. When you look at the Caucasus and ask them who they want to be the leader, they unanimously say Turkey. All Muslim societies, in Africa, the Far East or the Balkans, regard Turkey with love and respect. This excellent progress will further speed up in the future and the Turkish-Islamic world will enter a golden age like the Age of Happiness.

Sahib Mustaqim Bleher: You have proposed the formation of a Turkish Islamic Union. Do you see a Turkish Islamic Union as a stepping stone to the re-establishment of some kind of caliphate or do you envisage a different model of global political Islam?

ADNAN OKTAR: It is important for Muslims to gather around a spiritual leader, rather than a caliphate in particular. It is unlawful for Muslims not be united and act as one. In other words, in the eyes of the Qur’an it is obligatory for Muslims to act as one, be brothers as one and gather round a single leader. But they do not do that. The door to all kinds of scourge will remain open so long as they do not do that. Muslims must fulfil this obligation. I say this so that the Turkish-Islamic Union will be established under Turkish leadership, under the leadership of the Turkish nation. Every state will remain as a separate nation state. It can behave freely in domestic matters, but they need to have a spiritual leader at their head. That is because Christians have a Pope, they have a leader. It is essential that Muslims also have a leader. If that union has a leader, then all this strife and chaos can easily come to an end. In that event, if even the hair of Muslims’ heads somewhere is hurt, the incident will be stopped at once because all Muslims will act in concert. But if they are fragmented, if they act in a manner leaving them open to a policy of ‘divide, fragment, swallow’, then it is of course easily to swallow up small morsels. But it is impossible to swallow up the Muslim world as a whole block. Muslims must fulfil this obligation at once.

Sahib Mustaqim Bleher: Do you think the nation state as we know it will have much future? If not, what short-, medium- and long-term alternatives you can see?

ADNAN OKTAR: There will be a period when states will maintain their own existence and alliances will be formed. In the Turkish-Islamic Union, for example, all states will maintain their own existence. Muslim states that maintain their integral natures will come together to form one spirit, a spiritual union, a union of love. It is a question of Muslims gathering under one roof. The age we are living in is the age of Hazrat Mahdi (as). It is the age of the coming of the Prophet Isa’/Jesus (as). By Allah’s leave, the Muslim world will soon be in union, and will form a union that covers the world. The coming of Hazrat Mahdi (as) will take place. It is the time when Isa’ (as), son of Maryam, will return. This is clear from the verses of the Qur’an. These are absolutely certain in Sunni belief, in the Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki and Shafi’i schools. Nobody denies them, no imam from any school has ever denied them and all of them accepted. In the same way, the coming of the Prophet ‘Isa (as) is a certainty in Shiite belief. And that of Hazrat Mahdi (as). All the portents of this holy good news have come true. There are some 300 portents of the coming of Hazrat Mahdi (as) and the Prophet ‘Isa (as), and they have all happened. We will all live together, insha’Allah, Alawites, Sunnis, Jafaris and everyone. And Hazrat Mahdi (as) will lead the Muslim world, insha’Allah. There will be a century of joy and happiness. Islamic moral values will enjoy a glorious world dominion. Christianity will be cleaned of polytheism and assume a purified state. It will amalgamate with Islam and the Qur’an. It will be an excellent outcome for Christianity, and Islam, and the world. The prayer of the Prophet ‘Isa (as) has been heeded. He asked to be one from the community of our Prophet (saas). When he returns to Earth, he will be one from the community of the Prophet Muhammad (saas).

Sahib Mustaqim Bleher: You referred to the current global financial crisis as a sign of the End Times. Do you see this crisis predominantly as monetary or economic in nature, and does the solution lie in monetary reform or in economic measures? Will or should there be a return to protectionism and does this herald the end of globalisation?

ADNAN OKTAR: This is no ordinary economic crisis, but a major event described as happening in the End Times. Our Prophet (saas) has stated in the hadith that such an economic crisis will take place before the appearance of Hazrat Mahdi (as). I can give a couple of examples of these hadith:

Before the coming of the Mahdi, TRADE AND ROADS between nations will be cut, and strife among people will grow. (Al-Qawl al-Mukhtasar fi Alamat al-Mahdi al- Muntadhar, p. 39)
STAGNATION IN THE MARKETS, AND A DECREASE IN EARNINGS... (Portents of Doomsday, p. 148)
Everyone COMPLAINING OF LOW EARNINGS... The rich being respected for their money... (Portents of Doomsday, p. 146)
Business being stagnant. Everyone will complain ‘I cannot sell, buy or earn anything.’ (Portents of Doomsday, p. 152)

This economic crisis is metaphysical. All the economists, scientists, industrialists, investors and everyone in the world are trying to stop it, but they cannot and will not. It will bring the whole system down with it. It began in 2007, and by 2014 it will swallow up almost all countries and materialist systems, and the leaders of those systems will be impoverished and humbled. Shortages will grow as a result. That means nobody will be able to show off because of his wealth and possessions, or be stubborn and arrogant. Like Qarun, Allah will bring all these systems down. The story of Qarun in the Qur’an is happening now in the End Times. All the treasure of Qarun is collapsing now, in other words. The Qur’an says that Qarun’s treasure was very famous and extensive. It says his might and economic strength was very great. The economic strength of those other people was also very great. But they have now entered the age of famine described in Surah Yusuf. And that famine will last for 7 years, and they will undergo great changes during that time and come to know the Qur’an and the moral values of Islam. Their salvation lies in the Turkish-Islamic Union, insha’Allah.

Allah has already brought that system down across the world and everyone has begun having to renounce the interest system. They will have to abandon it, because this economic crisis of the End Times is a great miracle of the age of Hazrat Mahdi (as). It is a marvel of the age of Hazrat Mahdi (as). And it will overturn all banking systems, all banking systems based on interest. Only in the Turkish-Islamic world will unity, togetherness, health and economic well-being remain, apart from which they will all collapse.

Sahib Mustaqim Bleher: In your book on Freemasonry you describe how it gave birth to humanism and attempted to undermine and subvert the Christian religion. Do you think the Muslim religion has been subject to similar degeneration by Freemasonry or other secret societies?

ADNAN OKTAR: The apathy of some Muslims today, the disunity in the Muslim world, the insensitivity of some Arab leaders toward the spilling of Muslim blood in Palestine and the Middle East, the way that some Muslims regard the intellectual struggle against Darwinism as unimportant and the way they engage in no activity on the subject are all the result of masonic activity. That they are almost afraid even to speak of Turkish-Islamic union is also the work of the masons. All of them are beyond that, but the heads of state of many Islamic countries are under the control of atheist Zionists by way of the masons. For example, the president is a freemason, the prime minister is a freemason and ministers are freemasons.

That is the case in several Islamic countries, excluding Turkey. They are very careful when it comes to division, maintaining fragmentation and avoiding union. The leaders of several Islamic countries are on their guard so that a Turkish-Islamic Union should not be established. They say this is the thing to be avoided most of all. And they do indeed strongly avoid it. The fragmentation of Islamic countries, the way they are all divided, is the greatest weapon in the hands of freemasonry. The masons regard them as a horde of ants, and imagine it can easily crush them with its tanks as they have no single leader. They have struck them right in the jugular vein. They have laid hands on their most important weapon. They say that when they strike against one Islamic country that country will be left to its own devices and nobody will come to its support. Because they are testing this out. They are shedding rivers of blood in Palestine, and there is not a squeak of protest from most Islamic countries.

Look, children and the like are crying out for help in Palestine, but Egypt has closed its border and refuses to allow aid convoys in. How is one to explain that? We cannot just sit back and watch if children are being killed. We cannot sit back and say, “But what if they kill us, too.’ Fear is a corruption of the End Times, a scourge of many Muslims: ‘But what if I am imprisoned, or beaten up, or insulted, or slandered or killed?’ My brother, then you will earn the appropriate merit. Is not your aim in life Allah’s approval? Most Islamic countries are in this needless state of fear. They have experienced great suffering. But Allah would not have inflicted that suffering on them had they been rational and courageous. Strength comes from Allah. None other than Allah has strength. Allah hands out fear and afflictions. Allah sends afflictions to the cowardly. But Allah protects the brave. Muslims have a duty to be brave.

Sahib Mustaqim Bleher: You frequently quote Said Nursi. To what extend is your own activism and method influenced by the educational movement he founded?

ADNAN OKTAR: My family is a classic Turkish family. In my last years at high school I saw how there was anarchy in Turkey and how some Muslims were being badly oppressed. That made me really uneasy. I developed a strong urge to save and protect Muslims. I began studying and investigating during that time. I was greatly influenced by Imam Rabbani. I read the Letters of Rabbani, an excellent work written in a very sincere style. I read Imam al-Ghazali’s Spiritual Exercises. I was greatly influenced by that, too. But I was especially influenced by the works of Said Nursi. He was the greatest scholar of this century, a very worthy human being. In my view, he is the greatest scholar of the last 1,000 years. I love him dearly. He is an extraordinary person. I do not think his true worth has yet been fully understood. He is a very metaphysical person; whatever he said came true. I really like his very holy Risale-i Nur Collection. I think it is very valuable. It contains great secrets and profound wisdom, and is written in a very sincere style. I recommend it to everyone. It is a superb book.

Lessons learned from Gaza

2009-01-19T14:46:00.001Z

After a halt (or pause) in the carnage wrought by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) on the helpless people of Gaza (essentially a large open prison camp completely unprotected against the onslaught by the Israeli military hardware (paid for by the West), it is time for an initial assessment of what has happened. A number of pertinent conclusions arise:

1. The IDF is NOT invincible. In spite of being armed to the teeth with the latest technology, Israel did not achieve its only stated war objective of stopping the firing of rockets from the Gaza strip into Northern Israel. It's withdrawal after three weeks of continued bombardment and losing more than a dozen soldiers to the comparatively unarmed Gazan population rising in the defence of its territory is Israel's second major defeat in as many years. The war against Lebanon two years ago was also unsuccessful in its declared objective of returning two captured IDF soldiers. Nor has the political and military structure of either Hamas or Hizbullah been destroyed, leaving nothing but widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure and heavy losses in civilian lives as the end result of those two military operations.

2. Israel cannot be trusted. In desperation at having lost its myth of invincibility she might try to strike at anyone to justify her continued existence. The possession of a huge nuclear arsenal makes such a pariah state highly dangerous.

3. Terrorism has been provided with official sanction: Since Israel has justified (state) terrorism and the indiscriminate killing and wounding of defenceless men, women and children as long as some kind of greater military objective is being pursued, the argument for not involving civilians in political and military conflicts has ultimately been lost. Any group with whatever perceived greater objective can now cite the Israeli attacks against Lebanon and Gaza as justification for causing widespread damage amongst civilians. Having thus changed the rules of engagement might still come to haunt both Israel and her Western allies.

4. There are no Islamic states or governments in the world. Any state wanting to be called Islamic would have intervened to liberate Gaza from the destruction brought upon it by Israel. Historically and under international war such intervention would have been justified in the face of Israeli war crimes. Numerous Arab and other Muslim nations have large standing armies (e.g. Turkey has at least a million soldiers in active service at any one time) and expensive military hardware; the case that they are powerless against Israel can, therefore, not be made, particularly given the inability of Israel to even win a war initiated by herself against peoples without a standing army (Lebanon and Gaza). Nor can the moral case of Israel merely defending her borders and "right to exist" be made any more after the indiscriminate targetting of civilians. Given that the majority of citizens all across the world objected to and abhorred the Israeli war crimes, the regimes imposed upon Muslim nations do not represent their people.

5. Western governments are more answerable to Israel than to their own people who voiced clear objection to the war against Gaza, hence the myth of democracy has once more been exposed as a farce. Foremost amongst those are the United States of America whose new president Obama has been discredited even before taking office by trying to cleverly not be drawn on the issue. In America the right to wrestle power back from from an unrepresentative and oppressive state by popular uprising is enshrined in the constitution, and similar notions exist in most other Western nation states. That the people, permanently enslaved by debt financing, will ever renegotiate the social contract is, however, highly questionable both in the West and in the Muslim world.

6. The UN is utterly useless. Its buildings and institutions can be attacked with impunity.

7. If there ever was a right for Israel to exist on land appropriated from other people without their consent, this right has now been eternally forfeited.

8. The current rulers of the world - Israel, the US and their subordinates amongst the nations - are more likely to be defeated by the outcome of their own arrogance and false sense of invincibility than an external conqueror. It is a rule of history that all empires will come to an end. Western economies are already imploding and Western armies are overstretched in unwinnable wars. The targetting of a perceived weak enemy, as in the case of Gaza, is a sign of increasing desparation heralding the quickening of this inevitable end.

P.S. I expect to be inundated with outraged, emotional and defamatory comments. They do not detract from the factuality of the above.

The shoe bombers

2008-12-28T12:44:00.001Z

Don't talk to me about Islamic terrorism no more. A few years back American "Neocons" in the Bush administration with blind loyalty only to the illegitimate terrorist state of Israel led us into an illegal invasion of Iraq under the pretense of weapons of mass destruction. Last year, Israel tried to bomb Lebanon back into the dark ages whilst our very own middle east "peace envoy" Tony Blair called for a cease fire to be postponed in the hope that Israel could finish the job. Thankfully, the Israeli army had to settle for a defeat, although the Lebanese civilians paid a heavy price for it. So this year they went for a more downsized enemy to show their muscle and sent their Christmas peace message into Gaza, for many years the largest open air prison camp on earth. For all those who hailed Obama as the new saviour, I didn't hear a pip squeak of protest from him. A Bush spokesman, predictably, blamed the victims who had it coming to them and merely called for Hamas to show restraint. One might think scores of Israeli civilians had died. So this is the shape of things to come in the climate of the engineered witch hunt against Muslim terrorists. What Israels "Christian" supporters forget is that the chosen people do not see them as equals either. Israel is like the kid in an American school shooting teachers and fellow pupils for not having given him full marks in the last examination. Israel will not stop until the world acknowledges that global rule is rightfully hers. Meanwhile all the Muslims around the world can do is to throw shoes. Please, don't talk to me about terrorism no more.

Islamic Party calls for boycott of Lloyds TSB

2008-11-19T05:32:00.000Z

Press release:

Not having had the courtesy of a reply after an initial letter of protest to Lloyds TSB, the Islamic Party of Britain is calling for a boycott of both Lloyds TSB and the Islamic Bank of Britain, after Lloyds instructed the Islamic Bank of Britain to withdraw all banking facilities to Interpal, a charity providing much needed assistance to Palestinians suffering under occupation.

"We never understood the so-called Islamic Banking initiatives to be anything but a branding exercise", said Dr Sahib Mustaqim Bleher, general secretary of the Islamic Party of Britain, "but this inappropriate and undemocratic political interference by Lloyds makes it clear who calls the shots". Muslims account holders of either Lloyds or the Islamic Bank of Britain, especially business customers, are urged to move their banking elsewhere or at least communicate to the bank that they may intend to do so. Organisations who have spoken out to support Interpal against this undeserved interference are asked to add their voice to this call for a boycott.

"Talk is cheap", said Bleher. "Muslims should realise their strength and vote with their feet. If we act in concert, there are enough Muslim account holders, given the financial crisis, to turn Lloyds into the next casualty of the banking sector - where they belong if they think they can abuse their power to target our community. If we fail to act, we no longer deserve to be listened to."

Obama: by his friends you shall know him

2008-11-07T11:53:00.000Z

With the initial euphoria of the election of the first "black" president of the United States of America slowly subsiding, it is time to take a good look at the colour of Obama's politics rather than skin. It quickly becomes apparent then that there won't be much change after all. Early on in his campaign, Barack Obama gave a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) indicating his unwavering support for Israel. His selection of staff and advisers confirms that he is not going back on his word.

Obama's campaign manager was David Axelrod, an American Jew from Manhattan, who will be rewarded with the post of Chief White House advisor. As Chief of Staff, Obama selected Rahm Israel Emanuel, who also holds Israeli citizenship and served as a volunteer in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). John Podesta, also Jewish, heads the new president's transition team. Likely candidates for treasury secretary are Lawrence (Larry) Summers, Timothy Franz Geithner, and Paul Volcker, all Jewish. John Kerry, whose parents converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism, might become Secretary of State. An exception with regard to kosher credentials might be former CIA director Robert Gates, who could be invited to stay on as defence secretary - not much change in Iraq or Afghanistan then. James (Jim) Steinberg, likely to become National Security Advisor, is part of the tribe again, as is another contender for this post, Dennis Ross, who was Clinton's Middle East Envoy. The few expected black appointments will be safe choices, such as Susan Rice, potential Ambassador to the UN, a former protege of the infamous Madeleine Albright.

So colour really doesn't matter all that much. Those who hope that the Bush administration's unconditional support for Israeli aggression might change with Obama will be in for a nasty surprise. Of course, McCain wouldn't have been any different. And just for the record: Given that only about three percent of the American population are Jewish, their heavy concentration in the corridors of power is, of course, purely coincidental!

The end of Islam as we know it

2008-09-30T17:56:00.002+01:00

The fasting month of Ramadan has come to an end and, along with other Muslims, I should be celebrating. But as every year, at least in Europe, the celebratory spirit is dampened by the confusion as to when it is time to stop fasting and when the day of Eid celebrations begins. Islam follows the lunar calendar in which months can be 29 or 30 days long. Traditionally, if the moon was not sighted physically with the naked eye, thirty days had to be completed. Thus, one could never be quite sure when important occasions, such as the start of end of fasting, would begin, until the evening before. Whilst adding to the excitement of key Islamic events throughout the year, this "unpredictability" is not very welcome in the modern industrial society where everything wants to be planned.

There is the added problem that the lunar cycle will not be the same for every place on earth, yet information travels instantly. It would be quite wrong, if relying on moon sightings, for Muslims on one side of the globe to start the month at the same time as those on the opposite side, but this is what often happens due to telephone and satellite TV communications. As a consequence, some countries have started to fix the calender rather than relying on moon sightings.

One such country is Saudi Arabia, the British-enthroned dynasty currently ruling over the two holy places of Makkah and Madinah. However, since the self-styled custodians of the holy places wish to be seen as strict adherents of traditional Islam, they are not honest about having fixed their dates in advance and pretend each year, that somebody has actually seen the moon. Since, when fixing the dates somebody must have confused the day the new moon is born with the day the nascent crescent can be seen, those Saudi moon sightings have consistently been too early and often at a time when it was physically as impossible to see the moon as it would be to watch the sun rise at midnight. This year, for example, the moon set well before sunrise on the day Saudi moon sighting reports after sunrise were announced.

Sadly, Muslims the world over have bought into the branding of Saudi Arabia as the custodians of the holy places and safeguards of traditional Islam, and thus follow them blindly. Many, of course, also go with where the money is, given that Saudi petrol dollars have paid for many a mosque around the world, strings attached, of course. A closer look at the political reality or a visit to US army bases in Saudi Arabia would quickly present a different picture: that of Saudi-America, the occupier of the holy places and instigator of distortion and corruption of the religion of Islam.

This corruption of traditional Islam goes a lot further than merely lying about the moon. It involves the banning of all Muslim cultural and poetic expressions as innovations, reducing Islam to a set of heartless rules Taliban-style, it includes fuelling the "clash of civilisations" between Islam and the West, and it features the subversion of Islam through so-called Islamic banking ventures in which forbidden interest and usury are renamed in order to make them palatable to an unsuspecting Muslim populace. In addition to halal banking, regulated by the Bank of England to which those banks guarantee to charge at least the base rate of interest, we now also have, regulated by the Financial Services Authority, halal mortgages at higher rates than from high street lenders and halal insurance products, with many such enterprises being run as side-lines by non-Muslim commercial banks or insurances paying a so-called Shariah Board to issue them with a certification of compliance with Islamic law.

Critical voices are few and have no forum, since all the major Muslim events and media are by now sponsored by one or the other bank or insurance company. Being a Muslim today simply means paying a little more for your mortgage, banking and insurance needs in order to placate your conscience, eating pre-stunned "halal" meat and poultry, buying Islamic designer wear and fashion goods and keeping out of politics lest you are accused of terrorist sympathis. And whilst new editions of the Qur'an with all references to Jihad removed would not be received with much accolade by Muslims for whom at least the Arabic text of the scripture is sacred, much of the same is achieved by new interpretations which reduce Jihad to a mere struggle against the evil inclinations of one's own sole.

Forget about the liberation of Palestine or the resistance in Iraq, the moderate modern Muslim keeps his faith private and obeys his government. Hence Hazel Blears, the secretary of state for Communities and Local Goverment, announced the British governments intention to set up a Muslim theology board in order to promote a "peaceful form of British Islam". Maybe, like the Sharia boards of the banks, they can turn the illegal occupation of Iraq and the British intervention in Afghanistan (and soon Pakistan) into a religious virtue for Muslims. And maybe they will have the authority to excommunicate unrepentant critics of this new form of Islam, like myself. So I better do celebrate the fact that for now I can still live Islam without first requiring a government certificate to practice, never mind what day the month will actually start.

How long will bankers keep fooling us?

2008-09-26T10:50:00.000+01:00

Here is a typical example of half-truths and disinformation: This morning John Humphreys of Radio 4's Today programme asked his listeners whether they were baffled about the current financial crisis and wanted to know where all the money was and who got it. Together with his "expert" interviewee he then proceeded to confound them further. John Kay, author of "The truth about the markets" wasn't telling the truth at all. When asked by Humphreys why the banks, if they had lots of money but weren't willing to lend it, would need more money from the treasury, he explained that they had assets, but those assets were in IOU's from ordinary people and these were no longer trusted, hence the banks would want to swap those for trusted IOU's from the US government. Humphreys interjection that not all personal loans would default and did not people pay back their loans with real money and were not the properties against which they were secured still worth something, if not as much as last year, was met by the most laughable suggestion from Kay that in this case the American government could eventually even make a profit by bailing out the banks. Finally Humphreys wanted quoted an email from a listener stating that the banks would not put the new money from the government into circulation but use it to improve their balance sheets, to which Kay replied that their capital had been depleted due to past bad practices and needed to be improved in order for them to be able to put further money into circulation.

All this raises more questions than it answers. The simple truth is that almost all money in circulation, far from being "real money", to use Humphreys term, comes into existence as a debt. In what is known as fractional reserve banking, banks create credit, in other words, invent money which they then lend, backed only by a small ratio of assets, these assets in turn mostly not being gold, silver or commodities but entitlements to repayments from debtors. For example, a bank would lend to an individual a hundred pounds of non-existing money based on having a single pound of real assets; those hundred pounds of outstanding debt would then be declared an asset of the bank on the basis of which it then can lend another thousand, and so on. The current crisis, therefore, is not down to bad management but inherent in the system of debt-based finance. Governments have long since abdicated the right to issue money into circulation and given that right to private banks from whom they themselves then borrow back. In other words, governments have been privatised a long time ago.

What makes the situation so hard to understand for most people is that they have trusted their governments and economists for so long and put their faith into a fraudulent system, which makes it hard to now accept that we were all fooled into pledging our real wealth, e.g. properties, in exchange for phony money, and then put in real sweat and labour in order to pay it back plus the penalty of interest. To unravel the mysteries, here are some questions that should really be asked, although economists will avoid them at all costs:

If banks were justified in charging interest on loans they make because they allegedly took some risk, why should they now not also pay the price of having assessed those risks incorrectly? Why should the tax payer fund the result of their commercial incompetence? If a private individual invests into a business venture which returns losses, the government does not reimburse them, so why are the banks as commercial enterprises different in this respect?

If the government or treasury has so much money to inject into the banks in order to help them survive, why - at the same time - is the government borrowing money from those very banks? After all, there isn't a government in the world which does not have a national debt or so-called public borrowing requirement. Does the money the government will give to the banks reduce their debt? If it instead increases the indebtedness of the government, where does the government borrow that extra money from, seeing the banks are currently short of cash?

Given that governments represent or manage the wealth of their respective countries and people, and given that all governments are in debt, who are these fabulous individuals who own more than all the countries of the world put together in order to lend to those governments who are all in debt? And where did they get those vast sums from? Who sold them the earth and with what authority?

If governments need to give money to the banks so that the banks can put that money into circulation to prevent a deepening of the financial crisis due to lack of available funds, why does not the government simply put the money into circulation itself through development projects? Why should the government need to give the money to a bank who might not put it into circulation as intended? And why should that bank profit from government and tax payers money? Shouldn't those profits rather go back to the tax payer?

What happened to the theory of free markets if we now privatise profits and nationalise losses? If the banks' assets (outstanding debt commitments) are no longer worth as much as they were, shouldn't the banks have to bear that loss since they took profits for many years when those same assets were overvalued?

The questions could continue, and the only honest answer would be that we have been conned. This would finally lead to demands for accountable government and thorough monetary reform. Instead, we are more likely going to get plenty more of the misleading explanations put forward by "experts" such as Kay. The question of who is really in charge, the governments or the bankers, is not one they would like us ask, since we might then want to wrestle that power back off them.

Trumping up the charges

2008-09-09T08:46:00.002+01:00

"Three men have been found guilty of a massive terrorist conspiracy to murder involving home-made bombs." This is how the BBC leads its article on the recent conviction of three British Muslims for to murder persons unknown. Most other news outlets carried similar hype, with only a few providing a more balanced picture of the outcome of the trial. In truth, the headline should have read: "There never was a conspiracy to blow up airliners with liquid explosives." Whilst the government is gloating at having secured convictions of sorts, the fact is that it's whole story of a plot on account of which every traveller in Europe had to surrender drinks at airport check-ins and carry toiletries in a clear plastic bag has been exposed as fiction.

This does not come as a surprise, since to carry liquid explosives disguised as drinks onto an aircraft in order to blow it up is a chemical impossibility as it would require laboratory conditions at sub-zero temperatures on board. The government knew this all along and in the first days of introducing new airport security measures drinks were simply spilled into large containers, proving that they were not considered dangerous at all even when mixed. The aim had always been to scare the public in order to justify greater control over them; the then home secretary John Reid also wanted to score political points, albeit unsuccessful.

The men charged and convicted had been stupid enough to plan staging an action in which detonating explosives was threatened in order to stage a political protest. The fact is that they never made any explosives whatsoever. All of them pleaded guilty to causing a public nuisance. The three who were convicted of conspiracy to murder were not convicted on evidence but because they had also pleaded guilty to this charge. None of those eight men before the courts who had not pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder were convicted of that charge. There is generally a lot of pressure put on defendants to plead guilty in order to receive a lesser sentence. In the case of terrorist suspects this pressure is often exacerbated by the very real threat of extradition to the United States and the prospect of death row. Faced with stark choices like this, the young suspects often give in.

There is no doubt that the trials were politically motivated, and as such they are a major setback in not achieving their intended outcome. Not long ago a research student at Nottingham university was investigated and held in custody for possessing al-Qaedah material he had downloaded from a US government website. On the other hand, in the 1990's leftist bookshops were awash with books calling for a "class war" and the execution of judges and murder of police officers. Although these were brought to the attention of the police, these were never banned and charges against their authors, never mind anybody having bought or read them, were never brought. As usual, the UK justice system does not care so much what you do, but who you are.

The only decent thing to do for the government now would be to ease the grotesque security measures at airports and allow travellers to take their drinks on and personal toiletries on board without the unwarranted harassment.

Islam and the Political (book review)

2008-08-06T16:10:00.000+01:00

Couched heavily in academic jargon this book probably benefits those the least who need it the most: political activists. Nonetheless, Amr G.E. Sabet (and his publishers Pluto Press) must be congratulated for providing us with a first comprehensive attempt at conceptualising Islamic politics and political Islam, for, as he rightly observes, "[t]he absence of a relevant methodological framework ... manifests a condition of dependency on the donor civilization's epochal formations and definitions of reality." Thus "[r]einstating the dynamics of Islamic history ...largely hinges upon the dialectics of the past, present, and future creating a new consensus or a confirmation of who Muslims are, what they want to be, and how they want to be. These queries constitute structural and existential concerns over identity which must be addressed if Muslims are to confront their perceived disenchanted condition."

Sabet demarcates the relationship with the West through a "self-referential" circular political theory of Islam and reclaims, courageously, Islam's right to universal truth at the expense of all other alleged truisms: "That which makes claims to truth, and defines its source from outside of history, cannot relinquish its rights to both justice and universality without forsaking its own essence." He is scathing about "opportunity hoarders" in the Muslim world doing the bidding for secular hegemonial power and has no respect for Islamic pretentions by Muslim-majority states failing to apply Islam consistently. About the attempt of the Turkish ruling party to graft Islamic values onto a secular stem he comments that "employing all the political skills that served to bring the AKP to power may turn out to have been the easy part." And as for the Hijaz and the Arabs: "Saudi Arabia ... is neither "fundamentalist" nor Islamic ... [its policy] essentially served to render Israel the real and sole regional power." and: "when for instance Arabs complain about the atrocities that Israel commits against the Palestinians, frequently the retort is that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Falling into the discoursive trap, Arabs fret trying to prove that Israel is not a democratic state, as if democracy is the issue, instead of citing it as an example of the organic bond between democracy, on the one hand, and power and colonial discourses on the other... One should be aware, therefore, of strategic deceptions of the kind incorporated in concepts, labels, or mechanisms such as terrorism, democracy, freedom, equality, and others yet to come."

As can be seen from this quote already, he does not shirk away from calling a spade a spade when it comes to Western concepts everybody seems to these days feel compelled to subscribe to, and quite rightly describes "human rights" as a mere discourse of power behind which is hidden the ongoing attempt of making secularism dominant whilst "it may still be too early to talk about a "post-colonial" phase." "In its essential characteristics, secularism is irreligious, and therefore anti-Islamic. By extension, so is liberal democracy... Labeling an individual or group as being democratic or undemocratic in many ways becomes the secular equivalent to the religious affirmation of faith or of excommunication. The "non-democrat" becomes essentially the "non-believer" whose life and property is fair game... In confronting the Western discourse, Islam can only shape reality rather than adapt to it. If it is to do so, Islam will definitely have to be re-politicized and restored to its true essence as a political religion capable of overcoming historical conditions."

Sabet looks at the "Umma" with a viewpoint to the international order in which it exists. "The crisis that the Muslim world faces thus extends beyond the issue of the legitimacy of regimes to that of the legitimacy of the state structure itself." "No longer is the state simply a means to power and wealth from the inside shielded by sovereignty from the outside - which some may call corruption - but a structure of "durable inequality" of which the former predicament is but one source." Of course, Western liberalism, especially after the collapse of Communism, also tries to re-arrange international relations, and Sabet does not miss the fact that a lot of Western rhetoric contains subterfuge as well as hypocrisy: "To the great power society such transformation [of the state] will mean more integration and unity in the style of the European Union (EU) or the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, Mexico, and the US, or the consolidation of power and hgemonic influence of the Jewish state of Israel over its neighbors... For the Muslim world, in contradistinction, the same discourse regarding the state translates into "humanitarian intervention", "minority rights", and "right to secession" or self-determination, among other supposedly lofty yet practically fragmentary principles." Thus he observes that "as globalization is being universalized as a system of durable inequality, it becomes clear that human rights is nothing more than the ideological underpinning of such a global order."

Has Sabet pondered about the post-modern phase which appears to bear out the self-destructive propensity of the liberal-secular project? He rather sees it as an exercise in justification: "In its discursive and Orwellian double-talk, post-modernity simply represents the latest attempt at universalizing Western values in the guise of modest self-denial or "unmaking"." "Marxism, which had plausibly been presented as a "form of religion" ... has provided for the visible repressive and dominative elements of secularism which, while concomitantly serving the rational interests of its Liberal counterpart, allowed the latter to plead innocence. With Marxism's collapse, liberalism has been faced with the task of having to do the job itself. And since it is not equipped by its very logic to manifestly claim universal truths, post-modernity reflects the latest took in the liberal-democratic secular arsenal to universalize itself while still pleading innocence... Post-modernity, in effect, constitutes nothing more than the appropriated euphemism for (pseudo) nihilism in the same fashion that reason constituted the appropriated euphemism for Western passion."

So does the author have the answer to the problems faced by a disenfranchised Muslim Umma? Throughout the book he claims he does by citing the example of the Iranian Revolution and advocating that a leadership vacuum could be filled by Iran as having successfully defined a new concept of an Islamic state in the process. In fact, he goes as far as saying "I propose Iran for Islamic world leadership." In support of this stance he argues that "It is more than a coincidence that the only time and place where Israel has been forced to withdraw unconditionally [in the Lebanon] ...is where the Iranian revolution has been relatively successfully exported."

It appears, that the author is somewhat blinded by wishing a success which has not been sustained. There is no denying the important, even catalytic, effects of the Iranian revolution, however, whether it has provided effective leadership is doubtful. It could be claimed that in fact it failed to effectively communicate its vision to its following and did rely too heavily on charismatic leadership. This is less a criticism of the Islamic revolution in Iran than an assessment of reality. The Islamic Party of Britain, for example, which I co-founded, suffered from the very same failings. What Sabet misses entirely is how even leadership is today mediated by the rhetoric of mass media image making, largely successful because of the anonymous nature of society in which traditional means of leadership selection have been eroded.

When Sabet cites that B.H. Liddel Hart "emphasized the crucial importance of conception as a guiding principle in peace and/or conflict. He understood the fact that distracting the mind and expectations of opponents deprives them of their freedom of action as a sequel to their loss of freedom of conception... Fighting becomes secondary or redundant as opponents lose their sense of self-representation and consequently change their purpose, consciously or otherwise." In this he is entirely correct, but it seems he fails to perceive the detrimental effects such intellectual warfare can have even on the attempted rebellion against and recovery from it.

However, there is another omission, much more grave: Sabet restricts his analysis to matters social and political. In his criticism of the Moroccan writer Muhammad Abed al-Jabri's book "The Arab Political Mind" he tells us that the latter "...identified three key organic determinants which he believed to have constituted the basic components of a pre-modern Islamic historical superstructural order: The tribe (collectivity); the spoils (economics); and the faith (Islam)." That the societal order is a three-legged stool is also clear from the description of the Pharaonic system in the Qur'an of being represented by "Qarun, Haman, and Fir'aun" - representing the economic, the intellectual and the collective respectively. Sabet has eloquently addressed issues of conceptualisation, indoctrination, (media) rhetoric, ideology (Haman) and political power and domination (Fir'aun/Pharaoh), but a state or entity having only appropriated those two aspects without being in charge of its own economy (Haman) will still fall.

The sad observation that actual interest rates in Iran currently are at around 36% is probably the most striking indication that the Islamic revolution in Iran was ultimately not a success since economic injustice prevents and violates political and social justice. This is not a Shia-Sunni issue, and the author is correct that such "mazhab" issues must be overcome; Sudan is a Sunni example where both the education system (Haman) and the political system (Fir'aun) were reformed, but the IMF remained in the driving seat regarding the economy, turning the political success ultimately into a false hope and betrayed sacrifice by the people. Unless the monetary system underlying the economic organisation is seriously addressed, "durable equality" persists, and any talk of Islamic State or Islamic Revolution remains a mere marketing ploy, hence it seems appropriate to refer to a quote from Ignacio Ramonet the author cites in his book: "Marketing has become so sophisticated that it aims to sell not just a brand name or social sign, but an identity. It's all based on the principle that having is being." Whether Western companies sell halal banking, halal mortgages, and now even halal car insurance to profiteer from the "modern and moderate Muslim" whose image they create, or whether political regimes try to stay in power by internally dressing up as an Islamic state allegedly combatting the West whilst externally submitting and conforming to the global financial elites, the difference is only one of scale. As Sabet rightly observes: "Once the religious regime is securely situated in power, and especially after the inevitable demise of charismatic leadership, it will eventually attempt to institutionalize and preserve the status quo. The revolutionary regime will adopt a conservative attitude and will not be inclined to change." Thus the success of Hizbullah in the Lebanon may not be so much due to having imported the Islamic Revolution, as the author asserts, but due to the fact that it operates outside the constraints of its own state structure.

"Islam and the Political" is an important starting point in addressing issues long overdue. Its serious limitations, however, give rise to the not unfounded fear that Muslims will continue to be overtaken by world events rather than begin to shape their own destiny.

Amr G.E. Sabet's book Islam and the Political - Theory, Governance and International Relations was published as a paperback (309 pages) by Pluto Press in 2008.

Corrupting communities

2008-06-27T14:55:00.001+01:00

Councils up and down the country are given substantial sums of money by central government to combat "Islamic extremism". The more Muslims a local council has, the more money it gets, suggesting that extremism must be something inherent in being Muslim and therefore increases proportional to their numbers. Cash-strapped councils will welcome the much needed cash, but of course they will also need to justify it and produce results. To show that they are proactive in combatting extremism, we can expect to see examples of extremism turning up where they never existed before.

It is not only local authorities who can be expected to engage in creative accounting. Some of the money (only some, a big junk is expected to cover the council's "administrative" expenses) will have to be given to Muslim groups or individuals. These, too, must prove that they can deliver the goods. What better way to do so then to denounce rival groups or unpopular individuals as being extremist?

All this has undertones of Stalinism. Schoolbook history is misleading about the "collapse" of the Soviet Republics. Capitalism and Communism have always been two sides of the same coin and both favour strong central governments. Effectively, communism was bought out and simply moved West since it is probably more convenient to bribe people into giving up their liberties than having to threaten and bully them. Where the carrot does not work, Western governments also have the stick, like the right to declare exclusion zones or holding people without charge, all in the name of fighting terrorism or extremism.

What both systems need to stay in power, however, is surveillance. Corrupt governments do not trust their subjects and need to keep an eye on them. Britain is leading the way in camera surveillance. Other countries in the ever enlarging European Union (run like the Soviet Union by unelected commissioners) lead the way in gathering and retaining computer-processable information about their citizens, recently complemented by biometrics. Yet, making sense of information is difficult from a distance, hence the desire to recruit informers. MI5 have been given a lot more resources as well to recruit from amongst Muslims, but the government is probably right in assuming that individuals would hesitate to join, or cooperate with the Secret Service, whereas they would quite happily compromise a little if offered a share in the money for a new community project and become, unwittingly, citizen informers. This method isn't new either. Files for East Germany after re-unification showed that there was a dossier almost on every citizen and almost everybody was informing on everybody else. It is doubtful that much of this information was very reliable, and a great deal of it was probably offered in order to settle old scores, to gain an advantage or due to holding a grudge. What better way, for example, to get custody for one's children in a divorce case than portraying the opposing party as a Muslim extremist likely to radicalise the children?

One thing seems apparent. The less money a government has to spend on education, healthcare or basic infrastructure, the more money it is likely to throw at ways and means to combat any potential disenchantment with and protest against the level of services provided. Those who happily agreed to an erosion of freedom in order to be protected from Islamic extremism will soon find out that those measures were really intended for them, not the extremists. There is something seriously wrong with a political system where a front bencher in parliament such as David Davis has to resign to draw attention to the overbearing control exercised by government. And it doesn't matter which party gains power in an election. As with capitalism and communism, they too are two sides of the same coin.

The demise of secular dogma

2008-06-08T10:57:00.003+01:00

"These people are so scared of public opinion they are willing to set in stone the right to ignore it. Freedom requires the governing elite to be held to account. They must be getting very worried if they are enacting such dictatorial powers for themselves." Thus comments Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party, on the European Parliaments attempts to prevent Euro-sceptic members from organising themselves and rightly calls the EU mindset arrogant and anti-democratic. What he fails to perceive in his criticism, however, is that this arrogance and intolerance was not invented by European bureaucrats or even Communist commissars before them. This arrogance is a key feature of secular dogma of which Muslims have been at the receiving end for decades due to practising and holding on to their beliefs more tightly than those who still call themselves Christians.

In Germany and France "enlightenment" sinks to the depth of judging a Muslim woman on the basis of whether she wears a piece of cloth on her head or not and denying her access to education or public office if she does. The showcase of secularism, however, is Turkey, where European powers conspired through the Masonic and crypto-Jewish Young Turk movement to unseat the Muslim caliphate and outlaw religious interference in politics. The movers behind the European super-state are as weary of Turkey as they are of the Euro-sceptics amongst their midst; neither can be trusted because of the "public opinion" factor. Euro-sceptics in many European countries are calling for the people to have a say through referendums on a proposed European constitution, common foreign policy, or joint armed forces, and whenever the people were given a democratic chance to voice their opinion they clearly rejected what their masters in Brussels had in mind for them. Hence, if the people are not mature enough to agree to what the unelected European Commission proposes, they must be denied the right to express their views altogether. In European double-speak this is called democracy in action.

In Turkey, likewise, the people never abandoned Islam and it keeps making a come-back. Over and over again those wanting to reform the fundamentalist secularism of Turkey into a proper democracy where Muslims, after all constituting the majority of the population, also can have their aspirations realised, are being outlawed. Whenever a party with Islamic leanings obtains a majority and enters government, the courts and the military try to declare it illegal and in violation of the secular constitution. In addition, they jail politicians who do not agree with them for their opinions. The Turkish constitutional court has just overturned a law passed by parliament which would have allowed Muslim girls to enter university wearing a scarf, and there is talk once more of banning the ruling AK party which only a year ago had won such a strong mandate during elections that European governments must be rightly worried, since their own popular support is forever diminishing.

In a similar show of desperation the secularists have passed a 3-year jail sentence on Adnan Oktar, known around the globe under his pen name Harun Yayha, for dearing to successfully demolish Darwin's theory of evolution as well as exposing Freemasonry. Likewise, European countries regularly jail "revisionists" who dear wanting to subject some of the "founding myths of Israeli politics" (Roger Garaudy), which tirelessly propagated through the official version of the "Jewish Holocaust", to a measure of scientific scrutiny. The "freedom of speech" argument regularly used when it comes to the right to insult what Muslims hold sacred (e.g. when defending Rushdie's or a Danish cartoonist's right to insult, see response in Satanic Voices Ancient and Modern), is conveniently forgotten whenever secular fundamentalist dogma is being attacked. After all, it is the nature of dogma that it must not be questioned. History, however, teaches us that a false dogma cannot be upheld by legislation and court sanctions. Ordaining the earth to be flat and punishing any expression of doubt that it might not be still does not make it so. This is why our rulers are "scared", as Farage put it. They know they are fighting a losing battle, for the truth will out.

The terrorist attack that never was

2008-05-24T11:09:00.001+01:00

Convictions for terrorist offences in the UK are on the up, apparently showing that the increased resourcing for anti-terrorist police and the heightened security measures at airports are working. In reality, however, each and every one of the alleged terrorists convicted in a UK court has been someone who might have contemplated or dreamt about doing something, possessed intellectual material (usually freely available on the internet) of use to somebody contemplating a terrorist attack, or would have been capable of doing some damage if only they had the means. The latest conviction of a "Muslim terrorist" threatening to "blow up Bluewater shopping centre in Exeter" is a prime example of this madness.

This is the case of a prisoner who, whilst in prison and therefore unable to move freely, never mind to organise a major crime (to state otherwise would imply that UK prisons are unsafe hotbeds of criminality), made a threat in anger to blow up a shopping centre with three limousines packed full of explosives. When a prison officer told him that the shopping centre he was talking about was actually not in Exeter but in Kent, he retorted he hadn't finalised his plans yet. There is nothing new about prisoners getting frustrated and angry, nor about them making wild threats in order to attract attention. To take such nonsense serious, however, exposes the immature emotionality and hysteria by which the current anti-terrorism effort is characterised.

Of course, stupid threats like that, which in the past would have earned a "watch your mouth or you'll go down the block (prison segregation unit)" from a prison officer, is welcome nourishment for politicians and media keen to cash in on the ever-present Orwellian terror threat lurking at every corner. "Is Exeter now a hotbed of Islamic terrorism?" was one of the headlines in the UK media, since another man with a history of mental illness injured only himself by trying to set off some incendiary devices in Exeter. When a former BNP political candidate and his friend in Lancashire were charged under the "Explosive Substances Act 1883" (not the Terrorism Act 2000!) for having amassed the largest chemical explosive haul ever found in a private house in the country, together with rocket launchers and a chemical protection suit, the national media had to be pushed to even mention the story (after it was first reported on Mathaba.net). The two right-wing extremists had serious plans of causing major damage, they weren't just dreaming about it or writing poetry (like the "lyrical terrorist" Muslim lady recently convicted under UK terrorism legislation), but to their credit, they were white and could not be described as having Islamic tendencies.

Consequently, the public remains uninformed about any real danger whilst willingly giving up privacy and freedom in the face of a hyped up alleged Muslim terror threat so serious that travellers have to endure long queues at airports and surrender tweezers and knitting needles (you can pick up metal cutlery after check-out at the restaurants in the departure lounge!), put their toiletries into clear plastic bags and discard any bottled water or other drinks they might have brought along. None of these measures are going to make anybody even an iota safer than they were before, but they provide a lucrative income to security contractors and support to governments wanting to control their citizens, monitor their movements, lock up opponents indefinitely without charge and without having to deal with defence lawyers, and stifle any meaningful political discussion. Welcome to the free world! On the other hand, in the much maligned third world, allegedly run by dictators restricting any kind of freedom, I can take my tweezers and bottled water onto the plane. I can then fly to a major European airport and from their transit to another European airport without being subjected to the harassment passengers boarding at that very same airport have to endure. It all makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

Minority government

2008-05-02T11:47:00.001+01:00

The results of local council elections in England and Wales proved a great disappointment for the ruling Labour party, in fact they were their worst results for over 40 years, pushing the party into third place behind the Conservatives and Liberals. Labour's policies have been unpopular for a long time, and as they have been in power for over a decade the blame cannot be laid at anybody else's doorstep. Effectively, Britain now has a minority government, a government that does not represent the will of the people, which is supported by very few people amongst the electorate, but which is nonetheless able to drive through unpopular policies due to an overwhelming majority in parliament.
Political commentators have mainly focused on whether Labour's election losses mean that the Conservatives stand a chance of winning the next general election. Nobody seems to bother that these elections are proof positive that parliamentary democracy is not working as a means of expressing the will of the people. The people of Britain have had a minority government for a long time, not only did the government take power on the basis of substantially less than half the votes cast, but considering that only just over a third of the eligible population actually went to the ballot box, only one fifth to one quarter of the country ever supported the government they got. The reason so few people exercise their vote is not that they couldn't care less who governs them, but that they understand only too well that there is no real alternative on offer. Whoever gets elected will carry through the same unpopular policies dictated by the banks and large corporations. If people were permitted to place a vote of no confidence in a serving politician or to decide on policy issues, the turnout would increase immensely. This is why governments stay clear of referendums, knowing all too well that their policies are out of tune with the electorate.
What is needed is a wholesale review of the role of government. Government used to be the servant of the people, but its function now has become to manage the people on behalf of vested interests. The "Nanny state", as it was labelled when Labour first came to power, interferes in every minute detail of its citizens' lives to the degree that many have begun comparing modern Britain to the former East European states. New Labour never abandoned "socialism", they simply got rid of its caring and social pretensions.
It would not be far-fetched to claim that increasing security legislation, whilst purporting to combat an alleged ever-present terror threat, is actually designed to put in place means to control an increasingly dissatisfied population who are finding it more and more difficult to cope under the high-tax, low-yield economic climate threatening to destroy their livelihoods. As the 19th century history Lord Acton put it: "The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks". Today's governments are brought to and kept in power in order to prevent, or at least, delay this battle from being fought. The will of the people has been reduced to "one man one vote" but without a say in the affairs of state - or even his own affairs most of the time. The latest election results clearly show "democracy at work".

Historic detachment (Fes centenary)

2008-04-06T13:26:00.002+01:00

Fes, the oldest medieval town still in existence, is celebrating its 12th centenary. The highlight of the festivities - otherwise most noticed by added decorations to the anyway stunningly beautiful centre of the new town, billboards and posters, and series of lectures - was an open air stage show of folkloristic art comprised mainly of dance and music. With the exception of some terraced seating facing the stage, which was reserved for dignitaries, the event at Bab Boujloud, one of the gateways to the old Madinah of Fes, was free admission for all. In retrospect this may not have been such a good idea.

The visual effects were superb with live recording of the stage alternating with scenic photography on a large display screen, complimented by a separate but corresponding imagery cast across the whole width of the old city walls. The choreography, too, was well crafted, and as a cultural show the presentation was of high quality, even if the attempted marriage of old and new, West and East appeared forced and artificial at times, for example in the mixing of Spanish Flamenco with a form of tap dance from the desert in an apparent imitation of Flatley's River Dance. Yet, the best description available for this celebration of Moroccan culture and history is probably that of detachment.

Whilst it didn't help that the inadequate supply of loudspeakers made it difficult to listen attentively, the crowd present was anyway not interested in doing so. The show was staged for them - and of course the cameras, resulting in glowing accolades in the national media no doubt -, it did not involve them, however, and there was no real interaction between those on the stage and those watching them on the big screen. A ticketed event with a modest entrance fee would have been more appropriate, accompanied by smaller in situ events engaging local communities. As it happened, the people of Fes who attended expected a party atmosphere and soon got tired of the constant flow of folklore. From the very start they couldn't be bothered listening to the introductory remarks of the organisers or even the Royal visitor, crown prince Molay Rachid. They preferred talking, laughing, shouting, whistling, and on the whole would have been better placed at a football match. Football is big in today's Morocco, culture is not.

There were only two numbers which really caught on with the crowd: the performance of a local rap band and the absolutely magnificent fireworks which beat those staged at New Year in most European cities. The fireworks provided an ecstatic finale without which the whole show would have been flat, the rap music was a marker of how modernity has pushed heritage aside in today's Morocco, drowning centuries of cultural treasure in monotonous beats. The intention had been to celebrate the history of Fes and Morocco and portray Morocco as at ease with its past and the present, bridging the conflicts between competing cultures and values. Whilst there is some truth in this latter observation, the dominant impression, viewed from amongst the mass of spectators, not the media or the specially invited guests, is of a country having become detached from both its history and its culture, of a people starting to loose their soul, and of a Moroccan populace no longer at ease with, nor appreciative of, its own foundations. 1200 years on, the living Fes is becoming a museum for tourists and surrendering its claim to being the spiritual and cultural capital of the Maghreb.

Detached from present-day reality, the festivities were a celebration of the past without offering a path to the future. Vast sums have been spent in this and other events where, so the official tag line, "Moroccans celebrate their history". More accurately, Moroccans are having their history celebrated for them and thus find that it no longer speaks to them. Reducing a people's past to song and dance is ultimately shallow. What about their writers, their scholars, their poets, their craftsmen, their fighters, their heroes? What about the stake the ordinary citizen has in the society inherited from earlier generations? With incoming investments and tourism resulting in the rapid rise of property and other prices their own country is fast becoming out of reach for the locals. Unemployment is high, as is the confusion about how to synthesise Islamic and Western values. A true celebration of one's heritage must build on it to propose perspectives for the future. Dazzled by the bright lights of the fireworks the attendees lingered a while and then, realising that that was it, went on their way home, impressed, but otherwise unaffected. Maybe the quite considerable sums of money would have been better spent in rejuvenating the old town and supporting its restoration and what survives of its ancient craft workshops and artisans.

For the sake of provocation

2008-04-01T09:37:00.001+01:00

An item in the news this week contained the hype about a theatre in Potsdam, in the former East Germany, where racism continues to thrive, was staging the first stage play of Rushdie's Satanic Voices, the book that Roald Dahl considered unreadable. This was followed up by further news articles in the mainstream media that the play was performed without violent incident. Much to the regret of the theatre, I suppose, who had probably hoped to ride to fame on the controversy as Rushdie did aforetime.
On the trail of the republication of the Danish cartoons insulting the prophet Muhammad, the Dutch release of an anti-Islamic film and the Pope's very public baptism of an Egyptian anti-Islamic journalist in Italy one wonders whether there is a concerted effort to stir up troubles, and I am glad that Muslims have matured and did not respond as expected.
We indicated long ago in the book "Satanic Voices", our response to "Satanic Verses", that Rushdie was not acting alone but on the behest of "Satanic Presses" and "Satanic Purses". Islam is dangerous because in its opposition to lending money at interest it poses a challenge to the primacy of banks, a message becoming ever more potent during the current credit crisis.
These days poor writing and shabby expressions of hatred are elevated to art form when they malign the Muslim enemy. Anything to make Muslims look bad is good in the eyes of the media and politicians. However, their sword has become blunt.
The French author and pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupery, best known in the UK for the story "The Little Prince", sums it up beautifully in his magnus opum "Citadel" (Wisdom of the Sands), doubtlessly inspired by his encounter with Islam:
"Whence I was led to reflect on those who consume more than they bestow. Thus it is with the lies of the rulers of a nation; for the efficacy and power of their words reside in men's belief in what they tell. True, much may be achieved by lies; yet when I lie I blunt my weapon in the using of it. And, though I may begin by besting my opponent, there comes a day when I must face him, weaponless.
A like case is that of the poet who makes his effects by playing traitor to the time-proved rules; for scandalizing, too, is a technique. But such a man is an ill-doer. He shatters for his personal ends a vase containing an age-old treasure, common to all. In order to express himself, he ruins the possibilities of expression for others; like one who, to light his path, should set fire to the forest, leaving nothing but ashes and charred embers for the rest of men. Moreover, when once grammatical mistakes have become the rule, I can no longer scandalize or startle. But also, by the same token, I am unable to express myself in the beauty of the oldtime style, for I have made havoc of its usages and ruled out the mutual understanding, the signs and symbols, the speaking glances that are a code built up from generation to generation and that enable me to transmit my thought down to its subtlest shades. I shall have expressed myself, perhaps - but at the cost of ruining my instrument, and others', too."
So all the supporters of Rushdie and Co. have done is to destroy the integrity of literature and art. Shocking Muslims into a response no longer works. And the day may well be near where the rulers' lies are no longer believed and they face their opponents weaponless.

Chinese mortgage - plus ca change

2008-03-12T06:03:00.000Z

Since the terminal decline of the US economy everybody has been looking to China and India as the rising economies of the world. It seems the bankers got there first. So as markets shift from a collapsing Western economy to a buoyant Eastern one, the old French proverb "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose" - the more things change, the more they stay the same - seems to apply.
China has had a rough winter causing delay in food supply deliveries, which in turn caused food prices to rise. According to the Chinese National Statistics Bureau, overall inflation has reached its highest recorded level. The suggested remedies give us a clue as to what is happening. Besides the old-style communist measures of a planned economy to freeze some commodity prices, the Chinese government is also talking about the darling measure of "free market" economies: raising interest rates. They've already done so a number of times.
There is a direct correlation between inflation and interest rates, but it is not as the economics school books teach us. At the moment, only China's food prices are rising rapidly due to shortages. Once the new measures hit, the still very low inflation for other goods will also jump up.
In a healthy economy, enterprises make enough profit to pay for their raw materials and labour, and a little extra for the shareholders of a company. In an interest-based economy, they have to earn an awful lot more, because the bankers demand their pound of flesh before anyone else. Enterprises financed on loans are the reason for the ecologically unsustainable growth rates every Western government is trying to achieve. Thus the cost of borrowing has a direct effect on prices. Higher interest rates, therefore, cause inflation rather than reduce it. They only reduce it when the economy contracts and companies go broke, being sold off well below their value.
The boom and bust cycles of interest-based economies are the bankers' way of calling in the spoils. There isn't much benefit for the lender in owning a title to the fictitious money he lends - in fractional reserve banking, bank loans are hardly backed by any real collateral -, but making people mortgage their properties and then dispossessing them when they can no longer afford the payments is very lucrative for the financiers. "Mortgage" in old French means "death grip"; sadly the borrower only discovers this when interest rates go up.
So it seems the bankers as international money-lending parasites have simply moved on to a new host after realising there isn't much more to squeeze out of the Western economies they have been living off for decades.
If China wants to be the next super power, then the Chinese government would do well to rethink it's economic policy and curb the lending activities of the banks. Otherwise the Chinese government will soon be held hostage by them in the same way most governments of the world already are.

What cut cables can teach

2008-02-06T13:52:00.000Z

Arguably, the most important, albeit not particularly spectacular, event of last week was the consecutive cutting of four major fibre optic communication cables in the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf and North of the Egyptian coast. I say, consecutive, because had they all been cut simultaneously, it would be unprecedented but could still be called an accident. As there was a considerable time lapse, however, the probabilities of an accident are slim, more so since the theory that the cables were cut by ship anchors has since been discredited with the confirmation from the Egyptian ministry of communication that no ships were present in the area at the time the cables were cut. This leaves sabotage or an act of war as the only other option. The fact that there were no immediate American condemnations of this as a terrorist act indicates that it had the tacit approval of the United States, a theory further supported by the fact that Israel and Iraq remained unaffected since there internet traffic is carried via a different route. Without wanting to speculate, however, a number of interesting lessons emerge from these events.

Firstly, the internet has proven surprisingly resilient, managing to compensate for the lost traffic routes without collapsing altogether. It also demonstrated the complicated nature of the worldwide web, with India most heavily affected by a break in communications located in the Middle East, which in turn affected the UK in particular, since most large UK companies have outsourced their call centres to India. There is, therefore, no way to disrupt the internet selectively without a knock-on effect elsewhere.

Secondly, the public appears to happily buy any story it is fed by mainstream media. Tell them a ship's anchor cut through the cables and they believe it. They won't ask why after such an "unforeseen" event no measures were put in place to prevent the same thing from happening again, or why suddenly so many lethal ship's anchors are floating around the ocean when previously they never caused a problem. This public lethargy does not bode well for the future.

Thirdly, today's wars are increasingly related to technology and communications. In a report to Congress, US National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell listed amongst his major concerns besides "Al-Qaeda" that Russia, China and oil producing countries were using their wealth to advance political goals (let's guess that the USA could never possibly be accused of such a heinous crime!) and that the threats faced by the US were global, complex and dangerous, including the vulnerability of computer systems. The truth is, that Iran's nuclear capability has never really worried the White House as they know too well Iran would not be stupid enough to use such destructive technology even if they had it. It is a smoke screen for allowing interference on account of much more conventional capabilities Iran has developed like, for example, the recently announced ability to launch its own rocket and soon send its own satellites into orbit.

In this context, there have been speculations that the cutting of the internet cables was intended to cut off Arab oil producing states from vital communication routes prior to another weapon in Iran's armoury, the long-awaited and heavily speculated about Iranian oil bourse which, by trading in Euro, would send the already free-falling dollar to depths from which it could never recover. Unlike the Arab states, for example, Iran and China seem to have understood that economic warfare can be much more effective in bringing down an enemy than military engagement. Of course, they are not alone, the US and the UK have been using economic warfare as part of their arsenal for many decades.

Those opposed to being enslaved by the world hegemony of corporate America under the guise of "globalisation" should take heart in the knowledge that the internet remains one of their most potent weapons to fight back - a weapon which cannot be wrestled from them by the big powers without those powers shooting themselves in the foot. At the same time, they must be even more alert and try to wake up the general public - hitherto sedated by consumerism and entertainment and frightened by purported threats of terrorism as well as the real threat of bankruptcy and economic loss. The US economy, and with it its political influence, is about to collapse, and we don't expect it to surrender any more quietly than a fish flapping violently after having been removed from the water.