Western Resistance

Adrian Morgan

© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 7:40 AM | Comments (1)

May 22, 2008

UK: Exeter Bomber was Muslim Convert

Around 1pm on Thursday, an explosion took place in a restaurant in Exeter in Devon, in Britain's West Country. Only one person was injured in the bast, and this now appears to have been the bomber himself. The restaurant was the Giraffe restaurant, one of a chain of 22 outlets, and it is located in Princesshay Shopping Center in the heart of the cathedral town.

Later, police announced that they had arrested a man, and also two controlled explosions took place in the toilets at the restaurant. The man was named as 22-year old Nicky Reilly, who has a history of mental illness. A police statement later in the evening suggested that Reilly, who had become a Muslim convert, had been "preyed upon and radicalized" by Muslim extremists.

The man had detonated his bomb in the toilels, and according to an eyewitness it appeared that chunks of his face were missing. Officially he has facial injuries and a "lacerated eye". Reilly is in hospital under a police guard. After the explosion, the man had refused to leave the toilet, leading to the cubicle door being broken down.

15 other people had been in the restaurant when the explosion took place. One eyewitness said he heard one loud bang followed by two smaller ones. It appears that the bomb that exploded was a nail bomb.

Exeter is a quiet city with low numbers of immigrants, and has a famous cathedral. The university of Exeter does have Muslim students, and it is possible that those who "radicalized" Reilly may have come from the university. This is only a supposition.

Currently, a team from Scotland Yard's anti-terror unit have arrived in Exeter. A team of Royal Navy bomb disposal officers patrolled the city center, carrying out searches. Many roads leading to the city center were closed throughout the afternoon.

News available from:
Daily Mail, BBC, Evening Standard, Times, Reuters via the Independent, Mirror, Channel 4 News, Mid Devon Star, BBC (2), Exmouth Herald, Devon 24, Bloomberg and AFP.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 5:39 PM | Comments (2)

May 20, 2008

Blasphemy: Islam, Christianity And The Law - Part One

This article by Adrian Morgan (Giraldus Cambrensis of Western Resistance) appears today in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.

Blasphemy: Islam, Christianity And The Law

Part One (of Two)

Current Cases

Last week on Tuesday, May 13, Human Rights Watch urged Saudi Arabia to revoke a death sentence. Sabri Bogday, a Turkish man who had a barbershop in the Saudi kingdom, had been given a death sentence in April this year. Mr Bogday was accused of blaspheming against Allah. The incident allegedly took place 14 months ago during an argument with his neighbor, an Egyptian who ran a tailor's shop.

The Egyptian filed the complaint and then disappeared. Mr Bogday admitted charges of "swearing against Allah", but was not given a chance to repent. Mr Bogday retains his Turkish citizenship, even though he has lived in the Saudi kingdom for 11 years. The Turkish government is trying to assist his attempts to have the death sentence removed.

In Afghanistan this weekend, on Sunday May 18, an apprentice journalist appeared briefly in court. 23-year old Parwiz Kambakhsh was sentenced to death in Mazar-i-Sharif in the north of Afghanistan on January 22 this year for blasphemy. Mr Khambakhsh had downloaded an article from an Iranian website, and brought it into his journalism class.

This article questioned why a man is allowed under Islam to have four wives, but a woman is not allowed four husbands. Khambakhsh maintains that he only brought the article into class for the purposes of discussion. He was given only three minutes to prepare his defense when he was taken to court, and the trial took place in secret. On Sunday, an appeal court judge told him he had one week to prepare for his appeal against the death penalty. Khambakhsh told the judge: "I'm a Muslim and will never allow myself to insult my religion."

Back in March 2006, the West was shocked when a court ruled that an Afghan man, Abdul Rahman, was sentenced to death by an Afghan court. Rahman had converted to Christianity. Apostasy, according to judge Ansarullah Mawlawizadah, was "an attack on Islam." 500 Muslim clerics demanded the death penalty for Rahman. He was smuggled out of the country and now lives in Italy.

Even the Afghanistan Senate approved the death sentence against 23-year year old Parwiz Kambakhsh. The trainee journalist's plight may be politically motivated - his brother Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi has written on the atrocities committed by a former leader in the Northern Alliance. This man is Haji Mohammed Mohaqeq. It appears that the harshness of Parwiz' sentence may have been intended to silence his brother's reports. Mohaqeq is head of Afghanistan's Religious and Cultural Affairs Commission, and is based in Mazar-i-Sharif.

April 8 a young HIndu was lynched to death by his co-workers after being accused of blaspheming against Mohammed, founder of Islam.

23-year old Jagdeesh Kumar worked at a garment factory in Karachi, a port city in Sindh province. He was beaten to death while a contingent of police stood by and did nothing. It took days for a police report to be filed on the case, but arrests did not happen till weeks later. According to my friend, Pakistani Christian journalist Qaiser Felix, when the three workers who killed Jagdesh were arrested, they were "charged not with murder but with 'failure to inform the police that blasphemy was underway'." Qaiser wrote that Jagdeesh was the first Hindu to die as a result of Pakistan's blasphemy laws.

On Friday last week, Compass Direct reported on the case of a Pakistani Christian, Dr Robin Sardar. This man, a father of six, lives in Punjab Province, where most of Pakistan's small number of Christians live. Dr Sardar appears to have been falsely accused of blasphemy by a street vendor. The doctor argued with the vendor. The next day (May 5), after the vendor had been reporting that Dr Sardar had earlier blasphemed against Mohammed, a mob of Muslims arrived at his home, calling for his death. Police arrested Dr Sardar. His house now carries a sign outside it, bearing the words: "This is the house of a blasphemer."

According to Dr Sardar's nephew, he had been friends with his accuser for years before the blasphemy accusation was made. A police report was filed. Since 1990, an amendment to the law means that anyone found guilty of blaspheming against Mohammed receives a mandatory death sentence. So far, no-one has been executed for blasphemy in Pakistan, though at least 22 individuals have been lynched to death after being accused of the crime.

One activist based in Islamabad has said: "Not a single murderer who killed anyone for blasphemy has been punished for murder. In fact, such murderers get hero's treatment in police stations. And those police officials who openly honour such murderers have never been tried for their illegal and reprehensible action."

In Bangladesh this month, a Christian pastor based in Mymensingh district was "punished" by Muslim villagers for being open about his faith and ignoring the death threats that Muslims made against him. On May 2 the 13-year old daughter of Pastor Motilal Das was gang-raped by five Muslim villagers.

These are just a few recent cases. What do such acts of brutality and laws that support intolerance say about these societies? Why is Islam the only faith to continue to condone the killing of apostates and blasphemers?

Christian Blasphemy

The Judeo-Christian heritage that underpins Western culture did originally uphold the death penalty to those who blasphemed. The justfication for such harshness can be found in Leviticus 24: 15-16, "The man that curseth His God, shall bear his sin: And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, dying let him die: all the multitude shall stone him, whether he be a native or a stranger. He that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, dying let him die."

Even though Jews and Christians have abandoned the death penalty as the punishment for blaspheming, the passage in Leviticus was used by early Christians to kill or cruelly punish the blasphemer. The Christian Roman Emperor Constantius II, a son of Constantine, decreed in 341 that pagan worship should be punished by death. Emperor Justinian (527-565) outlawed blasphemy and swearing, on the grounds that these caused earthquakes, and a constitution from 538 gave city prefects permission to execute blasphemers.

In the late Medieval period, various Inquisitions led to persecution of heresies, including blasphemy. In Iceland in 1343 a Norwegian bishop ordered a nun to be burned to death for blasphemy and communicating with Satan. On August 3, 1546, French writer and printer Etienne DOlet was burned at the stake for blaspheming against Christ.

Spanish theologian Michael Servetus questioned the Nicene Creed of the Trinity and was subsequently burned at the stake in Geneva in October 1553. Philosopher Giordano Bruno was a former Dominican monk, who became a philosopher. He supported Copernicus' view that earth moved around the sun, and even suggested that stars were suns that might have planets circling them, and even life. Bruno taught in various European countries, but he died in his native Italy, accused of blasphemy. He was burned alive in the Campo di Fiori in Rome on February 17, 1600.

A contemporary of Bruno was a miller from the village of Friuli in Italy, called Domenico Scandella. He was also known as Menocchio. He maintained that Godo and angels were formed spontaneously from chaos, "as worms are produced from cheese". For this he was tortured and tried by the Inquisition, and was burned alive in 1599 or 1600, aged 67.

In 1641, Massachusetts legislation punished blasphemy with death. Similar laws made blasphemy and idolatry into capital crimes in Connecticut and New Hampshire. In 1692, the Province of Massachusetts Bay issued statutes that again codified blasphemy as a capital offense. In 1695 the British government repealed the death penalty for witchcraft and blasphemy from the province's legislation. Currently under Massachusetts general law (Chapter 272, Section 36) blasphemy is still a crime. The maximum punishment is a year in jail and/or a fine not exceeding $300. No-one has been prosecuted for blasphemy in this state since the 1920s, but in 1977 the state's legislature refused to repeal the law.

In both Catholic and Protestant countries in Western Europe, burning of heretics and "witches" reached a peak in the mid 17th century. In Salem, Massachusetts, as had often happened in Europe, the prattlings of children led to a pogrom against innocent adults. The burnings and hangings of innocent peasants, and even nuns, for the crimes of witchcraft and heresy had discredited religion. Such cases involved torture to secure confessions. Torturers and accusers often gained a share of their victims' goods. As a result, such crimes would eventually disappear from statute books. Blasphemy in many countries became "downgraded" to a crime that could invoke only a jail sentence, and not the death penalty.

Britain retained its Blasphemy Act of 1697 for three centuries. In 1838, it was established that British blasphemy law only related to the Anglican faith. 1881, secularist publisher George William Foote started a magazine called "The Freethinker". Articles in this periodical led to Foote being jailed for a year for blasphemy. His jail experiences were published as a book, and can be found at Project Gutenberg.

The last Briton to be jailed for blasphemy was John William Gott. On December 9, 1921, he was jailed for nine months, with hard labor, for writing that Christ's entry into Jerusalem must have looked like "a circus clown on the back of two donkeys". Gott died less than a year after his release, aged 56.

The last successful prosecution for blasphemy (blasphemous libel) in Britain took place in 1977 when Denis Lemon, a publisher of a gay newspaper was fined and given a nine month suspended prison sentence. Lemon had published a poem that described a centurion's lust for the body of Christ.

The 1977 trial was the first to have taken place for 50 years. On February 14, 1989, British author Salman Rushdie was issued with a death fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini. Blasphemy was then regarded as something from a bygone era. When numerous British-based Muslims publicly demanded the death penalty for the author, it became clear that the story of blasphemy in the West had begun a new chapter.

Islamic Blasphemy Versus Christian Blasphemy

The Salman Rushdie affair was a catalyst for British Muslims to become radicalized. Fanatical Islamism had been seen as something alien until that time. In 1970, for example, Muslims burned down a British Council library in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, after Times columnist Auberon Waugh called Muslim baggy trousers "Allah Catchers". The Rushdie affair exposed how many British Muslims of Pakistani origin shared the fanaticism of their former countrymen. Their anger led to the formation of an activist group called the UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs. One prominent figure in this group, Iqbal Sacranie, became first secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB).

In 2005 Islamist activists from the MCB in 2005 had tried to have an Islamic blasphemy law introduced in Britain. When that failed, they successfully persuaded Tony Blair's government to introduce the "Incitement to Religious Hatred Act". This would have made a person eligible to seven years' jail for insulting another religion, even if there had been no intention to stir up "religious hatred". This antidemocratic bill was emasculated in the Upper House before it became law.

In February 2006, protests against cartoons published in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten reached their peak. Muslims around the world demanded that non-Muslims should respect their sensitivities. Around 50 people died in riots. Where acts of Muslim terrorism had failed to elicit a great response, Muslim "blasphemy" galvanized people to protest. On October 26, 2006, a lawsuit brought by a coalition of Islamic groups was thrown out by a Copenhagen court. The suit complained that staff at Jyllands-Posoten had "libelled" Muslims.

Earlier attempts to invoke Denmark's blasphemy law (not used since the 1930s) were also thrown out of court. The Danish law states that anyone who "publicly offends or insults a religion that is recognized in the country" could receive a four month jail term. This law had not been invoked in decades. Danish judges refused to allow the Jyllands-Posten cartoons to be tried under this law, as they believed freedom of expression was more important than supporting a prohibition against blaspheming.

Two years after the first cartoon protests, Islamists were caught in Denmark. These plotted to kill Kurt Westergaard, one of the cartoonists. The cartoons were republished, and more protests ensued.

As pointed out by Dr Andrew Bostom in February this year, the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) wanted the United Nations to uphold a universal ban on blasphemy of any kind.

The Secretary General of the OIC, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, made a speech on February 15, 2008, to this end. It is not the first time that Ihsanoglu has argued for the UN to implement a universal ban on blasphemy. On Wednesday February 6 2008 shortly before that speech was made, Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki announced his expectations that the Vatican should work with his Islamist regime to stamp out blasphemy against all religions.

In February 2006 at the height of the carton crisis, the OIC had argued for a universal blasphemy law. For many Muslims, arguing that their religion should be protected against abuse seems fair. For some leftists and multiculturalists, who traditionally would have opposed Christian blasphemy laws, they argue for Islamic blasphemy laws out of a misguided sense of "justice". In March 2006 Spain's socialist government colluded with Pakistan to present a draft "universal blasphemy" resolution to the United Nations. Similar notions of cultural relativism inspired the socialists of Britain's Labour government to introduce the Incitement to Religious Hatred Act.

In practice, no Muslims are hauled up in Western countries and accused of blasphemy against Christianity. And certainly, even if Muslims were found guilty of anti-Christian blasphemy, they would not serve more than a short jail sentence. Muslim countries have shown by example that Islamic blasphemy legislation is frequently applied to non-Muslims. In Pakistan, non-Muslims are deliberately targeted by Muslims, and often (falsely) accused of blasphemy.

In the Australian state of Victoria in 2001, the governor Steve Bracks introduced a "universal blasphemy law". This appalling piece of legislation, called the "Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001" has made a mockery of legislative principles of justice. The law was introduced to protect (appease?) Muslims and uphold a spirit of multiculturalism. The Act has failed almost every group in Victoria, and garnered extreme resentment.

In October, 2003 this law was used to persecute a Christian evangelical group called Catch The Fire Ministries led by two pastors, Danny Niallah and Daniel Scot. Mr Scot had fled Pakistan, where he had been accused of blasphemy. The ministry was taken to court by the Islamic Council of Victoria, assisted by the Equal Opportunity Commission of Victoria. In one 2002 sermon, heard by three visiting "undercover" Muslims, Christianity had been compared against Islam, with Islam viewed unfavorably.

In December 2004, Judge Michael Higgins ruled that the pair had vilified Islam, in a way that was "hostile, demeaning and derogatory of all Muslim people, their god, Allah, the prophet Muhammad and in general Muslim religious beliefs and practices." He ordered the pair to apologize for the comments.

The tribunal brought up the stupidity of the law. Daniel Scot wanted to mention the verses about Islam's treatment of women during the trial. His opinions on these Koranic verses had led him to be placed on trial. He was told that he could only give the references for such verses, and not read the verses aloud. The verses themselves, the court ruled, constituted vilification.

On May 3, 2005 Daniel Scot announced that he would refuse to apologize for his comments about Islam. Danny Niallah agreed, saying: "Right from the beginning we have stated we will not apologise, we will go to prison for standing for the truth."

The pair steadfastly refused to apologize for telling the truth as they saw it, even though they could have been jailed for three years. In December 2006, the Victorian Supreme Court upheld their appeal and struck off the ruling by Judge Michael Higgins. Any future prosecution of the matter would have to be presided over by a different judge.

The notion of Victorian state law trying to protect every religious group's interests has inevitably led to absurdist situations. Former policeman, now transsexual practicing "Wiccan" (witch) Olivia Watts decided to run for local government in Casey, Victoria. Rob Wilson, a local councillor and Christian, led a campaign against Watts. The witch sued, using the 2001 law, and won the case. Awarded high costs in damages, the local taxpayers of Casey had to foot the bill. The state's attorney general issued a statement, in which he said: "We govern for all Victorians - and that includes witches, magicians and sorcerers."

The Victoria state law demonstrates how bizarre "egalitarian" blasphemy laws are in practice. As a libertarian, I abhor any blasphemy laws. Freedom of speech would be eroded if any blasphemy laws are enforced. Compromised versions of the law which try to outlaw any forms of blasphemy become tools of leftists and so-called liberals to attack traditional views, and are inherently dangerous and socially divisive.

There is no comparison between Western laws of blasphemy and Islamic law on blasphemy. The latter is far more absolutist and creates appalling situations for those who are accused of blasphemy against Islam.

When Spiritual Worlds Collide

On May 6, 1998 in Pakistan, a native-born Catholic bishop shot himself dead. 66-year old John Joseph, Bishop of Faisalabad in Punjab province, apparently killed himself in protest at Pakistan's discriminatory blasphemy laws.

Exactly 12 years before, on May 6, 1986, pro-Islamist Islamist dictator General Zia ul-Haq had introduced the most pernicious of Pakistan's blasphemy laws. This addition to the penal code, Article 295-C, states: "Use of derogatory remarks, etc; in respect of the Holy Prophet. Whoever by words, either spoken or written or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.

In its original form this law, included in the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1986, was draconian enough. However, on October 1990, the country's supreme Islamic court, the Federal Shariat Court, made a ruling on Article 295-C. It stated that "the penalty for contempt of the Holy Prophet... is death and nothing else." The court ordered the government to implement necessary changes to the law, adding: "in case this is not done by 30 April 1991 the words 'or punishment for life' in section 295-C, PPC, shall cease to have effect on that date."

The blasphemy laws were introduced in stages. Zia ul-Haq worked closely with the Islamists of the Jamaat-e-Islami party. This party, founded by Syed Abul A'la Maududi, exploited the dictatorship of ul-Haq to exert a power they could never achieve through the ballot. For his part, ul-Haq exploited the Islamists to retain power. Most rural Muslims felt that introducing laaws based on Islam were automatically "just". Ul-Haq himself was a frequent worshipper at the radical Lal Masjid or "Red Mosque" in Islamabad.

Other laws introduced by ul-Haq's administration were the notorious Hudood Ordinances. These laws removed the distinction between adultery and rape. A woman who reported that she had been raped put herself at great risk. Unless she could present four Muslim witnesses, she woulf be charged with adultery and jailed. The maximum penalty under these laws for adultery was "Hadd" - the death penalty. Many women were jailed for reporting rape incidents. As a result, rape incidents had flourished. The Hudood laws were only removed in September 2006.

On May 6, 1996, Bishop John Joseph went to the city of Sawihal, and there addressed a group of people who had become victims of Pakistan's blasphemy laws in the afternoon. In the evening he went to a sessions court in the city. It was here, on November 6 in the previous year Ayub Masih, one of his parishioners, had been shot at. On April 27, 1996, Masih had been given a death sentence for blasphemy.

At Bishop Joseph's funeral, two days after his apparent suicide, a message from Pope John Paul was read at the service. This message expressed hope for justice. That justice never came.

Pakistan's blasphemy Laws - Sections 298-B and 298-B - deliberately discriminate against Ahmadis (also called Ahmadiyya or Qadiani). These are Muslims, but regarded by many other Muslims as heretics. The Ahmadi swear to "harm no-one". However, they believe that the man who founded their sect in 1889 - Mirza Ghulam Ahmad - is a prophet. For most Muslims, Mohammed is the last prophet. The Ahmadi's "heresy" has led to them being seen by Muslims as apostates at worst, non-Muslims at best. They are banned from attending the Haj pilgrimage in Mecca.

In Bangladesh, the Jamaat-e-Islami party has been involved in active campaigns to harass the Ahmadiyya. In Pakistan, the same party and other Islamists persuaded ul-Haq's regime to legally discriminate against them. Under Pakistan's blasphemy legislation, no Ahmadi can declare himself to be a Muslim. Anyone who does, or who tries to propagate his or her beliefs, can receive a three year jail term.

Article 298-C of the Pakistn Penal Code states: "Persons of Qadiani group, etc, calling himself a Muslim or preaching or propagating his faith. Any person of the Qadiani group or the Lahori group (who call themselves Ahmadis or any other name), who directly or indirectly, posses himself as a Muslim, or calls, or refers to, his faith as Islam, or preaches or propagates his faith, or invites others to accept his faith, by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation or in any manner whatsoever outrages the religious feelings of Muslims, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years and shall also be liable to fine."

To date, more than 800 people have been punished under Pakistan's blasphemy laws. In Part Two, I will examine some of these cases, to demonstrate how they are used as a weapon to settle personal feuds and to persecute non-Muslim minorities. I will show how the Clash of Civilizations is causing Western societies to change their legislation on blasphemy, while Muslim countries resolutely refuse to soften their stance towards those who are seen to blaspheme against, or to insult Islam.

Adrian Morgan

© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 7:02 AM | Comments (6)

May 16, 2008

Norwegian girls ask for it.

Esther of Islam in Europe translated the following interview.

Oslo police recently released its 2007 Rape Report. The report shows a marked increase in Somali rapists, generally on account of gang rapes.

The transcript below is not complete (in the original)

---

At least ten women were attacked and molested by a gang of Somali men at Sofienberg park in Oslo on Saturday evening.

Last year a record-high 161 rapes and 35 rape attempts were reported in Oslo. Over 70% of the rapists were non-Norwegian [ed. ethnically, a majority had Norwegian citizenship].

Lawyer Abid Raja visited a cafe in Grønland in Oslo for Norwegian broadcaster P4. There he met three young men (ages 26, 30 and 35), from Somalia and Senegal.

The men, who refused to have their names published, spoke with P4 about the rape and robbery wave hitting the city.

A: Honestly? Norwegians are horrible!

Q: What are you thinking about?

A: I'm thinking of everything. Not least the food is bad. (He then speaks of the fact that Muslims don't eat pork).

Q: What do you think of Norwegian women then?

A: They're something completely different, he says as his friends laugh.

---

A: But listen now, Norwegian girls complain that foreign boys do this and that, but the reason there are so many rapes is that Norwegian girls go around almost completely naked! That's like saying "come here and fuck me", you understand?

Q: You're saying that Norwegian girls are asking to be raped?

A: Not exactly asking, but when then go out almost completely naked and get completelydrunk in Frogner park or go to a party together with some friend, and then they complain about being raped? It's their fault, says the 26 year old from Somalia.

Q: But even if they go around lightly dressed and get drunk then they're certainly not asking to be raped?

A: No, but many of the foreigners aren't used to this where they come from. They're not accustomed that girls go dressed as they want, then maybe they interpret this a bit wrong, you understand?

Regarding the gang who attacked several girls, threw them down and tore off their clothes in Sofienberg park in Grünerløkka, the men explain this saying that the boys were very young.

A: Weren't these boys young? Such as 13-14 years old? I think this was curiosity as to how girls look. They were so young that they didn't know what they were doing, says the 35 year old Somali.

The 30 year old comes from Senegal and thinks African men respect women, but that attack rapes happen when the men drink.

A: We who come from Senegal don't like to speak with Norwegian men, but we like Norwegian women. That's because in African culture they respect women, but not men.

Q: But why do young African men attack Norwegian women?

A: Such things happen now and then. When we drink too much and get drunk it happens that we attack them, but if we don't drink, we don't attack Norwegian women - but respect them, says the Senegalese, who speaks in bad English.

The 26 year old Somali speaks the most. He thinks his and his friends' points of view represent the attitudes of many in the Somali community.

Q: You don't think many will be scared that you have such attitudes if P4 broadcasts this interview on the radio?

A: Just broadcast it, because this is true. That's the way things are - it's the facts. I'm not lying. I've never been with a Norwegian lady, but I've been with many Norwegian girls - they are fairly nice and very skilled in bed.

Source: P4 (Norwegian), h/t Snaphanen (Danish)

____________________________________________________________

You'll find this is the prevailing attitude of Muslims in any Islamic country. Consider that these Muslims will be instilling this same attitude into the children they raise in European countries. Won't be long before Europe descends into a violent, dangerous third world pit, just like most of the Islamic countries they escaped from.

Posted by Isabel de Castilla at 12:29 AM | Comments (5)

May 15, 2008

UK: Dominic Whiteman On Islamism

This article by Adrian Morgan (Giraldus Cambrensis of Western Resistance) appears today in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.

Dominic Whiteman has been European Director of the private intelligence-gathering network, VIGIL (www.vigilnetwork.com) since its inception in 2005. VIGIL was set up in the wake of the 7/7 London al Qaeda attacks by Dominic Whiteman and others, originally to form a bridge between former military and intelligence personnel and the authorities. VIGIL soon became an international network of experts - ranging from linguistic experts to banking experts - and involved itself in the secret provision of intelligence to mostly British and American authorities with the aim of preventing extremism and terrorism.

During his time as head of VIGIL Europe, some changes have happened, particularly in British society: the extreme Islamist sect Hizb ut-Tahrir has come closer to being banned, legislation has been changed on UK libraries' stocking of extreme literature and Tamil Tiger funding networks and their kingpins across Europe have come to the attention of the police.

Dominic leaves VIGIL at the end of May to head up a new operation called V7 Europe (www.v7europe.com). V7 Europe seeks to investigate encroaching extreme Islamism in European member states; its investigative remit includes Muslim faith schools, infiltration of police forces, immigration departments and local government by extreme Islamists, as well as highlighting cases of FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) and Muslim honor violence across the continent. Here, Adrian Morgan talks to Dominic about the last few years and his expectations for the future.

Q: So, why the move from VIGIL to V7?

I have taken VIGIL as far as I can as European Director. I felt the time was right to up the pressure on the extreme Islamists particularly in Europe, where the real battle for preserving democracy and our liberties exists. Europe is where the enemy is making headway and I refuse to accept this. VIGIL is an international network and though I've enjoyed receiving tip-offs from exotic compartments as distant as Dubai and Indonesia over recent years, the real battleground is Europe and V7 gives me the freedom to concentrate wholly on key European problems.

I've decided the time is ripe to focus purely on Europe and put the extreme Islamists on the back foot across Europe by exposing their means and ways - simple as that. I'll achieve this by working closely with the EU and colleagues in European member states to affect legislation change. We hope this will curtail extreme Islamists' ambitions of ever achieving a European Caliphate. Having said that, I'm remaining on VIGIL's steering committee and will be relying to a great degree on VIGIL investigators across Europe to get the job done.

Europe's a soft touch right now for the Islamists, where those who stand up to extreme Islamism are wrongly seen as neo-cons - this will change in the cool light of day when the Islamists' project is exposed for real and the Madrid bombers, 7/7 bombers and other Islamist terrorists are seen merely as products of an Islamist system that seeks to expand. Political poles are changing and we are slowly coming to grips with our real weakness of recent years - fondness for over-arching political correctness.

Q: What do you hope to achieve at V7?

I hope to be able to put the facts on the European table - that extreme Islamists have infiltrated our schools, local government, charity commissions, immigration departments, central government and police forces with an aim to changing our way of life from the inside at our expense and at the expense of decent Muslims. I'll deliver the facts as they are - there's no need for trimmings. I want to achieve this goal in a cool, collected manner - away from the headlines and the increasingly extraneous hubbub of national politicking - and I want my team to leave no stone unturned in the process of uncovering the truth.

I want to work with EU legislators to stamp out extreme Islamism in Europe, so that the majority of Europe's Muslims (peaceful citizens that they are) can start to feel at home again. I look forward to getting the best out of the very talented team which has gathered to push V7 forward. I am already especially grateful to our Muslim investigators on the ground, who have already dug up some stunning intelligence, which we'll report back on in the late summer of 2008 through think tank reports, which will be made available publicly.

What goes on in Europe is important to all the world's citizens but especially important for our American friends. Bear in mind, any extreme Islamist can, at any time, catch a plane to the U.S. using a visa waiver and stroll into the U.S. from Europe. Americans are rightly proud of their Homeland Security but they sometimes forget how far their Homeland extends.

Q: What were your best memories of VIGIL?

I really enjoyed seeing Abdul Wahid of Hizb ut-Tahrir squirming on BBC Newsnight chair in late 2006 when the interviewer Jeremy Paxman questioned him after VIGIL's successful infiltration of his sect had just been aired. I watch the Wahid interview whenever I feel down.

I enjoyed having a one-to-one with the Islamist extremist Abu Izzadeen last year on Omar Bakri's cyber mosque where I asked him in a private message session whether he'd be choosing a plane (like Bakri) or jail - he was genuinely flustered. Then, just two weeks later, (nothing to do with VIGIL - purely the work of the anti-terror police) he was jailed.

But the best memories are team memories. VIGIL is compartmentalized so few compartments ever talk to other compartments but as a Director I could talk to everyone and I can say almost every compartment had its finest hour, whether the results remained private or went public. I remember several big moments, most of which will go with me to the grave. The VIGIL team has achieved a great deal since 2005 and will no doubt flourish in the future as the network gains more momentum and the foe further self-divides. We're more than 50% an American network and I'll particularly miss the day-to-day banter with my American friends.

Q: What were your worst memories of VIGIL?

I have no really bad memories. One compartment turned out to include an Islamist and that was a tough few days. I came across excellent people and my memories are mostly rose-pink. We did go through one stressful funding crisis (when two donors died in quick succession) but I look back on that lesson positively now, as it was the time when we weeded out the shallow money-grabbers in the network from those who really wanted to make a difference and were prepared to give everything asked of them to further the cause - we were strengthened as a result and chopped off two compartments who, if anything, were holding us back.

Q: Who is taking your place at VIGIL?

Jane Blunt will be running the European arm of VIGIL. She's from a law enforcement background and has been working with me since the start of 2007 as my European deputy. She's a very learned woman and I'm sure she'll do brilliantly.

Q: Are you optimistic about the future of Britain and Europe?

Of course. If Europe combined to defeat Nazism brazenly bashing down our front doors, we're more than capable of keeping Islamism out, which is cowardly seeping under our back doors. You just have to listen in on some of the Jihadi chat rooms for a long enough period of time - a week or so - and you'll pick up when the occasional reality check temporarily bursts the Islamists' bubble. The Islamists think they are clever but they overestimate their own intelligence and underestimate the intelligence that built the Free World.

I've heard people like Bakri bemoaning the massive strength of secularism - the Islamist youths are mostly rebelling, in the footsteps of the Islamist author Sayyid Qutb, because they know they've already lost the game against what they would call Eurocentricism. Islamism is a dead duck and sometimes we forget to see how obvious this fact is. Europe, and especially Britain, are too stubborn, progressive, successful, freedom-loving and overall unswerving for Islamism to ever really take hold. Even if the Islamists made some political headway - take beer away from a ship's infidel crew and there'll be a successful mutiny every time.

Q: How can we all play a part?

Obviously, keep drinking beer! No, seriously, there are two things you can do: Firstly, keep your eyes open - look for the little things like evidence of scalded ground, vans being filled late at night, sudden changes in previously mainstream Muslim (or other) neighbors, suspicious activity - and report this to your nation's anti terrorist hotline. (0800 789 321 in the UK.) Never be paranoid and enjoy your freedoms to the full.

Secondly, whether in Europe or the U.S., look for evidence of illegal Muslim schools, especially home tutoring, look for Shari'a courts, forced marriage, honor violence, FGM doctors, dodgy Islamist councillors, government workers and police - put yourselves in the shoes of an extreme minority, who might as well have just landed from Mars, and think about how you might try to subvert the current status quo. Report this evidence to VIGIL and, where relevant, it will filter through to those who need to know about it.

Q: Are there global solutions to the War on terror?

Eventually, yes. But first one nation - and I think it will be Britain (as, unfortunately, it has the right mix of extremist problems) - must build a successful blueprint for other nations to copy, to show them how to defeat and stamp out extreme Islamism in a similar way. There will be mistakes along the way and many irrelevant sideshows (such as we are seeing with the pointless squabble over detention periods right now here in Britain).

The terrorism element of the global struggle against militant Islam is already being addressed globally and should be continually addressed: virtually, in terms of funding, operationally, resolutionally, leaving a land corridor open for the military suppression of incorrigible Jihadis, and even theologically.

The culturalist Islamist element of the struggle is more my specialty and, until the evidence is sitting there on the table that shows an extreme Islamist project, then we are merely tilting at windmills. That is where V7 comes in, with its investigative hordes looking wherever they can to piece extreme Islamist plans together and to expose their perfidy. Police forces and security services are too busy catching terrorists - and rightly so - to look into the areas we are scrutinizing.

Eventually all solutions must be global - after all, the Islamist "solution", like Hitler's was, is global in design. Unless the Free World's solution looks to extinguish militant, political Islam as a global (or potentially global) force, we run the risk of unnecessarily perpetuating the struggle.

Q: Who do you admire most for taking on the Islamists?

Apart from all the military personnel daily facing down the enemy, I most admire Muslim women who refuse to throw out their jewellery and colourful clothing, who stand up to the Islamists knowing that by their very presence and expression of freedom they are hurting the misogynistic male Islamists where it hurts them most. Especially those women who daily walk the streets in what the Islamists call "Muslim lands" in Europe (like Leytonstone, Small Heath, Luton etc. in Britain) and tell the Islamists where to go when they are abused for showing the slightest hint of flesh. These women deserve medals - they're why we'll win.

Q: You come across many politicians. Which politician do you think is most aware of, and committed to countering, home-grown terrorism?

I come across many British politicians. There are several who are good in their own ways - Baroness Neville Jones, Patrick Mercer, Michael Gove, Liam Fox, David Davis, Anne Cryer - though confined to the limited powers of Westminster. Likewise, Tony Blair was good in his own way. Home-grown terrorism is a European problem, not just a British one. Spain has Judge Baltasar, France has Sarkozy etc. There are plenty of politicians who, as they say, "get it" but all successful politicians are self-preservers - politicians are often not the right vehicles to counter culturalist Islamist encroachment in a sustained campaign, just as they are invariably the wrong people to issue military orders.

Q: What factors are holding politicians back from addressing - or creating a proper strategy against - home-grown terrorism in Britain?

Labour politicians, in particular, are risking seats in inner cities where Islamists dominate electoral wards - this is a major political factor which sees members of parliament embrace people who are often no better than terrorists. Similarly, Liberal MPs have a huge problem in certain London seats with Tamil Tiger leaders who have large bloc votes which to some degree dictate MPs' success at elections.

Another factor is EU Human Rights legislation, though I think that the EU legislation is not as destructive as Britain's Labour Government's Human Rights Act of 1988, which placed the ECHR of 1950 above all UK law. Human Rights legislation has caused a temporary field-day for so-called civil rights lawyers, who, whilst some do some good, merely help terrorists and their extreme Islamist brothers and sisters go about their pernicious business. There's no coincidence that when failed 21/7 bus-bomber Muktar Ibrahim was caught after going on the run, he shouted out to armed police "I have human rights."

Again, the overwhelming need for political correctness is a stumbling block - extreme Islamists are turning any building they can find in Ward End, Birmingham (UK), into a charity-run, tax free "mosque" or community centre to promote their brand of extreme Islamism and yet go try and build a church in Rawalpindi or Jeddah ... political correctness is getting in the way of our ability to deliver home truths and stop some of the extreme Islamist madness before it happens. Attend these so-called "mosques" and community centers and they're 2% religion and 98% politics - stirring up their members to hate Britain and further divide - and they are abusing the objects of their charity listings.

Finally, I must bring up resourcing - whilst European police and security services are better funded and focused on the terrorist threat, there should be more preventing extremism funds to investigate what the culturalist Islamist enemy is up to in our communities, radicalizing the youth, creating ghettos, forming extremist sects (like Hizb ut-Tahrir) etc. Why funds are given to Islamists themselves by the likes of the British Government I have no idea - like giving candy to pedophiles.

Until there are more resources put into combating extreme Islamism - from inspiration all the way along the conveyor belt right through to terrorism outcome - then we're giving extreme Islamists more of a start than they deserve.

Q: Which politician do you respect least, and why?

I am humble enough to admit that there are people I respect least but politically astute enough to have publicly forgotten them.

Q: Which leader of any Islamist group do you admire most?

I admire Ed Husain of the British Quilliam Foundation the most. He's an all-round good egg. He's a devout Muslim involved in politics, so I guess he's an Islamist. Ed, Maajid Nawaz and Rashad Ali at Quilliam do a sterling job and their days of extremism are well and truly over - where they have come from and how their metamorphosis has occurred gives us real hope for the metamorphosis of other Islamist extremists.

Q: What is your favorite quotation?

I suppose I should go for Edmund Burke's "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing", but I don't publicly "do God", so I suppose I don't publicly do "good" or "evil."

Instead - especially in the current climate of weakness in Europe in relation to countering extreme Islamism - I'll bank on Churchill's "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."

Q: What would you say to Abu Qatada who has been granted bail in Britain?

"Behind you." No, seriously, I'd rather not waste my breath. He should not be allowed to walk a street in the Free World ever again.

Adrian Morgan

© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 9:22 AM | Comments (1)

May 14, 2008

US: The "right" to wear a Muslim veil in court?

In Detroit, on Monday, Muslim woman Ginnah Muhammad lost her appeal. Ms Muhammad (pictured) had worn a face veil in a court case in Hamtranck in October 2006. The judge at that case, Paul Paruk, had ruled that Ms Muhammad should remove her face-covering.

At the time, Muhammad was claiming that Enterprise Rent-A-Car, a car rental company that charged her $3,000, had wrongly charged her its fee. The rented car had, Muhammad claimed, been broken into by thieves.

Muhammad refused to remove her face-veil or niqab. She even refused to remove it in front of a female judge. As a result, her case was thrown out in March 2007. Judge Paul Paruk had said that he needed to see her whole face while she gave testimony, to judge her truthfulness.

Muhammad decided to sue Judge Paruk, and on Monday US. District Judge John Feikens ruled that there was no case to answer. Judge Paruk's attorney, Margaret Nelson, had argued that the original decision to see Muhammad's face was not based upon religion, but upon a need to "fully observe" her features.

44-year old Muhammad ironically has a business selling skin-care products. Ironic in that so little of her own skin is visible. Her lawyer, Nabih Ayab, described the ruling as "unfortunate", and suggested he would take the case all the way to the Supreme Court.

The situation here is not about religious rights - but about people trying to "make history" by upsetting a system that has worked admirably well. I would go a step further and say that it is more about politics than about "religious rights".

No-one has stopped Muhammad from being a Muslim. If, on the street or in her home, Muhammad chooses to cover her face, that is her right. But in a court of law, visibility of both a defendant and a plaintiff is paramount. If it were any other way, there would be no need for plaintiffs and defendants to appear in court.

Would a judge have ruled any differently if a Klansman appeared in court wearing his white robes and with his face concealed, claiming his "religious rights" should be upheld?

Americans should not be under any complacent illusions that the situation where a judge can expect to see someone's face will remain that way. In Britain, judges used to have the right to expect to see a person's face. That right has been thrown away, sacrificed on the altar of political correctness.

On November 8, 2006, a British immigration hearing at Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent was stopped when an attorney appeared in court with her face entirely covered by a niqab. Judge George Glossop aked for the woman lawyer to remove her veil. He said it prevented him from hearing her properly. The Judge stopped the hearing while he sought guidance from above.

Later, in April 2007, Britain's Judicial Studies Board issued a statement by its Equal Treatment Advisory Committee. The ruling claimed that in Briatin face-veils can now be worn not only in civil cases, but in criminal cases too.

I sincerely hope that if this case does go to the Supreme Court it is thrown out. It would be caving in to pressure from those who wear their religion publicly like a political statement. Such individuals are not acting to support rights to justice, but serving their own ends.

I wonder how Judge Judy would rule, faced with a similar situation?

News details here:

Wood TV, Associated Press and Michigan Live

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)

UK: "All Must Have Prizes" - Gordon Brown's Adventures In Wonderland

This article by Adrian Morgan (Giraldus Cambrensis of Western Resistance) appears today in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.

"All Must Have Prizes" - Gordon Brown's Adventures In Wonderland
(A Personal View)

The Dodo On The Beach

However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out "The race is over!" and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, "But who has won?" This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead....At last the Dodo said, 'Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.'"

The above passage from Alice in Wonderland was published by Lewis Carroll in 1865. Two years later, Karl Marx published Das Kapital, a withering critique of capitalism. In 1848, Marx and Engels had published the Communist Manifesto.

When Carroll wrote "all must have prizes", it is unknown if he specifically referred to communist or socialist movements which were developing in the mid 19th century. Carroll himself may have flirted with "Christian Socialism", but he is generally viewed as a conservative and traditionalist. The enduring power of "Alice in Wonderland" and its sequel derives from its affectionate irreverence towards traditional institutions such as royalty and the judicial process.

Carroll's protagonist, Alice, encounters a menagerie of caricature figures that border on the grotesque. Her questions and comments are straightforward and direct. These comments cut through the pretensions of the powerful and expose them as harmless by demonstrating their absurdities.

The "Caucus Race" on the beach, where an extinct old bird encourages others to run around in circles can be seen as a satire on politics. The term "caucus" is essentially American, but Carroll appears to be lampooning British politics. The creatures running in a circle are not too dissimilar from the Red Queen in "Through the Looking Glass" (1871) who states: "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place."

The bird who presides over the Caucus Race is a Dodo, a creature with a long beak. Two other participants in the race have large beaks - the Eaglet and the Lory (a type of parrot). In Victorian times, the term "Beak" described both a judge and also a school principal. A cartoon from the magazine "Punch's Almanack For 1882" from December 6, 1881, called "Up Before the Beak" depicts a courtroom scene with birds, where the "Beak" or judge is a Maribu stork.

I do not intend here to write a textual analysis of Lewis Carroll's whimsies, but I am presupposing that most readers have familiarity with Alice in Wonderland and its sequel, if only through the 1951 Disney movie. The absurdities of Britain's Labour party and its failed experiments in socialist social engineering can be easily compared to the absurdities of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

The Labour party is traditionally socialist, despite Tony Blair's attempts to rebrand it as "New Labour". On May 1 this year, local elections were held through much of Britain. May 1 - May Day - is traditionally a day celebrated by socialists as "International Workers' Day". There was nothing for the socialists in Labour to celebrate this May Day. Labour suffered its worst trouncing in the polls for forty years.

The most visible manifestation of the British public rejecting Labour and its policies happened in London. Ken Livingstone, the nasally whining ultra-leftist Mayor of London, was kicked out, to be replaced by Tory Boris Johnson. Livingstone has played games with the electorate of London for eight years - inviting Islamist Yusuf al-Qaradawi to London even though Qaradawi supports the bombing of Israeli civilians. Livingstone even claimed in 2005 that Qaradawi was similar to Pope John XXIII, stating that Qaradawi was "the most powerfully progressive force for change and for engaging Islam with western values."

Widely suspected of being more fond of alcohol than is usually healthy, Livingstone supported the plans for a massive "mega-mosque" in Newham, close to the site of the 2012 London Olympics. This mosque is to be built by the extremist group Tablighi Jamaat, but Livingstone dismissed all complaints about the mosque as attempts to "stir up hatred between Muslims and non-Muslims." He ignored the fact that many local Muslims object to the Deobandi extremists behind the mega-mosque project.

Livingstone's snide and devious politicking obviously alienated voters, but his ejection pointed to a deeper problem with Labour. When a party that has nationally been in power for eleven years fares so badly in local polls, then attention turns to the leader.

In Labour's case, this leader is Gordon Brown. When he was Rector of Edinburgh University in 1975, Gordon Brown wrote about how Antonio Gramsci (1891 - 1937), founder of the Italian Communist Party, should be a model for Scottish politics.

Gordon Brown was not elected by his party to the position of leader. On June 27, 2007, six weeks after Tony Blair officially resigned, Gordon Brown became unelected prime minister. After almost a whole year of being in power, it seems that Gordon Brown is already fast on his way to political extinction.

The only genuinely original policy that Gordon Brown has proposed since stumbling into power is his proposition to construct so-called "eco-towns". These towns are designed to have a low "carbon footprint". Far from being environmentally friendly, these conurbations will blight pristine rural locations, and have already been met with opposition. Britain has a housing shortage, but mainly because over the past decade Labour has allowed uncontrolled immigration.

With former "allies" from the Labour party now coming forward to give their criticisms of Gordon Brown, in one respect, the prime minister is very close to the Dodo. Like Carroll's Dodo he likes to be in charge, though he has hardly a clue of how to run the show. When the Portugese first encountered the Dodo on Mauritius, they named it "doudou" meaning "silly". Brown may have a brain when it comes to calculating figures, but when it comes to judging public needs and wishes, he is a fool. Brown has waited in the wings for ten years, counting the days until he gained power. Now he has been in power for almost a year, Brown cannot come up with a single popular policy.

During Blair's leadership, Brown was a grumpy accountant, acting as Chancellor but arguing constantly about when he would become leader himself. Blair had the vision to make Labour appealing to the middle classes and the wealthy. All Gordon Brown can do is hark back to his socialist roots. And the public is fed up with socialism. Where Blair could use his imagination, Gordon is stuck in a time warp, unable to offer anything other than more taxes to fund his socialist agenda.

As a politician who is no longer relevant to the voting public, and who is encountering opposition from senior figures within his own party, Gordon Brown has a lot in common with the Dodo - he is well on his way to extinction.

Real Deals And Dodgy Contracts

"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"

Why did Brown ever expect to become head of the Labour party? To answer that, one must look back to May 1994, and to a meal that Brown allegedly shared with Tony Blair in a restaurant in Islington, North London. The restaurant - no longer in business - was Granita. Whether oysters were on the menu is unknown. Over this meal, the two politicians made a deal - the so-called "Granita Pact". The Labour Party had just lost its leader, Scottish politician John Smith, who died of a heart attack. The party would face a leadership contest. The "Granita Pact" meant that Blair would not be challenged by Brown if he took control of the party. The only caveat would be that he would eventually step down and make way for Brown to fill his shoes.

In Through the Looking Glass, the pugilistic twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee recite to Alice the poem "The Walrus And The Carpenter. The eponymous gourmets fix on a plan to take some oysters for a walk, and both end up devouring the creatures, leaving only their shells. In the 1951 Disney movie "Alice in Wonderland", a twist is introduced, wherein the Walrus eats all the oysters while the carpenter gets none - at the close of the scene the Carpenter chases his former supper companion with murderous intent.

The deal to create a monarchical succession of leadership from Blair to Brown is, of itself, quite scandalous. The leadership of a party should come about through an open election, not via some Machiavellian or Faustian pact negotiated in secret. And herein lies the fundamental flaw in such an arrangement. A deal may have seemed valid back in 1994, but times change.

Brown may have seemed a viable candidate back in 1994, when being Scottish could have earned him a sympathy vote after John Smith's death. When Brown was handed the post of leader on a plate, it appears that Labour party members also acted out of sympathy, acutely aware of Brown's frustration at waiting for Tony Blair to resign.

In early 2006 news broke of an alleged scandal. Called "cash-for-honors", it was believed that before the 2005 election, Labour had offered places in the House of Lords, parliament's Upper House, to those who loaned large sums of cash to the Labour party. The police were involved, and even though a 16 month investigation exonerated Labour politicians, the reek of grubby dealings tainted the party. How much Gordon Brown may have been aware of such measures is discussed below.

Labour won the general (national) election in 2005 on the promise of holding a referendum if any European manifesto were to be introduced. Yet Brown signed the European Treaty on December 13, 2007, before even parliament had been given a chance to discuss it. No referendum was offered to the electorate.

Gordon Brown pretends to be a man for the people - and trots out his history as son of a humble Scottish preacher until the tale becomes as nauseatingly mawkish as an oft-repeated Lassie movie.

Despite his pretensions of being a homespun "son of the manse", Brown showed total contempt for the electorate by pushing for the signing of the European Reform Treaty.

Brown also showed contempt for the poorest members of society when he recently proposed the scrapping of the 10 penny threshold for taxation. This meant that the lowest paid workers would become poorer through government taxation - hardly a wise measure for someone who still thinks socialism is acceptable.

On the wisdom of proposing such an unpopular measure immediately before nationwide local elections, see the comments above concerning the Portugese and Dodos.

Nothing but a pack of cards!

"At this moment the King, who had been for some time busily writing in his note-book, cackled out `Silence!' and read out from his book, `Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.'..... `It's the oldest rule in the book,' said the King. `Then it ought to be Number One,' said Alice."

Last year, it was revealed that since its election in May 1997, the Labour government had introduced no fewer than 3,000 new laws, one for each day of Tony Blair's leadership. Gordon Brown was a leading member of the government so cannot deny responsibility for this situation. He now continues the trend of introducing reams of pointless legislation.

Despite the over-abundance of laws - many of which are either petty, mean or undemocratic - the government has failed to provide adequate legislation to combat terrorism.

Individuals such as Jordanian Islamist Abu Qatada, who has been been described as "Osama bin Laden's spiritual ambassador in Europe", cannot be deported from Britain.

The long-running farce surrounding Qatada is due to the Labour government introducing the Human Rights At of 1998. This Act stipulates that no existing British laws can contravene the 1950 European Convention of Human Rights. Because any trial in Jordan may possibly involve evidence gained by torture (though this is not certain) then Abu Qatada must be set free, a judge has recently ordered. Qatada will be placed under a curfew, but he should not be in Britain at all. He entered the country illegally on a forged passport.

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA)was introduced in 2000 to deal with terrorism and serious crime. Now this law is being used by city officials on councils to snoop on citizens. Worse, the act allows people's personal data to be shared with a staggering 792 different agencies.

Another aspect of the government's new legislation gives jumped-up local council officials the powers to run around like little Nazis snooping on people (using the terms of RIPA) and then fining them if they commit petty offenses such as dropping litter. The concept of Fixed Penalty Notices is consequently abused.

As a result, a young mother was recently fined £75 ($146) for littering. Sarah Davies was feeding a sausage roll to her daughter when a small piece of sausage and pastry fell on the sidewalk. A council official jumped forward and issued a fine. The fact that a pigeon had flown down and carried away the offending "litter" was irrelevant to the power-crazed bureaucrats from Hull City Council.

In a similar vein, Copeland Council in Cumbria abuses the legal powers granted to it by the Labour government. Refuse bins used to be collected once a week, but many councils now only collect once a fortnight. When Gareth Corkhill's bin was so full its lid was four inches ajar, he was taken to court and fined £210 ($408).

What is so disgusting about these infractions of petty regulations is that the courts uphold them, even though the judiciary is unable to boot a supporter of terrorism such as Abu Qatada out of the country.

Labour's disastrous Human Rights Act means that not only foreign terrorists get special treatment. Britain's home-grown prisoners who are drug addicts get special molly-coddling. In November 2006 it was revealed that heroin-addicted convicts who were forced to go without their opiate drugs when they were imprisoned were to be compensated to the tune of thousands of pounds.
This month, the Sentencing Guidelines Council recommends that if a person steals to fund a drug or gambling habit - then that individual could escape a jail sentence.

And his answer trickled through my head,
Like water through a sieve

The quote above is from Haddocks' Eyes a poem in Through the Looking Glass. It seems appropriate to just about anything that Gordon Brown has said publicly since he fumbled to grasp the reins of power.

One of Brown's most meaningless statements is his recent assertion that elderly people will not have to give up their homes to fund their care needs. In Scotland, which now has its own parliament thanks to Labour, care needs of the elderly are paid for out of the national budget. In the rest of Britain, the elderly must spend most of their savings and assets before they qualify for free care. Brown's solution to the problem is to introduce a compulsory tax that everyone must pay into.

This new method of taxing seems to have come from the notebook of Gordon's former guru, Italian communist Antonio Gramsci. There is no announcement of when such a tax will be introduced. The way things are going, Gordon Brown will be unemployed before such a scheme could feasibly be drafted and passed through both Houses of Parliament.

For ten years I have looked after my mother (who has Alzheimers) at home. This saves her having to sell the family house to fund her care. My mother paid National Insurance contributions since 1948, when the National Health Service was founded. Despite this, she still has to pay for every aspect of her care. I hear Gordon Brown's comments on subsidizing care for the elderly and feel sickened at their insincerity.

It appears Labour expects the British public to be like Lewis Carroll's White Queen, who forced herself to believe six impossible things before breakfast.

According to Alice in Wonderland: "it's always pepper that makes people hot-tempered....and vinegar that makes them sour - and camomile that makes them bitter." When he was Chancellor, only one thing made Gordon Brown hot-tempered, sour and bitter, and that was Tony Blair. Now Brown is prime minister, he cannot blame Blair for his failure to cope with leadership. Brown lacks Blair's communication skills. Blair could fake sincerity well, and his smiles appeared natural. Gordon Brown's smiles seem less natural than those of the Cheshire Cat.

The notion of Brown being ousted from his post as leader of the party before the next election is now being discussed in public and loudly.

Frank Field, former welfare minister, has spoken of "tantrums of an indescribable nature" coming from Brown when he was Chancellor and Tony Blair was prime minister. Field added "The awful fact that is coming across is that he seems so unhappy in himself. I think everybody in the country who has ever watched a news clip of the prime minister realises that. I think that's a mega problem for him and for the government."

Two new books are coming out which add to the chorus of political voices condemning Brown. Former deputy prime minister John Prescott has just published serialized extracts of his autobiography. In this, he describes Brown as "frustrating, annoying, bewildering and prickly," a person who could "could go off like a bloody volcano."
>
Additionally, Prescott states that Brown often asked Tony Blair exactly when he would be standing down. Even Anne Baxter's ambitious character in All About Eve had more tact and class than that.

Prescott found himself caught between Gordon Brown who would tend to sulk because the prime minister remained in power, and Tony Blair who would tend to moan about his Chancellor. Prescott suggested to Blair that he should sack Brown. This never happened as "Tony knew that sacking Gordon would tear the party apart."

At the same time that Prescott's memoirs are published in The Times, then Tony's wife also publishes her memoirs in the same newspaper. The editors of the Times are kind enough to let us know what Cherie Blair thought of Gordon Brown. Cherie states that the terms of the deal that is now known as the Granita pact were negotiated weeks before the actual meal took place. She claimed: "The Granita meeting was basically for them to talk about the announcement." Cherie reveals that, like a latter-day Lady Macbeth, she urged her husband: "Listen, Tony. This is your moment. You've got to take it. Who dares wins."

Former Labour fundraiser Lord Levy also has a book of memoirs to be published. On Sunday, he was asked about the police inquiry into alleged corruption in the "cash-for-honors" scandal. Lord Levy said: "I would find it very strange that the person who is leading the election campaign for Labour, that is Gordon, who has to fight the election, who has to fund the election, (to) know where the monies are coming from because the party is spending considerable sums of money - surely you're going to ask: "Well how is this being funded? Are we bringing in the money on donations?" "

Brown has tried to distance himself from the criticisms, but there seems to be nothing he can do. The public have already cast their vote on his performance in the local elections.

Labour has been in power for a decade, and it is rare in modern British politics for a party to last so long. Margaret Thatcher was in power from 1979 to 1990, and under John Major her party continued in power until 1997. Blair had his decade of power from 1997 to 2007. But Gordon Brown has no charisma. He is not a good communicator. He tends to preach at people rather than make them feel personally engaged. In two years' time, Britain must have a general election. If Gordon Brown leads the party at that time, Labour will have no hope of winning. Judging by Labour's appalling performance, that can only be a good thing.

When Brown became prime minister last June, opinion polls showed that he initially had strong public support. This public confidence was called the "Brown Bounce", but this lost its elasticity some time last fall.

Labour has bullied the electorate with its numerous new laws, and it has forced through its policies of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism has failed to inspire people, and has been shown to be more socially divisive than cohesive. Cultural relativism means that in schools, British values are regarded as "no better" than those of any other culture.

When Labour came to power in May 1997, it introduced a "Scottish parliament". Splitting the country in this manner has only fostered resentments between Scotland and England. There have been demands for an "English parliament", with 61 percent of English people supporting such a move.

After the recent local election fiasco, the leader of the Labour party in the Scottish parliament, Wendy Alexander, apparently called for a referendum on Scottish independence. Brown has said he will fight to keep Britain united. Yet it was his party that started the break-up of national unity by granting to Scots and Welsh people their own parliaments, but not offering the same for those who live in England.

The local elections showed how unpopular Labour and its policies have become. Gordon Brown lacks the personal magnetism to inspire confidence. If he has already lost the support of the people, then nothing will bring back the "Brown Bounce". An awkward, pessimistic individual with no visible warmth or passion will not win hearts and minds. The Tories have been in the shadows for a decade, and finally they appear to be gaining popularity.

I have shamelessly mixed my metaphors in this assessment of Gordon Brown's Labour party, and thus I have probably exhausted all useful analogies from Wonderland or Looking Glass World. Being so thoroughly out of touch with public sentiments, Brown bears a passing similarity to the delusional Mad Hatter, presiding over another national "unbirthday". Could Brown conceivably be compared to the demonic Jabberwock?:
"And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!"

Brown is the head of a governing party that is in a crisis. Musing on the subject of Wonderland and Looking Glass Land, maybe there is only one cure for the malaise that currently affects Britain's body politic:

"The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said, without looking round....."

(nb: the author would like to reassure readers that he in no way supports decapitation, even for Labour party leaders).

Adrian Morgan

© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 9:39 AM | Comments (2)

May 11, 2008

Islam in the Classroom: The American Textbook Council 2008 Report

Bad news on the American public education front. The American Textbook Council has put out their 2008 Report: Islam in the Classroom. According to the report, there has apparently been no progress in eliminating the politically correct airbrushing of history and promotion of Islam in the junior and high school level text books since I last reported on it two and a half years ago.

Gilbert T. Sewall, the author of the report reviews the nation's ten most widely used textbooks for junior and senior high seems well aware of the multicultural and politically correct bias that pervades textbooks today.

I encourage anyone concerned with what textbooks the taxpayers are funding for the education of our children to read this report. It critiques several example passages and gives a good idea of the distortions and omissions about history and Islam that are presented in these texts. There are several examples of passages that are deliberately offering very little insight into important geopolitical forces like terrorism, fundamentalism and modernity that affect national security. Also, while Islam is played up and whitewashed, European and Christian history is painted in a harsh light its relevance is downplayed.

Sewall places the blame mainly on the schoolbook publishers and governing boards who too quickly cave in to deflect protests from "pressure groups" such as the Council on Islamic Education. He says that the political climate in education that places heavy emphasis on "diversity" and the catering of students who can't or won't learn history makes it easy for these pressure groups to get away with their version of history. Parents who attempted to block the books at a local level were dismissed as racists. Yes, it's racist to want history accurately portrayed.

According to ATC, California and Texas adopted their textbooks in 2005 which will apparently be used for years to come. What they've done is ensure that millions of children will be trapped using books that offer mediocrity and a soft petaled version of history. More than that, I fear that the multicultural mind-rot offered to our children will discourage critical thinking to such a degree that we will produce a generation that is ill-equipped for the challenges of the future. The slide in education has been taking place already for the last forty years.

What can be done? In my 2005 piece, I said that parents have a high degree of power at a local level in choosing the textbooks for the students. However, clearly, I was wrong. The forces of multiculturalism and politically correct thought is so strong that we see that the voices that stand for truth and accuracy are again shut down as racist. Still, I think it's worth it to continue to challenge school boards locally over the curriculum and textbook matters. Even if the efforts fail, it's important that the administrators know that these textbooks will never go unnoticed and unchallenged.

Home schooling has becoming an increasingly viable option since there are so many online resources available for the home schooling parent. Also, the growing homeschooling phenomena is of increasing concern to the public school system - tax dollars lost and all. If this phenomena continues to grow academics will finally be compelled to change the offending textbooks in order to keep students.

Homeschooling is not an option for most working parents but they can still stay actively involved in what the children are taught in social studies and history. Stay on top of what books are at issue - the top ten are included in the report - and review your child's textbooks. You can find supplemental reading for your child that offers a more accurate accounting of history and world affairs. This might even be an excellent opportunity to teach your child about the multicultural agenda and teach them to question information they receive from books, government and schools. You might not be able to home school your child, but you can still take on the task of helping your child develop critical thinking skills that are so lacking in the educational environment now.

We aren't beaten yet, but we're going to have to get extremely pro-active when it comes to the education of our young. Start now.

addendum:

California, that liberal paradise and consequently, bastion of freedom and self-determination has recently outlawed homeschooling at the appeals level.

Apparently, it does work to take up the fight at the local level in other states besides California:

Posted by Isabel de Castilla at 6:41 PM | Comments (1)

May 8, 2008

Malaysia: First (Living) Woman Allowed To Leave Islam

Malaysia attempts to present itself as a "liberal" Muslim state. Article 11 of the Malaysian constitution states that a citizen can follow any religion of their choosing, contains a clause which shows that Malaysia has no concept of religious freedom but adds: "The law may control or restrict the propagation of any religious doctrine or belief among persons professing the religion of Islam." Article 3 states that Islam is the official religion of the state, but Article 3 (1) of the constitution states that 'other religions may be practiced in peace and harmony in any part of the Federation'.

Additionally, there is a racist element in Malaysia's constitution. All ethnic Malays are said to be Muslim. At the age of 12, each person in Malaysia is issued with an identity card - called MyKad - upon which the person's religion and race are listed. And all Malays are automatically said to be Muslims.

The problems are made worse by the racism of Malaysia's ruling party - UMNO. This party has ruled in a coalition since Malaysia became independent in 1957. After race riots in 1969, the party has actively promoted a racist policy of "ketuanan Melayu" which gives job preferences and privileges to Malays and Muslims above other racial/religious groups.

In the history of modern Malaysia, the only person who was allowed to leave Islam was an 89-year old widow called Nyonya Tahir. She had married a Chinese Buddhist man in 1936 when she was aged 20. She became a Buddhist. Her choice to become a Buddhist was made long before the Malaysian constitution was written. Nyonya had tried repeatedly to have the National Registration Department (NRD) change her status to "Buddhist".

The NRD never makes any decisions of this nature, as an amendment tot he constitution was brought in by the ruling UMNO party in 1988. There are two systems of justice in Malaysia - the civil courts, and the sharia (Syariah) courts. Article 121 (a) was introduced in 1988 which stated that any issue which fell under the jurisdiction of the Islamic courts could not be dealt with by the civil courts. As for a Muslim all issues of "religious status" are dealt with by the Islamic courts, all appeals to civil courts on issues of apostasy are rejected.

Nyonya Tahir made history when on January 24, 2006 she was allowed to be granted the status of being a Buddhist. This status had been denied her ever since Malaysia became independent in 1957.

Unfortunately, this privilege was not fully appreciated by Nyonya Tahir, as she had died on January 19 of that year. Her body had been refused a burial until Seremban State Syariah Court had decided on the issue.

The custom of body-snatching by Muslim courts has shocked the Western world since December 2005, when the corpse of a Hindu former mountaineering hero was refused burial. The Islamic courts had been told that Maniam Moorthy had become a Muslim convert, a fact his wife Kaliammal had denied. Moorthy had been in a coma when the allegations were made, and could not confirm or deny the claims. Kaliammal tok the case to the HIgh Court. The judge said that because of Article 121 (a) he could not intervene. On December 28, 2005, Lance-Corporal Moorthy's body was taken away by representatives of the Islamic courts and buried as a Muslim in a Muslim ceremony.

Since that time there have ben several cases where the bodies of Buddhists, Christians and Hindus have been denied burial until representatives of Islamic courts have battled to take possession of the cadaver. Such actions, shocking to outsiders, naturally cause upset and offense to grieving relatives. Muslim women are not allowed to marry out of their faith. As a result, families have been forcibly ripped apart when Islamic courts have decided that a Hindu woman is officially a "Muslim".

One 57-year old Malay woman, Kamariah Ali, had publicly rejected Islam in 1998 and in 2005. An Islamic court sentenced her on March 3, 2008 to two year's jail for the "crime" of leaving Islam. She has been jailed for being a non-Muslim before. She was a member of the heretical "Sky Kingdom Sect" which welcomed Buddhists, Muslims, Christians and Hindus to its compound. She was jailed twice before for not being a "proper" Muslim. In this decade she was jailed for insulting Islam, and in 1992 she was jailed for apostasy.

Another Malay woman who has fought for the right to leave Islam is Lina Joy. She became a Christian in 1981. The NRD refused to recognize either of her change of name from Azlina Jailani to a Christian one (Lina Joy) or to accept her conversion out of Islam. Eventually the NRD allowed her to have her Christian name on her MyKad, but refused to list her as a Christian.

Lina Joy took her case to the Federal Court - the highest court in the nation - in 2006. The result was delayed and delayed. Eventually, in May 2007 the judges at the Federal Court ruled by two to one that she had no right to leave Islam. Outside the court, Muslims cheered the result. Lina is not allowed to marry her Christian boyfriend while she is officially a "Muslim". She and her lawyer have received death threats from Muslims.

I wrote earlier this year:

"A similar case involved an ethnic Chinese woman from Nibong Tebal, Penang state, who was originally called Tan Ean Huang. She had married an Iranian man called Ferdoun Ashanian in 1999. Before she married him, she converted to Islam in July 1998, and her MyKad was changed by the NRD to acknowledge her conversion. She became known as Siti Fatimah. Only a few months after the marriage Ashanian deserted her, and his whereabouts are now unknown. In May 2006, she applied to Penang's Islamic Affairs Council to declare that she is not a Muslim. Siti Fatimah wanted her MyKad religious status to be officially changed to Buddhist.

She claimed that her conversion to Islam was only a means to get married, and after the failure of her marriage she had gone back to her Buddhist beliefs. She maintained reverence for Buddhist deities such as Kuan Yin and others. On August 11, 2007, Judge Othman Ibrahim Othman ruled at Penang's Syariah High Court that a decision would not be made until December 3. He ruled in the meantime that she should undergo Islamic counseling. As in other such cases, a decision has still not been made."

In Penang state, in northwest Malaysia on Thursday, a Shariah High Court' decided that the 39-year old cake-seller could leave Islam. The court ruled that when Siti married her husband, the official Islamic authorities and her husband had both failed to give her proper guidance on Islam.

The judge, Othman Ibrahim, ruled that "The court is disappointed because MAIPP (Penang Islamic Religious Council) did not act quickly to save the faith of a Muslim and provide a procedure to control and supervise a Muslim convert so that she did not abandon Islam. Without reasonable methods, perhaps more will come to court to renounce Islam."

Othman also criticized the Penang Islamic Religious Council (MAIPP) for failing to attend the court until the proceedings were nearly over, despite MAIPP being issued with a summons and statement of claim.

Judge Othman ordered MAIPP to cancel the certificate that claimed Siti had converted into Islam.

Lawyer Ahmad Munawir Abdul Aziz of the MAIPP said: "So you can't blame her for her ignorance of the teachings and wanting to convert out."

Siti was pleased, and said: " I want to go to the (Buddhist) temple to pray and give thanks."

Siti had filed her appeal on July 10, 2006, naming MAIP as a defendant. She asserted that she had only converted on July 25, 1998 only to be able to marry her Iranian husband. He had absconded four months after the marriage. Siti claims she still eats pork.

Her lawyer said it was a landmark decision. Some minority groups have said that this was a victory for minority rights, but until Muslims are allowed to leave Islam, just as any other person can leave their religion to convert into Islam, there has been only a lucky result for Siti.

It is of no consolation to Kamariah Ali who is in jail, to Lina Joy, or to Hindu women such as Revathi Massosai who was placed in an Islamic "rehabilitation center", wher she claims she was mentally tortured. It is no consolation for the family of Hindu rubber tapper Marimuthu. His wife, by whom he had six children, was said to be a Muslim. He was told that unless he converted to Islam, he would be prosecuted for "khalwat" - being in close proximity to a person to whom one is neither a relative or marriage partner. His wife has been forced to leave her family.

Until these injustices are addressed, and the racist parts of the constitution (Article 160, section 2) that define all Malays as Muslims, and the amendment of 121 (A) is struck off, there is nothing here to celebrate. The news is good for Siti, but it is a fluke, rather than a basic right. I am reminded of the saying "one swallow does not a summer make".

Siti may not even be out of the woods yet - MAIPP has the right to contest the decision from the state's Syariah High Court. Ahmad Munawir Abdul Aziz, representing MAIPP, said that his group would be lodging its appeal within 14 days at the Penang Syariah Appeals Court.

Siti had also tried to have the NRD change the religious status on her MyKad identity card from "Muslim" to Buddhist". Judge Othman Ibrahim had refused, stating that his court did have jurisdiction over this matter.

Malaysia's largest trading partner is America. Perhaps the American government should be pressing for Malaysia to allow freedom of religion for all people in Malaysia. As a member of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), the Malaysian government has moved further towards Islamism.

In 2007, during the nation's 50th anniversary celebrations of independence (Merdeka), Malaysia's chief justice Ahmad Fairuz suggested that common law should be abolished and replaced with Sharia law.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 9:47 PM | Comments (0)

Islam: Civilization Clash in Shakespeare's Time - Part Two

This article by Adrian Morgan (Giraldus Cambrensis of Western Resistance) appeared today in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.

The Clash of Civilizations In the Time of Shakespeare: Part Two

Part One appeared last week.

All the Ottoman Sultans were descendants of Osman I (1258 - 1326). Around 1300, this ruler united certain of the disparate Turkish tribes (Seljuks) who had originally settled in Anatolia from the 11th century. Osman emerged as a ruthless leader, uniting some of these tribes with force where necessary and establishing a center of power at Bursa near Constantinople.

The heavily-fortified city of Constantinople was held by the Byzantines and in the 15th century the Ottomans became determined to conquer it. Murad II (1421 - 1451) tried unsuccessfully to invade the city in 1423. On May 29, 1453, the city finally fell to the Ottomans, who were led by Mehmet II (1432 - 1481). The conquest of Constantinople has been described as the event that ended the Medieval period.

The Genoese had a trading colony in Constantinople when the city was under Byzantine rule. In 1348, they built a tower which still stands. It is called the Galata tower, after this Genoese colony. In the 15h century it became the home of a detachment of Janissaries. In the 16th century the tower was used to hold prisoners of war. These would be sent to the naval arsenal at Kasimpasa, where they would become galley slaves.

Janissaries

The "new army" (yeni ceri) of Janissaries reflected Ottoman hostility to Christianity. Orhan I, the son of Osman I, who ruled from c. 1324 - 1360, founded the group around 1330. From its inception the main recruits were Christians - either adults who had been forced to convert to Islam, or children of Christians who were abducted as "tributes". After an edict of 1362 by Sultan Murad I (ruled 1360 - 1381), special privileges were offered to this new army, and Turks began to join. The Janissaries became the main standing army of the Ottomans, but Christians continued to be forcibly inducted to its ranks.

In the 15th century, hostage taking became a weapon of control. In 1442 Vlad II the ruler of Wallachia (which includes modern Romania) sent two of his sons, Vlad and Radu as hostages to Sultan Murad II. Vlad was 13 at the time, the elder of the two captives. The boys remained at Adrianople (Edirne). Though Radu chose to stay with his captors, Vlad was freed in 1448. He became Vlad III, ruler of Wallachia. He battled against the Turks, but used against them a method of punishment he had learned from the Ottomans. He was known as Vlad Tepes - Vlad the Impaler. As well as enacting mass-impalements, he was reputed to have once eaten bread soaked in a victim's blood. The legends of Vlad Tepes and his father gave rise to the Dracula myth.

Another young hostage of the Ottoman Turks was George Kastrioti (aka Skanderbeg, Albania's national hero). He and his three brothers had been sent as hostages to Turkey by their father, who was following the orders of Sultan Bayezid I (also called Yildirim, or "lightning"). Skanderbeg converted to Islam, and distinguished himself in the Ottoman army. In 1443, he rebelled against the Ottomans and - as a Christian - he led some three hundred Albanians to fight with the Hungarians against the Turks. For 25 years he fought against the Turks, preventing them from conquering his homeland.

The Janissaries were a well-trained and effective military force. They were generally feared by members of the Turkish citizenry. They would carry long staves. Fynes Moryson was an English traveler who was in Constantinople in 1597. He encountered contempt for being a non-Muslim.

Moryson wrote that once, while walking in the city, "a wild-headed Turke took my hat from my head (being of the fashion of Europe not used there) and having turned it, and long beheld it, he said (to use his rude words) Lend me this vessell to ease my belly therein; and so girning flung it on the dyrtie ground, which I with patience took up".

Moryson on several occasions was robbed by Janissaries, who took his provisions from him. He published his account, called "An Itinerary" in 1617. He noted that long after his return to England, he was still traumatized by the experience.

Thomas Dallam, the organ-maker described in Part One, visited Constantinople at the end of the 16th century. Along the way, he and some others from his ship happened to be stranded for a night in a village on the northern shore of the Sea of Marmora. A janissary had been assigned to act as a bodyguard. They stayed in a "darke uncomfortable house". They slept on bare floorboards, while the janissary slept over a trapdoor.

In the night, one of the fifteen men went to the balcony to relieve himself. At dusk, the men had spoken of the snakes of the region. One of the man's garters was hanging loose and the wind blew it against his leg. He yelled that a snake was on him, and the others woke thinking they were being ambushed. The janissary who had been charged to protect them showed none of the courage normally associated with his trade. Hearing the noise, he opened the trapdoor and slipped into the cellar beneath. When the chaos had subsided the janissary was unable to climb out of the cellar and had to be pulled out.

The foreign embassies in Pera, Constantinople, would usually have a small retinue of Janissaries to guard their interests. Between 1555 and 1562, the Flemish ambassador at the Ottoman Sublime Porte (government) was Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq. This individual, who would introduce the tulip to Western Europe wrote of Janissaries: "The Turkish state has 12,000 of these troops when the corps is at its full strength. They are scattered through every part of the empire, either to garrison the forts against the enemy, or to protect the Christians and Jews from the violence of the mob. There is no district with any considerable amount of population, no borough or city, which has not a detachment of Janissaries to protect the Christians, Jews, and other helpless people from outrage and wrong."

The subjugated states were obliged to pay jizya tax to the Ottoman government at this time, and alsoto submit quotas of male children, aged 12 to 13, who would become Janissaries. Among some of those sent to Turkey to be trained in warfare, a select few were chosen for the diplomatic service. These individuals, called Ajem Oghlan ("rough lad") would be sent to Constantinople to work in the service of the Sublime Porte.

The Ajem-Oghlan would be chosen for "bodily perfection, muscular strength, and intellectual ability, so far as it could be judged without long testing." Busbecq noted: "The Turks rejoice greatly when they find an exceptional man, as though they had acquired a precious object, and they spare no labor or effort in cultivating him."

From the mid fifteenth century onwards, there were several Janissary revolts. Finally, when these infantry troops were seen as a potential threat to Ottoman rulership, the Janissaries were officially disbanded in 1826.

Galley Slaves And Piracy

During the Renaissance, the main vessels of war in the Mediterranean were galleys. The Venetians and Genoese employed such oared vessels, and the Ottomans used similar vessels. These had sails, but a single tier of oarsmen maneuvered the boats in close combat.

The oarsmen on Christian and Ottoman boats were usually captives, forced to act as slaves. Few individuals who became such slaves would ever be free to write of their experiences.

One such individual was Edward Webb. He published an account of his adventures in 1590 in a book entitled "Ed: Webbe His Travailes: The rare and most wonderfull things which Edw. Webbe, an Englishman borne, hath seene and passed in his troublesome travailes.... Herein is set foorth his extreme slaverie sustained many yeres togither, in the Gallies and wars of the great Turk against the Landes of Persia.....".

Webb was a skilled gunner. His father Richard Webb, he states, was Master Gunner of England in 1554, the year of Edward's birth. Edward Webb was released with a ransom in May 1589 from captivity. His release in Constantinople is a matter of historical record. Webb reported that he had been serving on a ship as a gunner when it was captured. He and his companions were forced to act as a slave oarsman in Turkish galleys, stripped naked and abused.

He wrote that he spent six "yeares in this miserable state, wonderfully beaten and misused every day." He told his captors that he had "good skill in Gunners art" and was released from the galleys. He was still in bondage, and had to serve as a gunner, a conscript in the Turkish army. Webb claimed he had served in campaigns in Syria and Palestine, as well as Russia, Goa in India and even in the land of "Prester John".

This latter detail has led some to doubt the authenticity of parts of his report. Webb included myths of Prester John into his account of his travels. He describes cannibals, headless men and four-headed beasts in Prester John's kingdom. Worse, he recounts that he stroked unicorns in parks in this kingdom, an artistic license that (unless he speaks of rhinos) damages his credibility. Some of his details of Prester John's kingdom became reworked into Shakespeare's Othello (1.3, 128-45).

John Fox was another gunner who became a galley slave. He successfully mounted a rebellion and escape. His tale is told in Richard Hakluyt's vast anthology of travelers' tales, "Voyages...". Fox had set out from Portsmouth, England in 1563. His ship, the Three Half Moons, held 38 men and munitions. It was bound for Spain to trade, but was attacked by "Turks" near Gibraltar and soon overrun.

"the Christians must needs to the galleys, to serve in new offices; and they were no sooner in them, but their garments were pulled over their ears, and torn from their backs, and they set to the oars.".

In winter, many Ottoman galleys were put to shore at Alexandria in Egypt for repairs and "trimming". Near this spot their slave oarsmen were kept in a prison. In 1577, Fox and two other Englishmen were housed among 238 Christian captives, who came from fifteen nations. Fox killed a prison guard and led a revolt that saw the captives escape. They boarded the only galley that had been "trimmed" and fled. Though they were fired upon with cannon, none of the other galleys had masts or sails, and there were no slaves ready to row. Fox and crew escaped to Gallipoli.

From the latter half of the 15th century and into the first part of the 16th, the Ottomans had encouraged piracy. There were four Barbarossa brothers but two became notorious. Aruj (c. 1474 - 1518) was given a position in the Ottoman navy and was given several galleys to command. He began to attack the Italian coast, and also became engaged in conflicts with the Knights of St John.

Aruj gained control of Algiers in August 1516. He killed the Algerian ruler, Selim ben Tumi, either by strangulation with the ruler's turban, or suffocating him in his own steam bath. Aruj was killed by Spanish fighters in 1518, but in 1529, Algiers fell to the Ottomans.

Aruj's role was taken up by his younger brother Khair ad-Din. Algeria became a center for piracy. Last year, Family Security Matters dealt with the subject of the Barbary Corsairs, and their forcible abductions of both sailors and civilians.

In 1571, the Battle of Lepanto was a victory for combined Christian forces against the Ottomans. This was the last major battle involving galleys. The acts of piracy by the Ottomans would continue, and even increased after this. The galleys needed a large crew. A fleet of 200 ships required 20,000 oarsmen. Though galleys began to be phased out, Christian slaves would be used in construction work and other enterprises. The Barbary Corsairs, whose actions were never condemned by their Ottoman overlords, continue to hijack ships, raid village ports and traffic humans until 1815.

In Algeria, four English individuals who had "turned Turk" assisted their masters to build boats that were better suited to sail beyond the confines of the Mediterranean. These men, known as Ward, Bishop, Sakell and Jennings became notorious as traitors. In August 1609 these traitor-pirates' activities were discussed in the court of King James I.

The most feared of these pirates was Captain John Ward, born in Feversham in Kent. As a Muslim he was called Yusuf Reis. He came to piracy late. He was already a convicted pirate when in 1603, aged 50, he was forced into the navy. He deserted, hijacked ships and ended up on the North African (Barbary) coast. He made Tunis the center of his piracy. There Ward had allegedly vowed to "become a foe to all Christians, bee a persecutor of their wealt".

The Dey of Tunis was pleased with Ward's attacks, and gave him a plot of land and an abandoned castle. Ward had started piracy for profit, hoping to become wealthy from seized treasure, but gained greater wealth from kidnapping and trafficking human slaves. Andrew Barker, one of Ward's English captives said Ward's home was "a very stately house, farre more fit for a prince than a pirate." Barker said he had nor seen "any peere in England that beares up his post in more dignitie, nor hath attendants more obsequious."

When Scottish traveler William Lithgow met Ward in Tunis in 1615, he wrote that the pirate lived in a palace and had a retinue that included 15 Englishman. Lithgow related that Ward's home was "a fair palace beautified with rich marble and alabaster stones. With whom I found domestics, some fifteen circumcised English renegades, whose lives and countenances were both alike. Old Ward their master was placable and diverse times in my ten days staying there I dined and supped with him."

"Ward the Pirate" became the subject of a ballad written around 1690.

Slave Raids

In 1551, Suleiman the "Magnificent" ordered Dragut Reis to attack Malta. Malta was under the guardianship of the Knights of St John. The attack upon Malta failed, so Dragut reis turned his attention to the neighboring island of Gozo. A total of 5,000 citizens of Gozo, including women, were taken into slavery.

It is easy to blame the Ottomans for their slave-raids - especially when they were officially trading with the kinsmen of those they kidnapped. Between 1609 and 1616, a total of 466 English vessels were captured and their crews made into slaves. Many were worked to death. These slaves were, if lucky, ransomed. Kidnapped Christians were kept prisoner in Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. In 1640, 3,000 English slaves who were held in Algiers petitioned their government for help. Through the 17th century it was traditional for English churches to hold services for the purposes of fundraising for the ransom of the hostages.

The Christians in the 16th century had also copied the activities of the Ottoman slave-dealers. In Bodrum (formerly Halicarnassus) in southwest Turkey, the Knights of St John (Knights Hospitaller) had a castle. These knights fought against the Turks at Lepanto and earlier at Malta. They had imprisoned Aruj Barbarossa at this castle.

In 1993 excavations at Bodrum castle found the skeletons of 13 galley slaves, still in fetters. These had been Muslims, probably war captives, who had served as galley slaves for the Christians. Their bodies had been unceremoniously thrown in a garbage heap.

The Genoese who captured Muslim prisoners also made them work as slaves on their galleys. According to Michelangelo Dolcino, the Muslim galley slaves would be chained to their benches night and day.

The times were harsh and savage. In June 1565 in a battle at fort St Elmo on the island between Jean de la Valette and Ottoman forces, both sides were uncompromising. The Turkish general Mustapha ordered the wounded Knights of St John to have their hearts torn out. Valette ordered that all Turkish prisoners should be decapitated, and that no more live prisoners should be taken.

The Ottoman Caliphs did nothing to condemn slavery, and grew wealthy through hijackings, kidnap and slavery. In today's climate of moral relativism, people are quick to condemn Western culture and history, yet hypocritically excuse the atrocities of others.

Thomas Dallam noticed that on the Greek island of Chios and others which were under Ottoman rule, how poverty-stricken the inhabitants were, due to their having to pay massive taxes to their overlords. This taxing of non-Muslims is all part of Islamic law. Called jizya, it is described in the Hadith of Bukhari (Book 19, number 4294) thus: "If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them."

Many Muslims who currently complain that the West is "Islamophobic" should seriously re-examine their own history. In 1159, all the Christians in Tunis were given a simple option - "convert or die". They were not offered the opportunity of paying a special jizya tax to keep their faith.

From the time of Suleiman the Magnificent, the jizya tax was enforced in Christian communities under Ottoman rule. Samuel Purchas, who continued to publish the papers in Richard Haklut's possession after the latter's death, published an interesting document.

The document is authored by Edward Brerewood (c.1565-1613) who was the head of Astronomy at Gresham College from 1596 until his death. He states: "But, in all the Turkes Dominion that hee hath in Europe, inclosed after a peninsular figure, betweene Danubius and the Sea, and containing in circuit about 2300 miles (for Moldavia, Walachia, and Transilvania, I reckon not for the parts of his Dominion) namely, from above Buda, on Danubius side, and from Ragusa on the Sea Eastward, to the utmost bounds of Europe, as also in the Iles of the Aegean Sea, Christians are mingled with Mahometans...."

"And in his Dominion of the Turks in Europe, such is notwithstanding the mixture of Mahumetans with Christians, so that the Christians make two third parts at least of the inhabitants: for the Turke, so that the Christians pay him his yeerely tribute (which is one fourth part of their increase, and a Saltanie for every poll) and speake nothing against the Religion and Sect of Mahumet, permitteth them the liberty of their religion."

The Ottoman Caliphate had its faults, as did the earlier civilizations of the West. However, Western culture has not clung to the barbarisms and oppressions of its past. The Islamists who today tell us that the world would be a better place under a Caliphate should really examine that past critically. Do they really want to bring back slavery and to force non-Muslims to convert or be killed unless they pay a tax? As philosopher George Santanya stated: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Adrian Morgan

© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 6:43 AM | Comments (0)

May 4, 2008

On Genocide, Free Thought and the Healing Profession

The recent events surrounding this latest battle between the anti-jihad blogs stemming from a piece on genocide posted in Gates of Vienna has reminded me again of what I dislike about the psychoanalytic profession. It is not the usual charges that it is not really science, nothing can be agreed upon in the community and that it just a bunch of sophisticated sounding hooey. My objection is that the most important traits to being a good healer such as wisdom, judgment, discernment, compassion and integrity just can't be measured with a string of letters after the name. These traits can't really be taught in a lecture and they aren't necessarily acquired over time. I think there's a very high risk of doing more damage than healing for those who have the credentials, the proof of a high level of training, the aura of intelligence, the respect, but are lacking in any one of the more difficult to measure traits.

My first instruction on the capacity of medical professionals for destruction was when I read about Dr. Joseph Mengele. The most terrifying thing about the Mengele story is that this was a man who was born into a family of wealth and privilege. And yet this soft, comfortable life did not prevent him from being cruel to others. By all accounts, he was a highly intelligent man. He was very well educated. He was a professional healer. And yet none of these things inoculated him against becoming evil. If anyone had the freedom to exercise his options and the ability to recognize what those options were, it should have been Mengele. If anyone should have internalized a sense of compassion and responsibility and understood the important place of ethics in his field it should have been Mengele!

Mengele is the most notorious but he is hardly the only medical doctor directly or indirectly involved in the holocaust. For the several decades preceding the final solution the scientific community, including, and especially, psychiatrists, wrote extensively on eugenics. Most were in full support and there was very little attention to the ethical implications of eugenics. They saw the culling of the diseased and infirmed a way towards a better society. Doctors wrote papers on the best way to kill the infirmed and reduce the population of the inferior races like blacks and Jews. Their favorite sport was to write research papers proving that the Jews were genetically defective.

Did the doctors see what was coming down the pike? Did they realize that they were greasing the wheels of genocide? They at the very least had to know that they were causing damage to the reputation of an already beleaguered people.

It seems like some of these psychiatrists would have found the menacing situation that was developing in Germany worth a paper or two; the propaganda machine, the youth camps, the growing intolerance to dissent, the general population growing increasingly unsympathetic and hostile towards gays, Jews and the sick. But no, the good doctors didn't think to jump all over the Third Reich until after the smoke cleared and the mountain of bodies were piled up to the sun. Then we get to hear all about how such a sophisticated society like Germany could have gone down such a dark road. We get to hear all about the psychological phenomena of scapegoating and appeasement. Really, what would we do without the learned professionals?

How could the professional healers be so willing to pick on the weak, the people they should have been helping, while remaining so blind to the sicknesses of the greater society? These are the very people you'd expect to recognize sooner than anyone the menace that was right before their eyes.

Well, it's human nature, I guess. We're naturally programmed to go along with the strong current, the strong leader or the general attitude or sentiment of the society we're brought up in. It's safer and easier. It might be an evolutionary advantage. The people who learn to follow along with society survive. We don't have to learn to go with the flow, we don't have to actively think about it. It's automatic behavior. Next we soak in our societies attitudes and values growing up. Once we're stamped with society's template, we're off on autopilot for the rest of our lives, blind to everything but what our society taught us to see. Then a charismatic leader comes along with a mission. He pushes the right buttons and targets the right people. And people fall in line. It doesn't matter how intelligent or educated you are. It doesn't matter how much training you have in the human psyche. It clearly doesn't matter.

But there were people who saw what most of the medical community couldn't see. There were educated elites who did concern themselves about the ethics of eugenics. There were people who had a moral compass and resisted the message they were being fed by their society. People put their lives on the line to resist the growing pathologies of their society. It was a minority, but still! Proof that people are not merely slaves to the template they had been stamped with by their society.

When I was in middle school we watched some interviews of some holocaust survivors. One of the survivors said that we are no different today than what we were 40 years ago. Another holocaust could still take place during our generation or the next generation. My instinct told me he was right but I couldn't work out why. Don't most of us now know that racism is evil and everyone is the same? Haven't we seen all the horrifying videos of the concentration camp prisoners? How could there be a repeat?

Our generation has the same human nature as the WWII generation. It's our society's template we post-WWII generations have been stamped with that is different. We are now taught that Western civilization is no better and often worse than other civilizations. All religions are basically the same. We Westerners should be ashamed of ourselves for imperialistic past and that no other civilization is capable of the same level of evil. The rest of the world would not be in the pitiful state it is in if it weren't for our actions. We soak up this message in a million different ways since birth. And we know well the consequences for not towing the politically correct line range from being fired, jailed, assassinated, booted from Pajamas Media, or just branded as evil, racist and neo-nazis.

Some people today are realizing there's a flaw or two in the template that's been handed down to us. They're realizing the chief reason Western society is again hurdling down the road to destruction is that the politically correct template has hampered our ability to address legitimate problems like unrestrained immigration or Islam's rather destructive influence on Western society. They're stepping out of the comfort zone and taking on the subjects that have been taboo for so long. I encourage this not just on the grounds of supporting a free exchange of ideas. I encourage it because I think we need to erase or at least lessen the stigma associated with going outside the bounds of politically correct thought.

So, Dymphna, from Gates of Vienna, one of my favorite bloggers, is taking a break from GofV. She stopped in reaction to Shrinkwrapped's posting assessing El Englis as having signs of "regressive response to anxiety" because of the piece exploring genocide as a possible outcome of the current situation in Europe. Well, I think that was just the final straw. Since the beginning of rift between the anti-jihad blogs back in October she and GofV has been on the receiving end of attack after attack from Charles Johnson of LFG and his minions. She is a character and she really knows how to compound a problem, but she's a clearly a good person and she always has interesting things to say. I'm very sorry to see her go.

I think the blow that really stands out in my mind is the blow she received from her supposed friend, and member of the healing community, Dr. Sanity. The Sanity Squad was to address the conflict between the anti-jihad blogs that had taken place due to the October conference in their November 19th podcast. Sanity accidentally let the podcast running during a private conversation where she noted Dymphna's voice "quivered" during the interview and she wondered if she was afraid of something. Well, let me clue you in, Dr. Sanity. In the world we live in today, we can be branded a racist for the most innocuous of criticisms. There are certain trigger words that instantly create deep suspicion and tarnish your reputation. Once you're accused of supporting White supremacy or having neo-Nazi connections you're already in a distinct disadvantage, you're already placed on the defensive, trying to break through psychological barriers that keep people from giving you a fair chance. Added to that there seems to be an amazing level of obliviousness amongst the professionals among us as to just how vicious and relentless Charles is with his attacks that would put anyone on the defensive. He's the big man on the block tearing down the reps of the smaller blogs. And Shrinkwrapped called it a "family squabble"? I would have been upset too during that interview in the face of such obtuseness.

You'd think that the professional healers at least would have recognized that the role Gates of Vienna had been cast in put them at a significant enough disadvantage that some research beforehand to sort out the issues is necessary so they can make the podcast about a rational discussion on the goals of the conference, the role Vlaams Belang had in the conference, what Gates of Vienna understands about VB's past, what Gates of Vienna sees as the role of VB in the future. You'd think they'd recognize that if they don't do the necessary research on this sensitive subject beforehand, then the participants run a high risk of fostering more misunderstanding and creating more hurt feelings. And yes, creating more fear. The discussion would naturally descend into the realm of irrationality and one side especially would faced with the psychological barriers that go along with defending against vicious attacks by a more influential blog and the stigma associated with having White Supremacy ties. All that gushing compassion Dr. Sanity claimed to have had for both sides means zip when she demonstrates how little thought and care she's willing to devote to the handling of this rift in the anti-jihad community.

An already shaken Dymphna then discovered the 23 minutes of private conversation that made it on the podcast made for the public that hurt her even more. She sent a series of e-mails to Siggy and Sanity that were over emotional and her demands to delete the podcast that included threats of exposure of negative information were more than a little ill-advised.

Frankly, I would have thought Dr. Sanity would have been happy for an excuse to delete the podcast since that bungling, badly researched and careless performance reflects very badly on all the professionals involved. She choses to leave the podcast up but you'd think she'd at least have the humility and compassion to recognize that she made a mistake that hurts someone. And that recognition would be reflected in how she handles this problem. But no. Dr. Sanity proceeds to make the private e-mails Dymphna sent to her and Siggy public claiming she was FORCED to do it due to threats and blackmail. Well, no, Dr. Sanity. You most certainly were not forced to make those emails public. You might have told Dymphna privately that you know she's acting out of strong emotions and advised her to take a step back and think things through. You might have given her a chance to back off of her threats, before you publicly humiliated her more and gave that creepy Charles Johnson more ammo to attack. There are any number of approaches you could have taken that might have salvaged a friendship and help foster some trust that could have help eliminate some of the fear that keeps this whole affair alive. If not for the sake of friendship, then for the sake of your profession as a healer? It's yet another example of a member of the healing profession choosing destruction over healing.

Shrinkwrapped doesn't make much better of a showing for his profession either in this latest anti-jihad flair up. It seems like Charles The Enforcer Johnson has been just begging for a good, long psychological write-up for quite some time now. He obsessively targets his ever growing list of enemies for constant smears and humiliation. He bans people right and left simply for disagreeing with him. There's practically a whole club of Charles Johnson's ban victims. And they aren't neo-Nazis. I think Charles Johnson is a malicious person who cloaks himself with politically correct thought so he can appear righteous when attacking his victims. Well, there are about a dozen different ways you can go with the whole Charles Johnson, LGF influence in the blog community. But no, there's silence on that meaty subject. I don't blame him. Nobody wants to risk getting put on Charles Johnson's hit list. But Shrinkwrapped will, however, unleash his mad analytical skilz on regressive El Englis, a guy who doesn't have the wherewithal or the inclination to damage his reputation in the blog community the way Charles Johnson demonstrated he does. And what has Shrinkwrapped really shown us about genocide in his piece? Except that he is going to act as Charles Johnson's willing arm to stifle discussion.

I don't think it's at all difficult to see why the professional healers in the blog community seem to shake Dymphna so. These are the people you'd expect to get it better than anyone. These are the people you'd expect more than anyone to chose healing over destruction. But it turns out that the professional healers of today are just as blind and destructive and lacking in a moral compass as their colleagues of the past were.

My position is that it is not the few brave voices out there willing to take the hits for exploring the subjects society feels too uncomfortable to discuss who would be responsible for enabling genocide. It's the people who go along with stronger current and blind themselves to the real menace before them.

Posted by Isabel de Castilla at 5:08 PM | Comments (12)

May 1, 2008

Islam: Civilization Clash in Shakespeare's Time - Part One

This article by Adrian Morgan (Giraldus Cambrensis of Western Resistance) appeared today in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.

The Clash of Civilizations In the Time of Shakespeare: Part One

Anyone with only a passing interest in Islamic affairs will be aware of the term "Caliphate". The last Caliphate, that of the Ottomans, was officially abolished on March 3, 1924, on the orders of the secular government of Turkey. Islamists glamorize the Caliphate as something "good", but in its last years, the Ottoman Caliphate was bloated and corrupt. It gave rise to the Armenian genocide under Sultan Abdul-Hamid II. From the early 16th century onwards, the Sultan of the Ottomans was also the Caliph. On November 1, 1922 the Sultanate was officially abolished and the deposed Abdul-Hamid lost his title of Caliph. 18 days later his cousin was inaugurated as the very last Caliph, Abdulmecid II.

A year earlier, the Topkapi Palace which had formerly been the seat of the Ottoman Sultans, had been turned into a museum. A color photograph taken for Albert Kahn's "Archive of the Planet" project, using the Lumiere brothers' autochrome process, was taken on November 24, 192 in the palace. I features the gigantic throne upon which the Sultans had sat.

The Ottoman Sultanate had lasted from 1299 until the start of the 20th century, but it reached its peak of prosperity and power in the 16th century. The ruler who schemed to invade Christian European territory was the second Ottoman Caliph, Suleiman I. In 1521 Belgrade, capital of Serbia, had been captured by the Turks, and in August 1526 southern Hungary had become a Turkish dependency after the Battle of Mohacs. Three years later, the Siege of Vienna took place. Suleiman's forces failed to take the city, and apart from a second attempt to invade Vienna in 1683, this was the furthest that the Turks pushed into the European heartland.

Suleiman I was the tenth Sultan of the Ottomans. He ruled from 1520 until he died, aged 72, in 1566 while leading a war campaign against Austria. Suleiman was called "The Magnificent" by Westerners, while his Muslim subjects called him "Kanumi" or "Lawgiver". During his reign, Suleiman conquered Baghdad, and briefly took control of Persia.

In 1536 he signed a treaty with Francis I of France against the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Under the pseudonym "Muhibbi", Suleiman was also an accomplished poet. He was the second Ottoman ruler to be called "Caliph". Suleiman's father, Selim I, who ruled from 1512 to 1520, had conquered Egypt and adopted the title "Caliph". Selim I had assumed power by forcing his father to abdicate and he had murdered his own brothers to secure his position. He had seen potential in Suleiman and had assisted his claim to the throne by killing Suleiman's brothers (his own sons) and other male relatives. Selim I was, understandably, called "The Grim".

Suleiman I inherited some of his father's cruelty. When he saw rivalry between two of his sons, Bayezid and Selim, he ordered that Bayezid be killed. After Suleiman's death, Selim II became ruler and Caliph, but he was a drunkard and a womanizer who was unable to harness the military gains made by his father and grandfather. He never led his army on a campaign, and left most of the governing of the empire to Pashas. Selim II died on December 5, 1574 in Istanbul.

Selim II's son Murad III ascended the Sultan's throne. Murads mother Afife Nur Banu Sultana was of Venetian in origin. His wife Safiye had also come from Venice and had belonged to a noble family. She had been captured in her youth by Turkish pirates, and become a slave. Sultana Safiye was Murad III's favorite wife, and wielded power

Trading and diplomacy

Under the rule of Murad III, Safiye had assisted in softening the role of the Ottoman Sultanate towards the nations of Western Europe. Skilled in diplomacy, she seems to have had a special affinity for the England of Queen Elizabeth I. Perhaps the Protestantism of the English monarch was seen as a beneficial ally against the "United Europe" represented by the Catholic Holy Roman Empire.

Elizabeth saw Spain as a threat at this time, with good reason. Philip II of Spain (ruled from 1556 - 1598) had been married to Mary, Elizabeth's Catholic half-sister. Mary had ruled from 1553 to 1558 and had returned England to Catholicism. Until his death, Philip II saw England as his rightful territory and inheritance. In 1581, Philip annexed Portugal. England had conducted trade with the East overland through Russia, but this route could not be guaranteed to stay open.

Following a diplomatic mission to Constantinople in 1575 by the agents of two wealthy London traders, an ambassador was sent to Ottoman capital. This ambassador, William Harborne, arrived in October 1578 after a three month voyage overland. He took up residence in the "Porte" and traded under the French flag. His presence was initially to act for the traders, Edward Osborne and Richard Staper. This arrangement was soon extended by both Elizabeth and Murad III.

On March 15, 1579, Murad wrote to Elzabeth of Harborne's mission: "In most friendly maner we giue you to vnderstand, that a certaine man hath come vnto vs in the name of your most excellent Regall Maiestie, commending vnto vs from you all kindnesse, curtesie and friendly offices on your part, and did humbly require that our Imperiall highnesse would vouchsafe to giue leaue and libertie to him and vnto two other merchants of your kingdome..."

In early June 1580, Murat IIII granted a charter of privileges to English traders in Turkey. At that time the charter was made, only the French and Venetians had been allowed to trade.

On September 11, 1581, Queen Elizabeth granted exclusive trading privileges to 16 individuals, including Staper and Osborne,. This agreement led to the founding of the Levant Company.

Letters from Sultana Safiye to Queen Elizabeth were pleasant, if over-writiten: "I send your Majesty so honourable and sweet a salutation of peace that all the flock of Nightingales with their melody cannot attaine to the like, much lesse this simple letter of mine. The singular love which we have conceived one toward the other is like to a garden of pleasant birds..."

On June 26, 1581, Elizabeth had written to Murad III to reassure him that the actions of a rogue Englishman, Peter Blake of Ratcliffe would meet with severe punishment. In his ship the Roe, Blake had committed acts of piracy against Ottoman subjects at sea. The Sultan was addressed as "the most renowned and emperious Caesar, Sultan Murad Can, Emperour of all the dominions of Turkie, and of all the East Monarchie chiefe above all others whosoeuer, most fortunate yeeres with the successe of al true happinesse."

WIlliam Harborne traveled to Turkey as official ambassador for Queen Elizabeth in a tall ship, the Susan. The ship arrived at the Porte on March 26 1583. It would be some time before he would be granted a personal audience with Murad III. Gifts were brought in to the Sultan, carried by twelve men. These included cloth, gilded silverware, bottles and ceramics and even hunting dogs dressed in coats of silk. The gift which seems to have impressed Murad most was a clock.

This clock was described by an anonymous commenter in Richard Hakluyt's travel anthology "Voyages", or "Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation". The item is described as "one clocke valued at five hundred pounds sterling: over it was a forrest with trees of silver, among the which were deere chased with dogs, and men on horsebacke following, men drawing of water, others carrying mine oare on barrowes: on the toppe of the clocke stood a castle, and on the castle a mill. All these were of silver. And the clocke was round beset with jewels."

Until his retirement in 1588, WIlliam Harborne persuaded Murad III not to side with the Spanish against Britain, and English trade with the Ottomans flourished. Harborne was replaced by Sir Edward Barton who acted as ambassador until December 1597 when he died of dysentery. His successor was Henry Lello, an individual whose air of constant worry gave rise to his nickname "Fog".

Thomas Dallam's Organ

Harborne's presentation of the clock appeared to have inspired the next proposed gift to the Sultan - a large organ. This instrument, covered in baroque embellishments, was to be manufactured by Thomas Dallam, one of the leading organ manufacturers in the country. Dallam came from a village near Warrington in Lancashire, and was commissioned to design and construct the instrument.

Unfortunately, the Sultan had died on January 7, 1595. Murad III had suffered all his life from epilepsy and a severe grand mal fit, probably combined with a stroke, had killed him..The news was sent back to Elizabeth's court by the ambassador, Edward Barton in his fortnightly dispatches. He wrote on January 11: "105 (the embassy's code for Murad III, while Elizabeth was called 9) is extreame sick, some say deade and his sonne sent for out of Magnesia in Natolia."

Murad III was succeeded by Mehmed III, his son by the Sultana Safiye. Murad III had reputedly sired a total of 103 children. Mehmet had strangled sixteen (some say nineteen) of his brothers) to ensure his claim to the Ottoman throne. Shakespeare made an allusion to this custom of fratricide in Henry V, when the king addresses his own brothers at his coronation:

"This is the English, not the Turkish court;
Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds,
But Harry, Harry."

The Sultana, now the Queen Mother, continued to play an important role in Ottoman political life. It was decided that the organ should be sent to the new Sultan. Accompanying it would also be a coach, worth £600, for Safiye, the Queen Mother.

The organ - special gift to the new Sultan, Mehmet III - was presented to Queen Elizabeth in November 1598 for her to inspect. As well as being able to be played normally, the organ was also an automaton - which could play pieces of music automatically. It contained a clock that chimed a carillon of bells, and small ornaments on the instrument would move.

Thomas Dallam was to travel with the instrument, which was dismantled and packed into cases with straw. He ordered clothes for himself, and also two virginals, so he could amuse himself on the voyage by practicing his musical and keyboard skills. The ship he traveled on was The Hector. This left Gravesend on Tuesday February 13, 1599. On Wednesday August 15, the Hector reached Constantinople.

Though he had not been educated to any high level, Dallam wrote down his experiences of the journey in a diary. This journal is housed in the British Museum (Additional Manuscript 17480). The diary was not included in Richard Hakluyt's anthologoy of travel manuscripts, nor did it appear in "His Pilgrimes" an anthology by Samuel Purchas who continued to publish Hakluyt's documents posthumously. From the time the diary was completed in 1600 until the late 19th century its history is unknown.

In 1893, the Hakluyt Society published the text in a book entitled "Early Voyages and Travels in the Levant" which included extracts from the journal of Dr John Covel (1638 - 1722) who worked for the Levant Company in Constantinople as a chaplain.

Dallam's account of his journey is lacking in pretension. His spelling follows no order. The Hector had set its anchor beside the Seven Towers at Constantinople, the Ottoman state prison. Dallam would not inspect his cargo on the Sunday, as he was a devout Christian. He wrote: "The twentieth day (of August 1599), being Monday, we began to look into our work: but when we opened our chests we found that all gluing work was clean decayed, by reason that it had lain above six months in the hold of the ship, which was but newly built, so that the extremity of the heat in the hold of the ship, with the workinge of the sea and the hotness of the country, was the cause that all the gluing failed; likewise divers of my metal pipes were bruised and broken."

William Aldridge, consul at Chios. was present, and said the organ was not worth two pence. Dallam deliberately avoided mentioning his response to Aldridge. The chests were taken to the consul's house at Vines of Pera, the diplomatic quarter. Dallam and his assistants set to work restoring the organ, spurred on by an offer from Aldridge of a £15 bonus.

On August 28th the Hector, now situated outside the Sultan's palace, saluted Mehmed III with its 27 cannon. This led to a fatal accident. Dallam wrote that while one of the toughest seaman "was ramming in his cartridge of powder, some fire being left in the breech of the piece, the powder took fire and blew that man quite away in the smoke; about 3 days after all his lower part, from his waist downward, was found two mile from that place, and his head in another place."

In early September, the Sultan was visiting his mother Safiye at one of her residences. The restoration and repairs were complete, and on September 11 the organ was carried into the Sultan's palace. This was called the seraglio - a name which referred to the harem quarters where Mehmed's concubines were housed - but was the main palace of the Ottoman rulers. Close to the Topkapi Palace, the main seat of the "Sublime Porte" - a name for the Ottoman government - was housed.

The building of the Topkapi Palace in Constantinople had commenced in the mid 15th century under the supervision of Mehmed II. The palace would be the main residence of Sultans and their retinues until the 19th century. At the start of the 20th century, the palace became a museum. In the time of Mehmed III, it was the home for the concubines, and also Sultana Safiye, as well as other staff, including Mehmed's dwarfs, who would dress in gold brocade with swords at their sides, and also his deaf-mutes.

Dallam wrote: "At every gate of the seraglio there always sits a stout Turk, about the calling or degree of a justice of the peace, who is called a chia; not withstanding, the gates are fast shut, for there passes none in or out at their own pleasure."

He described the various courtyards and gardens he and his associates had to pass through, before reaching a building where the organ was to be reassembled. On the same day, the coach was been delivered by Paul Pinder, ambassador Henry Lello's secretary, to the Sultana Safiye.

Lello wrote a letter around this time to Sir Robert Cecil, in which he mentioned Safiye's gift. He wrote that "the coach must of necessity be given to the old Sultana because it hath been brutted (announced) here long agone by some out of England that her Highness had ordained the same for her." The Sultana had already instructed him to order two horses from her own stables to draw the coach when it was ready. Lello made no specific mention of the organ.

Dallam would make the journey into the Topkapi Sarayi (palace) on several occasions as he reassembled and fine-tuned the organ. Lello told Dallam that the Sultan was "a monarch but an infidel, and the grand enemy to all Christians. What we or any other Christians can bring unto him he doth think that we do it in duty or in fear of him, or in hope of some great favor we expect at his hands." Lello warned Dallam that Mehmed III would give him no greater reward than the fee he had already been paid by the English government. He also suggested that Mehmed had no intention of seeing the creator of his gift.

The next day, Dallam did encounter the Sultan when Mehmed arrived with his retinue slightly earlier than expected. He wrote: "The Grand Senior, being seated in his chair of estate, commanded silence. All being quiet and no noise at all, the present began to salute the Grand Senior; for when I left it I did allow a quarter of an hour for his coming thither. First the clock struck 22, then the chime of 16 bells went off, and played a song of four parts. That being done, two personages which stood upon two corners of the second storey, holding two silver trumpets in their hands, did lift them to their heads and sounded a tantara. Then the music went off, and the organ played a song of 5 parts twice over."

At the top of the organ was a model of a holly bush filled with blackbirds and thrushes. At the end of the automatic organ-playing, these "did singe and shake theire wynges". Dallam noted that the Sultan was enthralled by the gift. Mehmed asked his vizier if the machine would ever repeat the performance. When told it would do the same an hour later, the Sultan decided to stay and witness the performance."

The organ was designed to automatically play only once every six hours, but Dallam had told the adviser where there was a pin in the machine. When the organ's clock chimed on the hour, all he had to do was touch the pin and the carillon, drum rolls and musical mechanics would start again. This was done.

The Sultan sat by the keys, watching them move. When he was told that the organ could be played by hand, Dallam was summoned into the room. He wrote: "I stood there, playing such thing as I could until the clock struck, and then I bowed my head as low as I could, and went from him..." Dallam's performance was well-rewarded. Mehmed took 45 pieces of gold from behind him, and ordered the gate-keeper to give it to the organ-maker.

Within days, someone had tampered with the organ, and Dallam was summoned to return to reset the mechanisms. Shortly after this, Dallam was invited by one of the Sultan's officials to have a special tour of the "privy chambers" at the palace. Over three days Dallam was shown around parts of the palace no outsider had seen. He saw the Sultan' bed-chaber, the private bath-houses and archery butts, and the rooms where royal gifts were stored.

On one occasion at a marble-paved courtyard, his guide indicated a grille set into a large wall. The guide urged Dalam to look through it. "When I came to the grate the wall was very thick, and grated on both sides with iron very strongly, but through that grate I did see thirty of the Grand Senior's concubines that were playing in another court."

Dallam was transfixed. The women were "verrie prettie ones in deede." They wore small satin jackets and their lower parts were clad in white drawers of such a lightness that "I could discern the skin of their thighs through it."

"I stood so long looking upon them that he which had showed me all this kindness began to be very angry with me. He made a wry mouth, and stamped with his foot to make me give over looking; the which I was very loathe to do, for that sight did please me wondrous well."

Thomas Dallam was treated well by the Sultan and his officials. Apart from his brief voyeurism with the concubines, he obeyed the rules which were ordered. He had to look downward in the presence of the Sultan or a senior official, and when leaving the noble's presence he walked backwards.

In England there was ambivalence towards the Turkish empire at this time, even though trade was being encouraged with the Ottomans. Shakespeare (1564 - 1616) would call the Ottomans "Ottomites" in his play Othello, first performed in 1606:
"Are we turned Turks, and to ourselves do that
Which Heaven hath forbid the Ottomites?" (II.iii.169-70)

For most people in Europe, even when trade was taking place, the Turks were feared. The concubines in Mehmet III's harem were mostly Christians who had been abducted by corsairs (pirates). The coasts of Europe from the 15th century onwards were prey to the marauding of corsairs from north Africa. The rulers of these nations - Morocco, Tripoli, Algiers, Libya, were vassals of the Ottomans. Entire populations of some coastal towns were abducted into slavery.

The Ottomans themselves encouraged such plunder and slavery. The "Barbary corsairs" would attack targets in Ireland, Scandinavia and even attack whaling vessels off Newfoundland. The Ottomans would plunder ships and take crew members to work as galley slaves.

On October 15, 1579, in a response to Murad III concerning the future ambassador WIlliam Harborne, Queen Elizabeth herself expressed concern about the English sailors who had been taken as galley slaves by the Ottomans. She addressed the Sultan as "the most imperial and invincible prince" and wished him "many happy and fortunate yeeres, with abundance of the best things." She nonetheless was obliged to end her letter with the following:

"Moreover the signification and assurance of your highness' great affection to us and our nation, doeth cause us also to entreat and use mediation on the behalf of certain of our subiects, who are detained as slaves and captives in your Galleys..."

The lives of galley slaves were both arduous and humiliating. Those forced to work the oars on the galleys were stripped naked. Few had any chance of improving their status with their captors or gaining their freedom.

The Ottoman empire was so dependent upon slavery that it relied upon slaves for its defense. It instituted an elite infantry force called Janissaries. The name came from Turkish: - "yeniceri" or "new army". These soldiers were slaves, abducted mostly in childhood, and then intensively trained.

In part two, using contemporary and first-hand accounts where possible, I will describe how the Ottomans inspired dread in the cultures of Europe.

Additional Sources:
Richard Hakluyt: "The Principall Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation", London, 1589
Stanley Mayes: "An Organ For the Sultan", Putnam, London, 1956

Adrian Morgan

© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 5:20 AM | Comments (5)