What It's All About

I can't do elegies, and my local churchyard was once a country churchyard but no longer. Never mind. While wandering through it today, my eye was caught by a small gravestone beside the path. It bears the inscription 'Treasured memories of Darren X' (I won't give the full name).

A hackneyed phrase, perhaps, easier to inscribe on a stone than in a heart? Wait - the grave is immaculately tended, and in the vase in front of the headstone there are fresh flowers. And there are dates on the stone: one in July 1968, one in August 1969. The treasure is treasure indeed.

One of the questions which could be asked is where God was on that day in August 1969. It's a fair question, of course, and I can't get much beyond answering that he knows and I don't.

But there is another question: why were there flowers, and what do we do with the Why? Do we do our best to explain it away? Or do we fall on our knees before it as before the Mystery of Mysteries?

Engage, Muslim attitudes and the 'clash of civilisations'

A Gallup poll on worldwide Muslim attitudes gets a somewhat triumphalist write-up from Engage. A more considered reponse, focussing more on the methodology and statistics than on the intensive spin that's been put on them, would not go amiss.

A sample of the spin: 'Gallup found that majorities in many predominantly Muslim countries as well as the United States report experiencing enjoyment, smiling and laughing, and enjoying good-tasting food' it says here. Well, thanks for telling us, but I imagine that even Samuel P. Huntington is able to distinguish between Muslims and zombies, whilst here in the UK there can be few of us indeed who have not enjoyed good-tasting food cooked by Muslims.

Here are just a few points Engage might want to consider:-

1. Is it not absurdly simplistic to reduce the diversity of Muslim attitudes to a binary typology of 'moderate' versus 'radical', determined by responses to just two questions about attitudes to the US?

2. 'Only' 7% are 'radical', the poll finds. Well, OK, but 7% of 1.3 billions is 91 millions - this won't give al-Qaeda too any nightmares about running out of recruits.

3. The bar for 'radicalism' is set pretty high. Not only must the respondent have an 'unfavourable' or 'very unfavourable' opinion of the US, he/she must admit to feeling that the 9/11 attacks were 'completely justified'. Anyone merely thinking they were more justified than not gets to be a moderate.

And on this basis Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who condemns 9/11 but openly condones suicide bombings in Israel, is a moderate - not a view that has found much favour with Engage up to now. Nor is he in any way an isolated figure: there can be no doubt that if the poll had canvassed opinions on terrorist attacks against Israel it would have presented a very different picture of the fault line between 'moderate' and 'radical'.

4. From the Yahoo report which Engage quotes:-

'"Ironically, [radicals] believe in democracy even more than many of the mainstream moderates do, but they're more cynical about whether they'll ever get it," said Esposito, a professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University in Washington.'

That 'even more' is an interesting way of putting it. The poll asked whether 'moving toward greater democracy will help Arab/Muslim societies’ progress.' Whilst 'radicals' were split 50/50 on this one, just 35% of 'moderates' answered affirmatively. We're not exactly talking about moderation in any Lib-Demish sense, are we?

I do take Engage's point that it's essential not to 'paint the Devil on the wall', to use one of my favourite German phrases, and the poll did produce some genuinely encouraging findings. But there is another danger, too: that one day liberals will discover that the 'clash of civilisations' was lost while they were busy looking the other way.

KKK kandidate Obama

A special message for any white American readers out there who are planning to vote Obama: you're evil racist scum. Have a nice day.

How much am I paying this man to spout this insulting claptrap?

PS I'm afraid it looks very much as if they're on Trev's wavelength at Barack's church ('We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black' - anyone know of any Unashamedly White churches that I could attend in the Curmudge area?). Disappointing.

Did the earth move...

...for you too?

Fascinating that you apparently had to be in a very specific part of town to feel it. Our fourth-floor flat in Berlin used to shake regularly when a heavy lorry drove past, and for a second or so I thought that was what was happening. Then I realized what it must be. I'm a bit of an earthquake veteran, you see - I experienced what I guess must have been the 1990 Bishop's Castle quake. That was, as I remember it, just a single jolt. I was sitting at my desk at work (in South-West London), looked round to see who had given my chair a shove, and there was nobody there. This time I was a lot closer to the epicentre, and the room was shaking from side to side for a good five seconds as if a giant hand had taken hold of the building.

No damage done, but some people nearer the epicentre weren't so lucky.

Frau G slept through it, and was distinctly unimpressed when I woke her up to tell her about it.

Personally, I blame the gays.

Down at the BBC

Sometimes I think people get a bit too overwrought about BBC bias. Then I come across something like this - a snippet from the now concluded trial of Mohammed 'Osama bin London' Hamid.

Lets get this straight. In June 2005 - yes, that's right, June 2005 - the Beeb screened a programme which aired Muslims' complaints of being treated like terrorists. A very reasonable complaint, except that one of them was, errh, the recruiter and trainer of terrorists Hamid. He and two of the other defendants (one cleared, one convicted) went on a paintballing trip at the Beeb's expense.

Well, anyone can make a mistake, can't they? But now get this:-

'Nasreen Suleaman, a researcher on the programme, told the court that Mr Hamid, 50, contacted her after the July 2005 attack and told her of his association with the bombers. But she said that she felt no obligation to contact the police with this information. Ms Suleaman said that she informed senior BBC managers but was not told to contact the police.'

We aren't told what advice, if any, she got from the producer of the programme, Phil Rees. We do, however, learn that he now works for al-Jazeera.

Hmmm.

Executed for being poor

'An Iraqi militant group posted a video on the Internet on Monday that appeared to show the 2004 killing of 12 Nepalese men who worked for a contracting firm in Iraq.'

(full story here)

Since the 'militants' have seen fit to remind us of the crime, we should also remind ourselves what the victims were doing in Iraq. My atlas tells me that 40% of the population of Nepal is malnourished. It isn't bang up to date but I don't suppose the situation has changed dramatically. So it's a safe bet that for these men a job enabling them to feed their families was not something to turn down even if they had to go to Iraq to do it (and even though they were officially banned from travelling to Iraq by the Nepalese government).

So remember this case next time you come across someone claiming to be a socialist or a liberal who suggests that Islamist terror is some kind of cry for justice on behalf of the world's poor and oppressed.

Pants

As worn by Kirk Elder, a man of few but well-chosen words.

What's happened to Scott?

Remember Scott of the Ablution? He was a magnificent fisker of the liberal papers, his finest hour coming when he infuriated the Grauniad by revealing to the world that it had taken on a Hizb ut Tahrir member as a trainee reporter.

It all went quite a year and a bit ago, without any warning. And, as I discoverd last night, now the blog's vanished altogether. Why? It's at moments like this that blogging feels like a pretty unsatisfactory communication medium.

Here some other fans (another of our favourites among them - don't even think of doing a vanishing act, Snoopy) bemoan the disappearance, and one of them links to an archive which has preserved his stuff.

Thanks for the blog, Scott, and whatever you're up to, I hope you're enjoying it.

A Canterbury Tale

Fouer and Twyntie theye came to seke
The Arche-Bishop, wyse and meke
Labouryte and hippye, Gaye and Greene
Anti-warre and libertyne
All sondry folke urbayne and progressyve
Vexed by Musselmans aggressyve.
Hie and thither to the Arche-Bishop's manse
The pilgryms ryde and fynde perchance
The hooly Bishop takynge tea
Whilste watching himselfe on BBC.
Heere was a hooly manne of peace
Withe bearyd of snow and wyld brows of fleece...

I was planning to post one or two more thoughts on the ABC, but now I must admit defeat: there's no way I can cap this (hat tip: Laban).

The commentariat speaks

...with a little help from Peter Briffa. Priceless (hat tip: Stephen Pollard).