Pub Philosopher

Religious hatred law starts to bite

A number of people have already posted about Father John Hayes, the priest who was interviewed by police on suspicion of inciting racial hatred, after he expressed views about religious dress and radical Muslims in his parish newsletter. Esmerelda wondered whether, given that Father Hayes's comments were made over a year ago, someone was taking advantage of the new Religious Hatred Act to make their complaint.

This may give a clue to the response of the police. Usually, the police would look at the evidence in a complaint and then decide whether they thought a crime might have been committed before taking any further action. The problem is, you can't do that with the Religious Hatred Act.

Read Section 29B. It says:

A person who uses threatening words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, is guilty of an offence if he intends thereby to stir up religious hatred.

And you can't work out what someone's intention was without talking to them.

To establish whether Father Hayes had broken the law, the police had to judge whether he was a rabid Muslim-hater, hell bent on stirring up a religious war, or a harmless parish priest engaging in theological debate. Presumably, the senior officer who picked up this case decided that the only way this could be done was by sending two coppers to interview Father Hayes.

As I said last year, this is one of the most worrying aspects of the new law. It is up to the authorities to decide what they think you meant. They can, if they choose, infer meanings from your words that had never occurred to you when you wrote or said them.

In the case of Father Hayes, the police told him at the end of the interview that there would be no further action. However, because of the way the law is written, they may have to follow up many similar complaints with interviews, if they are to determine the intent of the accused.   

It appears, also, that you don't need to say anything especially inflammatory to be deemed worthy of further investigation. Here is a copy of Father John Hayes's newsletter, which is still on his church website.

Sunday 22nd October 2006

TWENTY NINTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

From Fr. John

John Humphreys interviewed a young Muslim girl last week who believed that wearing the veil is an essential part of her religion. When John Humphreys pointed out that objectively it was not part of Muslim teaching, she said she believed that for her it was. I could understand the interviewer’s frustration because, in saying what she did, she just slammed the door on any kind of rational debate.

Few people, if any, are convinced by argument. That means it will be difficult, if not impossible, to have dialogue with radical Muslims among whom I would include this young girl. But good honest folk who have been going about their business, wearing jewellery that has been the custom in our country for centuries, have been sucked into a debate which has come about by extremist immigrants who think the whole world should revolve around them and seemingly are hell bent on destroying everything that is sacred in our Christian country. And powerful people are so afraid of being counted succumb to the every whim of this very small but vociferous minority.

It seems odd to me that Muslims can go around in burkas and demand that they wear veils in school but it is still against the law for a catholic priest to wear his cassock in pubic or a catholic to marry the heir to the throne. Perhaps the next step will be the removal of the crosses on the Union Flag?

But worse is to come if secularists get their way in compelling faith schools to take 25% non-Christians. It could mean that the 25% could try and gain control of a school’s governing body, thereby eliminating religion from the catholic school altogether. It is time to wake up to what is going on and do something about it.

Riots in Amsterdam

For some reason, the British media don't seem to be interested in the six days of rioting in Amsterdam. Apart from this small piece on the BBC's website, there has been silence.

It all started when a Moroccan man, who had been questioned in 2004 about his links to the Muslim extremists who killed Theo Van Gogh,  walked into a police station and stabbed two police officers. One of the officers who was attacked then shot him dead. Moroccan youths responded by taking to the streets and burning cars.

Dutch blogger Michael van der Galiën takes up the story and expresses his exasperation at the attitudes of the young Moroccans interviewed and of the authorities' response. He concludes:

Meanwhile we can be sure of one thing: as long as the mayor of Amsterdam - Job Cohen of our Labor Party - continues to call on the police to respond to the violence with kindness, understanding and compassion our mainstream parties will lose support and idiots like Geert Wilders will do increasingly better in the polls. Why? Because although Wilders overreacts, any reaction is better than no reaction.

It all sounds vaguely familiar, doesn't it?

Respect falls apart

According to Labour blogger John Gray, the Muslim businessmen who control local politics in George Galloway's constituency have told George, in no uncertain terms, that they don't like commies, uppity women and poofters.

Now, whatever you might think of George, he's not thick so he probably suspected all along that these Muslim chaps might have a few rather conservative views. It can't have come as a surprise to many people. Apart from the SWP, that is, who thought that they could somehow fuse their left-wing politics with one of the world's most reactionary religions and start a revolution.

It appears that, when forced to choose between his Muslim allies and the Trots, Galloway has gone with the former and has told the SWP to fuck off. Literally.

The shaky coalition that was Respect is starting to fall apart. The only surprise is that it has lasted so long.

Holiday in Somalia

Things must be getting better in Somalia. It seems you can go on holiday there now.

Yasin Abdirahman would have been safer if he'd accompanied his mother instead of staying in Southall.

Thug walks free after beating up an old man

Just a three-year supervision order for half-blinding a 96-year-old man?

The culprit wasn't a young thug either. He was a 44 year-old who should have known better.

His victim, a World War Two veteran, has had to move into a nursing home because of his injuries.

I wonder also why an old man with two walking-sticks was having to stand up on a tram. Didn't anyone have the decency to offer him a seat?

Anyway, watch the video of the smiling scumbag leaving court. Make sure you have something nearby to punch.

Bloody Cartoons

Part of the documentary Bloody Cartoons is now available online.

MediaWatchWatch has another piece here.

Hopefully the whole thing will be available soon as, despite telling you all that it was going to be on, I forgot about it.

If anyone knows where there is a copy online, please let me know.

Black people want the police to get tough

Earlier this year I wrote about how, after the riots in the 1980s, the police were forced to cede control of the streets to rioters and drug lords and how those who suffered the most from this were black people. In a response to that post, Laban Tall put it more succinctly:

Black gun crime is the bastard child of the Scarman report.

I'm not suggesting for a minute that Keith Jarrett was involved in any of the 1980s riots but he is a similar age to many of those who were. He must understand better than most why stop-and-search caused resentment among black youths at the time and why, in the long term, the more sensitive policing tactics that replaced it were disastrous. His suggestion that, to reduce gun and knife crime,  more young people should be stopped and searched, should therefore be taken seriously.

Of course, he has been criticised by so-called anti-racism campaigners who are always quick to jump on anyone who questions the findings of the long series of police-bashing reports, from Scarman to Macpherson. The usual tactic is to dismiss such critics as racists but that charge won't really stick to the President of the Black Police Association.

Mr Jarrett claims to have support for his view from many in the black community:

From the return that I am getting from a lot of black people, they want to stop these killings, these knife crimes, and if it means their sons and daughters are going to be inconvenienced by being stopped by the police, so be it. I'm hoping we go down that road. I am going to be pressing him [Sir Ian Blair, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police] to increase stop-and-search. It's not going to go down very well with my audience, many of whom are going to be black. We have talked about disproportionate use of stop-and-search in the past, but what I am proposing is quite the reverse. The black community is telling me that we have to have a look at this.

The last two decades of soft policing, brought about by a fear among senior officers of doing anything that might lead to charges of racism, effectively abandoned black communities to the rule of the drug gangs.

Many of those who, in the 1980s, threw stones at the cops, or complained about heavy-handed policing, now have children of their own. They have seen cannabis replaced by crack and knives superseded by machine guns. It is their kids who are in the firing line and they want something done about it.

Another far-right party implodes

I usually reckon I'm pretty well informed about the antics of the even-further-right but I'm afraid I completely missed this one.

It appears that yet another far right group has been formed, wrenched apart by the usual infighting and then wound up, without me even being aware of it.

Research lab suspends Watson

In yesterdays Independent, James Watson said:

We do not yet adequately understand the way in which the different environments in the world have selected over time the genes which determine our capacity to do different things. The overwhelming desire of society today is to assume that equal powers of reason are a universal heritage of humanity. It may well be. But simply wanting this to be the case is not enough. This is not science.

Some people want it to be the case so badly that they will go to great lengths to stop people asking questions. As a result of the outrage over his comments, James Watson has been forced to cancel his tour of the UK and has been suspended from his job.

It might be possible to silence individuals but, fortunately, it is not yet possible to erase what they have said from people's memories.

James Watson may have gone back to America but the questions he raised are still hanging in the air.

Who is to blame for the Karachi bomb?

America and Britain, of course!

Come on now, try to keep up.

Tory councillor refuses to back 'racist' Boris

A Tory councillor has refused to support Boris Johnson's bid to become London's next mayor. According to Black Information Link, Croydon councillor Enley Taylor has accused Boris of making racist remarks about the Stephen Lawrence inquiry.

Boris's remarks about the Macpherson report were published in his  book Lend Me Your Ears. Luke Akehurst has helpfully posted the relevant quotes:

'it is as if the PC brigade, having punched this whole in the Metropolitan Police, having forced this admission, is swarming through to take over the entire system. There has been a whiff of the witch-hunt as the Lawrence road-show tours the country, demanding confessions of racism from senior officers, and excoriating those, like Sir Paul [Condon] who are not prepared to defame their entire force. If, in a few years' time, you were to ask a member of the public: “Who killed Stephen Lawrence?”, the answer would probably be “The Police.” Am I alone is wondering whether a sensible attempt to find justice for the family of Stephen Lawrence has given way to hysteria?' (Lend me your Ears p426)

'Heaven knows why Macpherson made his weird recommendation, that the law might be changed so as to allow prosecution for racist language or behaviour “other than in a public place”. I can't understand how this sober old buzzard was prevailed upon to say that a racist incident might be so defined in the view of the victim “or any other person”. This is Orwellian stuff.
'Not even under the law of Ceaucescu's Romania, could you be prosecuted for what you said in your own kitchen. No wonder the police are already whingeing that they cannot make any arrests in London. No wonder the CPS groans with anti-discrimination units, while making a balls-up of so many cases.' (Lend me your ears p211)

'What about the Ceaucescu-ish recommendation that it should be possible to legislate against racism even in a private place.’ (Lend me your ears p216)

'As for his [Macpherson's] suggestions that there should be more race awareness sessions for the police, and possible adjustments to the national curriculum to stamp out racist attitudes, he [Macpherson] is vehement that this should not be exaggerated.' (Lend me your ears p217)

‘we could probably achieve the same results, if not better, if we axed large chunks of the anti-racism industry, stopping taxing so many people with the threat of legal action, and left a bit more of the struggle against racism to tolerance and good manners.' (Lend me your ears p212)

Fair comment, some might say, but enough to get him branded a racist.

Boris Johnson has offered to meet with Councillor Taylor to discuss his concerns but the councillor is demanding an apology first.

Councillor Taylor made the news last year when he promised that the Tories would contribute £125,000 to a Caribbean festival in Croydon if they were elected. Which they were. And they kept their word.

Science Museum bans 'racist' Dr Watson

I suppose this was inevitable.

The Science Museum has cancelled Friday's talk by Dr James Watson, the scientist who, together with Francis Crick, discovered the DNA double helix. The museum banned him because of his comments in this interview with the Sunday Times.

He says that he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”, and I know that this “hot potato” is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because “there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level”. He writes that “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so”.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission says that it is considering Dr Watson's remarks, presumably to see if it can get him under any of the UK's race-hate laws, and the 1990 Trust is demanding that he apologise to “Africa and all people of African origin”.

I have no idea whether there is any substance behind Dr Watson's claims. I'm not likely to find out either because every time a scientist advances such a hypothesis he is silenced.

Last time Dr Watson got into trouble, Susan Greenfield commented:

Nothing should stop you ascertaining the scientific truth; science must be free of concerns about gender and race.

She's right, of course, but that doesn't cut much ice with the managers of the Science Museum.

Guardianland

Jonathan Glancey has named Arnos Grove Tube Station as the twelfth best modern building.

In the world!

The Guardian is so fucking North London, isn't it?

Bricking it

I also missed the story about Charlie bottling out of the Royal Film Performance of Brick Lane. Perhaps things like this are just too frightening for the Royal Family these days.

Didn't Charlie's ancestors get to be King by being fearless in battle and killing all the other contenders?

Oh well, times change.

Brick Lane's UK premiere will be on Friday 26 October, at the London Film Festival. Are you brave enough to go and see it?

So no change here then

When you go away for a while you often expect things to have changed when you get back. That's totally irrational, of course, because the world continues on its way without you. 

I've just  been catching up with a few of the Islamonutter stories that I missed. You have probably all seen these by now.

A bakery in Glasgow put in Muslim-only bogs,  just in case they get any Muslim employees in the future.

Muslim checkout staff at Sainsbury's were told that they could refuse to put alcohol purchases through their tills.

Muslim medical students refused to attend lectures on sexual diseases or alcohol. Some even said that they would not treat patients of the opposite sex.

And an airport worker was sent home for putting a picture of Jesus up in the staff room, following a complaint from a Muslim colleague.

Is that the lot, or did I miss any more?

One more time - What was the Cartoon War about?

It's two years since Jyllands Posten printed the Mohammed cartoons and about twenty months since thousands of Muslims rioted over something that most of them had never seen. Tomorrow night, BBC 2 will be showing a documentary entitled Bloody Cartoons, which includes interviews with some of the cartoonists and demonstrators.

Two years on, some people wonder what all the fuss was about. A couple of months ago, Larry asked why the people who got so worked up about the attack on the Danish cartoonists were not equally angry about the banning of some cartoons in Spain.

But the row over the Danish cartoons was not just about free speech, it was also about the extent to which western governments were prepared to compromise their own principles in the face of a determined attack. The Danish Imams and their allies in Muslim states tried to force a liberal state to oppress its own citizens.

As I said at the time,

The campaign against the Jyllands-Posten cartoons is an attempt to force a democratically elected government to introduce repressive laws for the benefit of a minority.  The Danish Imams and their government supporters in the Muslim world have used a combination of diplomatic pressure, economic boycott and extreme violence to try to achieve this goal.

Flemming Rose put it more succinctly in this interview:

Muslims were insisting on applying Islamic law to what non-Muslims are doing in non‑Muslim countries.

The Danish government held firm, asserting that, under its constitution, it could not punish the journalists or even force them to apologise. The aim of the riots and boycotts was to force Rasmussen's government to change its mind.

Surely anyone who considers himself to be a liberal, by whatever definition, should be incensed at the suggestion that Denmark should abandon its traditions of press freedom to appease the forces of repression. Yet the response of our political class was equivocal, to say the least.

Denmark has been one of Britain's staunchest allies in recent years, yet no MP spoke out in support of the Danish government's stance and no British newspaper was prepared to show solidarity by publishing the cartoons. That's what made me angry. Our leaders and opinion formers were not prepared to stand up for free speech, nor were they brave enough to stick their necks out for one of our allies.

Does any of this still matter or has the row blown over? Well there are still people who want to make countries enact repressive laws protecting Islam, and other forms of mumbo-jumbo, from criticism.  Just last month, the UN Human Rights Council came under pressure from African and Islamic countries to draft an international treaty compelling states to act against any defamation of religion.

Just as the Danish Imams and their allies did, the likes of Doudou Diene want to impose on the West the repression that prevails in Africa and the Islamic world. This fight is not over yet. Not by a long way.

What a load of.........

I've seen some rubbish on the interweb, but this......Jeez!

(H/T: Shuggy)

Thanks to James

In some parts of India, the internet connections were unreliable, especially, it seemed, when there was about to be a bandh. As a result I lost a few posts while trying to blog from India.  James from Whatsthatsmell stepped in to post things that I had left in draft, so, thanks to him, you were able to read my inane ramblings from halfway across the world.

Thanks James.  The beers are on me.

Running a patchwork country

Well, I'm back, so this blog should soon get back to its usual low standards.

I will probably bore you with a few more reflections on my trip to India. It's that kind of place. It leaves you thinking about the things you have seen, for weeks, or even months, after you come back. So people tell me anyway.

As I said in the post about Indian violence, that the country holds together at all is, in many ways, a credit to those that run it and to its founding fathers. When India was formed it was by no means a done deal that all parts of the country would join the new state. Pakistan and Sri Lanka went their own way and many of the maharajahs considered opting for independence before deciding to join the new state. In Hyderabad and Goa, military action was needed to secure the territories for India. These centrifugal tendencies are still there and, at any time, there will be a number of ethnic, cultural, caste or religious groups agitating for special status or, in some cases, complete separation.

Managing this patchwork is no mean task. The government ties itself in knots making concessions in the form of scheduled status and quotas for jobs and parliamentary seats. Political unrest often paralyses whole areas and the business of government is slowed down by the need to manage the diverse interests and opinions.

While I admire Indian politicians and business people for being able to manage these tensions, I can't help feeling that, if you had to choose, you wouldn't start from here. If you had a country without ethnic, religious and cultural divisions, why would you want to make life harder for yourself by creating some. Yet that is just what we have done in the UK.

As I have said before, Britain's model of multiculturalism is based on the strategy that was used to govern the colonies, especially India. A system of deals with maharajahs and tribal leaders, whereby concessions are given in return for support, is the Empire's legacy both to Britain and to India.  In an earlier post, about the Ram Setu issue, I expressed surprise that a major civil engineering project could be stopped because it had offended religious and communal feelings. 'Only in India,' I thought.

Or perhaps not. Someone sent me a link to the Crossrail site while I was away. It appears that, before this this major civil engineering project could be given the go-ahead, it was necessary to consult with representatives of Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and other faiths.

An assessment of the numbers from each community at every station on the route was carried out and a series of 3-hour consultation workshops was held, at which delegates from the so-called priority groups could make their views known. I live near the Crossrail route too but, as I'm not a representative of a priority group, no-one asked for my opinion. The lesson from India is that, if you are not a member of a priority group, you need to get yourself recognised as one or else you lose out.

In Livingstone's London there are already echos of the Indian model, with a collection of ethnic, religious and cultural community leaders competing for attention and the power of veto. The extent of the Crossrail consultation is a symptom of just how far this form of multiculturalism has become entrenched. Of course, a cross-London railway will have no more impact on someone if they are a Muslim or a Buddhist than it would if they have no religion at all but that's not the point. In a patchwork country, the maharajahs have to be consulted. That's just the way things get done.

It's our culture that made us rich

A study by Dr Horst Feldmann from the University of Bath has found that:

[C]ountries where the main religion is Protestant Christianity have higher employment rates than those where other religions are dominant.

These countries, which include the USA, the UK and Nordic countries such as Denmark, Sweden and Norway, have employment rates that are approximately six percentage points higher than countries where other religions are practiced by the largest proportion of the population.

Dr Feldmann says:

Religion does not necessarily have a direct impact upon most people’s behaviour today. Rather, the impact of religion may be indirect, for example, in helping shape the national culture of a given society.

In its early days, Protestantism promoted the virtue of hard and diligent work amongst its adherents, who judged one another by conformity to this standard.

Originally, an intense devotion to one’s work was meant to assure oneself that one was predestined for salvation.

Although the belief in predestination did not last more than a generation or two after the Reformation, the effect on work ethics continued.

This was particularly conducive to the rise of modern capitalism. It stimulated entrepreneurial spirits and helped to assimilate workers into the factory system.

Most protestants today are likely to work not in order to attain certainty of salvation but because their parents taught them the virtue of work.

The Protestant virtue of hard and diligent work has become part of a national culture of the relevant countries.

Today these values and norms are transmitted by educational institutions and mass media to all people living in a Protestant country.

While the majority of individuals may have little or no contact with the church today, the impact of living in a society that was historically shaped by once powerful Protestant institutions persists today.

This shapes everyone, Protestants as well as others, to fit into a given national culture that includes the value of hard and diligent work.

Conversely, countries dominated by other religions, such as Catholicism, Islam and Buddhism, are likely to have developed a national culture that does not put a high value on hard and diligent work and often is hostile toward paid employment of women.

He might also have added that Protestant countries are among the least corrupt.

It appears that a nation's cultural norms might contribute to its prosperity after all. Well who'd have thought it, eh?