Author Archives: Faisal

Religion, Literature and Offence

By Faisal | Published: March 30, 2010

Philip Pullman at the Oxford Literary Festival, on the offence caused to Christians by the publication of his new novel The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ:

’nuff said.

Posted in Freedom of Expression | Leave a comment

The Penalty for Apostasy

By Faisal | Published: March 30, 2010

Take a look at Dr Mohammad Mukadam, chairman of the AMS-UK (Association of Muslim Schools UK).

He believes in practising the shari’ah in toto. But is reticent when it comes to stating the shari’ah penalty for apostasy in a public televised debate. When pushed, he relents and speaks his mind:

“If it’s an Islamic country, then the Shari’a is very clear. Apostasy is dealt with the death penalty. But what’s the relevance between what happens in an Islamic country and Great Britain. I fail to see the connection.”

Personally, I agree that there should not even be a notional connection between the shari’ah in an Islamic country and public law affecting muslims in Britain. I would go further and state that even in most Muslim-majority countries, administrations have been sensible enough not to institutionalise the shar’iah applied as state legislature, but rather confined it to matters of personal ethics.

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Posted in Education | 5 Comments

Multiculturalism undermines diversity

By Faisal | Published: March 20, 2010

Kenan Malik on the irony of Multiculturalism and how it undermines diversity by misrepresenting minorties:

Multicultural policies have come to be seen as a means of empowering minority communities and giving them a voice. In reality such policies have empowered not individuals but “community leaders” who owe their position and influence largely to their relationship with the state. Multicultural policies tend to treat minority communities as homogenous wholes, ignoring class, religious, gender and other differences, and leaving many within those communities feeling misrepresented and, indeed, disenfranchised.

As well as ignoring conflicts within minority communities, multicultural policies have often created conflicts between them. In allocating political power and financial resources according to ethnicity, such policies have forced people to identify themselves in terms of those ethnicities, and those ethnicities alone, inevitably setting off one group against another.

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Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

When Sanal Met Surender

By Faisal | Published: March 20, 2010

India’s top trantric guru Pandit Surender Sharma boasted on television he could kill another man using only his mystical powers. Sanal Edamaruku, president of Rationalist International, challenged the Pandit to demonstrate his powers on him and kill him on live television. Millions tuned in to see the holy man subject the sceptic to chants, mantras and a series of tantric rituals but to no avail. Sanal Edamaruku was still very much alive and smiling.

The Times:

“He was over, finished, completely destroyed!” Mr Edamaruku chuckles triumphantly as he concludes the tale in the Rationalist Centre, his second-floor office in the town of Noida, just outside Delhi.

Although exposing the Pandit went ‘miraculously’ well for Edamaruku, things have not always gone so smoothly for India’s highest profile guru-exposer:

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Posted in Obscurantism | Leave a comment

Gita Sahgal on NDTV

By Faisal | Published: March 17, 2010

This is the NDTV interview with Gita Sahgal. It is the most comprehensive account she has provided of her side of the Amnesty-Moazzam Begg-Cageprisoners controversy since it started more than a month ago.

Amnesty International have not distanced themselves from their position of partnering and giving platform to the ‘violent jihad’ doctrine advocated by Begg and Cageprisoners. If anything, they have climbed deeper into bed with Begg and have tightened their embrace of the jihadi “human rights” group.

Gita mentions briefly how Amnesty have changed their position from denying outright the accusation they endorse Begg’s political views and have turned 180 degrees. It is possible that Amnesty are now at the cusp of releasing a statement in which they justify the use of “defensive jihad” and do not consider it antithetical to human rights. If that is the case, this will be the unravelling of Amnesty.

Posted in Human Rights | 1 Comment

Amnesty USA: Bigging Up Begg Since 2008

By Faisal | Published: March 15, 2010

Amnesty International have tried to claim that it has never promoted the views of Moazzam Begg or Cageprisoners, only his experiences. But from an article on a speech delivered to Amnesty USA in Washington DC in 2008, it is clear that Moazzam Begg was expounding on both his experiences and his own personal views.

Here is a cached page of the event:

Moazzam Begg is spokesman for the Human Rights organization, Cageprisoners, with whom he has been working since his release from Guantanamo Bay in 2005. He regularly lectures around the world speaking about the effects of the ‘War on Terror’ and detention without trial. He is also author of, Enemy Combatant: A British Muslim’s Journey to Guantanamo and Back. It is the first book to be published by a former Guantánamo Bay prisoner.

Posted in Islamism | Leave a comment

What Ails the British Left

By Faisal | Published: March 15, 2010

Ian McEwan took a real incident that happened at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) and used it as a plot device in the narrative of the protagonist in his new novel, Solar.

Nick Cohen recognises the incident in McEwan’s storyline and recollects the real events that took place at the ICA which involved comedian Chris Morris, author Martin Amis, Andrew Anthony on the panel and an ICA auditorium audience full of irate, sanctimonious, post-modernist, middle class liberals in a marvellous article on what ails the British left. Luckily, Padraig Reidy of Index on Censorship was also in the audience that night.

Here is Reidy’s hilarious account of the events at the ICA from a CiF piece from 2007, ‘When liberals attack!’:

It was at this point that TV’s greatest satirist [Chris Morris], the shaggy-haired Swift of our age, took his turn to speak.

And what a wonderful turn it was.

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Posted in Moral relativism | 1 Comment

Liberal Confusion

By Faisal | Published: March 12, 2010

Terry Eagleton is interviewed by the Culture Editor of the New Statesman. Asked about his very public spat with Martin Amis two years ago, Eagleton replies:

I’m interested in the way a whole stratum of the liberal literati (Rushdie, to some extent Ian McEwan, A C Grayling, obviously Amis and Hitchens) – the very people you’d have expected to be guardians of the liberal flame of tolerance and understanding – have, at the very first assault, rushed into these caricatured postures driven by panic. I’m very struck by how those who are making ugly, illiberal, supremacist noises about the superiority of the west are precisely the sort of literary and liberal characters from whom you’d expect more imagination, openness and sensitivity.

Norm defeathers and skins that turkey most elegantly:

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Posted in Moral relativism, The Far Left | 4 Comments

No Banning for BNP Teachers

By Faisal | Published: March 12, 2010

The BBC reports:

Teachers in England should not be banned from membership of the British National Party or any group which may promote racism, a review has concluded.

The government commissioned the report last September after a leaked list identified 15 BNP members as teachers.

Review author Maurice Smith added his recommendation should be reviewed every year, which ministers have accepted.

Mr Smith, a former chief inspector of schools, said a ban on BNP members in schools would be “taking a very large sledgehammer to crack a minuscule nut”.

“I do not believe that barring teachers or other members of the wider school workforce from membership of legitimate organisations which may promote racism is necessary at present,” he said.

I cannot disagree with that.

However, predictably enough the usual assortment of fashionable muddle-headed leftists and faux-liberals are up in arms about the decision. Such as Pickled Politics, Islamophobia Watch, and a collection of Trots, for example.

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Posted in Civil Rights | 31 Comments

The Competing Intolerances of India

By Faisal | Published: March 12, 2010

Salil Tripathi writes in the WSJ of the continuing attacks on freedom of expression by both Muslim and Hindu fundamentalists in the “most populous democracy in the world”:

In a little-noticed case on Feb. 26, police in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh arrested Macha Laxmaiah, an author who writes using the pseudonym Krantikar (“revolutionary”), and his distributors, including Innaiah Narisetti, president of the Hyderabad-based nonprofit Center for Inquiry, for “hurting the sentiments of Muslims.” Their alleged crime? The distribution of “Crescent Over the World,” a book including contributions from Salman Rushdie, Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen, and a cartoon from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Mr. Narisetti is out on bail now; Mr. Laxmaiah remains in custody.

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