Britain's Muslims praised by British Chancellor

He said Muslims had contributed economically ever since they started migrating to British towns and cities in large numbers in the 1950s.

Methinks Gordon must have had a few too many at the pub before his speech.

http://www.islamic.co.uk/statistics/disadvantage.asp

"belief in fair play, equality for all", except for women and non-Muslims. Brown bathes in complete horse-manure.

That is it. Gordon Brown cannot be counted on. He is beyond the pale. End of story.

Hugh: The Labor Party itself cannot be counted upon. Vote for the Tories or the UKIP.

http://www.apostatesofislam.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=661

Internet Toolbox for Islam-critics

That's it! Time to invade Britain.....

Well, being a somewhat useful Chancellor of the Exchequer doesn't automatically mean you're a brilliant mind as this piece of news impressively shows. Whatever their modern appearance - you can't allow a left-wing party to be in control of your country. The same goes for every other country in the West with the exception of France where the right is as bad as the left (Chirac et al). Does anyone of our friends in the UK think that Veritas is an alternative?

Economic benefit, he is kidding me, most of them are on social security, they don't buy or borrow, their education in this background religion does not equip them for the modern world, the women don't work, the huge additional policing cost is a drain on governmental finances and I could go on.

I think Mr Brown has got confused, he is really talking about the Hindu immigration which has had a significant positive economic impact to the UK, that is who he really means, its worrying that someone looking after the UK purse-strings can make such a simple mistake in the identy of those that are adding to the prosperity of the UK. Blimey as us Brits say, the mind just boggles!!!!!

Sounds like political posturing in the worst way" just saying what you think they want to hear". Can Brown be that ignorant of the true teachings of Islam. Is he just making one of those nice positive speeches that so many politicians love to do even though they don't believe a word of it. Or could it be appeasement in the worst way. Maybe somehow he read to much Neville Chamberlain and not enough Winston Churchill?

Backward, not background, blimey!

Gordon Brown "defined a hero as 'someone who has given their life to something bigger than themselves'...."

The form is telling: the singular metamorphoses into the plural ("someone who" has given "their" life to ...."than themselves"), a wriggling amoeba splitting and asexually reproducing in the medium of his awful prose (he wants at all costs to avoid choosing between "him" and "her" and therefore puts "their" from which the further mistakes spring).

But even if we rewrite Gordon Brown's sentenceto define a hero as "someone who has given his life to something bigger than himself" the idiocy remains.

That can be said of all sorts of people: Adolf Hitler comes to mind, so does Lenin (and possibly Stalin), and a host of Un-heros for Our Time. Next we will be hearing about how the "sincerity" and "the fervency" of one's beliefs are necessarily admirable qualities, to be admired and applauded, whatever those beliefs may be. To the question "Is it possible to make Blair look good?" Gordon Brown has just uttered his Yes.

UKIP, please. Or Howard, if he stops being so mealy-mouthed about Islam.

I was at speakers' corner when a Mohammedan orator asked the mainly Muslim crowd 'Does Tony Blair like Islam?'. No one said that they thought that he did.

The problem with this sort of hogwash (maybe that phrase'll be banned) from Gordon Brown is that it doesn't fool Muslims but it fools lots of infidels.

Actually it makes Mr Brown look a complete and utter idiot, most Brits feel that the Muslims are a drain on our society and add absolute zero, Mr Brown is trying to say otherwise to what end I am at a total loss to understand.

The infidels in Britain listening to stories of the one eyed / one handed twit having his legal costs paid for, his house paid for, £550 a month in social security paid for, will think Mr Brown comes from another planet...

I respect Blair for supporting the Iraqi war, but that is about it...

One moral universe, intertwined destinies, genuine religious tolerance.

..hmm...

Sounds so familiar...just can't put my finger on it.

Ahh...I've got it, you must be speaking of pre-Islamic India or perhaps even Arabia, Chancellor.

No, my good sir?

Oh, Islam, you say!

Might this be the same Islam which fights as we speak with Hindus, Buddhists, Taoist, Confucians, animists, Jews, even, or so I've been told, Christians?

Oh its a different Islam, please forgive pukka sahib, my simple Hindu mind cannot comprehend your subtle and complex Abrahamic ways.

Brown is a blithering idiot. He's also out of date.

The first main wave of Muslim immigrants were hard working - they had no option. The Ugandan Asians were particularly successful. It's the second or third generation, born here and taking this country for granted, who are more of a pain and contribute less.

In my experience Muslim women often do work - it's the young men who don't - too busy plotting the next jihad.

But I don't see why even Muslims who are hard working, law abiding and pay taxes should be praised for so doing. They are doing no more than their duty. No other religious group is singled out for praise. To do so is the soft racism of low expectations.

Hugh: 'Brown is beyond the pale'?? I hope that awful pun was not intentional!

I hate this government and hope they get their majority cut. Too much to hope that the Tories will get in and cut my taxes.

Gordon Brown is a prime example of why Europe, including the UK, sadly, is dead...it just has not hit the ground yet. Imploding native populations (birth rates so low as to be virtually unrecoverable) and a tidal wave of unassimilated third world immigration (modern europe appears to worship the third world) has been a formula for cultural suicide.

What disfunctional group-think would lead hundreds of millions of people to enthusiastically commit themselves and their posterity to oblivion?

Islamofascism is the catalyst which promises to accelerate the decline of the native populations and cultures of europe but it is europe's inexplicable embrace of its own destruction, so evident in its pusillanimous appeasement of its third world tormentors, which has sealed its fate.

Demographics (native european birth rates)alone guarantee the physical extinction of europe's native population as well as a cataclysmic social welfare train wreck. That is a simple mathematical certainty which is easily observed and understood. What is not understandable is europe's fatal embrace of its own demise.

"Hugh: 'Brown is beyond the pale'?? I hope that awful pun was not intentional!"

But it was intentional and why, "Interestd" (that not merely mute but absent "e" perturbs, but the letter-limit explaisn that so vividly present absence), call it a "bad" pun?

Many seem to think puns are disreputable. Dryden dismissed the pun as a "mere clench" which Shakespeare was partial to; Johnson continued in the same vein. Most puns, even the worst of them, should be welcomed with open arms. Paronomasia uses up no natural resources, stimulates the mind, and is less polluting than digital remastering, if you get my seedy drift.

Shakespeare couldn't help himself. He sat at the pub, aupres de sa blonde (no lager lout, he did like a pint of light beer along with his bangers and mash which he wolfed down between performances in the Liberty of the Clink), and as he sat eating, he scribbled on a piece of paper, and the puns came. Unstoppable, and not to be stopped. Full stop.

The Pun is like the Person from Porlock. Even when he interrupts, you have to let him in.

But Hugh, when you say "the Pun is like the Person from Porlock. Even when he interrupts, you have to let him in," aren't you tacitly admitting that the pun, like the Person from Porlock, is a killer of inspiration?

And wouldn't you agree that STC's entire poem in question is about the loss of that inspiration, such that the Person from Porlock is in fact the hero and protagonist?

And do you have the Happy Good Friday Blues?

Yours
Robert

Hugh sez:

The form is telling: the singular metamorphoses into the plural ("someone who" has given "their" life to ...."than themselves"), a wriggling amoeba splitting and asexually reproducing in the medium of his awful prose (he wants at all costs to avoid choosing between "him" and "her" and therefore puts "their" from which the further mistakes spring).

But even if we rewrite Gordon Brown's sentenceto define a hero as "someone who has given his life to something bigger than himself" the idiocy remains.

Are you one of those pseudo men twits who believe that only men can be hero's (when in fact there is a dearth of real manhood in the west, thanks to the likes of Olaf Trygvasson and your beloved Charlemagne, and the countless wars that have destroyed the gene pool of "real men".}

I hope not, for that is also the opinion and belief of Muslims.

Frankly speaking my wife is my hero, and I would rather have her standing by my side guarding the door to the house than any of the pseudo men, that masquerade as men in our society today. Macho and machismo and tough talk and tough act does not a "man" make.

Pliny the elder wrote of the Sarmatians that they required their women to fight in battle and slay a foe to win the right to marry. Viking women carried a knife around their neck while the men carried theirs at the waist, and the Germanic woman (before Charlemagnes "christianizing program") leaned on swords in their doorway as the men went off to defend the nation (or plunder effeminated Christianized Rome).

Back on topic, I'm waiting for Amazon.com to ship Bat Ye'ors Eurabia, it is quite sad but Europe is indeed heading towards Eurabia. The Dane population will be replaced (by Muslims and other immigrants) within two generations, Netherlands don't have the cajones to defend themselves, neither do the French and the Germans, the Ukraine is next, thanks to Bush's buddy Yanukovych.

Food for thought, the "neo cons", "neo liberals" eat from the same plate as Marxists, they all believe, the wellspring of their greed and self justifying ideology, that man is an economic creature alone (which is an obvious consequence when one projects ones own greed and consumerist needs onto others).

Thus in their eyes, all social problems can be solved via proper economic policies, for Marxists it is public ownership and redistribution and elimnation of class, for neo con-neo liberals it is trickle down economic policies (the voodoo economics of Reagan recycled by Bush). Both of which, by the way, result in the elimination of the middle class... me and you.

I understand something that you don't. In their eyes the war on terrorism is a consequence of bad government and "poverty". Well the truth is, that they are correct but for the wrong reasons,. The bad government is Islamic, which leads to the poverty since Islam is an impoverished ideology.

In the eyes of the neo con, neo liberals, the only cultural war is the internal war, which they exacerbate, manipulate and utilize to stay in power and gain more wealth and power.

Islam is, I'm sure, quite a useful tool, in their eyes, because within an Islamic society there is no culture war, it is about as homogenous and an effective social control tool as is available on the planet.

And with the whole world impoverished and reduced to scrabbling for food, water and clean air, and the whole population convinced (as Islam) does that the only thing of real importance is submission to clerical authority and being a good Muslim. And with the middle class eliminated, which is what is happening before our eyes, thanks to globalization, outsourcing, and the tax, economic programs of the corporate elite/neo cons, then the Bush's and Saud's can sit back and enjoy the good life, which us compliant, less than sentient, but certainly righteous drones will provide them.

From the position of their bulls-eye gluteus maximus application, I would say his lips must be 'brown' as well.

Guilt over 'the sins of the lost Empire' is used as a method for committing slow suicide.

Why doesn't Islam feel such similar guilt?

Because their creed, unlike the 'Christian', doesn't center on humility and forgiveness, but dominion and contempt for the native population.

The Brits, like the 'left' in all Western countries, have no grasp of animal reality. The first swimming cell that devoured the second, less motile, amoeba, brought about 'The Fall'. Nature "red in tooth and claw". They can't stomach this harsh truth about the 'violent universe' (to borrow Nigel Calder's phrase), and, in wishful self-mortification, flee into utopian obeisance and shame for being such 'beasts'.

The canny Muslims take full advantage of this Western 'guilt'. They play it like a Stradivarius.

In America, the professorial class -perfectly embodied by the latest fraud, plagiarist and fake-Indian, Herr Ward "little eichmanns' Churchill- has been feeding a varient of this morbidity to college students for three decades. Executed in the form of the 'genocide of the native peoples' guilt-complex, even though none of the students were born, or at hand, during any of the historical battles between Native Americans and the European colonizers.

Nor were they involved in the endless fractricidal warfare that plagued the continent as Native peoples slaughtered one another, from Maine to California, over capturing fresh sources of breeder-women, honor-killings over arcane insults, beaver-pelt pond 'rights', raw moose antlers & seashells, deer migration routes and other such 'noble' glories. The myth of the 'they were better than the dirty white eyes' is just that. One more silly ahistorical fable.
Humans are human. Not angels.

But, Europeans treated the native peoples as badly as they did one another. And we should all regret the sorry, sordid, horror-filled diary of our planet. But to pretend that any one group is 'responsible' ignores human nature. We are all prone to the worst behavior if not restrained by some preaching of reason and compassion.

Where is the reason or compassion in Islam?

Reason is banned as un-Koranic. (It is the heretical crime of skepticsm.) And compassion is only 'by Muslim men, of Muslim men, and for Muslim men'. The women are serfs. Infidels are dogs.

And Britain, it appears, is performing a Grand public slow-motion suicide. Ultimately as dramatic as the self-immolating Buddhist monks* in Viet Nam.

To apologize for being 'about-average humans' in the past.

Islam will cheer it on, louder and louder.

Watch for the banning of alcohol (an Arabic word, ironically), next.

*Torches of 'the world is burning, the body is burning' literalism (monks who appear not to have understood the Buddha's core idea of 'the middle way', which scorned such ego-fueled [sic]extremism) who set fire to themselves in the streets of Saigon in a t.v.-friendly protest of their second-class treatment at the hands of arrogant, French-influenced Catholic South Vietnamese rulers. It did no good, in the short term, and got them the atheistic communist terror state in its place. A poor tactical move, after all. ("Om, om on the range."- as 'The Firesign Theater' joked.)

Brown is the new black - the 'black heart of Islam' as Will Cummins called it. The lengths that New Labour will go to to Brown nose the Muslims beggars belief. But appeasement never works and maybe the Labour vote will be split, courtesy of the evil tosser George Galloway and his Respect party or the dopey Europhile Lib Dems.

OT - the cretinous 'religious hatred' bill is currently being savaged in the House of Lords. But there has been a total media blackout on this crucial topic.

Hugh, Shakespeare etc, nothing wrong with puns - there's no 'e' in 'Intrstd' and there's no effin puns in the Koran.

Until the mid-1960s, every schoolchild (Jack or Jill) taught to read and write English was instructed to use "his" as the possessive for "one" and its variants "someone" and "no one." In the beautiful and intelligent past, no one endowed that convention with any great significance, political or sociological. That came later, in the hysterical frenzy that gave us, briefly, "womyn" and "personkind." Now those constructions have had to beat a hasty retreat, under gales of laughter.

The God of Language is not mocked. That is what the heroine (not hero, for the word "heroine" is perfectly serviceable) of my own tale -- my mother -- taught me. I wouldn't dream of disagreeing.

Britain's Muslims praised by British Chancellor
American Muslims praised by American President

Giaour,

I'd put it this way. Most in the West will put short-term political and economic expediency over the survival of the very institutions which make politics and economics possible. Under our benign new Caliph I just hope to have the fastest donkey.

belief in fair play, equality for all

The Price of Motherhood and the Choice of Childlessness

Rev. Dr. Holly Horn
May 12, 2002

In Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible, there are but three brief occasions of dialogue between G-d and a woman. The first follows the eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil by Adam and Eve.

The second takes place after Hagar, the Egyptian slave, becomes pregnant by Sarah's husband, Abraham, and runs away into the wilderness. The third dialogue takes place between G-d and Sarah, after the announcement that Sarah will bear a child.

G-d initiates these conversations in response to a transgression by the woman. Eve has eaten the forbidden fruit and given it to Adam. Hagar is a slave who has run away from her owner, Sarah. Sarah, despite the history of faulty translations, has shown no interest whatsoever in carrying out G-d's plan for her to have a child, and upon hearing the promise of one does not exult in the prospect of motherhood, but she exclaims, "Shall I have sexual pleasure with such an old man!"

In each case, the woman is admonished by G-d for her transgression. And for each, the consequences include some degree of coercion in child-bearing.

"To. . . [Eve] G-d said, 'I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."

G-d's words to Hagar: "Return to your mistress, and suffer under her hand," sentenced her to child-bearing in slavery.

And G-d rebukes Sarah for her laughter, her anticipation of sex rather than pregnancy.

In each instance female transgression is a product of desire. Eve desires the knowledge of good and evil. Hagar desires freedom from oppression. Sarah desires sexual pleasure. Female desire for knowledge, freedom, and pleasure are given voice, and they are denied within the structures of dominance and submission (marriage, slavery, cosmos) whose common thread is the gendered oppression of coerced childbearing and whose ultimate authority is a male god. A male god who lies - to each of these women.

So, that's how it was in Genesis, bereshit, in the Beginning - of our civilization.

Preparing for this sermon has been an unusual experience. In addition to my conversation with Worship Associates Leslie Abend and Janet Scannell, the topic has popped up in other meetings, and in casual conversation. One woman came up to me after the service last week, telling me about her decision to bear a child, and about her friend's infertility. I've heard from people as far away as Wisconsin, who read our newsletter and had something to say about this.

And the more I talked with people and the more I read, the more opaque the concept of "choice" became; and more faint the authentic voice of female desire, the wellspring of our spirituality.

In her book The Price of Motherhood, Ann Crittenden. quotes Lawrence H. Summers, "a distinguished economist who subsequently became the secretary of the treasury: 'Raising children . . . is the most important job in the world.'

For "[i]n the modern economy, two-thirds of all wealth is created by human skills, creativity, and enterprise - what is known as 'human capital.' And that means parents who are conscientiously and effectively rearing children are literally . . . 'the major wealth producers in our economy.'"

But, Crittenden continues, ". . . [T]he lack of respect and tangible recognition is still part of every mother's experience. Most people, like infants in a crib, take female caregiving utterly for granted.

The job of making a home for a child and developing his or her capacities is often equated with 'doing nothing.'" Crittenden writes: "I'll never forget a dinner at the end of a day in which I had gotten my son dressed and fed and off to nursery school, dealt with a plumber about a leaky shower, paid the bills, finished an op-ed piece, picked up and escorted my son to a reading group at the library, run several miscellaneous errands, and put in an hour on a future book project. Over drinks that evening, a childless female friend commented that 'of all the couples we know, you're the only wife who doesn't work.'"

"The idea that time spent with one's child is time wasted is embedded in traditional economic thinking. . . The policies of American business, government, and the law do not reflect Americans' stated values. Across the board, individuals who assume the role of nurturer are punished and discouraged from performing the very tasks that everyone agrees are essential."

And the vast majority of these individuals who raise the vast majority of children are mothers.

"Inflexible workplaces guarantee that many women will have to cut back on, if not quit, their employment once they have children. The result is a loss of income that produces a bigger wage gap between mothers and childless women than the wage gap between young men and women. This foregone income, the equivalent of a huge 'mommy tax', is typically more than $1 million for a college-educated American woman."

One reason for this is the failure of employers to provide paid maternity leaves. "This country is one of only six nations in the world that does not require a paid leave. (The others are Australia, New Zealand, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Papua New Guinea.)" Another is a tax structure that unfairly taxes the lower wage earner in a family at a higher rate. And the lack of subsidized quality childcare makes it all but impossible for many women to work.

And consider that, legally, ". . . marriage is still not an equal financial partnership. Mothers in forty-seven of the fifty states . . . do not have an unequivocal legal right to half of the family's assets. . . Family income belongs solely to 'he who earns it'. . . A married mother is [legally] a 'dependent', and a divorced mother is 'given' what a judge decides she and the children 'need' of the father's future income. As a result, the spouse who principally cares for the children - and the children - are almost invariably worse off financially after divorce than the spouse who devotes all his energies to a career."

And since government social policies don't even define unpaid care of family dependents as work, a primary caregiver is not eligible in her own right for Social Security, disability insurance, unemployment or workman's compensation.

"For all these reasons, motherhood is the single biggest risk factor for poverty in old age. American mothers have smaller pensions than either men or childless women, and American women over sixty-five are more than twice as likely to be poor as men of the same age."

"The other result of mothers' exclusion from social insurance programs is, of course, child poverty. Almost one-fifth of all American children under age eighteen lived in poverty in 2000. . . The incidence of child poverty in the United States is more than twice as great as in Canada, nearly three times as great as in the United Kingdom, and roughly eight times as great as in Germany. In the Nordic countries, there is no child poverty, thanks to generous family supports."

"Changing the status of mothers," Crittenden concludes, "by gaining real recognition for their work, is the great unfinished business of the women's movement."

Yet, as if from another universe, Madelyn Cain in her book The Childless Revolution, writes: ". . . [A]s the number of childless women grows, a new political force will be felt. The inequalities the childless have endured will be less tolerated and demands will be made for corrections. . . The first place that requires change is the workplace. It is there that the childless face a daily barrage of unfair practices. . . The childless worker is abused. The conflict in the workplace . . . is no longer men versus women; it is the childless worker versus the parent worker."

Childless employees are shortchanged", she continues, "when it comes to medical benefits. They're tired of working longer hours, traveling more, or otherwise picking up the slack for colleagues with family obligations. Cain writes: "Many childless workers are tired of being . . . uncompensated for the extra work, and viewed as second-class citizen despite extra efforts. . . Regrettably the needs of the working mother are considered noble whereas the needs of the childless are viewed as unimportant or even frivolous."

Cain goes on to cite the tax credit parents receive for dependent children as an example of mistreatment; and the Fair Housing Act, which restricts childless women younger than 55 to living side-by-side with children - whether they wish to or not.

Still, it seems like a parallel universe, the one from which Cain writes. Where Crittenden exposes stereotypes about do-nothing stay-at-home mothers, Cain describes the negative misconceptions about childless women: that we're selfish, unfeminine, child-hating, workaholic, in either denial or anguish.

Both address taboo subjects: Crittenden discusses the marital tensions and sense of loss that often lie beneath the surface of mothers' lives. Cain takes on childlessness itself.

And both authors write about choice, about women's reproductive choices, lifestyle choices, and the lack thereof.

In the last 20 years, the number of women between the ages of 40 and 44 without children has doubled to a ratio of 1 in 5. And the numbers of single women and couples without children continue to rise.

Cain distinguishes between the childless and the childfree: the childless being those whose desire for motherhood is savaged by infertility, the death of a child, medical conditions, the absence of a desired partner, or the staggering complexities of lesbian parenting.

The childfree, on the other hand, are those who do not wish to have children, for any number of reasons - a more pressing desire for a successful career, self-assessment of their own potential as mothers. What Cain doesn't mention is that, for some, the choice to be childfree must reflect an unwillingness to risk dependence, abuse, or poverty.

And then there are those whose lives unfolded in such a way that children simply did not become a part of it, neither fully by choice or chance, but by happenstance; women who might have become mothers if the circumstances had been different; who may wonder if they regret not having children because we're supposed to regret it, yet have made peace with their lives.

Of course, the same can be said for some mothers, those who bear or raise children out of no compelling desire of their own, but because circumstances - the desire of a beloved spouse or partner, the presence of step-children - cast them in a role with which they, too, have made peace.

But, Ann Crittenden writes: "The big problem with the rhetoric of choice is that it leaves out power. . . To most women choice is all about bad options and difficult decisions: your child or your profession; taking on the domestic chores or marital strife; a good night's sleep or time with your child; food on the table or your baby's safety."

And Cain asserts that women have been sold a bill of goods with regard to infertility - that few of us know the real statistics on how fertility drops precipitously with each decade of our childbearing years; or the increasing numbers of men who are infertile - or that the miracles of modern science help a scant few to conceive.

Desire and choice. These are not the same. For some of us, desire - to be a mother, a teacher, a minister, a life-partner with another - is so compelling that we, in fact do not choose so much as we are chosen. It's a deep-seated sense of personal identity; a calling, if you will. We may struggle with them. We may not realize all of them, but we ignore our desires at our peril.

Our hearts' desires are an expression of the divine within us; much as the desires for knowledge, for freedom, and for sexual pleasure brought Eve, Hagar, and Sarah into conversation with G-d.

What G-d revealed to them was the injustice and corruption inherent in the divine, patriarchal order. That G-d lied to Eve, telling her she'd die if she ate fruit from the tree of knowledge. That G-d lied to Hagar about naming her son after he was born. That G-d lied to Sarah, putting false words into her mouth. And that G-d's lies exposed the power of female desire as well as the mechanisms of control.

Our choices in the real world are conditioned by these mechanisms of control, and by lies. It is a lie that two women estranged by virtue of race and class, Hagar and Sarah, must leave a legacy of mutual destruction between Jews and Muslims. There is more to the story than this, a story of personal regard as well as betrayal, of moral compromise, of shared history and shared oppression.

Likewise it is a lie that mothers and other women do not share the same interests in workplace equity or in the conscientious and effective rearing of the next generation. Every single one of us has a stake in the future.

Our choices are limited by our ignorance, our lack of information as well as the prejudices that divide us. And we all pay the price.

It's not for lack of imagination. Consider that in Sweden, for a year after the birth of a child, mothers receive a check from the government each month amounting to 75% of her former salary. And then she may return to her job on an 80% schedule, a statutory right of every parent with a child under the age of eight.

All over the world, men have been withdrawing from the institution of the family and reducing their financial support of children. Sweden countered this trend by giving fathers ten days of paid leave after the birth of a child, twelve months of paid leave that can be used by either parent, and - most recently - a month that is forfeited unless the father takes it. Not a single man called to complain when this month was set aside for men only.

For health care, look at France.

And as for subsidized quality childcare, we need only look to our military for an excellent model. It is, unfortunately, available only to the families of those who serve in the armed forces.

Whatever the cost, the recognition of unpaid labor however much it be a labor of love, the restoration of independence and dignity to American mothers is the real cost - and the fair price - of raising the next generation. And since researchers are in unanimous agreement that strong, independent mothers, mothers with economic power, produce the most skilled, creative, and entrepreneurial children - we will all be repaid, if only by the taxes which will finance our own Social Security.

Crittenden observes that mothers themselves, for the most part exhausted, tend to view these issues as personal, as private problems, and somehow their fault. And while we Americans are way behind many other industrialized countries in sending women to the legislative bodies which frame our choices, all of us are called to make common cause. May it be so. AMEN.

shiva,

For health care, look at France.

Britain's Muslims praised by British Chancellor American Muslims praised by American President Posted by shiva

I am reluctant to post a book recommendation that would compete with Roberts. However for Dhimmi and Jihad Watchers I have a criticism, they are in my opinion intellectually lazy and prefer to browse forums and post opinions or hand wringing (and idiotic questions) such as Why do Bush or Why does Blair or Why don't Muslims do this or that?

Take a break from the computer log onto Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble and start buying and reading some books, including Spencer's (all of them).

I mention this because of Shivas' comment about Blair and Bush. Read, please do, Paul Sperry's Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have infiltrated Washington. If idiot conservatives are still looking to Bush for leadership or worshipping in the sand castle church/mosque constructed by Rove/Nordquist, they will be (if they are sentient) outraged and afraid. From Bush, to Ashcroft to Mueller and Rove and Norquist we are being sold out, betrayed to Muslim votes and Saudi money.

And the base of Bush, who is betraying not only America but Western Civilization, slobbers affectionate kisses on his exposed derriere because he has congress pass special legislation for a woman in a vegetative state, while recruiting Jihadis to work in the CIA and FBI, and inviting outright subversives into the Whitehouse.

I can equally condemn Clinton and the Democrats, but that is a waste of time, Clinton does not have power and neither do the Democrats.

As regards women, child bearing, rearing, motherhood.

In my opinion the problem is that women are not regarded as equals and accorded the same respect that men expect and demand. A consequence of a patriarchial culture that has it's roots in the warm clime of the mediterranean and levant and as manifested in Judeo Christianity and Islam's attitudes towards women. We know how Islam regards women, but we don't acknowledge the similar attitude of women as lesser than or even polluted and mindless that is the legacy of Judeo Christianity. (I can easily quote Deuteronomy, Leviticus, how women are regarded in the Old Testament (as prostitute, even the heroines are prostituted like Esther and Sarah), and the New Testament, especially the Pauline Gospels.

Instead of women being considered equal partners as in the Scythian, Sarmatian, Celtic, Norse and Germanic traditions, they are considered to be lesser than. In fact the early fathers at a church
naturally were inclined to believe that women had no souls, but,probably because the Fathers also knew that widows who could be sold spiritual nostrums, some of the Fathers devised the doctrine that if women were piouos and adequately endowed the Church, Jesus would, when they died, replace thier sexual organs with male equipment,thus qualifying them for admission to a Heaven of which the doors bore the warning "Men Only" (sounds like the Muslim Paradise doesn't it/).

As late as AD 5858, a Catholic Synod heatedly debated the question whtehter women were human beings or animals, and the authentically Christian view of females persisted in the orthodox Medieval definitions of a woman as a "pestilential beast", a "destroyer of men", a "bar to salvation", etc.. the full text runs to about fifteen lines of Latin invective. And this opinion, by the way, was endorsed by the blood thirsty social reformers of the French Revolution, who, althouogh they thought themselves anti Christian, were really applying the essentials of the old Judeo Christian doctrine in all they were doing, including Communism of which there is quite a mandate and endorsement in the New Testament (Matt 19:21: 'Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.'Also Acts 2:44-45

All the believers together had everything in common; they sold their possessions and their goods, and distributed among all in accordance with each one's need

Acts 4:32-35
The Believers Share Their Possessions
and Acts 5:1-11 the story of Ananias and Sapphira)

Back to the notions of women (feminity) and men (masculinity) there are two aspects to it, biological and cultural, however the biological aspects have been used to justify the cultural, while more pronounced in the Islamic world, the same attitude to a lesser degree is maintained in the non Islamic world. To wit the rants against "feminists", "lesbians" (who can blame them, if I was a woman I would be one also) and even homosexuals, the roots of which are in reality misogynistic (a lack of respect and a disgust for women, except as property, sex objects and nanny's for the offspring of men).

And talking of sex objects. Islam objectifies women by denying them not only rights and opportunites but by forcing them to veil, while the west objectifies women by exposing them and lusting after their sexuality.

Bikini or Burqa both are the objectification of women.

Here is something I have taken note of. If God or Allah was given a female image or ideation, if all references to sex and gender order and relations were excised from the Bible and the Qur'an, there would be no such thing as monotheism in any of it's variant forms.

If I were younger I would take scissors and produce a desexed Bible and Qur'an, or conversely reverse all gender references and then would see how palatable and attractive religion would be to Jews, Christians and Muslims.

But I am too old, don't have time, and if I did I would be a target of rage, vengance, character assasination and fatwa's that would make that vented towards Salman Rushdie or Madelyn O'Hare look like nursery school ramblings.

As an afterthought, it is my opinion that proper child rearing requires the dilligent and loving effort of two parents (not just the mother, and that mothers can discipline, and fathers can nurture), but at least until the child goes to school, there should be one parent at home (male or female).

The reason that both parents work these days is due to two factors.

l. The must have, immediate gratification of the consumer culture, and the need for people to keep up with the JOnes and prove that they too are Alpha apes or wannabe's.

2. The nature of our money system (fractional reserve or debt money) which is devalued by the interest that must be paid on the money created out of debt (all debts including mortgages and credit cards - no debt = no money).

The debt creates the money, but not the money to pay the interest, and that of necessity results in rising prices as each person raises the price of their labor product to maintain their well being.

Too many cars, computers, cell phones, DVD's, MP2 players, too many toys, too many wants and desires that are perceived as "needs", and too much debt (interest to be repaid).

We need to change our attitudes, lifestyle, expectations and reform the monetary system, by turning it back over to the government and not to banks and credit companies (which are managed by the Federal Reserve or Central Banks, like the Bank of England).

Sorry for the long rant, but I could (actually have) written a manuscript on essentially these subjects and problems, but breaking through the walls of perception and propaganda is as tough a job as trying to convince a Muslim that Allah was a moon rock (or that Abraham hence Judeo Christianity) is a Hindu derived myth.

OT:

The Sunday Telegraph reports today, in its Obituaries, that Prof. Richard Fletcher, historian, has died. It is a long article, but it states, mid-way through, that "he disposed of the myth that Islam is an inherently violent and intolerant faith."Sunday Telegraph.
I find this very disturbing. Many ordinary people will read this and, once again, think that everyone else is wrong, and that Islam must be a religion of peace and the rest of us are just fearmongers and bigots (I can see the arguments with my mother now!).

Perhaps Hugh has some insights into the good professor's works?

A poster above offers an excerpt from an obituary about Richard Fletcher:

"he disposed of the myth that Islam is an inherently violent and intolerant faith."

Really? Is that what Fletcher did? Here is a quote from Richard Fletcher's book on Moorish Spain (a popular book, not to be confused with the scholarship of Levi-Provencal or Dufourcq, but not a bad one):

"The witness of those who lived through the horrors of the Berber conquest, of the Andalusian fitnah in the early eleventh century, of the Almoravid invasion- to mention only a few disruptive episodes- must give it [i.e., the roseate view of Muslim Spain] the lie. The simple and verifiable historical truth is that Moorish Spain was more often a land of turmoil than it was of tranquility...Tolerance? Ask the Jews of Granada who were massacred in 1066, or the Christians who were deported by the Almoravids to Morocco in 1126 (like the Moriscos five centuries later)…In the second half of the twentieth century a new agent of obfuscation makes its appearance: the guilt of the liberal conscience, which sees the evils of colonialism- assumed rather than demonstrated-foreshadowed in the Christian conquest of al-Andalus and the persecution of the Moriscos (but not, oddly, in the Moorish conquest and colonization). Stir the mix well together and issue it free to credulous academics and media persons throughout the western world. Then pour it generously over the truth…in the cultural conditions that prevail in the west today the past has to be marketed, and to be successfully marketed it has to be attractively packaged. Medieval Spain in a state of nature lacks wide appeal. Self-indulgent fantasies of glamour...do wonders for sharpening up its image. But Moorish Spain was not a tolerant and enlightened society even in its most cultivated epoch."

What do you think? Does the paragraph just quoted above, taken from Fletcher's book on Moorish Spain, indicate someone who "disposed of the myth that Islam is an inherently violent and intolerant faith" or someone who saw things quite differently?

Fletcher's last book, however, "The Cross and the Crescent," is different from his book on Moorish Spain -- it is awful, from first to last, a work of apologetics. It's a puzzlement.

Who, by the way, wrote that obituary? I have just been enjoying the Second Book of Telegraph Obituaries, including those of Group Captain Fred Winterbotham and Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, and would hate to think that the same author produced that idiotic remark in the midst of the Fletcher obituary. I would like to know the writer's name.

Hugh:

Many thanks for your response to my comment about the article on Prof. Richard Fletcher. I found the piece under the Obituaries section of my local newspaper, here in Canada, and noted that it was from The Daily Telegraph. I then went to the Daily Telegraph online and saw that they had a link under their Obits section to Richard Fletcher (it's a subscription link so I could not view it online).

However, I am more than happy to re-type the entire article here for you:

**************************

Prof. Richard Fletcher, who has died aged 60, was a historian of diverse interests, but was chiefly known for his studies of medieval Spain and the clash between the two great religions of Christianity and Islam.

It was a field to which Fletcher's conservative, empirical Anglican temperament was well suited, as it was one in which the fragmentary nature of the primary sources had created a rich arena for nationalist myth-making and religious partisanship. But while Fletcher had a deep distrust of sweeping generalizations and always admitted the limits of historical knowledge, his work was never dry. His interest in individuals, nose for nuance and fluent prose, spurred his readers into a curiosity to learn more.

He was at his analytic best in The Quest for El Cid (1989), a brilliant essay in source criticism and a riveting detective story, which won him two major literary awards. In this he examined the life and legend of Rodrigo Diaz "El Cid," the 11th-century soldier of fortune who became the national hero of Christian Spain--and was played on screen by Charlton Heston.

Encrusted in patriotic legend, Diaz had become the perfect Christian knight, ever loyal to a Christian king and never defeated in his battles against the Moors. In fact, as Fletcher revealed, Diaz was a thoroughly ambiguous figure who operated a lucrative protection racket on the frontier between Christianty and Islam and was happy to fight for a Muslim ruler if the money was good. Fletcher showed how his story had been perverted and expropriated by nationalist Christian Spain for its own purposes.

The Cross and the Crescent(2002) was a well-timed reminder of the complexities of the relationship between Christianity and Islam in the crucial period between Muhammad and the Reformation. He disposed of the popular myth that Islam is an inherently violent or intolerant faith, while showing how many Christians came to see it that way. He showed that relations in this period were almost always peaceful, that of the two cultures it was the Islamic society which was the more advanced and sophisticated at the time and that there were many fruitful contacts between Christian and Muslim scholars, traders, lovers, and others.

Fletcher's historical interests were broad-ranging and many felt that his best work was The Conversion of Europe: From Paganism to Christianity 371-1386 (1997), a thorough, reflective study of how an obscure Jewish sect that had developed into a plebian cult in the Mediterranean cities of the late Roman Empire became the religion of Europe. The book was described by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, as "an enthralling book of real genius."

Richard Alexander Fletcher was born on March 28, 1944, and was brought up at Wighill, in Yorkshire, England, the probable site of the murder in 1016 of Earl Uthred of Northumbria, an event that sparked a feud lasting three generations. It was this connection that ignited the teenage Fletcher's interest in history and he would publish the results of his research into the murder of its aftermath in Bloodfeud (2002).

A convivial man, Richard Fletcher was fond of good food and wine, and of hunting and fishing."

***********

I look forward to your thoughts.

Cheers.

The mystery of why Fletcher's "The Cross and the Crescent" is so much less convincing and impressive than his other works (such as that on Moorish Spain) may be cleared up by reading his preface.

In that preface (pp. XIV-XV) Professor Fletcher writes as follows:

"To my kinswoman Emma Clark (to whom the book is dedicated) I am deeply indebted for finding time in a busy life to read the entire typescript and comment instructively upon it from a Muslim's perspective. In the light of her criticism I have introduced many changes into may text; where I have neglected her advice it has never been without anxious hesitation."

"where I have neglected her advice it has never been without anxious hesitation."

Think upon those words, which are plain - "in the light of her criticism I have introduced many changes" -- but Emma Clark was not a historian, not of Spain, not of Islam, not of anything. She was, and is, famous because she is one of those soi-disant upper-class converts to Islam who made the papers. She is not only a "kinswoman" to Fletcher, but also the great-granddaughter of a former Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith.

And note that last phrase -- he, Fletcher, worried not about the views of a learned colleague, not about the judgment of posterity on this book, but about the reaction of -- Emma Clark -- "where I have neglected her advice it has never been without anxious hesitation."

And to make matters still worse, his obituary lifts a phrase, a phrase that goes even beyond what is in "The Cross and the Crescent" to misstate, in true Karen-Armstrong style, what the book is said to argue, and there it is for all time -- a false obituary, enrolling Fletcher as one who promoted scholarly dhimmitude.

But the problem is not only with the Emma Clarks and the Karen Armstrongs. It is with those who, like Fletcher, are concerned with the good opinion of Muslims.

How difficult it must be for any non-Muslim member of a department not to think, as he (or she) writes, not to consider the effect of what is written on Muslim colleagues, or friends, or even someone with whom one is romantically attached. There is the element of vanity; can Bernard Lewis, lionized in Turkey for decades, a friend of well-known Ottomanists who treat him with courtliness, a friend of Osmanlis, a guest of Prince Hassan when he visits Amman, quite see the treatment of non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire or under Islam in the light that someone not made so much of, not grateful for so many favors and proffered friendships, possibly can?

Can a member of MESA Nostra, who has to meet with Muslim colleagues at faculty meetings, who must rely on them for a sharing of a workload, assignment of courses, overseeing of undergraduate and graduate theses, in trading book-blurbs and references upon which grants and fellowships depend -- how likely is it that one will not only pursue lines of inquiry, such as treatment of non-Muslims under Islam, or the slave trade in Islam, or the real position of Jews in the Ottoman Empire (compare Joseph Hacker with Bernard Lewis), if it is only going to give one trouble. There are brave exceptions: people who are independent scholars, outside any academic institution, or people who teach in another field but have studied Islamic history on their how, or the professor who, in a small college, may be the entire department of Middle East studies, or has no Muslim colleagues and can safely investigate, and write, the truth.

Fletcher made the mistake of letting his kinswoman not only read but criticize, in detail, his manuscript, and he admitted to having made changes as she wished, and when he did not, admitted as well to a state of "anxious hesitation."

In Italian newspaper slang, the obituaries which are prepared for the well-known (and thus likely to be given space), and which sit in their files, added to from time to time, and then taken out when the relevant party finally dies, are called "cocodrilli."

But Fletcher's obituary, the shameless borrowing of that misleading and tendentious Armstrong phrase, leads to a different sort of tears. Not crocodile tears. Not even lacrimae rerum. But tears for the steady drop-by-drop collaboration of so many, in little ways and big, in the surrender of what could and should be our self-sufficient and self-confident civilization to a primitive but powerful menace, out of nothing more than mental laziness.

Alarm, and disgust, at times threaten to overwhelm even the least flappable observers.

Hugh:

Thank you for your most recent response re Fletcher. Your writings are a joy to read.

That you, however, one of the "least flappable observers," finds the whole thing alarming, speaks volumes.

PS: No writer's name is associated with the Telegraph article.

Perhaps the Fletcher obituary--including Hugh's observations--deserves its own entry under Dhimmi Watch?

Perhaps the Fletcher obituary--including Hugh's observations--deserves its own entry under Dhimmi Watch?

Hugh-

You got there 'first-est with the most-est' about Prof. Fletcher's "Cross/Crescent" opus. Kudos! The work, for its failings, says nothing like what the obituarist made the book seem to be conveying- essentually promulgating the "peaceful religion" model. Who wrote this obituary? And why? Did they read Fletcher's book? Or is this some gloss pulled off an Islamic website?

Bizarre.

Even the superficial review of the book, on a popular online sales site, shows that its contents are obviously NOT such a puerile paen to the Muslim Myth.

An excerpt from it: [by Silvana Tropea]: "In the best of times there was coexistence ... Christians were tolerated (but disdained)... In the worst, [there was] outright persecution.... The Islamic world flourished when it was most open to ...[outside]... thought... [but] withdrew 'from intellectual receptivity' at the height of its power...".

And thereby collapsed into the stunted thing it has been ever since. An warped intellectual dwarf. Raging against the 'injustice' of what it does not recognize as its own self-blinding. Oedipus Wrecks. [apologies to J.Joyce] Blaming its failings on 'the other', and not itself.

And old, infantile trick. Effective for the inpulse-driven, uncritical mind.

Fletcher may have been somewhat indecisive, and, as you mention, given to strangely unhistorian-like editorial influences, but he was NOT whitewashing the Muslim facts. Or playing siren to their 'Restored Caliphate/Abbasid' myths.

I didn't read the cause of his death. 60 seems pretty young nowadays.

One good thing, noted at the end of the obituary, clearly speaks in his favor- that he retired from York University "because he had become exasperated by the politically correct bureaucratization of university life".

To quote El Cid:

"Conozca a su enemigo."

(Know your enemy).

Re. Gordon Brown, the word pandering comes to mind.

Blair et al may go down to defeat - Brown's words are so obviously pimping for moslem votes, that, were i a brit, it would look to me like Blair is selling me out without a thought for a few more years of power.

Wonder if Mr. Howard could muster up as much realism for moslems and islam in the U.K. as he has for the very modest problems that a few gypsies have caused. That would win him a huge and life long police guard and the Prime Ministers job. He'd have to be a very brave man, much braver than that yellow piece of work, G.Brown.

The Times Obituary is at
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-1519774_1,00.html

The Guardian Obituary at

http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,1440471,00.html#article_continue

describes him as "a loyal son of the Church of England, Fletcher was culturally ecumenical, and felt an affinity for Islam" and says that it was fortuitous that the The Cross and the Crescent was begun before 9/11

I think that's a very creepy statement.

Some 30% of muslim families from pakistan and Bangladesh have not one person employed in the family. As muslim families are 2 to 3 times larger then the norm, it gives an indication of the huge number of people that are on welfare. Even if one person was employed, it is hardly likely that the family could sustain itself without considerable welfare benefits. This just indicates the huge drain on resources that muslims are deliberately imposing on us. This excludes all the expenses for security measures, legal expenses (taxpayer money for Cheri Blair), prison expenses (muslims are well represented in the prison population). All this is good jihad. Be in no doubt, draining the kuffar economy is 'good jihad'.

Most muslim immigrants to the UK have virtually no marketable skills, in fact are illiterate for the most part, and will remain unemployed (very likely voluntarily), for the rest of their lives. At 65 they will all be eligible for a state pension, whether they have worked or not. And yet the cry goes out that we need muslim immigrant workers to fund the pensions gap.

Britain's muslims certainly have been as assett to Mr Brown. Brown is an old labour socialist whose idea is that everyone should be dependent on the state. Those who wish to be independent are deemed as anti-social rebels. Welfare dependents OTH can be depended on to vote Labour come the election.

It was said that the West will sell rope to those who wish to hang it. Not so now. We will give away our culture for a vote.