Nowhere in that article is it mentioned the religion or Islam or Muslims or terrorism or West vs. East or anything other than race is a factor. In fact, the quotes explicitly attribute the violence to gangs drawn along racial lines. It’s brown-on-white violence in response to white-on-brown violence. Assuming the article presents an accurate picture, it has nothing to do with Islam.
But thank you, Valteron, for making clear your racist assumption that Pakistani = Muslim.
This is not a comment by the EDL but by the Bishop of Rochester and the Church of England’s only Asian bishop. It is from this source: Bishop warns of no-go zones for non-Muslims
Bishop warns of no-go zones for non-Muslims
Bishop Nazir-Ali warns that attempts are being made to give Britain an increasingly Islamic character
By Jonathan Wynne-Jones 12:01AM GMT 06 Jan 2008
Islamic extremists have created “no-go” areas across Britain where it is too dangerous for non-Muslims to enter, one of the Church of England’s most senior bishops warns today.
The Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester and the Church’s only Asian bishop, says that people of a different race or faith face physical attack if they live or work in communities dominated by a strict Muslim ideology.
“Christian preachers face arrest in Birmingham,” by David Harrison in the Telegraph, June 1 2008.
A police community support officer ordered two Christian preachers to stop handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham.
The evangelists say they were threatened with arrest for committing a “hate crime” and were told they risked being beaten up if they returned. The incident will fuel fears that “no-go areas” for Christians are emerging in British towns and cities, as the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, claimed in The Sunday Telegraph this year.
Arthur Cunningham, 48, and Joseph Abraham, 65, both full-time evangelical ministers, have launched legal action against West Midlands Police, claiming the officer infringed their right to profess their religion.
You are completely off topic. The point was that I was challenged to give cites by people wgho claim there are no areas in the UK where non-Muslims cannot go. The BBC today article I cited at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/re.../oldham1.shtml clearly indicates that. If it does not specifically mention the Islamic aspect, it is because political correctness makes it impossible for them to speak in any other terms than vague references to “Asians”. As to my “assumption” that Pakistanis are Muslims, I do not claim they are. But are you telling me that these gangs are made up of the tiny minority of Pakistani Christians who are just trying not to get murdered in Pakistan?
You are not a spokesperson for gay people. Please do not attempt to pass yourself off as one.
Your statement shows a really aggressive denial of reality.
The overwhelming majority of Islamic countries don’t proscribe the death penalty for homosexuality.
Furthermore there are many Christian countries, such as Uganda, Namibia, Tanzania, Dominica, and Jamaica have much harsher penalties than most Muslim countries.
You have clearly led a very sheltered life and should learn more about Islam if you want people to take you seriously.
I’ll be happy to help you if you want.
My bad. I had just mentioned that the EDL has a GBLT division and that a number of gay people show up at EDL demos with rainbow flags.
So allow me to correct myself.
“Why do these gay people support the EDL? Maybe because they are scared shitless of Islam, the most murderously homophobic ideology since the Nazis. Maybe because 72% of British Muslims want gays executed or imprisoned. Maybe because gangs of Muslim youths regularly go gay-bashing in cities like London, Amsterdam and Paris.”
Is that better?
Valteron owes Tony Blair, (for whom I have no great love or respect), an abject apology for totally distorting what Blair was taped saying.
Blair addressedtwo separate but related situations:
the cultural issues that reside within many nations, (mostly Muslim), that have not yet engaged in modernization,
and
the specific policies of Iran.
His point was that the peoples in those countries tend to be (lower case) conservative in nature and suspicious of changes imposed from the outside. Al Qaida made a good PR choice to portray the cultures of those countries to be in direct conflict with a threat from the West. If you go back and actually listen to his words, (rather than being led astray by the ineptly chosen title on the web page or Valteron), you will notice that Blair does not even mention Islam as a major component of the situation. Rather, he notes that one radical fundamentalist Muslim sect was effective in promoting the notion of a cultural conflict.
He then goes on, in a second portion of the clip, to address Iran as a rogue nation. Again, none of his comments even refer to Islam. He draws no conclusion that the leaders of Iran are driven by their religion. Instead he points out that Iran, as a nation, is pursuing a particularly reckless path based on the (presumably political) goals of its leaders.
Islam only fits into this narrative as one of many factors–one that was effectively corrupted by a single group for propaganda purposes, but which does not, itself, play a role except as it is used by that group.
Drawing from his words the idiotic notion that the religion, itself, is a cause of problems demonstrates only that prejudice allows one to distort any statement to be bent to the will of one’s hatred.
It can’t and won’t happen in the US.
No, just seven of them. Including Iran and Saudi Arabia, who finance hundreds of mosques and train Imams for Muslim communities in the West.
I am not going to sit here all evening trading countries with you. Look up "LGBT Rights by Country or territory in Wikipedia. Here is the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country_or_territory You have only to glance at the world map to see that with the exception of some states in southern Africa and some small countries in the Caribbean, the belt of murderous homophobia is more or less concentrated in the Muslim world. And states like Guyana, the only country in South America that still persecutes gays, has a large Muslim presence. Besides, even countries like Jordan where gays are not criminalized have a record of gays “committing suicide” in jail after the family slips the guard a few bucks, or being honour-killed by their families.
BTW, gay Muslims often take refuge in Israel, where they can live in freedom.
And in countries like Indonesia, Muslim hard-liners are calling for Sharia law and the death penalty to be restored for gays.
If I had led a sheltered life, I would swallow your Taqiyya much more easily and believe that Islam is just a happy bunch of people who have nothing against gays.
I have read the Koran quite extensively, thank you. And I intend to remain an infidel. I will die before I submit or become a dhimmi.
Gee, I could have sworn I heard him say at 0:48 "an ideology that says ‘the west is fundamentally hostile to Islam and that’s why we have to wage war against these people. . . .’ ". I could have sworn he said that this attitude is deeply rooted and widespread.
It is never about Islam, is it Tom? Even when it is.
Yes. And that ideology/attitude is not “Islam”. It may be Islamic, but there is a difference, in the same way that Catholic dogma regarding birth control can be called christian - it’s true but imprecise to the point of being misleading.
I live in a city in England with a higher than average Muslim population and a much higher than average eastern European (mostly Christian) immigrant population. There is one particular Muslim/immigrant area of town that is generally considered ‘a bit dodgy’ to walk through at night, despite the actual lack of crimes. I cycle through the area to and from work 6 days a week, sometimes in the dark, for the last 3 years and have never felt intimidated.
I’ve lived in various places throughout the town since birth. I can definitely tell you there are many more white-dominated areas to avoid and they haven’t improved in over 20 years. I was punched in the face aged 7 for no reason. I was threatened with a crowbar aged 14 because we dared move in to the house of a former drug dealer. If it wasn’t for the large dog we kept we would have been burgled twice. In one particular location I was afraid to wander around even in the daytime.
It’s easy to find people talking about no-go Muslim dominated areas of towns (or paki-villes as they are often affectionately refereed to) but how much of it is based on facts and how much is due to simple xenophobia with a nice dollop of confirmation bias?
No, Mexican fanatics haven’t done anything like that. And we haven’t recently dropped bombs on Mexico or conquered it or openly propped up a mass murdering despot there. Amazing coincidence, that.
Not a shred of evidence supports the bishop’s claims. He doesn’t mention a single place where non-Muslims can’t go.
Can you provide us with some EVIDENCE? Like, an honest-to-God news report of no-go areas? Shouldn’t there be reference to some city blocks or something? I mean, this would be huge, huge news, if there were areas of British cities that non-Muslims couldn’t go. There would be videos, news stories on every major channel, big articles in magazines and papers (real news sources, not the Christian Nutbar Nework) and pictures of the blocked-off, super dangerous areas.
You’re so brave and tough.
I’m going to follow your example, and refuse to become a slave to the Martians.
Well, if you had actually paid attention to his statements prior to that, you would have heards him describe a cultural clash and then hear him explain that al Qaida exploited that pre-existing concern.
Of course, in your odd version of unreality, it is always about Islam, even when it is not. ::: shrug :::
I see. . . . . and al Qaida exploited that pre-existing concern among members of what religion who tend to have contempt for western values, whose clergy regularly condemn the west as corrupt and stanic, and whose Prophet said that he was commanded to fight until all worship on Earth was for Allah alone?
Could it have been among the Mormons? Among the Shinto in Japan? Gee, I wonder!
As a British expatriate, I think my very favorite thing about this board might be all the wonderful new information I discover about my own country from people who’ve never been there.
I’ve seriously considered moving back so I too can experience the joy of warm beer, waiting six months for a doctor’s appointment, or being beaten up for not being Muslim.
Clearly, things have changed since 2006.
Not much.