A blog that is well worth reading

Alan Craig's name is not as well known as, perhaps, it ought to be. He is the man who led the battle against the East London mega-mosque, a battle that seems to have been lost as planning permission has been approved of. But to some extent the battle was won as the vast building will not be constructed in time for the 2012 Olympics, which was the original aim.

The sect behind the mega-mosque is Tablighi Jamaat, which originated in South Asia and has particularly harsh views on the position of women (as well as the Infidel). This is what Mr Craig has to say and he is not inaccurate:

Originating from South Asia, Tablighi Jamaat is the most successful Islamic missionary group on the planet and the UK is one of their prime missionary targets. During the recent public inquiry into the use of their West Ham site, the sect’s trustees explained how they reconcile their active promotion of wedding ceremonies with the fact that theirs is a male-only mosque. At the ceremony the marriage contract is signed solely by the bridegroom and the father or brother of the bride. The bride does not sign it. She does not even attend her own wedding.

The Planning Inspector, blinded and biased by his profession’s multi-cultural mores, subsequently reported (here) merely that “the highest standards… of inclusion for women… are not being achieved” at the male-only site (yes, he really wrote such tripe, check it out: para 77) and that the all-male mosque is “generally an inclusive environment”! Troglodyte Saudi authorities that bar female car drivers within the regressive Kingdom can eat their hearts out: this bride-ban is happening in 21st century London apparently with the active connivance of UK authorities.

When shall we hear from the feminist organizations of this country about this outrage. Or about the other one Mr Craig writes about on his blog, the bullying of a Bangladeshi Christian pharmacy assistant?

My own association with Mr Craig is through work on Baroness Cox's Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill about which I have yet to write. Mea culpa. I am delighted that he has a blog of his own as well as a column in The Church of England Newspaper. I strongly recommend the blog to my readers though I know that not all will agree with everything Mr Craig says. He would be the first to support people's right to disagree. Go for it.

ADDENDUM: Alan Craig disagrees with me on one important point and says this:

Actually the battle against the mega-mosque is far from lost; in a sense the battle proper has yet to begin - when we see the full plans published later this year.

However we have lost a preliminary planning skirmish - which no doubt has encouraged and emboldened the mosque proposers. We won the argument but lost the decision - this time round.

Well, he will have the full support of this blog. A city that has as many mosques as London does, has no need of a mega-mosque, let alone one where women are not allowed to sign their own marriage agreements.

Where do the Cleggerons stand on this?

As the political world in Britain yawns and turns away becomes convulsed by the news that the egregious Baroness Warsi has decided to deflect criticisms of her hopeless chairmanship of the Conservative Party by accusing the entire country of being prejudiced against Muslims (Ed West's very sensible piece, Lord Tebbit's ditto and even ConHome has come up with mild criticism of the good lady) some people are looking further afield.

Baroness Cox, not a token appointment by any manner of means, being one of the hardest working peers in the realm, asked HMG on Tuesday:

they will make representations to the Government of Egypt to ensure adequate protection of all religious minorities, following the recent killings of Christians in Alexandria

There was a good deal of pleasant waffle in the subsequent debate but one thing comes out fairly clearly from Lord Howell's evasive replies: the Cleggeron Coalition may have said that it is terribly upset and saddened by the events though heartened by some of the reaction in the rest of Egypt (the evidence for the latter is patchy) but it made no representations to the Egyptian government whatsoever. I hear from other sources that while other governments issued some kind of stern warnings the British one kept quiet. Perhaps they do not want to upset Baroness Warsi, who is, presumably, trying to pre-empt her well-merited dismissal from a post she never deserved.

European values

This is really by way of a rant. Few things annoy me more than the insistence of the colleagues that everything they do within the European project is in the name of something they call "European values", which never seem to include the nastier bits of our complicated history. The Renaissance, for instance, was full of blood and murder and crime as Harry Lime points out in that famous monologue on top of the Big Wheel in The Third Man.

It is not only the unpleasant parts of European history that are fudged in the name of glorious European integration; there is a reluctance to face up to the reality of those wondrous "European values" because they are the exact opposite of what the European Union and all its ideas stand for.

The reason this came back to me was because I have been reading Gordon Campbell's Bible: The Story of the King James Version 1611 -2011, the story of that great work of theology and literature, 400 years old next year. Describing the early English translations of the Bible, or parts of it, Professor Campbell devotes an appreciable amount of space to William Tyndale, the man who is known as the "father of the English Bible".

Most of his life consisted of dodging around various European cities and states, avoiding the various emissaries of the English King and of the Pope and working desperately hard to translate various Books of the Bible and to have those translations published. He was welcomed in the Protestant states and his translations were smuggled into England where they were supremely popular. (Reminds me of the sight of a highly respectable elderly Russian lady doctor hiding a tiny copy of Leonid Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago among her underwear as she was preparing to return to Moscow.) In the end Tyndale's luck ran out and he was tried for heresy in Antwerp, sentenced to death and strangled with his body burnt afterwards. Ironically, this was a year after his great English enemy and persecutor, Sir Thomas More had been executed.

Of course, these days Tyndale would not have survived even as long as he did or not as a free man. For now, in the name of those "European values" that used to allow people to move around and live in places that were more congenial there is a system in place that aims to have just one legal structure, one set of punishments and one ideology to bind us all.

A short interruption in the service

I shall be away till Monday evening and as I am going to Paris, I refuse to take my laptop or spend any time on the computer. There are far better things to do, not least meeting with some like-minded individuals. (Oh yes, they do exist in France as well.)

In the meantime here is a jolly story about organizers of an art exhibition who dared to criticize the close link between the Orthodox Church and the Russian state (nothing new there) being on trial for blasphemy. I found it on Tom Palmer's blog. Tom, whom I met a couple of times in Washington DC is a one-man operation for the spread of ideas of freedom in the most unlikely parts of the world, specifically in the former Soviet Union. He goes to the more difficult parts, like Kyrgyzstan and the other stans rather than the highly accessible Baltic States. Personally, I think that there is a long way to go till the ideas of freedom take root in Central Asia but when they do, it will be thanks to Tom Palmer and a few hardy souls like him.

The answer is, of course not

Phyllis Chesler asks in her latest column on Pajamas Media:

Do people really understand what is going on in our world right now?

The answer is, sad to say, of course not. Why would they? After all, what Ms Chesler says and what some of us also try to say, though not so eloquently, is not nice. People should be nice to each other, runs the modern meme in the comfortable West. They should be non-judgemental.

Ms Chesler is particularly concerned with the way language is being abused, which means that truth and clarity disappear.

Do people really understand what is going on in our world right now? That language is being used to confuse us? America is the greatest “terrorist,” Israeli Jews are the “Nazis,” non-Muslim pro-western law Brits are called “right wing fascists” because a small number stood up to 200 angry and armed Muslim Brits in front of a Birmingham mosque, parliamentarian Geert Wilders is considered a “racist Islamophobe” and faces a criminal trial because he tells the truth about Islamist jihad.

And, by the way, the so-called “fascist” Brits held aloft an Israeli flag and signs that said “Extremists Out,” “Britain Safe.” One woman interviewed said: “If people come here they should respect out laws.” Yes, this group may also be allied with genuine racist-fascists Nazi-era style—but then again, they may not be. The problem is they what they are saying has merit.

To be fair, many people are beginning to get worried. Others have been so for a long time. But even among those who do not like to see what is going on in their own countries, it is rare for one to understand that whatever "compassion" you may feel for those poor, unhappy, oppressive, misogynistic, homophobic, illiberal perpetual victims, our place must lie with other democratic and liberal societies. And that means Israel. Of course, everyone is welcome to criticize its government. The Israelis do all the time.

News from Uzbekistan

I do not suppose any reader will be terribly surprised that there is less than complete religious freedom in Uzbekistan (or, for that matter, any of the "stans"). Theoretically, there is, of course, just as the Soviet Constitution of 1936 was the most liberal in the world. Such a pity about it author, Nikolai Bukharin, being shot in 1938 after a trial that failed to live up to the most obvious of legal standards.

What Uzbekistan and other countries of that ilk do is to announce that all religious organizations must register with the government; then they can pick and choose whom to register and clamp down on all unregistered one. Organized civil society, you see.

I read with grim amusement the latest information from Forum 18, an organization that is dedicated to the promotion of religious freedom and tolerance, a thankless task.

In another case, after a police raid on a Baptist's home his library has been confiscated and sent for "religious expert analysis", local police told Forum 18. Amongst the books are works by Sir Walter Scott and Ivan Turgenev, a sign language book, a Koran translated into Russian, and a Russian Orthodox prayer book. The books' owner, Pyotr Zvonov, faces charges of "illegally producing, storing, importing and distributing of materials of a religious nature."

I wish them luck if they are going to wade through Scott's novels to find if there is anything of religious nature in them.