April 01, 2004

WITH WHOM ARE WE AT WAR?

Keith Berry asked 19 bloggers. Answers range from “radical Islamic fundamentalists and their supporters” (Croooow Blog)) to “anyone not loyal to W.” (Scoobie Davis).

Interesting. This guy seems to support the “radical Islamic fundamentalists” option:

Britain's most prominent Muslim leader last night demanded a crackdown on "rogue" Islamic preachers, blaming them for brainwashing young men with sermons promoting holy war against the West.

Iqbal Sacranie, the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, was backed by the families of some of the eight men arrested in Tuesday's anti-terrorism raids in south-east England.

The father of one of those arrested, Lal Hussain, makes a good point:

"This version of Islam is spoiling it for everyone else. They have not arrested them; they arrested these kids. They are the extremists, making inflammatory speeches on the pavement, yet nothing is done."

Posted by Tim Blair at April 1, 2004 01:08 PM
Comments

Keith Berry asked 19 bloggers.

Tim, you forgot to complete the tag. The link doesn't work.

Posted by: TimT at April 1, 2004 at 01:19 PM

Sorry, I guess I should have said your slave boy Trang has made another stupid mistake. Time for a flogging, I say!

Posted by: TimT at April 1, 2004 at 01:21 PM

testing

Posted by: Dead Ed at April 1, 2004 at 01:41 PM

hmmm just had a comment knocked back for 'questionable content' or something like that. I wasnt saying anything out of the ordinary.

Posted by: Dead Ed at April 1, 2004 at 01:43 PM

Destroy all ememies of ZOG!!

Posted by: Dead Ed at April 1, 2004 at 01:48 PM

Ed (sigh) and everybody -- this blog is protected by MT-Blacklist. When you post something with phrases or parts of phrases that are too much like common spam terms or domain names of spammer websites, it will reject your input, and it will give you a message telling you what that input is. The most common culprits are phrases with "your" followed by either "link" or "comment" because of the "com" syllable in "comment" (your-dot-com is found in many spammer messages and websites). People who have an Earthlink email address will also have to alter that in the email field -- add "NOSPAM" or something between "earthlink" and ".com." And also, using "preview" will not tell you whether or not MT-Blacklist will reject your message.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at April 1, 2004 at 01:49 PM

Fascinating. And there I was, imagining we were at war with Iraq.

Posted by: Oddball at April 1, 2004 at 02:04 PM

Oddball: you were wrong.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at April 1, 2004 at 02:10 PM

Huh! People are denouncing extremist Muslims. In Great Britian. And those people are Muslims themselves.

There's hope for the world yet. Political Incorrectness is not dead.

Posted by: JeffS at April 1, 2004 at 02:46 PM

The father of one of those arrested makes a good point, however, it would make sense for Muslims to do something about the extremists in their midst - if non-Muslims interfere they will be accused of being anti-Islam.

Posted by: kae at April 1, 2004 at 03:17 PM

Yesterdays arrests of Homespun islamic terrorists is a continuation of previous similar events.
The two English suicide bombers in Israel and the arrest of english terrorists in Egypt mean that the threats will now surely come from the offsprings of immigrants who arrived a generation ago in the UK.
What does that mean for Australia ?
Should we continue ignoring such politically incorrect Issues ?
should'nt we ban radical jihad teaching in Australian mosques before they bear fruit here?

Posted by: davo at April 1, 2004 at 03:44 PM

We're at war with ourselves, in some respects...

Anybody else see tonite's South Park? Mel Gibson, that lunatic, defecating fool...

If Jesus scares Trey Parker and Mat Stone that much, they might want to think about taking out some insurance, like donating some more to Kerry's campaign. Maybe they can arrange for Father Makcey to help Kerry do his "marytr thing"...

What would the REAL JFK say about all this, one wonders?

"Go get laid" comes to mind....

Posted by: geezer at April 1, 2004 at 03:52 PM

Thanks Andrea, will download that for future reference.

Posted by: TimT at April 1, 2004 at 03:59 PM

Yeah, but what are they telling each other behind closed doors?

Posted by: Helen at April 1, 2004 at 04:43 PM

Radical islamic teaching is protected free speech ( and religion ). The brits did the right thing. The "kids" out making fertilizer bombs are the ones who needed locking up. If their parents were worth a shiite, they would get up and leave the Mosques of hatemongers and find one whose doctrine is peaceful. Either that or picket the Mosque until a sane preacher emerges.

I call bullshit on this parents so called renunciation of the radical preachers. It is just more of the same avoidance of personal responsability. The Muslims are very adept at it. Comes from not having a moral center.

Posted by: Papertiger at April 1, 2004 at 08:14 PM

Wow 19 bloggers talk about a broad spectrum...not. Best response after the arrest...one father said: "my son is interested in gardening and politics."

Posted by: Andrew Ian Dodge at April 1, 2004 at 10:36 PM

"Best response after the arrest...one father said: "my son is interested in gardening and politics." "

How about this one:

"These boys are all Manchester United fans."

Posted by: Scott Burgess at April 1, 2004 at 11:32 PM

Papertiger:

I call bullshit on this parents so called renunciation of the radical preachers. It is just more of the same avoidance of personal responsability. The Muslims are very adept at it. Comes from not having a moral center.

Agreed, they are avoiding their own responsibilities -- they could a lot more to shut those radical turkeys up. After sober reflection, I'm just hoping that this isn't a scam. If it is a scam, you are right, they are very adept at misdirection.

Posted by: JeffS at April 2, 2004 at 12:38 AM

Virtually none of the answers referenced even indirectly to North Korea.

Posted by: Andjam at April 2, 2004 at 12:50 AM

Can I just point out for the benefit of your more childish readers that Iqbal Sacranie's remarks were made in the wake of a police investigation & swoop that resulted in the arrest of 8 suspected Islamist terrorists, and which was named "Operation Crevice".

Posted by: wardytron at April 2, 2004 at 01:56 AM

I don't think you can/should ban this kind of radical speech. It needs to be countered and debunked actively by Muslims.

Posted by: aaron at April 2, 2004 at 02:01 AM

Frankly, it's about time moderate Muslims spoke up. All I hear out of our local Muslims (supposedly moderate) is a continual bleat about the need to respect the traditions and cultures of Islam, the need to understand the plight of the Palestinians, the need to understand Arab resentment of Americans setting dirty infidel boots on holy Islamic soil --- and not one word about their need to respect, understand, or treat with dignity the rest of the (un-Islamic) world.

Posted by: Rebecca at April 2, 2004 at 03:31 AM

The other day my own NY Congressman, Peter King (R), said something to the effect that we should be listening in on the extremist sermons taking place in American mosques. King was nailed to the cross for even suggesting such a thing! (Hmm, maybe not the best choice of a metaphor?)

Posted by: Sweete at April 2, 2004 at 04:26 AM

Wardytron:

Can I just point out for the benefit of your more childish readers that Iqbal Sacranie's remarks were made in the wake of a police investigation & swoop that resulted in the arrest of 8 suspected Islamist terrorists, and which was named "Operation Crevice".

Most of those facts start out Tim's post. So what? And that's what the thread is about, really.

So what is your point here? Other than scolding people, I mean.

Posted by: JeffS at April 2, 2004 at 02:57 PM

Manchester United fans, well that explains it. One point: Britain has tough laws against hate speech – which it shouldn't – and incitement to harm people.The trouble is that when it comes to Muslims, they are afraid to enforce the law.

Posted by: Dave F at April 2, 2004 at 08:49 PM

JeffS, I wasn't scolding anyone; on the contrary - in England "crevice" can be interpreted as a euphemism for "asscrack", and so - in a spirit of public service - I was sharing the information that the police op was called "Operation Crevice" in case there were any more people like me, who are slightly more puerile than average, and who might be mildly amused by this news.

Posted by: wardytron at April 2, 2004 at 08:54 PM

The guy I like is "The Hook" Hamza who continues to preach in the streets of London. The combined efforts of the British Empire and its subjects have been unable to silence this man. Amazing!

Let's hear it for liberal democracy...then shoot the son-of-a-bitch with shit and hang him for stinking.

Posted by: Theodopoulos Pherecydes at April 2, 2004 at 11:43 PM

Wardytron:

Puerile, huh? Well, I don't mind behaving like a child myself, now and then. It can be quite releasing.

But I don't do it just to get attention, or to go off thread. If this was a joke of sorts, it's a middlin' one......we'll never know if what you say is true, since code words for operations are usually selected at random.

So it sort of fell flat.

Posted by: JeffS at April 3, 2004 at 12:55 AM

JeffS, let's agree on a compromise: it was a BRILLIANT, epochal joke that was simply ahead of its time, despite being epochal. Traditionalist, less enlightened audiences failed to appreciate it, but in years to come will be telling their grandchildren they were there. And if you look up the phrase "operation crevice" on Google you'l see it was indeed the name of the op.

Posted by: wardytron at April 3, 2004 at 05:12 AM