EDL - Setting the Media Agenda on Islam

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Permalink Reply by Joe on February 6, 2014 at 12:41

Perhaps some of you with contacts in EDL might like to suggest they link to this analysis on their FB page or tweet it.  People who have spent 4 years being denigrated by the likes of The Guardian should know that it is EDL who is making the Leftist elite jump.

Permalink Reply by Paul Austin Murphy on February 6, 2014 at 12:58

Good work Joe, although, to be honest, I didn't realise that the EDL focussed that much on FGM.

"She told me 'it's not our business, it's their culture and we must leave them alone'."

And yet these precise people have been interfering with the culture/s of the working class for decades. They have been denigrating, dismissing, criticising and lampooning it on a systematic scale. What a freaking hypocrite.

They pretend to to be relativists (although they may not use that word about themselves), but when you scratch the surface, their relativism is very selective. What Pinochet did was not part of her 'culture', but the Left wrote hundreds of articles about him - and he didn't even live in the UK. They have criticise countless foreign 'fascist' regimes. Texas 'rednecks' are a staple of Leftist comedy. Etc.

But if you apply relativism at the domestic scale, it would render you incapable of criticising any other group. Fox hunters have their own "culture". So do gun-owners. But was she silent about these groups? No. They are WHITE.

What she really meant is that, as an inverted or positive Leftist racist, therefore a simple racist, she deemed that the savage browns were not capable of treating their women the way she is treated by her friends and family. Such racism is even more appalling that that of the "far right" because it is not recognised or it is denied. It is racism compounded with hypocrisy and self-deceit, as well as a selective and racist relativism.

Permalink Reply by Joe on February 6, 2014 at 13:41

Paul Austin Murphy said:

Good work Joe, although, to be honest, I didn't realise that the EDL focussed that much on FGM.

The existence of EDL raised the profile of the problems with islam, and raised the profile of the sundry counter-jihad sites around the internet.  Tommy (and those connected to him) tweeted 100s of times about FGM over the past 2 years or so (along with many other issues).  Alan has been interviewed by major newspapers speaking about islam.  Even I've been interviewed by people from The Guardian, The Times, and Radio 4.  I've spoken to producers from the BBC and Channel 4.  Neither Alan nor I would have had any contact with the media if it hadn't been for EDL making opposition to islam newsworthy.  I'll wager 99.99% of Guardian readers had never heard of Pamela Geller or Robert Spencer before 2009.

That's the power the "chavs" of the EDL have had.  But the Leftist elite think that only they should be acknowledged to have any political power.  I made a conscious decision back in 2009: do I go and give my time to Peter Tatchell or EDL.  I chose EDL, because all the evidence showed that trying to do things Tatchell's way had been a 20 year exercise in futility.

"She told me 'it's not our business, it's their culture and we must leave them alone'."

What she really meant is that, as an inverted or positive Leftist racist, therefore a simple racist, she deemed that the savage browns were not capable of treating their women the way she is treated by her friends and family. Such racism is even more appalling that that of the "far right" because it is not recognised or it is denied. It is racism compounded with hypocrisy and self-deceit, as well as a selective and racist relativism.

This has been identified conceptually and named years ago.  I introduced many people to the term "the racism of low expectations".  I first saw Ayaan Hirsi Ali using it about 4 years ago, and assumed she'd been the one who named it.  But then I discovered Sunny Hundal using this very phrase in an older Guardian article.  Thus, the Guardianistas know of the existence of this form of racism, but they choose to ignore in general, and only dust-off the phrase when it is useful to them. Thus their deceit is even greater than you imagine.

Permalink Reply by Joe on February 6, 2014 at 13:54

History will have a hard time establishing what EDL campaigned on in the first 2 to 3 years, since the EDL website was hacked and taken down several times.  None of the elite nor the media worried about such attacks on freedom of speech.  In fact, they gloried in it, seeing it as "just desserts - you criticise muslims, and they will behead you".

Here are 3 items from the EDL website which I could find with no trouble.

http://www.englishdefenceleague.org/uk-soft-on-fgm/

http://www.englishdefenceleague.org/action-not-words-on-female-geni...

http://www.englishdefenceleague.org/why-we-are-going-to-exeter/

Anyone with a Twitter account can log in and do an "advanced search" looking for "FGM" in the twitter feed from TR's account. https://twitter.com/TRobinsonNewEra  I'm sure they will find scores of tweets from him alone on the topic.

Certainly I was writing about FGM on the EDL forum back in 2010.

Permalink Reply by Paul Austin Murphy on February 6, 2014 at 14:26

I wasn't saying that the EDL didn't focus on FGM. I just meant that I didn't note it much myself. I hardly visited the EDL website after 2010. And since 2011, I stopped looking into all things EDL unless I came across stuff in the newspapers or on the Internet. Also, on my blog I never wrote a post devoted entirely to FGM. If I had, I would have checked what the EDL had to say.

The terrible thing, as you know, is that the Left and Muslims always make that utterly bogus "culture not religion" distinction in the case of FGM. Only the seeds of stern sexual repression and even the rationalisation of "honour killings" can be found in the Koran and hadith. Nonetheless, there is nothing, I think, specifically about genital mutilation there. But it simply follows naturally from the theology of women-hatred and women-control in Islam.

Also, Islam is a cultural phenomenon anyway. Some Muslim countries have been CULTURALLY Islamic for up to 1,400 years. So if that's the case, the culture-religion dichotomy simply breaks down.

FGM exists because Islam has sanctioned it for hundreds of years; whether or not it is mentioned in the Koran. In fact direct and indirect references to honour killings in the Koran and hadith do exist - though, of course, in the Arabic the words 'honour killings' would never have been used (of course).

Permalink Reply by paul collings on February 6, 2014 at 15:39

I think we can agree that the EDL helped people focus on the Islam issue in this country, (and Europe), it gave people the incentive to look at their keyboards and find a story about Islam they would not have found in the MSM.

I know there were many other groups working hard before EDL, and I don't want to undermine their contribution or hard work and danger they did and faced before that fateful day in Luton that sowed the seeds of the EDL, But many groups have benefitted from the high profile they achieved.

I know my first serious attempt at understanding the depth of the problems in the UK was via the EDL, and then when I realised I didn't have the facts required  to truly understand what was happening I joined this site which had a wider knowledge base that helped me understand islam was only part of a much bigger problem.

There are other groups educating people to the dangers of Islam, none have ever managed to get the boots on the ground like EDL. I'm sure every ones heard the military saying the only way to win any conflict is with boots on the ground. Anyone in the EDL who, come wind or rain, travel hundreds of miles every year  to highlight the insidious plan of Mohhamad, should know that their efforts have had an impact. I hope they find a way forward.  

Permalink Reply by Paul Austin Murphy on February 6, 2014 at 16:08

Absolutely.

Permalink Reply by Joe on February 6, 2014 at 17:31

Paul Austin Murphy said:

The terrible thing, as you know, is that the Left and Muslims always make that utterly bogus "culture not religion" distinction in the case of FGM. Only the seeds of stern sexual repression and even the rationalisation of "honour killings" can be found in the Koran and hadith. Nonetheless, there is nothing, I think, specifically about genital mutilation there. But it simply follows naturally from the theology of women-hatred and women-control in Islam.

Also, Islam is a cultural phenomenon anyway. Some Muslim countries have been CULTURALLY Islamic for up to 1,400 years. So if that's the case, the culture-religion dichotomy simply breaks down.

FGM exists because Islam has sanctioned it for hundreds of years; whether or not it is mentioned in the Koran. In fact direct and indirect references to honour killings in the Koran and hadith do exist - though, of course, in the Arabic the words 'honour killings' would never have been used (of course).

No-one can make a hard & fast distinction between "culture" and "religion".  Unless one claims that some religion truly was given ab initio from God (which most atheist leftists would never be able to claim without laying themselves open to charges of hypocrisy), one cannot separate religion off from culture.  Religion will grow out of a pre-existing culture, and religion will then in turn influence the cultures in which that religion grows.  The Leftist elite reject the very concept of "essence", but then want to create some essential difference between religion and culture.  I do not reject the concept of essences, yet even I think it is ludicrous to say that culture does not influence religion, and vice versa.

We've documented several times, that FGM followed islam across the world (e.g. Indonesia, Maldives)  Therefore, islam is something which causes FGM to be done where it did not happen before islamic domination.

http://4freedoms.com/group/women/forum/topics/fgm-a-global-islamic-...

http://4freedoms.com/group/children/forum/topics/muslim-brotherhood...

Alan has pointed out before (but I can't find a URL) that at a UN "human rights" gathering, the Egyptian delegate stormed out of the meeting discussing FGM, saying that to criticise FGM was to criticise islam.

The Reliance of the Traveller, a book of sharia law which covers all 4 schools of sharia law, states that FGM is "obligatory" to some schools, and is a "courtesy" (to the husband) in the other schools.  It does not specify any school of sharia law which opposes FGM.  http://4freedoms.com/xn/detail/3766518:Comment:100506

Muslims cannot claim that islam is just the koran.  The koran does not contain instructions on how to pray.  Nor does it provide any means by which muslims can even calculate when to celebrate Ramadan.  Thus, either directly or indirectly, all muslims rely on the hadiths.

Permalink Reply by Joe on February 6, 2014 at 17:34

It's also worth remembering in this vein, that the prosecutions of grooming gangs also shot up following EDL starting to demonstrate in 2009.

If anyone wants to suggest another issue like FGM where they think the media have begun to report on islam-related issues which were previously neglected for decades, I will see if I can do the same kind of analysis to show that there is a temporal correlation between EDL's demonstrations and the media no longer ignoring some topic.

Permalink Reply by Paul Austin Murphy on February 6, 2014 at 17:47

"No-one can make a hard & fast distinction between "culture" and "religion".  Unless one claims that some religion truly was given ab initio from God (which most atheist leftists would never be able to claim without laying themselves open to charges of hypocrisy), one cannot separate religion off from culture."

I never thought of it that way. Yet that perfectly describes the predicament the Leftist defender of all things religious (i.e., Islamic) is in. In other words, in order to accept that distinction, the Leftist himself must, well, become religious (i.e. Islamic). That is, in order to accept that distinction, as you say, he must accept that religion (i.e. Islam) is "manna from heaven", as it were. This means that not only are Leftists (patronisingly) defending Islam, they are also buying into the (Islamic) theology.

All this is so obscene. Marxists/Leftists have been telling us for the last 160 years that religion (i.e. Christianity) is completely cultural. Or even more basic than that. It is a nothing but a byproduct of "socioeconomic material conditions". And also a "tool of the ruling class". And yet when religion takes on a brown face, all of a sudden religion (i.e., Islam) gains a metaphysical/transcendent status which is separate from culture. Is this yet more of that Leftist racism?

"Alan has pointed out before (but I can't find a URL) that at a UN "human rights" gathering, the Egyptian delegate stormed out of the meeting discussing FGM, saying that to criticise FGM was to criticise islam."

"The Reliance of the Traveller, a book of sharia law which covers all 4 schools of sharia law, states that FGM is "obligatory" to some schools, and is a "courtesy" (to the husband) in the other schools.  It does not specify any school of sharia law which opposes FGM."

Yes, but in all these instance they wouldn't have used the words "female genital mutilation". So how did these Egyptians and sharia scholars describe these acts of sadistic mutilation?

Permalink Reply by Joe on February 6, 2014 at 22:59

Paul Austin Murphy said:

"The Reliance of the Traveller, a book of sharia law which covers all 4 schools of sharia law, states that FGM is "obligatory" to some schools, and is a "courtesy" (to the husband) in the other schools.  It does not specify any school of sharia law which opposes FGM."

Yes, but in all these instance they wouldn't have used the words "female genital mutilation". So how did these Egyptians and sharia scholars describe these acts of sadistic mutilation?

Here is what Reliance says:

E4.3: Circumcision Is Obligatory

Circumcision is obligatory (O: for both men and women. For men it consists of removing the prepuce from the penis, and for women, removing the prepuce (Ar. bazr) of the clitoris (n: not the clitoris itself, as some mistakenly assert).  (A: Hanbalis hold that circumcision of women is not obligatory but sunna, while Hanafis consider it a mere courtesy to the husband.)

As shocking as things like The Reliance are (it contains a section on the legality of muslim men having sex with pre-pubescent girls), it has to be remembered that the book is also coy about those things that it thinks are beyond the pale for an english-speaking audience.  Thus, the sheikh does not translate the sections on slavery (but they are not removed from the medieval text, they are just left in arabic, so arabic-speaking muslims know that slavery is legal under islamic law, but the dumb kuffar will not make that connection).

In a similar vein, the description of what is done with FGM is bowdlerized.  The arabic text in the book says:

Circumcision is obligatory (for every male and female)
by cutting off the piece of skin on the glans of the penis of the male,
but circumcision of the female is by cutting out the clitoris
(this is called HufaaD). {bold emphasis ours}

http://answering-islam.org/Sharia/fem_circumcision.html

The english text is made to look like the mutilation is less bad ("removing the prepuce"), whereas in arabic, they make it clear it is the complete excision of the clitoris.  Another example of the racism of the elite: the same elite would (these days) be hyper-critical of white Nazis, but are loathe to subject brown Nazis to any kind of critical examination.

Permalink Reply by Alan Lake on February 9, 2014 at 21:32

The FGM Supported by OIC/Egyptian Delegate at the UN, is in the header block for the Women Victim's Room, it is so important, with this comment:

This video proves the use of Islam to protect the practice of FGM, at the highest level - while Muslims constantly deny that FGM is anything to do with Islam!

Here's another link for good measure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrboYFBC8_w#t=7

Of course, I have a copy, for when the Fascist Left try get this truth removed.

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