Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

John O'Sullivan on the Unique Bond Between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher

I found this article fascinating.

INTERNAL CONTRADICTIONS OF MULTICULTURALISM

British Daily Mail headline:  "Muslims' fury forces schools to shelve anti-homophobia storybooks for 5-year-olds.   (HT: Mark Steyn at the Corner)

Two primary schools have withdrawn storybooks about same-sex relationships after objections from Muslim parents.

Up to 90 gathered at the schools to complain about the books which are aimed at pupils as young as five.

One story, titled King & King, is a fairytale about a prince who turns down three princesses before marrying one of their brothers.

Another named And Tango Makes Three features two male penguins who fall in love at a New York zoo.

Bristol City Council said the two schools had been using the books to ensure they complied with gay rights laws which came into force last April.

Read the whole article.  Steyn says to expect more stories like this and I think he's right.

Daniel Pipes on the Islamification of England

Click here for this useful summary.

BRITAIN MUZLES THEIR OLYMPIC ATHLETES FROM CRITICIZING THE CHINESE REGIME

Oh brother!  Talk about a kow tow to tyranny and an abject overthrowing of  free speech!

British Olympic chiefs are to force athletes to sign a contract promising not to speak out about China's appalling human rights record – or face being banned from travelling to Beijing.

The move – which raises the spectre of the order given to the England football team to give a Nazi salute in Berlin in 1938 – immediately provoked a storm of protest. . . 

Should a competitor agree to the clause but then speak their mind about China, they will be put on the next plane home.

Read the story and weep for spineless England.  Many in England are calling for a boycott of the Olympics under these  requirements.  (HT: Drudge)

ENGLAND CONTINUES ITS CAPITULATION TO MUSLIMS

In England, the Telegraph reports husbands with multile wives have been given the right to claim extra welfare benefits.  Amazing!

Even though bigamy is a crime in Britain, the decision by ministers means that polygamous marriages can now be recognised formally by the state, so long as the weddings took place in countries where the arrangement is legal.

The outcome will chiefly benefit Muslim men with more than one wife, as is permitted under Islamic law. . .

David Pryce-Jones reports: 

News of the Islamization of Britain comes thick and fast. In the last few days, the children’s story of the three little pigs who built a house against the Big Bad Wolf has been forbidden for fear of offending Muslims. . .  According to a government program, British schools

Better Not Leave Islam for Christianity in Britain if You Want to Live

The  Daily Mirror has the story:

The daughter of a British imam is living under police protection after receiving death threats from her father for converting to Christianity.

The 31-year-old, whose father is the leader of a mosque in Lancashire, has moved house an astonishing 45 times after relatives pledged to hunt her down and kill her.

The British-born university graduate, who uses the pseudonym Hannah for her own safety, said she renounced the Muslim faith to escape being forced into an arranged marriage when she was 16.

She has been in hiding for more than a decade but called in police only a few months ago after receiving a text message from her brother.

In it, he said he would not be held responsible for his actions if she failed to return to Islam.

Also from the article:

A study this year found that 36 per cent of British Muslims between 16 and 24 believe those who convert to another religion should be punished by death.   (more)

(HT: Kathryn Jean Lopez at The Corner)

What Kind of Country is Sudan? And How Should Britain Have Reacted to Mrs. Gillian Gibbon's Imprisonment? Melanie Phillips Responds. UPDATE: NRO Commentators Also Respond

Melanie Phillips pulls no punches.  She says:

The case of Gillian Gibbons, the British teacher jailed in Sudan after her pupils named their class teddy-bear Mohammed, has shown up once again the spinelessness of the Foreign Office which has turned Britain into an international laughing stock.

Her freedom has been left to depend on the ostensibly freelance efforts by two Muslim peers, Lord Ahmed and Lady Warsi, who have been in Khartoum lobbying for her release. .

Mr Miliband should have thrown the ambassador and every Sudanese diplomat out of the country, cancelled all visas and stopped British aid to Sudan.

And he should also have denounced the religious precepts which produced such a barbaric response to a preposterously imagined slight.

Moreover, the only reason Mrs Gibbons was placed in this predicament at all was: because, for more than two decades, the British Government has kow-towed to the Islamist rogue regime in Sudan.    (More  . . - Melanie Phillips proceeds to chronicle the history and nature of the Sudanese government and the situation in Britain)

Update - National Review asked a number of distinguished observers to offer their thoughts.  These included Bay Yeor, Jonathan Foreman,Tawfik Hamid, Victor Davis Hanson, Paul Marshall,

Archbishop of Canterbury Calls America "Imperialist"

Never underestimate the folly of supposed "leaders."  Take Rowan Williams, for example, the current Archbishop of Canterbury.  An article in the Times of London reports:

THE Archbishop of Canterbury has said that the United States wields its power in a way that is worse than Britain during its imperial heyday.

According to the article,

Williams suggested American leadership had broken down: “We have only one global hegemonic power. It is not accumulating territory: it is trying to accumulate influence and control. That’s not working.”

He contrasted it unfavourably with how the British Empire governed India. “It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalising it. Rightly or wrongly, that’s what the British Empire did — in India, for example.

And how about this?  The interview was given to a Muslim magazine.

In the interview in Emel, a Muslim lifestyle magazine, Williams makes only mild criticisms of the Islamic world. He said the Muslim world must acknowledge that its “political solutions were not the most impressive”.

All of which led the historian Victor Davis Hanson to respond in a classic, must-read rebuttal:

I suggest that the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams read a little history about the British experience in India before he offers politically-correct but historically laughable

Melanie Phillips Chronicles the Dismaying Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism That Pervades Much of Britain

This is a major article that should be noted carefully. 

Heart-Rending Tales of Dirty Hospitals in Britain

Melanie Phillips recounts the sad and infuriating stories here. 

(HT: Ian Murray at The Corner who titles his post "The Reality of Socialized Medicine.") 

Churchill as Zionist

I'm interested in the history of Israel's founding.  What was the role of Churchill?  John Derbyshire refers to a new book to be published in September by Yale University Press, Churchill's Promised  Land by Michael Makovsky.  Derbyshire says, "I vaguely knew that Winnie was a Zionist, but didn't realize the depth and  conviction of his Zionism. . . Along with Churchill's warmth towards Palestinian Jews went a deep dislike  and distrust of Palestinian Arabs."

A sample of pre-publication blurbs:

Fouad Ajami :

"Churchill's Promised Land weaves a seamless web between diplomatic and intellectual history.  Arresting, thoroughly documented, and at times startling, this will be the standard book on Churchill's complex political and intellectual response to the Zionist project. This is the best kind of history: no axe to grind, guided by the sources, it is a work of genuine scholarship written by a discerning and curious historian."-  

Fouad Ajami, author of The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the  Iraqis in Iraq

Natan Sharansky :

"Today, when Western civilization is under severe attack and the legitimacy of national movements, such as Zionism, is being challenged by the new post-nationalist universalists, Michael Makovsky shows in dramatic and vivid detail why Churchill, one of the greatest statesman in centuries, consistently and stubbornly fought for both." Natan Sharansky, author of The Case for Democracy

Britain and the "Culture of Coddling Kids"

Michelle Malkin on coddling kids.

British educators have now determined that "asking pupils to put their hands up when they think they know the answer to a question in class could make quiet children fall behind," according to the London Telegraph. To spare students from this awful terror, the British Department of Education is now recommending that children be given 30 seconds of "thinking time" before being asked to answer or told to discuss questions in pairs before answering. Instead of teaching students to conquer their shyness and stand up for themselves, educators will be encouraged to pamper them in emotional bubble wrap.

Major Rise in Anti-Semitic Attacks in Britain

Article is here.  Excerpts:

Global anti-Semitism is spiraling upward, driven by xenophobia and cultural clashes in Europe and by increasingly virulent anti-Zionism in the Arab world, according to a comprehensive study of anti-Semitic incidents released by a Tel Aviv University research institute on Sunday. . .

. . .In all, 590 incidents of violence or vandalism were recorded in 2006, a 15 percent increase from 2004 and a seven-fold increase from 1989.

The 2006 figures also represents a 31% increase from 2005, when anti-Semitic incidents declined after several years of increases.

"In two countries - France and Norway - chief rabbis are calling on Jews not to step outside with Jewish symbols on their person," said Prof. Dina Porat, who edited the report along with Stauber.  [much more]

In the Hard to Believe Department: Sex Education in the UK

William Keenan writes:

British authorities promote sex education programmes that would make a sailor blush - and achieve record rates of disease and pregnancy.

We have just learned from a United Nations’ report that Britain is the worst place in the developed world in which to be a child.

. . . Not very long ago the Daily Telegraph ran a whole-page story headlined, Outrage over explicit sex lessons. Education correspondent John Clare described parents’ anger at 12-year-old children being given explicit sex lessons. In these lessons they were taught sodomy, oral sex with reference to “blow jobs” and mutual masturbation.

After carefully investigating the matter John Clare said he had come to three stark conclusions: “First the use of these crude and explicit materials is apparently widespread. Second, the school has not told parents precisely what their 12 year olds are being taught. And third, parents everywhere have virtually no hope of discovering the content of their children’s sex education lessons.”   (more)

John Derbyshire Laments the Passing of The England That Was

John Derbyshire, a former Englishman, and now an American citizen has this to say: 

I've told this story before, so I hope I'll be forgiven for telling it again. My Mum, Esther Alice Knowles (1912-98), eleventh child of a pick'n'shovel coal miner, in one of the last conversations I had with her, said: "I know I'm dying, but I don't mind. At least I knew England when she was England."

I discounted that at the time. Old people always grumble about the state of the world. Now I understand it, though. I even feel a bit the same way myself. I caught the tail-end of that old England—that bumptious, arrogant, self-confident old England, the England of complicated games, snobbery, irony, repression, and stoicism, the England of suet puddings, drafty houses, coal smoke and bad teeth, the England of throat-catching poetry and gardens and tweeds, the England that civilized the whole world and gave an example of adult behavior—the English Gentleman—that was admired from Peking (I can testify) to Peru. 

It's all gone now, "dead as mutton," as English people used to say. Now there is nothing there but a flock of whimpering Eloi, giggling over their gadgets, whining for their handouts, crying for their Mummies, playing at soldiering for reasons they can no longer understand, from lingering habit. Lower the corpse down slowly, shovel in the earth. England is dead.

Why Was The Brit Female Hostage (Fay Turney) There In The First Place?

Kathleen Parker asks a good question: Why does a once-great power such as Britain send mothers of toddlers to fight its battles? 

Why indeed?  Is the West in the throes of some great insanity that it must argue against all common sense and logic because some (can we legitimately call it "crazed"?) movement thinks it a good idea to erase all differences between men and women?

It is, of course, madness.  And it doesn't help the image of the West to have, as Kathleen Parker put it, "a dangerous, lying, Holocaust-denying, Jew-hating cutthroat thug" point that out to us.

Parker rues the propaganda value to Ahmadinejad of the Faye Turney episode.

In the eyes of Iran and other Muslim nations, we're wimps. While the West puts mothers in boats with rough men, Islamic men "rescue'' women and drape them in floral hijabs.

We can debate whether they're right until all our boys wear aprons, but it won't change the

Captured Royal Marines' Behavior Found Embarrassing and Disgraceful to Other Brits

John Derbyshire has more to say (earlier here), but perhaps pride of place for the most scathing commentary to date must go to Richard Littlejohn. 

The rules of engagement these days have been rinsed in so much fabric softener that I'm astonished our troops are even allowed to carry weapons any more. . .

The feminisation of our entire society has utterly destroyed whatever credibility and moral fibre we ever had. The emotional incontinence which flooded the country at the time Lady Di popped her Jimmy Choos is now our stock in trade.  [more here and be sure look at reader comments].

The Daily Mail weighs in, as does a "Rue Brittania" editorial from the New York Post.  Tony Harden of the Telegraph finds the Royal Marines' conduct "cringeworthy."

No question about it.   A sad day for Brits and the West.

In case anyone is interested, here is the American Soldier's Code of Conduct, a very stirring, impressive document indeed. 

It Takes a Pakistani Christian to Set England Straight on the History of Slavery And Its Abolition

Mark Tooley continues his excellent reporting and commentary, this time on England's orgy of repentance for slavery while failing to give credit to the Christians and the movement that rose up to abolish slavery.   His current article should be read in its entirety.  Some excerpts:

One of Britain's most outspoken prelates is Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali, an ethnic Pakistani, who most recently broke with political correctness by refusing to join in the chorus of apologies for Britain's role in slavery

The Anglican bishop was responding to British elite culture's rhapsody of shame over the 200th anniversary of the slave trade's abolition. British statesman and abolitionist William Wilberforce waged a decades-long crusade in parliament and British society to abolish British slave trading and ultimately slavery itself. Wilberforce's triumph, fueled by his devout evangelical faith, is one of the most heroic sagas in British history.  Britain not only freed its slaves throughout the empire. Its Royal Navy aggressively battled against the slave traders on the high seas.

Naturally, British cultural elites would prefer not to celebrate such a victory for British concepts of freedom.  That the anti-slavery campaign was waged by vigorous Christians makes the Wilberforce epic all the more distasteful to them.  Many urged that the abolitionist anniversary should

Teachers Drop the Holocaust to Avoid Offending Muslims

The U.K. Daily Mail has the story.

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Government backed study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

I am glad I started an "absurdity" category on this blog last week.  Most timely.

Anxiety in England Over Churches Becoming Mosques

The story is  here. 

"As for the new mosque, there will be no obvious changes to the church's exterior, but the cross at the top will come down." 

Ah yes, the cross.  That is the Great Divide.  And Islam is not timid about its removal.  But it is the cross that saves and speaks of the self-giving, incarnate, love of God.  That Islam totally denies.  And so the Great Divide.

John Derbyshire Scorns the Kowtowing of Modern Brits

Update: Derbyshire maintains his position, saying he expects Marines to stand up to torture.  Here's his additional comment.

**

Derbyshire writes of the British captives held by the Iranians:

How on earth can Britons behave like that? A previous generation would not have done so. I knew the women of my mother’s generation pretty well (Mum was born in 1912), and I am certain that any one of them, given that headscarf and told to put it on, would have said: “You can hang me with it if you like, but I’ll be damned if I’ll wear the filthy thing.” The men likewise. What on earth has happened to the British? Where is John Moyse?

After some paragraphs he returns to ask:

What on earth has happened to the British?

What has happened is multiculturalism. The British no longer feel that contempt for other nations that sustained them for so many centuries. Or, if they feel it, they guiltily suppress that feeling, as being flagitiously “racist.” Boswell described Johnson as “a stern TRUE-BORN ENGLISHMAN, and fully prejudiced against all other nations.” (Boswell’s capitals.) That would have the Thought Police knocking on Johnson’s door nowadays.

He goes on to quote George Orwell and make other comments.  It's all quite stimulating and worth reading, even if you (and I for sure) have some reservations.    What he says, though, is somewhat reminiscent of C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man, where Lewis speaks of "men without chests."  There's something to contemplate here.

The Once Proud British Navy Now Supine: Truly Sad

Here's an article ("Hostage Sailors: British Impotence") from Arthur Herman, author of To Rule the Waves, How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World.

Some excerpts:

There was a question whether the Blair government would end up leaving Britain with a navy too small to protect its shores. Now it seems to want a navy that can't even protect its own sailors.

. . .  Since January, the Blair government has broadcast its intentions of gutting the Royal Navy's surface fleet. At the same time, it also announced its plans for withdrawing 2,500 British troops from Iraq. The result? First, the Royal Navy is finished as a credible military force. Second, the British Army's redeployment from Basra has been widely interpreted as abandonment of the Iraq mission, rather than as moving on to Afghanistan after a job well done, as Blair insists.

. . . The mullahs in Tehran clearly see the new pacifist trend in Britain not as a hopeful sign of future accord, but as supine surrender. Just as clearly, they have singled out Britain as the latest weak link in the Coalition fighting in Iraq and in the War on Terror.

. . .  The United States has grown used to doing the fighting and dying the other industrialized democracies refuse to do in order to defend themselves and their interests.

Britain has been an exception. In places like Bosnia and the Persian Gulf, and in operations like Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom, its

What Newt (As British Prime Minister) Would Do If Iran Doesn't Release the Brits Pronto

From an interview with Hugh Hewitt:

HH: Now let’s get to the first major issue of the day, which is Iran. Mr. Speaker, if the United Kingdom feels obliged to use force, if diplomacy fails to get their people back, will you applaud?

NG: I think there are two very simple steps that should be taken. The first is to use a covert operation, or a special forces operation to knock out the only gasoline producing refinery in Iran. There’s only one. And the second is to simply intercede by Naval force, and block any tankers from bringing gasoline to Iran…

HH: Would you do, would you urge them…

NG: And say to the Iranians, you know, you can keep the sailors as long as you want, but in about 30 days, everybody in your country will be walking.

HH: So how long would you give them, to give them that ultimatum, the Iranians?

NG: I would literally do that. I would say to them, I would right now say to them privately, within the next week, your refinery will no longer work. And within the following week, there will be no tankers arriving. Now if you would like to avoid being

Pro-American Brits Produce A Video Campaign: "A World Without America"

18 Doughty Street today launches a video campaign to combat anti-Americanism in the U.K.  I find this quite fascinating.  Below is the statement and explanation.  If you want to go directly to the video, click here at YouTube.   Please keep reading...     (HT: Michelle Malkin)

British Poll: Significant Percentage of Youth Strongly Committed to Islam

I found this shocking:

31 per cent of young Muslims said that they believed that if a Muslim converted to another religion they should be punished by death, compared with 19 per cent of the over-55s.

That quote and the following are from David Frum's extraordinary post today:

The British think tank Policy Exchange commissioned a major study of British Muslim youth. The Times reports  the findings:

The poll of 1,003 Muslims found that more than a third of 16 to 24-year-olds wanted to live under Islamic law, compared with 17 per cent of the over-55s.

The deep divisions between the generations are most starkly illustrated over attitudes to the hijab,

Radical Muslim Subtlety in Britain: "I Come to Slaughter You"

From CNN news:

DUBLIN, Ireland (CNN) -- At a recent debate over the battle for Islamic ideals in England, a British-born Muslim stood before the crowd and said Prophet Mohammed's message to nonbelievers is: "I come to slaughter all of you."

"We are the Muslims," said Omar Brooks, an extremist also known as Abu Izzadeen. "We drink the blood of the enemy, and we can face them anywhere. That is Islam and that is jihad."

Anjem Choudary, the public face of Islamist extremism in Britain, added that Muslims have no choice but to take the fight to the West. . .

BRITAIN CAN'T UNDERSTAND ITS MUSLIM TERRORIST PROBLEM

Londonistan author Melanie Phillips tells Stephen Spruiell of National Review Online (the underlining is my own emphasis):

  "It’s not enough to thwart terror attacks if at the same time you are not only failing to come to grips with the radical ideology behind them, you are busy appeasing it.”

“This is really the core of the problem of what’s happening in Britain,” she said. “Even though Britain had its own atrocity last year, the 7/7 bombings, and it was perpetrated by British-born Muslim youths... there is a settled consensus developed among the political class in Britain that this was kind of one-off, that it wasn’t al Qaeda, that this was a group of guys who put together a plot because of anger over the war in Iraq. Britain does not want to believe what is patently obvious: that it has an enormous fifth column of radical Islamic terrorists who were born and bred in Britain.”

The explanation for Britain’s deep state of denial, Phillips said, is partly psychological: “A holy war is a horrific concept. It is a protracted fight with an uncertain outcome and an enormous cost in terms of casualties. Human nature, when we are faced with a reality that is overwhelmingly awful, is to deny its existence and alight instead on something that is less bad.” She said that is why so many in Britain blame London and Washington for provoking terror attacks. “We can change ourselves. This is within the scope of our potential. Consequently, the British cannot come to grips with the terrible ideology that’s driving the global jihad.”

“It’s not enough to thwart terrorist plots and break up terrorist cells, vital as those things are,” she said. “In addition, what they have to do and have not done is address the ideas that are driving people to these horrible acts.” They are ideas, she said, based on a paranoid view of the world in which that the West is out to destroy the Muslim world and controlled by the Jews. . . .  “Britain will not even acknowledge the role played by religion. This is the way a war is lost, the way a civilization dies.”    (More)   See also my earlier post on England and Its Terrorists

ENGLAND AND ITS TERRORISTS

Today the United Kingdom reflects on 7/7.     Diana West has a must read column which opens with these paragraphs.

Just in time for the one-year anniversary of 7/7, a poll conducted for The Times of London indicates that 13 percent of British Muslims believe that the four Islamic suicide bombers who murdered 52 people in London last July should be regarded as "martyrs."

With a Muslim population in Britain estimated at 1.6 million, this means that some 208,000 British Muslims regard these killers with what can only be described as a worshipful attitude, which is despicable. But Mother England, it seems, is home to an awful lot of despicable people.

One of them, surely, is Anjem Choudary, who made related news this week. Mr. Choudary is a former leader of al-Mujahiroun, a defunct, jihad-inciting group, whose venomous pronouncements on Islamic supremacy have earned him a strange prominence in the British media. He refuses to condemn the 7/7 attacks, says Muslims shouldn't help police combat jihad terror and advocates sharia (Islamic law) for Britain. During a BBC "Newsnight" appearance this year, the host asked Mr. Choudary why he didn't simply move to a sharia state like Iran.

"Who says you own Britain, anyway?" Mr. Choudary replied. "Britain belongs to Allah. The whole world belongs to Allah ... If I go to the jungle, I'm not going to live like the animals, I'm going to propagate a superior way of life. Islam is a superior way of life."   (HT: Michelle Malkin)

Back on May 14th, I posted material on Melanie Phillip's book Londonistan.   Steve Emerson subsequently conducted an interview with Melanie Phillips which contains the following exchange:

Emerson:   Do any authentically moderate Islamic organizations or leaders exist?
Phillips: No. There ARE truly moderate British Muslims, but they are a frightened and powerless minority within a minority, and to date they have no representative institutions.

Update: Daniel Pipes (7/12/06) has yet more extensive coverage on British polls related to Muslim sentiment, Sharia law, Jews, etc.    Concluding sentence:

In sum, over half of British Muslims want Islamic law and 5 percent endorse violence to achieve that end. These results demonstrate that Britain's potential terrorists live in a highly nurturing community.

IMPORTANT INTERVIEW WITH MELANIE PHILLIPS, AUTHOR OF "LONDONISTAN"

Jamie Glasov of Frontpagemag.com has a short, but powerful interview with Melanie Phillips, author of Londonistan.    This interview needs to be read in its entirely.  It is not long.  The following quote does not do full justice to the interview.

The British establishment, as I have said, has a historic proclivity towards appeasement.  It takes the cynical view that there is no group in the world whom it cannot buy off one way or another.   In addition, it has an absolute blind spot about religious fanaticism.   It refuses to acknowledge the religious nature of Islamic fascism -- maybe because to do so would mean facing up to horrendous challenges, or maybe because the British elite simply cannot take seriously something that sounds to its super-sophisticated ears so absurd as the restoration of the medieval Caliphate and the Islamisation of the world. . .

Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum and author of Militant Islam Reaches America says this about the book:  

In contrast to the overwhelming majority of her British compatriots, who prefer to avert their eyes from the radical Islamic horror growing in their midst, Melanie Phillips has compiled a unique record that fearlessly, brilliantly and wittily exposes this problem.  Londonistan builds on and goes beyond her prior work by showing the role of what she calls the British ‘spiral of decadence’ in permitting Islamist ideas and demands to ride roughshod over the UK’s traditional ways. Phillips rightly warns Americans of the acute dangers for them, too, from Britain’s being a source of Richard Reid–like terrorists to the ending of the two countries’ special relationship.

Steven Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and author of American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us  says this:

"Londonistan" is one of the most compelling books you will ever read on the ascendancy of Islamic fundamentalism, violence and intimidation in the West. Melanie Phillips exposes the scandalous appeasement of militant Islam by British officials, the media, even the Church of England, capturing in extraordinary detail how British society and institutions have either ignored or actively fostered the growth of extremist groups on British soil. This book will both enlighten and enrage. Although its story is focused on the United Kingdom, it could be applied to any European capital or to the United States.