Anti-Halal-Meat Campaigns on Facebook

There is a new flurry of activity of mostly British anti-halal-meat campaigns on Facebook. I have liked, joined, friended, subscribed to all I found, signed petitions, encouraged them and posted on their walls.

I invite you to do the same if you like them. Here they are.

SAY NO TO HALAL MEAT

Say NO to Halal slaughter in Skegness - it collects signatures for a petition to the East Lindsey District Council (E.L.D.C.) to stop a new halal slaughterhouse from opening in in Skegness, Lincolnshire, England. The page started less than a month ago, on 27 July, and they have already collected 566 signatures; 434 are still needed.

E.L.D.C.: Stop the Halal slaughter house opening in Skegness - this is the petition page where to sign.

Say No To Skegness Halal Slaughter House!

Boycott Halal - liked by almost 7,000 people. It's the Facebook page of the website Boycott Halal, with the tagline "It's wrong for so many reasons", which is also the collaboration of Infidels United (United we stand in defense of freedom), Boycott Halal Cause, BOYCOTT HALAL in USA, Canada, NZ & Australia.

SAY NO to Halal MEAT at Toby Carvery - targets this restaurant chain.

Say No To Halal !

Say no to halal this is my country and thats not the way we do it

I'll update this list as new campaigns and groups are formed.

Does Madonna Care about Young Pakistani Girl Lynched and Imprisoned for Being Christian?

No protest from Madonna, Paul McCartney, Sting, Peter Gabriel and others of their ilk here.

Of course, a Christian 11-year-old girl with Down's Syndrome beaten up by a mob, arrested and put in jail in Pakistan, facing the death penalty for having allegedly burnt pages of Islam's Holy Book, under the country's blasphemy laws - portrayed as "strict" by the Western media but in fact simply following the Quran as good Muslims should - is not remotely as bad as a bunch of talentless, publicity-seeking, balaclava-wearing female hooligans trespassing into the Christian Orthodox Cathedral which is the symbol of Russia's liberation from state-imposed atheism, barging into its sanctuary containing the altar, offending the congregation with a vulgar and insulting song and dance full of expletives mocking a Christian prayer and then, after having shown their courage by denying their presence in the church, eventually having to face the consequences of their criminal actions.

First, the facts. The girl, Rimsha, living in a poor outlying district of Islamabad, is accused by her Muslim neighbours of burning pages of the Quran, of which police officials say there is little evidence.

But hundreds of angry neighbors [500 to 600, according to the police] gathered outside the girl's home last week demanding action in a case raising new concerns about religious extremism in this conservative Muslim country. [Emphasis mine; note the term "conservative" in this context]

The police intervened apparently for her protection, because the angry mob wanted to set her alight. As even the BBC says, in Pakistan just being accused of blasphemy, even without solid evidence, carries a death sentence from the mob, if not the state.

Almost everyone in the girl's neighborhood insisted she had burned the Quran's pages, even though police said they had found no evidence of it. One police official, Qasim Niazi, said when the girl was brought to the police station, she had a shopping bag that contained various religious and Arabic-language papers that had been partly burned, but there was no Quran.

Some residents claimed they actually saw burnt pages of Quran _ either at the local mosque or at the girl's house. Few people in Pakistan actually speak or read Arabic, so often assume that anything they see with Arabic script is believed to be from the Quran, sometimes the only Arabic-language book people have seen.

As many as 600 Christians have fled their homes in the area where the girl lives, fearing for their lives.

It is well known that in Pakistan blasphemy laws are often used to harass and persecute non-Muslims, especially Christians, and even for personal vendettas.

"It has been exploited by individuals to settle personal scores, to grab land, to violate the rights of non-Muslims, to basically harass them," said the head of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Zora Yusuf.

Those convicted of blasphemy can spend years in prison and often face mob justice by extremists when they finally do get out. In July, thousands of people dragged a man accused of desecrating the Quran from a police station in the central city of Bahawalpur, beat him to death and then set his body on fire.

Actually, he was burnt alive

Attempts to revoke or alter the blasphemy laws have been met with violent opposition. Last year, two prominent political figures who spoke out against the laws were killed in attacks that basically ended any attempts at reform.

The girl's jailing terrified her Christian neighbors, many of whom left their homes in fear after the incident. One resident said Muslims used to object to the noise when Christians sang songs during their services. After the girl was accused he said senior members of the Muslim community pressured landlords to evict Christian tenants.

Pakistan's Minister for National Harmony (you need an office like that in a Muslim country) Dr Paul Bhatti is the brother of murdered Minister of Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti, the country's only Christian government minister, killed for criticizing the blasphemy laws. The Minister said to the BBC that he really fears an umpteenth tragedy, and that the girl with her family should be taken to a safe place possibly out of Pakistan.

There are so many things to say on this, I don't even know where to start.

The media, Western and non, are incredible: they call Pakistan's blasphemy laws "strict" and Pakistan "conservative", not "Christianophobic", "racist", "fascist", "nazi", although in this case these terms, much overemployed (changing "Christianophobic" for some other "phobic") and inappropriately used in the public discourse, would for once be apt.

Somebody who, in a moment of rage during a heated row accompanied by verbal abuse on both sides, utters the word "nigger" (and, if he is the captain of the England football team, even just the word "black") is "racist" and risks being dragged to court; someone who beats up and tries to burn alive Rimsha is "conservative".

Does that sound right to you? Are you sure that the media you read and watch help you to make sense of the world we live in, or do they instead confuse the picture completely?

The behaviour of the Muslim mob in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital city, not some remote rural area, also deserves some reflections.

Who should reflect, in particular, are those who like to talk of great differences between radical and moderate Muslims, and of Islam as a jolly nice religion "highjacked" by what Robert Spencer calls its "misunderstanders".

From the many episodes of this kind that we've seen for a long time, it's obvious that in Pakistan Muslim people who hold these "extreme" views on blasphemy are not extreme at all, in the sense that either they are in effect a majority or their views are tolerated and accepted by a majority, so much so that they are reflected in the law of the country.

If you want to have an idea of the relative numbers, while fewer than 100 demonstrated in Karachi to condemn the murder in 2011 of Minister of Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti, thousands rallied in major Pakistani cities demanding punishment for Asia Bibi (a Christian woman condemned to death for blasphemy) and threatening further protests and anarchy if the government moves to amend the blasphemy laws, and nearly 50,000 rallied in Karachi against the amendment of blasphemy laws and hailing Qadri, the killer of Salman Taseer, the provincial governor who was trying to achieve that amendment, as a hero.

If you want to do something about the fate of Rimsha and her family, the Asian Human Rights Commission has a sample letter and relevant email, fax, address contact details (via Jihad Watch).

Muslims Demand Sharia-Controlled Enclave in Oslo, or Else

And pro-Islam leftists think that these are just nightmares dreamed up by "Islamophobes"!

On 14th August a group of Muslims living in Norway, called Ansar al-Sunna, sent an incredible (or not so much anymore) letter to several Norwegian politicians and journalists. In it they expressed their desire not to mix with infidels "and your dirty values ​​and attitudes", including women allowed to walk around "half-naked", promiscuity, drug and alcohol abuse.

They then requested to be handed over a largely Muslim neighbourhood in Oslo, Grønland, "which we can control completely with our own ministers, border guards, police and legal system governed by Sharia law, and prohibit the wickedness you stand for which is contrary to Allah's Laws".

They continue: "We will not be part of the Norwegian society. And we don't see the need to move out of Norway since we were born and raised here. And Allah's earth belongs to everyone. But let Grønland be ours. Cordon off the area and let us control it the way we want. This is to the benefit of both parties. We do not want to live with filthy beasts like you."

The authors of the letter also threaten to carry out a new, bigger 22 July or a 9/11 on Norwegian soil:

Now the government must wake up and take responsibility before this war is going to Norway. Before Muslims take the necessary step. Do not confuse the Muslims' silence with weakness. Do not take advantage of the Muslim patience. Do not force us to do something that can be avoided. This is not a threat, just a word of truth. Justice words. A warning that the consequences could be fatal. A warning about a September 11 on Norwegian soil, or bigger than the July 22 attacks. This is for their own good and for their own interest.

The group Ansar al-Sunna is well known to Norway's media.

The Norwegian press, however, did not consider this letter as important enough to be reported.

Source: Document via FrontPageMag

Should Human Rights Be Rejected?

In Europe in particular, “human rights” have become dirty words.

For that we have to thank supranational bodies like the European Court of Human Rights, that have given this concept a bad name through a never-ending proliferation of entitlements that often have very little to do with the concept’s original and true meaning.

Parts of the European counterjihad have also started systematically attacking the idea of human rights. And there were some who did not sign the Brussels Declaration at the conference of July 2012 because they had problems with its human rights strategy.

The phenomenon of so-called “judicial imperialism”, by which unelected judges through their verdicts supersede laws passed by elected representatives of the people, has long been recognized by many brilliant writers, from the British journalist Melanie Phillips to the Italian philosopher Marcello Pera, former President of the Italian Senate — the second highest office in the country — author of the book Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians, and incidentally the professor with whom I prepared my undergraduate thesis, who wrote:

It was not a law of the United States Congress that first liberalized abortion in America, but a ruling of the Supreme Court. The Italian parliament has never authorized euthanasia, but court rulings have. No public debate preceded a court decision in the Netherlands that euthanasia may be performed on twelve-year-old children. Not by parliamentary law was same-sex marriage first granted equal status to marriage between a man and a woman in some countries. Not by parliamentary vote has eugenics become a right. No parliamentary decisions allow for polygamy to be freely practiced, as often occurs, or for the recognition of transgender rights. Nor is it the will of the people that distinctions be made between terrorists and ‘resistance fighters’ who plot to carry out massacres, or that migrants be allowed to remain in a country they have entered illegally.

However, these authors do not think, and I agree with them, that we should throw away the human rights baby with the bathwater of its distortions.

To bring clarity to this discussion, we need to look at the philosophical basis and origin of “rights”. People sometimes scoff at philosophy, but they probably don’t realize that practically all major views that are held today, mainstream or not, have at one point been formulated by philosophers.

Without delving too much into a historical analysis, the contemporary idea of human rights derives from the concepts of rights, natural rights and God-given rights in ethics, established by the 16th- and 17th-century thinkers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, the 18th-century Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, and other philosophers, continuing a Christian tradition.

In politics, classical liberalism is the doctrine that has at its centre the theory of the fundamental rights of human beings, namely that all humans are naturally free and equal, and their basic freedoms exist before, are independent from, and incoercible by the state.

Human rights are individual rights, not group rights. Liberalism does not recognize the right of cultures to exist or to be protected, which is one of the dogmas of multiculturalism in open contradiction with the theory of human rights, showing once again how the latter has been distorted beyond recognition — even transformed into its opposite — by its current usage and applications. Cultures that violate individual rights should not be protected at all.

The criticism levelled against human rights, that they conflict with each other so someone, usually a judge, has to decide on their relative weights, describes a situation that is common to all legal or ethical principles, so is not a good reason to reject human rights. Even a summary knowledge of the law will show you that laws constantly contradict other laws, so a balancing act is always required.

The problem, highlighted by “anti-humanrightists”, of the infinite, ever-expanding number of new “rights”, often used to help Muslims in the West, illegal immigrants and jihadists, is real, but the target here is this proliferation, not human rights.

Bear with me while I bring in philosophy again. In logic, a concept has two dimensions: meaning and sense. The former is the class of objects to which the concept refers, the latter the information it conveys. There is an inverse proportion between the two: the larger the meaning the narrower the sense and vice versa. If you ask me what happened today and I answer “everything”, this reply’s descriptive power is almost nil because its meaning is so all-comprising.

The extension of the meaning of “right” has decreased its sense, to the point that today it just describes nothing more than a desire for something. In these times of public spending cuts I found even a “right to our library”.

In fact, many of the current “human rights” policies are violating real rights. The distinction between negative and positive rights is also crucial.

But I think that we cannot do without the principle of rights.

You can see why we need the concept of human rights when you think of free speech. Presumably all counterjihadists support free speech, but what does that mean if not the “right to” free speech? It’s impossible even to formulate the idea without a reference to rights or some very similar principle.

Anti-jihad people (in the comments section of the linked post) who say they only believe in democracy, narrowly defined as majority rule, and nationalism will find it impossible to derive the case for free speech from those two beliefs alone: if a nation’s majority decided to abolish free speech, they would have nothing to oppose this undesirable result.

It is no coincidence that we need the concept of rights, and it’s not just for semantic or political reasons. It goes deeper than that, to the foundations of our beliefs. It may be true that there have been great political movements without an ethical basis theoretically formulated, but I think that, in the same way as we need ethical guidance in our personal lives, so we do in our political actions.

Throughout this debate on human rights, I have encountered many references to “gut instincts” and similar, as bases for making political decisions. I believe that it’s dangerous to leave everything to that, for a simple motive. As individuals, we all have “instincts”, feelings, emotions which are entirely subjective and not shared by anyone else.
What we have in common is reason, which is universal.

Once we do away with a rational ethical foundation, which the rights’ view provides, we can no longer be sure of what other people in the same movement really want, what are their motives behind what superficially may appear the same aspirations: different people may be for democracy for all the wrong reasons, for example, as the Muslim Brotherhood clearly shows.

There are other ethical theories, but the only real rival of the rights’ view is utilitarianism which, as I explained here, would be a worse substitute.

In conclusion, human rights should not be discarded but, far from it, returned to their original meaning. Their present use, deriving from a quasi-socialist interpretation of them, is in conflict with the liberal doctrines and the spirit from which they originated.

Pussy Riot Are Not Supported by Ordinary Russians

These Pussy Riot women are definitely not political martyrs. The very fact that at first, advised by their lawyers, they even denied having been in the church during the concert shows that: if they were prepared to retract, what courageous political message can that be? In the UK The Times even took that denial seriously.

What will its position after thier admission, wonders in a post's comments Alexander Mercouris, who then adds and clarifies the legal case:

Also by admitting that an offence was committed the girls have confirmed that they are not adopting the defence adopted for them by Amnesty International and their western admirers that they were entitled to do what they did as an exercise of their right of free speech under Article 10(1) of the European Convention of Human Rights. Please note: any such defence of the girls you now read in the western media or on the part of assorted worthies such as Amnesty International, Sting, Madonna, Red Hot Chilli Peppers etc, is not being made by the girls themselves in their defence and never has been. They could not previously make this defence because up to now they were not admitting that they were present in the Cathedral so they could not claim a defence of free speech for actions they were not admitting they ever made. Now that they admit that they were present in the Cathedral the girls are also admitting that what they did was an offence albeit only an administrative offence. This is an admission that they were not entitled to do what they did so the defence that they were entitled to do what they did as an exercise of their right of free speech under Article 10(1) of the European Convention of Human Rights does not apply.

The only defence the girls are now making is the defence of proportionality, that the penalty prescribed under the charge of hooliganism is disproportionate to the offence committed. This is a valid defence and one to which Article 10(2) of the European Convention of Human Rights applies.

Where the defence is one of proportionality this creates the classic situation, as I have argued previously, for a plea bargain in which an admission of guilt and an apology is traded for a lower sentence. If the girls had made their admission and offered a sincere apology right at the start of this case we would have been spared all the nonsense of the last few months. The trial would by now long since be over, a lenient sentence could have been agreed and the girls would almost certainly by now be free.

There is no reason why the Court would not have agreed to impose a lenient sentence as part of a plea bargain. There are (or were) ample grounds for mitigation given that the girls are (1) young and inexperienced and therefore could argue that they did not fully understand the upset what they did would cause (2) have no previous history of serious criminal convictions (3) did not cause material damage (4) did not act for material gain (5) can validly argue that they did what they did because they were incensed by the Patriarch’s support for Putin in the election campaign and (6) because two of them are mothers with children. I understand that sentencing practice for the offensive of hooliganism is flexible so the Court has wide discretion as to the sort of sentence it can impose once it has taken the admission, apology and plea in mitigation into account.

The question is whether the outbreak of sanity we have seen this morning has come too late. The trial has now started and the apology offered is much less than fulsome and the mitigation has been seriously damaged by the arrogant and disruptive conduct of the defence up to now. Significantly there is no promise from the girls not to do the same thing again whilst a further bad sign is that the girls’ lawyers have renewed their pointless call for the Patriarch to give evidence at the trial. Since the Patriarch was not present in the Cathedral when the offence was committed he is not a witness and there is therefore no sense in calling him. I understand that the defence is also persisting in its foolish argument that the prosecution is somehow politically motivated, which makes no sense in the light of the admission made this morning and which can only further damage the girls’ mitigation and antagonise the Court.

Let us hope however that the admissions and comments made this morning do represent a sea change and a dawning realisation that the defence tactics adopted up to now whatever their political impact have been from a legal point of view disastrously counterproductive. In that case it is just possible even now that a line may be drawn under the whole affair. I am not holding my breath though.

... The Pussy Riot case shows no crisis within the Russian court system. What it shows is appalling conduct by the defence as I have discussed previously. [Emphasis added]

There are many other things that people in the West don't know, because the mainstream media don't tell them.

Russian public opinion is mostly against Pussy Riot. Maybe, partly because the Russians, speaking the language, are not so easily misinformed by the media as we in the West are, and know exactly what swear words these women were shouting while punching the air and kicking their heads off in the Cathedral's sanctuary containing the altar.

How strange that the word "hate", that so frequently and liberally is spread around by the politically correct Left, is not used by them here when it so aptly describes what the band's behaviour expresses.

This is what Zagolovki, a Russian-language news blog, says (Google translation):

Protesters [at the furst court hearing of the Pussy Riot trial] were significantly lower than during the last few sessions on the arrest of girls from Pussy Riot, - no more than two hundred persons, and opponents with posters "for morality" and "Protect Our Children" was significantly greater.

And the blog Da Russophile summarizes several opinion polls thus:

April poll, Levada: 47% of “shocked and outraged ordinary Russians” [this is what British paper The Guardian had written, which the post intelligently and mercilessly attacks] think 7 years is an adequate punishment; 32% think it is excessive; and a mere 10% do not think they should be criminally prosecuted at all.

April poll, VCIOM: How do Russians look at Pussy Riot’s “punk prayer”? Hooliganism – 46%; sacrilege – 21%; political protest – 13%; PR – 10%; 4% – encouragement of hatred towards religious groups; 1% – art. In other words, only 14% of Russians agree with The Guardian’s interpretation. 86% think Pussy Riot should be prosecuted.

July poll, Levada: 36% approve of the prosecution of Pussy Riot, 50% disapprove.

July poll, FOM: 34% of Russians think that several years in prison is a just sentence, whereas 37% disagree. If they were asked to write a sign a letter in defense of Pussy Riot, 28% say they would and 51% say they wouldn’t.

Pussy Riot Offensive, Expletive-Laden Mock Prayer

This was obviously meant to offend Christianity and the faithful, it was not a political protest with the purest, noblest, most heroic of intentions, but an act of hooliganism directed, surprise surprise, at the most vulnerable, the least politically correct of Europe's beliefs and institutions.

Double Standards: Pussy Riot Mania versus Silence on Egypt Crucifixions

Let me make a comparison.

We have on one hand a Russian punk group of three women who, under the pretense of being more intelligent than they are and staging a "political" protest against Putin, chose as the setting for their vulgar and offensive pantomime a Christian church, Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral.

If they are so brave, why not the Red Square? Why didn't they have the courage to choose a mosque, which would have put them not in danger of a few years' imprisonment but under a death threat from Muslims?

Don't give me that stuff about how the group wanted to denounce the close ties between the Russian Orthodox patriarchate and the Kremlin: Red Square is even closer to the Kremlin than any church.

The Pussy Riot later apologised, saying that their stunt was political, unrelated to the Orthodox religion. How can it be unrelated to it if it desecrates one of its churches?

As Orthodox commentators in the Russian media pointed out, the cathedral has become the symbol of Russia's Christian revival after 70 years of state-imposed atheism, and stands as a monument to all those who died for their faith under the Soviet Union.

The Pussy Riot's choice of venue for their action is inexcusable. It is just one of a long line of cases of people attacking Christianity and its symbols and justifying this in the name of "art" or now in this case "political protest".

Now all the international media and "celebrities" from Madonna (from whom I didn't expect anything better) to Paul McCartney (from whom disappointingly I did) have fallen into the trap of these who are at best clueless punks (in every sense of the word) or at worst talentless fame seekers who have got what they want: celebrity status without deserving it.

So, it seems that saving these three would-be singers from jail is one of the most important tasks in the world, a top priority, judging from the carpet media coverage and the intervention of everybody, from feminist groups to organizers of Global Pussy Riot Day protests in many cities around the world.

Politicians got in there too. The German Der Spiegel reported that 121 members of the Bundestag sent a letter to the Russian ambassador in Germany supporting the Pussy Riot.

On the other hand we have opponents of Egypt's President Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood who are killed and wounded in the streets, even literally crucified for their protests, media outlets closed down, journalists beaten up, and how much outcry does that provoke?

You can guess. Hardly anything at all.