Former EDL leader and current PEGIDA co-leader Tommy Robinson features extensively in the book, and a 30-minute excerpt from an interview between the two recorded by Robinson surfaced on YouTube in January. I put myself through this in full yesterday, and ended up writing down the majority of what Pai had to say due to sheer exasperation at her ignorance and delusion, with the intention of adding my own reactions to the typically well-informed and well-argued responses from Robinson.
Pai otherwise seems like she might be a pleasant and reasonable enough person, but she's a prime example of how profoundly ignorant of Islam and its woes so many supposedly 'right-thinking' people are, and resorts to so many of the most feeble, easily dismissed, and at times laughable counter-arguments of ill-informed Islam apologists. Hopefully some of what follows here will be of use to anyone who encounters similar apologist drivel, whether it be on social media or in the real world. It's pretty drawn-out, but that's mainly due to the sheer volume of quite frankly daft things Pai came out with over the course of the 30-minute clip, and the absolutely colossal quantities of evidence available to comprehensively debunk such responses.
The video in question can be watched here. If you've got the time to spare and it's your kind of thing, it's probably worth listening to for a typically accomplished set of rebuttals from Robinson, whose knowledge and intelligence are consistently underestimated by privileged media types of both genders and all ethnic and religious backgrounds, many of them with Oxbridge degrees, but barely half the intellect, and a fraction of the knowledge of Islam and Muslims, of the working-class white oik from Luton. After all, what could anyone possibly learn from a bloke who speaks unspeakable truths in a provincial accent while wearing half of Stone Island's autumn/winter collection?
"Are you saying those criminals represent the whole (refugee) population? They don't represent everybody!"
Football hooligans didn't represent all matchgoers in the 1970s and 1980s. They represented a minority. So presumably, by by Hsiao-Hung Pai's logic it was a draconian measure and a waste of public money to tighten security and policing at and around football stadia on matchdays.
However, there was no such minority to speak of among cricket fans. Hence, the policing was nothing like as stringent or aggressive at major cricket matches as it was at football matches, and I suspect this remains the case. And with good reason.
Those form the present influx of mostly Muslim refugees and economic migrants into Europe, and members of the existing Muslim communities here are far more prone to crime of a variety of types than the non-Muslim majority, but most egregiously, and as most explicitly demonstrated recently, especially prone to all manner of sex crimes. They do not have to be 100%, 50%, or even 20% sex offenders to merit greater scrutiny, or indeed measures against their entry or ongoing residence into Europe. The mere fact that they have a dramatically disproportionate likelihood of committing such crimes - and there is a litany of statistical evidence from across Western Europe to support this statement - is enough to merit counter-measures. Otherwise, by your logic, Hsiao, the football hooliganism that led to numerous fatal incidents at matches across England and Europe in the 1980s would have been allowed to get worse and worse, because after all, the hooligans weren't representative of everybody at football matches.
I wonder how many turned out to be involved in the grooming, trafficking, and sexual abuse of non-Chinese girls, insurance fraud, postal vote fraud, benefit fraud, terrorism offences, or suicide attacks. All of which are either disproportionately common among - or pretty much unique to - Muslims in Britain.
Come to that, when was the last time anyone heard of a plague of rape, violence, fraud, or terrorism from within the Chinese community in the West?
Right, yea.
Different immigrant groups have fared and continued to fare drastically differently from one another in the West. Pay any attention and many of the underlying reasons are usually pretty obvious if one discards left-wing taboos and removes the blindfold of cultural relativism.
The composition of the large Muslim population of Western Europe is roughly as follows: About two thirds Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Indian in the UK, predominantly North African in France (Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian etc.), predominantly North African and Turkish in Belgium and the Netherlands, predominantly Turkish in Germany, and a pretty broad mix of Pakistanis, Iranians, Bosnians, Kosovans, Somalis, Turks, Syrians, Iraqis, and Afghans in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. So in terms of ethnic and racial origin, it's extremely diverse. Yet, notwithstanding the odd exception, the social, criminal, and integration issues seen across these very diverse populations are remarkably similar from one European nation to the next, whether it be exceptionally high levels of imprisonment, rape, unemployment and benefit dependency, involvement in terrorism, and so on.
What's the common denominator?
Well that's tough luck, because the people striving by both violent and non-violent means for a world in which you convert to Islam or are executed (I'm assuming Hsiao isn't a Christian or a Jew), and treated as an item of reproductive livestock even if you do convert, are very interested in it.
I'm not that interested in how AIDS spreads or exactly how it kills people, but if I were working with needles or in the sex industry, I'd at least make sure I knew everything there is to know about how to minimise the risk of getting it.
In three words: know your enemy.
And to get an idea of how much the people Tommy Robinson is campaigning against respect anyone's "right to religion" (or their right to be free of it), just take a look at how non-Muslims are treated in their countries of origin like Pakistan or Bangladesh.
Look at the decline of the non-Muslim populations in those countries since their establishment as nations whose state religion is Islam. Look at the murder of seven atheist and secularist writers and publishers in Bangladesh since 2013.
Look at the "blasphemy" charges routinely brought against non-Muslims in Pakistan, including Asia Bibi, a Christian woman currently awaiting execution by hanging having been charged with blasphemy in November 2010 following a dispute which arose after she was seen drinking from a metal cup also used by Muslims at a well. No, really. Water apartheid is a thing in Pakistan, because non-Muslims are "unclean".
You may also wish to note the mass protests and "revenge" bomb attacks across Pakistan following the execution of Mumtaz Qadri last week for murdering a politician who criticised the death sentence handed to Asia Bibi. Qadri was a security guard for Punjab state governor Salman Taseer, who called for clemency for the Christian woman. Qadri's reaction to this was to shoot Taseer 27 times in January 2011. In 2014, a Sunni mosque named in Qadri's honour was completed in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.
Most disturbingly of all, you should note the widespread mourning for Qadri among high-profile, influential Muslims in the UK, which reads almost like a who's who of so-called "moderate" Muslims and government funded imams.
Or you might wish to read about the blasphemy lynch mobs which rise up fairly regularly in Pakistan to slaughter Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, and members of the Ahmadi Muslim minority. Here, here, here, and here.
All that, Hsiao, should hopefully give you some idea of the kind of religious "freedom" we would enjoy should the people Tommy Robinson challenges fulfill their ambitions of conquering Europe in the name of Islam, whether via violent jihad, demographic jihad, or a mixture of both. Be under no illusions about the fact that many Muslims are trying to do this, or the fact large minorities of Muslims actively support them (more of that soon), and that almost none of the rest are likely to have any interest in challenging them should they continue to make headway.
And I would suggest you have no need to concern yourself with it for as long as Buddhists aren't committing acts of mass murder, rape and enslavement across the world on a daily basis as part of a struggle to subject humanity in its entirety to every last whim of Buddhist doctrine, and for as long as Buddhists are not a rapidly growing, colonially minded, self-ghettoising minority in the West with unfortunate habits such as the mass rape of non-Buddhist schoolgirls, calling for the murder of homosexuals and those who leave or even criticise Buddhism, being among the least economically productive and most fraudulent, corrupt groups in society, and making women dress from head to toe in black and never leave the house without the permission of their father or husband.
The Rohingya in Myanmar. Yes. Occasionally it gets mentioned along with events in the Central African Republic as though it constitutes some sort of counter-balance to the theatres of rape, enslavement, mass murder, and genocide in the name of Islam we see in Nigeria, Mali, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Philippines, to name a few.
Funnily enough, one rarely hears of Buddhists carrying out atrocities anywhere else, and Buddhists do not revere as their infallible example a tyrannical, slave-trading warlord who committed countless acts of rape, assassination, war, and even genocide. On the contrary, Buddhists in general are noted as particularly peaceable bunch by and large.
Without wishing to paint with too broad a brush, this rather begs the question as to what led up to the violence of recent years in Myanmar. Some cursory reading reveals that it stems from the southerly migration of the Rohingya into Buddhist territory in the 1800s, and that the Rohingya have played their own part in inter-communal tensions and violence over the decades. In addition, it's worth noting the political backdrop: Myanmar is still governed by the remnants of an authoritarian, ethno-nationalist military dictatorship. That in itself is not evidence of some universal article of Buddhist faith in the manner in which the occurrence of jihadi atrocities from the Philippines to San Bernardino is where Islam is concerned.
Without wishing to paint with too broad a brush, this rather begs the question as to what led up to the violence of recent years in Myanmar. Some cursory reading reveals that it stems from the southerly migration of the Rohingya into Buddhist territory in the 1800s, and that the Rohingya have played their own part in inter-communal tensions and violence over the decades. In addition, it's worth noting the political backdrop: Myanmar is still governed by the remnants of an authoritarian, ethno-nationalist military dictatorship. That in itself is not evidence of some universal article of Buddhist faith in the manner in which the occurrence of jihadi atrocities from the Philippines to San Bernardino is where Islam is concerned.
"But it's not about what is said in the book! ... Interpretation evolves, just like the Bible!"
Except that in mainstream Islam, it really is about what is said in the book, and interpretation really doesn't evolve a great deal. Islam in its orthodox form has written into it certain do's and don'ts which militate pretty decisively against innovation, independent reasoning, and even mere evolution of interpretation. The Qur'an is the final, timeless, inerrant, never altered command of Allah, infallible down to the last comma, and cannot be challenged. Muhammad is the very best of Allah's creation, and the finest example for all people to emulate in all times. And in mainstream, majority Islam, that's pretty much it. Wife-beating, beheadings, rape, slavery, genocide and all.
That's largely why every notable attempt at some kind of moderation over the centuries, whether it be the rationalist Mu'tazilites in 9th century Baghdad, ill-fated reformist theologians in 1980s Sudan, or anything else in the intervening 1100 years or so, has ended in failure, and often, murderous suppression.
Christianity on the other hand has an Old Testament which is largely superseded by the New Testament and its much more benign, compassionate message centred around the teachings of Jesus Christ, a man who had a dozen committed followers at the time of his execution, and whose most violent recorded act involving causing a bit of a commotion at a corrupt market in a temple.
In both respects, Islam could hardly differ more drastically, with its self-proclaimed prophet a man who, according to the most trusted accounts in Islamic scholarly tradition, in the final decade of his life went from being something of a joke figure with 150 or so followers to ruling more or less the entire Arabian peninsula. Along the way, he led or ordered a hundred or so military expeditions and raids, owned and traded slaves, ordered massacres of whole tribes of men, ordered the assassination of numerous personal detractors, and had multiple wives, one of whom was nine years old at the time of the union being consummated.
In addition to the night-and-day contrast between the examples of Christ and Muhammad, the tradition of abrogation in Islamic scholarship is, in its practical consequences, almost diametrically at odds with the manner in which the more compassionate, pacific New Testament supersedes the fire and brimstone of the Old Testament in Christian tradition. Put simply, where a chronologically earlier ayah of the Qur'an from the more benign Meccan period appears to be at odds with an ayah from the later, more bellicose Medinan period, the latter ayah has precedence over the former, effectively cancelling it out.
For the sake of clarity, the Medinan period was the final decade of Muhammad's life, in which he and his followers undertook hijra (migration) from Mecca to Yathrib, which later became Medina (simply 'the City' in Arabic), and the Muslims conquered much of the Arabian peninsula through countless acts of war, terror, and plunder.
Very few Christians or Jews left today care or even know about the harsher commands of Leviticus and Deuteronomy in the Old Testament. Almost none at all follow them personally, let alone seek to ensure that all others do so under the threat of violence, enslavement, or death.
Muslims, on the other hand? Well, as I said earlier, we have hundreds of thousands of jihadis, if not more, seeking to do just that with Islamic law in Nigeria, Mali, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Philippines, not to mention all the sovereign states where some form of Islamic law is imposed with varying degrees of severity, or indeed all the "non-violent" Islamist groups the world over like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb ut-Tahrir, and so on.
"Moderates" may seek to contextualise some of the more unpleasant among the reputed deeds of Muhammad when challenged, but most of them aren't doing a great deal to halt or challenge the daily atrocities committed across the globe by those seeking to emulate Muhammad's ostensible example and implement Islamic law. Nor are they doing much to challenge or counter-act the metastasis of Islamist and jihadi ideology, or the ever more regular Muslim demands for non-Muslim acquiescence to the norms and desires of Muslims across the Western world, whether they relate to the suppression freedom of belief and expression where Islam is concerned, the withdrawal of food and drink considered "haram", gender segregation, or women's dress.
No. For the most part, said "moderates" do not direct their ire at those committing acts of mass rape, mass murder, and genocide, nor at those beheading "sorcerers" and throwing homosexuals off roofs, and certainly not at those calling for such executions, or mourning the death of a man who murdered a politician for the act of questioning a Christian woman's death sentence for insulting Islam.
The majority of said "moderates" prefer instead to rail against the following:
- "Islamophobia" (it's appalling and downright racist how touchy many of these non-Muslims are about terror attacks, mass rape of their women, violent misogyny and homophobia, and the colonisation of their towns and cities after all).
- "Foreign policy" (conveniently ignoring the fact that the arch nemeses of the Ummah - the US and the UK - are among the most generous providers of aid to Muslim nations, and that many of these economically and politically dysfunctional nations would quickly be in even worse trouble were this aid withdrawn).
- The treachery and "apostasy" of progressive, secularist Muslims like Maajid Nawaz, Dr Tej Hargey, Asra Nomani, Irshad Manji, and Raheel Raza, who of course are nothing but stooges and "house Muslims" for the neo-conservative, Zionist conspiracy.
In short, priorities can tell us rather a lot.
"Christians are the same! Many Christians are the same, they don't question the Bible!"
Think we've done this one Hsiao. Most don't even know what the worst bits of it say, let alone follow it. And those who do aren't really waging holy war in conflict zones across the world to impose Biblical law upon whole societies, or using entryist tactics and migration to agitate for it. A lot of Muslims don't follow the Qur'an or Islamic law too rigidly either thankfully, but it doesn't take a majority of literalists for us to be faced with an existential long-term threat.
"There's other factors too, not just religion, why people become radicalised"
It makes perfect sense when, as I've already said, the only people committing beheadings in the streets and in homeware stores, flying airliners into skyscrapers, detonating themselves on buses and trains, or massacring schoolchildren, university students, and shoppers, or taking girls and women as sex slaves in the name of their religion with any kind of regularity all happen to be Muslims.
What was it that looked so "liberal"? The taqiyah he often has on his head, the fist-sized Salafi beard with its trimmed moustache? The full-length Islamic jubba he typically wears?
Yea, that's exactly the kind of look I associate with the most ardent campaigners for transgender rights and the liberalisation of laws relating to prostitution too.
"He (Anjem Choudary) is not a hate preacher. I don't think he is!"
I'm curious in that case as to what term you would use to describe someone who advocates the imposition of Islamic law upon humanity in its entirety, which, in its truest form, would necessarily entail the persecution of the 90% or so of the world's population who are not heterosexual, practicing Sunni Muslim men, and the slaughter of anyone who resists, leaves or blasphemes against Islam, or is found guilty of homosexual acts or adultery.
"A lot of that (the murder of Lee Rigby) was not just to do with religion. Religion is the tool. But a lot of it was to do with foreign policies"
Yes, that's right. In fact, here are the words spoken by Michael Adebolajo himself as he stood feet from the nearly decapitated body of Lee Rigby with a bloodied meat cleaver in his left hand:
"The only reason we have killed this man today, is because Muslims are dying daily by British soldiers. And this British soldier is one, he is an eye for eye and a tooth for a tooth. By Allah, we swear by the almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you, until you leave us alone. So what if we want to live by the Shari'ah in Muslim lands? Why does that mean you must follow us and chase us and call us extremists and kill us? Rather you lot are extreme! You are the ones, when you drop a bomb, do you think it picks one person? Or rather, your bomb wipes out a whole family? This is the reality. (Inaudible) if I saw your mother today with a buggy, I would help her up the stairs, this is my nature. But we are forced by the Qur'an in Surah At-Tawbah, through many, many ayat throughout the Qur'an, that we must fight them as they fight us, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I apologise that women had to witness this today. But in our lands, our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your governments! They don't care about you! Do you think David Cameron is gonna get caught in the street? When we start bussin' our guns, do you think your politicians are gonna die? No it's gonna be the average guy, like you. And your children. So get rid of them! Tell them to bring our troops back, so you can all live in peace. Leave our lands and you will live in peace, that's all I have to say. Ameen. Allah's peace and blessings be upon Muhammad, Sallahahu 'Alaihi wa Sallam."
"Muslims"
"We swear by the almighty Allah"
"the Shari'ah"
"Muslim lands"
"we are forced by the Qur'an in Surah At-Tawbah, through many many ayat throughout the Qur'an, that we must fight"
"our lands"
"our women"
"Ameen. Allah's peace and blessings be upon Muhammad."
... But obviously, it wasn't just "religion" that compelled two Nigerians born and raised in Christian families in London to run over and hack an off-duty British Army soldier to death, nearly beheading him in the process, with one citing as their motive the British government's military interventions in "our" "Muslim" lands, and their obligation to Allah as set out in the Qur'an to "fight them as they fight us". Their conversion to Islam was probably just coincidental to the whole episode.
My recollection may be sketchy, but I definitely can't think of any other cases of Nigerians from Christian backgrounds butchering people in the street in broad daylight in protest against some matter of "foreign policy".
"But people don't have to follow it! (responding to mention of Qur'an, 4:34, which advises husbands to beat disobedient wives if all else fails)"
But hundreds of millions of people do, and are, so it's a problem. Any questions?
"I'm sure if you read the Bible from beginning to end, there must be something that isn't right for the modern age"
"Are you saying in the Christian Bible, there is nothing that is outdated and backward?"
Yea we've done this one. Very, very few Christians take any of the worst and most outdated bits seriously and follow them these days, in fact most probably haven't even read them. And there are barely any at all out there committing atrocities in a bid to force people to follow those particular Biblical commands.
"I have to find out before I can say Anjem Choudary is what the media tell me"
To his credit, Choudary is pretty good at telling us exactly what he is and what he stands for in his own words. That's actually rare among high-profile Muslims, and, to be honest, quite refreshing. All you need to do is listen to him.
And that's more or less everything Hsiao-Hung Pai said that I was moved to write down and address.
Great piece Mate.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this, it's rare to read something which is as I would have written it (as in the style)
ReplyDeleteand the content contains some details that I am yet to familiarise fully.
I would thank you personally but I see the post is Anonymous