This just in from Dover…

Family appeal for tortoise’s swift return
A FAMILY have been left distraught after their tortoise, which was a family
heirloom, was stolen.
Speedy was taken from a cottage in Station Road, Martin Mill, some time
between 9pm on Tuesday, July 19, and 7.15am on July 20.
His owner, Lynn Parker, said Speedy belonged to her aunt, who asked her to
look after him shortly before she died.
“I am just gutted he has gone,” said Mrs Parker.
“He was in his pen, and I did not see him when I left for work, and we would
just like him back.
“I live in the middle of a field and we hardly have any visitors, so someone
must have known he was here.”
Anyone who may have Speedy or has seen him is urged to contact police on
01304 240055. He may have traces of white paint on his shell, and Mrs Parker has
another way of identifying Speedy from other tortoises.
Dover Mercury, 28 July 2005

(Via the Chief)

There seems to be a constant murmuring going on among more extreme Muslim elements that there is still no proof the London bombings were the work of Islamic extremists and that they are being victimized. For example, here is Mohammad Naseem, the chairman of Birmingham’s Central Mosque, speaking last Thursday (via Harry):

Muslim bashing seems to be more earnest than the need for national unity and harmony. Terrorists can be anybody – we will have to see [whether the bombers are Muslims]. The process is not open; the process is not transparent; the process is not independent. I do not have faith in the system as it stands.

And here is the latest statement, released last week by our friend Aslam’s Hizb ut-tahrir group:

A few hours after the bombings on Thursday 7/7/2005; before any investigation and before revealing even the reality of the bombings as to whether they were planted or human bombs, the hateful crusader comments began to be made: Blair immediately pointed to ‘extremist’ values while hinting at Islam. Others declared that Islam is, “an evil and brutal religion.” In this manner their crusader hatred of Islam and the Muslims has appeared. They know that many explosions have been carried out by extremists from their own countrymen though they did not describe them in this way nor did they describe their religion, values or culture in an inappropriate way but confined their discussion to the individuals involved (sic).

Yet at the same time, in the eyes of groups like Hizb uh-tahrir, there is every good reason for the bombers to attack us, as their same statement helpfully continues:

O Muslims:

You can see these states, especially the colonialist states and those which have ambitions over our countries, may disagree on everything but they are united against you and against your Deen. Here they all move in one direction; they want to keep the issue of the Muslims in a state of crisis, separated and disconnected; they want the Muslims to be under their sphere of influence and under Jewish influence, so that, as they themselves admit, they can prevent the Muslims from returning as one Ummah in one state; the Khilafah Rashidah which will put the world in its right place and give back the rights to its people, and spread goodness to all corners of the world.[...]

Hizb ut-tahrir is steady in following this path, it will not undertake material actions nor does it view that as a correct solution. It does not accept the killing of civilians or the harming of those who have security. But despite this, it takes the view that because the powerful nations spill the blood of Muslims, violate their honour and desecrate their sanctities, that these are the real reasons which produce these material reactions. If the big nations wanted to put a stop to these actions they would have thought and reflected on the questions that we mention above – but we know that the arrogance of these states will stop them from thinking in a sound manner and following the correct path.

So there’s no proof that extremist Muslims did it. But it’s obvious why they did it.

PS To the Guardian NUJ members, is this the kind of minority representation your newspaper needs?

Theirs is not just a war against the Egyptian economy and government, it is a war against the entire Egyptian people, as it is against all the people of Britain, of Spain, of Lebanon, of Iraq, of Indonesia, of the US — of everywhere. The terrorist is at war with the entire world.

It is not enough to hunt down and destroy these men of evil. The thinking that drives them must also be destroyed. That puts a special responsibility on decent human beings everywhere. These fanatics claim to act in the name of Islam. That has to be shown to be a lie.

Their vision of the faith is so warped, so twisted, that it has nothing to do with Islam. They pollute it, they make it feared, even hated elsewhere in the world, they bring shame and humiliation to the faithful. They have departed from Islam. Muslims here and elsewhere must tell the world, not just once but again and again, every time the fanatics attack, that they have nothing to do with Islam, that they have been cast out.

Editorial in Arab News. (Via someone but I forgot who!)

Do I need to keep pointing you in the direction of the Daily Ablution? Or is everyone going there automatically now?

In the latest installment the Guardian claims in an interview with a French newspaper that it did not sack Aslam because of the blogging furore but rather because it had been carrying out an internal inquiry of its own into Aslam’s links with Hizb’ut Tahrir.

As the Ablution points out, if they were already carrying out an inquiry into Aslam’s links with an extremist group why ask him to write the piece in the first place?

Meanwhile Harry reports that Aslam appeared at a special NUJ chapel meeting on Tuesday where he expressed surprise that his article had caused offence. He also failed to adequately answer questions about the anti-semitism of Hizb’ut Tahrir. Nevertheless a vote to condemn his sacking was still narrowly passed. Apparently NUJ staff thought it was important to have representative voices from ethnic communities on the paper.

I agree. But where do you stop? Here, here, or here? Some minority voices are not worth listening to let alone printing.

Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian (via Harry of course!) takes issue with Ken’s defence of suicide bombings in Israel and opposition to it at home…

So when Livingstone offers this as some kind of defence – that Qaradawi is against 9/11 and 7/7, but in favour of “martyrdom operations” against Israeli civilians – I am not comforted. I am fearful of the dark place he has entered.

And yet that was not the end of it. In that same interview, the mayor noted what he regarded as a double standard. Why, he wondered, was it legitimate for “a young Jewish boy in this country” to join the Israeli army “and end up killing many Palestinians” while a “young Muslim boy in this country” who wants to defend his “Palestinian brothers and sisters … is branded as a terrorist”?

Imagine these cases for a moment. A British man emigrates to Israel; a few years later he might get called up for military service; he might even end up in an operation that results in the killing of civilians. And then there is another British man who arrives in Israel for the sole purpose of staging a suicide bombing. (This latter case is not hypothetical: Britons Asif Mohammed Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif did exactly that in 2003.) Is there not a moral difference between these two actions? Why does Livingstone say they are equivalent?

More importantly, what is the mayor doing talking like this? He must realise how incendiary it is to bring the Middle East conflict directly to these shores, pitting the “young Jewish boy” against “the young Muslim boy”. How reckless to encourage one community to see the other as would-be recruits for the bitter war of Israeli and Palestinian. “They seek to turn Londoners against each other,” Livingstone said of the terrorists on July 7. Yet what was he doing last week?

I agree wholeheartedly with Freedland’s sentiments here, although I think (and I can’t believe I am saying this) that he is missing the point when Ken talks about “young Jewish boys” doing military service. I think Ken is talking about those young Jewish men and women in the UK who volunteer to do military service in Israel—not people who emigrate and are later conscripted.

Even so. Freedland is still right. Those volunteers do not leave with the intention of “killing Palestinians.” Unlike suicide bombers whose mission is specifically to kill as many people as possible.

Again, if Ken’s short, twisted logic were followed to its natural conclusion then young British men would be in much the same position. After all, aren’t they the ones being sent to foreign lands like Afghanistan and Iraq? And as Freedland points out:

Let’s say Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer were angered by the occupation of Iraq or even 80 years of western imperialism, as Livingstone himself has suggested. What weapons would they have against the mighty arsenals of Britain and the US? Those men from Leeds had no jet planes or tanks. They too “only have their bodies”. Under Qaradawi’s logic, so generously explained by the mayor, they too must have a legitimate right “to fight back” by attacking the civilians of the imperialist power: in other words, you and me.

Which of course brings us back neatly to the brillaint argument that we should never be in Iraq and Afghanistan in the first place. That if we just left them alone they wouldn’t bother us. That it’s our fault they are acting like this in the first place. Maybe if we just reasoned with them…

I say we reinstate Saddam, put the Taliban back where they were and have a good old chinwag about what they want. Perhaps if we gave them Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel (of course). Make them promise not to bomb us any more. (Well, just the Americans—and just a little.) Who knows? We might achieve peace in our time…