Fascism and Islam

So the EDL are in my city today, breaking stuff and assaulting people. Beneath the mask of “we just don’t like terrorists” lies quite obvious fascist sentiment by a bunch of illiterate chav thugs in cheap tracksuits. We must remember that there is nothing ‘English’ about exclusion. We are a diverse and dynamic culture. We are not a divisive and static culture. The EDL promote a very divisive and static agenda. Nationalist rhetoric tends to increase at times of economic hardship. Our ‘culture’ is vastly under threat from a neoliberal elite, and a Tory government insisting on an economic and social engineering project that seems to show new signs of failure every day. What neoliberalism has been utterly superb at achieving, is dividing the poorer communities on the basis of race. As noted in previous blogs, this tool of economic division disguised as racial division was really first used before the American civil war. And it works every time. The EDL are a confused product of that division.

It is of course necessary, given the title of this blog, to explain what I interpret as Fascism. Fascism is not a single doctrine, with a single goal, and cannot be explained so simply as perhaps Communism can. And so we must allow for a variety of explanations, but each has common threads. For me, it is a range of ideas merged into one: Mass movement ideologically opposed to full political emancipation, indoctrination at the point of childhood through education, violent, oppressive, free expression is very limited, pressing for some sort of utopia based on a very narrow vision of what they consider to be decent and correct, nostalgia based on a time before all was lost to a perceived threatening force from ‘outside’, extreme dogma, intent on running a social system in a very repressive way in order to keep on a sort of ‘righteous’ path, adverse to even the most fundamental human rights.
Whilst regimes may cite the supremacy of what they see as a master race to be the reason for following that line, others use what they consider the supremacy of their religion. Politically, it has traditionally been a very useful tool to divide lower classes against each other. Religiously, it has been a way to divide what those in control call “true” believers, with those considered not religious enough. This is how the Taliban controlled most of Afghan in the 90s, it is how Saddam kept control of Iraq for so long; especially in his ability to perpetuate and deepen the divisions between Sunni and Shia. This is the essence of fascism for me. It is not restrained to the political, it incorporates and sometimes manifests itself through religion.

It does seem to me that if you do have a criticism of Islam, people automatically presume you’re a bit racist. That you haven’t thought it through. That either you accept this religion as a beacon of peace, or you’re racist. Personally, I happen to despise Nationalism as much as Religion. And so groups like the EDL are just as much of a cancer to me, as Islam. It seems that Islamofascism has a lot in common with Nationalist fascism and the EDL. I’m of the belief that both Nationalism and Religion hold divisive principles based on abstractions that just aren’t real. Nationalists hold the concept of some sort of nostalgic Nation above the individual. Religion uses ‘prophets’ and ‘gods’ in the same way. But essentially, both are fighting for a fairy tale, using the most vicious and oppressive methods that are abhorrent to me as a Secularist.

The fear of criticising Islam is quite widespread. Muslims tend to claim “offence” at anything slightly critical, but fail to see the irony in their own behaviour. When the Danish cartoons were published in Jyllands-Posten, the Pope criticised the Danish papers. Politicians criticised the Danish papers. The Washington Post started its column by depicting the outrage felt at the publishing of the cartoons. The real crime , was the Islamic response, including the bombing of the Danish embassy in Pakistan, 100 deaths, Hotel Jørgensen bomb explosion, and countless death threats. These people are the enemies of free thought and free speech and should be forever dismissed as such. Whilst Danish papers often satirise religious figures within the Jewish and Christian traditions, the only time violence erupted was when the paper satirised Islam. Islam likes to claim special treatment, it cannot abide criticism, it cannot abide satirisation and it certainly cannot abide freedom of speech.. The hypocrisy of the Islamic reaction to the Danish cartoons can be seen more evidently, when we examine cartoons coming out of the Islamic press:

This cartoon was printed in ‘Arab News’ an English language publication in Saudi Arabia. It is considered a moderate paper. What it shows is rats, with the Jewish star of David as eyes, running in and out of a building called “Palestine House”. Racism, propaganda, hatred and hypocrisy all in one cartoon.

This was printed by Al-Arab Al-Yawm in Jordan. Overwhelmingly, cartoons coming out of the Arab press depict the Jewish people as killers.

Most Islamic cartoons aimed at Jewish people, show themes of Jewish blood lust and a people who wish to control the World. It is eerily similar to propaganda printed by the Nazis. Islamic countries in the Middle East (including the Palestinian Authority in Palestine, and the Islamist groups in the new Egyptian Parliament) are Fascists. Dr. Joël Kotek, a political scientist at the Free University of Brussells states of the anti-Semitic cartoons:

“The collective image of the Jews created by Arab cartoons lays the groundwork for a possibility of genocide. My collection of Arab caricatures demonstrates this. One can argue about whether these genocidal ideas are conscious or subconscious. My view is that they are still at the subconscious stage.”

- It is against this backdrop, that we must look at the Danish cartoons, and understand that they are not the issue. The issue must be a sort of Islamic sense of superiority free from criticism and satirisation.

Through fear of causing offence, there is a horrible denial that Islamofascism exists at all. And so groups like ‘Unite Against Fascism‘ pop up. The UAF is a group that opposes one sort of fascism. Nationalist fascism. Islamic fascism, which is widespread also, it tends to ignore. It ignores the attacks on free speech that Islam seems to plague us with. It is very difficult to engage with Muslims, when even a cartoon satirising a religious figure like Mohammad, is manipulated to appear like a serious racist attack. It is actually a disgrace. It is fascism. It is demanding a special place in society, above criticism. Groups like the UAF ignore this.

If you go to the UAF website and search “Tommy Robinson” the leader of the EDL, you get countless articles attacking him. And rightly so. The man is a nazi. But, if you type the name “Anjem Choudhary“, you get no results whatsoever. Choudary is one of the idiots who will refer to Muslims in war torn countries as “brothers and sisters“. It’s a rather curious sentiment, because these people didn’t seem to give a shit when Iraq was run by the Hussein crime family. Or when Afghanistan was under the heavy hand of the Taliban. I am lead to the conclusion that “brothers and sisters” is a mask. It seems to show support for individuals, yet what it is actually suggesting is that when you’re killed or tortured under a Islamic fundamentalist regime, it is fine, because you are simply a sacrifice in the name of the perpetuation of Islamic rule. Motive is important here. When Islamic regimes kill their own people and their “brothers” in the UK keep quiet, the regimes notice that they can get away with it. When Saddam took out Halabja, there was very little condemnation in Western countries. No march through London. No anti-Saddam protests. Saddam killed thousands on purpose. If an American bomb hits the wrong target, and kills innocents; suddenly Muslims in the UK come out in force against Western “imperialism“. Here is what Choudhary said on BBC Hardtalk:

Look, at the end of the day innocent people—when we say ‘innocent people’ we mean Muslims—as far as non-Muslims are concerned they have not accepted Islam and as far as we are concerned that is a crime against God.

- Now here is the problem as I see it with Islam. The Koran is so very vague, and has intense amount of contradictions, that for moderates to claim that a nut case like Choudhary is “taking the Koran out of context“, is entirely disingenuous. It goes without saying that Choudhary does not represent Islam. But his views are no more illogical or irrational than moderate Muslims. It is easy to find passages that support Choudhary’s interpretation of the Koran. It is easy to find imperialistic, war driven, hate filled diatribe within the Koran and because it is easy, it will absolutely always have Fascist support, such as that of Choudhary. Islam is an imperialistic religion. The Koran sets the tone. The Hadith follow up:

Paradise is in the shadow of the swords.

He who dies without having taking part in a campaign dies in a kind of unbelief.

A day and a night fighting on the frontier is better than a month of fasting and prayer.

- There is absolutely a very clear link between Islamic text, and Islamic violence. To deny it, is to turn our backs to the root of the problem. We then tend to fill that hole, with “George Bush” or “The West” or “Imperialism“. Let’s also not forget, that Islamic regimes are not simply standing tall against Western oppressors. I have lifted this from a blog I wrote on Palestine a few months back, but it is entirely relevant to this entry:

Fatah is a political party within the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Even though the UN officially recognised the PLO as representative of the Palestinian people in 1974, and gave it the right to participate in debates in the Security Council, in 1976; its largest member Fatah still carried out terrorist attacks in which they took over and killed 11 people in the Savoy hotel in 1975 and the Coastal Road Massacre in 1978 killing 37 Israelis. To take over the Savoy in the centre of Tel Aviv, they threw grenades at anyone who came close, and threatened to kill all hostages unless the Israeli government released five Palestinian prisoners. The killings were planned by Khalil al-Wazir, the man who set up Fatah. Al-Wazir, who is viewed as a great martyr in Palestine, was not simply retaliating for Israeli aggression, he believed Jerusalem was divinely handed to Muslims, and that Israel had stole it from them. The problem here, is religious fundamentalism. Fatah hasn’t changed that.

Today, the Constitution of the Fatah Party states quite clearly:

12. Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.
13. Establishing an independent democratic state with complete sovereignty on all Palestinian lands, and Jerusalem is its capital city, and protecting the citizens’ legal and equal rights without any racial or religious discrimination.

- It wants Israel gone. How can a State like Israel really expect to support the Statehood of a Nation next door, who wish to see it destroyed? How is that responsible? To compare, as Abbas has done, and as many Pro-Palestine bloggers do, the Arab Spring to the Palestinian problem is not helpful and very short sighted. The Egyptian people do not wish the wipe their next door neighbours off the map. There is no mention of setting up a Palestinian State with East Jerusalem as its capital. It wants Israel gone, and Jerusalem entirely an Islamic city. It is a religious problem, nothing less.

- Fatah is Islamofascist. It isn’t the product of Western aggression. It plays the victim card perfectly. It is imperialistic by its very nature. And yet it is viewed as a force for progression and good. Its ideology does not require Western imperialism, or Israel. Its ideology is autonomous, and transcends the cultural landscape of the time, because it is firmly rooted in 7th century tribal society. Mahmoud Abbas, is not a good man.

As noted, the claim of imperialism against the West coming from Islamic writers, is also widely hypocritical. History of Islam expert Bernard Lewis, writes:

Imperialism is a particularly important theme in the Middle Eastern and principally the Islamic case, against the West. For them, the word “Imperialism” has an inimitable meaning. This word is for example, never used by Muslims of the so-called ‘great Muslim empires’ which conquered vast territories and populations and incorporated them in the “House of Islam.” It was perfectly legitimate for Muslims to conquer and rule Europe and Europeans and thus enable them to embrace the true faith. It was a crime and a sin however, for Europeans, to conquer and rule Muslims.

- In the 21st Century, there is a tendency to blame the West, for the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. As if, maybe if we be a bit nicer, it wont exist. It is again a horrible attempt to deny that the Koran contains passages that permit the use of Fascist methods of war to promote an Islamic Imperialistic agenda. The argument is not with oppression against Islamic states…. it is with anyone who attempts to block the spread of this putrid little ideology. It starts with education. It is Fascist education, in the following way. In a study into Palestinian textbooks called “From Nationalist Battle to Religious Conflict: New 12th Grade Palestinian Textbooks Present a World Without Israel”, it was found that text books in schools throughout Palestine, teach:

….repeatedly reject Israel’s right to exist, present the conflict as a religious battle for Islam, teach Israel’s founding as imperialism, and actively portray a picture of the Middle East, both verbally and visually, in which Israel does not exist at all. The following description of Israel’s founding represents the dominant dogma about Israel in Palestinian schoolbooks: Defining Israel’s founding as a “catastrophe unprecedented in history,” “a theft perpetrated by “Zionist gangs,” together with numerous other hateful descriptions of Israel as “colonial imperialist” and “racist”, compounded by the presentation of the conflict as a religious war, leaves no latitude for students to have positive or even neutral attitudes towards Israel. This negative imagery and religious packaging are compounded by hateful presentations of Israeli policy. The young students are imbued with a Palestinian identity as “victims” just by virtue of Israel’s existence. The well-meaning student is left with no logical justification or religious option to accept Israel as a neighbor or to seek coexistence. Given the total rejection of Israel’s right to exist, on nationalistic and religious grounds, Palestinian terror against Israel since Israel’s founding in 1948 is defined as: “resistance … acts of most glorious heroism.”[17] PA educators teach that fighting Israel is not merely a territorial conflict, but also a religious battle for Islam. The schoolbooks define the conflict with Israel as “Ribat for Allah” – “one of the actions related to Jihad for Allah, and it means: Being found in areas where there is a struggle between Muslims and their enemies”

This has absolutely nothing to do with the West. We may have funded fundamentalists in the past for short sighted anti-communist reasons. We may have trained them. And we are responsible for encouraging their growth. We did not create them. The victim card, the refusal to accept you might be to blame at all, is very Fascist because it helps add credit to the notion that your cause is ‘right’ and those on the outside must be wrong. It is actually a tactic the EDL use often. To add to that, the education that promotes a victim-like mentality, does so in conjunction with promoting hatred, in the above case toward the Jewish people. An easy target. Create a false enemy to rally a mass movement. Fascist reasoning. And i’m sure you do not need me to point out the obvious link between the suggestion of a sort of Jewish conspiracy, and the literature coming out of 1930s Germany.

My intense lack of respect for Islam (note; not a lack of respect for individual muslims. I believe you should be free to practice your faith in private whenever you wish, regardless of the Country you reside) stems from the apparent demand for respect, without actually offering a reason why it should be respected especially when the passages concerning the fate of nonbelievers such as myself are so insulting and offensive anyway. How dare Islam demand respect from me, when it condemns me to horrific eternal punishment simply for my lack of faith:

Allah has, surely, cursed the disbelievers, and has prepared for them a blazing fire,
Wherein they will abide forever. They will find therein no friend, nor helper.

Sura 33:65 – 66

We shall let them live for a while and then shall drag them to the scouge of the fire.

Sura 2:126

Allah is an enemy to unbelievers.

Sura 2:98
Now, I didn’t ask to be made the enemy of ‘Allah’. He made it that way. And so I have to ask, why on Earth should I respect my enemy? He apparently has nothing but eternal torture for me, which is perfectly fine (the rather pathetic excuse from Muslims about these passages is; “Well you don’t believe in Hell, so it doesn’t matter“…. the fact that billions of people who don’t know me, think I deserve eternal punishment is disgusting enough, thank you) but if you draw a cartoon, you’re offensive? What a crock of shit. It goes on too. Unbeliever bigotry: 2:85, 2:154, 2:114, 2:162, 2:175, 2:24, 3:12, 3:19. Respect it? No. It is a disgrace. It is a cancer. Taught to kids, it perpetuates division. It is no different to anti-Semitic Nazi literature. One must note that Islamic fascism – that is, Islam based fundamentally on the teachings of the Koran – is poisonous.

I think it is important for anti-fascist groups to step up and not be afraid to speak out against all varieties of fascism. The EDL represent a Nationalist fascism. They are the product of a World system based on the continual tug of war between the concept and culture of previously devised pre-capitalist Nation States and the concept of Capitalism itself. People like Choudhary and in fact, most modern Muslims to one extent (whether they claim offense at any criticism, thus attacking the very foundation of freedom of speech, or they promote widely fundamentalist Islamic principles) are the product of an outdated Holy book that preaches imperialism and war at its very core. Nationalist Fascism exists. We must distinguish between those who are proud to be a certain Nationality, and those who promote Nationalist Fascist agendas. Similarly, it must be said that Islamofascism exists too. We must distinguish between those Muslims who are simply privately practising their faith, and those who wish to promote a mixing of Islam and politics; these are fascists. Those of us who consider ourselves children of the enlightenment, should be vigilant against both vicious menaces.

The science of the Koran

Science-in-hindsight, is what the Koran should be called. Very vague ‘science’ at that. It is a book that you can find obscure verses and claim scientific understanding….. after the science has already discovered something. Like when people suggested Nostradamus predicted 9/11…. but were only able to make the connection after 9/11. The Koran is similar… wait until something is known, and then claim Islam knew it all along. This isn’t science, this is absurd opportunism.

I was first introduced to Islam’s claims on scientific advancement, and forethought, when listening to the Muslim speaker, Hamza Tzortzis try to point to the Koran’s description of mountains as proof that the Holy book is divine. He claimed that there is no way Mohammad could have known that mountains act as ‘pegs’ – as claimed in the Koran – at that time. This refers to the fact that mountains extend downwards into the upper mantle of the Earth. The moment he said it, the Muslim observers in the room were taken in, as if he’d just proven the existence of God. They were awed by his vision. Sadly, they were also woefully misinformed and manipulated (which is of course, the job of the religious preacher). The Koran in this instance, states:

“Have We not made the earth as a wide expanse, And the mountains as pegs?”

- Typically vague, but also wrong. Clearly Allah is asking a rhetorical question. If an answer were permitted, it would be an unequivocal ‘no’. Though Islam Guide.com thinks the answer is a definitive yes backed by modern science.

Modern earth sciences have proven that mountains have deep roots under the surface of the ground and that these roots can reach several times their elevations above the surface of the ground. So the most suitable word to describe mountains on the basis of this information is the word ‘peg,’ since most of a properly set peg is hidden under the surface of the ground. The history of science tells us that the theory of mountains having deep roots was introduced only in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

- All of the above, simply isn’t true. A mountain is not stabilising anything, it holds nothing together. It is like a human in water, part is above the surface, part is below, but you wouldn’t refer to the part of the body below the surface as a peg. It simply floats. Likewise, a mountain simply floats on the mantle.
Islam-guide.com continues its plague of ignorance, with the conclusion:

Likewise, the modern theory of plate tectonics holds that mountains work as stabilizers for the earth.

I recall my science lessons at school, my geography lessons of which I retained information from, to the abandonment of all mathematical teaching, which I quickly learned to discard through pure hatred of the subject. I recall that Volcanoes do not extend as ‘pegs’. Contractional tectonics also form mountains – the Appalachians for example, are definitely not ‘pegs’. The Sierra Navada mountain range has mountains created by what is known as fault block mountains, which are formed when rocks slide through the slopes of the Earth’s crusts. None of which act at all as stabilizers. To claim so, would get a huge roar of laughter from the scientific community.

The reason that the Koran refers to mountains as “pegs” is for it’s next claim:

And He has set firm mountains in the earth so that it would not shake with you… (Quran, 16:15)

Now, islam-guide.com again tries to, rather embarrassingly, explain this quote, and link it to modern science:

Mountains also play an important role in stabilizing the crust of the earth.4 They hinder the shaking of the earth.

- Firstly, they don’t hinder the shaking of the Earth. In fact, mountains are formed by the shaking of the Earth. Secondly, that isn’t what the Koran says. It states quite unequivocally that mountains will ensure the World that the Earth will NOT shake with you, in any way. Well, tell that to the people of Japan. An Earthquake so strong, the island of Honshu was moved eight feet eastward. If Allah had intended for mountains to prevent the Earth from shaking, he failed, miserably.

Often, I have been told by the religious faithful that their Holy Book contains advance science that humanity, at the time of writing the Holy Book, could not possibly have known.

Followers of Islam, more so than Christianity or Judaism in this instance, claim their book is filled with advanced scientific knowledge. To the believer, it’s somewhat of an assurance that their scripture is anything but a book of delusions and vicious hatreds. To the unbeliever, its poor attempt to break the increasing truths offered by science.

Every claim of scientific advancement in the Koran, is either too ambiguous to take seriously, already knowledge widely accepted at the time, or just plain wrong. It is extraordinary for Islamic scholars to claim that their Holy Book holds any sort of scientific truth. A very quick critical analysis of the Koran, and of scientific knowledge already known, long before Mohammad’s time, proves that the Koran offers nothing new. It is beyond irrational to claim it does.

For example:

“Seest thou not that Allah merges Night into Day And He merges Day into Night?” [31:29]

- This, according to Way to Allah.com is, quite bizarrely, proof that the Koran held the knowledge of the Earth’s spherical shape:

Merging here means that the night slowly and gradually changes to day and vice versa. This phenomenon can only take place if the earth is spherical. If the earth was flat, there would have been a sudden change from night to day and from day to night.

- Well, why didn’t the Koran say that the Earth is spherical, if that’s what it meant? As opposed to a deeply ambiguous suggestion? Not only that, but it is wrong. The Earth spinning on its axis is what creates the illusion of day and night, not “Allah”. I cannot imagine a reputable astronomer or physicist would phrase the day turning into night, as a God merging the two together.
If we are going to take deeply ambiguous statements and claim they are proof of scientific advancement, with respect to the Earth’s shape, then we must be consistent:

[15:19] And the earth We have spread out like a carpet; set thereon mountains firm and immovable; and produced therein all kinds of things in due balance.

- This seems to suggest that the Earth is flat, like a carpet, and that Mountains cannot in any way move.
Not only is the idea of a flat Earth scientifically wrong, it was even known to be wrong by the time the Koran was written. It offers no new insight, it simply offers an idea that was defunct around the 3rd Century BC. About 800 years before the Koran. Aristarchus of Samos suggested the Sun was the centre of the Universe, in the 3rd Century BC; this piece of wisdom was truly way ahead of its time. Aristarchus offers us a glimpse into scientific reality on a scale that, 800 years later, the Koran hadn’t even came close to, and Aristarchus certainly didn’t claim divine revelation for his predictions. Unsurprisingly, flat Earth predictions were borne out of Ancient Mesopotamia, and so it would seem that cosmological claims in the Koran can be viewed as earlier traditions coming out of Mesopotamia thousands of years prior to the Koran. Heavens, Firmament, great deep, pillars, the concept of the Earth being flat like a carpet, all this nonsense can also found in the Bible. Educated people knew the Earth was round, as envisaged by Ptolemy and before him, Aristotle, long before the Koran; which still seems to suggest that Earth is flat.

I’m not the only one who suggests that the Koran says the Earth is flat. Tafsir al-Jalalayn, a prominent exegeses of the Koran that still holds much importance, 600 years after it was written, states quite openly:

” … and his saying sutihat makes it obvious that the earth is flat, and this is certified by Ulama’ ash-shar’a (the shari’a theologians), not a globe as it is said by ahlul-hay’a (the laymen).”

Let’s for one second accept that the Koran states that the Earth is egg shaped (this translation, is rather new), is this new to the Koran? Well, no. Let’s note that before becoming a Prophet, Muhammad was a merchant. A trader. He had contact with different cultures, and would most definitely have come into contact with ideas especially those coming out of Greece. The Greeks knew the Earth was round in the 6th Century BC. Plato taught students that the Earth was a sphere. Aristotle’s incredible evidence based in astronomy was way ahead of its time, predating Islam by a millennium. Aristotle noted that the shadow of the Earth on the Moon during a lunar eclipse, is round. Eratosthenes even attempted to work out the Earth’s circumference, 700 years before Muhammad’s time. These great Greek scientific leaders, have seemingly had their brilliance hijacked by Islam, which claims their achievements as their own.

A simple observation of Greek history, finds that by the time that the Koran sprung up, Greek cosmology and culture had spread as far as Afghanistan and even India, having penetrated Arabia centuries previous.

Much like the Nostradamus obsessives, believers in the Koran cannot predict a new scientific discovery, until after the discovery is made. They then re-translate their Holy Book, and surprise! “We were right all along!” Fans of Nostradamus will only assign a prediction of his, after an event has taken place. It is weak reasoning, and it certainly proves absolutely nothing. If the Angel Gabriel genuinely did present Mohammad with scientific knowledge written in the Koran, then the Angel Gabriel was less knowledgable in the 7th Century, than Aristotle was, 1000 years earlier. I’m not sure that’s too good an advert for Heaven.

On the subject of taking the translation too far, and just inventing their own translation from the original, to suit objections, there is one doing the rounds that amuses me greatly. The claim is that the Koran actually accurately describes the Big Bang, here:

It is We Who have built the universe with (Our creative) power, and, verily, it is We Who are steadily expanding it. (Surat adh-Dhariyat: 47)

- The problem here is, the experts claim that this isn’t actually what the original translation says. The translation, according to the the Centre for Muslim-Jewish engagement at the University of California, the verse actually reads:

Yusuf Ali: With power and skill did We construct the Firmament: for it is We Who create the vastness of space.
Pickthal: We have built the heaven with might, and We it is Who make the vast extent (thereof).
Shakir: And the heaven, We raised it high with power, and most surely We are the makers of things ample.

- This is clearly vastly different from the more modern translation. The constant use of the phrases “heavens and Earth” echoes the same offering from the Bible and other ancient sources, which considered the universe to consist pretty much entirely of the Earth and heaven, so it is unsurprising that the Koran mentions them together, all the time. The Koran, again, proves to be a product of its time. If it is divine, it is horribly lazy of its creator. The Koran is pretty conclusive with its cosmology; the Earth is flat, there are seven heavens, and it is geocentric.

Another favourite of the Muslim community, is to quote the Koran’s claims on embryology:

And indeed We created man out of an extract of clay. (12) Thereafter We made him as a Nutfah in a safe lodging. (13) Then We made the Nutfah into a clot (a piece of thick coagulated blood), then We made bones, then We clothed the bones with flesh, and then We brought it forth as another creation. So Blessed is Allâh, the Best of creators.[] (14)

- This is one of those instances where the Koran is not vague. It claims that man is made from a clot of congealed blood. Whilst being entirely wrong, the moulding together of a drop of blood, with embryology already existed, is not new to the Koran, and was quite obviously stolen by Muhammad, from the Babylonian Enuma Elish tablet. When you copy something from another source, and the other source is entirely wrong, thus making your claim entirely wrong, then it is clear your book is not divine.

The quote from the Koran also claims that the bones come first. Nutfah by the way, means sperm, in the best possible translation into English. To be precise, nutfatun amshaajin means a mixed drop of sperm. It doesn’t refer to the female ovum, in any such translation (and believe me, those who believe that the Koran contains scientific truth, like to say, when questioned about the vague, ambiguous, and wrong statements in the Koran, that it can be translated differently; they only tend to play this card when their first translation is quite obviously wrong).
The word used for blood clot, is alaqa. This word has been translated into ‘blood clot’ by Maulana Muhammad Ali, in 1951, Muhammad Zafrulla Khan in 1971, the Supreme Sunni and Shii Councils of the Republic of Lebanon in 1980, Hamidullah in 1981, and Indonesian Department of Religious Affairs in 1984. It’s pretty obvious that Alaqa is best translated to mean blood clot. The problem with this is, there is no stage in human development where the fetus is a clot of blood. It is just false science.

When it comes to the joining together of male sperm, and the female egg. Perhaps the Koran is unique and shows great forethought and revelation? Well, no. The Hanbali scholar Ibn Qayyim, in his book Kitab al-tibyan fi aqsam al-qur’an, gives us a statement from the lips of Mohammad himself:

He is created of both, the semen of the man and the semen of the woman. The man’s semen is thick and forms the bones and the tendons. The woman’s semen is fine and forms the flesh and blood.

- Quite obviously, this is wrong. The “great” Prophet, is entirely wrong.

Dr Basim Musallam Director of the Centre of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge says:

“Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen were as much a part of Middle Eastern Arabic culture as anything else in it…… “The stages of development which the Qur’an and Hadith established for believers agreed perfectly with Galen’s scientific account….There is no doubt that medieval thought appreciated this agreement between the Qur’an and Galen, for Arabic science employed the same Qur’anic terms to describe the Galenic stages”

- Turns out, the Koran merely states something that was known centuries earlier, alongside completely wrong ‘science’. All the Koran does here, is spend a long time catching up to scientific thought at the time.

Does the reference to sperm mean that the Koran has stumbled upon a great revelation; that sperm is partly responsible for life? Well, again……. no. Not even slightly. Aristotle had pointed to Anaxagorus, a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, around 450bc, who stated that sperm came only from the male, and that the female simply provided a place of nurture. So, the “safe lodging” which Muslims say refers to the womb, was known as that, 1000 years before the Koran.

Secondly, it is important to note that bones are not created first, and slowly fleshed out. Bones and muscle tissue are created simultaneously. For a far more eloquent explanation, whilst at the same time dismissing the Islamic claim on embryology of Hamza Tzortzis, I would strongly advise watching this video, as Hamza attempts to explain embryology and the Koran’s claims on embryological truth, to……. a leading embryologist. The result is predictable; Tortzis and whomever he is with are proven wrong, and so they resort to changing the interpretation of the text, to suit the objection. Weak, weak, weak.
Needless to say, the Koran is wrong. There is never a stage in the development of a fetus, in which bones exist alone, much like there being no stage in fetus development when the fetus is a clot of blood. It would appear that we can find more information from Wikipedia on the development of a fetus, than we can from the all knowing master of the Universe. Wikipedia > Allah?

And do we really believe that we needed a 7th century divine commentary to tell humanity that sperm creates human life? The Koran, simply stole this idea from the ancient Greeks, without giving them any credit for it.
J. Needham, an author who specialised in Embryology, in his book “A History of Embryology” states the importance of Ancient Greek, Indian and Egyptian Embryology, says that the Koran’s Embryological claims were simply:

“a seventh-century echo of Aristotle and the Ayer-veda”

- It appears more and more so, that the Koran is simply a collection of religious dogma attempting to claim the forethought of secular science as espoused by great minds like Aristotle, as its own. It is similar to when a girl in my Politics seminar tried to claim that Christianity invented Democracy. Religion trying to latch onto human advancement, and claim it as its own, should be treated with the contempt it deserves.

To summerise, the Earth is not flat, mountains do not hold the Earth down preventing it from shaking, and humans do not start out as bone, slowly fleshed out over time. A God who presents so many vague statements is bad enough, but an omniscient being presenting his creation with what seems to be drunkenly erratic commentaries on certain aspects of the World and humanity which turn out to be entirely false on the most basic of examination, is a God that not only should not be taken seriously, but should never have any sort of political power over the workings of society, and should be challenged by every free thinking human being, at every possible opportunity. That is how humanity advances beyond primitive dogma.

There is absolutely no scientific credibility laying in the pages of the Koran.

The burden of proof

It seems apparent from early on in the history of the Church, that the existence of a Christian God was not disputed. The arguments and the philosophical debate seemed irrelevant. It simply gave many people who were already becoming suspicious of the Polytheistic system forced upon them by Rome, a chance to reassert control over their lives, and a way to escape and hide in a World of their own. A sense of individuality apart from Rome.

Doctrine became more important than spirituality and truth. Bishop Victor of Rome, around 190ad decided when Easter would be celebrated. He came up against opposition from a sect called the Quatrodecimens who insisted on celebrating Easter on Jewish passover. Victor demanded uniformity. The Catholic Church was becoming powerful very early on, and any descent from its ranks, was met with swift punishment and calls of heresy. Many gnostic groups felt the full force of the Catholic Church’s iron fist. The truth was that many different Christian sects existed. Some didn’t even acknowledge the resurrection. Many didn’t believe that Jesus was born of a virgin. There could only be one sect that reigned victorious; not because of any divine power, but because it had friends in very high and rich places. The Catholic Church spread its message violently and with threat of severe punishment, for centuries proceeding the early years of the Church. Islam is experiencing much the same attempts to monopolise knowledge and debate in Eastern Nations now. If you dare to question the tenets of Islam in a Nation like Iran, you better run for your life. That is the only reason organised religion is perpetuated. The existence of God and the philosophical arguments surrounding his supposed transcendental nature, were not explored pre-Enlightenment, through fear alone, not reason.

Anyway, today I had a short discussion with a Muslim guy who told me that as an Atheist, I could not disprove the existence of a God.

There were two problems I can see instantly with this statement.

Firstly, this is entering the realms of Deism. It is true, I cannot disprove a creator. But a creator has no attributes, and so it takes a rather large leap to get from a creator, to the Christian or Islamic God. A creator could be anything; an infinitely good creator, an infinitely evil creator, two creators, a creator whose final act before dying, was to create the universe, a creator that created the universe but then stepped back. This is entirely different from a God of religion. To prove a religion is worthy of public power, it must first prove a creator who is infinitely good, infinitely knowledgeable. And so we are given the old cosmological argument provided by Aquinas, and currently being used constantly by William Lane Craig in every debate he has:
1. Every thing has either been caused to exist by something else or else exists uncaused.
2. Not every thing has been caused to exist by something else.
3. Therefore, at least one thing is itself uncaused.
The problem being, that point two is conjecture, rather than truth. Aquinas’ logic is limited by time itself. If existence is infinite, then everything that exists has indeed been caused by that which came before. Fortunately for those of us who languish in unbelief; not everything that exists, has a cause. On the subatomic level, protons appear spontaneously and cease to exist just as quickly. The entire study of Quantum Mechanics backs this up. Both Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss attest to this.

Even if Aquinas’ logic is applied to the existence of a God, it is impossible to assign the logic to the existence of a God of organised religion, because Aquinas’ God could have been the first cause, but has had nothing to do with existence ever since. Perhaps it was more than one first cause. But obviously this is irrelevant because no philosopher would take the old cosmological argument seriously any more.

There is a more rounded version and a more modern version of the cosmological argument that is early Islamic in origin, though taken from earlier traditions. But even this argument, is weak. The Kalam Argument as it is known states that:
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
It is weak because of how it is worded. The language is its downfall. “Everything that begins to exist has a cause“. This places a limit to “everything“. Everything…. that begins to exist. Which automatically excludes the idea of something that doesn’t begin to exist, i.e – a God. It is trying to prove God, by just presuming God already exists as something that didn’t begin to exist, and just existed any way. The Islamic Kalam argument does not point out where the evidence is for that which did not begin to exist. It is trying to persuade the reader that God is already a known. He is transcendental and so already exists. Almost clever, but not actually.

It is also limited by the constraints of time. Something cannot ‘begin’ unless time exists. Since time sprang into existence at the point of the big bang, there is no ’cause’ before. Because before doesn’t exist. The entire chain of cause and effect began at the point of the big bang. So, the premise of the Kalam argument is wrong. It follows then, that the rest of it, is wrong.

On the cosmological argument, the Muslim guy tried to suggest to me, that the Koran offers evidence that science has only just managed to discover. He quoted the Koran:

Then He turned to the sky, when it was still gas, and said to it, and to the earth, “Come into existence, willingly or unwillingly.” They said, “We come willingly.”

Quite how this relates to science is beyond me. As far as I can discern, a God looked at some Gas and said “make the Earth”. I’m pretty sure that isn’t what Stephan Hawking is trying to suggest. It is not a very persuasive argument to say the very very least. Even then, the Koran is saying nothing new. Even for the time period. The Ancient Greeks, 1000 years before the Koran, were theorising about atoms, gas particles and even evolution. The Greeks had guessed that the atom was the building block of everything, long before Islam sprang into existence. It would be wholly arrogant for Islam to take credit for knowledge that pre-dates it, by about a millennium. That being said, the Koran doesn’t mention atoms. It mentions gas (doesn’t go into much detail, unsurprisingly for a Religious text). And so, is wrong. Scientists would be ashamed to call this verse scientific in any way whatsoever.

The cosmological argument, in every way, fails.
Even if it didn’t fail, the cosmological argument does not imply a personal God of any sort. That is problem number one with the statement “Prove God doesn’t exist“.

The second problem and most important, is the burden of proof.
As an Atheist, I did not start by saying “God doesn’t exist“. I simply hear a religious person say “God does exist” and I reject the notion, based on the lack of evidence to support the assertion that the religious person has made.

The burden of proof is not on me to disprove the existence of a God, because it is logically impossible to do so. It would be equally as impossible to ask a religious person to prove that there isn’t a monkey sitting on my head, that turns invisible whenever someone else looks at me. They would not logically be able to disprove it, because it is an assertion that I have made without the use of evidence. The burden of proof is lodged firmly with me. If I am to make an extraordinary claim, and use it to justify horrendous abuses and prejudices (the appalling and frankly moronic and dangerous way religious people treat homosexuality), then they MUST provide extraordinary evidence.

Proof against an assertion with no characteristics or evidence, is logically impossible. I should not be expected to provide evidence for denying an assertion. The person making the assertion should provide the evidence.
So the burden of proof is not on Atheists, it is on the believers. And none of them can offer any proof whatsoever. It comes back round to the original cosmological argument, especially with reference to the Kalam argument. A God that cannot be seen or heard or have any kind of human attributes attached to it, and was the first cause so must exist outside of the realm that He created (if I make a cup, I am not part of the cup, I am apart from the cup), cannot be disproved as such. I cannot possibly, as an Atheist summon up enough arrogance to presume I can disprove something that according to those who make the assertion, exists beyond the realm of human knowledge. We are all subject to the limitations of time and space and we cannot transcend that. That goes for religious people also.

And so it stands, the burden of proof is not on me, it is on the religious person.
Needless to say, the Muslim guy I was speaking to briefly, didn’t answer.

Darwin is greater than Jesus and Muhammad

A couple of my Muslim friends wont let me touch their Koran. They think that because I don’t believe in their silly little fairy tale, I am somehow unworthy of touching their book of nonsense. It is sacred apparently. I have therefore took it upon myself to ban all my religious friends from touching my copy of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. I do this, because in the book, Darwin applies logic and evidence to come up with the greatest revelation the World has ever known. This revelation wasn’t given by a vicious dictatorial God/Allah in some obscure corner of a desert to a man from a nation of angry warring illiterate tribes who were convinced for centuries that the Earth was the centre of the universe and executed people for heresy if they thought otherwise. This revelation was given by nature, as pure fact. Fact is something both the Bible and the Koran seem to be lacking, and so I ban them from touching my copy of the Origin of Species, because they are unworthy of reading anything other than pure fiction. They are though, more than welcome to read my copy of The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe. Although I fear they may take it literally and start ordering the immediate deaths of anyone who says a bad word against Aslan.

It is interesting what people find sacred. Religious books, I prefer to laugh at. They are pointless, archaic, and worthy of ridicule. They should not be taken seriously, and people in a position of power should not have to swear on them, when they take office. It is apparently all about devotion to God.

God, or Allah, or whatever name he has to go by (Apollo, Yahweh, El) is to be obeyed at all times. Prayed too constantly, sang about, worshipped endlessly, feared, loved, and never disobeyed on fear of burning for eternity in utter pain (but he loves you, remember that). God is a dictator. Pretty fucking evil at that.

The painter Caravaggio, one of my favourite painters of all time, paints a beautiful baroque style piece depicting Abraham on the verge of sacrificing his son Isaac by the word of God, as an angel appears to stop him, revealing it was all just a test to see how devoted Abraham was to God. The contrast of light and dark is beautifully striking in the painting. But the subject of the painting is clearly Isaac. Which is great, because Christians tend to ignore the importance of Isaac in this story. This story doesn’t portray God as all loving, or Abraham as a great devoted Prophet of God. It portrays God as a dictatorial maniac, and Abraham as insane.
In the painting, as in my mind, Abraham has absolutely no emotion on his face. He is a man possessed. By contrast, Isaac is terrified. His dad has bound his hands behind his back, is holding him face down on a stone alter, and is about to gut him…. because God demanded it. When I have children, if I am told to kidnap my child, tie him/her to a stone alter and stab him/her to death, for God, I will happily tell you, no matter how sacred your God may be, he is a despicable cunt.

Child sacrifice is prominent throughout the Old Testament. The king of Moab sends a burnt offering of his dead son up to God. It works too, because his nemesis is swiftly dealt with:

Then he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt-offering upon the wall. And there came great wrath upon Israel; and they departed from him, and returned to their own land.

God appears to endorse child murder. As long as it’s in his name. The book of Exodus seems to confirm God’s need for people to kill their children as a sign of devotion to him:

“You shall not delay to offer from the fullness of your harvest and from the outflow of your presses. The first-born of your sons you shall give to me.”

Less brutal, but just as despicable is both Judaism and Islam’s use of circumcision. I wont refer to it as circumcision for the remainder of this blog, it shall henceforth be known as child genital mutilation. According to Jewish law, a child should be genitally mutilated soon after birth. It is non-negotiable. The child has no say. He hasn’t even decided if he believes the bullshit his parents are forcing on him, before he is mutilated. It strikes me as utterly abhorrent, and worthy of prison (if I were to go out, and cut a bit off a kid’s penis, I am pretty sure i’d be thrown in prison and Daily Mail readers would call for the death penalty to be bought back for monsters like me), but instead, child genital mutilation is entirely legal purely because the cult that practices it, has quite a few members. No evidence for their logic, just strength in numbers. A logical fallacy if ever I saw one.

Islam is the largest group of people in the World that practice genital mutilation. The BBC website says:

Some Muslims see circumcision as a preventive measure against infection and diseases.

A better preventative measure against infection and disease, would be to recognise that the entire study and practice of modern medicine and biology, is based entirely and necessarily on Evolutionary theory, not on out dated, unnecessary, dirty, despicable rituals. Now, people who actively and happily mutilate babies, both Jewish and Muslim, are not bad people. Which suggests that their blind obedience to fairy tales leads them to make utterly absurd decisions. They are influenced by the illogical and the dangerous.

But that’s what happens when as a divine being, you spend 98,000 years of human existence ignoring them, and pop up in the last 2000 years, with a book of ridiculous rules. A book that you don’t bother giving to a society that has advanced to the stage where its population are largely literate and educated (China), but instead, you give it to crazed uneducated, illiterate tribesman in the middle of the fucking desert. God massively misjudged his original audience.

On the website Bible.ca, they have a page called “Darwin was wrong”. I read the first two paragraphs and sat wondering how anyone could be so ignorant and ridiculous. Then I noticed they were religious Americans. So I put 2 and 2 together.
Their website says:

If a fair maiden kisses a frog which instantly changes into a handsome prince, we would call it a fairy tale. But if the frog takes 40 million years to turn into a prince, we call it evolution. Time is the evolutionist’s magic wand. Fairy tales come in many forms!

- Apparently a talking snake in a magical garden of a man made out of dust and a woman made out of a rib of the man does not come under the whole idea of ‘fairy tale’. How ironic. Secondly. That isn’t what evolution says at all. No one has ever suggested a frog can become a human. A frog is just as evolved today, as you or I. A frog has adapted to its surroundings, and thus survived, and evolved to deal with change. 99% of all species throughout time have not been as lucky. I would happily start believing in God if a frog suddenly became a man. Stop misrepresenting Darwin, you absolute cretins.

Darwin’s theory of evolution says that over millions of years simple life forms (one celled creatures) slowly evolved into complex life forms (fish), and that one kind of animal evolved into another kind (ape to man)

No one has ever said a chimp suddenly became a businessman or politician (although George Bush exists, so I might be wrong). Man has simply adapted to changes in surroundings and climate over the millions of years of time on Earth, to situations and to the necessity of survival. We have evolved both biologically and socially over many millions of years. We are descended from the ape family, but we did not suddenly become human from ape, in the same way that your great grandad did not suddenly become you.

It isn’t even a debate any more. It is fact. Evolution is a fact. Natural Selection is the theory, the model behind Evolution. But Evolution itself is fact. Religion should be neglected; pushed aside as dangerous dogma and outdated superstition that has no place in the modern World.

I am taking quite a swipe at religion today. Most people on here know I hate religion and all it stands for. I hate its divisive nature. I hate its indoctrination of children. I hate that it has held science and discovery and human advancement back centuries. I hate its power. I hate when its members start getting violent and demanding special attention. I hate that I will get death threats to my email if I say “Isn’t God/Allah absolutely inhumane and a little bit shit“. I hate that I am supposed to respect religion. I don’t. It disgusts me. I say this, because both the books of Christianity and Islam condemn me, for being Atheist.

I was actually quite reassured when I read this verse in the Koran:

You shall not accept any information, unless you verify it for yourself. I have given you the hearing, the eyesight, and the brain, and you are responsible for using them.

On the surface, this seems like the most important, and logical verse, in any religious book anywhere. It seems to be suggesting that you are your own person, free from the influence of others. Think for yourself. Come to your own conclusions. Don’t be dictated too. Almost Atheist thinking right there in the Koran.
So, following that rule, I have verified for myself, after reading the Bible in its entirety, and much of the Koran, as well as The Origin of Species, God is not Great, The Selfish Gene, and knowing that my dog is the result of mixed breeding, and that I am losing my hair at 24 years old, just like my dad did…. that the Koran and the Bible are both entirely nonsensical, and Evolution outranks them both. Great. I used my own evidence. I did what the Koran told me too. Allah must love me for this.

” If you encounter those who disbelieve, you may strike the necks.”
- Koran 47:4

“Lo! the worst of beasts in Allah’s sight are the ungrateful who will not believe”
- Koran 8:55

“That (is the award), so taste it, and (know) that for disbelievers is the torment of the Fire.”
- Koran 8:14

“But as for those who disbelieve, for them is fire of hell; it taketh not complete effect upon them so that they can die, nor is its torment lightened for them. Thus We punish every ingrate. And they cry for help there, (saying): Our Lord! Release us; we will do right, not (the wrong) that we used to do. … Now taste (the flavour of your deeds), for evil-doers have no helper.”
- Koran 35:36-37

Oh….erm…… okay. So, what the verse about thinking for yourself actually meant was: Think about it, but then agree with Islam, otherwise you’re going to burn in hell, tortuously for eternity, after my followers kill you. Whilst burning in hell, we will then cry for help, from the very entity that condemned us in the first place.

The Bible isn’t much easier on us evil non-believers (by non-believers, I mean, intelligent people). Deuteronomy suggests that not only should those who don’t believe in the Christian God be put to death, but the entire town in which an Atheist (or believer in another Faith) lives, should be exterminated.

Suppose you hear in one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you that some worthless rabble among you have led their fellow citizens astray by encouraging them to worship foreign gods. In such cases, you must examine the facts carefully. If you find it is true and can prove that such a detestable act has occurred among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock.
- Deuteronomy 13:13-19

They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and soul; and everyone who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, was to be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman.
- 2 Chronicles 15:12-13

Forgive me if I fail to respect religions that condemn me to the worst kind of punishment possible. I am clearly their enemy. So fuck them.

God/Allah/Hitler (they are all very similar) demands complete obedience. Which begs the question, what the fuck is the point of life? I despise these doctrines, and yet I’m supposed to follow them avidly or be eternally punished? What a horrible life. Atheism does not demand anything of the sort. We do not claim that you have to be moral because you might be punished in an afterlife if you aren’t. We say morality is based on social evolution and the need to survive.

We as a species are incredible. Morality comes from us, and nothing else. We do not need a vengeful lunatic fairy in the sky to make us perform good deeds. We do it for the sake of good, not for the sake of God. We do not need silly superstitions and rituals in an attempt to please a vindictive bastard in the sky, in the hope that we might go to a nice place when we die. Humanity is great. The discovery that Darwin made, is far more stunning and awe-inspiring (as well as truthful) than anything religion has ever had to offer. The name “Darwin” should be taught to children and heard in classrooms across the World, years before the names “Jesus” and “Muhammad” are uttered.

I would like to see Temple Mount in Jerusalem destroyed and replaced with a statue of Darwin, because Darwin makes the prophets of the two warring religions, look like amateurs in comparison.

I get bored

At work, when it is quiet, it is supremely quiet. I get bored quite easily. I usually take a book with me. Purely because the work itself is mind numbingly pointless. There is no social good. It is not improving my sense of self or helping to achieve any goal I have. So I take a book. However, yesterday I forgot to take a book. So I tried to concentrate on other things. Unfortunately, I was in a bit of a mood because earlier in the day, I discovered I had no milk to make tea. Being English, and having no milk for tea, is an horrific situation to find ones self in. Even now, I look back, and it makes me want to weep. When the Pope’s representative told the press that the UK was like the Third World (I watched that on my HDTV, which sits next to the XBox, and Laptop, near the second PC, in the window which over looks our two cars…… perhaps Bob Geldof should do a World concert for me and my obvious poverty stricken status), he meant with regard to lack of milk for tea, i’m sure of it. I had no milk for tea. Malnourished Ugandan orphans certainly have no milk for tea; quite clearly a link. We should listen to the Catholic Church more. They make SO much sense. So obviously it played on my mind all evening, to the point where I think I may have gone a little bit insane.

And this is the product of that insanity:

Contrary to the conclusion you may have drawn, I am not studying fine art.
I even gave him some new happy disco shoes, to celebrate.
I was trying to convey how my mood would change for the better, if I were to have some milk at home. Today I have milk at home. I thought this would make me happy. I even prepared to indulge in a happy dance.  And it did make me happy. For a second. But then, I spotted flying toward me, a flying spider. As if regular spiders aren’t horrendous enough. It had fangs, and blood dripping from them. It had a sting the size of a butchers knife pointed at me, and long hairy legs. Okay so I may be exaggerating. It probably wasn’t even a spider. They don’t fly. But this was huge. I kept my eye on it the entire time I made a cup of tea, and moved around the room methodically avoiding its evil gaze (when I wrote ‘evil gaze’ I giggled childishly because it sounds like ‘evil gays’. I’m not even Catholic. Or Right Winged American. Homophobic humour, I should get a job at Fox). I knew what it wanted, and what it wanted was to kill me. I am now locked in my bedroom, it is probably waiting outside. Although, it feels like it is on me somewhere. The same feeling I get if I walk face first into a cobweb. I presume the spider is on me. That is how this feels. It is probably waiting for me to sleep, and then it’ll bite me.  I will have to leave and enter my house from now on, through my second storey window, via a rope that I will craft out of old clothes. That is how serious this situation has become.

Anyway, after calming down a little, and deciding that having no milk is actually no big issue. I thought I would enter the realms of political and religious satire. And this is the result:

What an entirely pointless blog entry.

Tao Te Ching: Violence

When I was 19, I first came across Tao Te Ching and it’s teachings. I didn’t read it as a guide to my own life, simply as a work of literature; a beautiful work of literature. At around this time, I read the Old Testament and a part of the Koran. As works of art go, the Old Testament and the Koran, are genius. Fantastic stories that transcend time. It amazed me that I was reading words that have been read by great scholars and kings for generations. What the Bible and the Koran didn’t do, was provide me with answers. Nor did they act as a moral guide. I consider them to be war manuals, intolerant hate filled nonsense that may have applied to a time long past, but has no room in society today.

Tao Te Ching is different. It fits my liberal way of thinking, whilst also providing a beautiful moral guide that has more relevance today than it ever has before. I cannot possibly live by it’s guide, because i’m far too materialistic and Western, engrossed in Capitalism and things that do not matter, to be able to forget it all and live a Taoist lifestyle, but as ethical systems go, Taoism is mine. One of the passages I come to read over and over, is the passage on violence.

“Whoever relies on the Tao in governing men
doesn’t try to force issues
or defeat enemies by force of arms.
For every force there is a counterforce.
Violence, even well intentioned,
always rebounds upon oneself.”
- Tao Te Ching

I’ve always been aware of street gangs around the City that I live. I never associated with anyone in them, because it seemed their lives were meaningless and irreconcilable with my philosophy on life. Whenever i’d hear stories about fights that my friends had got into, i’d think “why?” …… “He called me a cunt, so I smacked him!“…… well i’m sure that did the trick! I’m sure he doesn’t think you’re a cunt any more!…….. and more often than not, it backfired, and they’d end up getting the living shit kicked out of them. Violence for me, was for weak minded, insecure idiots. It did nothing for me, and I hate associating with people who live like that. “I’m going to knock him ooout!”….. shut up you moron.
The term “governing men” to me, refers to anyone in any group considered the leader. I always felt great respect for those who could fight with their minds and their words.

Violence used always comes back to haunt those who use it. America use force across the globe to further their business empire. Be it Shell or Exxon in the oil fields of Iraq, or Coca Cola draining the water supplies of the third world for financial gain; eventually people start getting a little bit annoyed, and half the planet starts to plot revenge in the most sinister and deadly of ways. And then, terrorism strikes Western cities, the most evil of men think they can use violence to stop violence against the lands they were born. And so America uses violence to try to stop the violence that tried to stop the violence used against them, and a vicious, unbreakable circle is born. It doesn’t work. It never worked. It didn’t work in Iraq, it wont work with Iran.

Similarly, my fellow left wingers appear to be unable to fathom that although Israel in both Lebanon and now in Gaza have committed acts of what can only be described as genocide…….. Palestinians have also caused despicable suffering and heartache in Israel. Road side bombs or in 2004, Hamas launched a rocket that fell within feet from a school in Sderot, killing a four year old child and an Israeli man. Also in 2004, a female suicide bomber killed four and wounded twenty at the Erez Crossing in Gaza in which Hamas claimed responsibility. The list goes on. Where were the protesters when Hamas were wreaking chaos across the World? Is the death of one or two innocents, not worth talking about?

Violence makes the World more unsafe; violence breeds violence; violence breeds ignorance.
Suddenly Americans are seen as evil Imperialists hell bent on killing anyone who stands in their way of an unrivalled business empire. Muslims are considered inherently violent, wishing death upon anyone who says a bad word against their Prophet. It’s as if different species of human have been man made. It is forgotten that a Muslim came from nothing, much like an American came from nothing. The Pakistani came from nothing. The white Brit came from nothing. We’re all the same. We’re all human. It doesn’t matter if we chose to walk around naked, or covered in Muslim attire, we’re all from the same void.
The Muslim in Iraq is just trying to protect his home against that foreign invasion force whom he didn’t invite; the American man is just trying to make money to feed his family. Neither can be blamed for the circumstances in which he or she is born. And so it isn’t difficult to come to the conclusion that one man’s terrorist, is another man’s freedom fighter. One man’s hero, is another man’s villain. The World is built on contradiction, and whilst we’re all from the same place, we’re all so very different. Those differences should always be respected.

“
His enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.
He doesn’t wish them personal harm.
Nor does he rejoice in victory.
How could he rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?

He enters a battle gravely,
with sorrow and with great compassion,
as if he were attending a funeral.“
- Tao Te Ching

The Right to hysteria

I’m sure we as a Western society need to take responsibility of our thoughts before we make such outlandish suggestions filled with unfounded propaganda. It needs to come from both sides of the Political divide. There are those Liberals among us who will argue until they cannot argue any more, that the Bush Administration were actively involved and had funded 9/11. They will work tirelessly to find any unimportant discrepency and tie it to a mass conspiracy. It is ultimately a fatuous argument on their part.

Similarly, there are those on the Conservative side of the fence, who see a scratch on the flesh and call it a canon ball wound of great proportions. I’m talking about ‘Freedom of speech’. Conservative writers, much like Liberal writers, will not deviate from their ideology. They will insist that the opposing ideology is wrong, not just on certain issues, but on everything they stand for. A GOP Blogger Gopwire writes recently that us Liberals have a deep underlying plan to “to “hush” conservative’s so Obama and his cronnies can be free to destroy our nation as we know it.” I take great offence at this, because there is no plan to silence anyone. And it isn’t just liberals that have attacked what people consider to be their rights, throughout history. Conservatives are just as guilty. You cannot argue that one side is destroying your liberty whilst blindly supporting the same on the other side. Rhetoric as powerful as “free to destroy our nation as we know it” engages not the thoughtful brain, but the easily lead. There are those, like that particular blogger who will insist that Obama has a plan to destroy the Nation purely because his policies disagree with those of the Ideology he blindly and obediently follows. There are those who consider George Bush to have been the devil, even though those in their own Democratic camp have been failing to pay taxes, screwing the system, and generally acting rather corrupt whilst preaching ‘change’. The term “destroy our nation as we know it” is ridiculous hysteria of the worst variety.

There are those Liberals who insist that Nuclear weapons do not serve the purpose they claim to serve, and are in fact inherently evil. There are those Conservatives on the other side of the fence who believe that Nuclear Weapons are a key to National security. I agree with both. They are inherently evil, but one cannot expect to disable your Nuclear capability in the hopes that your enemy will do the same thing out of good will. It just isn’t realistic. The Liberals in this case, refuse to acknowledge that they may be wrong.

There are those Liberal bloggers who insist that Israel is disastrously evil. And whilst the actions of Israel recently, is nothing short of genocide, I cannot help but wonder why those Liberals will not step out of their ideological bearing and condemn Hamas for their wickedness and hatred since coming to power; and in fact before gaining power.

Similarly, there are those who refuse to acknowledge that Western Policy may have something to do with the rise of Extremism. They don’t “hate our freedoms” they don’t want to “destroy our way of life“, they simply hate us for how we’ve treated their Nations in the past. They think it gives them a right to fight fire with fire. We’re all in agreement that terrorism is by definition, evil. But why are we quick to label our enemies terrorists, whilst we are apparently fine with the atrocities our own Governments cause? Why are we surprised that we’re hated?

On the other hand, Conservatives are refusing to take even slight blame for the collapse of the Global economy. They will not for a second hear of the notion that a free deregulated market concept is anything but perfect. They instead, find the most obscure reasons to blame Liberals for the disaster. The Free Market ideal much like the Socialist ideal, is just that; an ideal. It doesn’t work in reality. But even when it fails, the Conservative branch will refuse to accept it.

There are those who insist that Socialism can work, regardless of the fact that where ever it’s been tried, it’s ended in a nightmare of genocide and dictatorship. There are also those who live by the wonders of the Free Market, regardless of that fact that it has left so many nations behind, drenched in indescribable poverty. Neither side will admit it’s notion is flawed. Massively flawed.

Others will live by what the media says, unquestionable in their acquiescence. In ‘Audacity of Hope’ by Barack Obama, along with other sources, speak of an article not too long ago suggested that Guards at Guantanamo Bay had flushed Koran’s down the toilet to the dismay of Muslim inmates. The Pentagon then released a report outlining that although the Koran’s had not been flushed, the female U.S Guards had pretended to smear menstrual blood on the faces of inmates during questioning, and pissed all over the Koran and an inmate. Fox News went that day with the headline: “Pentagon finds no evidence of Koran being flushed“. I often feel anger toward Fox News reports, there bias is shameful. And yet, many people will sit and quote them on their blogs, insisting that they are right… because Bill O’Reilly said so. They do not think for themselves. They do not investigate for themselves. The presume that their bias choice of media, is entirely without fault in it’s assessments. The media has a love affair with partisanship. The people have a love affair with partisanship. That, will never change.

There are those who sport tshirts and logos with “Communism killed 30,000,000 and all I got was this lousy tshirt”, whilst failing to acknowledge the deaths of thousands under Capitalist Regimes like Pinochet’s Chile. Just because one ideology kills less innocents than another, doesn’t make it relatively moral. It just means one dictator with no ideology was much more committed to murder and genocide than the other evil dictator with no ideology. Why are we arguing that it is the fault of the ideology, rather than the tyrants who profess to be apart of that ideology?

Similarly, Obama is savaged by Republicans and conservatives for saying “You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done“. One forum dedicates a topic of conversation to this, with the Topic title being “Obama against free speech for Conservatives/Republicans/Private citizens“. No he isn’t. He’s merely stating an opinion. Which is surely, his freedom of speech right? Freedom of speech does not mean the freedom to say whatever you want to say without consequence. Limbaugh has called Obama “The magic Negro“; he’s said “I hope Obama fails“; Of African Americans, he said “They’re 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?“; and he once referred to Obama as “Osama Obama“. The Republicans and Conservatives did not express anger at the utter lack of respect and tact that Limbaugh has shown, they waited until Obama responded and then stood to support Limbaugh. It’s slightly unnerving when that happens. It is not supporting free speech, it is out right support for the freedom to insult and cause trouble without having to stand up to the consequences. You cannot throw such deep hate filled attacks at people and then hide behind “I’m just exercising freedom of speech!!” when you’re called up on it.

Over here in the UK recently, Dutch Freedom Party MP Geert Wilders has been denied entry to the U.K, based on the fact that he is trying to show his film linking Terrorism to the Koran, and Islam in general. It is a film filled with one side of a very complex argument. Wilders does not talk to any Muslims who strictly oppose and denounce all Terrorism in the name of their holy book. He merely sticks to the notion that the Koran and therefore Islam is evil. He fails to point out that actually, there are those who practice Islam, who are strongly opposed to Extemism. Instead, he applies his twisted logic to include all Islam. By that same logic, we could apply the Phelp’s family’s reading of Christianity, to the entire Christian nation.
There will always be excuses by those intending to defend their beliefs, which is there right to do. However, to ignore punctilious evidence that contradicts their beliefs, is disturbingly wrong.

Whilst Wilder has a right to say exactly what he believes, and it was a mistake for the British Government to ban him from the Country, it has sparked a multitude of Conservative Bloggers, who suggest that the British are now pandering to Islam because we’re afraid to offend Muslims. That whilst we allow home grown muslims to call for the slaughter of those who insult Mohammad, we don’t allow the opposite argument to take shape. They go further to claim that it is an out right attack on freedom of speech. This, in my opinion, is utterly misleading.

The suggestion that the UK Government is afraid of offending muslims is a weak one at best, given that the main issue Extemists have with the UK is that we support Israel and the war in Iraq. The fact that a Fascist MP was banned from our shores will only prove to ignite misguided Nationalists like the BNP who insist that we’re becoming a Nation pandering to Muslims. The Government cannot expect to beat the rise of the Nationalists, by banning those who may support the Nationalist cause. Nationalists can only be beaten through debate which serves to ridicule their pathetic cause. Geert Wilders himself, said of Britain “Be brave. Be a defender of free speech. If you don’t you are weak. You are cowards. Your country has already taken a big step in the direction of Islamification.” What he, the Nationalists and all those who insist that banning Wilders from British shores is a step toward the abolition of freedom of speech do not talk about, or report on their Nationalist websites filled with hate and propaganda, is that Wilders is not the only person to be banned from British shores..

Muslim cleric Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi was refused entry. He has described suicide bombers as “martyrs” and homosexuality as “a disease”.

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan barred on the grounds that his racist and anti-Semitic views could threaten public order

Now forgive me if i’m wrong, but those people are Muslims right? In fact 80 Islamic Hate Preaches are among the 230 people banned from the UK. You cannot, as the Nationalists would like to do, suggest that freedom of speech is dying purely because those who support your flawed ideology are banned from the Country, yet not make a sound the moment that those who disagree with you are banned. To truely possess freedom of speech, we must allow the hate fill muslims to be beaten by logic and reason, whilst at the same time we defeat those Fascists and Nationalists with the same logic and reason. They may be entirely wrong and flawed in their arguments, but they both have the right to say it, providing they can in fact deal with the consequences of those words.

However, it certainly doesn’t help the Islamic cause, when the protest Wilder’s film about Muslims being violent, by calling for his death.
The problem with Islam is that it cannot claim to take the moral high ground against those who attack the faith, by burning and threatening to kill those responsible for insulting it. Much like the problem with the West, in that anyone who threatens us we call “Terrorists” and yet, we fight terrorism, with terrorism. It’s one big bag of hypocrisy from every side you look. No one side has the moral high ground.

In any event, i’m derailing from the point of this blog. To suggest such a small provision is an attempt to destroy all freedom of speech; like suggesting that the Obama Stimulus is somehow equal to turning the United States of America into Soviet America is misleading and shows a lack of forethought. When Bush was doing it, no one suggested Socialism. When Guiliani’s New York debt reached record highs and spending increased by 30%, no Republican called out “SOCIALISM!”. The moment someone who happens to disagree with them does it, it’s suddenly Leninist.

Similarly, Democrats and those of us on The Left cannot legitimately attack those like the Bush Administration for it’s Free Market failure, when people like Rahm Emmanuel, who served on the board of Directors as Freddie Mac lied and cheated it’s way through scandal; is now given pretty much the top job in Washington. It isn’t change. It’s much of the same. It isn’t Socialism. It isn’t an attack on any fundamental rights, it does not require Political Drama Queens on either side of the political fence to act as if they World is falling down around them whenever the ideological tide changes slightly (ever so slightly) against them. It’s getting boring now.

“You’re wrong.“
“Why?“
“Because you’re Liberal.“
“But you’re wrong.“
“Why?“
“Because you’re Conservative.“
That’s how modern politics is. That’s how modern political bloggers write. I must concede that I too am guilty of this. We don’t care what the opposition has to offer, it will be wrong and useless and too much of the same or too Socialist before it’s even been offered. We take a point and we find evidence to back up our point whilst ignoring all evidence to the contrary. Again, I must concede that i’m guilty of this, but i’m certainly not the only one. I’m yet to read a blog or a Newspaper or the website of a Political Party who come to an equally well rounded opinion.

The Labour Party of the 1970s destroyed the lives of millions. The Conservative Parties of the 1980s and 1990s destroyed the lives of millions. The Labour Parties of 1990s and 00s are destroying the lives of millions. And suddenly we’re all taken in by the Conservative opposition. They must be better than what we already have, we all presume. But it will take another decade before that Conservative Party who will inevitably become the next Government, again, destroy the lives of millions, by which time we’ll have a New New Labour, who offer change, and then proceed to destroy the lives of millions. It’s the same shit, over and over. Do we really believe David Cameron to be any different?

I fully accept that differences in opinion and ideology and the crucial need to have all sides allowed to talk, is a gift of Democracy to the developed World. However, when both sides refuse to accept that the other side may have a point; when both sides refuse to accept how tragically wrong they have been in the past; when both sides refuse to work together rather choosing instead to push their own agenda through (Although I support the Obama Stimulus fully, I do feel Pelosi appears to have used it to her own ideological advantage, which is so desperately wrong) whilst at all times attacking limited aspects of the other side rather than accepting certain arguments they may give as valid; when all of that happens, we are not Democratic. We are two teams of political stubborn spin and twisters, hellbent on destroying the opposition regardless of how negatively it affects the Country.

By creating such deep divide based on a ‘get-one-over’ on your opponent system, we are allowing those people who make a small dent in their car sound like a hellish car crash when they relay the story on their blogs and news articles to influence the weak minds of a generation.

I do not believe Obama is either Socialist or evil. I believe he is trying to do what is best for the Country. Similarly, I believe John McCain and Sarah Palin were not evil, they simply wanted to do what was best for the Country. They just differ in how that goal is to be achieved. Suggesting either McCain or Obama have some hidden agenda, without actual evidence (And I don’t mean taking what you consider to be evidence, out of it’s original context) or adequate quotations, is deeply ignorant. And although that may be true, as Freedom of Speech would have it, those who cry SOCIALIST the moment Obama provides support for those who need it most, or the moment they cry OUT OF TOUCH the moment Sarah Palin makes a mistake when interviewed (as if she’s the only one) have the right to their hysteria.

I’m slowly becoming disillusioned with Politicians across the board in general.