This feels very wrong, police action

[Alpinestars]

AJS- said:

Fred
Never been to an EDL rally or knowingly engaged with their supporters. I met an apostate of Indian background who went to a PEGIDA March. Clearly a roaring racist because he didn't have a good word to say about Islam, despite having been brought up in the midst of all its love and tolerance. His family wanted to kill him.

My point is that I suspect certain parts of the authorities wish to stifle discussion of Islam and will use any means at their disposal to do that. I don't think this is healthy for a democratic country.

Alpinestars
Not really no. I think their language and behaviour are repellant and have done a lot of damage to a worthwhile cause. I'm sure many or even most of their members are yobs looking for a fight. But as I think you have gathered by now I do believe Islam is a violent and destructive religion which demands endless conflict with non-Muslims and a horrible way of life imposed on everyone including Muslims. It is tolerable precisely to the degree to which it is not followed, and the world would be a better place if Muhammed had gone through with his suicide attempts.

The success of the EDL and of Tommy Robinson is a direct result of the whole question of violent Islamism being pushed outside the boundaries of respectable discourse by people screaming racist.

I do have a degree of admiration for Tommy Robinson because from this fairly shabby start he has developed into someone who can make his point quite ably and intelligently.

Not sure what "not really no" means?

Do you think it is/was a racist organisation?

[TonyToniTone]

AJS- said:

Toni
If he was an apostate called Mohammed and spoke out against Islam I most certainly would. Is that still racist?

Oh come of it that anecdote is just too convenient.

[anonymous-user]

don4l said:

The Police are generally heavily regulated in how they excersise their powers.

There is a very good reason for this.

I'm not saying that I think that the police cannot be trusted to have good judgement. However, in every profession there are some bad apples. This is why we have checks and balances. This is why a jury consists of 12 people, and not just one.

I do not believe that Police should have the power to tell me to leave a city unless I am actually doing something wrong.

That's the nature of preventive powers. The balance is using them to prevent problems vs the intrusion of a person's rights. One of the oldest laws that is regularly applied - preventing a breach of the peace - it's fundamentally preventative.

I would expect within the context of a football match there'd have been a few people scrutinising the decision given the structures in place to police a football match.

[Noodle1982]

If Robinson's beef was with scientology rather than islam, would there be as much uproar and hatred towards him?

[AJS-]

Alpine
It means that while I may share their stated desire to combat fundamentalist Islam I don't feel any particular affinity to the organisation itself or to the kind of people who do/did seem to be attracted to it. Nor do I think their approach was especially helpful.

What do you mean by a racist organisation? I seem to remember they explicitly claimed not to be, and that they had non-white members. On the other hand it probably did contain a lot of racist people.

It's not an anecdote Tony. I have met apostates not called Muhammed and managed not to be racist at all towards them as far as I know. I would strongly defend their right to discuss Islam whatever colour their skin.

Such as this bloke

https://youtu.be/wMeu7Od2Tbo

Or this lady

https://youtu.be/fe_cuzsmmHU

Or Salmon Rushden for that matter.

Any of whom I would much rather identify with than the EDL, despite the fact that they are not white.

[Elysium]

AJS- said:

Elysium said:

How are the authorities "stifling grown up debate about Islam"?

By refusing entry to the country for figures like Geert Wijlders, Robert Spencer and Pamela Gellar who do discuss these issues in a grown up fashion. By insisting every terrorist atrocity is nothing at all to do with the real peaceful and tolerant religion of Islam and anyone claiming it is has an agenda. By pandering to the absurd conflation of Islam with race and the nonsensical invention of Islamophobia as a form of racism.

OK lets run with your first figure. This chap:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/net...

This is not grown up debate. We don't need new extremists here, we have enough of our own.

I would define racism as a belief that negative stereotypes represent a particular ethnic group.

I would define religious hatred as a belief that negative stereotypes represent a particular religious group.

They both stem from the same mode of thinking and are all but identical.

There are 2.7m Muslims in the UK, so it is blindingly obvious that they are not all terrorists. That is why spokesmen who condemn Islamic terrorists often point out that they do not represent ordinary Muslims. Just as the IRA did not represent ordinary Catholics.

[AJS-]

You mean you disagree with what he says. He's not attacking Muslims in the street or adapting football chants to be crudely offensive. He's not demanding a white Christian fundamentalist state.

And just as Brietbart probably isn't the best place to get a balanced account of things the Independent has its opinions too.

I don't think anyone is saying that all Muslims are terrorists. The issue is the ideology of Islam which is inseparable from violent supremacism.

[Elysium]

AJS- said:

You mean you disagree with what he says. He's not attacking Muslims in the street or adapting football chants to be crudely offensive. He's not demanding a white Christian fundamentalist state.

And just as Brietbart probably isn't the best place to get a balanced account of things the Independent has its opinions too.

I don't think anyone is saying that all Muslims are terrorists. The issue is the ideology of Islam which is inseparable from violent supremacism.

The issue is that inciting religious hatred is illegal in this country. I support that position.

Geert Wilders is on record as saying "I don't hate Muslims, I hate Islam". He is entitled to believe whatever he wants, but I think the authorities are correct to assume that his intention in coming here would be to incite racial hatred and hence break the law.

Your assertion that Islam is inseparable from violent supremacism is nonsense. The problem faced by ordinary Muslims is simply that they are being asked to accept a book written in the middle ages as the absolute truth. Most find a way to do so without attacking people.

It's becoming clear to me at this point that you are not an impartial observer here, concerned purely about individual freedom. You appear to have an issue with Islam, which has made you sympathetic to anti Islamic extremists. That is again your choice, but I think is entirely explains why you find it difficult to understand the actions of the police in connection with Tommy Robinson.

[AJS-]

I never claimed to be an impartial observer.

If inciting racial hatred laws are used to stop people promoting violence against ethnic groups then it wouldn't be a problem. Wilders wasn't doing this. He was invited by two peers to discuss an issue they deemed worth investigating. Do you imagine that Lord Pearson and Baroness Cox were going to shave their heads and go out beating up Pakistanis after this discussion?

The laws were used stifle honest debate. Which is sinister in itself and stores up problems which will inevitably lead to more resentment and more radical opposition to Islam.

If you are convinced that these behaviours are not part of Islam then why not have that debate?

If a similar thought process has driven this then it is also wrong for the same reasons.

[rscott]

AJS- said:

I never claimed to be an impartial observer.

If inciting racial hatred laws are used to stop people promoting violence against ethnic groups then it wouldn't be a problem. Wilders wasn't doing this. He was invited by two peers to discuss an issue they deemed worth investigating. Do you imagine that Lord Pearson and Baroness Cox were going to shave their heads and go out beating up Pakistanis after this discussion?

The laws were used stifle honest debate. Which is sinister in itself and stores up problems which will inevitably lead to more resentment and more radical opposition to Islam.

If you are convinced that these behaviours are not part of Islam then why not have that debate?

If a similar thought process has driven this then it is also wrong for the same reasons.

He was due to screen his movie (which likens the Koran to Mein Kampf...) in the House Of Lords ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7882953.stm ) . Other members of the upper house didn't want him or his film there, especially as, as the time, he was in the midst of being prosecuted in the Netherlands for inciting hatred.

Yes, there are discussions to be had about Muslims in Britain (and Europe), but what sort of rational discussion do you think is possible with someone who's starting point is to ban all Muslims from the country?

The same laws used to ban him, Pamela Geller, etc are also used to ban some extremist Muslim speakers from the country, for the same basic reasons - their views are too extreme to contribute to meaningful debate.


Oh and I'm still waiting to hear what the relevance of this all is to a convicted football hooligan being moved on from a pub?

[greygoose]

don4l said:

It is a real pity that people won't learn from history.


Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands and Chezoslovakia are all following suit.

Whilst not wishing to doubt your historical learning, Czechoslovakia split up in 1993.

[Rovinghawk]

rscott said:

I'm still waiting to hear what the relevance of this all is to a convicted football hooligan being moved on from a pub?

When he was convicted he was punished. the matter is then done & dusted. It's not up to the local police to attempt to punish him again for the same act.

[Tonsko]

I didn't know anything about him... since having found out about him, I'm sure that I don't agree with his politics. Having said that, the police should not have the right to do what they have done, unless there is a legal position in place to say that they can; it smacks of a senior officer (or someone close to them) having an axe to grind and reacting emotionally. It's not an ideal way for the police to behave, at all, and to my mind further erodes their credibility as an organisation.

Edited by Tonsko on Wednesday 31st August 10:48

[FredClogs]

greygoose said:

don4l said:

It is a real pity that people won't learn from history.


Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands and Chezoslovakia are all following suit.

Whilst not wishing to doubt your historical learning, Czechoslovakia split up in 1993.

I hope you're not attempting to introduce any facts or reality into this debate or the world view of the above poster, that will never do...

[rscott]

Rovinghawk said:

rscott said:

I'm still waiting to hear what the relevance of this all is to a convicted football hooligan being moved on from a pub?

When he was convicted he was punished. the matter is then done & dusted. It's not up to the local police to attempt to punish him again for the same act.

I'm talking about the usual anti-Islam comments from the same old posters..

[ikarl]

rambo19 said:

I'm no fan of tommy robinson, but I urge you all to watch these videos;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YQ94jFg_4A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-UAQAvCCC4

I wondered what these links were last night, so I clicked the first one... saw it was a 1hr+ video and was about to come back to rip into you

Then I saw it was Tommy Robinson at Oxford Uni doing a speech/Q&A - I was intrigued... Now, I didn't watch the whole video as it was rather late but what I did see has made me wonder why there is such an backlash against this person. Do people understand what he stands/campaigns for? Or what he is against?



I'm yet to decide whether TR is wrong/right/ or somewhere in between, or if he is just a nasty little man... I haven't yet fully formed an opinion either way, however, in the comments section someone has quoted Edmund Burke, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing".

[FredClogs]

rscott said:

Rovinghawk said:

rscott said:

I'm still waiting to hear what the relevance of this all is to a convicted football hooligan being moved on from a pub?

When he was convicted he was punished. the matter is then done & dusted. It's not up to the local police to attempt to punish him again for the same act.

I'm talking about the usual anti-Islam comments from the same old posters..

It's the left isn't it? And social justice warriors, probably because the EU for so long held down our sovereign right to get drunk and fight. We're sleep walking into a lefty totalitarian nightmare where people of all creeds might be able to have a quiet drink in a pub on a saturday afternoon without being harassed by drunken and violent louts.

You have been warned and silencing those people like Tommy Robinson who are simply telling the truth by head butting peope and inciting hatred and violence will only lead to more quiet relaxation and harmony - and who wants that!?

[AJS-]

Rscott
The relevance is the attitude of some sections of the government and police towards discussion of Islam.

Yes those laws are used to stop Islamist preachers directly linked to terrorism but quite sparingly.

http://www.siobhainmcdonagh.org.uk/newsroom/speech...

Right wing nut racist Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh highlights the case of Hanif Qureshi who jas been allowed to visit and preach unhindered. One particularly charming quote from Qureshi is

Moderate Imam said:

"Let them know those who consider Sunnis as cowards that Allah has honoured us with the courage and power to strangulate those involved in blasphemy, to cut out their tongues, and to riddle their bodies with bullets. For this, nobody can arrest us under any law"

Now if you can find anything Robinson, Wilders, Spencer or Geller have said that is even comparable to that then there may be a point. Otherwise I will continue to believe that the authorities have a serious problem with discussion of Islam from one side.

Edited by AJS- on Wednesday 31st August 11:36

[rscott]

AJS- said:

Rscott
The relevance is the attitude of some sections of the government and police towards discussion of Islam.

Yes those laws are used to stop Islamist preachers directly linked to terrorism but quite sparingly.

http://www.siobhainmcdonagh.org.uk/newsroom/speech...

Right wing nut racist Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh highlights the case of Hanif Qureshi who jas been allowed to visit and preach unhindered. One particularly charming quote from Qureshi is

Moderate Imam said:

"Let them know those who consider Sunnis as cowards that Allah has honoured us with the courage and power to strangulate those involved in blasphemy, to cut out their tongues, and to riddle their bodies with bullets. For this, nobody can arrest us under any law"

Now if you can find anything Robinson, Spencer or Geller have said that is even comparable to that then there may be a point. Otherwise I will continue to believe that the authorities have a serious problem with discussion of Islam from one side.

Again, how is this relevant to Stephen Yaxley-Lennon being moved on from a pub ? Just trying to keep discussion vaguely related to the opening post.

[AJS-]

rscott said:

Again, how is this relevant to Stephen Yaxley-Lennon being moved on from a pub ? Just trying to keep discussion vaguely related to the opening post.

Again, the attitude of the authorities to those who criticise radical Islam.