The Iranian Uprising

By Melanie Phillips

http://www.melaniephillips.com/

January 1, 2018

An Iranian woman raises her fist amid the smoke of teargas during a protest at the University of Tehran December 30, 2017 (STR/AFP)

What’s happening in Iran is of the greatest significance. Thousands of anti-regime demonstrators have taken to the streets now for four days in protest. Reports suggest that at least twelve people have been killed by government troops. It is hard to over-estimate the courage of those demonstrators.

The scale and scope of these demonstrations across Iran is unprecedented: estimates suggest they have been occurring in at least 30 cities, including some places long deemed to be the regime’s power base.

With President Hassan Rouhani acknowledging economic “grievances”, a “lack of transparency” and “corruption”, the regime has responded with patent alarm. As well it might. If these protests continue to accelerate, they can produce an upset that was unimaginable until now. For this is an uprising against the regime itself.

Demonstrators have been chanting “Death to Khamenei” (|Iran’s supreme Leader), “Reformists, hardliners, it is game over now,” “Death to the Islamic Republic” and “Shame on you, mullahs.”

They are also chanting: “Forget about Palestine, forget about Gaza, think about us”, ‘Death to Hezbollah” and “Leave Syria alone, think about us instead”.

As Dr Majid Rafizadeh observes here, this uprising is more significant even than the “Green Revolution” demonstrations in 2009. People then were protesting against rigged elections and the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Today they are demanding regime change: an end to the Islamist regime that took power in 1979.

This of course shows up as utterly risible the gloss initially put on these protests by the western media – those outlets, that is, that even bothered to report the demonstrations when they first erupted – that the issue which has brought Iranians onto the streets is merely economic privation.

They said this because the media reflects the European/Obama view that the Iranian regime is not an enemy but an ally. How then can they acknowledge that the Iranian people are rising up against oppression?

The Obama/EU axis and its media supporters have consistently dismissed or denied Iran’s role as the world’s principal sponsor of terrorism. They have ignored or downplayed its march to regional hegemony. They procured or applauded the shocking nuclear deal which enables this fanatical Islamist regime –– which has been at war with the west since 1979 and which openly declares its genocidal intent to wipe out out Israel – to become a nuclear armed power in ten or fifteen years’ time: a deal which, though sanctions relief, has also funnelled money to the regime to enable it to step up its terrorism and embed itself further in the region.

The result has not been merely that the free world has been placed in hugely increased danger. The European/Obama axis also abandoned and betrayed the Iranian people who have been suffering under the cruel tyranny of a regime which oppresses women, jails dissidents and hangs gay men from cranes.

When the people previously rose up in the 2009 “Green Revolution”, they were brutally suppressed. That revolt was put down with the tacit connivance of President Obama who said and did nothing to support them. So why have the Iranian people now risen up again and in such huge numbers? The answer is two words: Donald Trump.

For he has changed the dynamic of the entire region by signalling from the get-go that he has the Iranian regime in his sights. The Iranian people have been thus encouraged to believe they will be backed by the president of the most powerful nation on earth, rather than betrayed as they were by his predecessor.

Since the uprising began, Trump haas tweeted his support several times, saying:

“The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations!”

“Oppressive regimes cannot endure forever, and the day will come when the Iranian people will face a choice. The world is watching!”

“The entire world understands that the good people of Iran want change, and, other than the vast military power of the United States, that Iran’s people are what their leaders fear the most….”

Slowly, reluctantly, the media are being forced to revise their previous indifference and dismissive attitude. Yesterday, CNN reported that this wave of protests seems to be a direct challenge to the rule of the Supreme Leader.

“’This is something that didn’t happen in 2009. This is a huge thing to happen in Iran’, said Nic Robertson, CNN’s international diplomatic editor.”

You don’t say! But if you think this means CNN is finally waking up to reality, you’d better calm down. For lower down the story, it solemnly tells us:

“The consensus from experts: US President Donald Trump’s tweets about the situation are not helpful.Rather, they say, the world should show solidarity with the Iranian people by supporting freedom of expression.”

As opposed to people supporting Trump’s freedom of expression, I suppose. Don’t you just love these anonymous “experts”? In glorious technicolour all-singing all-dancing consensus: just plain wrong.

Trump’s tweets are aimed at both the regime and the demonstrators. To the regime he’s saying: your time is up and the US will be helping the people make that a reality. He’s saying this to demoralise and weaken it. To the people he’s saying: we’re with you. That message of backing from the most powerful leader in the world is aimed at giving the people the courage to continue. Without it they are far less likely to persevere.

If people are to rouse their courage to pit themselves against the might of a regime that can kill and crush them, the support of the rest of the world is absolutely crucial. So far, though, Trump is alone in offering such support. Apart from Britain’s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson feebly and pointlessly tweeting his “concern”, Britain and the EU have been silent. They are not supporting the people of Iran against the regime. They are not trying to weaken it. How can they? They have helped empower it. As have their cheerleaders and Obama sycophants in the media.

Dr Rafizadeh writes: “The fault lines are completely visible. If you are on the side of justice, freedom, and basic human rights, and if you respect humanity, you will not be able to remain silent. Let us at least give moral support, if not more, to the Iranian people. Justice and truth need to prevail. This is what history has repeatedly shown us. Let us not be on the side of history that would remain silent in the face of such crimes against humanity, let us not join the ranks of other dictators, terrorists, and criminals, that turned a blind eye to violence, and the will of brave, innocent people.”

Alas, on this Britain and Europe are, as so often, on the wrong side.

HOW BRITAIN IS COMMITTING SUICIDE (AGAIN)

By Melanie Phillips

http://www.melaniephillips.com/

August 28, 2017

(Reuters)

The Times (£) reports today that a white Christian child was taken from her family and forced to live with a niqab-wearing foster carer in a home where she was allegedly encouraged to learn Arabic.

The story says that child was placed in not one but two Muslim foster homes, against the wishes of her family, by the London borough of Tower Hamlets.

“In confidential local authority reports seen by The Times, a social services supervisor describes the child sobbing and begging not to be returned to the foster carer’s home because ‘they don’t speak English’.

“The reports state that the supervisor heard the girl, who at times was ‘very distressed’, claiming that the foster carer removed her necklace, which had a Christian cross, and also suggested that she should learn Arabic.”

In 2015, Tower Hamlets council was stripped by the government of many of its powers after its former mayor, Lutfur Rahman, was found guilty of corrupt and illegal electoral practices. This year Ofsted inspectors found “widespread and serious failures” in council services provided to children who need help and protection.

In at the absence of any explanation by the council why it dealt with this case in such a way, it would appear that it has behaved with a frightening degree of cruelty, incompetence and ideological zealotry in erasing a child’s cultural identity.

The really frightening thing is that it is hardly alone in this zealotry. For decades, Britain has told itself – and taught its children – that the very notion of its own Christian culture (which, because of its indigenous population, is inescapably white) is racist, colonialist and illegitimate and should be replaced by a multicultural orthodoxy. This requires prioritising minority faiths and cultures (particularly Islam) over Christianity and western values. Anyone who objects to this doctrine is promptly tarred and feathered as a racist or Islamophobe.

This appalling fostering scandal is not the only example of such ideological zealotry to have emerged in recent weeks. Earlier this month Sarah Champion, Labour MP for Rotherham, was forced to resign from Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow Cabinet after she wrote an article in The Sun warning that more must be done to stop gangs of Pakistani men targeting young girls for sex, and calling on the government to investigate why so many men who share the same cultural background are behind bars for abusing young girls.

After Corbyn demanded her resignation, Ms Champion apologised for her “extremely poor choice of words”, claiming that the headline and opening sentences” had stripped her words of “nuance”. The paper responded that her team had approved the entire column as published and said they were “thrilled” by it.

Ms Champion’s fruitless attempt to save herself should not distract from the fact that she had asked the right question. For the overwhelming majority of the pimping gangs who have been preying for years on young girls are composed of men from Pakistani Muslim backgrounds and who specifically target non-Muslim, mainly white and often underage girls. This terrible, widespread abuse has been going on for years – and despite a series of criminal prosecutions is still continuing – largely because of the blind eye turned by police and welfare authorities terrified of being accused of racism or Islamophobia.

Lo and behold: for telling such untellable truths Ms Champion was promptly scapegoated. Now another Labour politician appears to have been scapegoated in turn for coming to her defence. And here’s the kicker: this second Labour politician is herself a reformist Muslim.

Amina Lone, a Manchester Labour councillor, said on TV that Sarah Champion was “… not a racist but a brave woman speaking out about a politically awkward issue”. Later she tweeted: “I grew up in a Muslim community where these attitudes were common. ‘White girls are easy’, ‘Nobody cares about them’, ‘They are just slags’, ‘Their parents don’t look after them properly’ etc were/are still said today. I hear it regularly.”

Turns out Ms Lone was also being a brave woman. One week after making these remarks, she failed to be reselected for her council seat. The grounds the council offered as the reason for deselecting her were unusual: that she had a poor attendance and campaigning record. Anyone believe that?

We are living in culturally totalitarian times. Truth, tolerance and decency are being replaced by lies, oppression and cruelty. Such incidents are now occurring thick and fast; and there’s a lot more of this to come.

Netanyahu's Mufti Firestorm

Last century’s Islamist ideologues drew on both Communism and Nazism. The Palestinian cause likewise fuses Islamist and Nazi ambitions with Soviet psychological warfare.

Melanie Phillips

http://www.frontpagemag.com/

November 2, 2015

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem supported Hitler, and visited the Nazi-leader in Berlin in November 1941.

Reprinted from Jerusalem Post

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about the role played in the Holocaust by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, he cannot have imagined the reaction he would detonate.

What he said was this: “He [Husseini] flew to Berlin. Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time; he wanted to expel the Jews. And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here.’ ‘So what should I do with them?’ he [Hitler] asked.

He [Husseini] said, ‘Burn them.’” In the subsequent global firestorm, Netanyahu was denounced for exonerating Hitler. It was said he had claimed the mufti had given Hitler the idea of exterminating the Jews when the two met in November 1941; that he was cynically trying to tarnish today’s Palestinians; even that he was a Holocaust denier.

His subsequent protest that he had no intention of absolving Hitler of responsibility fell on deaf ears. Even those who acknowledged that the mufti had allied with the Nazis insisted Netanyahu had turned history back to front.

Most of this reaction, however, is at best wide of the mark and at worst quite obscene. For Netanyahu was fundamentally correct.

There can be no doubt he spoke too loosely. He has provided no source for the words he quoted from both Husseini and Hitler at that November 1941 meeting. And he should have acknowledged that the mass murder of European Jews was already well under way, and that Hitler had talked about exterminating the Jews since the 1920s.

But mass murder is not the same as genocide. And the precise moment when Hitler decided to exterminate the whole of European Jewry – the “Final Solution” – has long been disputed by historians.

For even while the Nazis were rounding up Jews for slaughter they were also deporting them – more than 500,000 between 1933 and 1941. And recently unearthed documentary evidence suggests that the mufti and Hitler egged each other on in a mutual genocidal frenzy.

A book published last year, Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, by Barry Rubin and Wolfgang Schwanitz, argues that the mufti’s alliance with Hitler turned the extermination of the whole of European Jewry into a strategic imperative.

As late as July 1941, according to Hermann Göring, Hitler thought the last of the Jews could be removed from Germany by “emigration or evacuation.”

The authors write: “Yet since other countries refused to take many or any Jewish refugees, Palestine was the only possible refuge, as designated by the League of Nations in 1922. If that last safe haven was closed, mass murder would be Hitler’s only alternative.”

Rubin and Schwanitz make clear that the November 1941 meeting between Hitler and Husseini merely continued a dialogue that had started earlier that year about the mufti’s opposition to Hitler’s deportation of European Jews.

“In February 1941, Hitler had received al-Husaini’s proposal for an alliance of which one condition – paragraph seven – was that Germany stop Jewish emigration from Europe. After Hitler promised al-Husaini on March 11 to do so, Germany’s expulsion of the Jews was impossible and only mass murder remained.

“... After agreeing in early June to meet al-Husaini to discuss the issue, Hitler ordered SS leader Reinhard Heydrich on July 31, 1941 to prepare an ‘overall solution for the Jewish question in Europe.’ On October 31, he ended the legal emigration of Jews from German-ruled areas.

But the specific final decision had not yet been taken.”

On November 28, Hitler met the mufti in Berlin. “Behind closed doors, Hitler promised al-Husaini that Arab aspirations would be fulfilled. Once ‘we win’ the battle against world Jewry, Hitler said, Germany would eliminate the Jews in the Middle East, too.” The following day, “he ordered Heydrich to organise a conference within ten days to prepare ‘the final solution of the Jewish question.’” As the book also shows, the mufti was making common cause with Hitler long before 1941. By 1936, he was courting the Nazis for arms and money. In 1940, he sent Hitler a nine-page letter detailing a proposed alliance. The Palestine question, he said, united them in their joint hatred of the British and the Jews. He proposed to make Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Transjordan a single federated state with a Nazi-style system. In return, he wanted Hitler’s help to wipe out all Jews in the Middle East.

Evidence that the mufti played a key role in the Holocaust was provided at the Nuremberg Tribunal by Eichmann’s close associate in the extermination program, Dieter Wisliceny. He said: “The mufti was one of the instigators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and was a partner and adviser to Eichmann and Hitler for carrying out this plan.”

This was corroborated at the tribunal by two witnesses, Andrej Steiner and Rudolf Kasztner, who confirmed that Wisliceny had talked about Husseini in these terms during the war.

Given all this evidence, the reaction to Netanyahu’s remarks demonstrates historical ignorance, venom toward Israel and particular malice toward Netanyahu himself – not least amongst Israeli Jews. Prof. Moshe Zimmermann of the Hebrew University, for example, said the prime minister “joins a long line of people that we would call Holocaust deniers.”

But as Dr. Alex Safian of CAMERA has pointed out, Zimmermann has previously likened IDF solders to the Nazi SS and Jewish children living in Hebron to the Hitler Youth. If anyone is guilty of Holocaust denial, it is surely Prof. Zimmermann.

Nevertheless, one has to wonder how Netanyahu could have been so careless with his words. The answer, I would suggest, is that he and the rest of Israel’s political class are crippled by the arrogance of moral certainty.

They know they are the victims of irreconcilable Arab aggression. They know they stand for morality, history and law.

And they think the evidence is so overwhelmingly obvious that no reasonable person could disagree.

They don’t grasp the extent to which reason has been eclipsed by emotion, ideology and bigotry. So they fail to realize that there is no lie about themselves too absurd or outrageous for the enemies of Israel to regurgitate.

These enemies react with fury to evidence of the grand mufti’s Nazi enthusiasm because this destroys the fiction that the Palestinian cause so dear to their hearts is noble. This cause is in fact the direct heir to a genocidal project.

We know that Nazi doctrine whipped millions of Germans into murderous frenzy. We also know Soviet propaganda turned truth and lies inside out and brainwashed millions.

Yasser Arafat learned from the Soviet Union how to rewrite history and capture the minds of the credulous. Mahmoud Abbas, whose doctoral thesis denied the Holocaust, hero-worships Husseini. Palestinian propaganda reproduces vile Nazi tropes of Jew-hatred.

Last century’s Islamist ideologues drew on both Communism and Nazism. The Palestinian cause likewise fuses Islamist and Nazi ambitions with Soviet psychological warfare. This explains not just the frenzied war against Israel, but why so many in the West are cheering it on.

That is the context of Netanyahu’s mufti firestorm.

Melanie Phillips is a columnist for The Times (UK).

The Grand Mufti reviews the Nazi "Handzar" S.S. Division in Yugoslavia in 1944.

‘Please Mr Obama, stop supporting terrorists here in Egypt’

By Melanie Phillips

http://melaniephillips.com

14 July 2013

In all the welter of words about the ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, very little has been written in the mainstream media about the extraordinary contortions of the Obama administration, which did so much to put the Brothers into power there in the first place.

The administration’s first reaction was to threaten to cut off US aid to Egypt in order to punish the military for unseating the Muslim Brother President, Mohamed Morsi.  Then a State Department official vouchsafed that Morsi had been ‘undemocratic’, and the administration backed away from outright confrontation.

Nevertheless, reports persist that the US continues to support the Brothers against the Egyptian military.  As Raymond Ibrahim reports, the US ambassador to Egypt, Anne Patterson, has come to be seen as a Brotherhood stooge:

‘... soon after the overthrow of Morsi, U.S. ambassador Anne Patterson assured Hisham Qandil, who hours ago was Egypt’s Prime Minister, that “there are many forms of pressure, and America holds the keys to the Gulf.”

‘Among other things, in the days leading to June 30, she called on Egyptians not to protest — including by meeting with the Coptic Pope and asking him to urge the nation’s Christian minority not to oppose the Brotherhood, even though Christians have naturally been the most to suffer under Morsi, especially in the context of “blasphemy” accusations.

‘Thus, and once again, the Obama administration makes indubitably clear that its primary interest in Egypt is to see the Muslim Brotherhood stay in power, the Egyptian people’s will — the will of tens of millions of secularists, liberals, moderates, and Christians — be damned.’

Then there was this: 

‘Yesterday El Fagr reported that, during their most recent phone conversation, U.S. ambassador Anne Patterson demanded that Egyptian General Sisi release all Muslim Brotherhood members currently being held for questioning: “And when Sisi rejected this order, the American ambassador began threatening him that Egypt will turn into another Syria and live through a civil war, to which Sisi responded violently: ‘Neither you nor your country can overcome Egypt and its people.’”

‘Moreover, the day before the Salafi party withdrew from negotiations with the new Egyptian government, Al Nahar reported that Patterson had “incited them [the Nour Party, the Salafi party] to tamper with the political scene and the road map and to threaten to withdraw from political participation if Dr. Muhammad Baradei becomes elected as Prime Minister…”Apparently, these are the “many forms of pressure”that Patterson earlier assured Hishan Qandil the U.S. would use to reinstate the Brotherhood.’

Things have reached such a pass that Patterson has even been called a member of a MB sleeper cell. So what does that make Obama — whose bidding, after all,  his Ambassador to Egypt is merely doing?

The astonishing thing is that, given Obama’s backing for the Brothers, the US currently might be said to be more Islamist than Saudi Arabia.

And all this, moreover, when the Arab world is convulsed in unprecedented ferment, offering the best chance of stopping the advanced of the Brotherhood – mortal enemies of the west --  that has occurred for a very long time.  As the authoritative Israeli commentator Ehud Ya’ari has observed, the ousting of Morsi has delivered a stunning reverse to the Brothers’ hitherto steady progress towards regional power.

And as Khaled abu Toameh writes, Egypt is now punishing the Palestinians on account of Hamas’s  support of the Egyptian Brotherhood, by sealing its frontier with Gaza and denying access of food, fuel and other supplies to the Palestinians (with not a peep, of course, from the anti-Israel BDS crowd against this ‘collective punishment’).

So now a new and powerful alliance against Iran, the deadly Shia Islamic foe of the west, is on the cards between Egypt, Saudi and the Gulf states. There is a chance to put the Muslim Brotherhood, the deadly Sunni Islamic foe of the west, back in its box. Even Qatar, backer of Hamas and the Brotherhood, is now under pressure to reposition itself. And Egypt is getting down to stamping out al Qaeda in the Sinai.

For the first time in living memory, a popular uprising has ousted Islamists from power -- and suddenly the prospects for dealing the forces of darkness a severe blow look brighter than anyone can remember.

Yet at this critical juncture, when western leadership to take advantage of this situation is essential, the US is on the wrong side. Despite posing as the champion of the Egyptian masses who craved freedom, Obama has aligned the US with those seeking to extinguish freedom.

The ironies abound. Having declared he would reposition the US as the friend of the Arab and Muslim world, by extending to it the hand of friendship and promoting the Muslim Brotherhood for all he was worth, Obama now finds that hand is being furiously bitten off.

The millions who took to the Egyptian streets were demonstrating not just against Morsi --the man who was leading the country into both economic ruin and religious tyranny and was tacitly supporting those who were killing Egyptian soldiers -- but also against the  man they blamed for putting him there, Barack Obama.

As the Egyptian film director Mazen Said has said in this passionate video: Mr Obama, stop supporting terrorists and leave Egypt alone.

The instinct of the shallow, ignorant, culturally narcissistic west, which cannot conceive of anyone not behaving or reacting like itself, is to say that anyone who opposes tyranny must be a good guy. But at present in the Arab and Muslim world only bad guys, alas, are likely to gain power.  The reason is that freedom and democracy do not automatically follow from elections. They depend instead on the prior establishment of free institutions. In the absence of such institutions, elections merely empower more tyrannical regimes. And such institutions largely do not yet exist in the Arab and Muslim world.

Those young Arabs and Muslims who really do crave western freedoms will unfortunately have a long time to wait. For the foreseeable future, therefore, it’s a war to the finish between barbarism and civilisation.

Maybe one day the US and UK and the rest will finally work out which is which. But not until Obama himself has passed into history – where it goes without saying, he will be fixed for all eternity on the wrong side.

How Melanie Phillips Became a Culture Warrior

Posted By Mark Tapson On July 15, 2013 @ 12:32 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 9 Comments

http://frontpagemag.com/

FrontPage Mag readers almost certainly are familiar with British journalist Melanie Phillips from her book Londonistan, which chronicled England’s multicultural slide into submission to Islam, or from her more recent book The World Turned Upside Down, about the West’s slide into secular mass derangement. But few readers may know about Phillips’ own journey from the political left to social conservatism. She takes us on that journey in the short autobiography she just released on her own publishing imprint, EMBooks, an ebook called Guardian Angel: My Story, My Britain.

This quick and compelling memoir of her personal and professional life “is the story of my culture war: the account of my battles with the hate-mongering left.” It spans her youth and her decades as a journalist, editor, prominent columnist, and author, reflecting the disturbing changes in British culture and society that she witnessed along the way. Those changes left two Britains in their wake: one “adhering to decency, rationality, and duty to others,” and the left, “characterized by hatred, rampant selfishness, and a terrifying repudiation of reason.”

In 1977 she joined the staff of the progressive Guardian, one of Britain’s most influential newspapers. The attitude there, as among progressives in general, Phillips acknowledges, was that “we were the embodiment of virtue itself… We were the left; therefore everyone who was not the left was the right. The right was evil; everyone not on the left was therefore evil… and everything not on the left was politically extreme.” The significance of this was that the left had hijacked the middle ground and substituted its own extreme values as the center of political and moral gravity.

Phillips herself was not driven by ideology, which meant that she found herself increasingly in confrontations with the Guardian’s left, “who had replaced truth with ideology, and whose weapon of choice against all dissent was vilification and demonization.”

It also opened her eyes about the left’s anti-Semitism; Phillips didn’t consider herself a Jewish writer, but the Guardian unofficially did, and this set her apart “from those who were going along with the great secular onslaught on the Judeo-Christian roots of the West.” Questioning the paper’s double standard in its coverage of the Middle East – giving Palestinian terrorists a pass while waging a seeming vendetta against Israel – she was shocked to realize that her cohorts were blinded by the prejudice of political correctness, which conferred victim status on certain “Third World” groups while holding “oppressive” developed countries like Israel to impossible standards.

By challenging their twisted thinking, Phillips had aligned herself with the oppressor. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to crush the terrorist presence there, the Guardian’s chief leader-writer cornered Phillips and referred to it as “your war.” “At that moment,” she writes, realizing that she represented the Jewish “other” to him and to others at the paper, “the iron entered my soul.” It was a turning point of no return. The scales fell from her eyes and she understood that she was “wrong to have assumed that the liberal left was on the side of the angels. I now realized that, on the contrary, there was a gaping moral hole at its heart.”

When she wrote a column in 1987 placing the responsibility for the crisis in British schools to the breakdown of teaching, her Guardian colleagues were dismayed that she did not blame Margaret Thatcher’s “heartless” spending cuts, and in their eyes, “[l]iterally overnight, I became ‘right-wing.’” And indeed, “[i]ssue by issue, my writing during the 1980s and 1990s reflected the fact that Britain was undergoing a cultural revolution. And, as society changed, so too did my own attitudes change.” She saw her “former comrades on the left… embracing lies over truth, injustice over justice, rule by the strong over the weak – and even destroying the very basis of what it was to be a human being.”

Her biggest break with the left, however – “the most visceral, the most ferocious, the cultural Rubicon” – was over the breakdown of the family. “The fragmentation of the family was leading to the fragmentation of moral values – but any attempt to tell people how they should behave was damned as ‘theoretical imperialism,’ while tell them that lifestyle choice was the only acceptable doctrine was not.” Her defense of the traditional family unit marked her as a “right-wing extremist,” even an “Old Testament fundamentalist.” Gradually she saw that what the left hated about her was that “they understood that the banner behind which I was actually marching was the Biblical moral law which put chains on people’s appetites.”

In 1993 she left the Guardian and joined the Observer, and in 1996 she published All Must Have Prizes, about the ideological dogmas that were unraveling British education. “Most teachers, I wrote, were unaware that they were the unwitting troops of a cultural revolution, being now taught to teach according to doctrines whose core aim was to subvert the fundamental tenets of Western society.” This brought howls of condemnation from the left, naturally, but “[o]n and on I marched, straight into the guns. What else could I do?”

In March 1996 she won the Orwell Prize for political writing, and in 1998 left the Observer for the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sunday Times. “Was I now a conservative?” she asked herself. Though she resisted the label and was no devotee of the free-market and hyper-individualism, she was being invited to speak at conservative venues, and

Much that such people said resonated with me. They seemed to be refreshingly rooted in the real world rather than frolicking in the neverlands of theory and wishful thinking; they looked soberly at facts and evidence and had an open mind; in disagreement they were courteous and did not resort to abuse.

She went on to write for the Guardian’s nemesis, the Daily Mail, and she increasingly addressed the threat of Islamic extremism. When 9/11 came, “the twin tracks of my isolation on social and cultural issues and my isolation on Israel were finally joined.” For understanding that Israel and Britain faced the same Islamic enemy, she was now labeled “Melanie the warmongering Zionist Jew.” She subsequently published Londonistan, a book that highlighted “the unbridgeable chasm between myself and the left,” which felt like a “very bad divorce.”

Phillips still rejects a political label; she remains focused instead on preserving the values of Western civilization. “And that requires moral, political, and religious leadership of the highest order – and buckets of courage” – which she certainly has.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.  

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Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com

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Until our leaders admit the true nature of Islamic extremism, we will never defeat it

By MELANIE PHILLIPS

http://www.dailymail.co.uk

26 May 2013

Ever since the spectre of Islamic terrorism in the West first manifested itself, Britain has had its head stuck firmly in the sand.

After both 9/11 and the 7/7 London transport bombings, the Labour government promised to take measures to defend the country against further such attacks.

It defined the problem, however, merely as terrorism, failing to understand that the real issue was the extremist ideas which led to such violence.

Following the barbaric slaughter of Drummer Rigby on the streets of Woolwich by two Islamic fanatics, the Prime Minister has announced that he will head a new Tackling Extremism and Radicalisation Task Force

Accordingly, it poured money into Muslim community groups, many of which turned out to be dangerously extreme.

When David Cameron came to power, his Government raised hopes of a more realistic approach when it pledged to counter extremist ideas rather than just violence.

This approach, too, has failed. The Government still has no coherent strategy for countering Islamist radicalisation.

Following last week’s barbaric slaughter of Drummer Rigby on the streets of Woolwich by two Islamic fanatics, the Prime Minister has announced that he will head a new Tackling Extremism and Radicalisation Task Force.

And the Home Secretary has said she will look at widening the banning of radical groups preaching hate.

But at the heart of these promises remains a crucial gap. That is the need to define just what kind of extremism we are up against.

The Government has been extraordinarily reluctant to do this — because it refuses to face the blindingly obvious fact that this extremism is religious in nature.

Boris Johnson said of the Woolwich murder 'It is completely wrong to blame this killing on the religion of Islam'

It arises from an interpretation of Islam which takes the words of the Koran literally as a command to kill unbelievers in a jihad, or holy war, in order to impose strict Islamic tenets on the rest of the world.

Of course, millions of Muslims in Britain and elsewhere totally reject this interpretation of their religion. 

Most British Muslims want to live peacefully and enjoy the benefits of Western culture. They undoubtedly utterly deplore the notion that the kind of carnage that occurred in Woolwich should take place in Britain.

Betrayal

And let’s not forget that, worldwide, most victims of the jihad are themselves Muslims whom the extremists judge to be polluted by Western ideas.

Nevertheless, this fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran is what is being spouted by hate preachers in Britain and on the internet, and is steadily radicalising thousands of young British Muslims.

Now the Prime Minister says he will crack down on such extremism. Yet after the Woolwich atrocity, he claimed it was ‘a betrayal of Islam’ and that ‘there is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act’.

The London Mayor Boris Johnson went even further, claiming: ‘It is completely wrong to blame this killing on the religion of Islam’ and that the cause was simply the killers’ ‘warped and deluded mindset’.  

Yet the video footage of the killers — who had shouted ‘Allahu Akhbar’ when butchering Drummer Rigby — records one of them citing verses in the Koran exhorting the faithful to fight and kill unbelievers, and declaring: ‘We swear by Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you.’

Frankly, these comments by the Prime Minister and London Mayor were as absurd as saying the medieval Inquisition, for example, had nothing to do with the Catholic Church, but was just the product of a few warped and deluded individuals. 

Power

Their comments were also deeply troubling. For if politicians refuse to acknowledge the true nature of this extremism, they will never counter it effectively.

But then, government officials have always refused to admit that this is a religious war. They simply don’t understand the power of religious fanaticism.

Of course, there are fanatics in all religions. Within both Judaism and Christianity,  there are deep divisions between ultras, liberals and those in between.

Omar Bakri Mohammed praises alleged Woolwich killed Michael Adebolajo and describes him as 'courageous' and a 'hero'. The radical cleric says the murder is revenge for the 'Muslim brothers' who have lost their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq

In medieval times, moreover, Christianity used its interpretation of the Bible also to kill ‘unbelievers’, because early Christians believed they had a divine duty to make the world conform to their religion at all costs. That stopped when the Reformation ushered the Church into modernity, and today no Christian wants to use violence to convert others to their faith.

The problem with the extremist teachings of Islam is that the religion has never had a similar ‘reformation’.

Certainly, there are enlightened Muslims in Britain who would dearly love their religion to be reformed. 

But they have the rug pulled from under their feet by the Government’s flat denial of the religious nature of this terrible problem.

Some people instead ascribe the actions of the Woolwich killers to factors such as thuggish gang membership, drug abuse or family breakdown. But it is precisely such lost souls who are vulnerable to Islamist fanatics and who provide them with father figures, a sense of belonging and a cause which gives apparent meaning to their lives. 

Many people find it incomprehensible that such fanatics remain free to peddle their poison. Partly, this is because the Security Service likes to gather intelligence through their actions. But it is also because of a failure to understand what amounts to a continuum  of extremism.

There are too many British Muslims who, while abhorring violence at home, nevertheless support the killing abroad of British or American forces or Israelis, regard unbelievers as less than fully human, and homosexuals or apostates as deserving the death penalty.

Such bigotry creates the poisonous sea in which dehumanisation and religious violence swim.

To the failure to understand all this must be added the widespread terror of being thought ‘Islamophobic’ or ‘racist’.

It is quite astonishing that universities mostly refuse to crack down on extremist speakers and radicalisation on campus — despite at least four former presidents of Islamic student societies having faced terrorist charges.

In a devastating account published at the weekend, Professor Michael Burleigh, who advised the Government on revising its counter-radicalisation strategy, described how this process descended into a ‘sad shambles’. He related how the Federation of Islamic Student Societies (FOSIS) had created a sexually segregated environment in which young people were being systematically indoctrinated in anti-Jew, anti-homosexual and anti-Western hatred by Islamist speakers on campus.

But although the Government condemned FOSIS for its failure to ‘fully challenge terrorist and extremist ideology’, with the Home Secretary even ordering that civil servants withdraw from its graduate recruitment fair, the Faith and Communities Minister, Baroness Warsi, actually endorsed it by attending one of its events at the House of Lords.

Lethal

Nor has the Government done anything to stop extremist preachers targeting and converting criminals in British jails at a deeply alarming rate.

On top of all this official incoherence is the paralysis caused by the excesses of the ‘human rights’ culture.

Thus the Home Secretary is facing a monumental battle to get through Parliament a Communications Bill that would give police and security services access to records of individuals’ internet use.

Anjem Choudary at a demonstration in 2007, with alleged Woolwich killer Michael Adebojalo behind him

It is said that some of these extremist preachers exploit loopholes in the law. If so, then the law should be changed.

But we all know what would befall any such attempt. It would be all but drowned out by shrieks that we were ‘doing the terrorists’ job for them’ by ‘undermining our own hard-won liberties’.

Well, it’s time to face down such claims as vacuous and lethal nonsense. 

The people threatening our liberties are Islamic radicals determined to destroy our way of life.

It is those who refuse to acknowledge the true nature of this threat who are doing the terrorists’ job for them.

And unless Britain finally wakes up from its self-destructive torpor, all who love civilised values — Muslim and non-Muslim alike — will be the losers.

m.phillips@dailymail.co.uk

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2331368/Until-leaders-admit-true-nature-Islamic-extremism-defeat-it.html#ixzz2USTgl2WT
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Stiff competition for Most Fatuous Reaction award

By Melanie Phillips

http://www.melaniephillips.com

24 May 2013

Prime Minister David Cameron, joined by London Mayor Boris Johnson, stressed that the attack was a betrayal of Islam and of the Muslim communities

There’s been some stiff competition over the past 24 hours for the coveted award of Most Fatuous Reaction to a Jihadi Atrocity.

I hooted at the commentator visiting from planet Zog, who had thus totally missed all the barbaric snuff movie beheadings and eviscerations and human bomb attacks carried out by jihadists over the past two decades across the world and who wailed, poor dear, that ‘none of it made any sense’.

I enjoyed the pointed satire of the commentator who intoned that we were all guilty of causing the two jihadis to hack poor Drummer Rigby to death and tried to behead him, while claiming they were fulfilling the edicts of the Koran and waiting for the police to arrive in order to try to murder them too – but then I realised that it wasn’t satire at all.

I marvelled at the languidly superior commentator who drawled that the problem in Woolwich had been caused by ‘testosterone’ and that the real threat to all of us was actually from the collapsing EDL and the all-but collapsed BNP.  And at the even more languidly superior commentator, who flicked barbs at Britain’s ‘hyperbole’ and ‘hysteria’ and implied that in Woolwich Britain kind of had it coming to it since it had been perceived as indifferent to ‘the appalling impact of a drone attack on a Pashtun village’.

Nice.

But worthy contenders as all these are for this prestigious award, I have decided that two further notable contributions tie in equal first place. In a statement described by the Spectator as ‘sensitive and calm’ the Prime Minister, David Cameron, told the nation that the Woolwich attack ‘was also a betrayal of Islam’ ,’ there is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act’ and the fault lay ‘solely and purely with the sickening individuals who carried out this appalling attack’.

In similar vein the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson said:

‘It is completely wrong to blame this killing on the religion of Islam but it is also equally wrong to try to draw any link between this murder and British foreign policy or the actions of British forces who are risking their lives abroad for the sake of freedom. The fault lies wholly and exclusively in the warped and deluded mindset of the people who did it.’

So to the Prime Minister and the Mayor, there was nothing to connect the Woolwich atrocity to Islam at all.  But on his little video rant, one of the killers drew explicitly on the Koran as the inspiration for his attack:

‘Surat at-Tawba through...many, many ayat throughout the Qur’an that...we must fight them as they fight us...’

which refers to a number of exhortations to ‘fight the unbelievers and ‘kill the polythesists wherever you find them’ and other such stuff in similar vein..

Nothing to do with Islam? It’s as absurd as saying the Inquisition had nothing to do with the Catholic Church, or the Holocaust had nothing to do with Nazism but these things were just the product of a few warped and deluded individuals.  

If indeed such terrorism is noting to do with Islam, why is it justified by the Islamic high establishment? As the liberal Egyptian thinker Tarek Heggy wrote last year:

 ‘The cornerstone of the theory, which is the essence of Islamic thinking, is that humans must not set the rules governing relations between people, but that these can only be set by the Almighty. To this day, not a single leader of any movement of political Islam has reconsidered the idea of hakemeya [the Islamist view of man-made laws] introduced by Sayed Qutb in his famous treatise, “Signposts Along the Road” … Thus the Islamist has a constant problem with man-made constitutional and legal rules.…

‘Certainly the leaderships of most schools of political Islam refuse to describe the suicide attacks launched by Muslim fanatics against civilians as terrorist attacks. Certainly too none of them consider Osama bin Laden a terrorist. Indeed, most hold him in high regard…’

What’s bizarre is that jihadis are treated as genuine Muslim spokesmen -- see the way broadcasters were giving one of them air-time yesterday -- but when it comes to analysing an Islamic terror attack, that very same political and media establishment falls over itself to agree with those extremists that its perpetrators are not real Muslims at all.

Even more absurd, these craven politicians are now being left behind by Muslims themselves. In the Guardian, for example, Usama Hasan has written:

‘British society, including its Muslim communities, needs to move beyond the routine condemnation of terrorist attacks and plots – there have been dozens since 9/11. We need instead to address the extreme Islamist ideology that al-Qaida and its sympathisers promote to incite attacks against soldiers and civilians worldwide in both war-torn and peaceful countries. Muslim leaders need to take ownership of the specifically religious aspects of the problem, that is to say the twisted theology that easily brainwashes vulnerable people, some of whom are intelligent university students and graduates.’

Maybe Usama Hasan could have a quiet word with the Prime Minister and Mayor of London.

Syria's chemical weapons arsenal

By Melanie Phillips
The Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
http://phillipsblog.dailymail.co.uk/
25 July 2012

Syrian General Ali Abdullah Ayub, right, is pictured meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus (Getty Images)

There is a degree of panic, and rightly so, over whether the Syrian tyrant Basher al Assad will use chemical weapons against either his own people or foreign attackers. His regime has this week threatened to do the latter, thus finally confirming what was long suspected but never openly admitted, that Syria possesses chemical weapons. It is believed to have mustard gas as well as nerve agents such as tabun, sarin and VX. The fear is either that the Assad regime uses them or that they fall into the hands of Hezbollah, al Qaeda or other Islamic terrorist groups. Either prospect is utterly nightmarish. Even Russia says it has told Syria it is unacceptable to threaten to use them.

In the last few days, this has been much discussed. What has not been raised, however, is the question of how Syria managed to develop such a chemical weapons stockpile in the first place. No-one in the western media seems remotely curious about how Syria has managed to arm itself to the teeth with them beneath the radar of international scrutiny.

Dr Danny Shoham, at the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, is an expert in chemical and biological warfare. In a Middle East Quarterly article in 2002, Guile, Gas and Germs: Syria's Ultimate Weapons, he set out the extraordinary history of Syria’s chemical weapons programme.

It first received chemical weapons from Egypt, he says, as far back as 1973. By the late eighties, it was saying it possessed an ‘answer to Israel’s nuclear threat’; people who read between the lines understood this meant Syria now possessed non-conventional weapons. In 1992, Syria refused to commit itself to the elimination of chemical weapons. From the 1970s onwards, wrote Shoham, Syria covertly developed a chemical weapons programme, aided by a wide variety of European and Asian suppliers including the Soviet Union, West Germany and middlemen and brokers located in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Britain, and Austria.

Shoham concluded:

‘Syria now possesses the most formidable CBW capabilities of any Arab state. Its arsenal probably even exceeds that of Iran in quantity and quality. Yet in building it from scratch, under the rule of Hafiz al-Asad, Syria has always managed to stay just outside the spotlight of international scrutiny. It did so by diffusing its efforts, and by playing its political cards with supreme skill—entering (and exiting) the Arab-Israeli "peace process" at just the right times, joining the Kuwait war coalition, cutting back at the last moment on its support for Kurdish separatism in Turkey, and so on. The West has always had some reason not to include Syria on its blackest list. Other regional problems have also drawn attention away from Syria. The United States is still preoccupied with Iraq and Iran, alongside which Syria appears benign.

But at this moment in time, it is a fact: Syria has more destructive capabilities than either of them. The West is often accused of a double standard—of tolerating Israel's possession of WMD, while preventing those same weapons from coming into the hands of Arabs or Muslims. But if there is such a double standard, then how does one explain the West's silence, if not complicity, in the building of Syria's CBW capabilities? A simple explanation would be to say that Syria outwitted the world. But that explanation may be too simple. Many parties profited from the Syrian build-up, and foreign strategists thought that a strong Syrian deterrent might give Hafiz al-Asad the confidence to make peace.'

That, however, was back in 2002. In 2003 the US, Britain and others went to war in Iraq to make the world safe from Saddam Hussein and his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Ever since, however, we have been told that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the proof of that is that none was ever found – surely one of the most profoundly illogical and imbecilic formulations ever to have fallen from human lips.

At the time, however, there were a number of reports that enormous truck movements across the border from Iraq into Syria suggested that some of these WMD had been moved there. Saddam’s Air Vice-Marshal Georges Sada, whom I interviewed, said he was absolutely certain that WMD had been moved from Iraq to Syria. All of this was however brushed aside for, as the bien pensant world has never stopped intoning with positively religious fervour, ‘we were taken to war in Iraq on a lie’.

But now we know that Syria possesses an arsenal of chemical weapons. So could any of this have come from Saddam’s Iraq, just as it was transferred from Egypt two decades previously?

In a more recent paper published in 2006 in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence , An Antithesis on the Fate of Iraq’s Chemical and Biological Weapons, Dr Shoham wrote that the two official reports – Duelfer and Carnegie in 2004 – that supposedly exonerated Saddam of still having WMD by the outbreak of war ignored much information that indicated the smuggling of chemical and biological weapons from Iraq into Syria. Although the most knowledgeable and experienced individuals tracking Iraq’s WMD were members of UNSCOM, they were largely excluded by the US intelligence community. Ill-trained soldiers would go to a site, find something suspicious, return 48 hours later and find it had disappeared.

In October 2003, the US intelligence community publicly pointed for the first time to transfers of WMD from Iraq to Syria. The Director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, James Clapper, said it linked the disappearance of Iraqi WMD with the huge number of Iraqi trucks entering Syria before and during the US invasion; based on satellite imagery, it assessed that these trucks contained missiles and WMD components. Shipments to Syria were supervised by Saddam’s most loyal intelligence agents. Once the shipments were made, these agents would leave and the regular border guards resumed their posts.

Moreover, captured Iraqi documents record that the Russian ‘spetsnaz’ moved many of Saddam’s weapons and related goods, including chemicals used to make chemical weapons plus missile components and MIG jet parts, out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the 2003 invasion.

In 2004 Nizar Najoef, a Syrian journalist who defected from Syria to Europe, claimed he had received information from contacts in Syrian intelligence that:

• Tunnels dug under al Baida near Hama in northern Syria were an integral part of an underground factory, built by the North Koreans, for producing Syrian Scud missiles. Iraqi chemical weapons and long range missiles were stored there;
• Vital parts of Iraq’s WMD were stored in the village of Tal Snan, north of Salamija where there was a big Syrian air force camp;
• Iraqi WMD was also stored in the city of Sjinsjar on Syria’s border with Lebanon.

Shoham concluded:

‘Apparently, then, the prevailing perception of the “failure” to find Iraq’s CBW arsenal ought to be rethought...Strategically, Iraq’s enduring arsenal may affect Syria’s CBW capabilities, provided that the transfer did in fact take place...’

Might some of Basher al Assad’s chemical (and possibly biological) arsenal have Saddam Hussein’s name on it?