The Manchester Attack Update #2

In the days since the attack on Manchester Arena, the Establishment has continued to display its ignorance, its racism and its cowardice, both moral and physical. It is all very well to order the plebs to “Keep Calm and Carry On” when you are protected by legions of taxpayer-funded armed guards. Notice too how the soldiers that have been deployed on our streets have been used to guard the very centre of the Establishment – Parliament and Buckingham Palace. Gibbering in fear over a few medievalist religious fanatics is not a good look for our glorious leaders. And, by the way, the “Keep Calm” campaign was scrapped during the Second World War because it was considered patronising when the UK was facing a real threat from a heavily armed industrial nation rather than a bunch of friendless losers who have watched too many beheading videos on YouTube.The recently elected Mayor of Manchester is one particular Establishment fool whose ignorance can stand for the rest. Andy Burnham opined that the Manchester bomber Salman Abedi was not a Muslim. Three thoughts occur to me after reading about this absurd outburst. For a start Burnham is not (to my knowledge) a Muslim so no self-respecting Islamist would be taking anything he had to say about religion seriously. Secondly, the Mayor of Manchester is not a member of the ulema, the body of “scholars” entitled to rule on all things Islamic, so he has no right to make this pronouncement. Finally, Burnham is clearly unaware of the Hadith that says (I paraphrase) “If any Muslim calls his brother an infidel, one of them is correct.” In other words, wrongly accusing someone of not being a Muslim negates one’s own membership of the religion. The only people more enthusiastic than the Islamophiles in the British Establishment of accusing people of not being Muslims have been hardline fundamentalists who love takfir.

Burnham’s ridiculous assertions are part of a wider ignorance about the Islamic religion. One of the most common arguments about Islamist terrorism has been to assert that the Bible is just as bad as the Koran when it comes to violence. As someone who has written on more than one occasion that Judaism, Christianity and Islam are essentially the same religion with different emphases, I find this claim bizarre. For a start it demonstrates a profound ignorance of both books and about the difference between history and theology. The Old Testament purports to be a history of the Jewish people and the violence therein is limited in both place and time. The Koran on the other hand contains a theology of violence that is not limited and will not end until everyone worships the one true “god.” A further problem is that Islam does not claim to be a new religion but merely the fulfilment of the prophets; the Bible is as much part of the Islamic religion as the Bible. So if the Bible is just as violent as the Koran then all you are doing is doubling the number of violent books beloved of Islamists.

Our racist rulers continue to insist on referring to British citizens of North African, Middle Eastern and South Asian descent as “Muslims” and declaim loudly about how this mythical “community” is not responsible for the Manchester attack. No-one with half a brain thinks they are! How many times must it be screamed from the rooftops – “Islam” is not a race, “Muslim” is not an ethnicity. Stop labelling our fellow citizens. The racist Establishment loves to foist this label on people because they are allied with the religious bigots who seek to control and manipulate these “communities.” The Establishment – politicians, the BBC, racist Guardian writers – do not care about honour killings, FGM and forced marriage because they are happening to non-white people. The alleged “Islamophobe” Donald Trump has been in the Middle East selling billions of dollars worth of military equipment to the disgusting klepocrats of Saudi Arabia, the main sponsors of Islamist terrorism and exporters of vicious Wahhabi Islam. I wonder how many of the weapons Trump has sold to the Saudis will end up in the hands of ISIS?

I am quite sure that many people in the nonexistent “Muslim community” hate and fear the same people the rest of the population does. Their main problem is that they keep getting lumped together with these nutjobs because the identity-politics-obsessed Establishment insists that ideology is a matter of genetics. I am also sure that, were they able to, a great many of the supposed “1.6 billion” Muslims in the world would break away from this violent and intolerant belief system.

Salman Abedi is typical of the monomaniacal god botherers who have caused so much mayhem throughout human history. The original founder of Judaism, Abraham, thought it was a good idea to sacrifice his son to the voices in his head. Jesus of Nazareth was a vicious sectarian who referred to non-Jews as “dogs” and, far from being a man of peace, numbered at least two members of Jewish guerilla organisations – Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot – amongst his closest followers and was executed for sedition along with two terrorists (not “thieves” as some versions of the Gospels would have you believe). Muhammad married a six year old and consummated the marriage when his “wife” was nine, led numerous armed attacks on non-Muslims, allowed himself multiple wives (up to eleven at the same time) when his followers were limited to four and personally carried out the execution of prisoners. None of these men are great moral examples or worthy of emulation in the 21st century. The kindest thing you can say about all three is that they probably didn’t exist, or if they did then they probably didn’t say or do most of what is attributed to them.

If this sounds like an angry post it is because I am angry. I am angry that religious totalitarianism has been allowed to flourish again in Britain after centuries of being gradually driven out of power. I am angry that the same people who (rightly) condemn Christian misogyny, anti-homosexuality and anti-Semitism seem determined excuse and promote the same ideas so long as they come from Muslims and/or Islamists. I am angry that fellow human beings are labeled as followers of Islam because of their ethnicity. I am angry that the racists in the Establishment are happy to turn a blind eye to hideous crimes so long as the victims are not white. Yes, I am angry, much good that it will do me.