RUTHFULLY YOURS

News from the Press Association via the BBC and the Guardian, and also the Birmingham Mail: A 15-your old schoolgirl has been arrested after she posted a video on Facebook. This video is said to have shown her burning a Koran, an event that had been carried out  on her school’s premises. The Koran was an English-language version, the reports state, which is an unusual claim to make. As she is still a minor, details of her identity are secret, other than the fact that she lives in Sandwell, a district of Birmingham. Whether she is white, South Asian or even Muslim is not stated.

The video was taken down from Facebook, and her school was informed. Worryingly, a 14-year old boy was arrested on Tuesday, “on suspicion of making threats on Facebook.” Both teenagers have been released on bail. It is uncertain whether they will be formally charged.

West Midlands police released a statement that said:

“The local neighbourhood team have strong links with the school and have been working closely with key partners from the community and the local authority to resolve the matter locally.”

The girl was arrested for the act of burning the Koran, on the grounds that she could have been “inciting religious hatred.” Other children were looking on as the Koran was burned. The police here appear to be overstepping the mark.

When the Incitement to Religious Hatred Act was introduced in 2005, the Muslim Council of Britain (who had urged its creation) wanted it to be seen as a blasphemy law, including treating insults against Islam as an offense. Blasphemous libel still exists under British law, but it only refers to Christianity. This blasphemy law has been invoked only twice in 90 years. In 1921, a man called Mr. John William Gott had produced a pamphlet that stated that Christ entering Jerusalem must have looked “like a circus clown on the back of two donkeys.” He was jailed with hard labor. In 1977, Denis Lemon was given a nine month suspended sentence and a heavy fine for publishing a poem by James Kirkup that dealt with a Roman soldier’s sexual fantasizing about Christ. The same poem was read on the BBC a year ago on an Asian “arts” program, and no action took place. Since the 1977 trial – itself an anomaly – there have been no trials for blasphemy.

However, the police in this particular case, and other recent cases, appear to be testing the 2005 Act in ways that were specifically advised against when the Bill was passed. A law traditionally has to pass both Houses of Parliament to be become law, but if it is repeatedly opposed by the Lords, a government can invoke the Parliament Act and railroad the bill into law.  The bill was passed by the House of Commons on July 11, 2005, even though many leading Christians opposed it. When the bill was deliberated in the Upper House of Parliament (The Lords) a majority of 149 found it unacceptable, and tabled an amendment that allowed for some protection of freedom of speech.

As reported in the Telegraph on January 31, 2006:

“Under the Lords amendments the new offence of inciting religious hatred would be restricted to threatening words and behaviour rather than a wider definition including insults and abuse.

The amendments would also require the offence to be intentional and specify that proselytising, discussion, criticism, insult, abuse and ridicule of religion, belief or religious practice would not be an offence.

But the Government has indicated that it plans to reverse most of the changes made by the Lords.”

The Bill was passed shortly afterwards, and in November 2006, Janet Daly wrote:

“As an amendment to the Government Bill that was passed in February acknowledged, there is an important distinction between words that appear to foment hatred towards people (members of a religion) and attacking the religion itself; between the believers and the belief. To say that Islam, as a faith, is wicked and vicious might be uninformed and gratuitous, but it is within the realm of debate about the nature of religion.”

The police are now using the same act to arrest a schoolgirl for allegedly burning a Koran. This act – though tasteless – is not illegal, but the police appear to be redefining the law on their own terms. The hypocrisy that this shows, when radical Islamists can burn symbols such as remembrance poppies with impunity – is an alarming development.

On September 11 this year, in Gateshead in Northunbria, in the north of England, a group of young men burned a copy of the Koran. They covered their faces in tea towels, and swore a lot, but one had said: “This is for the boys in Afghanistan. September 11, International Burn a Koran Day, for all the people of 9/11, this is how we do it in Gateshead, right.”

The young males appeared to have been drinking, and the incident occurred before they went to a soccer match. The video appeared on YouTube and on September 15, two people were arrested. On September 23^rd, four others were arrested. The men apparently belong to the English Defence League (EDL).

A 37-year old man connected to the individuals arrested had said to the Daily Mail:

“It wasn’t so much planned as more we were driven to do it. Now there seems to be one law for them and one law for us. They can burn a Union Flag and the Stars and Stripes, but we get arrested for burning a few sheets of paper.”

Britain is not unique in treating Koran-burning as an offense. In Bischheim in northeastern France in October this year, a blogger was arrested and charged after he filmed himself burning a Koran and then urinating on it. He subsequently posted the video onto his weblog. He was wearing a mask, and was identified because his telephone number could be seen in a section of the video that took place in his living room, where he threw paper planes at two boxes which were made to look like the WTC towers. He was arrested for “inciting religious hatred.” He could face up to five years in jail for his prank.

A Strasbourg deputy prosecutor said of the blogger:

“He claims full responsibility. He says he’s not a right-wing extremist but that in France he can burn the Koran, just as he can burn a Winnie the Pooh book, without worrying about the consequences.”

Another Facebook-related story took place recently in Coventry, Britain when a child whose mother is English and whose father is of South Asian origin was threatened with death. On Remembrance Day earlier this month, 13-year old Darius Gill posted a Facebook  tribute to the soldiers who had died. In response he was threatened with death by a gang of Muslims who called themselves “The Muslim Defence League.”

The Daily Mail reported that five Muslim boys and a “white” girl were suspended from the school after the death threats. One of the boys, who had threatened to slit Darius’ throat, had posted a picture of himself on his Facebook page holding an AK-47 rifle (pictured).

In the fall of 2005 Turkey began the official path of accession to Europe. The European Union has grown from a mere trading group to a body with preposterous pretensions of being a super-state. Its attempts to have a single currency are now in the process of breaking it up. The political union of Europe is dangerous on many levels, and with no common language or culture, there can never be a sense of genuine “oneness”. Turkey has stood as a bridge between Europe on one side and the Middle East and Islam on the other. In 1923, when Kemal Mostafa Ataturk established Turkey as a secular state, there has been a commitment to maintaining this secular identity.

Under the Islamist Justice and Development (AKP) party, led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the nation has slipped further into Islamism. In the past, Islamist governments have been deposed by the staunch secularists of the army. The army wanted Turkey to join the European Union, as it was already in NATO. Knowing that a military coup could ruin the nation’s chances of joining the EU, the army allowed Erdogan to introduce more Islamist measures and took a backseat role while the AKP challenged the entire identity of the secular state created in 1923. When there was a strong belief that the army would be mounting a coup, a convenient “plot” was discovered in the military, and a Night of the Long Knives began. The purge of leading army figures allegedly tied to this “Ergenekon Plot” has put an end to the political power held by the army, and now there are no internal forces to restrain the AKP party’s Islamist ambitions.

In May, Turkey supported the Muslim Brotherhood-organized “flotilla” to break the Gaza blockade, and moved closer to Iran and other unscrupulous Islamist nations. In September this year, it was revealed that Iran has agreed to donate $25 million to Erdogan’s AKP party.

The latest move by Erdogan, announced in PanArmenian is to create a free border zone between Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Jordan. There will be no visa requirements for people within these countries.

In Lebanon, Erdogan said to his Arab hosts that,

“although we are talking different languages in this vast geography, we should not forget that we have one history, one culture and similar values. We have given a shape the history together. Be sure that we will give a shape to the future altogether. We are the members of a civilization that gives high importance to neighbourhood…”

“…We have not lost anything or met any problem. On the contrary, when we removed the visa requirements, we clearly saw that they were meaningless. We have not removed the visa requirements; we have removed a century old yearning among our people. Our people embrace each other now.”

Libya is run by a crackpot Islamist dictator, and Syria is run by a Baathist regime with links to Iran and a desire to destroy Israel. Lebanon has a huge tract of land within its borders that is controlled by Hezbollah and funded directly from Iran.

The European Union has an open borders policy within its boundaries, and if Turkey joins the EU – assuming it can acknowledge Cyprus as an autonomous EU nation – it too will be allowed to have its nationals travelling and inhabiting any region of Europe. It would be all too easy for a corrupt official to grant a Turkish identity and a Turkish passport to a Syrian, Libyan or Hizbolllah terrorist or spy to travel freely throughout Europe.

Erdogan has laid his cards out on the table– and it is obvious that he sees his country as part of the Islamic/Islamist bloc, rather than “European”. For this reason alone, his desires to join Europe should be blocked at every turn.

This Eurabia Watch feature will continue to appear as a series on Family Security Matters, concentrating more on the roles that are undermining Europe socially and politically, as a result of misguided idealists failing to properly rally around their own cultural traditions.

However, the actions of Islamists globally cannot be ignored. For this reason we will be starting a new strand in the FSM tapestry – called “Global Islamism Watch.” This will be a column where the excesses of Islamism around the globe are exposed.

As of next week we will additionally be posting a new section on Global Terror Alerts.

The Editor, Family Security Matters.