RUTHFULLY YOURS

Europeans are free to say only what the courts let them.

When he was 50, the prophet of Islam took as his wife Aisha, who was then six or seven. The marriage was consummated when Aisha was nine.

This is not a smear. It is an accurate account of authoritative Islamic scripture. (See, e.g., Sahih-Bukhari, Vol. 5, Book 58, Nos. 234–236.) Yet it can no longer safely be discussed in Europe, thanks to the extortionate threat of violence and intimidation — specifically, of jihadist terrorism and the Islamist grievance industry that slipstreams behind it. Under a ruling by the so-called European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), free speech has been supplanted by sharia blasphemy standards.

The case involves an Austrian woman (identified as “Mrs. S.” in court filings and believed to be Elisabeth Sabaditsch Wolff) who, in 2009, conducted two seminars entitled “Basic Information on Islam.” She included the account of Mohammed’s marriage to Aisha. Though this account is scripturally accurate, Mrs. S. was prosecuted on the rationale that her statements implied pedophilic tendencies on the part of the prophet. A fine (about $547) was imposed for disparaging religion.

Mrs. S. appealed, relying on Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. That provision purports to safeguard “freedom of expression,” though it works about the same way the warranty on your used car does — it sounds like you’re covered, but the fine print eviscerates your protection.

Article 10 starts out benignly enough: Europeans are free “to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.” But then comes the legalese: One’s exercise of the right to impart information, you see, “carries with it duties and responsibilities.” Consequently, what is called “freedom” is actually “subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties” that the authorities decide “are necessary in a democratic society,” including for “public safety” and for “the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others.”

http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/10/febrile-summer-divided-capital/

Even if you ignore the rancorous Brexit debate and Remainers’ predictions that put the seven plagues of Egypt to shame, there have been plenty of entirely unrelated developments to make a Briton think seriously of buying a one-way ticket to the Antipodes or Americas.

The crowds sunbathing in the parks and strolling the shopping streets in their shorts and T-shirts seem so happy and carefree that if you didn’t read or watch the news you might have little sense that Britain may be finally, genuinely going down the tubes. Indeed, their calm and good cheer make you almost wonder if the panic, anger and bitterness so prevalent among the political and media classes might be misguided or at least excessive.

It was different last summer. In June, during the humid, febrile days after the terrible Grenfell fire, which came on the heels of Theresa May’s election debacle and assembly of a shaky coalition government, the capital felt as if it was on the verge of revolution. But then things calmed down and there was nothing like the run of headlines that over the past few months have prompted pundits to wonder if the UK as we know it is falling apart.
This dispatch appears in October’s Quadrant.
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Some of the more frightening ones may well be (consciously or unconsciously) part of the continuing campaign to stop or reverse the dismayingly chaotic Brexit process. These include the reports from both inside and outside the government that warn of catastrophic shortages of food, antibiotics and other vital goods come March 2019.

The UK may well face some difficult times after next spring, but it does seem a little unlikely that the country will be devastated by the equivalent of Napoleon’s naval blockade. It is not obvious that the hostility of M Barnier’s European Commission is shared by all the EU member governments, and surely one thing that has been made clear by various efforts to enforce sanctions on rogue regimes during the last decades is that there is no pariah state so despised and hateful that France, Germany and others won’t fight to trade with it. (As for the dark talk of civil unrest when or if Britain ceases to be a member of the EU, such an outcome seems more probable if the predominantly “Remainer” political class tries to overturn or reverse the referendum.)

However, there have been plenty of developments completely unrelated to Brexit or the EU that might make a Briton think a bit more seriously about buying a one-way ticket to the Antipodes or Americas.

This week, for instance, there was the report that a Birmingham prison whose management had been outsourced to a well-connected private company was actually being run by prison gangs, and was therefore even more chaotic and drug-ridden than the state-run penitentiaries. This was soon followed by an announcement by the Justice Secretary (a slow-witted fellow even by the undemanding standard that the Prime Minister prefers for her cabinet colleagues) that instead of enforcing the prison ban on mobile phones he would hand one to every prisoner. As is widely known (at least outside the Ministry of Justice), convicts use mobile phones not just to run their criminal enterprises from inside but to arrange the intimidation of witnesses and to put pressure on prison guards by targeting their families.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13158/turkey-education-islamization

After the minimum age for Quran studies in Turkey was abolished in 2011, a project named “Pre-school religious education through Koran classes” was piloted in ten cities across the country in 2013. The project teaches “basic Islamic information” to children between the ages of four and six. Since then, the number of “pre-school Koran classes” has continued to rise.

The number of religious “imam hatip schools” has climbed from 450 in 2002 to 4,112 in 2017. Meanwhile, there are only 302 specialized science high schools in the country.

“There are religious organizations… [that] pump their own ideologies on children through classes in ‘values education’ … We know that they use one-sided language that demonizes those who are different. We observe that the students who are exposed to such curricula consider those who think differently to be their ‘enemies.’… When one looks at countries such as Afghanistan, where similar steps were taken, one can see where this process leads to.” — İlknur Bahadır Kaya, chairman of the Parents’ Association.

Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) is set to receive an additional two billion liras (around $350 million), boosting its budget from last year’s 8.3 billion liras ($1.5 billion) to 10.4 billion ($1.8 billion) liras for 2019, according to the newspaper Cumhuriyet. This increase in budget surpasses that of 29 other major state institutions, including the ministries of the interior and foreign affairs.

The Diyanet, the state body regulating the role of Islam in Turkey, apparently has, as one of its main missions, transforming the country’s education system. It is now fully engaged in shaping school curricula.

After the minimum age for Quran studies in Turkey was abolished in 2011, a project named “Pre-school religious education through Quran classes,” implemented by the Diyanet, was piloted in ten cities across the country in 2013. The project teaches the Quran and “basic Islamic information” to children between the ages of four and six. In 2015, the Diyanet decided to expand to program to “all places where physical conditions are suitable.” Since then, the number of “pre-school Koran classes” has continued to rise. It has increased to 150,000 students in five years.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/23/oldest-intact-shipwreck-thought-to-be-ancient-greek-discovered-at-bottom-of-black-sea
Archaeologists have found what they believe to be the world’s oldest intact shipwreck at the bottom of the Black Sea where it appears to have lain undisturbed for more than 2,400 years.

The 23-metre (75ft) vessel, thought to be ancient Greek, was discovered with its mast, rudders and rowing benches all present and correct just over a mile below the surface. A lack of oxygen at that depth preserved it, the researchers said.

“A ship surviving intact from the classical world, lying in over 2km of water, is something I would never have believed possible,” said Professor Jon Adams, the principal investigator with the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project (MAP), the team that made the find. “This will change our understanding of shipbuilding and seafaring in the ancient world.”

The ship is believed to have been a trading vessel of a type that researchers say has only previously been seen “on the side of ancient Greek pottery such as the ‘Siren Vase’ in the British Museum”.

That work, which dates from about the same period, depicts a similar vessel bearing Odysseus past the sirens, with the Homeric hero lashed to the mast to resist their songs.

The team reportedly said they intended to leave the vessel where it was found, but added that a small piece had been carbon dated by the University of Southampton and claimed the results “confirmed [it] as the oldest intact shipwreck known to mankind”. The team said the data would be published at the Black Sea MAP conference at the Wellcome Collection in London later this week.