I'm taking a break from the diary over the festive season, and will return after January 3. I wish readers a happy Christmas, a good and peaceful new year, and a pleasant holiday.

As Tony Blair draws plaudits from all and sundry for his attempts to restart the Middle East 'peace process', Rachel Ehrenfeld provides a sharp dose of cold reality. After pointing out the unfortunate fact, ignored by the very same all and sundry, that Mahmoud Abbas may have presented a statemanlike face to the gullible west but to his own people has consistently called for the armed struggle to continue ( a fact seemingly alluded to by Blair in his comments about Palestinian terror having to end), Ehrenfeld raises another unfortunate fact about Blair's own government:

'With a well-established civilian/military infrastructure in the PA-administered territories, HAMAS has an annual budget is estimated at around $70 million, at least $20 million of which it receives from Interpal, the HAMAS front organization in the UK. Interpal not only raises funds for HAMAS in the UK, but also serves as the major courier of funds from other HAMAS-affiliated organizations in Europe to the West Bank and Gaza. Its activities are documented at length by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.

'Why does the Blair administration allow a HAMAS front to openly operate in the UK? After all, following US pressure, the European Union as well as the UK have outlawed HAMAS as a terrorist organization and prohibited the collection of money to assist terrorist organizations for any purpose, including civilian. Is the electoral support of the anti-Israeli lobby that crucial to the Blair administration staying in power? In his attempts to hold on to power, Blair apparently fails to understand that HAMAS’ continued operations will eventually undermine any hope for a viable Palestinian state.

'President Bush has called on the free world to focus “on helping the Palestinians develop a state.” However, Mr. Blair’s negligence of stopping Interpal’s activities and the funding of HAMAS in the UK stand in striking contradiction to the President’s plea.'

It does indeed. When challenged over Interpal in the past, the British government has said that there is 'no evidence' to connect Interpal with terror, since it merely funds Hamas's social services. But as Ehrenfeld points out, Hamas is a terror organisation tout court. Even the EU has said so. So this sophistry just won't wash. The fact is that while Blair swans round the Middle East promoting 'peace', he is turning a blind eye to the terror factory in his own back yard.

If the quality of an individual can be guaged by those who attack her, then the appointment of Ruth Kelly as Education Secretary in the wake of the defenestration of David Blunkett is the best news in ages. Hardly had Ms Kelly's feet got under her new desk than buckets of ordure rained down upon her from various directions. First off the mark in the much-chucking relay was the sisterhood. Ms Kelly, despite having produced no fewer than four children since becoming an MP and still managed to hold down ever-more demanding political full-time jobs without ever whingeing or playing the female victim card, is not a sister. Correction: it is because she produced no fewer than four children since becoming an MP and still managed to hold down ever-more demanding political full-time jobs without ever whingeing or playing the female victim card that she is not a sister. Hence the extraordinary outpouring of malice, jealousy and spite by the Blair Babes, as the Times reported on December 19:

'Some of the "Blair babes" are disappointed that despite being a working mum she has not been more forthright about women’s issues. "How has she managed to get so far when she's had so much maternity leave?" asked one female colleague...A woman backbencher who was elected with Kelly in 1997 said: "What's she ever done for Labour? We were the people in the key seats, rather than that cow who was dropped in and had barely been a party member for a couple of years. She wouldn’t talk to most of us. It was like she regarded herself as one of the 'in-girls'. This promotion is just a kick in the teeth.'

Oh dear. But much of this animosity derives from intense alarm that Ms Kelly, a practising and extremely serious Roman Catholic and a member of Opus Dei, no less, has the Wrong Views about social issues such as abortion, euthanasia and stem-cell research. As the Times reported today, this has caused panic within Britain's Frankenstein-industrial complex:

'Robin Lovell-Badge, head of developmental genetics at the National Institute of Medical Research, told The Times Higher Education Supplement: "I have just been in the US and have seen how confused the situation is there. If someone as senior as Ruth Kelly is not going to favour stem-cell research we will end up with a similarly schizophrenic system in this country. It is very worrying. "'

Note, of course, the implicit assumption that the default position of cannibalising embryos and destroying what remains of the sanctity of human life is axiomatically correct, and therefore any opposing views such as those held by Ms Kelly (she's religious, so she has to be a nut, just like George W Bush) must by definition be exiled altogether from the policy arena.

Nor is this the extent of the charge sheet. For Ms Kelly also has socially conservative views on family life, marriage and parenting. And as Education Secretary, she will now be in charge of the Government's teenage pregnancy strategy and its policy on sex education. No wonder the eugenics and rubber industries (more commonly known as family planning) are alarmed. The new minister might actually restore a modicum of order, sanity and morality to the sexual education of the nation's children. Horrors!

Of course, no-one knows how she is going to behave. Maybe she will be sucked into the amoral and anti-educational quicksands of the ghastly Education Department just like all her predecessors. But I would guess that it is no accident that the Prime Minister has put a woman with these views into this job. She displaced David Miliband, who was expected to get it but who has instead been shunted sideways to the Cabinet Office to do something frightfully important for Blair which for the moment escapes me. Miliband was gung-ho for abolishing A-levels. But Blair needs the soubriquet of 'the Prime Minister who abolished the gold standard of A-levels' like he needs a hole in the head. Canniest of political operators that he is, Blair understands the fury of Middle Britain at the disorderliness, insecurity and general cultural slide that is rampaging through suburbia (the pathetic Tories are still desperately trying to work out how they can join this cultural rout). It would surely suit him very well to have an Education Secretary who combined the work-and-family attributes of equality feminism (as opposed to the nihilistic, family-busting variety) with a defence of traditional social and moral values - and who will also defend the last tottering bastion of what passes for educational standards in this country.

My bet is that while Ms Kelly won't be allowed to rock the Frankenstein-industrial boat (big money talks louder than morals), she may well give the sisterhood a few more shocks. Tidings of comfort and joy, indeed.

The report this evening on the Prime Minister's visit to the Middle East by the BBC's political editor, Andrew Marr, on TV's Six o'Clock News, along with his exclusive interview with Tony Blair on BBC TV's News 24, was yet another dispiriting example of the prejudice that infests BBC coverage of this issue. Marr's report was almost entirely presented from the standpoint of the Palestinians. True, the Palestinians were the story, since Tony Blair's planned London conference will feature them alone (although Blair strangely referred to both sides coming to the conference -- is he really so detached from reality?). But Marr's report was based on the premise that the Palestinians were the victims in the Middle East drama, that all they wanted was a 'country of their own', and that Ariel Sharon's motives should be regarded with deep suspicion -- while the Palestinians' good faith was not even questioned.

Thus he referred to the 'quarter of a million Palestinians caught inside Israeli-occupied east Jerusalem', posed by a bit of the security fence that looks like a wall rather than the far less awful-looking wire barrier that comprises most of it, and asked emotively whether the Palestinians would 'ever have a proper country'. He did not refer to the fact that they were offered a proper country in 1947 and in 2000 but responded by trying to exterminate Israel. Nor did he refer (apart from a glancing and impatient reference to Israel only wanting to talk about terrorism while the Palestinians only want to talk about land) to the savage war waged on Israel which necessitated the barrier (whose route has now been modified to take in less Palestinian land as a result of a ruling by the Israel supreme court -- not that that is ever mentioned either) and the number of Israeli victims of terrorist atrocities which, if translated into British population terms, is the equivalent of about 70,000 casualties in four years. In his interview with Blair, he asked instead whether he was absolutely sure that Sharon would pull out of Gaza and give the Palestinians 'a real country'. He did not ask whether Blair was absolutely sure of the Palestinians' good faith since they are still refusing to disband their own terrorist militias, let alone take on Hamas (something Mahmoud Abbas has always said he refuses to do since he will not entertain the prospect of civil war) and which surely any fair-minded person would think is somewhat important if the 'peace process' is to be 'got back on track'.

In short, even-handed this was not. Most people who are ignorant of the situation in the Middle East (which is most people) and who watched those items would be confirmed once again in their BBC-induced view that that dispute is over a Palestinian state and Israel's obduracy in not allowing it. One more contribution by the BBC, in other words, to the frightening ignorance and prejudice now stalking the nation.

It seeems that America is not immune to Christianophobia and totalitarian hate-crime hysteria. In Philadelphia, 11 Christians were arrested on charges of criminal conspiracy, possession of instruments of crime, reckless endangerment, ethnic intimidation, riot, failure to disperse, disorderly conduct, and obstructing highways after preaching Scripture at a gay pride event. Charges were subsequently dropped against seven of them -- apparently because they were not videotaped quoting Scripture -- but four have been sent to trial. According to the Christian website AgapePress, the evangelists were harassed by gay activists:

'A militant group called the "Pink Angels," whose main objective is to silence outspoken Christians, formed a human chain to block the Repent America members' access to the sidewalk.The police eventually escorted the Christians past the blockade, and they began to preach and distribute gospel tracts on the public sidewalk and street inside the event. However, homosexual activists continued to harass the open-air evangelists, screaming obscenities, hooting and whistling to drown out their message. Some of Pink Angels carried large signs alongside the Christians to block their message and prevent them from speaking with other Outfest attendees.'

But it was the Christians who were arrested and charged. According to one outraged Philadelphia attorney, Brian Fahling:

'...if you are a Christian on the streets of Philadelphia and dare to publicly express a Biblical viewpoint, a jail cell awaits you.'

Fahling, who claimed that the prosecutor referred to the Bible as 'hate speech', compared the plight of the Christians as comparable to the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s:

'This is like being in the South in the 1950s up here in this court system. It is absolutely incredible'.

And in a subsequent article, Fahling added:

'First, symbols of Christianity are removed from the public square, now, Christians are facing years in prison because they preached the gospel in the public square. Stalin would be proud'.

This is where victim culture, and the onslaught upon the majoritarian religious and moral values of the west, has taken us. Our culture is locked in a life and death struggle. The problem is, only a few have noticed.

Anyone in Britain who wants to know what is likely to happen as a result of the proposed law against incitement to religious hatred should look at the first verdict handed down in Australia's state of Victoria last week under a very similar law. Two Christian pastors from the Catch the Fires evangelical ministry, Daniel Scot and Danny Nalliah, were found to have committed religious vilification against Islam. Their crime? Quoting the Koran in a way that got "a response from the audience at various times in the form of laughter".

The judge, Michael Higgins, said they had 'made fun of Muslim beliefs and conduct'. Ridicule in Victoria is thus now a crime. And as Andrew Bolt observes in the Herald Sun, the pastors have been convicted essentially for telling the truth:

'The judge gave 13 examples, starting like this:

"Pastor Scot, during the course of the seminar, made statements --

"(1) that the (Koran) promotes violence, killing and looting

"(2) that it treats women badly ...

"(5) that Allah is not merciful and a thief's hand is cut off for stealing ...

"(12) Muslim people have to fight Christians and Jews, humiliate them and fight them until they accept true religion (sic)..."

'Indeed, at least eight of the accusations arose from Scot quoting the Koran at the seminar, and -- it seems to me -- for the most part accurately. The Koran indeed tells Muslims to "kill disbelievers where you find them" in defending Islam, to "fight those who believe not in God ... until they pay the jizya (a penalty tax for non-Muslims)", and to share loot after a war. It also instructs men how to punish "ill-conduct" in their wives -- "admonish them (first), (next), refuse to share their beds (and last) beat them (lightly)". Thieves must indeed have hands lopped off, and so on. So what did Scot, in those 13 examples the judge gave, say that was actually false? Higgins in his summary does not say -- other than that he used wrong immigration statistics and failed to cite a verse of the Koran that claimed Allah was indeed merciful. But he ruled that in quoting the Koran Scot "failed to differentiate between Muslims throughout the world, (and) that he preached a literal translation of the Koran and of Muslims' religious practices which was not mainstream ..." '

Bolt points out that when the law was introduced, the government gave assurances that it would only be used against 'the most noxious forms of conduct", and would 'promote racial and religious tolerance'. Yet now two pastors have been convicted for, at worst, poking fun at the Koran -- while, Bolt charges:

'the Islamic Council... voted to install as Australia's Mufti Sheik Taj El-din El-Hilali, who has praised suicide bombers as "heroes", accused Jews of using "sex and abominable acts of buggery, espionage, treason and economic hoarding to control the world" and called September 11 "God's work against oppressors" -- as well as "the work of 100 per cent American gangs". '

In Victoria, this law has already incited inter-religious strife and community tension, criminalised truth-telling and restricted legitimate speech. Far from producing greater tolerance, it has attacked a cardinal tenet of a tolerant and just society. The Australian experience should be a chilling warning.

On the Today programme (0810) this morning, the Home Office minister Fiona Mactaggart — the minister who has been defending the proposed law against incitement to religious hatred — came close to justifying the Sikh violence which has succeeded in forcing the Birmingham Repertory Theatre to cancel the last ten performances of the play Behzti (Punjabi for ‘Dishonour’) . The Sikhs objected to the play because it depicts rape and murder in a Sikh temple. According to the Telegraph, after they first protested the theatre allowed them to circulate their objections to members of the audience. This did not placate the Sikhs who wanted the action moved away from the temple. Last Saturday night there was a riot outside the theatre involving more than 1000 Sikhs. Windows were smashed as the mob tried to storm the building, eggs were hurled, three police officers were injured and the play was stopped after 20 minutes. Since the Sikhs refused to guarantee that there would be no more violence, the theatre was forced to cancel the play to safeguard audiences and players. According to the Guardian, the Sikh playwright, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, has been forced to flee her home:

'"She has been threatened with murder and told to go into hiding by the police. She is personally paying a high price," said Shakila Taranum Mann, a filmmaker. "She feels this is an attempt to censor her. It is mob rule." '

Now by any normal standards, all this is appalling. This kind of violence and intimidation is simple criminal behaviour that should be stopped and the perpetrators punished, period. But instead of the theatre being protected from this intimidation and the play being able to proceed as a result, the play has had to be cancelled. Thus violence and intimidation have won the day in Birmingham, and a woman is now in hiding for having written a play that upset people.

So what was the government’s response to all this? Invited to comment, Ms Mactaggart first hid behind the pious disclaimer that the decision to cancel the play was entirely a matter for the theatre; then she went so far as to call the violence ‘very sad’ — ‘sad’?? since when is violent rioting, an attempt to storm a public building, assaulting three police officers and threatening a theatre company, the audience and a playwright ‘sad’? -- ; and finally issued the ringing statement that people were entitled to protest if their faith was insulted.

Well, I think Ms Mactaggart is an insult, to the intelligence and to democracy. Of course the Sikhs were entitled to protest and to object. There is all the difference in the world, however, between protest and violent intimidation. But most alarmingly, Britain is now a society where the greatest offence of all is to give offence. It is considered more heinous to offend people than to commit violence. This has been demonstrated by a number of incidents over recent years — such as the case of Harry Hammond (see January 14 post), who was attacked after he held up a poster calling for an end to homosexuality, lesbianism and immorality, but who was himself convicted of a public order offence. And in our multicultural society (sic), the very existence of the majority faith and its festivals is deemed to be offensive to minorities — who are themselves utterly baffled by such a ludicrous attitude.

In a devastating piece in the Times, Anthony Browne observes that Britain is committing cultural suicide by writing Christmas out of the script. As he so mordantly observes:

‘The Red Cross bans Nativity scenes in its shops… Christmas trees and decorations are banned in Britain’s Jobcentres… For the third consecutive year Christmas postage stamps will be Christless. A quarter of schools will not have Nativity plays, and almost as many have banned carols… Tony Blair’s Christmas cards have no reference to, well, Christmas. The Eden Centre in Cornwall has banned Christmas, replacing it with "a time of gifts. The war on Christmas is being waged across Christendom. In Italy, a school replaced the Nativity play with Little Red Riding Hood, while another replaced the word "Jesus" in carols with "virtue". The Mayor of Sydney caused outrage by reducing the city’s Christmas decorations to a single secular illuminated tree with the sign "Season’s greetings". The US now has a national "holiday tree" and schools take "winter holidays". Christianity has gone back to its origins, and become the world’s most widely persecuted religion, finally prompting the Vatican to hit back with a campaign against "Christianophobia".'

Paralysed by its own self-loathing and terror of giving offence through its very existence, the Church of England is just letting this happen with not a peep of protest; indeed, it is been avidly signing its own death warrant by genuflecting before the shrine of multiculturalism wherever possible. But of course, the way to assert itself is not to attack or intimidate people who may insult it. The nativity scene at Madame Tussaud’s featuring David and Victoria Beckham as Joseph and Mary was grossly insulting and disrespectful to Christianity. But it was still very wrong for a vandal to attack it.

Which brings us back to the Sikhs, who before this incident in Birmingham were the model of a law-abiding minority community. Indeed, in their passionate espousal of British values, they were in some ways more British than the British. So what on earth has come over them?

I think it is no coincidence that this has happened so soon after the new law against incitement to religious hatred was mooted. Sure, Sikhs are already covered, along with Jews, by the law against incitement to racial hatred. But as has been said before, there is a very great difference between inciting hatred against a race, to which people have no choice but to belong, and a religion, which is a matter of choice. The former is designed to prevent hatred of people; the latter, hatred of attitudes, opinions and texts. The former is a defence of liberty; the latter is a direct attack upon it. And it’s no use Ms Mactaggart insisting that the proposed law on religious hatred would not criminalise the giving of offence. It would. All religions, just like atheism or secularism, give offence to someone, and very often that someone claims that the perceived insult amounts to incitement to hatred. Sometimes this is true; sometimes it is not. But the blunt instrument of the law will not distinguish the one from the other.

The Sikhs understand that this law has been proposed because the Muslims have effectively threatened the British government, which (as more candid members privately admit) is throwing them this bone to buy their votes at the general election. So if the Muslims can get their way by flexing their muscle, why can’t the Sikhs? If Muslims can destroy a fundamental liberal principle by jumping up and down about being insulted, then why can’t the Sikhs?

Our laws against incitement to violence are very rarely used, despite clear evidence. And yet we are now arriving at a situation where legitimate opinion or drama is to be suppressed at the behest of violence or intimidation -- which will therefore have won twice over. The result will be increasing violence, as competing groups abandon the battleground of words to settle their differences on the streets instead.

This is decadence — a culture dying on its knees before the spectres of violence and intimidation, in a vain attempt to appease the forces that now threaten to destroy it.

Ursula Owen, head of Index on Censorship, has now aplogised for its appalling remarks on the murder of Theo van Gogh (see post below). However, as the Telegraph reported, the author of these comments Rohan Jayasekera, the magazine's associate editor has not lost his job. And Ms Owen's apology did not really get to the heart of the matter. She said:

'"There has been a lot of criticism and some support," she said. "I am sorry that it has outraged people. I don't think the tone is right and I do not agree with it. It would not have got in the magazine because it would have been edited before. This is not something I would have written myself. We have had people who write for us saying they disapprove of that piece but no one has said they are never going to write for us again." Miss Owen said that just because she had printed the piece did not mean that she endorsed the views in it."I do not agree with everything the magazine prints," she said. "We recently published a piece saying there was not a link between HIV and Aids. I don't agree with that view but I think it is important that it should be aired." '

Well, that's all very well but surely rather misses the point. It wasn't that these remarks were offensive, or that the 'tone' wasn't right. It was that a body which campaigns for freedom of speech effectively blamed a murder victim for his own killing on the grounds that he had caused offence. Such a position, taken by no less a figure than Index's associate editor, demonstrates the utter moral bankruptcy and indeed abject betrayal of Index's ostensible position, because it sided with those who would commit murder in order to suppress expression that offends them.

Ms Owen's apology simply does not acknowledge this. Unlike Peter Tatchell, the gay activist (with whose position I often deeply disagree) who nevertheless on this issue -- despite saying this was a one-off and out of character for Index -- makes a wider and very important point:

'"I found it to be a tragic betrayal of the magazine's traditional support for libertarian values. In this current epoch of post-modernism and live-and-let-live multiculturalism, moral relativism is gaining ground. This article was one more instance of this relativism. Liberal humanitarian values are under threat. Much of this threat comes not from the far Right, but from the Left's moral equivocation and compromises." '

Yup, Peter gets it.

The vitally important decision by the Law Lords that the government is acting illegally in detaining without trial foreign nationals suspected of terrorist involvement illustrates the woeful inability of this country to face up to the scale and nature of the terrorist threat.

This was particularly true of one member of the nine-strong panel, Lord Hoffman. Unlike Lord Bingham, who accepted that the UK was facing a ‘war or other public emergency threatening the life of the nation’ but disputed whether it was using the proper means to deal with it, Hoffmann asked whether Muslim extremism threatened the life of the British nation — as it had been threatened in the age of Elizabeth I, when Spain proposed to subject English institutions to the rule of Spain and the Inquisition — and concluded it did not.

This demonstrated a total failure to understand the nature of the Islamist threat to Britain and the west. Hoffmann thought this was even less fundamental a threat than IRA terrorism had been. But the intention to cause loss of life on a vast and unprecedented scale in itself makes Islamist terror different from conventional terrorism. And in addition, it is driven by the explicit aim to defeat western democracy and reinstitute the medieval Islamic empire that stretched halfway across the globe. This is not conventional terrorism: it is a war that has been declared on our values, a declared intention to destroy our way of life and subject it to Islam. Given the galvanising belief that everything that is not Islam is the sphere of evil and must therefore be obliterated, the threat to the life of this nation is surely obvious.

But not to Hoffmann.

‘The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these’

he said.

What an extraordinary thing to say. He thus implied that the major terrorist attacks we are told by the police have been thwarted were of less danger to the life of the nation than the law he was busy denouncing. But when a liberal society is attacked, it has to resort to illiberal measures to defend itself. Any nation faced with a major threat to its security and way of life is entitled to take steps to protect itself. On occasion, this may involve the temporary suspension of normal liberties in order to safeguard that way of life. This is indeed what happened during World War Two, when the government took powers to detain people on suspicion — of which Hoffman also seemed to disapprove.

Instead, he said:

‘Whether we would survive Hitler hung in the balance but there is no doubt that we shall survive al Qaeda’.

Oh yes? While people like Hoffman are in a position to cripple our defences, there’s plenty of doubt. Thank heavens he wasn’t around during the war, or we would quite possibly never have defeated the Nazi threat.

Even more bizarrely, he also cited the Madrid bombing to support his argument:

‘The Spanish people have not said that what happened in Madrid, hideous crime as it was, threatened the life of their nation. Their legendary pride would not allow it’.

What on earth is this man talking about? What planet is he on? The response of the Spanish to the Madrid bombing was not a display of legendary pride. It was a supine capitulation to terror. The bombing made them change their government to one that would abandon its support for the US in Iraq. This was not so much a threat to the life of the nation as a blatant and successful attempt to suborn it and change its direction.

Nor was Hoffmann the only Law Lord on this panel with an alarmingly fragile grip on reality. Lord Scott declared:

‘Indefinite imprisonment in consequence of a denunciation on grounds that are not disclosed and made by a person whose identity cannot be disclosed is the stuff of nightmares, associated with France before and during the revolution, with Soviet Russia in the Stalinist era, and now associated, as a result of section 23 of the 2001 Act, with the United Kingdom’.

So Britain is now like ‘Soviet Russia in the Stalinist era’? Hysteria, or what? Lord Scott should clearly have a little lie down in a darkened room. Does he have the remotest conception of what Stalinism was really like? How can a man capable of such a comparison be one of our most senior judges? And let us pinch ourselves — the terrorist suspects whom he is comparing to the victims of a totalitarian dictatorship are all free to leave prison immediately, provided they can find a country to take them. Two of them have indeed done so. The fact that no country will take the others, almost certainly because no country wishes to take in a suspected terrorist, is not Britain’s fault.

Moreover, the actual reasoning by which these Law Lords arrived at this judgment was also deeply inadequate. Their first argument was that locking up foreign Islamic terror suspects without trial is discriminatory, because there are also Islamic UK nationals who are terror suspects and who are not being locked up without trial.

The second argument is that locking suspects up without trial is a disproportionate response to the emergency that the country faces because it is ‘not rationally connected’ to the objective of preventing terror. Lord Bingham seemed to be particularly put out that the Attorney General had argued that the country’s security was properly a matter for the government rather than the courts. He also seemed obsessed by the fact that because the detained suspects were foreign nationals who were allowed to leave the country (a facility denied of course to victims of Stalin’s terror -- hello, Lord Scott) the detention provisions had muddled up immigration and security.

These points hardly seem to me to prove disproportionality — or am I missing something? But the Law Lords’ really bad argument, the one where they seem to have totally lost the plot, was over the key issue of ‘discrimination’. They compared foreign nationals and British nationals and decided that as the former were not being treated the same as the latter, this was unlawful discrimination.

But this is not to compare like with like. Foreign nationals do not have the rights or responsibilities of British citizens. Most pertinently, British nationals cannot be deported, nor once arrested are they free to move to another country. The foreign terror suspects are free to move to another country, and are only being held pending deportation. (The fact that the British government cannot deport them to countries which may ill-treat them, an impasse created by a particularly bone-headed judgment by the European Court of Human Rights, is an argument for withdrawing from the Human Rights Convention, not setting these suspects free).

To say that it is discrimination to treat suspects being held pending deportation differently from suspects who cannot be deported and cannot freely leave the country is grotesque. It amounts to the belief in ‘identicality’ — the curse of the age — which claims that only identical treatment is fair even if the circumstances are different. This produces in fact not fairness but gross injustice — and in the case of the terrorist threat to this country, a possibly lethal outcome.

The Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf, whose judgment in this case in the Court of Appeal in 2002 has now been overturned by the Law Lords, seems to me to have absolutely got the point. He said:

‘The Secretary of State is not entitled to adopt an irrational approach, either under the Convention or at common law. He is required to point to an objective justification for adopting the distinction he is making. This he does here, in my judgment, on solid ground because of the distinction between aliens and nationals which is part of domestic and international law. As I have stressed, an alien’s right to reside in this country is not unconditional. True it is that the detainees cannot be deported, but that does not mean they are in the same position as nationals. They are still liable to be deported, subject to the decision of the Commission [Special Immigration Appeals Commission] on their personal circumstances, when and if this is practical.

‘However, contrary to the view of the Commission, I consider the approach adopted by the Secretary of State, which involves detaining the detainees for no longer than is necessary before they can be deported, or the emergency resolves, or they cease to be a threat to the safety of this country, is one which can be objectively justified. The individuals subject to the policy are an identifiable class. There is a rational connection between their detention and the purpose which the Secretary of State wishes to achieve. It is a purpose which cannot be applied to nationals, namely detention pending deportation, irrespective of when that deportation will take place.

‘The fact that deportation cannot take place immediately does not mean that it ceases to be part of the objective. This is confirmed by the fact that two of the detainees were able to leave this country. It is suggested that the action is not proportionate. However, I disagree. By limiting the number of those who are subject to the special measures, the Secretary of State is ensuring that his actions are proportionate to what is necessary. There is no alternative which the detainees can point to which is remotely practical’

(my emphasis).

This last point is the crunch. These foreign terror suspects cannot be tried, either because the evidence against them would compromise intelligence operations or because it would not meet the requirements of proof in a criminal trial. They cannot be deported, because the courts forbid deportation to countries which might harm them (thus making Britain a natural refuge for al Qaeda: a truly brilliant move by our judiciary and human rights establishment). And now they can’t be locked up either. Yet according to the government, they are too dangerous to be let out.

What a mess. The Law Lords’ dismissal of Lord Woolf’s sensible and principled reasoning seems to be little more than a spasm of fury against the government by a judiciary smarting from its confrontations with a Home Secretary who ironically walked the plank only a few hours before this judgment was published.

But buried in this inadequate judgment is one extremely valid and important point. We have no coherent and effective anti-terror legislation. A startling and terrifying statistic leaps out from Lord Bingham’s speech — that upwards of 1000 British nationals have been trained by al Qaeda in Afghanistan. That’s a hell of a lot of potential terrorists in this country — and they are at large. Even if every one of them is being watched round the clock, that is clearly inadequate. If they are not being arrested because of the procedural difficulties referred to above, then we need a new structure altogether to deal with this threat from both foreign and UK suspects.

Given the nature of the risk posed by Islamist terrorism to this country, we cannot afford to rest upon the risk assessment that underpins our normal criminal justice system. That requires a case to be proved beyond reasonable doubt on the basis that it is better for several guilty people to go free than for one innocent person to go to jail. But when the result of just one guilty suspect going free may be thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction (yes, they very much exist) no society can afford to take such a risk.

And yet, of course, our principles of fairness and justice must be upheld. Personally, I would favour the establishment of special courts to resolve this conundrum, with specially vetted judges and lawyers and with special standards of evidence and proof, to try both UK and foreign terrorist suspects. I would also repeal our Human Rights Act and derogate from the International Human Rights Convention so that this country can again defend itself properly against threats to its well-being. The human rights culture, which has hijacked the moral high ground, is in my view a mechanism for restricting and denying basic rights and making them contingent upon the whims and prejudices of unaccountable judges — the kind who can’t tell the difference between a parliamentary democracy and Stalinism, or think that Islamist terror does not threaten the life of the nation. The human rights culture is actually a mortal enemy of life, liberty and democracy. The Law Lords’ judgment is but the latest example.

All lovers of life and liberty must surely have felt a deep chill descend when reading the sinister reaction of the Muslim Association of Britain to the article by Charles Moore in the Telegraph , protesting at the proposed law against incitement to religious hatred. We have been told that this law would not criminalise free speech on maters of legitimate interest and debate, merely incitement to hatred. The answer to that is that the distinction between the two is highly subjective and open to abuse. What more graphic illustration of that very point can there be than the MAB’s reaction to Moore’s article. Objecting that Moore had insulted the Prophet, the MCB not only called for him to be sacked but as the Guardian reported:

'The MAB said the article was full of "skewed interpretations and poisonous lies" and interpreted it as a "clear incitement to religious hatred and division". Speaking on its behalf, Anas Altikriti said: "Almost 15 years on from the infamous Salman Rushdie affair, one would have thought that the likes of the Daily Telegraph and its editors would have known better than to allow such filth and drivel to adorn their pages." '

The threat is absolutely plain. Moore’s offence is being equated with the Satanic Verses affair, for which Salman Rushdie was sentenced to death by an Iranian fatwa until eventually the threat was lifted. I am told that the police are now considering whether Moore needs protection. This sets in devastating context the concern that the proposed law will give rise to court cases intended to suppress necessary debate about Islam.

It also raises the most urgent questions about the behaviour of the Blair government. For with both this proposed religious hatred law and the Mental Capacity Bill (see below), the government is now directly striking down our two bedrock principles -- freedom of speech and the right to life. It is legislating both to suppress legitimate debate and to force doctors to kill. With these two measures, therefore, the government has moved into a new league -- an administration that poses a direct threat to life and liberty.

The House of Commons was at its very worst last night when the Mental Capacity Bill, which would enforce living wills and make it an offence in certain circumstances for doctors to refuse to starve or dehydrate patients to death, was passed in chaotic scenes as MPs were left unsure whether the government was or was not guaranteeing an amendment to neuter the death-dealing properties of the measure. The Bill is simply abominable and should never have been brought. But having been brought, it should have been treated, as such isues have hitherto always ben treated, as a mater of conscience and left to a free vote. Instead it was forced through on a three line whip.

So the situation is that the British Parliament has now whipped through a Bill under whose provisions doctors will be forced to kill their patients or go to prison. How can thuios possibly have happened, in a democracy in the 21st century?

Is this-- reported in the Times -- a threat?

'Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, has told European Union leaders that they will pay a heavy price in continued and escalating violence from Islamic extremists if the EU rejects Turkey as a member and confirms itself as a Christian club. “Accepting a country that has brought together Islam and democracy will bring about harmony between civilisations. If, on the other hand, it is not welcomed, the world will have to put up with the present situation,” he said, referring to terrorism by such groups as al-Qaeda — whose local affiliates hit Turkey last year, bombing the British consulate and three other targets in Istanbul.“That is the very clear and present danger and it is all around us today. There is nothing we can do if the EU feels that it can live with being simply a Christian club . . . but if these countries burn their bridges with the rest of the world, history will not forgive them.” '

It certainly looks like a threat to me, but one that surely gives the game away: give Turkey membership of the EU, on the grounds that it is a democratic state just like the rest of Europe, and if you don't we'll blow your brains out. Not perhaps the most well thought-through of diplomatic messages.

Victor David Hanson, meanwhile, makes some pungent and sardonic observations on Europe's Turkish dilemma:

'Turkey's proposed entry into the EU has become some weird sort of Swiftian satire on the crazy relationship between Europe and Islam. Ponder the contradictions of it all. Privately most Europeans realize that opening its borders without restraint to Turkey's millions will alter the nature of the EU, both by welcoming in a radically different citizenry, largely outside the borders of Europe, whose population will make it the largest and poorest country in the Union — and the most antithetical to Western liberalism. Yet Europe is also trapped in its own utopian race/class/gender rhetoric. It cannot openly question the wisdom of making the "other" coequal to itself, since one does not by any abstract standard judge, much less censure, customs, religions, or values.

'So it stews and simmers. Not to be outdone, some in Turkey dare the Europeans, almost in contempt, to reject their bid. Thus rather than evolving Attaturk's modernist reforms to match the values of Europe, the country is instead driven into the midst of an Islamic reactionary revival in which its rural east far more resembles Iraq or Iran than Brussels. So the world wonders whether Europe is sticking a toe into the Islamic Middle East or the latter its entire leg into Europe.'

The British government's view is that, by accepting Turkish membership, Europe will tame the Islamist tiger. But as VDH suggests, this is catastrophically to misjudge what Europe is now facing:

'But gut-check time is coming for Europe, with its own rising unassimilated immigrant populations, rogue mosques entirely bent on destroying the West, declining birth rate and rising entitlements, the Turkish question, and a foreign policy whose appeasement of Arab regimes won it only a brief lull and plenty of humiliation. The radical Muslim world of the madrassas hates the United States because it is liberal and powerful; but it utterly despises Europe because it is even more liberal and far weaker, earning the continent not fear, but contempt.The real question is whether there is any Demosthenes left in Europe, who will soberly but firmly demand assimilation and integration of all immigrants, an end to mosque radicalism, even-handedness in the Middle East, no more subsidies to terrorists like Hamas, a toughness rather than opportunist profiteering with the likes of Assad and the Iranian theocracy — and make it clear that states that aid and abet terrorists in Europe do so to their great peril.'

That is the question, indeed; and the answer so far is no.

Excellent piece in yesterday's Observer by Nick Cohen, who has been fighting a courageous battle against the moral bankruptcy of his comrades on the left who he rightly perceives are on the wrong side in the onslaught against freedom that is now under way. Cohen was appalled by the views expressed by Index on Censorship over the murder of the radical Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh. As is well known, van Gogh's own views on Islam, Judaism, Christianity and other matters were deeply offensive. But a free society permits the giving of offence; indeed, it is one of the hallmarks of just such freedom. He was murdered in an attempt to shut that freedom down. Index reacted to his murder by ridiculing the dead man for his views and, as Cohen observes, effectively blamed him for his own death:

'Rohan Jayasekera, the associate editor, invited readers of its website to see van Gogh's murder as a smart business move - "Applaud Theo van Gogh's death as the marvellous piece of street theatre it was", he cried. "What timing! Just as his long-awaited film of Pim Fortuyn's life is ready to screen. Bravo, Theo! Bravo!" Jayasekera slyly suggested the film maker was suffering from an inherited strain of insanity because he was "a descendant of the mad genius Dutch painter", before going on to say that you couldn't be surprised that his film had provoked a furious response because it was "furiously provocative".'

Cohen had assumed that Index on Censorship was for freedom of speech and against censorship. Silly him; Index, it turns out, is for censorship and against freedom:

'When I asked Jayasekera if he had any regrets, he said he had none. He told me that, like many other readers, I shouldn't have made the mistake of believing that Index on Censorship was against censorship, even murderous censorship, on principle - in the same way as Amnesty International is opposed to torture, including murderous torture, on principle. It may have been so its radical youth, but was now as concerned with fighting 'hate speech' as protecting free speech.'

This is, of course, precisely why the hateful proposal to criminalise incitement to religious hatred is so very wrong and dangerous. It will deliver victory to all those who want to silence the van Goghs of this world. Cohen makes a good point about this dreadful measure:

'...when society decides that people's religion, rather than their class or gender, is the cultural fact that matters, power inevitably passes to the priests and the devout for whom religion does indeed matter most.'

That is why a law against religious hatred is much more likely to be used, and freedom thus abused, than the law against racial hatred. The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, also writing in the (admirably balanced) Observer on this subject, totally failed to get this point (not the only issue on which his judgment is now in shreds, to put it mildly). More than that, his argument imploded on its own contradictions. He said, for example, that preventing incitement to religious hatred was designed to plug a loophole on behalf of Muslims and Christians, since Jews and Sikhs were 'protected' by the law against incitement to racial hatred. But in practice, this law offers next to no protection because of the extreme reluctance of the authorities to bring any prosecutions under it. Moreover, the Christian religion is already protected by the blasphemy law. In addition, Blunkett wrote this:

'The offence only covers hatred stirred up against people deliberately targeted because of religious beliefs or lack of them. It is not simple dislike or hatred of their beliefs; it's not a new blasphemy law by the back door. Nor is it an assault on people's right to disapprove of beliefs, teachings or practices of a religion. It's about tackling people who set out to whip up hatred, not about stopping people telling jokes - however offensive.'

But this distinction is absurdly disingenuous. The incitement that the law is designed to stop is to stir up religious hatred. So hatred of people's beliefs is being targeted. It is a blasphemy law by the back door. And as Randhir Singh Bains wrote in a letter to the Telegraph, this new law is likely to stir up rather more religious hatred:

'However, freedom of speech and expression is not merely tantamount to delivering encomiums on Islam or other religions; it also includes the right to offend. It is this right that has so far prevented Hindus from making a hue and cry over a verse in the Koran (Verse 39, Chapter 8) that urges "Muslims to make war on idol-worshippers (Hindus) until idolatry is no more and Allah's religion reigns supreme". Once there was a law against incitement to religious hatred, however, Hindus would be free from such constraints, and would be perfectly within their moral right to insist that such offensive verses, which could be construed as illegal under the new law, ought to be expunged from the Koran. A law against incitement to religious hatred might help the Government to win the next election, but it is likely to do tremendous damage to inter-communal harmony in Britain.'

Exactly.

The New Frontiers Foundation think-tank has published an utterly extraordinary and brilliant essay which should be compulsory reading for all in Britain’s power elites. It is the most important document I have seen produced by anyone in government for a very long time. It has been written anonymously by someone described only as ‘a senior UK official who has worked on issues of foreign and security policy for most of his professional life’. He has delivered a powerful cri de coeur that Britain, having never recovered from its post-Suez nervous breakdown and now paralysed by the choice between two diametrically opposing philosophies of the world represented by Europe and America, is in grave danger of siding with Europe and thus destroying its security and gravely weakening the western alliance. For the west, he says, is far from united:

‘Between America, Britain, and the EU, there is little agreement on current ideology and philosophy, future threats, or developing capabilities. This makes any sense of a coherent vision and purpose for the West increasingly difficult to sustain and throws a cloud over current alliances.’

Whoever this man is, he displays a profound insight into threats we face from both without and from within. Unlike so many in the British establishment, he understands the nature of the peril – and the part being played by our intelligentsia in undermining their own culture. Liberal democracy, he says, is fragile:

‘We humans are not rational and the suicide bomber is here to stay, it can only be contained… Further, many, particularly among the best educated, preserve either deep ambivalence or active contempt for the traditions supporting liberal democracy, making it susceptible to challenge and collapse by some sort of systemic economic and security challenge as occurred in the 1930’s.’

He understands the utter foolishness of the new orthodoxy in Britain and Europe of seeking to rely upon international law as substitute for war:

‘International law will not prove a salvation from conflict, nor will the two organisations dedicated to its spread – the UN and the EU. Both suffer dual problems: a legitimacy problem, given that legitimacy in the West relates to democratic accountability and neither organisation is democratically accountable; and an enforcement problem, given that both seek to minimise the power of the individual state but both rely on individual states. Further, international law is making it harder to conduct military operations by applying what are often inappropriate legal concepts to violent situations not susceptible to solution by civilian methods (the dilemma of “warfighting” or “peacekeeping”).’

He understands that the western media have become fifth columnists:

‘The transmission of information to enemies and terrorist groups is a paradoxical consequence of our open economies and requires new responses. It may also prove that, despite our superior technology, enemies nevertheless succeed in outperforming our decision-making either by shifting the nature of the conflict such that our technological advantage (in sensors etc) is denied (eg. Somalia), or by using our own media to paralyse our morale and decision-making (eg. partially in Serbia, now in Iraq). We should not assume we will win Information Wars just because we are better at producing IT.’

He understands that, to offset his inability to persuade the British public to sign up to the euro, Tony Blair may seek to placate Europe by surrendering to it instead our ability to defend ourselves as an independent nation. Unlike our eurofanatic Foreign Office, this man understands that the EU is simultaneously setting itself up as a rival to the US, thus undermining NATO, while proving unable or unwilling to develop an effective replacement defence apparatus:

‘These issues are sharpened by conflict between American visions of “warfighting”, European visions of “peacekeeping” and different attitudes towards international law rooted in different philosophical foundations and historical experience. The likely outcome of this is that the EU further undermines NATO and transatlantic relations generally as the EU planning cell grows, there is greater pressure for EU forces to be interoperable and to harmonise equipment, the EU culturally identifies itself as in competition with America, while defining its mission in terms of a return to the gunboat diplomacy of the past – “humanitarian interventions” and a return to Africa.

‘The UK seems increasingly bewildered and paralysed about how to react to these developments. It is increasingly torn between (a) wanting to be a “good European”, and (b) preserving “the special relationship” and working with the USA in Iraq. Britain’s defence strategy has been confused by the lack of a coherent vision and the desire of political elites, scarred by the failure of post-war economic policy, to be part of the “European project”. “Influence” has been confused with “interests” for so long that Britain struggles to debate its interests, consequently we have persisted in deluding ourselves about the economic and political costs of EU integration and have not considered alternative paths.'

And he warns:

‘Britain should reject EU integration (including EMU and the Constitution) on the basic rounds that: (1) the current path is undemocratic; (2) it is creating a regulatory structure that is smothering growth and is very hard to reform (rather than encouraging Hayekian institutional competition); (3) current European defence visions, based on small forces doing peacekeeping and grand rhetoric about multipolarity, are not a responsible answer to the threats of global disorder – we should pursue the means to have a real effect, not wallow in irresponsible posturing.’

Europe and America now have radically different views of the world, of human nature and of moral agency. From this writer’s masterly analysis it is clear that Europe is finished – not least because one of the reasons it now refuses to defend itself militarily is that it is unwilling to sustain any losses, since its populations have fallen below replacement level and it is relying instead on immigration to keep going – a process that will ultimately lead to its Islamicisation.

This is his sobering conclusion:

‘It may well be that the inherent nature of our culture renders such an alliance is doomed to fail. Given the hostility of much of educated opinion for the values of liberal democracy and competitive markets, it may prove impossible ever to forge sufficient unity of purpose – at least without the fear of destruction by an enemy. Without some such attempt, however, there is the danger of a repeat of the 1930’s experience and its terrible sequel as security and economic crises challenge the foundations of liberal democracy in this Century. There was no coherent entity to combat Nazism in the thirties. NATO did this job against Communism but is no longer suited to the role unless it is itself transformed. Mankind endlessly repeats errors but it is worth our effort in the UK to attempt to forge a new alliance before we again feel confronted by a mortal enemy, or feel his first blow. Changing attitudes in American policy elites and the potential openness of new EU members to a new approach provides an opportunity – but only if this country can rediscover a sense of self-confidence and optimism about our capacity to improve our world.’

There is much, much more of this. Read it all. The good news is that someone somewhere in the upper reaches of the British foreign policy or defence establishment has grasped all this so acutely. The bad news is that he is clearly so isolated that he has to resort to an anonymous essay to get this warning into the public domain.

But what he has given us is not merely an exceptionally valuable piece of analysis. It is a manifesto for any political party that purports to understand the precise nature of the threats facing the west since the fall of communism and the rise of Islamism – and the fact that the current government is on the wrong side of the argument. This document should be mailed to every Tory MP, and the shadow Cabinet should discuss it at length. For it shows once and for all how absurd it is for them to believe that Blair has parked his tanks on the Tory lawn. The issue is no longer economics and the market. It is no longer tax rises or reductions, God help us, or a bigger or smaller state, or the dire condition of the public services. It is, quite simply, the threat to our civilisation, our nation and our democratic values and traditions from a decadent British and European nomenklatura that no longer has the stomach nor the moral compass in order to uphold them from within, let alone fight to defend them against the threat facing us from without.

It is the great issue of our times. Nothing else matters like this. Where are the politicians who have the ability and the moral courage to grasp it?

An article in the Guardian provides an unconsciously revealing and quite terrifying insight into the almost unlimited capacity of the British and European establishment for self-delusion over the threat to the west from radical Islamism. Alastair Crooke is a former British intelligence officer who worked in the Middle East, Ireland and Afghanistan, and until last year was a special adviser to Javier Solana, the European Union high representative. There is so much that is wrong and muddled about his argument it is hard to know where to begin. He claims first of all that radical jihadists represent only a tiny minority and are ‘marginal’ within Islam, having alienated many Muslims by their violence:

‘The overwhelming bulk of Islamists and Muslims support elections, good governance and freedom (more so than in some European states, the polls show).’

Well, if that is true why are the overwhelming bulk of Islamic countries tyrannies and not democracies? If the jihadists are so marginal, why doesn’t the Islamic world defeat them instead of rising en bloc in a standing ovation at the Organisation of Islamic Conference summit when the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamed, incited his fellows to kill Jews and commit carnage against the west ‘in defence of the ummah’? If the majority are so alienated by the violence, why don’t prominent Islamic religious authorities issue fatwas against the jihadists instead of themselves preaching virulent hatred against America and the west, Israel and the Jews?

The fact is that radical Islamism — the Muslim Brotherhood, Wahhabi view of the world —is currently the dominant view in Islam. Yes, there is Muslim resistance to this but so far it has not done very well and is confined to a brave and embattled minority. Yes, when asked in opinion polls ordinary Muslims want freedom — but the religious culture to which they subscribe has so far kept them in servitude. Until and unless what is an effective civil war within Islam is resolved in favour of freedom and defeats the cult of death which has subsumed it, it is demonstrably ridiculous to say that the reformers are the majority. Furthermore, Crooke’s refusal to acknowledge that, rather than being some tiny, marginalised band of renegades the jihadists are being financed, recruited, equipped and trained by a network of Islamic tyrannies whose aim is to destroy western primacy throughout the world and replace it by Islamic power, is simply astonishing. This man was an intelligence officer?

He also contradicts himself within his own article. In one line, he says people are wrong to say of the jihadists that:

‘...people who use violence are marginalised within their own societies.’

Yet two sentences on, he says:

' A small proportion of Islamists, the extreme jihadists, are marginal..'

Well, what are they? Marginal or mainstream? As he also says, for both jihadists and the rest:

‘...this is a struggle to restore the standing of Muslim societies; to assert Muslim identity and autonomy from western imposition, and to find the transition to modernity of their economies and society on Muslim terms - not on western secular ones.’

Indeed, this is all too true. But Crooke doesn’t seem to understand what he himself has written here. For the western ‘secular imposition’ is precisely what the Islamists are fighting. In the west, democracy means that the source of political authority resides in the people. For Islamists, by contrast, the source of all authority, political as well as spiritual, resides in God. In other words, the conflict between Islam and the west is absolutely fundamental.

‘We do diverge on a few values...’

he says. On what planet is this man living?

The Islamists are explicitly fighting to destroy western democracy and fundamental values of individual freedom, particularly of women. For what they fear is the contagion of the west, the influence and the hold that the idea of freedom undoubtedly has over the minds of people in all cultures, given half the chance — and the mortal threat they think this poses as a result for their religion. That is why their stated intention is to defeat and destroy those western values everywhere Islam once had an empire and everywhere Muslims are now living. That is why this is indeed a war fought in the name of Islam against the west (terrorism is undoubtedly the wrong word, Crooke is right on that at least), and against those Muslims who wish to embrace democracy and individual freedom.

‘Muslims do not hate our values. They hate our policies,’ says Crooke. But the policies reflect the values. That is why the west should support Israel, as an outpost of those values defending itself against the century-old attempt by the Islamic and Arab world to destroy it. But for Crooke, Israel is wrong to defend itself:

‘The Israeli military justified an incursion into Jenin in the West Bank on the grounds that there had been 10 terrorists in the city and after the military action there were only four. The threat was reduced. Six had been killed. But to others, and to Jenin's inhabitants, there was a different perception. There had been 10 resistance fighters, the Israeli military had killed six - and now there were 24. The question is: was the use of superior military force a tool for subtraction or multiplication?’

No. That is not the question. The question is: given the thousands of Israelis who have been killed by Palestinian terrorism over the past decades, and the numberless Israelis who are alive today but who would have been murdered had the terror factories in Jenin and elsewhere not been degraded, is Israel’s military action against Palestinian terrorism a tool for subtraction or multiplication?

But then to Crooke, it seems that Israelis who are murdered by those fighting for Islamic ‘values’ don’t even enter the equation.

What a truly morally disgusting article he has written. And how terribly revealing of the warped — and culturally suicidal —mindset within the establishment in both Britain and Europe.

At last, a high-ranking member of Britain's military has suggested that the approach taken by the British media to the Iraq crisis may have cost the lives of British troops. As the Independent reports:

'The UK's senior military officer blamed the media yesterday for making it easier for insurgents to attack British troops in Iraq. The chief of defence staff, General Sir Michael Walker, said attacks on the Black Watch may have been prompted by media coverage of their deployment to central Iraq. Five members were killed during the month-long mission to Camp Dogwood, near Baghdad. General Walker told BBC2's Newsnight last night: "I think the contribution towards the initial attacks was certainly enhanced by, if you like, a media picture that was being laid across a number of channels." '

The deployment of the Black Watch provoked general hysteria in the British media, which not only announced that the regiment would be going into the 'triangle of Death' around Baghdad but said it would not be able to defend itself against the jihadi onslaught there. It was altogether an open invitation to these enemies to attack -- not least because it was clear that the heavier the losses these soldiers would sustain, the more the British media would blame not those who had attacked them but Tony Blair for putting British soldiers in harm's way in the first place. Thus a routine deployment in time of war was inflated into an anti-war propaganda campaign. The effects of such coverage are potentially disastrous in time of war. Sir Michael's brief remarks deserve to be amplified into a fully fledged critique by the British military of the part played by the media in fighting against their own side over Iraq .

Michael Burleigh in the Telegraph gets the proposed law against incitement to religious hatred absolutely right:

'Rarely can legislation touching on so many historic freedoms and rights have been botched up and inserted in such an inappropriate context, allegedly at the behest of "key leaders in all the major faith communities", none mentioned by name...Instead of following the American government in making all foreign aid contingent on how societies treat religious minorities, notably Christians, the Government is cravenly allowing so-called leaders of the British Muslim minority to alter our fundamental laws.

'Has it canvassed other protected "minorities", such as women or homosexuals, regarding whether Islam should be insulated from criticism of how it treats both "groups"? If such a law had existed in the 1980s, Salman Rushdie might have been prosecuted for writing Satanic Verses rather than being protected by the British state. It will soon be illegal to criticise, say, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who, on a recent trip to Britain, entertained Mayor Ken Livingstone with the chilling intelligence that homicide bombers can "legitimately" kill women and children in Israel, husbands can beat their wives everywhere and that homosexuals should be put to death.'

As Burleigh says, this proposal is being legislated in the context of the jihadi murder of the Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh and the intimidation of Dutch politicians who speak out against Islamic violence -- on which not one senior British politician has expressed outrage. In this context, introducing a law which will almost certainly be used to try to shut down legitimate debate about such matters shows all too clearly what side the British government is really on in the great struggle to defend freedom against those who want to destroy it.

It's heartening to see that there is a gathering consensus across the political divide against the proposed new crime of incitement to religious hatred. As the Telegraph reports, the campaigners include
the comedian Rowan Atkinson, who has raised concerns that comics like himself could find themselves in the dock for lampooning religion or the religious. The Home Secretary has denied this, and tried to claim that the impact of the new law upon legitimate free speech will be negligible:

'During a Commons debate on the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill, he said it was not intended that telling jokes about a faith should be caught by the offence, which carries a seven-year jail term. But critics said the wording - which does not contain a definition of religion - was too loose and represented a threat to free speech. It says religious hatred "means hatred against a group of persons defined by reference to religious belief or lack of religious belief''.

'Mr Blunkett said: "The offence will not criminalise material that just stirs up ridicule, prejudice, dislike, contempt or anger or which simply causes offence. A person who does not intend to stir up hatred is not guilty if they did not know that their words, behaviour, written material, recording or programmes were threatening, abusive or insulting. The offences do not apply to anything that takes place in one's own home. All prosecutions require the consent of the Attorney General, which will prevent the offences being misused through private prosecutions." '

This seems disingenuous. Judgments about the point at which insults or abuse turn into incitement are utterly subjective. The proposal is an invitation to mischief by those who wish to shut down inconvenient debate. There is a worrying tendency to define a widening range of unfashionable views as 'thought crimes', which either cannot be uttered without incurring social opprobrium or, worse, even attracting the heavy hand of the police hate crimes unit. For similar reasons, I am even uneasy about the law prohibiting incitement to racial hatred. But as Rowan Atkinson oberved, there is a significant difference between this and outlawing religious incitement. Attacking people on account of their race is to attack what they are. Attacking people on account of their religion is to attack what they think. The former is uncivilised. The later is an integral part of civilised and liberal discourse.

Religion is an idea. There should be no attempt in a liberal society to shut down debate over ideas. Moreover, religion is an idea which almost inevitably arouses hatred, which finds expression in vituperative debate. Trying to prevent that vituperation from being expressed would effectively criminalise much of literature, including various sacred or religious texts themselves. The blasphemy law, which has largely fallen into desuetude, should be repealed, not effectively extended in this back-door way. Noxious ideas have to be defeated by argument, not by being suppressed. Incitement to violence is another matter. There are already laws to deal with that, which unfortunately tend not to be used as often as they ought.

The religious hatred law is being introduced as a sop to the Muslim community in Britain, which is agitated over what it perceives as public hostility towards it since 9/11. As Atkinson oberved, while one should be alive to any real problems British Muslims might be experiencing, criminalising incitement to religious hatred is the wrong solution. After all, even moderate Muslim spokesmen say repeatedly that anyone who talks about Islamic terrorism is an 'Islamophobe'. Such people would therefore probably find themselves the target of legal challenge for conducting a perfectly proper and necessary debate.

As we can see from Australia where a similar law was introduced, it would put people in the dock for expressing entirely legitimate views about religion and would greatly exacerbate religious and cultural divisions. It is a thoroughly bad, dangerous proposal and should have no place in a liberal society.

The close connection between anti-Israel prejudice and Holocaust denial in Europe is all too grimly illustrated by this poll in Germany reported in the Jerusalem Post. It shows that more than half of those asked thought there was no difference between Israel's current treatment of the Palestinians and what the Nazis did to the Jews. The comparison is, of course, grotesque. For readers of this site who do not understand why -- and I'm afraid there are more than a few, which is why the German poll is so disturbing -- let me briefly spell it out. Whatever the occasional excesses committed by Israel towards the Palestinians -- and it would be idle to pretend they don't occur, and wrong to do anything other than condemn them unreservedly -- Israel is fighting a defensive war of survival against a Palestinian and Arab enemy that has been trying to ethnically cleanse Jews from their historic homeland for a century. To compare this with the Nazis' attempt to remove the Jewish people from the face of the earth is as obscene as it is irational.

Among the Germans polled, it reveals not only ignorance of the reality of what is actually happening in Israel but also a profound refusal to acknowledge the reality of the Nazi Holocaust. By making this false and odious comparison, it grossly inflates and distorts Israel's culpability while simultaneously diminishing to the point of denial the Nazi genocide of the Jews.

This is surely no accident. As the chairman of Yad Vashem's directorate Avner Shalev observed, the results were indicative of

'...a long-suppressed felling of anti-Semitism among the mainstream "so-called liberals" population which now, under the coating of anti-Israeli criticism, are becoming legitimate again. He added that the poll's results, which he said any objective person would repudiate, are also the result of the release of pent-up feelings of guilt built up from the Holocaust."The energies which bring about such answers come to protect feelings of guilt," Shalev said. 62 percent of respondents in the poll said that they were sick of "all this harping" of German crimes against Jews, while 68% said that they found it "annoying" that Germans today are still held to blame for Nazi crimes against Jews.'

The false narrative of Palestinian oppression by Israel has provided Europe with a perfect alibi for the Holocaust. If the Jews of Irael can be presented as today's Nazis, the real Nazis can be let off the hook since the Jews they murdered can retrospectively be held responsible for their own destruction, just as they are being accused today. And because the left has so totally bought into the narrative of Palestinian oppression and Israeli brutality, the heirs of those who fought fascism in Europe are now marching shoulder to shoulder on pro-Palestinian demonstrations with people chanting 'Jews to the gas'. Holocaust denial, for so long the preserve of the neo-Nazi right, has been turned into a respectable orthodoxy through the efforts of the left. Thus anti-Jewish genocidal prejudice has mutated from a desire to destroy the Jews into a desire to destroy the Jewish state.

So the world has been stood on its head, historical memory has been expunged, and rationality and decency have gone into retreat across the continent of Europe.

Many apologies for the hiatus in posts, caused by extreme overwork. I will resume normal service as soon as possible.

The Guardian’s mammoth special investigation into the attitudes of young British Muslims threw up some fascinating insights — both from what was said and what was left out.

First was what the Guardian itself thought sufficiently striking to headline on its own front page:

‘British Muslims want Islamic law and prayers at work’.

A clear majority said they want Sharia law in civil cases relating to their own community, while no fewer than 88 per cent want schools and workplaces to accommodate Muslim prayer times — five times daily (although a reader observes that two of these prayer times would be before and after work) — into the normal working day. Such responses indicate an unwillingness to accept the status of a minority faith and by extension the rights of a majority culture to express its own values and traditions. It displays instead a desire to force the majority culture to adapt itself to minority practices, something required by no other minority in Britain. There is a great difference between allowing a minority to practise its own culture as an add-on to or opt-out from majority practice, and forcing majority practice to be changed or be overruled by minority requirements. True, respondents said that any penalties should be in accordance with British (sic) law. But Sharia law on, say, family structure or the status of women is inimical to English law and its principles. It is in this context that one has to set the view from 40 per cent that they needed to do more to integrate into mainstream British culture. The majority in this survey suggest they require British culture to adapt to Islam.

As might be predicted, most young Muslims involved in the Guardian’s discussions complained about ‘Islamophobia’ and widespread misapprehensions about their religion. Although there was a degree of self-criticism, with one or two saying things like they had a duty to inform the police of any terrorist plot, or that Muslim communities were indeed introverted, most appeared to lack any insight and suggested instead they were being victimised by British society, claiming they were made to feel they didn’t fit in, or that Muslims had been ‘targeted’ by the government’s anti-terror drive. The Foreign Office minister Fiona McTaggart was actually booed when she said Muslims were not victims of the government’s foreign policy or anti-terror laws.

All this provoked Sarfaz Manzoor to write a courageous article lamenting such lack of self-awareness:

‘This reluctance to be self-critical may be partly a result of feeling embattled and not wanting to wash dirty laundry in front of others, but I think it is also owing to a failure of creative thinking from British Muslims. Put simply, there is a tendency to want to have the cultural cake and eat it too: to say yes we are different and no we are not different at the same time. The fact is that many people in the UK and elsewhere have concerns about British Muslims, and to just argue that they are misguided will neither reassure them nor provide a route towards conciliation. Too many of the self-proclaimed leaders among British Muslims seem more keen on furthering other agendas of politics, self-interest and self-promotion than in chiselling away at the tough questions. That requires a more rigorous degree of thinking and, thankfully, there were some signs of it in the hall. The woman who said: "There is racism and sexism in our community, we do it to ourselves"; the man who added that "Islam does not have a monopoly on morality"; and the many participants who said people are entitled to more than one identity.’

Manzoor concluded that the fact that the forum took place at all was a sign of progress. But quite frankly, there seems to be more progress taking place among young British Muslims than among the terrified PC clones at the Guardian. For they failed to put to their respondents the really hard questions. For example: do they believe it is the duty of Muslims to ensure that the majority culture adapts to the principles of Islam? Do they approve of the fact that the penalty for apostasy from Islam is death? What do they think of the fact that, according to the Cabinet office, no fewer than 10,000 British Muslims actively support al Qa’eda? Do they think Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state? Do they believe there is a Jewish conspiracy linking Washington and Jerusalem? And exactly what are they taught in the mosques about the west, America, Israel and the Jews?

Now, answers to questions like these would have been really illuminating. But it is not surprising the Guardian never asked them. For among the panellists they invited to discuss these issues was Tariq Ramadan, who the paper described as

‘one of the most revered Muslim scholars in the world’

.

Ramadan is a descendant of Hasan al Banna who founded the Muslim Brotherhood, the extreme sect which fathered modern Islamofascism. In August, the US revoked Ramadan’s entry visa on the grounds that he had connections with terrorist activity. He has vehemently denied this. But this is what the Islam scholar Daniel Pipes has revealed of Ramadan’s history:

• ‘He has praised the brutal Islamist policies of the Sudanese politician Hassan Al-Turabi. Mr. Turabi in turn called Mr. Ramadan the "future of Islam." • Mr. Ramadan was banned from entering France in 1996 on suspicion of having links with an Algerian Islamist who had recently initiated a terrorist campaign in Paris. • Ahmed Brahim, an Algerian indicted for Al-Qaeda activities, had "routine contacts" with Mr. Ramadan, according to a Spanish judge (Baltasar Garzón) in 1999. • Djamel Beghal, leader of a group accused of planning to attack the American embassy in Paris, stated in his 2001 trial that he had studied with Mr. Ramadan. • Along with nearly all Islamists, Mr. Ramadan has denied that there is "any certain proof" that Bin Laden was behind 9/11. • He publicly refers to the Islamist atrocities of 9/11, Bali, and Madrid as "interventions," minimizing them to the point of near-endorsement. And here are other reasons, dug up by Jean-Charles Brisard, a former French intelligence officer doing work for some of the 9/11 families, as reported in Le Parisien: • Intelligence agencies suspect that Mr. Ramadan (along with his brother Hani) coordinated a meeting at the Hôtel Penta in Geneva for Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy head of Al-Qaeda, and Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh, now in a Minnesota prison. • Mr. Ramadan's address appears in a register of Al Taqwa Bank, an organization the State Department accuses of supporting Islamist terrorism.’

Ramadan believes that Islam should replace western civilisation. He wants western culture Islamicised, gradually excising all references to Christianity and Judaism altogether. He has been accused of outright prejudice against Jews. One writer has said of him:

‘His problem is not the modernization of Islam, but the Islamification of modernity’

(‘Esprit et Vie,’ February 17, 2000).

This is the man to whom the Guardian turned to pronounce on

‘how to accommodate diversity and equality within a western democracy’

. How long will western democracy last when its proponents turn to such a man to answer such a question? And where dos this leave ‘mainstream’, ‘non-extremist’ Islam when someone like Ramadan is ‘one of the most revered Muslim scholars in the world’?