British House of Lords baroness warns Israeli audience about threat of Islamists

Baroness Caroline Cox of Queensbury warned about the growing threat of political Islam in Britain and Africa at an event hosted by the Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science, Technology and Security at Tel Aviv University and The Israeli Institute for Strategic Studies on Monday.

“Islam is using the freedoms of democracy to destroy it,” as some of its adherents try to “inhibit criticism,” said Cox, speaking at the Green House next to the university.

In England, if you criticize Islam, you are called a racist, she said.

In addition, she drew attention to what she called the effort to Islamize Africa through massive investments and other activities. She cited evidence and information gleaned from her stay in the region, pointing to the countries of Uganda, Nigeria and Sudan.

Cox sits in the House of Lords – in which she had served as deputy speaker from 1985 to 2005 – and is the CEO of Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART), which works to promote community development in various impoverished countries – mostly in Africa and Asia.

Cox spoke of Islamist groups that have been implementing a strategic plan and making massive investments in the educational system in Britain in order to alter the institutions to serve their purposes.

For example, she said, is a recent report that allegedly shows these groups are seeking to remove school headmasters so that they can be replaced with Islamists.

British newspaper The Sunday Times reported a story in March about leaked papers revealing a plot by Islamists to target struggling schools in order to take them over and implement Islamic teachings.

Another issue the British parliamentarian has been campaigning for, is for the rights of Muslim women.

Under this context, Cox raised the issue of polygamy, an issue that could have ramifications for Israel, particularly among the Beduin. The practice is illegal in both countries.

Unfortunately, she said, British leaders have sought to comply with sharia law despite the fact that it violates fundamental principles of the British legal system.

Cox said she did not want to speak about Israel because she isn’t an expert on the country.

In Britain, Cox proposed a bill that would work to make sure that any aspects of sharia law would comply with the country’s laws.

There are over 80 sharia courts functioning in the country and they “pose a threat to the principles of democracy,” and in particular, discriminate against women, she said.

Our hand should be extended “to moderate Muslims who seek to live peaceably, and redefine Islam in terms of peaceful coexistence and tolerance,”Cox said.

In a BBC Panorama documentary last year, titled: Secrets of Britain’s Sharia Councils, Cox said that even though her bill had stalled she was going to continue striving for change.

The BBC interviewed various women for the documentary and found that sharia councils discourage them from seeking help for domestic abuse from the authorities.

“It is time to draw a line in the sand and say enough is enough,” she said regarding the incompatibility of sharia law, gender equality and “one rule for all.”

http://www.jpost.com/International/British-House-of-Lords-baroness-warns-Israeli-audience-about-threat-of-Islamists-350723

http://www.jerusalemsummit.org/eng/presidium.php

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Jerusalem_Summit


No suprise on her views when she is a Christian Zionist and a member of the Jerusalem Summit.

ony Blair delivered a major speech on April 23 entitled, “Why the Middle East Matters”. In summary, he argued that the Middle East, far from being a “vast unfathomable mess” is deep in the throes of a multi-faceted struggle between a specific religious ideology on the one hand, and those who want to embrace the modern world on the other. Furthermore, the West, blinded up until now as to the religious nature of the conflict, must take sides: it should support those who stand on the side of open-minded pluralistic societies, and combat those who wish to create intolerant theocracies.

In his speech Blair makes a whole series of substantial points:

He states that a ‘defining challenge of our time’ is a religious ideology which he calls ‘Islamist’, although he is not comfortable with this label because he prefers to distance himself from any implication that this ideology can be equated with Islam itself. He worries that “you can appear to elide those who support the Islamist ideology with all Muslims.”

He considers Islamism to be a global movement, whose diverse manifestations are produced by common ideological roots.

He rejects Western non-religious explanations for the problems caused by Islamist ideology, including the preference of “Western commentators” to attribute the manifestations of Islamism to “disparate” causes which have nothing to do with religion. Likewise he implies that the protracted conflict over Israel-Palestine is not the cause of this ideology, but rather the converse is the case: dealing with the wider impact of Islamist ideology could help solve the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

According to Blair, what distinguishes violent terrorists from seemingly non-violent Islamists – such as the Muslim Brotherhood – is simply “a difference of view as to how to achieve the goals of Islamism”, so attempts to draw a distinction between political Islamist movements and radical terrorist groups are mistaken. Blair considers that the religious ideology of certain groups like the Brotherhood, which may appear to be law-abiding, “inevitably creates the soil” in which religio-political violence is nurtured.

He considers “Islamism” to be a major threat everywhere in the world, including increasingly within Western nations. The “challenge” of Islamism is “growing” and “spreading across the world” and it is “the biggest threat to global security of the early 21st Century.”

Because of the seriousness of the threat of this religio-political ideology, Blair argues that the West should vigorously support just about anybody whose interests lie in opposing Islamists, from General Sisi in Egypt to President Putin in Russia. He finds it to be an absurd irony that Western governments form intimate alliances with nations whose educational and civic institutions promote this ideology: an obvious example of this would be the US – Saudi alliance.

In all this, one might be forgiven for thinking that Blair sounds a lot like Geert Wilders, except that, as he takes pains to emphasize, he emphatically rejects equating Islamism with Islam. Tony Blair and Geert Wilders agree that there is a serious religious ideological challenge facing the world, but they disagree on whether that challenge is Islam itself.My Blair’s speech is aimed at people who do not wish to be thought of as anti-Musilm, but who need to be awakened to the religious nature of the Islamist challenge. He is keen to assure his intended audience that if they adopt his thesis they would not be guilty of conflating those who support radical Jihadi violence with all Muslims.Two key assumptions underpin Blair’s dissociation of Islamism the religio-political ideology from Islam the religion.

First, Blair presupposes that Islamism is not “the proper teaching of Islam”. It may, he concedes, be “an interpretation”, but it is a false one, a “perversion” of the religion, which “distorts and warps Islam’s true message.” He offers two arguments to support this theological insight.One is that there are pious Muslims who agree with him: “Many of those totally opposed to the Islamist ideology are absolutely devout Muslims.”

This is a fallacious argument. It is akin to asserting that Catholic belief in the infallibility of the Pope cannot be Christian merely because there are absolutely devout protestant Christians who totally oppose this dogma. The fact that there are pious Muslims who reject Islamism is not a credible argument that Islamism is an invalid interpretation of Islam.

Blair’s other argument in support of his belief that Islamism is a perversion of Islam is an allegation that Christians used to hold similarly abhorrent theologies: “There used to be such interpretations of Christianity which took us years to eradicate from our mainstream politics.” This is a self-deprecating variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy, in which another’s argument is attacked by accusing them of hypocrisy. Here Blair rhetorically directs the ad hominem attack against himself and his culture. In essence, he is saying “It would hypocritical of us to regard Islamist ideology as genuinely Islamic, because (we) Christians used to support similarly pernicious theologies in the past (although we do not do so today).”

This logic is equally fallacious: observations about the history of Christian theology, valid or not, prove nothing about what is or is not a valid form of Islam.

Blair’s second key assumption is a widely-held view about the root cause of “the challenge”. The fundamental issue, he argues, is people of faith who believe they and only they are right and do not accept the validity of other views. Such people believe that “there is one proper religion and one proper view of it, and that this view should, exclusively, determine the nature of society and the political economy.” “It is not about a competing view of how society or politics should be governed within a common space where you accept other views are equally valid. It is exclusivist in nature.”

Hilary Clinton has expressed a very similar understanding of extremist religionists, who “define religion in such a way that if you do not believe what they want you to believe, then what you are doing is not practicing religion, because there is only one definition of religion.”

Such views about religion may reflect the secularist Zeitgeist, but they offer a very weak explanation for the challenge of radical Islam. The problem is not that Islamists believe they and only they are right. The problem is all the rest of what they believe.Consider this: Tony Blair himself believes his goal is valid, true and worth fighting for, namely a tolerant, open, democratic society, and the Islamists’ goal of a sharia society is invalid. He does believe that his view should determine the nature of society. Likewise many religious groups believe that they follow the one true religion, including the Catholic Church, which Tony Blair formally joined in 2007: Mother Theresa of Calcutta certainly did not consider alternative religious views equally valid to Catholic dogma. But none of this certainty of belief implies that Tony Blair or Catholics in general are disposed to become terrorists, cut hands off thieves or kill apostates.

Blair’s argument manifests the paradox of tolerance. His vision of a good society is one in which people must respect the views of others as “equally valid”. At the same time he argues that we should disallow and combat Islamism because it is “perverse”. He is asking for Islamism not to be tolerated because it is intolerant.If Blair’s explanation for Islamist nastiness is flawed, what then is the explanation? This takes us back to Islam itself. Does Blair’s position on Islam hold water?

Blair’s arguments for his positive view of Islam are weak. The validity of Islamism does not rest or fall on whether there are pious Muslims who accept or reject it, nor on whether Christians have advocating equally perverse theologies in the past. In the end, Islam as a religion – all mainstream Muslim scholars would agree – is based upon the teachings of the Sunna (the example and teaching of Muhammad) and the Koran. Islam’s religious validity in the eyes of its followers stands and falls on how well it can be justified from those authorities.There are at least three respects in which Islamist ideologies claim strong support from Islam – that is, from the Koran and Muhammad.

One is the intolerance and violence in the Islamic canon. The Koran states “Kill them / the polytheists wherever you can find them (Sura 9:5, 2:191). Muhammad, according to Islamic tradition, said “I have been sent with a sword in my hand to command people to worship Allah and associate no partners with him. I command you to belittle and subjugate those who disobey me …” He also said to his followers in Medina, “Kill any Jew who falls into your power.” Following in Muhammad’s footsteps, one of Muhammad’s most revered companions and successors as leader of the Muslim community, the Caliph Umar, called upon the armies of Islam to fight non-Muslims until they surrender or convert, saying “If they refuse this, it is the sword without leniency.”

It will not do, in the face of many such statements found in the Koran and the traditions of Muhammad, to throw one’s hands up in the air and say there are also bad verses in the Bible. If Jesus Christ had said such things as Muhammad did, Christianity’s political theology would look very different today and medieval Christian Holy War theology – developed initially in response to the Islamic jihad – would have come into being as part of the birth-pangs of the religion, just as the doctrine of the Islamic jihad did in the history of Islam.

Islamist apologists find it relatively easy to win young Muslims over to their cause precisely because they have strong arguments at their disposal from the Koran and Muhammad’s example and teaching. Their threatening ideology is growing in influence because it is so readily supported by substantial religious foundations. Islamism may not be the only interpretation of Islam, but by any objective measure, it is open for Muslims to hold it, given what what is in their canon.

Blair makes a telling over-generalisation when he states that Islamist ideology is an export from the Middle East. Another important source has been the Indian sub-continent. Today Pakistanis today are among the most dynamic apologists for Islamism. Abul A’la Maududi, an Indian (later Pakistani) Islamic teacher and founder of Jamaat-e-Islami was writing powerful texts to radicalise Muslims more than 70 years ago – including his tract Jihad in Islam (first published in 1927). His works remain in widespread use as tools of radicalization by Islamist organisations. Maududi’s theological vision was driven, not by Middle Eastern influences or Saudi petrodollars, but by his life-long study of the Koran and the example of Muhammad. The spiritual DNA of Maududi’s Islamist theology was derived from the Islamic canon itself.

The second point to understand about Islamist ideologies is that the conflation of politics and religion, which is one of Blair’s main objections to Islamism, has always been accepted as normative by the mainstream of Islamic theology. It is orthodox Islam. As Bernard Lewis pointed out, the separation of church and state has been derided by most Muslim thinkers since the origins of Islam: “Separation of church and state was derided in the past by Muslims when they said this is a Christian remedy for a Christian disease. It doesn’t apply to us or to our world.”

The third point about Islamist ideologies is that their vision of a closed society in which non-Muslims are second-class participants is in lock-step with the conservative mainstream of Islamic thought. Here again Bernard Lewis: “It is only very recently that some defenders of Islam began to assert that their society in the past accorded equal status to non-Muslims. No such claim is made by spokesmen for resurgent Islam, and historically there is no doubt that they are right. Traditional Islamic societies neither accorded such equality nor pretended that they were so doing. Indeed, in the old order, this would have been regarded not as a merit but as a dereliction of duty. How could one accord the same treatment to those who follow the true faith and those who willfully reject it? This would be a theological as well as a logical absurdity.” (The Jews of Islam, Princeton University Press, 1987, p.4).

Tony Blair is right to call the world to engage with and reject radical Islamist ideology. This is a defining global challenge of our time. He is also correct to affirm that this ideology is religious. But he is profoundly mistaken to characterize it as un-Islamic. The fallacious arguments he puts forward for distinguishing Islam from Islamism are nothing but flimsy rhetoric. The hard evidence against separating Islamism from Islam is clear, the sentiments of some pious Muslims non-withstanding.

Islamism is a valid interpretation of Islam, not in the sense that it is the only ‘correct’ or ‘true’ one, but because its core tenets find ready and obvious support in the Islamic canon, and they align with core principles of 1400 years of Islamic theology. (To make this observation is not the same thing as saying that all pious Muslims are Islamists!)

Blair is right to call for the West to combat “radical Islam”, but the reason why “radical” is a correct term to use for this ideology is that radical means “of the root,” and Islamist ideas are deeply rooted in Islam itself. Islamism is a radical form of Islam. This explains why the radicalization project has been advancing with such force all over the world.

In order to combat radical Islamic views we do need to have a frank and open dialogue about the dynamics of radicalization. Blair is concerned about the damage being caused by denial about Islamism, but he indulges in his own form of blinkered thinking, which is just as unhelpful. He was right to identify Islamist ideology as the soil in which violent jihadi ideologies “inevitably” take root, but fails to identity mainstream Islam itself as the soil in which Islamism develops. In reality the Islamist movement is but the tip of the iceberg of the Islamic movement, a deeper and broader revival of Islam across the whole Muslim world.

When countering radical Islamic ideologies, Western leaders should refrain from putting themselves forward as experts on theology, who are somehow competent to rule on whether a particular interpretation of Islam is valid or “perverse”. There is something ridiculous about secular politicians ruling on which manifestations of Islam are to be judged theologically correct. As Taliban Cleric Abu Qutada once said, “I am astonished by President Bush when he claims there is nothing in the Quran that justifies jihad violence in the name of Islam. Is he some kind of Islamic scholar? Has he ever actually read the Quran?”

Ritual displays of respect for Islam should not be naively used as sugar to coat the pill of opposition to the objectionable beliefs and behaviour of some Muslims. Leaders need to be absolutely clear about what values they stand for, and insist on these values. They should not need to express a theological opinion about what is or is not valid Islam in order to challenge the anti-semitism of Palestinian school textbooks, the denial of basic religious rights to non-Muslim guest workers in Saudi Arabia, incitement against Christians in Egypt, the promotion of female genital mutilation in the name of Islam in the Maldives, or the UK practice of taking child brides.

In this post-secular world, our leaders need to “do God” with less naivety. They need to grasp that the inner pressure they feel to manifest respect for Islam whenever they object to some of its manifestations is itself a symptom of the ideology of dominance which powers the Islamist agenda. They should resist the pressure to mount an apology for Islam. The mullahs can do that.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-durie/tony-blair-on-the-islamist-threat/

What Blair should have said

Tony Blair, Britain’s former prime minister, took a scalpel to a neuralgic issue last week. In a major speech on Wednesday, he declared that the West needed to swallow its differences with Russia and China and make common cause with them to counter the threat of radical Islam, the biggest threat to global security today.

Blair has understood that, with the world facing this lethal threat, there is an even more dangerous reluctance in the West to engage with it – even to the point of understanding exactly what it is.

His remarks provoked scorn and fury in equal measure. He was accused of being “the tyrants’ friend,” “embarrassingly simple-minded” and posing a “threat to world peace.”

Blair, the Middle East envoy for the Quartet of the UN, the EU, the United States and Russia, has long been a lightning-rod for widespread fury in the UK over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Critics claimed that, as prime minister, he was in the pocket of Israel and US president George W Bush.

Excoriated by both Left and Right as a Neo-con warmonger who took the UK to war in Iraq “on a lie” about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, he is hounded by demonstrators calling him a “war criminal” and “Bliar” whenever he appears in public.

In his London speech, Blair poked directly at these wounds – even though, in a number of respects, he himself flinched from the full implications of a situation he rightly criticizes the West for refusing to acknowledge.

He suggested that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan failed merely because of sectarian fighting in those countries. That provoked unbridled rage amongst those who believe that the carnage in Iraq, in particular, was the result of an “illegal” war that was his fault and pointless from the start.

The second issue on which Blair provoked fury was Israel. Despite his pro-Israel views – for which he paid a heavy price in British politics – he used to maintain that solving Israel/Palestine would solve the region’s problems. Now he understands, correctly, that solving the region’s problems is critical to solving Israel/Palestine.

This is incomprehensible to those for whom Palestinian “victimization” by Israel is the defining issue of the times. But Mr. Blair wants people to understand that the real issue is the global threat from radical Islam.

As he said, “There is not a region of the world not adversely affected by Islamism” – including Europe, where the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda of Islamizing the West has been allowed to proceed unchecked. Yet the West goes to extraordinary lengths to deny this common factor. For saying we need to take sides, to “engage” and “intervene” against radical Islam, Blair stands accused of supporting tyrants. But in strategically crucial Egypt, it is only rational that Blair should say of General Sisi, the autocrat who stands against rule by the Muslim Brotherhood, that “it is massively in our interests that he succeeds.”

Nevertheless, aspects of this speech suggested Blair remains in a bit of a muddle. The turmoil in the Middle East, he said, was fundamentally due to the “titanic struggle” between Muslim reformers and Islamic radicals within both the Sunni and Shia worlds. That undoubted struggle, however, is by no means the whole story.

The unpalatable truth which he failed to acknowledge is that, invariably, the choice in the Middle East is not between a nasty strong man and nice reformers, but between a nasty strong man and Islamic radicals who threaten the West.

That, of course, is precisely the complaint thrown at him for deposing Saddam Hussein. But it was necessary to get rid of Saddam because he was too dangerous to the West to continue in office. It was similarly necessary to go to war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

But it was disingenuous of Mr. Blair to blame the subsequent chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan on the “distorting feature” of religious extremism. The murderous battles there took place only because the strategic failures of both the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns had removed the restraints which had previously kept those sectarian divisions under control but then signally failed to help install new restraints in their place.

His deepest mistake, however, was to say that the “radicalized and politicized” view of Islam was “an ideology that distorts and warps Islam’s true message.”

This is the argument that Islam is really a religion of peace and so the extremists don’t represent “true” Islam. But this is not correct. While millions of Muslims around the world do shun the violent or extreme tenets of the religion, these are endorsed by all the Islamic authorities who matter.

It is more correct to say Islamic radicalism is a valid interpretation of Islam, no less “true” just because it is not universally endorsed. Yet Blair elides “interpretation” with “perversion” – thus undermining his own message that the West doesn’t understand the nature and severity of the threat from the Islamic world.

He also omitted to mention the most devastating blow of all to the security of the West: that President Obama’s America has stopped defending its allies and is instead empowering its enemies. The Arab and Muslim world perceives the US throwing in the towel in Afghanistan, breaking its own red lines over Syria and displaying impotence over Ukraine.

Above all, it recognizes from the farcical negotiations in Geneva that the US will not stop Iran from getting the bomb, and that it has actually strengthened Iran’s stranglehold on the region.

Arab rulers will always align themselves with whatever “strong horse” they perceive to be dominating the pack. Accordingly, Arab states previously helpful or essential to the West such as Egypt are cozying up instead to Russia, China or even Iran itself.

The one beacon of stability and freedom in the entire region is the nation that is directly threatened with annihilation: Israel. America and Europe should therefore stop beating it up and rewarding or appeasing those who want it destroyed, from the Palestinian Authority to Iran. They should instead start defending their one true ally against the enemies who threaten them all. Western interests, commercial as well as security and political, lie in supporting Israel. Only when the West finally understands that will it have any hope of defeating the radical Islamist enemy. That’s what Blair should have said.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/What-Blair-should-have-said-350511

Tony Blair, who because of him and Bush we now have seen a dramatic rise in extremism both Islamic and far right:








RUSI says "there is no longer any serious disagreement" over how the UK's role in the Iraq war helped to increase the radicalisation of young Muslims in Britain. "Far from reducing international terrorism … the 2003 invasion [of Iraq] had the effect of promoting it," the study concludes.

"The rise of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was a reaction to this invasion, and to the consequent marginalisation of Iraq's Sunni population (including de-Ba'athification and army disbandment).

"Today, AQAP and other radical jihadist groups stretching across the Iraqi-Syrian border, pose new terrorist threats to the UK and its allies that might not have existed, at least in this form, had Saddam remained in power."

The study says that, although Saddam Hussein was one of the most brutal dictators of the late 20th century, responsible for successive atrocities against his own people and wars of aggression against his neighbours, by 2002 "the scale of these misdeeds had been much reduced, not least because of the containment measures put in place after 1991".


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/23/uk-military-operations-costs

this thread isnt about iraq

smelly_bandit wrote:this thread isnt about iraq

You brought Blair into the equation and as his actions with war in Iraq have greatly increased extremism, it is very relevant.

However:


Islamophobia Watch reports on the latest outburst by Baroness Caroline Cox, author of the Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill, under which “Islamic courts would be forced to acknowledge the primacy of English law”.

Cox, who has previously espoused apocalyptic views about the operation of shari’ah councils in the UK, once warned that “Brutal punishments like whipping and stoning could become widespread in Britain if Islamic Sharia law is allowed to thrive.”

Now, at a speech given in Israel, Cox said “Islam is using the freedoms of democracy to destroy it” adding that shari’ah councils “pose a threat to the principles of democracy”.

Cox, who was speaking at an event organised by the Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science, Technology and Security at Tel Aviv University and The Israeli Institute for Strategic Studies, when on to say that Muslims “inhibit criticism” of Islam by labelling detractors racists.

Cox also mentioned the alleged ‘Trojan Horse plot’ in her speech as an example of secret takeover strategies by ‘Islamists’ and investments in Africa made in order to ‘Islamize’ the continent.

A report on the event in the Jerusalem Post states: “It is time to draw a line in the sand and say enough is enough,” she said regarding the incompatibility of sharia law, gender equality and “one rule for all”.”

It is noteworthy that the Baroness should have chosen Israel as the location to make such remarks, sharing with her guest to the House of Lords, Geert Wilders, a penchant to make anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic remarks to Israeli audiences.

Also notable is her referencing the ‘Trojan Horse’ plot while investigations are underway and the provenance and veracity of the letter at the centre of scandal unproven.

It is interesting too that the Baroness refused to be drawn on questions about Israel with the JP observing “she did not want to speak about Israel because she isn’t an expert on the country”.

One could argue the Baroness is no expert on shari’ah councils or gender equality either but it doesn’t seem to have stopped her wading into that debate.

Contrary to her claims of discriminatory treatment of Muslim women by shari’ah councils, those who sit or work alongside them argue they have been instrumental to the serving of Muslim female needs in civil law matters.

The idea, popular with Cox, that Muslim women are denied justice and that they are being failed by British institutions that leave them at the mercy of religious tribunals is not without significance given similar allegations levelled at the operation of Beth Din courts and the Jewish women who turn to them. Not surprising that this did not feature in Cox’s presentation despite her pious claims to be defending gender equality. Nor does she seem to make the case for the abolition of Beth Din courts as part and parcel of her ‘one rule for all’ position. Indeed, no mention of this either in a puff piece published in the Daily Telegraph last week lauding the good Baroness as ‘feisty’ in her defence of ‘voiceless’ Muslim women.

Perhaps if the Baroness were inclined to listen to those Muslim women who have successfully turned to shari’ah councils, she might her more than just the heavy sound of her own convictions.

Cox in her speech in Tel Aviv made the peculiar claim to extend a hand to support “moderate Muslims who seek to live peaceably, and redefine Islam in terms of peaceful coexistence and tolerance”.

‘Redefine’ Islam in terms of peaceful coexistence and tolerance? As though to suggest Islam is not compatible with terms for co-existence and tolerance and the law abiding majority of Muslims who adhere to it are not living examples of peaceful co-existence and tolerance.

It will be useful to see how many of the Muslim ‘women’s rights’ organisations that have worked with Cox will drop her a line and ask that she kindly retract her bigoted, prejudicial views.

http://iengage.uk.net/news/baroness-cox-Islam-using-freedoms-democracy-destroy/

its utterly irrelevant since it was 9/11 that started the whole lot in the first place

not so good with historical timelines are you??

smelly_bandit wrote:its utterly irrelevant since it was 9/11 that started the whole lot in the first place

not so good with historical timelines are you??

Are you sure?

Motives for 9/11

Sanctions imposed against Iraq

Presence of U.S. military in Saudi Arabia

Support of Israel by United States



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_the_September_11_attacks


Much better at time lines than you smelly..


Now Bin Laden saw these as reasons and motives and even worse the west used to fund him, tad stupid really when you think about the fact we created a monster.

You were saying about timelines, please continue, I love your poor history lessons

Didge wrote:

smelly_bandit wrote:its utterly irrelevant since it was 9/11 that started the whole lot in the first place

not so good with historical timelines are you??

Are you sure?

Motives for 9/11

Sanctions imposed against Iraq

Presence of U.S. military in Saudi Arabia

Support of Israel by United States



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_the_September_11_attacks


Much better at time lines than you smelly..


Now Bin Laden saw these as reasons and motives and even worse the west used to fund him, tad stupid really when you think about the fact we created a monster.

You were saying about timelines, please continue, I love your poor history lessons

did the iraq invasion(2nd) come before or after 9/11??

think it through and get back to me

smelly_bandit wrote:

Didge wrote:


Are you sure?

Motives for 9/11

Sanctions imposed against Iraq

Presence of U.S. military in Saudi Arabia

Support of Israel by United States



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_the_September_11_attacks


Much better at time lines than you smelly..


Now Bin Laden saw these as reasons and motives and even worse the west used to fund him, tad stupid really when you think about the fact we created a monster.

You were saying about timelines, please continue, I love your poor history lessons

did the iraq invasion(2nd) come before or after 9/11??

think it through and get back to me

Nothing to think about, when was the first one where American troops were based in Saudi


Think about it.


Please smelly, I really do not need lessons on history from you smelly as seen, you have the motives and the fact even before the first Iraq war we used to finance him in Afghanistan.

i asked a question you refuse to answer

if you wont engage in the debate then there isn't anything to discuss

smelly_bandit wrote:i asked a question you refuse to answer

if you wont engage in the debate then there isn't anything to discuss

Your question was moot, because of the first Iraq war, I do know the timelines so was one step ahead of your next point, which we have been here before.

So make your point as it gets very boring or do you deny the motives for 9/11?

The British government has launched a public consultation on whether or not to introduce student loans that are compliant with Islamic Sharia law, which forbids loans that involve the payment of interest.

The move to seek input from the general public comes amid rising complaints from Muslim students, who argue that the existing interest-based student loan system is unfairly forcing them to choose between getting a university degree and staying true to their religious beliefs.

The government says the establishment of a scheme that would enable Muslim students to finance their degrees in a way that complies with Islamic principles would "ensure that anyone with the ability and desire can go to university."

Critics counter that the dispute over interest-bearing student loans follows stepped-up demands for Sharia-compliant banking and insurance as well as credit cards, mortgages and pension funds, which—taken together—are contributing to the establishment of parallel Islamic financial and legal systems in Britain.

The consultation—formally known as the Consultation on a Sharia-Compliant Alternative Finance Product—seeks to determine whether an "alternative finance system that is not interest based" would be acceptable to "anyone who might be deterred from the conventional system."

The alternative financial model involves a mutual fund pooling scheme (known as takaful in Arabic), whereby prospective students would withdraw money from a Sharia-compliant fund to pay for school. Upon graduation they would make a series of repayments back into the same fund to help pay for the education of other students who come along after them.

In an effort to address concerns that Muslim students would end up paying less than non-Muslims, the government says the fund would be set up in such a way so as to ensure that repayments are made at the same rate as students who take out traditional student loans.

The government's consultation document says "this model of student finance product was proposed and developed by experts in Islamic finance and has been approved by the Sharia Supervisory Committee of the Islamic Bank of Britain." It continues:

The model's underlying principle is one of communal interest and transparent sharing of benefit and obligation, with the repayments of students participating in the fund being used to provide finance to future students who select to join the fund. This ensures that all members of the fund benefit equally from it.

Students participating in the fund would not be borrowing money and paying it back with interest to a third party, which would not be compliant with Sharia law. Instead, the Takaful fund will be established with an initial amount of money that can be donated to the fund or on the basis of Qard Hasan (interest-free loan) and based on a concept of mutual participation and guarantee.

Students will obtain finance from the fund by applying in a similar manner to the conventional loan. The contract will be based upon a unilateral promise guaranteeing that they will repay a Takaful contribution—which is perceived as a charitable contribution from a Sharia perspective for the benefit of the members of the fund. Monies will be released once the contract is signed. Repayment will be made to the fund once they are in employment and earning above the repayment threshold, which would be set at the same level as for traditional student loans.

The consultation—which was unveiled on April 3 and will run until June 12—is in response to pressure from several Muslim lobbying groups who argue that sweeping government reforms to higher education that came into effect in September 2012 are discriminatory against Muslim students.

The reforms—aimed at improving the financial sustainability of the British university system by shifting the financial burden from taxpayers to graduates—tripled the cap on tuition fees to £9,000 ($15,000; €11,000). The new system also requires graduates who earn above £21,000 ($35,000) to pay interest on student loans of up to 3 percent above inflation.

The London-based Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) says the requirement to pay interest on student loans is unacceptable for the estimated 115,000 Muslim university students in Britain.

In an interview with The Independent, a FOSIS spokesman said: "Under Islamic law interest is seen as something that is prohibited. Previously, the interest rate was at the market rate of inflation. The problem now is that the interest is above the market rate. Because the rate of interest is above the rate of inflation, it is quite blatant usury."

FOSIS says it knows of many Muslim students have who decided against going to university because of the new system of student loan repayments.

Another group called First Ethical Charitable Trust has launched an advocacy campaign— "Lobbying for a Halal Alternative to Student Loans"—aimed at pressuring the government to introduce Sharia-compliant student loans. The group's website states:

In our view, there are thousands of Muslim students, each and every year, who are effectively being denied access to a university education because of the current interest based system of student loans.

Given Islam strictly prohibits both the paying and receiving of interest, many Muslim students face a conflict between funding their university course through taking a government backed interest-bearing loan and practicing their faith. As a result, thousands choose to forgo the massive benefits a university education can confer.

Denying these principled young people access to university is an incredibly short sighted policy which will condemn tens of thousands of practicing Muslims to permanently lower career and life opportunities, hence storing up social cohesion and equality issues for decades to come.

The group says it welcomes the government's "promising, yet long overdue step" but complains that "it will take 3-4 years before an alternative model becomes a reality, not only because of the need to pass legislation, but also because they need to then carry out a feasibility study, and properly test an alternative model. We think this is way too long and will leave many Muslim students stranded in the interim."

Others complain the government is creating a scheme that is only superficially avoiding interest and thus is not actually Sharia-compliant.

Sheikh Suhaib Hasan, a Muslim hardliner who runs the UK Islamic Sharia Council, is quoted by The Independent as saying: "By limiting the repayments to a benchmark similar to that of conventional bank interest rates, Sharia-compliant schemes I think are nothing but a smokescreen through which a prohibited matter turns into a permitted one, so it's better to leave it as it is."

Meanwhile, young Muslims interviewed by The Guardian are indifferent to the government's initiative and say they do not see the point in Sharia-compliant student loans.

Critics say the controversy over student loans is just the latest example of how the British financial and legal systems are being steadily transformed to comply with Sharia law.

In March 2014, it emerged that Islamic law is to be effectively enshrined in the British legal system for the first time under guidelines to help lawyers draft Sharia-compliant wills and estate planning documents.

Ground-breaking guidelines approved by the Law Society—the main professional association representing and governing the legal profession in England and Wales—provide details on how British lawyers should draft inheritance documents in order to comply with Islamic rules, which deny women an equal share of inheritances and exclude non-Muslims altogether.

The documents, which would be recognized by British courts, prevent children born out of wedlock—and even those who have been adopted—from being counted as legitimate heirs. In addition, anyone married in a civil ceremony or in a church could be excluded from inheritance under Sharia law, which recognizes only Muslim weddings for inheritance purposes.

Paragraph 3.6 of the guidelines recommends that some wills include a declaration of faith in Allah that would be drafted at a local mosque, and paragraph 5.2 hands responsibility for drawing up some papers to Sharia courts. Paragraph 2.3 of the guidelines suggests that Sharia law could overrule British law in inheritance disputes.

In April 2013, a documentary secretly filmed inside several of the 85 Islamic Sharia Law courts operating in Britain exposed the systematic discrimination that many women are suffering at the hands of Muslim jurists.

The documentary—Secrets of Britain's Sharia Courts—was filmed by the British Broadcasting Corporation and proved what had long been suspected: that Sharia courts, which operate in mosques and houses across Britain, routinely issue rulings on domestic and marital issues according to Sharia law that are at odds with British law.

In 2012, the British government began offering Muslim workers a Sharia-compliant pension fund in the public sector. A new government agency, the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST), will give Muslims who do not already have a company pension the option of investing in the HSBC Life Amanah Pension Fund, a Sharia-compliant pension scheme. The initial target market comprises some 200,000 Muslims in Britain.

In June 2011, Pointon York, an independent financial services company based in Leicestershire, announced that it would begin offering four Sharia-compliant Self-Invested Personal Pensions (SIPP) products that comply with Islamic law.

Pointon York was the first specialist SIPP provider to receive Sharia-compliant accreditation by the Islamic Bank of Britain (IBB), which has pioneered Islamic retail banking in the United Kingdom. The IBB will supervise the entire life-cycle of Pointon York's pension funds to ensure full compliance with Sharia legal principles.

Muslim families in Britain can already acquire Sharia-compliant baby bonds under the British government's Child Trust Fund scheme. In 2008, Britain's Financial Services Authority (FSA) authorized the establishment of the country's first Islamic insurance company as well as the country's first Sharia MasterCard, called the Cordoba Gold MasterCard.

In 2009, a report titled "Sharia Law or One Law for All?" found that scores of unofficial tribunals and councils regularly apply Islamic law to resolve domestic, marital and business disputes, many operating in mosques. The report warned of a "creeping" acceptance of Sharia principles in British law.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4287/sharia-compliant-student-loans

The Daily Telegraph reports on the Government’s announcement of the introduction of shari’ah compliant student loans to mitigate the risk of Muslim students opting out of higher education because of the student loans required to pay for tuition fees.

To ensure access to education and to prevent unintended discrimination against Muslim students, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has launched a consultation on ‘an alternative shari’ah compliant student loan scheme’.

Universities Minister, David Willetts said “We are aware that some Muslims and young people of other faiths might be put off taking out a conventional student loan.

“To address this we have developed a potential model alternative finance product which would be Sharia-compliant and could be offered alongside traditional student loans.”

The plans were also alluded to in the speech delivered by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, at the Muslim News Awards for Excellence ceremony on Monday. The PM, outlining the Government’s broader efforts to tackle anti-Muslim prejudice, said:

“…tackling Islamophobia means making absolutely sure that no person is held back from living their life or reaching their goals simply because of the faith they follow.

“So yes – we’re delivering on Sharia-compliant student loans, Help to Buy deposits and entrepreneur funds.”

http://iengage.uk.net/news/government-launches-consultation-shariah-compliant-student-loans/

smelly_bandit wrote:

The man who backs the EDL

 ://?roflmao?/: 

Well said baroness.

Tommy Monk wrote:Well said baroness.

She is a Christian Zionist, do you support Zionism?

smelly_bandit wrote:its utterly irrelevant since it was 9/11 that started the whole lot in the first place

not so good with historical timelines are you??

What did 9/11 have to do with Iraq?

Saddam was already at war with Al-queda    he was on their hit list. If anything they hatred Him more because he was the Most powerful Middle eastern Secular leader   

Saddam was gave religious freedom and the Fundamentalists hated him for it   

Didge wrote:

Tommy Monk wrote:Well said baroness.

She is a Christian Zionist, do you support Zionism?

mine enemy's enemy???