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| Recent Publications by New English Review Authors |
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In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas by Theodore Dalrymple |
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Defending The West: by Ibn Warraq |
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Nations, Language and Citizenship: by Norman Berdichevsky |
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Romancing Opiates by Theodore Dalrymple |
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Which Koran? by Ibn Warraq |
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Our Culture, What's Left of It
by Theodore Dalrymple |
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What The Koran Really Says by Ibn Warraq |
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Life at the Bottom by Theodore Dalrymple |
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The Origins of the Koran by Ibn Warraq |
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Why I Am Not Muslim by Ibn Warraq |
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Spanish Vignettes: An Offbeat Look Into Spain's Culture, Society & History by Norman Berdichevsky |
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Leaving Islam Edited by Ibn Warraq |
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These are all the Blogs posted on Saturday, 17, 2008.
Saturday, 17 May 2008
Lord Carey and Canon White call for release of ‘forgotten’ British hostages

From The Times. I had not forgotten these men.
The former Archbishop of Canterbury has broken a year-long government news blackout to appeal directly to the group holding five “forgotten” British hostages who were abducted in Baghdad last May.
Lord Carey of Clifton released a video statement through The Times in which he greeted the hostage-takers as “honourable men” and “men of faith”.
The former Archbishop recorded his address yesterday at the House of Lords, accompanied by Canon Andrew White, his former Middle East envoy and now Anglican chaplain to Iraq. Canon White has devoted much of the past year to working with Iraqi religious and tribal leaders to try to open lines of communication and engage in dialogue with the hostage-takers.
He addressed the kidnappers on camera, speaking in English and Arabic, and emphasised that the men held captive were devoted to the rebuilding and restoration of Iraq.
The hostages, four security guards and the IT consultant they were protecting, were abducted at the Iraqi Ministry of Finance on May 29 last year. They were taken by a large group of armed men, many of whom were wearing Iraqi police uniforms. The five hostages are reportedly being held in Iran.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said that work was going on behind the scenes and asked news organisations not to publish details of the men’s identities. It also urged the missing men’s relatives not to speak publicly.
In a video released by the kidnappers in December 2007, one of the hostages said: “I feel like we have been forgotten.”
The Times has chosen not to report certain details of the hostages’ current plight because of the sensitivity of the situation.
Canon White said: “We are working hard to make serious contacts. There are positive developments and we really hope we can get our people back. We are told that they are all OK, that they are good.
“It is really difficult, really painful for their families. It is a year now and they wonder when are they going to get their people back –
“What we are doing is separate from everything the Foreign Office, the Government of Iraq and the embassy is trying to do. We are working as religious leaders.”
The captors are understood to be seeking the release of two members of a breakaway Shia faction currently being held in Iraq by US forces.
Lord Carey, 73, is patron of the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East of which Canon White is president. The former Archbishop spent more than a year in Iraq when he did his National Service in the 1950s.
He said he hoped that the captors “share with me a belief in God who is all-compassionate – this is one of the great values of God in Islamic faith”.
A spokesman for the Foreign Office said: “We are doing everything that we can to try and secure the safe return of the hostages. We welcome the support being provided to back up those efforts and we remain in close contact with members of all the men’s families.”
Muslims do keep telling us that Allah is “All compassionate” – no harm in challenging them to live up to it.

Posted on 2:27 AM by Esmerelda Weatherwax

Saturday, 17 May 2008
Bostom's Legacy

Raphael Israeli has a glowing review of Andrew Bostom's new book, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism (also reviewed by Bill Warner here) in the Jerusalem Post:
Following the recent publication of his massive compendium The Legacy of Jihad - a breakthrough inasmuch as the enormous task of assembling together all the major sources which govern the holy war in Islam had never been attempted before - this amazingly prolific writer has completed another, no less imposing, collection of sources, Islamic and others, which testify to the long and sorry history of anti-Semitism in Islam. This too had never been undertaken before on such a scale, mainly due to the constrictions of political correctness that posited that Islam, unlike Christianity, had not entertained a systematic persecution of the Jews.
This apologetic for Islam has now been shattered by Andrew Bostom, who painstakingly but thoughtfully collected and collated this documentation that would have been a stunning and innovative undertaking for any scholar of Islam to pursue, let alone for a professional in medicine whose research on Islam has been merely a secondary career.
Appropriately, Bostom begins his volume with a well-tailored survey of the theological, historical and juridical origins of Islamic anti-Semitism, including the Koran, the Hadith and the Sirah, then proceeds to an insightful description of the dhimmis in the main lands of Islam, to test the theory of the cited sources against the practice of Muslim rulers in the entire area spanning the Middle East, North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula (Andalusia) and the Ottoman Empire.
The picture these documents give reverses in a dramatic way many of the ill-conceived and misjudged information that had attempted in the past to ascribe to the lands of Islam a much more benign and idyllic image of their (mis)treatment of the Jews. The coalition between the Palestinian mufti of Jerusalem and the Nazis during World War II is conjured up to conclude this introduction.
Secondly, the author delves in considerable detail into the main sources of Islamic jurisprudence - the Koran and the Hadith, complemented by the Sirah (the earliest pious Muslim biographies of Muhammad), where an abundance of references, usually not complimentary but rather derogatory, are made to Jews, collectively known as Israi'liyyat (Israelites' stories). This is a trove of anti-Jewish stereotypes that have become the Shari'a-based uncontested "truth" about the People of the Book. Those accounts are invariably cited in sermons during Friday prayers, thus assuring their universal diffusion among Muslim constituents and the constant poisoning of the souls of young and adult Muslims alike, something that renders their fundamentally negative attitudes to Jews and Israel unchangeable.
This extremely important collection from the holy sources is supplemented by the thinking and judgment of the most authoritative jurists whose every word has been awaited and avidly digested by Muslim constituencies the world over. The great medieval masters, such as Tabari and Jahiz, are reinforced by more recent ones such as the Egyptian Tantawi and Egyptian-in exile Qaradawi, who represent the two poles of established Islam and popular Islam in our contemporary world...
One can hardly exaggerate the vast importance of this volume, which will henceforth become indispensable for any student of Islam, of Judeo-Islamic relations, of anti-Semitism in particular and of hate-literature in general. The variety of materials assembled here, which makes a fascinating, if disagreeable, reading, for all the splendid and insightful overview offered by this incredibly energetic and imaginative author, will continue for times to come to constitute a mainstay of Muslim sources which will have to be referred to by future researchers, scholars and the general educated public which aspires to comprehend the significance of the new outburst of anti-Semitism, clearly articulated by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, among Muslims worldwide.

Posted on 7:14 AM by Rebecca Bynum

Saturday, 17 May 2008
Oslo: Rapes Are The Fault Of Norwegian Girls

This comes from Islam in Europe (hat tip: Brussels Journal)
Oslo police recently released its 2007 Rape Report. The report shows a marked increase in Somali rapists, generally on account of gang rapes...
At least ten women were attacked and molested by a gang of Somali men at Sofienberg park in Oslo on Saturday evening.
Last year a record-high 161 rapes and 35 rape attempts were reported in Oslo. Over 70% of the rapists were non-Norwegian [ed. ethnically, a majority had Norwegian citizenship].
Lawyer Abid Raja visited a cafe in Grønland in Oslo for Norwegian broadcaster P4. There he met three young men (ages 26, 30 and 35), from Somalia and Senegal.
The men, who refused to have their names published, spoke with P4 about the rape and robbery wave hitting the city.
A: Honestly? Norwegians are horrible!
Q: What are you thinking about?
A: I'm thinking of everything. Not least the food is bad. (He then speaks of the fact that Muslims don't eat pork).
Q: What do you think of Norwegian women then?
A: They're something completely different, he says as his friends laugh.
---
A: But listen now, Norwegian girls complain that foreign boys do this and that, but the reason there are so many rapes is that Norwegian girls go around almost completely naked! That's like saying "come here and fuck me", you understand?
Q: You're saying that Norwegian girls are asking to be raped?
A: Not exactly asking, but when then go out almost completely naked and get completelydrunk in Frogner park or go to a party together with some friend, and then they complain about being raped? It's their fault, says the 26 year old from Somalia.
Q: But even if they go around lightly dressed and get drunk then they're certainly not asking to be raped?
A: No, but many of the foreigners aren't used to this where they come from. They're not accustomed that girls go dressed as they want, then maybe they interpret this a bit wrong, you understand?...
Q: You don't think many will be scared that you have such attitudes if P4 broadcasts this interview on the radio?
A: Just broadcast it, because this is true. That's the way things are - it's the facts. I'm not lying. I've never been with a Norwegian lady, but I've been with many Norwegian girls - they are fairly nice and very skilled in bed.

Posted on 7:36 AM by Rebecca Bynum

Saturday, 17 May 2008
A McGonagall rhyme, not remembered for a very long time

William McGonagall's poems have plodded across these pages before, as has his play Jack o’ the Cudgel (or The Hero of a Hundred Fights):
Set in the court of Edward III, it tells the story of Jack, a “noble Saxon” who rises from pauper to royal knight and vanquishes his enemies by clubbing them over the head with an enormous cudgel. In one memorable scene, he stops a giant from attacking a minstrel, declaring: “Leave the minstrel, thou pig-headed giant, or I’ll make you repent/For thou must know my name is Jack, and I hail from Kent.”
Upon learning of Jack’s heroics, the King summons him to his court and makes him a knight.
He tells him: “Sir Jack, I give thee land to the value of six hundred marks/In thine own native county of Kent, with beautiful parks/Also beautiful meadows and lovely flowers and trees/Where you can reside and enjoy yourself as you please.”
These days would-be artists do not die poor for lack of talent; in fact a folio of thirty-five McGonagall poems, signed by the author, has just been sold at auction for £6,000. In his lifetime, however, McGonagall was paid only for one poem: an advertisement for Sunlight Soap:
You can use it with great pleasure and ease Without wasting any elbow grease; And when washing the most dirty clothes The sweat won’t be dripping off your nose You can wash your clothes with little rubbing And without scarcely any scrubbing And I tell you once again without any joke There’s no soap can surpass Sunlight Soap And believe me, charwomen one and all I remain yours truly, the Poet McGonagall
Well, it beats "A Mars a day helps you work rest and play," and is probably more accurate than this, or its German counterpart.

Posted on 7:08 AM by Mary Jackson

Saturday, 17 May 2008
126th FA Cup Final Cardiff City v Portsmouth
Things are going to be very quiet round here for the next 3 hours.
The FA Cup Final kicks off in about 15 minutes at Wembley.
Cardiff City v Portsmouth.
Two teams with an interesting history but these days from the lower divisions. Which is the joy of the FA Cup being a straight knock out competition, that it can and does throw up final matches of teams not in the tiny enclave of big rich clubs.
If you do not get the match on television where you are then you can follow it through live updates here via the FA website
Back at half time.
Posted on 8:41 AM by Esmerelda Weatherwax
Saturday, 17 May 2008
Annals Of The French Resistance: The Mayor Of Draguignan And The Mosque
Par zebulon9 le 16 mai 2008
Max PISELLI maire de Draguignan refuse de se laisser intimider par l’association culturelle musulmane de la Dracénie qui utilise des moyens peu élégants pour forcer la main au conseil municipal et à son maire au sujet de leur projet de mosquée comme l’atteste l’article suivant de Var Matin:
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