Blogging in a medieval theocracy

Today came the sad news from Egypt that a blogger, Abdel Kareem Soliman, was jailed for a total of 4 years after a 5 minute hearing. His "Crimes"? .....

 

No Free Thoughts In Theocratic States

 

...... Insulting Islam by suggesting that the al-Azhar university in Cairo was a "the university of terrorism" and that it suppressed free thought (really!). He also stated that the president for life Mr Mubarak was a dictator (never!).

Apart from the fact that all these accusations can be easily thought of as true, it's still somewhat ironic that in order to prove him guilty of a crime, they suppressed his freedom to think these thoughts by locking him up, thus proving that he was correct in his assertion that they were suppressing free thought, and thus not guilty of any crime, or perhaps just guilty of telling the truth.

Of course, bloggers around the world, from China to Africa get locked up or even killed, but there is a particular brand of Islamic Theocracy running across the world, which uses "Islamic Values" with which to suppress anyone who disagrees with it, and this is maybe the most frightening aspect to the brand of Islam that is abroad in the world at the moment.

 

The fact that Islamic based regimes see no contradiction in locking people up, for saying that they lock people up, just shows how dangerous a creed it is upon which to base a country. The bleeding heart Left, who have spent the last 20 years telling us all that 'all value systems are of equal weight' and that we should 'embrace Islam as a "peaceful" religion', must be finally getting slightly nervous as they watch this particular value system threaten, and wipe out free thought, where ever it gets a grip, ...... or probably not.

The Left has always had a blind spot for certain types of dictators and their crimes, hence the apologists for Stalin in the 1930's, or Mao in the 1960's, or even for Saddam Hussein in the 1990's. Now we have the apologists for Islam, who despite the murders, bombings, terrorist outrages, and a very large volume of evidence to the contrary, still believe that you can "cut a deal" with the Mullahs of the world. So they ignore the daily broadcasts of "Death to Israel, death to the US, and death to the rest of us 'unbelievers'", that come out on state radio across the middle east, and tell the rest of us to "embrace" the endless stream of "true believers" who arrive in Europe every year.

A recent television program in the UK showed Mosques that Mr Blair (our beloved, soon to be Ex PM) had praised as the "moderate peaceful face of Islam", advocating "marrying eight year old girls" (because that's what their prophet had done), "beating women" who disagreed with a man (although somewhat liberally, you were only to use a small stick), and forcing "all women to wear the face veil". 

 

Sitting on while these views were aired, were Mullahs who had been invited to Number 10 because they were "moderates" .... well if these are the "moderates" that the Left hope to cut a deal with, then God help us. It's not hard to imagine the form of government that these moderate Mullahs would usher in if they ever got real political power, it surely wouldn't be an advocate of the enlightenment.

Actually, like a lot of people, I am beginning to wonder what really is going to happen in Europe over the next 20-30 years. Will any country sit by and allow itself to become a "Muslim state", simply by the numbers of Muslim immigrants out voting them, or are we going to see some sort of reaction?

Admittedly, apart from France, with its 12-15% Muslim population, the rest of the the major European countries have Muslim populations of between 2 and 5%, but as that was from a base of well under 1% less than 30 years ago, it does seem that somethings gotta give sooner or later. It's hard to see any countries non Muslim population just PC'ing itself to its own demise, so something will happen but what?

Are we about to see a wave of right wing governments, voted in as a 'defenders' of "traditional European values", sweep across Europe as public fear is expressed in the ballot box? I ask this because the recent new entrants to the EU have a number of states where "traditional" values are being espoused e.g. Poland, and there is some evidence in the UK, that at street level the British National Party (BNP) has gained support. It could even be argued that the success of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) is linked partly to this uneasiness over immigration (as well as to an English distrust of the EU).

If this is the case, and I admit it may be only marginally more likely than a Muslim takeover of some small European country, then ironically the Left will have brought about its own demise by continuing to advocate "multiculturalism", long after the population at large had decided that the Muslim immigration model had been a complete failure. It's not hard to imagine that another few 9/11's, Madrid's, or 7/7's, would tip public opinion against any government that was still crying "Islam is peaceful" in the face of Muslim terrorist attacks.

A model for this kind of reaction can be seen in the wave of right wing governments in Europe in the 1930's, when the depression brought "strongmen", and nationalist governments into many countries, as mass unemployment took hold. This appears to go against the logic which says that left leaning governments, with state ownership policies and public works, would have swept the board, but largely this did not occur. I don't regard the US Democrats under Roosevelt as left leaning in the European sense, because they are only 'left' of the Republicans, but still centre right in European political terms. Roosevelt was as much a economic 'protectionist' as any of the governments of Europe during the depression so not really a leftist.

 

The Analogy is not exact, but it's something the Left would do well to ponder over the next couple of decades, because the issue of Islamic versus Western Christian/Secular values will only get greater over the next two or three decades.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6385849.stm

http://www.freekareem.org/