Lars Hedegaard, a Danish writer who has been critical of Islam and Muslims in the West, is reported to have survived an assault by a gunman whose bullet flew past his ear. Hedegaard is said to have punched him, causing him to drop his weapon and flee the scene. The nature of the incident cannot be asserted with absolute confidence but it seems probable enough that we can ask if it represents the continuation of a pattern.
God, I wish it didn’t. Unfortunately, you would have to have been living under a boulder to be too surprised by this. The list of people who have insulted, opposed or questioned Islam and Muslims in their words and then faced violence in response is daunting. Theo Van Gough was butchered in the street. Kurt Westergaard was forced to hide with his 5 year-old granddaughter as an axe-wielding thug rampaged through his house. The offices of Charlie Hebdo were bombed. The publishers of Sherry Jones were burned. Lars Vilks has faced the plots of terrorists; an arson attack; an assault and at least one egging. All of this, let us remind ourselves, was because these people drew cartoons, made films and published novels.
I am sure that there are people who would explain this not as religious supremacism but as the response of embattled people to persecution. This explanation collapses underneath the weight of the objection that violence against real and supposed heretics and blasphemers is more prevalent in nations where Islam is dominant. Never mind a place like Pakistan, where people are often killed for challenging blasphemy laws as well as for blaspheming. In the Maldives Ismail Rasheed could be stoned and stabbed; in Indonesia Alexander Aan faced a mob attack; in Nigeria, a man was macheted to death after he mispronounced a name and it sounded blasphemous.
European governments, of course, amid this irregular war against the freedom of expression, have been busily extending restrictions on speech to cover that which is held to be insulting and offensive. Hedegaard himself was fined about £600 for anti-Muslim statements that a blogger chose to publish. That people can say foolish and unpleasant things is undeniable. I do not know Hedegaard and cannot judge whether he tends to fall within or outside of this category. This, though, hardly matters. Opinions can be ignored and gunmen can’t, and when you are in the vicinity of both it is not hard to judge which should be your priority.
It is vital that these thugs be frustrated in their desire to live free of criticism and questions. As we have observed before, people have taken the fear of being offensive to heart. It it true, of course, that it would be pointless and mean to set out to wound people. Hypersensitivity, however, should not be indulged or it will not have to adapt. Where indulging it would constrains intellectual progress and threatens social harmony it has to adapt. Others have censored themselves for fear of risking their own necks. This is understandable – I am very attached to my neck – but it is also unwise. Allowing the hypersensitive to remain comfortable feeds their sense of entitlement. It will only make them angrier when your ideas and values inevitably clash. And, besides, cases like that of the Nigerian or the girl in Pakistan whose “blasphemous” misspelling prompted riots are evidence that trying to be polite need not save one from outrage.
That words alone can defeat the violent is, of course, delusive. This conflict is the inevitable consequences of unchecked multiculturalism and the grimmer business of excluding theocrats and supremacists from and within our societies remains crucial. Yet words are important. The more that good-natured satire and critical scrutiny is applied to religions the more their followers will accept that intimidation is a blunt and unwieldy weapon in the cause of facing it. Others are likely to find critiques so unanswerable that they are forced to adapt their creeds to fit new premises, and where the fundamentalism has been punctured the aggression deflates.
It is far from rare to hear commentators in the West being described as “brave” merely for expressing opinions that are slightly unorthodox. In facing pejoratives and, perhaps, the occasional insult many of us appear to seem that writers are being courageous. If we are so sensitive to the verbal assaults that people can endure after expressing their opinions we should appreciate the scale of the horror wrapped up in the fact that people assert a view and then be faced with eggs, axes, bombs and gunmen.
February 6, 2013 at 12:55 pm
I am sure that there are people who would explain this not as religious supremacism but as the response of embattled people to persecution.
You’ll be sure to find us people who say explicitly that, then?
February 6, 2013 at 1:01 pm
This seems to be a lurch back towards “Decency” from you. I’m very disappointed.
“I am sure that there are people who would explain this not as religious supremacism but as the response of embattled people to persecution.”
Are you going to deny that persecution of Muslims exists? There’s regular sweeping attacks on ‘Islam’ in the mainstream press, in the UK a gathering of football hooligans exists pretty much exclusively to menace Muslim communities (even diluting their fascism to enable allowing Sikhs, Jews & LGBT to join in on the fun…).
Oh, and speaking of sweeping attacks:
“This explanation collapses underneath the weight of the objection that violence against real and supposed heretics and blasphemers is more prevalent in nations where Islam is dominant. ”
Which ‘Islam’? Treating a faith with a billion adherents and no single (or even effective multiple!) centralised authority structure as a single entity in this way is Orientalism of the first order.
Look, I feel for people have axes swung at them. But you’re not mentioning persecution against Muslims at all, and your efforts to totally disconnect that from attacks on people staging crude criticisms of Islam are, frankly, unconvincing. These people often aren’t freedom loving satirists, they’re participating in popular attacks on a minority group.
February 9, 2013 at 3:43 pm
There is no persecution of Muslims in the Western world. Period. Muslims living in the West enjoy religious freedom, personal freedom and personal security at levels absolutely incomparable with any Islamic country. Yes, there is racism and some Muslims may be victim of it but that´s a different story.
Your defense of people violently attacking “crude” critics of their faith is worse than unconvincing. It is appalling.
February 9, 2013 at 3:53 pm
Some individuals and institutions have faced persecution. If churches were being set alight and synagogues attacked with pigs heads and bacon on another continent we would not hesitate from describing it as being marked by anti-Christian and anti-semitic persecution.
I agree, however, that Muslims are not persecuted en masse.
February 9, 2013 at 6:24 pm
Ben – this is not a persecution in my book. Those are individual criminal acts. And western law enforcement system is dealing with them reasonably well, thank you very much. Talking about some suffering minority under “sweeping attacks” whose members then turn to violence seemingly out of sheer desperation is utter nonsense.
February 9, 2013 at 6:26 pm
They are still acts of persecution but I think our disagreement is of the semantic variety. I agree that the idea that the people I have described above are defending their people rather than their God is mistaken.
Welcome, by the way.
February 6, 2013 at 1:54 pm
ejh -
That is how some people have explained the burning of the Satanic Verses, the rioting over that stupid film and Mohammed Merah’s shooting of Jewish schoolchildren. Perhaps they would not extend this view to these incidents but I see no reason why they wouldn’t.
James -
This seems to be a lurch back towards “Decency” from you. I’m very disappointed.
It is regrettable that you are disappointed. I am further from being a “decent”, though, than I have ever been as to maintain their view that interventionism is desirable such people must assume that Muslims across the world are liberals at heart. I am not so patronising.
Are you going to deny that persecution of Muslims exists?
No. It does. But, as I have said above, it is irrelevant to this point.
Treating a faith with a billion adherents and no single (or even effective multiple!) centralised authority structure as a single entity in this way is Orientalism of the first order.
It is not a single entity. Yet things that have differences can also have important similarities. There are features common to its different strands and one is hypersensitivity towards the irreverential treatment of its beliefs. This is proved by the fact that with the possible exceptions of Sufi countries in Africa, criticism of the faith is prohibited through official and informal means in all nations where Muslims represent majorities. This is a falsifiable thesis but I do not think that it is going to be falsified.
These people often aren’t freedom loving satirists, they’re participating in popular attacks on a minority group.
Which people? I don’t know Hedegaard but Charlie Hebdo did not “attack” anyone. They made fun of Mohammad. Sherry Jones did not “attack” anyone. She wrote a novel. Lars Vilks did not “attack” anyone. He drew some peculiar cartoons. This blurring of offensiveness and aggression is dangerous for all the reasons I have described above.
February 6, 2013 at 3:02 pm
I am sure that there are people who would explain this not as religious supremacism but as the response of embattled people to persecution.
I don’t see why this has to be an either/or question. You seem to agree that Muslims are oversensitive about their religion, and that they are subject to persecution. But you come dangerously close to saying that the one justifies the other. As for example:
Allowing the hypersensitive to remain comfortable feeds their sense of entitlement. It will only make them angrier when your ideas and values inevitably clash
Is that actually true? My own sense of this is that making the hypersensitive uncomfortable feeds their sense of persecution.
It’s also worth pointing out that in many cases this sense of persecution is completely justifiable – offending the delicate sensibilities of Muslims is a time-honoured way getting cheap publicity and/or raising your profile. Now obviously people should be allowed to do this because free speech. But it’s silly to pretend that said people are in fact performing a valuable public service.
February 6, 2013 at 3:03 pm
Apologies for messed up italics.
February 6, 2013 at 3:10 pm
Which now seem to have sorted themselves out.
February 6, 2013 at 3:07 pm
“No. It does. But, as I have said above, it is irrelevant to this point.”
You’ve said that, I know, but it isn’t true. A persecuted minority lashing out is simply not the same as a powerful majority furthering persecution. It should be framed differently, and with a view to avoiding accidentally perpetuating that persecution.
Like, for example, extrapolating from lone monsters to wider groups. These murderers and would-be murderers are as representative of Muslims as Valerie Solanas was of women).
“It is not a single entity. Yet things that have differences can also have important similarities. There are features common to its different strands and one is hypersensitivity towards the irreverential treatment of its beliefs. This is proved by the fact that with the possible exceptions of Sufi countries in Africa, criticism of the faith is prohibited through official and informal means in all nations where Muslims represent majorities. This is a falsifiable thesis but I do not think that it is going to be falsified.”
Well some Muslims I’ve met are as irreverent towards their faith as anyone I’ve met. So you are generalising.
February 6, 2013 at 3:28 pm
OK. First, you might want to wait until somebody actually does something before criticising them for it, otherwise you are making a non-falsifiable point, and against an unidentifiable target.
Second, when you say “official and informal means”, do be sure that “informal means” does all the work you’re expecting of it.
Third, try applying a little history to this. How possible was it to criticise Christianity in Christian countries in, say, the eighteenth century? If this has changed, is that because of something inherent in Christianity that is not inherent in Islam (if so, what?) or because something changed within the Christian world that did not change within the Islamic world? (If the latter, how and why might that be the case?)
Fourth, I really don’t think it’s possible to erect some imprevious division between a given ideology and the reasons why people might be attracted to it, any more than it’s possible to entirely separate the intellectual reasons why we are attracted to ideas from the psychological. We all know both are present. For this reason, I think this:
But, as I have said above, it is irrelevant to this point
is silly.
February 6, 2013 at 3:53 pm
Pete -
Sorry about the confusion. I was fixing the italics when you posted your second comment.
I don’t see why this has to be an either/or question.
Well, I guess it’s true that individuals could be inspired by a feeling of persecution. The phenomena cannot be explained by it, though, because such intolerance is common to situations where the perpetrators represent small minorities and overwhelming majorities.
Is that actually true? My own sense of this is that making the hypersensitive uncomfortable feeds their sense of persecution.
I think so. It seems notable that the most uproar is created by dissent in societies where it is extremely rare. In Saudi Arabia, for example, a man saying on Twitter than he did not love Muhammad was enough to reduce a cleric to tears. It is equivalent to the spoiled child who grows more dissatisfied the more they get.
This is not to say that people should be insulting for the sake of it, of course. No one is going to win my praise by dumping bacon outside mosques or anything so pointless and cruel. There is a happy medium.
February 6, 2013 at 4:05 pm
was enough to reduce a cleric to tears
A point: this might be relevant, but it might also be nut-picking. For all I know the average Saudi saw that on telly, thought “don’t make me laugh” and got on with planning their next illegal alcohol party.
February 6, 2013 at 4:12 pm
” It is equivalent to the spoiled child who grows more dissatisfied the more they get.”
OK, this is beginning to make me feel really uncomfortable. I’d ask you to reconsider what’s shaping your perceptions, here, because this seems to be informed by racist rhetoric. And also at odds with your trying not to be ‘patronising’. And also, as ejh notes, it’s nutpicking.
February 6, 2013 at 4:12 pm
(Basically, dude, it seems like you need a break from reading Harry’s Place.)
February 6, 2013 at 4:30 pm
ejh -
Yeah, I’m sure the force of his reaction was not representative of Saudi Arabians, still less Muslims at large. Yet I think it is illustrative of the point that if people are inoculated from criticism they will be more shocked and aggrieved when they encounter it.
A less extreme example might be the response to Chuck Hagel in the U.S.. Nothing he said about Israel was all that controversial but as pro-Israel lobbyists are so used to being above criticism in the States they started treating him as if he was Leila Khaled.
James -
I am not entirely sure what I am being accused of here. The “spoiled child” and Saudi cleric are examples of how people might react if you go out of your way to avoid offending them. I have not suggested that this corresponds with reality in Europe. Indeed, given the fact that books like Jones’ can be published and programmes like Tom Holland’s made – never mind that politicians like Wilders can be successful – I have no reservations in saying that it does not.
(Update: I would also note that people from Thomas Friedman to Alexei Sayle have used the metaphor of a spoiled child with regards to Israel and were not accused of racism by aggrieved leftists. To equate the behaviour of adults with that of children when they are dissimilar would be grossly insulting, yes, but there is nothing inherently vile about such comparisons.)
A persecuted minority lashing out is simply not the same as a powerful majority furthering persecution.
Except that, as I’ve said, these incidents are common to places where Muslims are minorities and majorities.
I also reject the claim that Muslims are a “persecuted minority”. Many Muslims face persecution, and so do many Jews, but neither are persecuted minorities.
Like, for example, extrapolating from lone monsters to wider groups. These murderers and would-be murderers are as representative of Muslims as Valerie Solanas was of women…
When I think of women who have enacted or promoted violence in the cause of misandry I think of — Valerie Solanas. When I think of Islamic supremacists who have enacted or promoted violence in the cause of stamping out dissent I think of those who targeted Rushdie, Van Gough, Vilks, Westegaard, Jones, Norris, Charlie Hebdo, Hedegaard, Masih, Taseer, Bhatti, Aan, Rasheed, Kashgari and innumerable others, as well as the fact that blasphemy is punishable by lengthy detentions and even death in countries across the world. It is insulting to all those who live in fear and have already fallen victim to such widespread intolerance to dismiss it as the work of “lone monsters”.
Well some Muslims I’ve met are as irreverent towards their faith as anyone I’ve met. So you are generalising.
Good for them. I was not suggesting, however, that all Muslims think and behave in this manner but that large numbers of them do.
February 6, 2013 at 4:44 pm
“Except that, as I’ve said, these incidents are common to places where Muslims are minorities and majorities.”
And in our context, they’re a minority. This is a separate set of conditions to the one operative where a government is enforcing a certain vision of political Islam.
“I also reject the claim that Muslims are a “persecuted minority”. Many Muslims face persecution, and so do many Jews, but neither are persecuted minorities.”
This is sophistry.
And if you’d written a similar article about “Jews trying to close down public debate again” (talking about Alan Dershowitz’s ongoing efforts against a BDS talk in New York), I think the troubling undertones would be a lot more clear.
“When I think of women who have enacted or promoted violence in the cause of misandry I think of — Valerie Solanas. When I think of Islamic supremacists who have enacted or promoted violence in the cause of stamping out dissent I think of those who targeted Rushdie, Van Gough, Vilks, Westegaard, Jones, Norris, Charlie Hebdo, Hedegaard, Masih, Taseer, Bhatti, Aan, Rasheed, Kashgari and innumerable others, as well as the fact that blasphemy is punishable by lengthy detentions and even death in countries across the world. It is insulting to all those who live in fear and have already fallen victim to such widespread intolerance to dismiss it as the work of “lone monsters”.”
The two are distinct issues. You can’t just say ‘This is what Muslims do’, you have to actually make the comparison between:
1) The tiny minority of Muslims who’ll behave like this, in a country where they in turn are in a tiny minority.
2) Those places where there are regimes enforcing political Islam.
Conflating or equating them isn’t good enough. Why are those regimes in power? How representative is their conduct of the people they purport to represent? Do you have an exhaustive list of this happening in every single Muslim-majority country to hand?
“Good for them. I was not suggesting, however, that all Muslims think and behave in this manner but that large numbers of them do.”
You were suggesting that there is a unifying trend within ‘Islam’ towards hypersensitivity towards criticism/mockery. If you are going to change the goal posts like this, I’m out.
February 6, 2013 at 5:35 pm
ejh -
I was hoping to preempt a possible response rather than accuse people of making the argument but I take your point. I will phrase it differently if I want to make such an argument again.
I am not dodging the question on the roots of Christian and Islamic responses to blasphemy but it is something that I will have to think about before holding forth.
It is true that I was overly assertive in describing other factors as “irrelevant”. As I said to Pete, they might influence people in this or that case. Yet the belief itself, and whatever implications it has for one who believes in it, is the unifying factor and, thus, the necessary one.
James -
Conflating or equating them isn’t good enough.
The distinction is a false one. These are not regimes enforcing political Islam but nations where most of the citizens are believers in political Islam.
(Which is not, of course, to deny that there are nations, such as Saudi Arabia, where the state is more theocratic than the citizens.)
Do you have an exhaustive list of this happening in every single Muslim-majority country to hand?
If you have contradictory examples I am more than willing to hear of them.
You were suggesting that there is a unifying trend within ‘Islam’ towards hypersensitivity towards criticism/mockery.
When I said “common to different strands of Islam” I meant it is common among them, not that it is common to all of them. That was unclear, and I apologise for it.
Now I must get back to work. Ironically, it is an essay on religion and politics.
February 6, 2013 at 6:18 pm
http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.ca/2013/02/islam-and-secret-of-monotheism.html#more
Interesting essay here. focus is on Islam, but only on Islam as the apotheosis of monotheism and what that (monotheism) means philosophically (in the writer’s opinion, of course).
February 6, 2013 at 6:41 pm
I might point out, though, that Turkey is a majority Muslim country, although the Turkish State is vehemently secular. Or was. Does the Turkish State criminalize apostasy?
February 6, 2013 at 6:47 pm
Thanks for the essay, Brian. I’ll give it a read. I think that apostasy is legal in Turkey, and its people tend to be more liberal than those of other nations. Blasphemy, however, is prohibited.
February 6, 2013 at 8:02 pm
“This seems to be a lurch back towards “Decency” from you. I’m very disappointed.”
Well, good luck coming back from that, bensix’s self-esteem! After investing so much in James’s approval, too….
“I’d ask you to reconsider what’s shaping your perceptions, here, because this seems to be informed by racist rhetoric.”
Yeah, that classic racist trope the “spoiled child”….
That weeping sheikh and many of his co-religionists are like a huge army of emotionally and intellectually retarded man-babies who would stamp on everyone else’s sandcastle if theirs didn’t get enough compliments. Spoiled children is the perfect analogy, or perhaps a fundamentalist brotherhood of Chris Crockers, all bawling for everyone to “WEAVE MOHAMMED AWWONE!!!”
Islamists have expanded the definition of persecution to include any speech or writing that isn’t unconditional praise for and support of Islam. In their book the only way to not persecute Muslims is to be one. The number of people in’t West who buy into this and think their sense of persecution is justified is scary. I’m sure Anders Behring Breivik thought he was persecuted but no one’s suggesting his grievance was legitimate (and rightly so). But of course, he was the iceberg tip of an alarming and growing trend of Islamophobia among white Europeans, wasn’t he? Whereas the murderer of Van Gogh, the 7/7 terrorists, the Charlie Hebdo bombers, the axe wielding psycho who came after Westergaard, this guy with a gun on Hedegaard’s door step….they’re all just lone nuts with no unifying ideology.
Yep, bensix, you’re just “nutpicking”. But what curiously rich pickings the Islamic world seems to provide! You could fill a fruit bowl with these guys.
February 7, 2013 at 3:40 am
“If you have contradictory examples I am more than willing to hear of them.”
Dude, burden of evidence is not on me.
February 7, 2013 at 3:45 am
“Well, good luck coming back from that, bensix’s self-esteem! After investing so much in James’s approval, too….”
Mate, this is actually something we’ve discussed before at some length. Bensix, as to a lesser extent I did, used to go along with the standard Harry’s Place type horseshit on liberal interventionism.
As for the rest of your comment: Breivik was, as it happens, informed chiefly by conspiracy theories about a global Muslim takeover. His ‘manifesto’ cited what we consider to be the mainstream press pretty extensively, especially their stuff on Muslims.
But that’s because our ‘mainstream press’ includes hatemongers like Richard Littlejohn, and Melanie Phillips.
February 7, 2013 at 8:45 am
they’re all just lone nuts with no unifying ideology.
Well, we can give that ideology the name of “Islamism”, but the problem is that this seems to identify them with a very large number of people who don’t, in fact, carry out or approve of physical attacks and assassinations.
I say “problem” but I may mean somethibg like “purpose”.
February 7, 2013 at 5:33 pm
The difficulty is that “moderate” religions provide the water in which the lone nuts swim. When you have a totalizing, absolutist faith like Islam, which mandates subsuming oneself to the will of “Allah”…And look at the polls bensix summarizes. Extreme views, at least at the level of “polls”, are COMMON not minority views in Islamic nations.
Of course, “we” in the west have a similar “faith”. It is called “Neoliberalism” and it justifies all kinds of horrors, including the Iraq war. It is a totalizing faith as well, one man can, based on a powerpoint and a flow chart, decide to liquidate an “enemy”, or a community. As horrible as the crimes of Islamic totalists can be, they pale in light of things like Fallujah…or the strangling of the Iranian economy.
February 8, 2013 at 12:40 pm
Brian -
Of course, “we” in the west have a similar “faith”. It is called “Neoliberalism” and it justifies all kinds of horrors, including the Iraq war.
I am no neoliberal – or, indeed, any kind of liberal – but I can’t help feeling that I would take living in the U.K. or America over Saudi Arabia or Iran any day.
James -
Mate, this is actually something we’ve discussed before at some length.
Yes – I don’t think that the accusation was merited but I have no problem with the occasional reminder of my past failings. It keeps one humble.
Dude, burden of evidence is not on me.
Well, I know that it has taken place in Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, Lebanon and Tunisia and those are the examples that are commonly cites as evidence of moderate states. I will admit to hearing of no examples in Turkmenistan. It is possible that they have a thriving culture of debate and scepticism that I am ignorant of.
ejh -
I say “problem” but I may mean somethibg like “purpose”.
As it happens, I agree that lots of people who could be described as Islamists would oppose extrajuidicial assassinations and assaults. Most of them, however, would claim that blasphemy is an evil and malicious act and that blasphemers deserve to be prosecuted and punished. Just as we would think people at least somewhat blameworthy if they demonised Jews, gays or Muslims and insisted that they deserved punishment under certain conditions if their followers decided not to wait ’til these conditions were realised, I do not think one can draw a clear line of separation here.
February 9, 2013 at 6:09 am
I missed this post at first Ben – I think it’s good this is getting some coverage. You said I think that you don’t know much about Hedegaard – here’s something I wrote about him.
http://hurryupharry.org/2012/04/20/lars-hedegaard-acquitted-again/
think it should be possible to say that the attack on Hedegaard is part of a pattern which has the potential to stifle free speech, via self censorship in particular, and also that the statements which sparked his original prosecution shouldn’t have been an issue for the law – but still think his views, or the way he seems to have expressed them, objectionable.I’m not sure quite *how* objectionable – he hasn’t come fully into focus fo me, partly I suppose simply because he is Danish, so it’s harder to research his views.
Even though neither Lars Hedegaard nor Douglas Murray is exactly my cup of tea, I was really surprised and appalled by some of the comments here and the way NO ONE seemed to have a problem with the worst ones.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/douglas-murray/2013/02/an-assassination-attempt-on-lars-hedegaard/
Harry’s Place has been mentioned here – and although I might disagree with some commenters (ones who are keener on Hedegaard and Murray than me perhaps!) I think comments such as Rag Narok’s would face immediate calls for deletion/bans.
February 9, 2013 at 4:06 pm
Sarah -
Thanks, and thank you for the link.
You will know if I have been reading too much Harry’s Place because I will develop an obsession with the Socialist Workers Party.
Rag Narok’s comment was noxious but also baffling. Does he know that by identifying himself with “whites” he is offering solidarity to Eastern European workers over, say, mixed-race Britons and third generation migrants? I suppose it’s foolish to except coherence from someone so splattered in green ink.
February 9, 2013 at 10:32 pm
Says:
Rag Narok’s (eloquent name!), sentiments are deplorable, but there is no reason to believe that just because he is racist he is incoherent re Eastern European immigrants. In fact it would be incoherent of him to bang on about white races and not include Poles, who are generally white.
Whatever his specific views on e.g. Polish immigrants in Britain (which you assume — you don’t know them), he could well believe that they are also white Europeans (why should he not?) and so in European or global perspective should be on “his” side as far as standing up to the Muslim hordes is concerned. If he should be the sort who wanted to get into the history of “Muslim hordes”, he might even evince an admiration for Poles for doing rather more than the anglos to e.g. stop them at the Gates of Vienna, and he would find plenty of Poles to agree with him…And he may very well prefer incoming Poles to third-generation Asian Britons (would be logical given his apparent starting-points!)
February 9, 2013 at 10:51 pm
Sarka -
Welcome!
This chap isn’t just against Islam, though. To quote him: “Race is THE issue…Islamic bashing is for the moment more acceptable”. I suppose it’s possible that he is keen on Poles and Romanians comin’ over ‘ere but if I had to bet on the question I would put my house on the other option.
(I’m assuming that it is a “he”, of course, which is uncertain. Still, if I had to bet on that I’d put my Grandparents’ house on it being a man.)
While I am an immigration restrictionist, I admire the Polish people. They have had one hell of a century. First the fascists and the Commies, then the fascists and then the bloody Communists again. Even when they finally get a government that is free of totalitarians it boards an aeroplane and crashes into Smolensk. Poor souls.
February 10, 2013 at 10:44 pm
[...] I was shocked to read (via Alan) about the recent attack on Lars Hedegaard, who seems to have narrowly escaped being assassinated on account of his views on Islam/Muslims. You can hear a recent interview with Hedegaard here. As Ben Six notes: [...]