……the atheist commentator Richard Dawkins.
Tell Mama have started flapping their forked tongues at Mr Richard Dawkins the famous atheist commentator. They have accused him of using ‘lazy stereotypes’ when discussing Islam. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Here we have a bunch of proven dissemblers and mountebanks in the form of Tell Mama, lecturing Mr Dawkins on honesty in language. The sheer bloody front of them. They are seriously pissed off with the fact that Mr Dawkins has told some cold hard truths about the ideology of Islam, and especially how Islam treats women, and Tell Mama have predictably tried to smear Mr Dawkins as ‘racist’.
Tell Mama said:
“Or take the following tweets:
Dawkins tweet infers that in the 1970′s, Afghan women used to dress as in the picture which he tweeted out. He states, “On international Women’s Day, how can anyone stand up and defend this loathsome religion.” By loathsome religion, he meant Islam, though let’s go back again to the facts. Dawkins blames Islam for the current state of social affairs of women in Afghanistan. He mentions nothing of the international interventionism for over a decade in the Cold War that fed fundamentalist groups who were used as proxies in the war against the Soviet Union. Indeed Ahmed Rashid’s books on the Taliban outline clearly the proxy war that fed arms to extreme groups in Afghanistan which destabilized the country and plunged it into an arena of constant war. Nor does Dawkins seem to clarify, if we want to take a rational and analytical approach to the social roles of women in Afghanistan, those Muslim female campaigners in Afghanistan who risk their lives daily to fight for women’s rights whilst praying 5 times a day and holding their own as believing Muslims in some of the most difficult of circumstances. But hey, who can reflect on that whilst sitting in the peaceful, scenic and easy lifestyle of Oxford and its dreamy spires, huh Richard?”
Note the obfuscation and the personal attack on Mr Dawkins from Tell Mama and the shifting of blame for the conditions of women from the Islamic nutcases that took the country over and instead placing all blame on the fact that Afghanistan was the site of a Cold War proxy conflict. The conflict there does have a bearing on the condition of Afghan women’s rights. However it is by no means the whole story and that the ideology of Islam must take its share of the blame, which I believe is the lions share, for the fact that women are treated like dirt in Afghanistan.
Here we see Tell Mama trying to smear Mr Dawkins as a ‘racist’ and trying to imply guilt by association:
“Re-tweeting Material from Sympathisers of Virulently Anti-Islamic ‘Counter-Jihadi’ Groups
The most disturbing element of Dawkins Twitter conversation was the following.
The individual in question makes clear on her Twitter account that she supports the extreme anti-Islamic nationalistic group, Liberty GB, (see snapshot below):
We have written about this group before through a posting on the TELL MAMA site which can be found here. However, remember the tweet from earlier where Dawkins suggests that someone is racist and that arguments are won on their merits? Well, here is the founder of the Group, (Liberty GB), a man called Paul Weston. Before we move onto Paul Weston, what is clear is that yesterday Dawkins re-tweeted material from a sympathiser of a nationalistic, race based, ‘Counter-Jihad,’ anti-Islamic group which has also been highlighted by Hope Not Hate through this excellent background material on the ‘Counter-Jihad’ Network.”
What Tell Mama have patently failed to note before they embarked on their rant was to notice the words ‘.racism is not accepted’ on the header page of DICS131294. How did they miss that? Were they blinded by their own hatred of an opposing point of view? Or where they so desperate to ‘racialise’ the matter and thereby increase the smear on Richard Dawkins.? My personal opinion is that TM have become desperate to make themselves look good. Since losing the majority of their public funding they have been reduced to scrabbling round in the bowels of the internet mining for something that they can either be offended by or use to smear others. I carry no brief for LibertyGB, I’m not sure even that someone with my views would be at all welcome within it, but really, pointing to one individual person’s association with one of Tell Mama’s designated ‘hate’ groups and using that to try to discredit Richard Dawkins, is really showing desperation on the part of TM.
No matter how much Tell Mama whine and stamp their feet and threaten to send their bent police mates or terrorist-representing lawyers round, it is a fact that cannot be escaped from that life for many, many women in Islamic societies and cultures is pretty damn awful. The first world problems of the Western feminists are light years away from women who have to deal with a psychotically patriarchal Islamic society where you or your sister or your daughter could be beaten, burned, sold or killed at any moment.
To conclude, I’m not Richard Dawkins’s number one fan,because I believe religion does not have to mean, or turn into, oppression or closed-mindedness. However I will defend Mr Dawkins completely when he describes Islam as ‘a loathsome religion’. A brief examination of Islamic cultures will quickly tell almost any sentient and thinking person that Islam is indeed a loathsome way to run a nation or a culture.
Link
Tell Mama’s attack on Richard Dawkins
http://tellmamauk.org/dawkins-again-retweeting-lazy-stereotypes-about-muslims/
I’m not sure I would agree with Richard Dawkins abourt Islam being a “loathsome religion” primarily because it is a political ideology first and foremost, not a religion (of peace or otherwise), and if it were classified as such then much of the cognitive dissonance we have been experiencing up to now would disappear.
However the Islamic civilisational model is indeed a loathsome model to use to run any country or any culture, and is VASTLY inferior to the Judaeo-Christian civilisational model which has given the world so much over the last couple of thousand years. It may not be perfect, but it is far and away the best framework devised to date for the advancement of humanity, and Islam is never likely to come close when it comes to our freedom of speech, of conscience and of religion, and the equality of everyone before the law regardless of race, gender, creed or colour, not to mention the pursuit of love, life and happiness.
I completly see your point on Islam primarily being a political ideology. My own studies of it has shown me that the spirituality of Islam only seems to be like an afterthought. Reading the words of ex-Muslims has also helped see how those who step outside of it percieve it to be empty of spiritual substance. Islam is as an ideology loathsome because it is run internally by fear. You hear that fear in the voices of those who leave Islam and I believe even Qaradawi himself admitted that Islam is held together by fear.
Another thing that takes Islam away from the other religions, especially the Abrahamic ones is how with Islam morality is to a large extent reversed. To use the Hebrew descriptions it is with Islam as if the Yetza Ha Tov (Human urge to do good) and the Yetza Ha Ra (the urge to do evil) are back to front, Islam is religious Newspeak if you will. In Islam there is a greater in-tribe / out-tribe division than almost any other ideologic or religious path. Islam has a very nasty ‘master race’ tendency that worries me greatly.
You may be right in that stripping Islam of the trappings of religion may enable more people to see it for wa it is. In a similar way how after WWII, the quasi-religious ‘blood and soil’ trappings of the Third Reich were removed and the stench of corruption and horror was revealed lurking beneath.
Yes, you are right.
I have written before, and although it’s not my original thought I think it is worth repeating, if the ideas of Islam were put forward by middle-aged white men it would be a banned organisation.
However, there is an inconsistency in the ‘master race’ tendency you refer to. There is no doubt it exists in strong form in Arab countries.
But the paedophile ‘prophet’ said, in his last sermon, ‘there is no superiority of an Arab over a non-Arab, or of a non-Arab over an Arab.’
He went on to say that superiority lies in degree of commitment to Islam. (But what I’ve written there is commentary, not quotation, so readers should look further and not just rely on me.) So, in theory it’s not a racial distinction. (In fact Gulf Arabs are appalling racists.)
But there is certainly an in-group/out-group division. It is transparent and explicit in mohammedan theory that, in a mohammedan state, non-mohammedans are not to have the same rights as mohammedans. They must pay more taxes and be made to understand that they are in a position of subjugation.
Try substituting, in a civilised society, the idea that non-members of the controlling group should be clearly second-class in rights. Do that and your political party will be banned, and you’ll probably face prosecution under ‘hate-crime’ legislation.