The Objectivist

Abortion Rights and Wrongs

2006-03-08T02:18:00.000-08:00

South Dakota last month became the first state among 10 contenders to pass a ban on abortion in a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the landmark case from 1973 that blocked states from outlawing abortion. This is, unfortunately, an argument in which there is wrong on both sides. On balance, however, it is the religious agenda of the anti-abortionists that gives rise to the greater concern, seeking as it does to break down the barrier between church and state erected by America’s founding fathers.

The move to prohibit abortion services is effectively an attempt to interfere with the right to bodily integrity, the most basic of property rights held by every man and woman. No religious leader, president, or judge may seek to abrogate that right for any reason. It is inalienable. Nor are there any countervailing rights to be considered: the unborn fetus, a potential human being, has no rights until such time as it is born. Leonard Peikoff puts it this way:

“Just as there are no rights of collections of individuals, so there are no rights of parts of individuals—no rights of arms or of tumors or of any piece of tissue growing within a woman, even if it has the capacity to become in time a human being. A potentiality is not an actuality, and a fertilized ovum, an embryo, or a fetus is not a human being. Rights belong only to man—and men are entities, organisms that are biologically formed and physically separate from one another. That which lives within the body of another can claim no prerogatives against its host. Responsible parenthood involves decades devoted to the child's proper nurture. To sentence a woman to bear a child against her will is an unspeakable violation of her rights: her right to liberty (to the functions of her body), her right to the pursuit of happiness, and, sometimes, her right to life itself, even as a serf. Such a sentence represents the sacrifice of the actual to the potential, of a real human being to a piece of protoplasm, which has no life in the human sense of the term. It is sheer perversion of language for people who demand this sacrifice to call themselves "right-to-lifers."”[1]

Equally, however, woman’s rights campaigners go too far in their attempts to claim special privileges for women over and above the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness guaranteed by the Constitution. There can be no “right” to an abortion, for the same reason that there can be no legitimate economic rights, such as the “right” to a job. Rights are freedoms to act, not claims to unearned values, or guarantees of an acceptable outcome. Consequently, while a woman has every right to seek an abortion without the need to justify that decision to anyone, it is equally the case that doctors may legitimately decline to provide that service if they so choose. If the entire medical profession of South Dakota were voluntarily to decide to discontinue the provision of abortion services, they would be entirely at liberty to do so. In those circumstances a woman living in the State would have to accept that she has no right to seek to force them to provide the service she seeks, but instead must look for it elsewhere. In a moral society, such as that envisioned by the framers of the Constitution, men deal with other men voluntarily, when it is in their mutual self interest to do so. That is not the situation here, of course. Rather, South Dakota has sought by force to prevent a legitimate kind of transaction between consenting parties which, however difficult the circumstances, infringes no-one’s rights and is therefore entirely Constitutional.

It is to be hoped that the current members of the US Supreme Court choose to re-affirm the ruling of their predecessors given more than thirty years ago and strike down this latest attempt to undermine the legitimate freedoms and inalienable rights held by all Americans, regardless of their gender.

[1] Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism, the Philosophy of Ayn Rand

The Philosophical Basis for Man’s Rights

2006-03-07T05:07:00.000-08:00

An animal rights commentator writes:
“Why rationality as a criterion for rights rather than interests? Why rationality as the criterion for moral consideration rather than the fact of sentience? ….. I find the idea of rights for both humans and animals a risible idea… I find your claim that humans have rights because they are cognitive risible as well. As far as I am concerned, it begs the question: I think, therefore I have rights. Where is the link? ...... When we're out protesting, invading offices, bull horning animal abusers, and so forth, and you pass by to point out that animals do not have rights, we'll shrug our shoulders.”

Here is the root of the problem: a lack of understanding of what rights are, what their philosophical basis is, and why they are essential for Man, but not animals. The inevitable result is moral confusion: hence the dismissal of the issue of rights as irrelevant, when in fact they are of central importance. One should not be surprised by this:

“The concept of individual rights is so prodigious a feat of political thinking hat few men grasp it fully – and two hundred years have not been enough for other countries to understand it. But this is the concept to which we owe our lives – the concept which made it possible for us to bring into reality everything of value that any of us did or will achieve or experience.” [1]

““Rights” are a moral concept – the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an individual’s actions to the principles guiding his relationship with others – the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context – the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.”[2]

The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A – and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. Man’s right to freedom of action is rooted in the volitional nature of his rationality. Unlike animals, which survive largely by instinct, man must choose to exercise his means of survival, his reason. Hence, if he is to survive as man, he must to free to make that choice. "Man’s survival requires that those who think be free of the interference of those who don’t. Since men are neither omniscient or infallible, they must be free to agree or disagree, to cooperate or to pursuer their own independent course, each according to his own rational judgment. Freedom is the fundamental requirement of man’s mind.”[3]

“Since Man has inalienable individual rights, this means that the same rights are held, individually, by every man, by all men, at all times. Therefore the rights of one man cannot and must not violate the rights of another. For instance: a man has the right to live, but he has no right to take the life of another.”[4]

So it is the moral concept of rights that provides the philosophical basis for man’s freedom and protection from other men, and this in turn depends on man’s nature and, more fundamentally, on the Axiom of the Law of Identity. Absent the requirement to exercise the choice to think in order to survive, the concept of “rights” has no meaning in the context of other species. Animals are, in fact, the moral equivalent of stones, for precisely this reason.

Furthermore, it is the moral principle of Man’s rights that places restrictions on the actions that a Man may legitimately take. We do not refrain from enslaving other men or taking their lives because we “love” them, because we are commanded not to do so by divine authority, or even because it would be contrary to our assessment of their “interests”, but because it would entail a breach of their inalienable rights and would therefore be wrong. The same does not apply to animals: they have no such rights that may be abrogated.

The concept of “interests” is a far weaker basis for the defense of animal welfare than the concept of rights. Firstly, it is not the supposed owner of said “interests” that asserts them – the animals in question are incapable of formulating or even comprehending such a concept – and therefore, unlike Man’s inalienable rights, are open to question. Such “interests” are like the poor substitute for inalienable rights handed out by Governments in Statist societies to their subjugated citizens in the form of “permissions” and, like the former, may be changed or revoked at any time. Secondly, in any conflict between Man’s inalienable rights and animals’ putative “interests” it is the former, being beyond legitimate dispute, that must prevail. Consequently, while a man may give cognizance to the principle that he should not cause unnecessary suffering to animals, it is because it would reflect poorly on his own moral character if he did not. He is otherwise generally at liberty to make use of animals to sustain his own life as he sees fit.

When a man gives a woman a fur coat, he is making the statement that he would put his own life at risk (albeit only notionally these days) in order to protect hers; that he values her beauty, pleasure and comfort more than other values he may aspire to, including his own comfort, and more than the lives of the animals whose skins he has used to make it. These are consistent values for a man to hold and an appropriate way for him to express them. He does not wantonly cause suffering to animals, but uses them to serve his own legitimate purpose and gain values that are consistent with that purpose.

[1] Ayn Rand, “A Nation’s Unity”
[2] Ayn Rand, the Virtue of Selfishness
[3] Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual
[4] Ayn Rand. “Textbook of Americanism”

The Moral Failure of Socialist Education

2006-03-06T03:14:00.000-08:00

There has been an outcry in recent weeks over Prime Minister Tony Blair’s modest proposals for education reform, and the bill now faces the threat of a major rebellion by recalcitrant Labour MP’s. The idea of a return to any kind of process of selection which would enable schools to decide which pupils they are willing to accept is an anathema to the Socialists. The stigma of the 11-Plus examinations, by which pupils were allocated to Grammar or Secondary Modern schools, the latter being the predecessor of comprehensive schools, is regarded even today, decades after its abolition, with fear and loathing.

The principle that Labour espouses in support of this position is one of “equality”: the notion that it is the duty of the Government to manipulate the playing field until it is approximately level, so that no pupil enjoys any kind of advantage. In reality, when Socialists talk about “equality” and “fairness” the notion they are in fact alluding to is the Communistic principle that no-one should be allowed to have something that others do not also enjoy. It is the same political principle that underpins their policy of aggressive taxation of the “rich”, who are considered to be enjoying too much of what good fortune and their own hard work have brought them. In other words, it is the politics of envy.

Socialist manipulation of the education system goes far beyond the hobbling of schools’ freedom to select on ability and aptitude. Courses are dumbed down to enable less able pupils to keep up; examinations are made progressively easier to delude those being educated as well as the nation as a whole that higher standards are being attained; legions of unsuitable candidates are ushered into universities by quota system to take meaningless courses which bring no tangible benefit to students or prospective employers, simply so that the Government can meet some arbitrary target for the proportion of students going on to further education; and Polytechnics are re-christened as universities in a further attempt to erode the ability of students and employers to distinguish the excellent from the merely commonplace.

At the same time, in a breathtaking act of hypocrisy, the Government enshrines specialist schools that may be as selective as they like as long as their specialty is not related to any academic discipline. In other words, it is acceptable to select on the basis of physical attributes such as speed or dexterity; but under no circumstances may selection be permitted on the basis of a person’s native intelligence. Why is this apparent dislocation of logic tolerated, one may enquire. Socialists almost certainly do not realize the answer and even if they did would be afraid to acknowledge it. It is this: that Man’s survival depends primarily, not on his instincts or physical prowess, but on his intelligence and ability to reason. In refusing to allow selection on the basis of intelligence, Socialists are deliberately evading a fundamental fact of reality regarding Man’s identity: namely, that some are better equipped to survive than others. And beginning from that fundamental evasion, Socialists are then obliged to evade a sequence of consequential facts such as, for example, that the deliberate hobbling of the more gifted ultimately impoverishes all of us, including the less able.

The moral principle that Socialists fail to understand and the root of so much of their mistaken ideology is this: a man does not require precisely the same skills and abilities as every other man in order to successfully pursue his own happiness. In other words, each individual’s life is the standard for all his values.

The Shaming of America

2006-03-03T02:34:00.000-08:00

Prime Minister Blair, America’s closest ally in the war on terror, describes Guantanamo as “an anomaly”. It is much, much more than that. Despite being locked up tighter than a nuclear facility, news of what is happening at America’s equivalent of the Tower of London is leaking out, like a poisonous chemical from a toxic waste dump. The US administration’s treatment of suspected terrorists has been condemned around the world on two grounds: its illegality and its ethical failure to respect the most basic standards of human rights. The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly has released its own report on the Lawfulness of detentions by the United States of America in Guantánamo Bay and more recently both Amnesty International and the United Nations have expressed their own concerns in a series of reports into what they call "a human rights scandal". Today comes testimony from a detainee, Moazzam Begg, communicated through his attorney, the latest in a series of leaked revelations that clearly implicates the United States in the routine mistreatment of prisoners in a process that can only be properly described as torture.

The argument that America is permitted to conduct its operations in Guantanamo under the laws of war is, I believe, unsustainable. Not only is the weight of expert legal opinion solidly against such a reading of the law, this view fails other simple “sniff tests”. Firstly, who is America at war with? Which country or legal entity? While it may legitimately regard a group of individuals as terrorists and combat them with every means at its disposal, what a country may not do is declare a state of war upon them, at least not in the legal sense. But let us suppose that the United States could muster an argument to overcome this legal hurdle and convincingly establish grounds on which such a declaration may be valid. Accordingly, there would be no need to afford a trial to Al-Qaeda members, or those who support them, until hostilities have ceased. On what grounds then, does America support the trial of Suddam Hussein and his henchmen in Iraq? They stand accused by the USA and its allies of being active sponsors of Al-Qaeda terrorism, and must therefore be classified as enemy combatants. Can it really be that America’s position is that hostilities in Iraq are at an end and that Hussein may therefore be brought to stand trial? If there is a valid reason for the inconsistency in the way in which America is handling this issue, I have yet to hear it.

Let us accept for the moment that the vast majority of those detained at Guantanamo are dangerous terrorists, who furthermore are motivated to lie not only about their innocence, but also about their treatment at the camp in an attempt to smear the good name and reputation of the United States. Even so, if there are reasons to believe that even one of the detainees might be an innocent who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, the continued denial of due process becomes insupportable. Are there grounds for such doubts? Certainly it is a position taken by many of those detained there, and by some of those that the United States has chosen to release, having presumably itself become convinced of their innocence. So doubts do exist – how could they not in the circumstances in which these prisoners were captured? – as the US itself appears to have recognized. I do not say for one moment that all those detailed in Guantanamo should be released. On the contrary, if tried and convicted they should face the severest possible penalty permitted under the law. But the essential point is that the detainees should face justice, not retribution.

There is, however, one argument against the continuation of Guantanamo that outweighs every other, and it is this: that the harm that America is doing to its own moral character and reputation as a champion of liberty and justice far outweighs any benefit it derives from continuing to hold the detainees there. The reason that America is so hated around the world by terrorists and dictators alike is precisely because, as the first truly moral society in the history of the world, it is the living embodiment of those ideals. To see the daughter of Locke, of Adams of Jefferson and of Lincoln, frolicking in the moral filth in which they habitually bathe, gives the greatest possible satisfaction to all those who stand in opposition to human freedom. For that reason alone, America must turn its back on the politics of the concentration camp and instead once more lift high the scales of justice and its torch of liberty.

Little Boxes

2006-03-01T00:22:00.000-08:00

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

- Malvina Reynolds

So now we know. David Cameron's big idea is to turn the British Conservative party into a facsimile of New Labour, sweeping away the last vestiges of Margaret Thatcher’s legacy. What does the Conservative Party now stand for? Cameron’s answer is clear: continued intrusion by the State; profligate and wasteful spending on failing education and health systems; forced redistribution of wealth coupled with a “moral obligation to make poverty history”; wholesale adoption of “green” ecology issues; and favoritism for women, ethnic minorities and other pressure groups. Cameron’s “vision” for the country is simply a replica of the Statist nirvana created by Blair and Brown.

Statism is a system of institutionalized violence and perpetual civil war, that leaves men no choice but to fight to seize power over one another. In a full dictatorship, that civil war takes the form of bloody purges, as in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. In a “mixed economy”, it takes the form of “pressure group” warfare, each group fighting for legislation to extort its own advantages by force from all the other groups.[1]

Modern day politicians are almost entirely incapable of doing anything productive. If you doubt this, ask yourself this question: is any of them capable of earning anything like the £200,000 that they have awarded themselves, if they were obliged to find a job in the real economy? In fact, would you be willing to employ a single one of them in your own business for a salary of even one tenth of that amount? Hardly. These are people who have no skills worth paying for and whose only hope of “earning” an income is to appropriate it as a superannuated politician. If that means rejecting every single principle and core value hitherto advocated by conservatives in order to get elected, so be it. In truth, the only principle that Cameron’s Conservatives now stand for is this: re-election by any means and at any cost.

So the British electorate is left with the following choice: the Red Statists, the Yellow Statists, the Green Statists, and now, courtesy of David Cameron, the Blue Statists. In other words, you can have any colour you like, as long as it’s Statism.

[1] Ayn Rand, War and Peace

Unintelligent Design

2006-02-28T01:17:00.000-08:00

The days are long gone when significant numbers of people could be persuaded to believe that the world was created in perfect form by divine fiat just a few thousand years ago. The widespread adoption of the scientific method, together with an overwhelming abundance of contradictory evidence from geology, astronomy and physics, has caused that creationist theory to be thoroughly discredited. Just as with other quasi-"scientific" theories inspired by religious faith, such as the notions that the earth is flat, or that it sits at the centre of the universe, the facts of reality eventually prevail once human reason is permitted to function properly and the necessary epistemological frameworks have been developed. But now a new attempt is being made to foist a reconstituted variant of the creed of creationism on the American public under the rubric of "intelligent design".

"Intelligent design" is yet another pseudo-scientific theory that, at its core, is nothing more than an article of primitive religious doctrine dressed up as modern scientific fact. Stripping away the verbiage, the essence of the case presented by its proponents is that elementary constituents of biological material are improbably complex and must therefore have been designed by a superior consciousness. The traditional name given to that “superior consciousness”, i.e. God, is often omitted altogether, presumably in the hope of making the idea as palatable as possible.

Let us begin by correctly identifying the philosophical genus to which this theory belongs. It is a variant of the doctrine of the primacy of consciousness, the belief that there exists a form of consciousness which is antecedent to reality and on which the latter is ultimately dependent. The Descartesian version of the theory takes the form “I think, therefore I am”. The creationist variant is “God thinks, therefore I am”. In either case, whether the thinking agent is Man or God, that agent’s consciousness is the root of all reality.

We may acknowledge at the outset that some primitive components of biological systems are indeed marvelously complex entities. Let us also recognize that Man, the rational animal, is capable of awesomely complex creations. But the syllogism that seeks to link the two by suggesting that complex structures can only be the product of a purposeful intelligence is entirely false. Let me draw an analogy to illustrate the point.

There is a theory which has a wide currency amongst less sophisticated investors that patterns in financial markets exist and can be reliably detected by means of charts and other simplistic analytical devices which go by the collective name of technical analysis. A technical analyst will study a chart of prices and pronounce on the future of the stock on the basis of his recognition of a variety of patterns having labels like a “head and shoulders”, “double top”, or “opening gap”. Unfortunately for its adherents, however, there is now an overwhelming body of empirical evidence refuting the theory that future stock prices are somehow predictable by these means. So why does the theory still persist? What accounts for its allure? Much in the same way that “intelligent design” has a superficial appeal, the theory of technical analysis is highly seductive to novice investors because it too obviates the need for hard thinking. Moreover, it appeals to the tendency in Man to see patterns in the world around him, even where none in fact may exist. The magnetic draw of these two aspects of the theory is often sufficient to overcome an under-educated rational faculty. Hope triumphs over reason, if not experience.

One of the tasks I set myself as a finance professor was to try to “cure” my students of this delusional fantasy at an early stage of their studies, so that they could make more rapid progress in avenues of rational enquiry bearing some correspondence to reality. Since, evidentially, the straightforward presentation of contradictory scientific evidence would not necessarily be sufficient, the way I would go about this task was to teach my students technical analysis. We would study every aspect of the theory and put it into practice, so that by the end of the course students were thoroughly convinced that the arcane theories of technical analysis held the key to untold riches in investment markets. Then, in the final lesson, I would reveal the secret I had withheld from them: that all of the stock series they had been analyzing had been generated by computer simulation. Not only were the stock prices themselves artificial and random, so too were every single one of the “patterns” that they had so successfully detected by technical analysis. The conclusion was starkly inescapable: random events are indeed capable of producing complex patterns which appear meaningful to Man, but which are not in reality significant. Despite appearances to the contrary, there is no “intelligent design” acting in financial markets, just the natural evolution of a random process. Once they had grasped these facts Occam’s razor did its work and students were able to eschew the more complex theory of “intelligent design” expressed in technical analysis in favor of the simpler, more rational, and empirically correct efficient market hypothesis.

Perhaps a similar process of education through simulation and hands-on experimentation in the classrooms of American schools would facilitate the consignment of the dangerous nonsense that is “intelligent design” to the dustbin of discarded pseudo-science, along with astrology, ecology and technical analysis.

Animal Rights, Animal Wrongs

2006-02-27T01:17:00.000-08:00

This weekend saw another example of an extraordinary new phenomenon in British public life - the backlash against violent extremism by a hitherto silent majority, sickened by the policy of appeasement adopted by their elected representatives. Just as with the recent demonstrations by Islamic extremists in London, people have finally found a voice to protest the intimidation and hatred perpetrated by a minority of violent thugs. An estimated 500 to 800 people were prepared to march on Saturday in Oxford on behalf of a new lobby, Pro-Test, in support of animal testing at the university's new £18m biomedical research centre which is having to be built under strict security measures as a result of the success of intimidatory tactics used by animal rights protesters. In a significant sign of the times, the formation of Pro-Test has been masterminded by a courageous 16 year-old bedroom blogger from Swindon, Laurie Pycroft, who has used the internet to mobilize support and has already received dozens of hate emails, including death threats.

The "arguments" advanced by animal rights extremists are entirely self defeating because, as Ayn Rand showed, "force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins." Using violence and the threat of it to try to advance the cause of animal rights is as futile and morally repugnant as the use of torture as a means of political persuasion.

But, if they are to succeed in their efforts to rout extremism, those who oppose the fanatics must do more than simply demonstrate and raise their voices in protest at their antics: they must win the philosophical debate. The argument that animal suffering is immoral, but justified by the greater good, is highly suspect, even dangerous, because it risks ceding to extremists the central tenet of their faith: that animals have rights, which we have a moral obligation to respect. Once we hand over the moral high ground to our opponents, it is only a matter of time before the cause of freedom and progress is lost, no matter how many Phyrric victories, like the one in Oxford, are won along the way.

The right way to present the argument is to challenge the moral premise that animals can have rights. The central argument is this: that even if it were possible to demonstrate the capacity for conceptual thought in animals, the case for animal rights would be no further forward: at most, protagonists will have succeeded in demonstrating that conceptual thinking is possible in animals, not that it is a necessary condition of animal existence. Even if we were to go further and suppose that in the case of a specific animal it could be demonstrated that conceptual thinking was not only a regular occurrence, but also had become (perhaps through training) a necessary condition of its survival, that would, at most, have implications in that one exceptional case – there should be no implications whatever for the animal kingdom as a whole. Animals would continue to survive by instinct alone, just as they always have.

According to this view, then, whatever its significance in terms of furthering our understanding of the conceptual function in Man, conceptual thinking in the context of animal behavior, if it really exists, is no more than an elaborate circus trick – one that is exceptional and without major ramifications for the moral issue of rights as applicable to animals as a whole. Proving that chimps have minds is not enough: proponents of animal rights must also demonstrate that the use of a rational faculty is a necessary condition of the existence of animals if they are to justify according them similar rights to those enjoyed by Man. To date, proponents have not yet properly addressed this second fundamental objection. Until they do the argument for animal rights remains untenable.

A Failure of Nerve

2006-02-25T04:07:00.000-08:00

In failing to prosecute Islamic extremists in the recent London demonstrations, the British Government is failing its people and all those who treasure the values of freedom and democracy, while giving succor to those who attack and undermine those values at every turn.
Now its policy of appeasement (see Jack Straw: Appease in our Time: http://www.islamic-teaching.com/cartoon11.htm) is under counter-attack as outraged citizens instigate their own measures to bring the extremists to book. This from Mr. John Gouriet and Mr Anthony Bennett ('Defenders of The Realm' group), e-mail: ajsbennett@btinternet.com:

Thursday 9 February 2006
Rt. Hon. The Lord Goldsmith QC
Attorney GeneralAttorney General’s Chambers
9 Buckingham Gate
London SW1E 6JP
BY RECORDED DELIVERY
My Lord,
re: APPLICATION FOR SUMMONS OF VARIOUS IDENTIFIED PERSONS SEEN ON 2-4 FEBRUARY 2006 IN LONDON, COMMITTING CRIMINAL OFFENCES, FROM DISPLAYING THREATENING SIGNS CONTRARY TO THE PUBLIC ORDER ACT 1986, TO INCITEMENT TO EXTREME VIOLENCE AND MURDER, CONTRARY TO THE OFFENCES AGAINST THE PERSON ACT 1861
You will be aware of the very serious and unacceptable behaviour of a substantial group of Islamist followers last Thursday, Friday and Saturday 2-4 February 2006 in Central London. Their words and placards were beyond all reasonable doubt deliberately intended to threaten and strike terror into the hearts of everyone who witnessed their demonstration. They demanded the most dire punishment of death inter alia by beheading for all who had in any way been involved in the publication of some cartoons beyond our shores in September last year, alleged to have been offensive to the sacred memory of their Prophet Muhammad. It is beyond belief throughout the nation that such a demonstration of terrorism could be allowed to proceed in the United Kingdom. It is intolerable that it should so far appear to have been permitted to take place unchallenged, when its perpetrators so clearly and publicly breached a number of criminal Acts that it is your duty to ensure are upheld. Failure to hold those responsible to account, for no matter what reason, can only encourage those who seek to impose their will and their ways by such horrific means to continue with that which they have so far got away with, and perhaps even put their direst threats into practice.A week has now elapsed since the first demonstration outside the BBC. There has been no indication so far that the Crown Prosecution Service or the Metropolitan Police are intending to prosecute those responsible. Indeed, the Metropolitan Police has issued several statements that it will only prosecute ‘if necessary’. There is nothing that we can find anywhere in law that suggests that once a crime known to law appears to have been committed, that the Police or the Crown Prosecution Service have authority to decide if it is ‘necessary’ to bring charges. The key criteria are the sufficiency of evidence and the public interest, not necessity. We sincerely hope that the Crown Prosecution Service will fulfil its duty and act alone. However if it does not, we as two private citizens and loyal subjects of HM the Queen, shall most earnestly entreat you, as Her Majesty’s Attorney General and first law officer of the Crown, responsible for the Crown Prosecution Service, to lend us your fiat and join us as co-plaintiff in upholding the law of the land in the High Court and if necessary beyond. If however in your wisdom, without demonstrably good reason, you decide not to ensure that the law of the land is upheld, we may reluctantly be compelled to join you as a defendant with others responsible in authority. To assist you, our application is intended to be submitted along the following lines: Proposed Defendants;(1) Mr ANJEM CHOUDRAY, c/o Allah Ghurabba Group, whose private address is known to the Metropolitan Police.(2) Mr OMAR KAYYAM from Bedford, at an address known to the Police or to the Prison Service(3) Individual protesters on Friday 3 February and Saturday 4 February who were seen or heard by Police Officers and others carrying out the following actions:(a) writing placards and banners which displayed threatening words(b) holding placards and banners which displayed threatening words(c) using threatening, abusive and insulting words. The names and addresses of all the above are known to the Metropolitan Police; please see below. The above-named should be required to answer to the under-mentioned charges. In view of the sensitive nature of this issue, we request that our address(es) be given only to the magistrates, district judge or senior court officials in the event of our intervention.We have written to the Head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Ian Blair, to ask for his help in identifying the names and addresses of those seen or heard carrying out the above actions. If these are not made available to us prior to any hearing, it is our intention to apply for a direction from the judge in the following terms:“That the Metropolitan Police be ordered to supply the names and addresses of all those seen or heard writing or holding placards or banners displaying threatening words, or using threatening, abusive or insulting words”. The police have been widely quoted as stating that charges will be brought in respect of the facts stated below “if necessary”. Leading moderate Muslims like Sir Iqbal Sacranie as well as politicians from all parties and from all shades of opinion have called for urgent prosecutions in respect of these matters. The purpose of this letter is to get these proceedings under way without any further delay.Charges: 1. That on 2, 3 and 4 February 2006 Mr Anjem Choudray solicited [i.e. incited] murder by avowedly organising a demonstration with dozens of placards calling inter alia for the massacre or murder of those opposed to or insulting Islam, contrary to Section 4, Offences of the Person Act 1861. 2. That on 2, 3 and 4 February 2006 Mr Anjem Choudray organised the displaying of signs on a public march with the premeditated and specific intention of displaying threatening, abusive or insulting words, calculated to incite hatred and violence and strike fear into all who witnessed these acts in person or on television, contrary to Section 4 and Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. 3. That on 2, 3 and 4 February 2006 a number of persons, at least several dozen, all of whom have been allegedly identified by the Metropolitan Police, prepared, carried and openly displayed signs on a public march which were threatening, abusive or insulting, contrary to Sections 4 and 5, Public Order Act 1986. 4. That Mr Omar Kayyam, of Bedford, living at an address known to the Police and the Prison Service, incited violence and murder contrary to the Public Order Act Sections 4 and 5 and contrary to the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 by openly dressing himself up on the demonstrations on 3 and 4 February 2006 as a suicide bomber.Names of Persons to be Charged: (1) Mr Anjem Choudray c/o Allah Ghurabaa group, or Al Ghurabba, (2) Mr Omar Kayyam of an address in Bedford known to the Police and the Prison Service, and (3) others whose name and address are known to the Metropolitan Police. More information is available to help the authorities to locate the whereabouts of Anjem Choudhary from Wikipedia, the Internet encyclopaedia. He is believed to be behind an extremist Islamist website which promotes and incites violence and murder. This is their entry today: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_GhurabaaDeath threatsIn response to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, Al Ghurabaa published an article on their website titled, "Kill those who insult the Prophet Muhammad". The article states, "The insulting of the Messenger Muhammad (saw) is something that the Muslims cannot and will not tolerate and the punishment in Islam for the one who does so is death. This is the word of the prophet and the verdict of Islam upon such people, one that any Muslim is able to execute."[1]Al Ghurabaa had organised the 3 February protest march from London Central Mosque to Regents Park [2][3] where protesters waived placards reading, "Butcher those who mock Islam", "Kill those who insult Islam", "Europe you will pay, your 9/11 is on the way", or "7/7 is on its way", "Europe you will pay, Bin Laden is on his way" and "Europe you'll come crawling, when the Mujahideen come roaring". Despite the similar theme on Al Ghurabaa's website, their spokesman, Anjem Choudary, said he did not know who wrote the placards. [4] MPs from all parties condemned the protest, calling on the Metropolitan police to pursue those responsible on the grounds that the threats were an incitement to murder.[5]The address of Mr Omar Kayyam is known to the Police. He was arrested on 7 February 2006 and put back in prison after it was found that he had breached his parole and licence conditions after being released early after being sentenced in 2002 to a 5½ year sentence for possession and supply of Class A drugs. We do not know which prison he is in, but he may be served with a summons there.On Sunday, 5 February, we enquired of P.C. 116 BS at Kensington Police Station (Police Reference CAD 3603) whether or not it was proposed to charge with any offence those engaged in organising the display of dozens of signs which, inter alia, called for the massacre, slaughter and murder of those who ‘insulted’ or opposed Islam. He advised us, and we quote verbatim, that: “Don’t worry. The Police were filming all the protestors; we had just as many undercover plain clothes Police Officers taking photographs as uniformed Police Offices. We know the names and addresses of every single one of those taking part in the march”.

Particulars of Alleged Offences:1. The signsThe signs displayed by the marchers were widely transmitted on television during 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 February. They include demonstrations outside the BBC on Thursday 2 February and demonstrations from the London Central Mosque at Regents Park to the Danish Embassy on Friday 3 and Saturday 4 February. Many photographs of the banners and placards appeared in all major national newspapers, in magazines, and several regional and local papers. These are some of the slogans noted and photographed:“Behead those who insult Islam”“Behead those who insult the Prophet”“Exterminate those who slander Islam”“Massacre those who insult Islam” “Whoever insults a Prophet, Kill Him” (carried by a number of adults and children)“Europe you will pay, 9/11 is on its way” (a reference to the Islamist attack on the Twin Towers on 9 September 2001) “Europe Your 9/11 will come”“Europe, you’ll come crawling, when the Mujahideen come roaring” [“Mujahideen” = Islamist warriors]“Mujahideen are on their way” [“Mujahideen” = Islamist warriors]“Butcher those who mock Islam”“Behead the one who insults the Prophet” “Be prepared for the Real Holocaust” “Mock today, die tomorrow, Denmark”“Death to those who insult the prophet”“Europe you will pay; Fantastic Four are on their way” [The “Fantastic Four” is a commonly-used Islamist term to refer to the four British-born ‘suicide bombers’ who killed 52 people and injured hundreds of others in London on 7 July in four bomb attacks last year]“I Love Al Qa’eda” (on a band around the head of a child) [Al Qa’eda claims direct responsibility for many terrorist attacks which have killed hundreds of people and injured thousands in recent years, including the bombing of the Twin Towers in New York on 9 September 2001) “Freedom: Go to Hell”“Democracy Go To Hell”.Muslim women, mostly dressed in burqas or hajibs, were seen writing out the placards.This is by no mean a complete listing of all the placards and banners seen, but these were the most prominent of those seen on TV film and in newspaper photographs in recent days. Samples of the material displayed and photographs of those displaying them are enclosed with this letter.2. The LawThe relevant law is cited below, with those subsections that apply to the facts above being highlightedSection 4, Public Order Act 1986 - Fear or provocation of violence (1) A person is guilty of an offence if he - a) uses towards another person threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or b) distributes or displays to another person any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting, with intent to cause that person to believe that immediate unlawful violence will be used against him or another by any person, or to provoke the immediate use of unlawful violence by that person or another, or whereby that person is likely to believe that such violence will be provoked (2) An offence under this section may be committed in a public or a private place, except that no offence is committed where the words or behaviour are used, or the writing, sign or other visible representation is distributed or displayed, by a person inside a dwelling and the other person is also inside that or another dwelling. (3) A constable may arrest without warrant anyone he reasonably suspects is committing on offence under this subsection (4) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or a fine not exceeding level 5 (Currently £5,000) on the standard scale or both. Section 5, Public Order Act 1986 - Harassment, alarm or distress (1) A person is guilty of an offence if he - a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour. or b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting, within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby (2) An offence under this section may be committed in a public or a private place, except that no offence is committed where the words or behaviour are used, or the writing, sign or other visible representation is displayed, by a person inside a dwelling and the other person is also inside that or another dwelling. (3) It is a defence for the accused to prove - a) That he had no reason to believe that there was any person within hearing or sight who was likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress, or b) That he was inside a dwelling and had no reason to believe that the words or behaviour used, or the writing, sign or other visible representation displayed, would be heard or seen by a person outside that or any other dwelling, or c) That his conduct was reasonable (4) A constable may arrest without warrant if - a) He engages in offensive conduct which the constable warns him to stop, and b) He engages in further offensive conduct immediately or shortly after the warning (5) In subsection (4) above 'offensive conduct' means conduct the constable reasonably suspects to constitute an offence under this section, and the conduct mentioned in paragraph (a) and the further conduct need not be of the same nature (6) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale.Offences Against The Person Act 1861. Soliciting murder, or as it has become known more recently ‘incitement to murder’ (the charge which has been upheld again the extremist Islamist Abu Hamza on 7 February 2006) is an offence under Section 4 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 (c. 100).It should be noted that within the last two or three years an elderly single protester, a Mr Harry Hammond, was roughed up by some ‘gays’, arrested, fined £350 and ordered to pay prosecution costs and have his signs destroyed by Wimborne Magistrates Court under Sections 4 and 5 of the Public Order Act when he displayed a sign saying ‘Stop Homosexuality’, and ‘Stop Immorality’ in Bournemouth Square. In another incident a pub landlady in Middlesbrough was similarly convicted, fined and ordered to pay costs in relation to displaying a scarf with the words ‘Sunderland are ‘shite’’, also under Sections 4 and 5 of the Public Order Act. These do not begin to compare with the gravity of the material displayed on Friday and Saturday and the necessity for those who prepared and displayed those signs to be brought to justice without further delay. We are aware of the powers of the Crown Prosecution Service to take over a prosecution and we strongly urge that they do so in this case by prosecuting those responsible for organising writing and carrying the banners during these demonstrations. If there is any clarification you require regarding any of the contents of this letter, please do not hesitate to contact us.If we are compelled to initiate private proceedings, with or without your fiat, we may request the assistance of the Court in ensuring the availability of those who are in a position to give evidence, namely officers of the Metropolitan Police on duty, Metropolitan Police photographers, TV companies who took video footage, photographers who took still pictures etc.

Islam and the Descent into Anarchy

2006-02-23T05:08:00.000-08:00

From Associated Press:

Shrine fury sparks Iraq killings

At least 46 bodies were found scattered across Iraq late Wednesday and early Thursday, many of them shot execution-style and dumped in Shiite-dominated parts of the capital, Baghdad.
They included a prominent Al-Arabiya TV female correspondent and two other Iraqi journalists, who had been covering Wednesday's explosion in Samarra. Their bullet-riddled bodies were found on the outskirts of the mostly Sunni Arab city 60 miles north of Baghdad.
In mostly Shiite Basra, police said militiamen broke into a prison, hauled out 12 inmates, including two Egyptians, two Tunisians, a Libyan, a Saudi and a Turk, and shot them dead in reprisal for the shrine attack.

Can anyone reasonably continue to doubt the linkage between the mindless violence taking place in Muslim Iraq and the mindless philosophy that guides the actions of those that perpetrate it? As Ayn Rand taught, everything in existence necessarily has an identity. The identity of the Islamic religion is fully revealed in its precepts and in the actions of its adherents in Iraq, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan etc, etc.

It is a wilful, dangerous and unforgivable act of evasion to refuse to recognize Islam for what it is and pronounce the only judgement upon it possible for rational men: evil.

The Limits of Law

2006-02-22T03:31:00.000-08:00

What would you think about a law which permits a foreign government to extradite you from the USA to face charges in that country, without having to make any prima facie case in the US courts, and where you would find yourself incarcerated for perhaps two years or more before being tried? What if, even if you were acquitted of any crime in that country, you were permitted no means of recovering the legal costs incurred in your defense and would almost certainly face bankruptcy?

Unjust? Certainly. Unconstitutional? Most definitely.

Which government could be responsible for such a travesty of justice? Libya? Syria? Step forward, the United States of America.

Aggressive US legislators continue to make strenuous efforts to extend the writ of US law outside the borders of the United States. To its eternal shame, they have succeeded in persuading the UK Government of Tony Blair to pass a new extradition treaty which permits the extradition of British nationals under precisely the conditions I have described. Yesterday that new treaty got its first test run as the High Court in London denied the appeal of the three NatWest bankers against their extradition to the USA to face charges in relation to the collapse of Enron. The USA has presented no prime facie case of their involvement but has simply required them to be whisked of to an American jail, where they will face at least bankruptcy and a lengthy stay in prison, even if found not guilty of any crime. Controversy about this appalling piece of legislation has been gathering pace, with 100 of the UK's largest law firms protesting to the Home Office that the arrangements were "lopsided" and "designed for one purpose and being used for another". Though the extradition deal with the US has been perceived as a way of countering terrorism, more than "50 per cent of the uses of it have been for alleged white-collar crime, which I don't think anybody expected", said Mr Harding, General Counsel for Barclays.

Lest Americans are congratulating themselves on being protected by the Constitution from such arbitrary and unjust laws, they should be aware that the arrangements with the UK are supposed to be bilateral, thereby granting the UK government the same powers to extradite US nationals to face charges in the UK. At this moment, however, Congress is balking at enacting legislation that is so clearly an affront to the rights to liberty and due process guaranteed by the Constitution.

We must now await the outcome of an appeal to the House of Lords to see if their Lordships are made of sterner stuff than the High Court in resisting the pressure of totalitarianism.

David Irving's ThoughtCrime

2006-02-21T01:10:00.000-08:00

David Irving, the right-wing British historian, was sentenced yesterday to three years in prison under Austria's ludicrous holocaust denial law, which threatens those who deny the role of Germany in the slaughter of millions of Jews in WWII with incarceration for up to ten years.

A large number of countries, including many in the West, now have similar holocaust denial laws, including France, Germany and Switzerland, while the UK has only barely managed to avoid enacting a similar "religious hatred" law.

Such laws are largely self defeating. Having a law that outlaws the questioning of a particular historical incident creates doubt about it - if an opinion has to be stuffed down peoples' throats by force of law, it suggests that the rational argument for it is weak. But holocaust denial laws are wrong, not because they are counter-productive in practice, but first and foremost because they are wrong in principle. There can be no compromise in the defense of Man's freedom to hold an opinion, regardless of whether or not it is offensive to others. Laws that protect the opinions or beliefs of a particular political gang, religious sect or racial group are an affront to human freedom and a denial of Man's right to hold whatever opinion he chooses to, no matter how irrational.

The correct response to those like David Irving and those who share his view is to let the evidence of history convict them of the gross irrationality of which they are guilty. For an historian, what greater punishment can there be than that?

Muslim State in Britain

2006-02-20T06:48:00.000-08:00

For the past two weeks, Patrick Sookhdeo has been canvassing the opinions of Muslim clerics in Britain on the row over the cartoons featuring images of Mohammed that were first published in Denmark and then reprinted in several other European countries."They think they have won the debate," he says with a sigh. "They believe that the British Government has capitulated to them, because it feared the consequences if it did not."The cartoons, you see, have not been published in this country, and the Government has been very critical of those countries in which they were published. To many of the Islamic clerics, that's a clear victory."It's confirmation of what they believe to be a familiar pattern: if spokesmen for British Muslims threaten what they call 'adverse consequences' - violence to the rest of us - then the British Government will cave in. I think it is a very dangerous precedent."
Dr Sookhdeo adds that he believes that "in a decade, you will see parts of English cities which are controlled by Muslim clerics and which follow, not the common law, but aspects of Muslim sharia law."It is already starting to happen - and unless the Government changes the way it treats the so-called leaders of the Islamic community, it will continue."
For someone with such strong and uncompromising views, Dr Sookhdeo is a surprisingly gentle and easy-going man. He speaks with authority on Islam, as it was his first faith: he was brought up as a Muslim in Guyana, the only English colony in South America, and attended a madrassa there."But Islamic instruction was very different in the 1950s, when I was at school," he says. "There was no talk of suicide bombing or indeed of violence of any kind. Islam was very peaceful."Dr Sookhdeo's family emigrated to England when he was 10. In his early twenties, when he was at university, he converted to Christianity. "I had simply seen it as the white man's religion, the religion of the colonialists and the oppressors - in a very similar way, in fact, to the way that many Muslims see Christianity today." Leaving Islam was not easy. According to the literal interpretation of the Koran, the punishment for apostasy is death - and it actually is punished by death in some Middle Eastern states. "It wasn't quite like that here," he says, "although it was traumatic in some ways."Dr Sookhdeo continued to study Islam, doing a PhD at London University on the religion. He is currently director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity. He also advises the Army on security issues related to Islam.

Several years ago, Dr Sookhdeo insisted that the next wave of radical Islam in Britain would involve suicide bombings in this country. His prediction was depressingly confirmed on 7/7 last year.So his claim that, in the next decade, the Muslim community in Britain will not be integrated into mainstream British society, but will isolate itself to a much greater extent, carries weight behind it. Dr Sookhdeo has proved his prescience."The Government, and Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, are fundamentally deluded about the nature of Islam," he insists. "Tony Blair unintentionally revealed his ignorance when he said, in an effort to conciliate Muslims, that he had 'read through the Koran twice' and that he kept it by his bedside."He thought he was saying something which showed how seriously he took Islam. But most Muslims thought it was a joke, if not an insult. Because, of course, every Muslim knows that you cannot read the Koran through from cover to cover and understand it.The chapters are not written to be read in that way. Indeed, after the first chapter, the chapters of the Koran are ordered according to their length, not according to their content or chronology: the longest chapters are first, the shorter ones are at the end."You need to know which passage was revealed at what period and in what time in order to be able to understand it - you cannot simply read it from beginning to end and expect to learn anything at all."That is one reason why it takes so long to be able to read and understand the Koran: the meaning of any part of it depends on a knowledge of its context - a context that is not in the Koran itself."The Prime Minister's ignorance of Islam, Dr Sookhdeo contends, is of a piece with his unsuccessful attempts to conciliate it. And it does indeed seem as if the Government's policy towards radical Islam is based on the hope that if it makes concessions to its leaders, they will reciprocate and relations between fundamentalist Muslims and Tony Blair's Government will then turn into something resembling an ecumenical prayer meeting.Dr Sookhdeo nods in vigorous agreement with that. "Yes - and it is a very big mistake. Look at what happened in the 1990s. The security services knew about Abu Hamza and the preachers like him. They knew that London was becoming the centre for Islamic terrorists. The police knew. The Government knew. Yet nothing was done."The whole approach towards Muslim militants was based on appeasement. 7/7 proved that that approach does not work - yet it is still being followed. For example, there is a book, The Noble Koran: a New Rendering of its Meaning in English, which is openly available in Muslim bookshops."It calls for the killing of Jews and Christians, and it sets out a strategy for killing the infidels and for warfare against them. The Government has done nothing whatever to interfere with the sale of that book."Why not? Government ministers have promised to punish religious hatred, to criminalise the glorification of terrorism, yet they do nothing about this book, which blatantly does both."Perhaps the explanation is just that they do not take it seriously. "I fear that is exactly the problem," says Dr Sookhdeo. "The trouble is that Tony Blair and other ministers see Islam through the prism of their own secular outlook.They simply do not realise how seriously Muslims take their religion. Islamic clerics regard themselves as locked in mortal combat with secularism."

For example, one of the fundamental notions of a secular society is the moral importance of freedom, of individual choice. But in Islam, choice is not allowable: there cannot be free choice about whether to choose or reject any of the fundamental aspects of the religion, because they are all divinely ordained. God has laid down the law, and man must obey.'Islamic clerics do not believe in a society in which Islam is one religion among others in a society ruled by basically non-religious laws. They believe it must be the dominant religion - and it is their aim to achieve this."That is why they do not believe in integration. In 1980, the Islamic Council of Europe laid out their strategy for the future - and the fundamental rule was never dilute your presence. That is to say, do not integrate."Rather, concentrate Muslim presence in a particular area until you are a majority in that area, so that the institutions of the local community come to reflect Islamic structures. The education system will be Islamic, the shops will serve only halal food, there will be no advertisements showing naked or semi-naked women, and so on."That plan, says Dr Sookhdeo, is being followed in Britain. "That is why you are seeing areas which are now almost totally Muslim.

The next step will be pushing the Government to recognise sharia law for Muslim communities - which will be backed up by the claim that it is "racist" or "Islamophobic" or "violating the rights of Muslims" to deny them sharia law."There's already a Sharia Law Council for the UK. The Government has already started making concessions: it has changed the law so that there are sharia-compliant mortgages and sharia pensions."Some Muslims are now pressing to be allowed four wives: they say it is part of their religion. They claim that not being allowed four wives is a denial of their religious liberty. There are Muslim men in Britain who marry and divorce three women, then marry a fourth time - and stay married, in sharia law, to all four."The more fundamentalist clerics think that it is only a matter of time before they will persuade the Government to concede on the issue of sharia law. Given the Government's record of capitulating, you can see why they believe that."Dr Sookhdeo's vision of a relentless battle between secular and Islamic Britain seems hard to reconcile with the co-operation that seems to mark the vast majority of the interactions between the two communities."Well, it isn't me who says Islam is at war with secularisation," he says. "That's how Islamic clerics describe the situation."

But isn't it true that most Muslims who live in theocratic states want to get out of them as quickly as possible and live in a secular country such as Britain or America? And that most Muslims who come to Britain adopt the values of a liberal, democratic, tolerant society, rather than insisting on the inflexible rules of their religion?"You have to distinguish between ordinary Muslims and their self-appointed leaders," explains Dr Sookhdeo. "I agree that the best hope for our collective future is that the majority of Muslims who have grown up here have accepted the secular nature of the British state and society, the division between religion and politics, and the importance of allowing people to choose freely how they will live."But that is not how most of the clerics talk. And, more significantly, it is not how the 'community leaders' whom the Government has decided represent the Muslim community think either."

Take, for example, Tariq Ramadan, whom the Government has appointed as an adviser because ministers think he is a 'community leader'. Ramadan sounds, in public, very moderate. But in reality, he has some very extreme views. He attacks liberal Muslims as 'Muslims without Islam'. He is affiliated to the violent and uncompromising Muslim Brotherhood."He calls the education in the state schools of the West 'aggression against the Islamic personality of the child'. He has said that 'the Muslim respects the laws of the country only if they do not contradict any Islamic principle'. He has added that 'compromising on principles is a sign of fear and weakness'."So what's the answer? What should the Government be doing? "First, it should try to engage with the real Muslim majority, not with the self-appointed 'community leaders' who don't actually represent anyone: they have not been elected, and the vast majority of ordinary Muslims have nothing to do with them."Second, the Government should say no to faith-based schools, because they are a block to integration. There should be no compromise over education, or over English as the language of education. The policy of political multiculturalism should be reversed."The hope was that it would to ensure separate communities would soften at the edges and integrate. But the opposite has in fact happened: Islamic communities have hardened. There is much less integration than there was for the generation that arrived when I did. There will be much less in the future if the present trend continues.

"Finally, the Government should make it absolutely clear: we welcome diversity, we welcome different religions - but all of them have to accept the secular basis of British law and society. That is a non-negotiable condition of being here."If the Government does not do all of those things then I fear for the future, because Islamic communities within Britain will form a state within a state. Religion will occupy an ever-larger place in our collective political life. And, speaking as a religious man myself, I fear that outcome."

Islamic Cartoons and the Clash of Civilizations

2006-02-19T09:49:00.000-08:00

The Danish cartoons and caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed can be seen at MohammedCartoons.com. See other related cartoons at: Image Problem and A Right to Blasphemy.
Muslims routinely publish cartoons far more offensive than the Danish ones. Are they entitled to dish it out while being insulated from similar indignities? While the debate rages, an important point has been overlooked: despite the supposed Islamic prohibition against depicting Mohammed under any circumstances, hundreds of paintings, drawings and other images of Mohammed have been created over the centuries, with nary a word of complaint from the Muslim world (see examples here).
Daniel Pipes has a must-read editorial on the subject: Cartoons and Islamic Imperialism. He writes:
"The key issue at stake in the battle over the twelve Danish cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad is this: Will the West stand up for its customs and mores, including freedom of speech, or will Muslims impose their way of life on the West? Ultimately, there is no compromise: Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult and blaspheme, or not."
Writing in the Intellectual Activist, Robert Tracinski rightly points to the need for the West to show solidarity in the face of threat of Muslim censorship. In Publish or Perish: The Lessons of the Cartoon Jihad, he writes:
"The answer, for publishers, is to tell the Muslim fanatics that they can't single out any one author, or artist, or publication. The answer is to show that we're all united in defying the fanatics."
So why is this particular cartoon so offensive to Muslims? Clearly, it is not simply for the reason claimed by Islamists, that it caricatures Mohammed - people have been doing that for a very long time, more or less with impunity. The real cause of Muslim fury is the direct linkage that the cartoon wittily establishes between the Islamic faith and the violence and terrorism that it is responsible for spreading around the world (see the Authentic Voice of Islam for examples). Identifying that connection has become a taboo, not only in Muslim countries, but also, to our shame, in the West, where political leaders are seen running around with copies of the Koran under their arms proclaiming Islam to be a "religion of peace" and denouncing all those who would defend free speech as intemperate radicals (see: Jack Straw, Appease in Our Time and The British "covenant of security" and its consequences).
Throughout the body of her work Ayn Rand argued eloquently to establish the necessary philosophical connection between faith and force. In the famous John Galt speech, for example, the central hero of Atlas Shrugged describes the philosophical and psychological links between mysticism and dictatorship as follows:
"Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from men, not their agreement. He wants them to surrender their consciousness to his assertions, his edicts, his wishes, his whims—as his consciousness is surrendered to theirs. He wants to deal with men by means of faith and force—he finds no satisfaction in their consent if he must earn it by means of facts and reason. Reason is the enemy he dreads . . . "
Leonard Peikoff, writing in the Voice of Reason, spells out the causal relationship between faith and force in these terms:
"The consequence of the epistemology of religion is the politics of tyranny. If you cannot reach the truth by your own mental powers, but must offer obedient faith to a cognitive authority, then you are not your own intellectual master; in such a case, you cannot guide your behavior by your own judgment, either, but must be submissive in action as well. This is the reason why, historically—as Ayn Rand has pointed out—faith and force are always corollaries; each requires the other."
Contrary to the assertions shrieked so vociferously by Islam's apologists in the West, there is a clash of civilizations taking place. It is brought about by the irreconcilable schism between, on the one hand, a civilization built on freedom and reason and, on the other, those civilizations who take their cue from the dark voices of medieval mysticism. As Ayn Rand put it in the Voice of Reason:
"The fissure had many philosophical names: soul versus body—mind versus heart—liberty versus equality—the practical versus the moral. But all of these false dichotomies are merely secondary consequences derived by the mystics from one real, basic issue: reason versus mysticism—or, in political terms, reason and freedom versus faith and force."
Robert Tracinski makes the point this way:
This is the final lesson of the cartoon jihad. The real issue at stake is not just censorship versus freedom, but something much deeper: the need to recognize the real essence of the West. The distinctive power and vibrancy of our culture, the source of our liberty, our happiness, and our unprecedented prosperity, is our Enlightenment tradition of regard for the unfettered reasoning mind, left free to follow the evidence wherever it leads."
The cartoon fulfills the essential function of art by enabling us to perceive directly the connection linking the philosophical concepts of Islamic faith and Islamo-facist force. Muslims object to that because it is so evidently truthful and because it exposes the root cause of their fanatical tendencies. Their appeasers in the West object because it lays bare their own moral hypocrisy and political cowardice in refusing to confront the clear and present danger that Islam represents to Man's freedom and progress.