How can they give iris recognition data if they are allowed to be veiled.

By the way, I hope that all those veiled women get rickets from lack of sunlight.

Posted by: Voltaire at August 2, 2004 9:52 AM

What came to be known as Muslim ethic is only and plainly SICK.

Posted by: Nikoz at August 2, 2004 10:44 AM

It seems that the British are following along in suit with the French.

It won't be long now before both of these countries fall to the Islamo-fascists.

Posted by: Son of Infidel at August 2, 2004 11:53 AM

So if a cross dressing Muslim male wears a burkha into a facility to get an ID, they can pass themself off as a female and no one would knowthe difference?

Posted by: DCWatson at August 2, 2004 12:30 PM

It will be just a matter of time before U.S. Muslims will agitate for the same special treatment, pointing to Britain and France as examples.

It is true that some groups, such as the Amish wear special dress, but their garb does not cover the face nor permit camouflage of the body so that bombs and weapons can be hidden or that the person can not be identified.

If special treatment for Muslims, or any immigrant group, occurs in the U.S., we are all doomed!!!!!

Posted by: epg at August 2, 2004 12:43 PM

A Muslim woman has already lost a lawsuit in the US to keep her face covered for a drivers license. The woman is a convert to Islam with a criminal record her "mug shot" was displayed on the internet.Courttv followed her case and polls showed 97% of respondents favored requiring Muslim women to show their faces for drivers licenses. The women lost her suit because driving is a priviledge not a right and if she didn't wish to comply with the law she could seek other forms of transportation. During the trial I found it ironic that a Muslim women was suing over a drivers license when the same woman would not be allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia.

If Muslim men did not have a history of diguising themselves as females (both Palestinian and Afghan males have done that) I'd say the retina scan and fingerprints were enough. I predict that the first time a terror attack is carried out by a Muslim female or a male disguised as a female the law will quickly change.

Posted by: Roxane at August 2, 2004 1:22 PM

Why does England, why do other countries in Europe, why does the United States, believe they must make exceptions to long-established and perfectly reasonable policies of general application in order to prove that, as David Blunkett's colleague suggests, "we are sensitive to their [Muslim] points of view." Surely the main thing, or the only thing, to be "sensitive" about at this point are those central tenets of Islam, which every Believer is required both to adhere to, and to spread. Among those beliefs is that which says Islam "must dominate and not be dominated," that all lands (dar al-harb) not yet subjugated to Islam eventually must become part of the Islamic domain, as the whole world belongs to Allah and to the Believers. The non-Muslim inhabitants, provided they are ahl al-kitab, that is to say People of the Book (Christians and Jews) will be offered three choices: to be killed, to be converted, or to endure the status of dhimmitude, which is to say, a status of humiliation, degradation, and permanent insecurity, because the failure of even one non-Muslim to fulfill the terms of the “pact” or “dhimma” can result in treating all non-Muslims with murderous ferocity. Hindus and Buddhists fare even worse; as polytheists and idolators (as the Muslims see it), they have only the choices of conversion or death. The long history of Jihad-conquest, followed by the imposition of dhimmitude on those conquered, demonstrates how seriously Muslims take these requirements, and the need to impose political, economic, and social disabilities, in every way. The slave-Jews of Yemen, the persecuted and ever-diminishing Zoroastrians of Persia, the harried Copts of Egypt and Chaldeans and Assyrians of Iraq, the Maronites on the run in Lebanon, where in their mountain fastnesses they managed for centuries to hold off forced islamization and arabization, the dhimmitude imposed even on Hindus (who, in India only, were granted a kind of honorary dhimmi status because, with 60-70 million killed by the Muslim conquerors, the remaining Hindus proved too numerous, and too profitable, either to completely kill off or to forcibly convert to Islam).

Given the increased unpleasantness and expense of daily life, and the increased danger as well, that Muslim populations ineluctably pose for the non-Muslims among whom they have been permitted to live, Infidels need now be “sensitive” not to Muslim concerns, but to their own well-being. They need to become "sensitive" to, by becoming aware of, the historical record of Muslim treatment of, and inculcated attitudes toward, non-Muslims,. They need to become more “sensitive” to the tenets pertaining to Infidels found in Qur'an and hadith and sira (the biography of Muhammad), they need to discover just how Musoims are taught to regard non-Muslims, and what fate is reserved for them, and what the ultimate goal of all Believers must be, and the rewards available to them. And above all, it is the Manichean nature of Islam, that strict division of the world between Believers and Unbelievers, or Infidels, that so defines the Islamic worldview, that must be understood, if not by all Infidels, then by a sufficient number to educate the rest.

Today it is the demand that women need not be photographed for an ID, which means that “iris recognition” will everywhere have to do (and will “iris recognition” machines be available to security guards at every skyscraper and school and airport? But it could also have been the demand that pork be taken out of offered school lunches, even for Infidel children, because its presence would offend Muslim janitors. Or it might be a even Infidels should be forced to endure electronically-amplified calls to prayer, where Muslims are able to railroad through a resolution to permit such an imposition, or whether it is the demand, made in Italy in the past few months, that all crucixes on all public walls be removed -- a demand which infuriated even anticlerical freethinkers of Italy, who saw this not only or even primarily as an act against a symbol of Christianity, but as attempt to do away with that “post-Christian” civilization that nonetheless, derives from centuries of Christian thought and attitudes. Or perhaps one should say, Judeo-Christian thoughts and attitudes, to use a formulation that is both more accurate, and more unacceptable to Muslims who insist that it is they who "contributed indispensably to Western civilization" which -- in their farcical version of history --is probably true).

Some demands are held in abeyance, for Muslims are not yet strong enough to impose their will directly. Though statues are forbidden in Islam (see, for example, Qaradawi on what is halal and what haram), no Muslims have yet demanded the removal of statuary from the public squares or museums of Europe. But they have engaged in a little vigilante activity. While statuary is forbidden in Islam, if statues are defaced or otherwise ruined, what remains may be permitted as long as it is no longer an object of respect or veneration. A few weeks ago, both Jesus and Mary were decapitated in Floing, in northern France -- that is, statutes of Jesus and Mary were decapitated, by local Muslims. Similar vandalism destroyed three statues, one of them from Roman times, in the Piazza del Popolo in Rome. The first attack was never mentioned in this country, and hardly in France; the second, given a few sentences in the New York Times. Mustn't scare anybody; mustn't alarm anyone. What good would it do?

The entire Western world has been performing heroic efforts at being "sensitive." Not a single news report on NPR, the BBC, or CBS, or NBC, or ABC, not a single major newspaper anywhere in the Western world, ever uses the simple and accurate phrase "Muslim terrorism" -- that is, terrorism planned and executed entirely by Muslims, directed either at Infidels, or at those Muslims whose behavior entitles them, too, to be regarded as Infidels, and terrorism prompted entirely by tenets of Islam, including those of violent Jihad.

What has been gained from this silence, this refusal to unembarrasedly place the epithets "Muslim" or "Islamic" before the noun "terrorism"? They are as closely bound as, in Homer, "rosy-fingered" and "dawn" or "wine-dark" and "sea." Are we all better off as a result of this failure to use words truthfully? Are we Infidels now more alert to what is really going on, or are we confused? Is not part of the mistake in Iraq due to the dreamy unawareness of the depth of hostility to Infidels -- even Infidels repairing schools, hospitals, roads, power stations, electricity grids, water purification plants? Are we not, by leaving the identifying adjective out, removing the very feature of this particular "terrorism" which would lead us to take measures to prevent the successful spread of Islam -- by a non-violent Jihad of the kind that Tariq Ramadan, whose ultimate goal is precisely the same as that of Bin Laden, that is the world-wide submission to Islam? Would not calling it by its real name -- the Jihad -- of which terrorism is merely one tactic -- would we not help the non-Muslim world to recognize its common enemy, and to begin to build, and to demonstrate, the kind of solidarity that is such a central feature of Islam, and which the non-Islamic world, per contra, shows no signs of emulating -- but emulate that solidarity, in this case not aggressively as is the case with Islam, but only to protect the entire non-Muslim world from the demands, the pressures, the incessant workings of a Jihad that is simply the latest exppression of an immutable doctrine, one that for a time, when most of he Muslim world was either somnolently within the walls of the Ottoman Empire, unaware of the great achievements of the non-Muslim world outside, or in some cases, within the colonial empires that it proved futile to fight against (though plenty of Muslims, from Abdelkader in North Africa, to the Mad Mahdi in the Sudan, to Muslims in Central Asia and India, did try) seemed to have fallen into desuetude -- but was only, in a sense, hibernating.

Now, with OPEC oil money, technological backwardness can be overcome with the buying of weaponry, which the Western world is only too happy to sell, and madrasas and mosques built, and diplomats, journalists, and academics bribed, sometimes directly, more often indirectly through contracts, junkets and well-paid lectures, and university chairs (the King Abdul Aziz Professor of This, the Al-Sabah Chair in that, with "Centers for Islamic-Christian Relations" here, there, and everywhere, not to mention all those accomodations, those free trips, those fat checks that may be the reward of participants in various "Dialogues of Civilisations" held hither and yon (the size of the check may depend on one's willingness to play the pious "Dialogue" game), the Jihad is back on the world stage, from East Timor -- it was Bin Laden himself who said that Australia needed to be taught a lesson for daring to protect the East Timorese Christians -- to India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, to the beleaguered Christians left in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, to the Israelis, still trying to protect themselves, as best they can, against the relentless and essentially endless Jihad against their sliver of an Infidel sovereignty, to Egypt, where Copts are always insecure, and black Africa, where Christians have been under major assault ever since the "Jihad" of the Muslims against the Christian Ibo in Nigeria, as the Biafran leader Col. Ojukwu expressed so clearly in the Ahiara Declaration of 1969.

It is only by focussing attention on the specific ideological character of this world-wide Jihad, in its many manifestations and with targets everywhere, that Muslims themselves, those so-called "moderates," may be shamed, or embarrassed, or otherwise forced to begin to admit to both the tenets of Islam, and to the need to do something about them. The pretense that there is nothing wrong with Islam, that there is just "terrorism" from a handful of people, or from, say, 10% of Believers (this is a figure plucked out of the air, and has no basis -- overwhelmingly, Muslims say they admire Bin Laden; overwhelmingly, Muslims adhere to the doctrine of Jihad -- the fact that a handful of Ahmadiyas and others, more or less declared to be Infidels by orthodox Islam, may claim otherwise, means almost nothing).

Not only would truthtelling help force Muslims to begin to own up to their own problems (all this talk about "a war for the soul of Islam" to date has been rubbish; the war has been a war of Muslims against Infidels -- there is no real sign of any "war for the soul of Islam" -- when we see the real thing, we'll recognize it).

It would also help non-Muslims to realize that whatever their own differences, these must be elided or overcome or suppressed -- just as Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, no fans of Bolshevism -- made common cause against Hitler with Soviet Russia. But this requires recognizing the real nature of Islam, and its universalist appeal, and its universal threat to all non-Infidels.

The non-Muslim world, the world of the hapless and still somnolent Infidels, who for all of our faults and stupidities, are not quite ripe for the Muslim plucking, not quite ready to embrace an all-encompassing ideology that represents a mental straitjacket so complete that it is, as Ibn Warraq said, a kind of fascism -- not some bastard "Islamofascism" but plain, garden-variety fascism. Under Islam little real activity in what Infidels regard as science and art is possible. Views that contradict Islam are strictly forbidden; freedom of conscience is not possible: once you are in the army of Islam, once you are part of the umma al-islamiyya, you can't leave.

There is a reason for the political, economic, intellectual, and moral failures of Islam, failures that have characterized Muslim societies ever since the non-Muslim populations that they originally conqueed were expelled or died out (as in Arabia), or were subject to slow asphyxiation and those who did not convert, but remained as dhimmis, saw a continual diminishment of their numbers, as people -- few of whom can be heroes -- transferred their allegiance to Islam, because to remain non-Muslims, in places ruled by Islam, proved too difficult, too distressing, too dangerous. Not everyone wishes to be a kind of martyr for his faith. How many of us, if we had to pay, each year, the equivalent of $50,000 or $100,000 as a "jizya" merely to remain non-Muslims, would do so? And our children, and our grandchildren?

A few centuries after the initital conquests, the non-Muslim populations that had, for a few centuries, held on and were responsible for a great deal of what is so misleadingly called high Islamic civlization (most of the translation from the Greeks was performed by Christian and Jewish Arabic-speaking translators) were reduced to a size, and a state, that kept them from being active contributors to that civilization. A relative few might survive, but they no longer mattered.

Everyone is now looking high and low for treasons to explain the failures of Muslim societies and peoples, over such a wide swath of territory, and over so many centuries. Some Arab Muslims say it all the fault of the "Great Satan" America; others, that it is the fault of the "Little Satan," Israel. Even those who, like the "Arab intellectuals" who at the behest of the U.N. published a scathing report on the state of Arab life and thought last year, are unable, in the end, to name the real problem -- for fear and filial piety lead to the Valley of Falsehood.

All these attempts to grapple with the Problems of Islamic Societies are akin to the spectacle of O. J. Simpson assuring us he "will continue to look everywhere for the real culprit." But after the receipt, by many Muslim states, of the most fabulous unearned wealth in human history, a transfer from the non-Muslim countries to the Muslim ones amounting to between 4 and 6 trillion dollars, one might have expected something, anything, other than the carnival of consumption, and armaments, in those states. Some hint of the development of science, some hint of real art, other than those mosques and palaces that are built, along with the military cities that dot the landscape of the Arabian peninsula. But as one Armenian architect who helped build those military cities has said: "Money can buy everything -- except civilization." With the obvious economic successes of the East Asian countries, that were miserably poor fifty years ago, and cannot be dismissed as "Western colonialists," the excuses for the Muslim world have run out (just compare Singapore's progress, with that of Malaysia next door). Their miseries are caused not by Westerners, not by Ariel Sharon, not by George Bush, not by the Pope, not some fundamentalist Christian conspiracy in the American South.

No. The problems of the Muslim world are caused by -- Islam. What a surprise.

Posted by: Hugh at August 2, 2004 4:23 PM

Wait until a terrorist bomber male/female blows themseves and others up on British soil!!WHY SHOULD MUSLIM WOMEN BE EXCEMPT FROM A LAW DESIGNED
TO PROTECT POPULATION FROM MUSLIM TERRORISTS??
This government should, has to go...Blunkett is turning to be more of a Dhimmi fool than Jack Straw.

Posted by: Morgane at August 2, 2004 4:41 PM

In the MiddleEast it's quite common for terrorists to dress like females with gowns and Hijabs to hide the explosives vests for being a suicide bomber.
I watched a special of actual footage( still don't understand why journalists are exempt for allowing felonies or mass murders by supressin gthe info) of a small thin Muslim male that strapped on a suicide vest and was wrapped with cloth to hide the contours of the vest. He then put on the robe followed by a Hijab with only a slit exposing the eyes.

I guess we'll have to wait until hundreds or manbey thousands of non-Muslims are murdered before we a another dragged out commission to report on the causes and suggestions for these
crimes to be stopped.
Of course Kerry might be at the helm and lets see how he answers to the touchy-feely response to Jihad that created this type of mass Murder.
Hell,lets just turn the missles towards the enemy and ram them head on with guns blazing just
like he did in Nam.

Posted by: ala-sux at August 2, 2004 6:17 PM

Hugh Wrote:
a demand which infuriated even anticlerical freethinkers of Italy, who saw this not only or even primarily as an act against a symbol of Christianity, but as attempt to do away with that “post-Christian” civilization

Muslims may be bowling over the French and the English...but I can tell you now the Italians are a different kettle of fish, they are very aware and wary of Islam.

Italians are very proud of their history,and culture and, unlike the French and English will not quickly give it up for any one, especialy to the politicaly correct, or Muslim apologists.

At least when the Muslims make a noise in Italy...the Italian reply with a bigger voice.

Posted by: Joe Bananas at August 2, 2004 6:33 PM

What a racquet for female criminals...convert to islam...no photo ID required...wow become a muslim and you never need to prove who you are. In addition not every place that ID is required has the ability to do an iris scan or run a set of fingerprints, everywhere from video stores to hotels require ID and do not have that type of equipment...and if they dared to decline services to a muslim woman based upon the fact that she could not prove who she was of course that would be considered racism....

Posted by: USAgirl at August 2, 2004 9:57 PM

USAgirl,

You'll be happy to know that in the US female Muslim criminals are photographed without their veils whether they like it or not.Here's a link to Sultanna Freeman's "mugshot" after she was arrested and later convicted for battery of a child.

Convicted felon Sultanna Freeman

Posted by: Roxane at August 3, 2004 12:49 AM

If this IS true then this is a terrorists charter. This is crass stulidity of the first order.

I am ashamed to be British and to be represented by such dhimmis.

Posted by: Pardonmeforbreathing at August 3, 2004 2:57 AM