Unbelievable. The Foggy Albion, apparently, wants to be the first nation in Europe to commit the cultural suicide.

-----------------------------
dolphin, CAGE co-founder.
http://www.acage.org

Posted by: dolphin at August 27, 2005 12:15 PM

Just put another shark in the water. Until the July bombings, I was really not aware how dhimmified England has become. I hate to say it, but I think it may be worse than France or Belgium.

Posted by: pedestrian infidel at August 27, 2005 1:37 PM

Of course, Muslim rulers will be very merciful. They will let the non-Muslim English people live and continue to work and go about their daily routines, as long as they pay the Jizya tax (and submit without protest to arbitrary whacks about the head or on the buttocks while depositing their tax), and bow their heads meekly in the street whenever a Muslim approaches them, and relinquish their seat on the bus whenever a Muslim needs to sit, and wear identifying colors so that the Religious Police can easily discriminate, and nevermore read or write or otherwise express opinions deemed harmful or insulting to the values of Islam, and celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah only while hunkered down in their flats with the blinds drawn closed and no loud music if any, etc...

Posted by: Dr. Pepper at August 27, 2005 2:51 PM

Britain must surely be the nation most at risk of
totally embracing Dhimmitude. Throughout history
few nations have been quiet as taken with themselves as the British, after all did they not once aspire to bring the whole world under their Empire, so they may well have a closer understanding of what makes men like
Ramadan tick. Tariq Ramadan is the new poster child of the Lunatic Left throughout Europe, unfortunately for the British they are Governed by these Lunatics, who would only insist that it’s a clean blade which they place at the throats of the unbelievers.
Tony Blair and his ilk are practicing the age old Islamic art of Al Taqia on the uninformed citizens of the UK, you know they are lying to your face whenever their pursed Dhimmi lips are moving. For Ramadan to be considered an innovator in any century but the 7th , is a pure lie perpetrated on the masses by the insane fringes that exist throughout all of Western society. This sick nonsense must end before it’s too late to save what is left of our own culture. It’s further proof we in the west are hell bent on following down the path of the Roman Empire and believing ourselves to be so enlightened that we commit Cultural suicide on mass. British elites are leading their unsuspecting and involuntary citizens into Eurabia, after all why should a few Bombs get in the way of Islamic expansion throughout the British Isles and beyond.

Posted by: sul3j at August 27, 2005 5:21 PM

Academics world wide have their rear ends engaged rather than their brains, its insane! I suppose one good thing can come out of it, Australia (my home) already accepts heaps of people from Muslim countries (pity about the intake of Muslims), a few indigenous infidel English coming over (fleeing Muslim takeover) here might eventually wake up our population to the dangers of Islam. As it is, the London bombings have stirred up a hornets nest over here, in relation to what people think of Islam (probably even more so than 9/11, which doesn’t surprise me, as the media etc couldn’t write it off to “US Foreign Policy’)

I just hope that when the English do flee (oh and in my book Muslims ain’t English) they leave all their stupid academics in England, so that they can experience one of their many paper theories in reality, (that is the Utopia of Muslim rule). I’m sure those academics will appreciate their daughters being raped, turned into sex slaves/slaves in general, being a multiple wife to one husband, having to walk behind their husbands, being beaten by the husband if he “fears disloyalty”, all this from the age of six mind you!

Oh and those very academics will also be proud when their sons partake in this evil.

The academics are as bad as Islam.

Posted by: 3rdtimelucky at August 27, 2005 5:23 PM

sul3j, sad thing is, it was cultural diversity that ripped the Roman Empire apart in the end, and our western leaders can't see it. Nor can they see how the Roman Empire was more often than not, ruled with "an iron fist".

Posted by: 3rdtimelucky at August 27, 2005 5:27 PM

One disquieting subtext here is that Tariq Ramadan was invited by Notre Dame, a Catholic university in the USA, to be part of an inter-faith symposium. Faculty there (and a good many students too no doubt) probably think Bush was behaving "chillingly like Hitler" in denying Tariq his visa so he could "build bridges" with all the touchy-feely Catholic professors and students in the heartland.

Posted by: Dr. Pepper at August 27, 2005 5:43 PM

Dr Pepper, soon Notre Dame won´t be catholic, he is against the teachings of the church, it´s pro-abortion, pro-gays and other things. I am angry too and many catholics for that invitation but it was refused to go in, thanks to God.

Posted by: Franze at August 27, 2005 6:08 PM

So one of the sons of the founding father of the Muslim brotherhood, is to get a visiting professorship at Oxford. Amazing. I expected this from Cambridge.

Meanwhile not ONE fanatic muslim cleric has been deported from Britain. Bakri the only one, left of his own accord, and may yet be back, and there is nothing the Home Office can do to prevent him.

I wonder where Britain misplaced its sovereignty. Has this bit of paper got lost somewhere or what?

As both the US and France refused entry to Ramadan, then surely the Home Office should ask why, that two nations with opposing views on the WoT, should refuse Ramadan entry.

But Ramadan apparantly is that much sought after "muslim moderate". Maybe Oxford has been given a grant to study this much sought after creature.

Now I have been aware of the civilisational threat of Islam since June 1967. Yet till around 2001, I had never come across a reference to moderate muslims. Googling the term "moderate muslim", the overwhelming hits were post 9/11. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the term "moderate muslim" is a very recent invention, and has no real historical basis. It also appears that "moderate muslim" is an invention of Daniel Pipes, very much I believe, to fullfill a requirement of the US administration to enable its post 9/11 ME policy.

But let us wait for the Oxford study on Ramadan to come out.

And BTW - A Muslim scholar is a contradiction in terms.

Posted by: DP111 at August 27, 2005 6:59 PM

That there is a moderate islam,
this is what the academanians,
hopeless enmessed
in a great net of denial,
desparately want to believe
about the believers of islam.

Why? because they are afraid,
they have deconstructed their world to nothing,
and have become philosopher charlatans,
cowards who follow nihilism blindly
down a garden path to their death:
the death of truth,
the death of decency,
the death of the Free,
Who embrace the enemy
with a soft sucking kiss
while skeletons dance and
hiss there is no good,no evil,
no levels of goodness,
no nadir of badness.

I pray these scholars will awaken
from their dreams of drama and angst,
come down from their ivory towers,
join the stream of humanity
they so disdain. It will be their gain.
If not, then they are the true fools
who will find their hallowed halls
invaded with termites from the east
who will embedd themselves in the timbers
and eat slowly and methodically for allah
until the magnificient structures fall down.

Tariq Ramadan is a master
in the muslim brotherhood,
educated in western ways,
perfector of obscuration,
facile consumate practioner
of jihad by the tongue.

Be aware, Oxford, beware!

Posted by: the poetess at August 27, 2005 9:37 PM

"to get a visiting professorship at Oxford..."
-- from a posting above

Not a "visiting professorship." Please note that Ramadan will be a visiting fellow at that by-now suspect place, the Middle East Centre at St. Antony's College. This is not exactly Christ Church or Balliol. St. Antony's is a graduates-only college. It began only in 1957, with money left to Oxford by Anton (Antoine) Besse, a Jewish trader in Aden, whose name was thus humorously memorialized in the name "St. Antony's." St. Antony's has two entirely separate enterprises. There is the perfectly decent East European/Russian Studies Centre. There is the Middle East Centre, much more doubtful, much more tendentious, and in scholarly production far inferior not only to the East European/Russian side (a few of those on that side of St. Antony's have apparently "learned about Islam" -- quite innocently -- from their mendacious colleagues at the Middle East Centre -- one thinks of the wisdom now being dispensed about Islam by Timothy Garton Ash), but to every other department at Oxford, or so it seems to an outside observer. Virtually from its inception the MIddle East Centre was headed by Albert Hourani, a plausible and worldly non-Muslim who appeared to be like a plump abbot in a monastery dispensing favors, and his favors were always to fellow Arabs, Muslims, and non-Muslim sympathizers and fellow-travellers. Not exactly an islamochristian of the Naim Ateek-Hanan Ashrawi school, Hourani nonetheless was possessed of ethnic pride, an ethnic pride that made him a defender of Islam and a promoter, though a sly one, of the Lesser Jihad against Israel in the pre-OPEC days when that was the only Jihad in town. In other words, Hourani was no Charles Malik, nor Habib Malik, come to think of it. HIs book "A History of the Arab Peoples" is a not-always-subtle bit of special pleading -- note, by the way, the plural "Arab Peoples" which is designed, one suspects, to avoid writing "the Arab people" or "the Arab nation" with all that that would imply for Western sympathizers for the recently-invented "Palestinian people." No fool, Hourani. If you wish to see his like dealt with appropriately, see the website www.eccelibano.blogspost.com.

The Middle East Centre at St. Antony's is well-known for er for churning out degreed "scholars" who never mention Islam, who apparently think Islam is irrelevant, and who have a very few interests -- Egypt, a little, but mostly, overwhelmingly, the issue of "Palestine" and the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the "construction of the Palestinian identity." Possibly 90% of the work done there until very recently was centered on this topic. Not the role of Islam in explaining virtually everything about Arab attitudes, Arab atmospherics, even such movements that seem to be alternatives to pan-Islam, such as Nasserism and Ba'athism, as two variants of pan-Arabism, in fact are deeply implicated in, and can not be explained without, a knowledge of Islam and its role. But St. Antony's Middle East Centre is peopled with those whose Elizabethen stagecraft tends to famously putting on Hamlet without the Prince. Besides, after 1967, there was important construction work to do, and you could practically hang a sign outside the outer door:

Men At Work: Construction of Palestinian Identity (A Hard-Hat, Soft-Head Site).

It was fun while it lasted, but the Lesser Jihad against Israel has now been joined by the Greater Jihad against Everyone Else, and eventually those who make up that "everyone else" are going to figure out what that relentless war on Israel is all about, and why it has nothing to do with the implausible "Palestinian people" or their "legitiimate rights" or still more silly and ahistorical, "occupied Arab [sic] land." It will take a bit to undo the misconceptions of the last few decades -- the Israelis may be the last to confront their own reality, given their penchant for denying their real sitatuion -- but it will come, if for no other reason than conceptual clarity about Islam, its tenets, its attitudes, the immutability of its canonical texts, is now for the Western world, and for much of the rest of the Infidel world, a matter that is no longer one that one may study or choose to ignore -

Does it come as a surprise to learn that one Rashid Khalidi arrived from Beirut, where he had been doing p.r. for the PLO, and became a student at St. Antony's, where he could promptly write a "thesis" (if you want samples of Khalidi's "scholarship" just google him -- it is all too absurd and too painful for me even to list the kind of "Palestinian identity" crap he has been turning out for years). Remember, all you need for the D.Phil. is a thesis, not course work. So the Arabs of St. Antony's, and the non-Arab apologists -- J. B. Kelly once called Roger Owen, once a lowly lecturer or fellow at St. Antony's who somehow managed to become that appetizing thing, a Full Professor (and the A. J. Meyer Professor of Middle Eastern something or other), though as J. B. Kelly once told me, Owen in his St. Antony's days was a "PLO groupie."

Now that Hourani is dead, the dismal place -- not St. Antony's but the Middle East Centre part of it -- seems to be in the hands of the deplorable Avi Shlaim, who was Court Jew to Hourani and one of those Israeli "revisionists" -- for more on Shlaim, read the evisceration by Ephraim Karsh.

So let's get it straight. Muslim apologists at St. Antony's have managed to get Tariq Ramadan -- whose jig is up in France and in Switzerland, and elsewhere on the Continent -- a visiting fellowhsip. Big Deal.

Oh, and how was it that Tariq Ramadan's jig was up? How did this soft-spoken, mild-mannered, plausible-to-unwary-and-stupid-Infidels manage to have his little game put paid to, so that he seeks fresh fields and pastures new along the Cherwell, possibly with a little welcoming dinner from his fellow conspirators at The Elizabeth?

Four reasons:

1. The book "Frere Tariq" by Catherine Fourest, that exposted in gruesome detail the nonsense and lies and half-truths -- bref, the taqiyya -- of Ramadan's long career.

2. The televised debate with Nicholas Sarkozy, which left Tariq Ramadan looking as sinister as he is.

3. The televised debate with Alain Finkielkraut, which was still worse for Ramadan, becuase he appeared not only as sinister as he is, but he appeared stupid as well, a clumsy liar, a confused liar and propagandist. He was left in the dust by the suave and well-prepared Finkielkraut.

4. The "Lettera aperta" addressed to Ramadan by Magdi Allam as one of the two appendices to Allam's book "Vincere la paura" (Defeating, or Overcoming, Fear). Egyptian by birth, Muslim by upbringing and by continued identification, Magdi Allam is a commentator on Islam for both the RAI (the Italian state television, which has several channels -- Rai Uno, Rai Due, Rai Tre, Rai Quattro) and is also a writer (and editor), formerly in the leftist La Repubblica and now in the rightist Corriere della Sera. Magdi Allam (who for the past few years has been accompanied at all times by several bodyguards after Muslim threats) writes in this "Lettera Aperta" to Tariq Ramadan, more or less thusly: "You don't fool me. I was born and raised in Cairo. I know your connections in Europe to the Muslim Brotherhood. I know whom you talk to, what you write and recite in your Arabic-language lectures. You can fool the Infidels. But you can't fool me." And there is much more, said obviously much more completely and eloquently.

And it is that quartet -- Catherine Fourest, Nicholas Sarkozy, Alain Finkielkraut, and Magdi Allam -- who have ended the career in France and Switzerland, of Tariq Ramadan as a spokesman for "moderate" Islam, for a "European" Islam (what the hell is that supposed to mean? Would there be different versions of Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira? Of course not. What it seems to mean is that the suave (or at least he thinks he is suave because he speaks softly, and with a more-in-sorrow expressiveness, of the "why-can't-we-all-get-along: variety that is used to turn every so-called Interfaith Dialogue into an exercise in Muslim Apologetics, warmly participated in by the Christians and Jews ignogrant enough, and silly or malevolent enough, to participate enthusiastically).

The Administratio knows a good deal more -- may know as much as Magdi Allam, even -- about Tariq Ramadan's ties to the organization that his father supported, and his grandfather Hassan al-Banna founded -- the Muslim Brotherhood. If the simpleton Scott Appleby knows nothing about this, or does not care to know, or thinks knowing it does not matter, and if others at Notre Dame are willing to play games with our safety, our security, our civilisation, so that they may preen themselves on their own tolerance -- well, they can go to their holier-than-thou hells in a handbasket of their third-world choice. We don't have to take it.

Now comes Avi Shlaim and company at St. Antony's, which let me repeat is not exactly, in the pecking order, somewhere up with Christ Church or Balliol. No, its Middle East Centre has produced nothing of value in the subject that matters most -- the study of Islam. Along with Hourani, its other famous apologist for Islam and for the Arabs was Elisabeth MOnroe, whose outrages at the TLS --where anonymous reviewers savaged the decent scholars of Islam, Arabs, and the MIddle East for years, without having to own up to it -- was one of the main reassons why a number of people campaigned to end anonymous reviewing at the TLS, and won. I believe that J. B. Kelly, Ann Lambton, Bernard Lewis, Kenneth Minogue, Donald Watt, and the late Elie Kedourie were some of those who fought to rip away the despotic regime, in Middle Eastern matters, of Elisabeth Monroe. And did. But Elisabeth Monroe, that horror, was deeply involved with that place which outsiders may be impressed with, but those in the know despite -- the MIddle East Centre at St. Antony's. Don't give it a thought. It has almost nothing to do with the best of Oxford. Possibly, tellingly, someone at the level of Tom Paulin takes it seriously. That's about it.

Posted by: Hugh at August 27, 2005 10:05 PM

Illuminating post, Hugh. Thank you. I have a daughter who may be heading for a top uni in a couple of years time (one can only hope) and this article stopped me in my tracks.

DP111 - re the 'moderate Muslim'. Have you read this article in an Aussie newspaper by one of their most well-known Western-designated 'moderate Muslims', Waleed Aly, who demolishes the concept of the 'moderate Muslim'. Lawrence Auster also discusses it on his site (amnation.com/vfr, 27th August, 3rd post)

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/the-clash-of-ignorance/2005/08/06/1123125843879.html

"In fact, to be labelled a moderate Muslim is offensive in the way it is to be called a moderate intellect. It carries with it the connotation that one’s faith is somehow diluted."

Posted by: Silvester at August 28, 2005 3:58 AM

That other so-called scholar al-Qaradawi who has been invited to Londonistan by Mayor Ken has supposedly been the "moderate" Ramadam's mentor. Among al-Qaradawi's beliefs are
1. The killing of homosexuals to keep society pure.
2. The killing of Apostates.
3. The killing of all Israelis, including children.
4. The mutiliation of women's genitals.

Posted by: londongirl at August 28, 2005 7:54 AM

"I have a daughter who may be heading for a top uni in a couple of years time (one can only hope) and this article stopped me in my tracks."
-- from a posting above

It shouldn't. The Middle East Centre at St. Antony's is a most particular place and situation, with a particular history --"particular" in the Italian "una giornata particolare" sense, but with nothing positive about it.

The phrase "top uni" worries. The whole marketing business of universities, the newsweeklies' rankings, the attempt to make customers (at least in the U.S.) positively grateful to be charged $40,000 per annum for what should, in a well-run universe, be free to all who can take advantage of it, and the observation that it is at those places described as "top unis" that are often the worst offenders -- send a kid to Princeton, and she may get Cornel West, to Harvard, Homi Bhabha, to Columbia, practically anyone at the MEALAC program will be a complete waste of time, a guide to nothing and nowhere.

But at Oxford, some colleges for undergraduates and graduates have been better at preserving standards than at the tendentious and embarrassing Middle East Centre. For all I know, a fresh infusion of Arab money, now sloshing about everywhere, made that Ramadan appointment possible. Let's not forget the deplorable "Said School of Business" which now sits in Oxford, dumbing-down the whole place -- yes, there goes the neighborhood, and what is it, pray tell, this year's fashion at business schools? It can't be Total Quality Control, for that's so yesterday and so Japanese, it can't be Barriers to Competition, because that's so day-before-yesterday (except perhaps in Kazakhstan, where the Michael Porter enterprise did manage to get one last good deep-pocketed gullible government to pay for a recent hasty lecture or two). So what is it -- "The World Is Flat" Friedmanesque crap? What's the latest little fashion in businss school crap these days? Well, even so, the Said Business School probably does less harm than the late soft-voiced liquid brown-eyed hysteric Edward Said.

I wouldn't worry about sending your daughter to a "top" or "untop" university as long as you thoroughly investigate her likely teachers. If interested in what must apparently be called the Humanities look for the teachers who teach, not the Morris-Zapp figures who get grants, and whirl from conference to conference, from nubile graduate student to nubile graduate student. Fads, French and otherwise, are a dead giveaway -- sometimes the course descriptions, with such words as "neocolonialism" or "privilege" used as a verb, can tell you all you need to know. A list of authors that goes "Shakespeare, Dickens, Toni Morrison" should also make that course off-limits. Talk about eusdem generis! Just the books, ma'am. Just the books and the words. Thirty years ago there was that play "No Sex Please -- We're British." Well, no literary theory please -- we're intelligent.

So only take the above to be a comment on how pitifully unimpressive that appointment is. Not to say that Ramadan should be anywhere outside the Middle East (yes, I know he was born in Geneva -- so what?). Let him create a "new Islam" in Egypt, or Jordan, or Saudi Arabia. That's where he belongs. Permanently.

Posted by: Hugh at August 28, 2005 7:55 AM

I can't see that he is creating anything "new" - only regurgitating the same medieval nonsense as a cursory glance at any of his writings will demonstrate.

Posted by: londongirl at August 28, 2005 8:09 AM

Maybe Red Ken will offer Ramadan a flu shot.

This might be off topic but Red Ken has decided that of the less than 2% of British citizens qualify for protection from "bird flu," his staff should receive the shots.

MEMBERS of Britain’s elite have been selected as priority cases to receive scarce pills and vaccinations at the taxpayers’ expense if the country is hit by a deadly bird flu outbreak.
Workers at the BBC and prominent politicians — such as cabinet ministers — would be offered protection from the virus.

Ken Livingstone, the London mayor, has already spent £1m to make sure his personal office and employees have their own emergency supplies of 100,000 antiviral tablets.

If there is an avian flu pandemic in the coming months there would be enough drugs to protect less than 2% of the British population for a week.

The Department of Health has drawn up a priority list of those who would be first to receive lifesaving drugs. Top of the list are health workers followed by those in key public sector jobs.

Although senior government ministers would be among the high-priority cases, the department said this weekend that it had not decided whether to include opposition politicians.

BBC employees would be protected because the corporation is required to broadcast vital information during a national disaster.

Politicians and the media have been placed before sick patients, heavily pregnant women and elderly people by government planners.

Yesterday, leading BBC presenters were surprised to learn that they would be given preferential treatment. Jeff Randall, the BBC’s business editor, said: “Are you really telling me that I am on a priority list for bird flu jabs? Marvellous. I always knew there would be an advantage from working at the BBC.”

John Humphrys, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, said: “I think if I were offered the jab I would probably pass it on to someone 40 years younger than me.”

Nick Clarke, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s World at One, said: “I’m sure I wouldn’t qualify. My programme has news and comment and the one thing you can do without in a pandemic is comment . . . They would want to have Huw Edwards and reassuring newsreaders on radio.”

Fears that a “doomsday” virus may sweep the world have been heightened by the recent spread of the lethal strain of avian flu, H5N1. The death toll, estimated at 120, has been of people whose work brought them into close contact with infected birds. Scientists have warned that millions could die if H5N1 mutates.

The Department of Health would not currently be able to cope with such an onslaught. Although it has ordered 14.6m doses of Tamiflu, an antiviral drug thought to be effective against the H5N1 strain, only 900,000 doses are in stock so far. The full supply will not be delivered until March 2007, at a total cost of about £100m.

Besides the NHS and BBC, firemen, police and the armed forces are among those listed in the two top-priority groups to receive the vaccine.

Posted by: DavidE at August 28, 2005 8:34 AM

Dear Al Hourani was such a compulsive apologist for all sorts of Arab and Islamist excesses. He practically deified George Antonius, this was after Antonius' big book on Arab nationalism, The Arab Awakening, had been taken apart by George Kirk, Elie Kedourie, and others.
As to British pro-Arabism and pro-Islamism, I have a book written by Egyptian Copts before WW One. They were complaining already at that time that the British were discriminating against the Copts in favor of Muslims. Britain showed a clear pro-Muslim policy when --in about 1920-- the Supreme Allied Council [I believe that was the body's name], including Britain-- told the Greeks to stop their advance in Anatolia [see Lord Kinross' biog of Ataturk]. Thus, the Greeks did not take Angora [Ankara] and stopped on a line that was hard to defend. In 1922, the Greeks were driven out of Anatolia altogether; that included one or two million Greek civilians, not to mention the massacre of Armenians in Smyrna, described by George Horton and Marjorie Housepian. Arnold Toynbee was an advocate of the switch in British policy, despite his being well informed about the Armenian massacres ongoing since 1915. Toynbee's institution, the Royal Institute for International Affairs, has been a center of pro-Arab, pro-Islamist propaganda [one would not call it scholarship] since the twenties. Just look at --and listen to-- those well and expensively dressed Arab women from the RIIA who get on the BBC and CNN as unchallenged experts. Now London has a repulsive pro-Islamofascist, Judeophobic mayor, plus a pro-Islamofascist member of commons, George Galloway, who apparently couldn't get reelected in his home district in Scotland. I recently read about an organizing conference held in Egypt for a common front of the Euro "Left" and the Islamofascists and Arab nationalists. Tony Benn and Galloway were there, I believe. Does anybody know whether any Western participant asked the Egyptian govt about the dreadful situation of the Copts?

Posted by: Eliyahu at August 28, 2005 8:57 AM

"Toynbee's institution, the Royal Institute for International Affairs, has been a center of pro-Arab, pro-Islamist propaganda [one would not call it scholarship] since the twenties..."
-- from a posting above

No one takes Toynbee seriously, but at one time he was quite a Book-of-the-Month Club sensation. Sometime in the early 1950s a conference of historians was held to discuss Toynbee's work. One after the other each got up. "Well, his work on other things may be acceptable, but he doesn't know a thing about ancient Assyria," said the Assyriologist. "Well, he may know all about other things, but he gets ancient China all wrong," said the Sinologist. And so it went, one after the other.

That Royal Institute of International Affairs, under Toynbee -- who detested Judaism as a "fossil religion" (as opposed to the ever-vibrant Islam) and of course Israel -- known popularly as Chatham House, got the Middle East so wrong, so consistently and totally wrong, that Elie Kedourie titled one of his books of essays "The Chatham House Version." That version had nothing to do with the reality that Kedourie, the driest and most impeccable and scrupulous of schoalrs, and a native of Baghdad, knew so well.

Still another critic of Toynbee worth remembering is Maurice Samuel, who wrote "The Professor and the Fossil" about, precisely, Toynbee's antisemitism, and its workings-out in his animadversions on history.

Toynbee's grand-daughter Polly contributes to The Guardian and is distinctly unsympathetic to Israel. Yet she has also more recently come around to seeing, or beginning to comprehend, what Islam is all about, and has even been labelled "Islamophobic." Just possibly she may --it would take a real understanding of Islam -- come to see that Israel is under siege, a siege that is not a matter of the recently-invented "Palestinian people" (of whom there was no mention prior to the Israeli victory in the Six-Day War) and their so-called "national aspirations" (which seems so soothing, so plausible, so much more limited a goal than the limitless goal of Jihad conducted with whatever instruments come to hand until Islam covers the globe).

I doubt she will get far enough to see that that is what the Israelis -- more than half of whom by the way come from the Middle East itself (and has she studied where the "Palestinian" Arabs came from -- such places as Algeria, Egypt, and Ottoman-ruled Europe -- which do not entitle them to claim to have lived in "Palestine" since "time immemorial"? But to find out about that, one would have to read all sorts of books, and thta takes time).

Anyway, that's a little bit to add on the Toynbees and on Chatham House.

Posted by: Hugh at August 28, 2005 2:32 PM

At a medium-level American university, I took several courses from a brilliant professor who was chairman of the Comparative Religions department and on the board of the Comparative Literature department (now retired from both positions) and who is fluent in Italian, French, German and has sufficient mastery of Latin to have read Aquinas's entire Summa. Not only did I learn from his class directly related to Islam that Islam expanded by apparently non-violent osmosis, but to my further dismay years later, he published an article in a local city newspaper shortly after 911 in which he repeated the mantra, which he must have imbibed in Academe during his formative years and never questioned, that the true tradition of Islam is one of "openness" and "tolerance".

Posted by: Dr. Pepper at August 28, 2005 4:03 PM

"He was recently appointed to a prestigious chair in Islamic studies in the University of Notre Dame in the US."

What is there to 'study' about Islam, especially at a university like Notre Dame? And if they are 'studying' it, what conclusions are they comming to? How long has this been going on? What thave they found out? Anything new?
It really does not take much to be a muslim. Just believe that there is no illah but Allah,and Mohammad is his messenger, do the prayers, pay the tax, bow in homage and renounce agreements with Jews (Tabari). Thats it, anyone can do it...how much 'study' does that take?
And to have a "prestigious chair"...Every one should have one of those...Mine leans back and a foot support comes up to rest those tired dogs.
Perfect for drinking beer and watching wrestling on tv...

Posted by: duh_swami at August 28, 2005 4:38 PM

duh_swami

There is a mountain of complex details in the history and religious rules of Islam. The famous British Orientalist Sir Richard Burton was the first non-Muslim to visit Mecca in 1853, and in order to do so, he had to pretend to be an Afghan Muslim and he had to learn hundreds, maybe thousands, of complicated details because, if he had been found out to be a non-Muslim in the middle of Mecca, he would have been torn to pieces by a mob carrying out the official law of Islam that no Infidel may set foot in Mecca on pain of death (another of their demonstrations of their "tolerance").

Posted by: Dr. Pepper at August 28, 2005 6:32 PM

Silvester:

Many thanks for the link.

Hugh:

Very informative article. Thanks.

Posted by: DP111 at August 28, 2005 7:17 PM

I bookmarked a link to prayer instructions because the instructions are so absurd and detailed. Do not think, let your brain become mush:

Prayer Instructions

Posted by: pedestrian infidel at August 28, 2005 7:44 PM

"not exactly, in the pecking order, somewhere up with Christ Church or Balliol"

Point taken, but how many of the ordinary infidels will realise this. Again perception, perception, perception, or that so often used quote 'real, feigned or imagined'- substance has no place in this debate, or rather the drive for accommodation with our muslim guests.

This is harmful, even the tabloids picked up on Ramadan after 7/7, where do they or anyone else on this stand now? Explain that Oxford has its good, the bad and now very ugly? Which ever way you cut this, this gives Ramadan credence on the BBC and many other outlets, which will no doubt seek his 'opinion' on why muslims behave as they do, and have the lacquer of 'Oxford' all of which propelling the myth of it's nothing to do with islam, it's centuries of western domination stupid or whatever.

It's the same story with Cat Stevens if one recalls - when barred from the US, Straw on Question time lambasted the US - 'Outrageous, how can there a dialogue when people like him are barred?' Of course the money sent to terrorists, and Cat Stevens' evil vindictive (in Arabic of course) on Israel mean nothing to him. There must be 'dialogue' - it doesn't matter if it's a hudna and ruinous in the long term.

From friends of Europe - "The treatment of Turkey's hopes of joining the European Union will be an "acid test" of Europe's ability to counter the myth it is doomed to conflict with Islam, Jack Straw, the UK foreign secretary, said on Tuesday." and "to demonstrate its values were shared with moderate Muslim countries."
It's no longer just Chirac now, of course this is being touted for just 'domestic' reasons, yes of course Al Guardian but be more specific on what the French, dutch and a whole host of others are fearing, domestically. It even got to the point where Straw refused point blank to have any debate with other EU members over their concerns over Turkey - stuff the icebergs, full speed ahead.

In the imediate aftermath of 21/7 a gov. spokesman on BBC was reputed (by a reporter) to reject a blanket ban on muslim immigration to the UK on the grounds that it would have a drepressing effect on our guests.

Later on 4/8 Straw stated "“One of the things we've got to do is give these leaders the confidence to face down terrorism justified by Islam,”. This is as close one could get to an admission of what the real problem is, but again no intellectual argument on how this is going to be facilitated. How is Ramadan going to rectify this?

(Another interesting comment from Straw - “Palestinians know they can kiss goodbye to a separate state” if the “fantastic opportunity” offered by the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza does not work. can it be slowly sinking in or is he just thinking he can nudge his scheme along by reading the riot act?)

I've got a feeling that Ramadan will be more carefull in what he says from now on, this will make him even more of a dangerous opponent. History has shown that from the point of view of infidels, war is always preferable to a hudna.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2005/August/theworld_August146.xml§ion=theworld&col=

JV

Posted by: jv at August 28, 2005 9:34 PM

sul3j:

Prime Minister Blair, Princess Blair, Bush's Poodle, call him what you will, is the worst PM in my lifetime! He continues to insist on caving in to Muslims. For example, he is determined to pass legislation to rob the Brits of their free speech, thereby making it impossible to criticise Islam.

He is a boy in man's clothing! Doesn't the saying go something like this: If he walks like a schoolboy, if he talks like a schoolboy, if he acts like a schoolboy, if he looks like a schoolboy, then he probably IS a schoolboy!

He's probably the best-paid schoolboy around. The quintessential apologist for Islam and Muslims. A greenhorn - a 'leader' hell-bent on destroying the very essence of what it means to be British!

Churchill must be turning in his grave!

Posted by: Mark at August 29, 2005 10:26 AM

Hugh: there is another point about St.Anthony's Middle Eastern Institute: it is redundant. Oxford already had an Oriental Institute, a splendid little faculty including some of the leading scholars in all oriental cultures (one leading member was the late Michael Aris, husband of the heroic Aung San Suu Ky) and of some of the most ancient Oriental chairs in Britain - from the Regius Professorship of Hebrew, established in 1488, to the Boden Professorship of Sanskrit, created for Max Mueller in 1867. Small problem: this institution has a tradition of vigorous independence. It takes money from whoever wants to contribute, but does not take orders. I have seen this close at hand. So it figures that any Muslims who might want influence in one of Europe's leading universities would take his money elsewhere.

Posted by: Paolo at August 29, 2005 10:57 AM