Blame The Beheading Of Lee Rigby On Madness Not Muslims- Says Russell Brand

In response to the beheading of Lee Rigby in Woolwich, England, actor Russell Brand (who himself looks a bit loony) posted on his Twitter feed:

“That bloke is a nut. A nut who happens to be Muslim. Blaming Muslims for this is like blaming Hitler’s moustache for the Holocaust.”

As a result of some Twitter flak for his comment, he wrote a piece for The Sun, explaining why he feels we need to blame the barbaric act on "madness not Muslims." Acknowledging his "Hitler's moustache" analogy was "glib" and "imperfect", he goes on to justify why we shouldn't blame this on religion.

There is something about the arbitrary brutality, humdrum High Street setting and the cool rhetoric of the blood-stained murderer that evokes a powerful and inherently irrational response.

When I heard the word “beheading” I felt the atavistic grumble that we all feel.

This is inhumane, taboo, not a result of passion but of malice — ritualistic. “If this is happening to guiltless men on our streets it could happen to me,” I thought. Then I watched the mobile phone clip.

In spite of his dispassionate intoning the subject is not rational.

Of course he’s not rational, he’s just murdered a stranger in the street, he says, because of a book.

In my view that man’s severely mentally ill and has found a convenient conduit for his insanity — in this case the Koran.

In the case of another mentally ill and desperate man — Mark Chapman — it was The Catcher In The Rye. This was the nominated text for his rationalisation of the murder of John Lennon in 1980.

He claims he's read Catcher in the Rye and some of the Quran and nothing in either compelled him "to do violence." That's because he says he's not nuts, but it's also because he's not Muslim. I understand his appeal for calm to prevent retaliatory attacks, even Rigby's family said as much, but denying it has anything to do with religion is very dangerous. The hundreds of thousands of militant, radical extremists around the world (some of whom live in England) who incite violence, or kill in the name of Allah can't all be mad.

So maybe we shouldn't blame it on Muslims, but we sure as heck can blame it on  Islam.

Read his whole commentary here.

Video: Pat Condell "Muslims Must Reject Jihad"

In response to the murder of soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich, Pat Condell's latest- Muslims must reject armed jihad.

As always, spot on.

Anti-Muslim Twitter and Facebook Posts Land Brits In Jail

Instead of muzzling and jailing the radical Muslims spewing hate and oftentimes inciting violence, the Brits are now arresting people who are criticizing the haters.  What happened to soldier Lee Rigby is outrageous, especially considering the circumstances. Yes, we have the right to be angry and comment on his brutal murder, but the people in England aren't allowed to do that.

Apparently three men were arrested after posting to Twitter and Facebook what were deemed to be racist and/or anti-Muslim comments regarding the Woolwich murder.

One man has been charged with "malicious communications" on Facebook, the Daily Mail reports.

Two others have been arrested under the Public Order Act on suspicion of inciting racial or religious hatred. The police are now arresting people based on mere speech in social media, a detective said in a statement to the press:

'The men were arrested under the Public Order Act on suspicion of inciting racial or religious hatred. Our inquiries into these comments continue.

'These comments were directed against a section of our community. Comments such as these are completely unacceptable and only cause more harm to our community in Bristol.

'People should stop and think about what they say on social media before making statements as the consequences could be serious.'

Of course, it was British Muslims who demanded the arrests, but where is their outrage and condemnation for what happened to Rigby?

 And what about arrests of Muslims who call for the death of infidels?

Those in the above photo are the kind of people who turn into animals like the butchers who killed Rigby. Why aren't they being detained.  Instead people who are angered by the senseless act of violence perpetrated in the name of Islam are the ones being targeted. Two of the men arrested were taken in the middle of the night:

"We began inquiries into the comments and at around 3.20am two men, aged 23 and 22, were detained at two addresses in Bristol.

"The men were arrested under the Public Order Act on suspicion of inciting racial or religious hatred. Our inquiries into these comments continue."

Muslims need to be equally outraged by the evil that some of their fellow Muslims do, and the British government needs to start becoming more pro-active and arresting those that are truly inciting and perpetrating hate and violence, not the ones reacting to it.

Home Secretary Theresa May has threatened to ban on-line extremist Islamists and radical groups, but  that will probably never happen.

Source: Yahoo

Mehdi Hasan: Muslim Apologist Regarding The Woolwich Butchers

So we have enlightened Muslims like Tarek Fatah who believes that Islam needs to evolve if the world is to survive the 21st century; and one of the only ways that will happen is if Islam renounces the doctrine of  jihad. On the other hand we have Muslim apologists like Mehdi Hasan- the political director of the Huffington Post UK- who refuses to accept that there are evil Muslims in the world who are killing in the name of Allah. This is exactly the type of Muslim Fatah condemns.

Hasan's response to the two Muslims who butchered a young soldier in Woolwich, England is the polar opposite of Fatah's.  Hasan, like most Muslims, is in denial. Quoting the Quran (Chapter 5 verse 32) "Whosoever killeth a human being it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind," he then launches into a lecture on how these two "supposedly" Muslim men "suspected of ambushing, murdering and mutilating an unarmed, off-duty soldier" while shouting "Allaho Akbar" were "brazenly violating the injunction of their own holy book."  As if they (and all their fellow extremists who wantonly kill) weren't actually Muslims at all. And "suspected" of murdering?  No allegations here, they were caught red-handed in their barbaric act. Unlike Fatah who says enough with the 'armed jihad', Hasan condones jihad, as per his religion, "in self defence and if sanctioned by a legitimate government."

Unlike most Muslims, Fatah believes these terrorist attacks do have a basis in Islam:

As a Muslim, I can say without fear, the latest terror attack has a basis in Islam and it's time for us Muslims to dig our heads out of the sand.

Hasan represents those who believe they don't.

Yet conventional wisdom still says the religion of Islam is behind violent extremism and radicalisation; that Muslims don't do enough to denounce terror; that imams and mosques incite hate and holy war. As is so often the case, the conventional wisdom is wrong. I have been a Muslim all my life and visited mosques across Europe, North America and the UK. Never, not once, have I come across an imam preaching violence against the West or justifying the murder of innocents.

Then he brings up Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik.

Many of my fellow Muslims want consistency from politicians and the press. When Anders Breivik, self-styled member of an 'international Christian military order', massacred 77 innocent Norwegians, most them children, in July 2011, did we indict Christianity? Sadly, we hold Islam and Muslims to a separate standard - despite the fact that, nowadays, (self-) radicalisation tends to be an online phenomenon; what the experts call the 'third wave' of al-Qaeda-inspired extremism has no need for either UK mosques or Pakistani training camps.

There is no consistency, so to speak, because it doesn't warrant it. Breivik was one case versus how many thousands of incidents, over the years, of Muslims killing others in the name of Allah, including fellow Muslims? No comparison whatsoever.

He then demonstrates classic denial about Islam being responsible for most of the violence in the world, today.

Listen to Olivier Roy, one of Europe's pre-eminent experts on extremism: "The process of violent radicalisation has little to do with religious practice." Read the classified briefing note prepared by the MI5's Behaviourial Science Unit in June 2008. "Far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly," reported the Guardian's Alan Travis, who obtained a copy of the document. "Very few have been brought up in strongly religious households...there is evidence that a well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalisation."

Uh, wrong.  And then:

Yet on TV news channels, on newspaper comment pages, on social networks, everyone is either a terrorism expert, an Islam expert, or both. Some cut and paste verses from the Koran out of context; others unthinkingly demand 'reform' of Islam. Few want to discuss the role of British foreign policy in helping to radicalise these young, disaffected individuals. Meanwhile, former CIA official Marc Sageman says that, "11 and a half years after 9/11, we still don't know" what turns young men towards terror.

I'll tell you this, though: it isn't my faith or the faith of 1.6billion other Muslims. 

Sure, blame it on foreign policy, blame it on anything other than the fact that these animals make a choice, based on Islamic doctrine, to wage armed jihad against anyone they deem to be an infidel. They're not being inspired by the Bible, or the Bhagavad Gita. And it is a choice to self-radicalize or allow oneself to be influenced by some imam in some neighborhood mosque. Although he might not have visited any such mosque during his travels, they do exist.

Until people like Hasan become more like Fatah, we will continue to have a problem with Islam.

Read the full commentary here.

Tarek Fatah: Time To Do Away With Doctrine Of Jihad

We need more Muslims like Canadian writer and anti-jihadist Tarek Fatah. His latest commentary regarding the butchers of Woolwich is a must read. He, in essence, is calling for the modernization of Islam by renouncing the doctrine of  "jihad" in all its manifestations.

When buses and trains exploded on 7/7 in London, the objective of the suicide bombers was to sow fear and terror in the very soul of the British people.

In that the jihadis were successful.

One would have expected the British authorities to not just hunt down the terrorists, but also to fight the cancer of Islamism that lies at the ideological roots of jihadi terrorism. Instead, successive governments in London have tried to pussyfoot around the challenge, hoping the jihadi terrorists and their ideology would melt away with time as Downing Street funded so-called "moderate" Muslim groups and "former" extremists to do the government's bidding.

As the brutal hacking death of a British soldier by two fearless jihadis chanting "Allah O Akbar" has shown, this strategy has failed. Muslims who see the West as the enemy and seek its destruction have become even more emboldened by the lack of resolve, which they see as cowardice. In addition, jihadis in the U.K. are no longer restricted to the second generation Pakistani Britons; they now come from places as far apart as Chechnya and Nigeria.

While the run-of-the-mill jihadi terror attack relies on suicide bombers and remote-controlled improvised explosive devices, Wednesday's attack came straight from medieval times, with the two jihadis using knives and cleavers to hack away at the victim and then beheading him. If this was not enough, they played to the gallery, demanding they be filmed as they chatted with passers-by, proudly defending their actions and promising more attacks on non-Muslims to come.

He also blasts  mainstream Islamic voices for failing to condemn jihad, describing how some did not even bother to mention Islam in their condemnation.

While ordinary Britons and non-Muslims around the world are bewildered by these never-ending acts of terrorism, the response of the leaders of the Islamic community is the tired old cliche -- Islam is a religion of peace, and jihad is simply an "inner struggle."

The fact these terrorists are motivated by one powerful belief -- the doctrine of armed jihad against the "kuffar" (non-Muslims) -- is disingenuously denied by Islamic clerics and leaders.

Read the rest here.  Well worth it.