Can civilisation confront evil?

When Francis Fukuyama said the end of the Cold War was the "end of history" (a claim that no doubt will plague him for the rest of his life), the great hope was that the world was turning back from a blood soaked century of both war and tyranny.   However, just as the Holocaust was not the final word on genocide, the end of the Cold War was not the end of tyranny.

What we are now seeing unfolding in Iraq and Syria, with the self-styled "Islamic State" is the latest incarnation of the philosophical embrace of the idea, common to all tyrants, that human beings do not exist for their own purposes, but are subordinate to the purposes dreamed up by others - to be slaves to a "greater" ideal, that involves the sacrifice of their time, property, passions, morals, beliefs, bodies, families and 

"Islamic State" has goals which are common to that of other eliminationist totalitarians:

- Impose its totalitarian law on areas it occupies, with brutal punishment for transgressions;

- Demand all residents of those areas embrace its ideology;

- Kill those who reject it or who are deemed to be "inferior";

- Enslave selected numbers of those it controls (in this case women it selects for sex slaves);

- Enforced breeding to grow its own numbers and dilute/weaken those it occupies.

It has parallels throughout history.  The Khmer Rouge (which dispatched between 1-2 million by execution or starvation), the Croatian Ustashe (who famously enforced one third of Serbs to be converted to Catholicism, one third deported and one third executed), militarist Japan, Nazi Germany and numerous Marxist-Leninist regimes once embraced by one of Nicky Hager's heroes.

Some may say it's not "our problem", although it is clear that some of the "Islamic State's" murdering hoards hail from the UK, Australia and other Western countries, and it is also clear that the "Islamic State" is getting funding from individuals in a wide range of countries, both Western, but also the hereditary dictatorships that the West has friendly relationships in the Persian Gulf.   It would appear the idle rich in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and the like are quite keen on funding those who behead children and impales their heads on sticks.  

Yes, just consider that, pause for a minute and think about a "militant group" (as is the accepted euphemism nowadays) that executes young children, impales their heads on sticks in a town, to warn of what happens if people do not embrace its totalitarian form of Islam.   Now consider that there are people in your country that are not only not offended by this, but willing to go and help out the killers.  
Furthermore, the Islamic State does not simply want a Caliphate over Iraq and Syria, but across the entire Middle East and seeks to wage jihad against the United States and Britain.  It doesn't just want to "peacefully" impose Shariah law (you know a bit like how the Taliban did in Afghanistan or the Khmer Rouge turned Cambodia's calendar to Year Zero), it wants the world to become a caliphate.

Be clear also that it is very well funded from selling oil from Syrian oil fields and if it gained control of more in Syria and Iraq, it could acquire weapons and have levels of funding the Taliban could only have dreamed of.

So think 9/11, 7/7 and think a level of danger that betrays the head in the sand "libertarians" who think this is a problem in the Middle East that can be ignored.   Even if Israel and the Palestinians signed a peace treaty tomorrow that finalised the "two state solution" (even if Israel was wiped off the map), the "Islamic State" would not hesitate, unlike its brethren Hamas.  Even if all of the Muslim world was run by a Caliphate, it would not hesitate, unlike its brethren Al Qaeda (who disowned it for being "too violent").

These are killers that, unlike the Nazis, unlike the Khmer Rouge and unlike the Rwandan gangs of blood thirsty murderers, gloat over their brutality.  Yes, it isn't just a surreptitious dark eliminationism, it is a loud and proud campaign of slaughter.

Childrens' heads impaled on sticks

That is what is happening, now, in areas ISIS has taken over in Iraq.

Among others, children are getting executed with their entire families, for not converting to Islam, and then getting their heads removed and impaled on sticks placed in towns to warn of what happens to those who do not embrace the "religion of peace".  Apparently 500 women and girls have been taken by ISIS, as rape booty, but I doubt most Western feminists will demand anything be done about that, they'll be worried that there aren't enough women in the board rooms of banks.

That's why it is morally right for the US, indeed for any military force that wishes, to eradicate ISIS.

The Western allies that overthrew Saddam Hussein owe it to Iraq to step in, over the heads of the weak sectarian Shi'a government, and use air power to curtail ISIS, then to fund and arm new Iraqi armed forces, consisting of Shi'a, moderate Sunni and those from other backgrounds, to eradicate this menace.

Meanwhile, the anti-Western, anti-capitalist Amnesty International demands Israel faces an arms embargo, for defending itself against the only part of the Palestinian territories that is attacking it.

Meanwhile, the tens of thousands of supporters of Gaza, march give moral approval to aggressive Islamism, albeit that comparing Hamas to ISIS is like comparing the Green Party to the Khmer Rouge.

If ISIS is not contained and takes control of sufficient oil and gas fields to fund endeavours elsewhere, make no mistake the price of appeasement will be high.

So ISIS must be kicked out of Iraq and, in spite of all that he is, a deal must be struck with Bashar Assad and the secular Syrian opposition, to do the same in Syria in exchange for a truce between Assad and the opposition as a prelude to a federal settlement, elections and his standing down as President.  

and to the appeasing peaceniks who oppose?

Ignore them.

Your intellectual forebears would have had us in a communist one-party state, and before that would have demanded peace with Hitler.  You are not defenders of freedom or civilisation, but appeasers to barbarity, dictatorship and slavery.  

This is a battle between civilisation and barbarity. 

Barbarity that is disowned by Iran (primarily for sectarian reasons), but also disowned by Al Qaeda itself.

There can be no compromise with such evil.  There wasn't with the Nazis or with militarist Japan.

That is the moral clarity behind the fight.  It should be NATO, it should be Arab allies, it should even be Russia, China and India in support (for both dictatorships are themselves threatened by the brethren of ISIS).

However, assuming that little is done, watch and see the world that isolationism brings.

PS: I was going to write a piece critiquing the Green transport of people in cities policy, but that's not remotely important.  

Does Russel Norman want Israel to disappear?

It's not clear, after all Russel Norman could just have been too quick to use the wrong language here but look at this:

"Palestine"...

...not Gaza (which Israel did withdraw from and Hamas subsequently used as a base to attack Israel - i.e. not occupied territories - the internationally recognised land of the state of Israel).  

.. not "the occupied territories" (which still respects a two state solution)...

but "Palestine", which implies the end of the state of Israel completely.  It is the Hamas solution.   Russel is wanting Israel to withdraw and disband according to that tweet.

but then this is contradictory:

So it looks like he accepts a state of Israel here, but how can we be sure?  His tone is so one-sided as to be virulently anti-Israel.  It's so evasive of the facts.

Israel withdrew from Gaza, completely.  

It dismantled Jewish settlements in their entirety, it told the Palestinians they could govern their own affairs. So they elected Hamas, which vowed to destroy Israel and institute an Islamist theocracy (and has not held an election since).  Hamas started shooting rockets into Israel, supplied by Iran (completely ignored in all of the "America arms Israel" rhetoric).  Israel imposed a blockade to stop the rockets getting into Gaza.

Iraq, Iran and what now

The dominant discourse as of late about Iraq has been the opportunity for those who opposed the Western intervention in Iraq to gloat, to repeat the largely vacuous claims that the war was "illegal" (when it was legally authorised by the governments concerned and to grant any legal status to the psychopathic Saddam Hussein regime is to abrogate any notion of needing law at all) and to blame the recent ISIS successes on Tony Blair and GW Bush.

The grain of truth in that is important, but it is not the key point at this stage

It is true that whilst the West was very capable, with aplomb even, in overthrowing the Hussein regime, and indeed few think that was bad in itself (although Saddam Hussein's chief sycophant George Galloway thinks so, but he has since gone on to lick the blood stained boots of Bashar Assad and Vladimir Putin), but was woeful in establishing a new order and constitutional framework on Iraq.  It was completely morally correct to overthrow the regime, which itself broke international law across many fields (international aggression, use and development of weapons of mass destruction and human rights) and was egregiously evil.   However, to expend over US$1 trillion in taxpayers' money and thousands of Western soldiers lives and not have an effective plan for a peaceful future (except for the relatively successful Kurdish region, which had spent over a decade effectively protected by a UNSC endorsed No Fly Zone), was grossly negligent.

It is for that, that Bush, Blair and the supporting leadership of those administrations deserve to be damned.

Let's be clear, had the bulk of Iraqis been imbued with the belief that all other Iraqis, regardless of what sect of Islam they followed (if any) or their background, deserved to live their lives in peace, then it would have been easy.

Islamist censorship is appeased in Britain

So in the past week or so in the UK:

- The Liberal Democrats are debating whether to suspend a Muslim Parliamentary candidate who tweeted a Jesus and Mo cartoon image saying he was not offended by it (and, according to his opponents, using "colourful" language to describe his Islamists opponents).

- Channel 4 and the BBC, both state-owned broadcasters, have refused to broadcast images of the said cartoon, in reporting the story (specifically showing the image with the depiction of Jesus, but concealing the depiction of Mohammed).  The reason given by the BBC was that it would be "gratuitously offensive" to some viewers, yet it was central to understanding what the fuss was about.

This is it...

More on this story here on my UK blog.

Meanwhile, George Galloway, fresh from spreading pro-north Korean propaganda on Russian propaganda channel, RT, is campaigning vehemently against the Liberal Democrat candidate.   There aren't words to describe the creature.

Even a few on the "liberal" left, which has shamefully appeased Islamist views for so long, is finally starting to wake up.

Free speech is under attack, and it is in the heart of the left liberal establishment that the challenge is happening, and they are shaking, shivering and fearful.

For there is no right to be protected from offence in a free society, and the fundamental problem is that the "liberal" left have pushed for laws to essentially do this.  To prohibit views that are offensive to many (and indeed to many libertarians and conservatives too), to seek to socially-engineer views, rather than confront them with debate, boycotts and voluntary action, but to use the state to shut them down.

The problem for them is that in creating this artificial construct, they have deemed it impossible for people of protected "oppressed" groups to be capable of committing the offences they created.  It is why it is politically impossible for many on the left to accept that people of non-European extraction can be racist, or that women can be sexist, or that the religious bigotry of non-Christians (or non-Jews) is a concern.  This doctrine is fed "protected oppressed group" identity students relentlessly, and is seen most recently in the "white privilege", "male privilege" slapdown, designed to shut down debate with a pejorative that implies you are not entitled to participate, because of your background.

Quite simply, until those of the "liberal" left eject this post-modernist collectivist identity politics fantasy, they cannot credibly take Islamists on.

So if those who proclaim opposition to racism, sexism, oppression of homosexuals and promotion of secularism cannot take on an ideology that is racist, sexist, oppresses homosexuality, oppresses any deviation from its religion, then their philosophical foundations are found wanting.

The (last) pope got something right...

(originally 2006)

Now I didn't have much time for Pope Benedict XVI, as I am an atheist and oppose the church's obsession with controlling people's bodies, its fundamental sexism and inability to adequately confront those of its employees who have violently and sexually abused many. 

However, the Pope is a powerful man, one of the most important in Christianity. For all of the flaws of Christianity, precious few Christians engage in violence to gain converts - while many may be offended by media and statements that attack the religion, very few engage in angry rampages of violence and there are precious few examples of modern day Christian militia out to do violence (though they are not unknown in Africa). The time for that is past.

His speech at the University of Regensburg in 2006 has upset Muslims across the world - they are, matching the stereotype that is hardening in the non-Muslim world, by protesting angrily, making anti-American and anti-Israeli statements, burning effigies of the Pope - in other words, acting like uncivilised, brutalised deranged thugs.  Criticism is not taken as a reason to offer rhetoric or reason in return, but anger and violence.

They have acted exactly the way that the Pope rejected. In his speech he said:

"Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats… To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death"

It is a lesson many Christians have taken, but which far too many Muslims have not.  They seek to enforce their religion with threats and violence, treating the mind as irrelevant, not seeking to convince with arguments based on merits, but on fear.

That is the fundamental difference today, that is oft-ignored by all too many, especially on the so-called progressive left.

In many Muslim countries, choosing to reject Islam (which you are assumed to have been born with) is a crime.  The last known execution for heresy of a Christian was in 1826 in Spain.  No non-Muslim majority countries have laws restricting religion.

So when Muslims wonder why their religion appears "singled out", then they need only look at the behaviour of their fellow believers. 

It isn't Christians, Jews or atheists that people fear waging violence int he name of religion. It isn't apparent in most Muslim countries that there is tolerance for those of other religions or no religion.

Anyone who thinks that the appropriate response to those who don't share their views is to threaten them with violence, is uncivilised and barbaric.  

Unfortunately for Muslims, it is people of their religion who far too often undertake this behaviour.  

They have every right to hold uncivilised barbaric views of others, but when they cross the line to threaten violence against those they disagree with, they should reasonably expect the full force of the law.

The right to religion is a right to practice your own beliefs - it is not a right to force others to submit to them, or to protect you from being offended.

Egypt's problems wont be solved by elections

You see in Egypt the problem comes from the politicians and they arise from the culture.

Unfortunately Egypt has a culture of  kleptocracy, corruption and favouritism. 

When he was President, Hosni Mubarak enriched himself to the tune of US$42 billion.  This is scandalous but hardly unexpected, because politicians in absolute power will both use violence to retain power and will be thieving bastards one and all.  Yet this is what politics does.  By granting unlimited power to people elected or otherwise, they do violence to others, they collect money through violence and can use it to corrupt, and can be corrupted to change laws, grant contracts and the like. 

It is what politics can do and does, and liberal democracy doesn't contain it, culture does.  In the US, politics is corrupted because people seek favours from politicians in the forms of money or privileges granted by the state.  However, there is an independent judiciary and free press, so there are institutions in place that can contain this.

In Egypt this doesn't exist.  It is stuck between the kleptocratic authoritarian culture of the army, which has deep roots in business and the economy well beyond what should be its core role.  

However, Islam also has deep roots that mean that a significant plurality of Egyptians are quite happy for the state and religion to be as one, meaning non-Muslims in Egypt face serious risks of oppression and discrimination by the state.

So when foreign observers call for free and fair elections, that's all very well, but what is the reason for this?  What do they want for Egyptians?

The problem of Egypt

Egypt has no tradition of respecting individual liberty or secularism.

Nasser was widely admired, as he took over the Suez Canal and lost the war he was about to launch against Israel (and lost the Sinai Peninsula).

Anwar Sadat bravely made peace with Israel, gaining back the Sinai, and was assassinated for his efforts (and is largely forgotten).

Hosni Mubarak set up a massive military led corporatist state of rent-seeking self-aggrandisement, whilst simultaneously suppressing Iranian style Islamists.  The same Islamists who bombed hotels, tour buses and killed foreign tourists, until Mubarak's secret police authoritarian state put enough of them in prison.  Meanwhile he appeased a moderate form of Islamism, allowing for the occasional hassling of Christians and implementation of Shariah law.

So he gets overthrown, and elections are held. The world quietly condones it and lo and behold, a plurality of Egyptians choose theocracy, as the alternative is a patsy of Mubarak.

The USA, EU and the rest of the supposedly freedom loving West celebrated democracy, not individual freedom and rights.   Not separation of religion and state.

So how could any Western politician oppose a government led by the Muslim Brotherhood?  How could it oppose that elected government trying to change the constitution?  

Indeed.  Egyptians who supported Islamism were happy.  Egyptians who supported secularism, the small Christian minority and Muslims who keep their religion in the private sphere, were not.

Neither was the Army, which has a large network of businesses which keep many of the senior officers well fed and watered.   

So Egyptians who don't like Islamism, and Egyptians with a vested interest in the Army's own corporatist enterprises, protested.

The Islamists were less than happy as the Army overthrew their authoritarians, to reimpose their own.

Now the Army is killing those who resist it, but don't be fooled.  The Islamists would do the same, given their predilection to terrorism, their predilection to criminalising apostasy, to harassing those who are not of their faith, to censoring views, cultural expressions and humour they don't like, to constraining the role of women.   Then of course there is the widespread anti-semitism, which is far more widespread.

So whilst the philosophy, politics and the motives of the Islamists are thoroughly despicable and the anti-thesis of individual freedom and the secular liberal democracy that Western civilisation is supposed to be based on, the ends - the political defeat of Islamism - do not justify the means - opening fire on civilians.

The problem is that the Army is led by a man, who believes it is ok for women to have their virginity checked by men, to protect them.  

Egypt needs rulers who will allow people to live ascetic Muslim lives, by choice, or not to.  It needs rulers who believe in freedom, and who believe in separation of religion from state.

However, it doesn't have a majority of citizens who share those values...

Minister willing to pay for contract killing

So let's imagine that a low ranking Cabinet Minister in the UK, or Australia, or Germany, or Japan, or a Secretary of the US Administration said he would pay a fortune to murder a civilian national of another country - even though that national had not committed a crime in his own country, nor had done anything other than to offend that Minister.

You see, the Pakistani Railways Minister can do it.   Although the Pakistani government has made it clear that he doesn't speak for the government, that doesn't mean a blind eye should be turned.  

The response to that should be clear and unequivocal, especially from those countries that use their taxpayers' money to spend on aid in this misogynist hate filled cauldron of vileness and sadness.

Ghulam Ahmad Bilour should be fired.  If he isn't aid will cease.  Regardless, this man should now be banned from entry into the United States, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand.  Politicians as much as anyone should not feel free to commission contract killings.

However, I fully expect there to be plenty of hand wringing because removing Bilour would risk collapse of the Pakistani coalition government because he belongs to the small Awami National Party, which is a socialist party with no strong Islamist credentials and only 2% of the votes at the last election meaning it is a small partner in a shaky coalition.

Pakistan officials will no doubt say that firing a Minister for such a comment will risk an Islamist backlash that could see the government folding and a new election resulting in an Islamist government being elected - a risk that isn't particularly likely given Pakistani politics are relatively Islamist as it is, and there is no strong Islamist party in the country (the largest coalition of such parties only gained 2.2% of the vote in 2008.

Still, it is surely an opportunity for the Obama Administration to make it clear that these sorts of threats will not be taken without consequences.

It is a clash of civilisations - it's about time we were proud of our's

Back when I studied international relations at university, Samuel Huntingdon’s “Clash of Civilisations” was not cited as a particularly seminal work.  It was thoroughly criticised, as the prevailing view at the time was that Fukuyama’s “End of History” thesis appeared to be more valid.  Bear in mind this was just after the end of the Cold War, and followed what appeared to have been a successful excising of Saddam Hussein’s gangster regime from Kuwait, under UN Security Council sanctions.

The heady days of humanitarian intervention appeared ahead, and with Russia a friend of the West, China focused almost entirely upon economic growth and internal stability and Middle East peace talks focused around pathways towards resolving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, it did not look like there was great international disunity like was seen under the Cold War.

Liberal democracy and basics levels of individual rights and free speech seemed largely universal now that what was the Soviet bloc, seemed to embrace them.  The weeping sores of Israel/Palestine, South Africa, Northern Ireland all seemed to be on pathways to progress.   China, albeit a large country still a long way from any embrace of such rights, appeared to be pointing in the right direction, and was inwardly focused only likely to lash out over Taiwan or Tibet.  Latin America appeared to have rid itself of virtually all of its tyrants.  East Timor was finally liberated from Indonesian military rule.  Saddam Hussein seemed contained.  The Balkans were a disaster and a travesty, but after (finally) intervention against Serbia, it all seemed to come to a halt, and Europe has managed to ringfence and rebuild those lands that were once Yugoslavia.   However,  Rwanda/Burundi and Liberia showed how easy it was for political/military leaders to incite mass extermination campaigns.

It has been clear now, at least for 11 years, that this rosy view of the world has been a mistake.  Most importantly, it is abundantly clear that the values of individual freedom, free speech and freedom of religion, are not embraced by the majority of the world’s population.

Whilst those of us in the “Western” world see differences between the US and Europe, these differences are insignificant between those of other civilisations on the planet.  It is taken for granted in the “West” (by which I mean the EEA countries, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand), that women should be equal under the law to men, that racism is unacceptable and barbaric, that free speech including the right to criticise all political views, and to both criticise and mock public figures, is inviolable, and that freedom of religion and from religion are part of a modern society. 

However, whilst many share some of these values, many not only disagree but cannot even comprehend a viewpoint that holds them.

It is fair to say that support or embrace of those values may be slightly weaker in Latin America than in the West, and moreso in the former USSR.   Confucian and Hindu cultures in east and South Asia also carry less tradition and support for such freedoms, but there have been, by and large, positive paths towards that (although racism/sectarianism remains rampant).   Sub-Saharan African countries have also a different view of such freedoms, which are more diverse than Huntingdon could reveal.

However, the big conflict is with the Islamic world, which itself has many diverse strands, but which by and large, with the exception of the likes of Bosnia, Albania and Turkey, is hostile to individualism, secularism and freedoms of speech and religion.

The reaction seen across the Muslim world, and in many Western countries, is a throwback of some centuries, indeed it is a difference that is more profound that than between Marxism-Leninism and Western liberal democracy/mixed capitalist countries during the Cold War.

The flames being fanned by Islamists are ones of values that are completely contrary not only to the post-enlightenment settlement between Christianity, the state and society, but also international law on human rights, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

 
The protestors are predominantly men, promulgating a misogynistic world view, which not only treats women and girls as possessions, but has no tolerance for even engaging in debate or challenge of their religious view.  Freedom of speech is to be burnt at the stake along with all those who they feel have hurt their point of view.  It is as dangerous as it is infantile, as fanatically anti-reason as the anti-semitism of the Nazis, the anti-classism of the Khmer Rouge and every sectarian conflict you can remember. 

They are as incredulous about the relaxed Western view over a film produced privately in the US, as Westerners are over their violence and (literal) sabre rattling.  They live in societies where drawing an image of their prophet can get you executed, and indeed even deciding that you no longer believe in Islam can mean death.    This is accepted as being integral to their entire social system and set of beliefs.   Religion is not an adjunct to life that provides meaning for certain ethical questions or advice on living under difficult circumstances, for reflection at least once a week.  It is central, fundamental and provides a source of guidance on a daily basis.  The closest parallel outside it in modern history is seen in the personality cult laden totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany, the Stalinist world, Maoist China and today in North Korea.   In all of them, the thoughts and words of the personality cults meant everything, their lives, their deeds took up so much time in education and daily life.   For many Muslims, Islam is that special.  The idea anyone would choose to abandon such believes is not only foolish, but dangerous and any such element is likely to bring down their proud culture.
 
Given they live in states which enforce this society, they find it remarkable that other states do not also reflect their national religions.  The idea that private American citizens can produce a film, without any official endorsement or state oversight, seems improbable and impossible to them.  After all, surely all governments everywhere enforce the religious values of their societies?  Just because the West has corrupt ones, and Christianity has been debased so much (they would say), is not the point.  After all, the Islamists would say, they certainly don’t allow people to poke fun at Christianity (don’t ask about the Jews though).

The seriousness by which they take religion, the state and the offence they feel, is palpably toxic.  Because they fanatically embrace Islam (almost entirely because they were born and raised with it), and because they believe anyone departing from it must be both foolish and evil, they see anyone who dares challenging it to be challenging them personally.  They see it as the devil – like an ancient tribe of animists who see outsiders mocking their totems.   They see it as dangerous and genuinely feel that a challenge or mockery of their faith is an attack on themselves.

Yet people in the West are regularly exposed to mocking, to having either religious or political beliefs challenged.  Few would resort to mass violence to defend their point of view.   You see, Western culture and society has embraced free speech, a diversity of views, open discourse and satire as being healthy.  The amount of mockery and what would be seen as blasphemy against Christianity is significant, and is seen across the Western world (although there are parts of the US where it is a bit scarcer than others).   However, the Christian response is, mostly, to engage, to debate, sometimes to call for new laws, but it isn’t to go out and vandalise or demand beheadings.

That is the response I’d have expected 600 years ago.  That is roughly where many in the Islamic world are.   It is why the invasion of Afghanistan is failing, because barely any effort has gone into changing culture – a culture which is as sexist, racist and religiously intolerant as Western society was in the dark ages, and as economically and scientifically innovative. 

So what does this mean?  The key question is how to respond to such sabre rattling.

There are, logically, five options.

Submit, appease, ignore, engage or fight.

Submitting to such declaration of bigotry or ignorance is not an option, it is surrendering that which literally millions of men and women have died to defend.  No one who even considers such an option deserves to live in a free society.

Appeasement is the worm’s way out, and indeed is the option that more than a few politicians will adopt.  This is to agree with the bigots, and to call for greater “respect and tolerance” of beliefs that themselves embrace little respect and tolerance.  This is the vile sycophantic selling out of more than a few on the left, who are only too quick to want to placate the men who want to continue to treat women as chattels, and execute apostates, rape victims and homosexuals.  No one who speaks the language of appeasement deserves to even be considered to be liberal or respectful of human rights.  It is telling that this is the response of the UN Secretary General.  It is also not the path for victory, for ultimately you will have sold out all of your freedom to placate those who hate the values you say you believe in, but prove by actions that you'll sell for some short term peace.

Ignoring the protests is a viable option, until of course, they start engage in vandalism and violence against the innocent.  In some places, they are on a scale where this appears the only logical option, to “let off steam”, but this simply means steam will build up again.  Nobody who fought for fundamental freedoms would see this as being honourable.

Engaging them, would appear to be the most logical and productive step forward.   Indeed, it is promising that counter-protests have appeared in some cities, such as Tripoli, and that some Muslims fear the approach taken by protestors is to deny the freedom some have fought for.   The message to them all should be very simple:

• -          Secular states do not control what films private citizens produce;
• -          Freedom of religion and freedom of speech include freedom to offend, to challenge and to mock;
• -          The response in a free society to being offended, is to challenge back and mock back, to disarm others through argument, reason and one’s own creativity, not violence;
• -          Those that advocate violence or vandalism to make arguments for their religion have already lost, as they are incapable of debate.

Finally, the need to fight in self-defence is critical.  Whether it be people or property owners, the application of violence should be resisted by the state and individual victims to the extent necessary to defend themselves.  For let's be clear, 9/11 was undertaken by those willing to destroy our way of life.   People who are not amenable to reason and engage in force, must be fought - there is no peaceful option to deal with those willing to kill you.

In conclusion, it is critical for those in the West, whether they be libertarians, conservatives, socialists, Christians or atheists, to understand that the commonly shared basic Western values of individual autonomy, equality of the sexes and races, and tolerance of different religious beliefs, are not shared by many on the planet (indeed they are inconsistently shared in the West).  For those values to get greater adherence requires patience, it requires leading by example and it requires continuous consistent engagement against those willing to take it on, and the use of force in self-defence for those willing to initiate force.

This has significant implications for a whole range of public policies, including immigration, education, defence, foreign relations, international aid policy, the welfare state and media.

These require politicians who are prepared to embrace a principle, rather than kowtowing to avoid offence.  Politicians who are proud of the freedoms fought for since the Enlightenment.  However, for them to come out, it requires citizens of Western countries to want to articulate loudly to defend the society that so many have, by and large, done little to defend. 

Post-modernist moral relativists have no place in this.  Neither do those wishing to appease.

Egypt's new dawn or a new dark age

For many years, there has been much concern expressed in the Western world about the consequences of letting the Muslim Brotherhood take over in Egypt.  After all, it was the justification for providing oodles of financial support for Hosni Mubarak’s regime, after he succeeded Anwar Sadat (who dared to make peace with Israel and was assassinated as a result), who himself succeeded the warmongering personality cult figure of Nasser.   Egyptians have been under the jackboot of dictatorship for decades, and as much as US Administrations have appeased Mubarak and Sadat (given both have maintained peace with Israel and kept the Suez Canal open), their opponents have long deified Nasser.  Egyptians who dared cross with any of the regimes would face a police, secret police and military ably dishing out summary justice, engaging in imprisonment, torture and summary executions.  

There were two comforts casually taken by Western supporters of the Mubarak regime.  One was that he wouldn’t wage war against Israel, back Islamists in Iran, Israel or elsewhere.  The value of having an ally who is peaceful in an area that has been volatile, is considerable, especially when it can have its hands on the throat of one of the great shipping routes between Europe, the Persian Gulf and Asia.   The second was that Egypt appeared to modernise.  It could be seen in the malls and shopping centres in Cairo, where young Egyptian women would walk around in jeans, hair uncovered and look little different from those in Europe.  It could be seen in the relative vitality of a country that welcomes tourists, has many fluent in English and had a semblance of a civil society.   However, underneath that entire facade were multiple pressures.

The first was the tired nature of living under a tired corrupt regime that had last more than 30 years with one president.  A regime where wealth and success could come to the well connected, the relatives, the friends and those willing to share with those in power the booty of contracts, trade and business.  A regime where the victims of such corruption, victims of the extra-legal use of authority by the regime would be ignored, at best.  A seething resentment that a country that was becoming wealthier, more connected, with an increasingly younger population, was sitting atop something rotten.  

The second came from those who resisted the modernisation, who saw the wealth and success of fellow Arab regimes to east and west, and would spread resentment at the dependency of Egypt on the succour of the United States (Egypt being, until recently, the second biggest recipient of US taxpayer funded aid after Israel).  They would prey upon the fact that most Egyptians are Muslims and see the hope in dealing with corruption, crime and what they perceived as moral decay, in dumping the quasi-secularism of the Mubarak regime, in favour of Islamism.  They did not think of the 10% Christian minority, or the tiny Jewish minority, nor did they think women should be anything but “equal, yet not bearing duties against their nature and role in the family”.  They would also prey upon the strong anti-Israeli sentiment, which harks back to the families whose sons were victims of the wars Egypt had waged against Israel in the past, and the strong fraternal sense of injustice many Egyptians felt with Palestinian Arabs.

So when Egyptians threw off the Mubarak regime and held elections, the inevitable binary result was that the top two candidates would represent the old regime, and the organisation best organised and longest protesting about it – the Muslim Brotherhood.

With Mr. Morsi becoming President, in a land that no longer has a working Constitution, the stage is set for a new battle.  Given the Parliamentary elections have been ruled null and void, these will presumably be held again, but he faces the army first and the smaller mass of Egyptians who support modernity.  The women who deep down fear new laws about what they wear, who they marry, their rights to divorce, their treatment if abused, their employment and their work.  The Christians who fear new laws about worship, about free speech, about education and about equal treatment under the law.  The Egyptians more generally who want a society where the state protects everyone’s rights, as individuals, including the right to apostasy (which has, at best, been controversial and difficult in Egypt).

For now, it is likely that Egypt will not become the new Iran.  It is still receiving US government largesse, which is largely benefiting the military.  Any shift in policy that results in this ending will risk a military coup, given the sheer size of the Egyptian military.  However, it is difficult to envisage how a man who belongs to an Islamist organisation, which espouses Sharia law as definitive, which seeks to restrict the role of women, which supports the abolition of the state of Israel and considers jihad and martyrdom as glorious, is going to ever represent a step forward.

If his colleagues get elected in the Parliamentary elections (along with Salafists who are more extremist), then one can envisage a new constitution.  Not one that separates religion and state, nor one that prioritises individual rights.

The intellectual bankruptcy of supporting democracy as the measure of freedom will then be revealed. Egyptians will be deemed to have “supported” an Islamic state, and it will be “better” than the Mubarak regime.

Those who would protest in the streets for civil liberties, for the rights of women and the rights of minorities would appear to be willing to surrender those, for the victory of a man who represents rejection of Mubarak, and implicitly, the United States which backed him.

It may be that fears of an Iranian style Islamist revolution are wrong, it may be that Mr. Morsi is in fact willing to support a secular Egypt, that respects religious and individual freedoms, that fights the scourge of corruption that has long infested that land and takes only token steps towards embracing the long held agenda of an Islamist state.  

However, it is clear that being allowed to vote for a President is not freedom.  Individual rights are not protected when people who do not belong to the dominant religion, live and worship in fear, and when laws are enforced to prohibit people abandoning the dominant religion with the death penalty.

State religion, deep cultural misogyny, suppression of “blasphemous words and deed” and death worship are not compatible with individual freedom (including the rights and equality under the law for women), freedom of religion, freedom of speech and embracing of life.  

Like a train that has escaped one tunnel, had a brief smattering of daylight and may now be about to enter another…

Three elections - freedom's not the winner

Greece

I've never seen so much televised election coverage for a Greek election, with BBC News, Sky News and CNN all providing dedicated coverage yesterday.  This was an election about remaining in the Euro - Greek voters, more often than not, wanted to play it safe.

The Greek election result is clear - a country divided amongst those who are scared of losing their savings in Euros to those who want to demand other country's taxpayers support a bloated socialist state, and then a who lot of others who variously want either the government to take over and steal from the rich, steal from the foreigners, or the 1.59% who actually want less government.

So for now, Greece will live off of the back of hundreds of billions of Euros of money from taxpayers in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Estonia, Slovakia and other solvent parts of the Eurozone, and will attempt to survive with some spending cuts and tax rises - although the former wont be enough, and the latter will choke off the economy even more.  The optimist in me hopes that Greece can actually cut its deficit, balance its budget, open its economy, cut costs and move forward.  However, I suspect Greece will be racked with strikes, mass protests and continued exodus of the best and brightest, whilst the coalition between the two parties that led Greece for 30 years into this mess in the first place fractures as the vested interests both have protected fight for their cut of the borrowed bankrupt pie.

I can only hope that since New Democracy now includes a few elements in favour of less government and not increasing taxes, that the concessions that this government can get from Germany are to not increase taxes more.  That at least will stop choking the private sector more (as cutting government spending is not the same as increasing taxes).   Meanwhile the far left reality evaders, whose xenophobia about foreign capital doesn't extend to foreign taxpayers propping up socialist states, will continue to portray all of this as some grand conspiracy to make foreign bankers rich.  Those "foreign bankers" (Golden Dawn would be proud of that rhetoric) took a 110 billion write off of Greek debt so far, meanwhile foreign taxpayers have effectively restructured most of Greece's private debt into new lower interest rate loans.   However, Syriza and the leftwing xenophobic haters of capitalism just blank this out - and none have any answer as to how to bridge the gap between the Greek government's spending and its tax receipts.   The newly elected Greek government must close that gap, or will face yet another judgment in a couple of years.   The only way it might even hope to do that, and rescue the economy, is to let the private sector flourish by getting out of the way (and doing its proper job when it is expected to do so).

France

French voters have snubbed Sarkozy's party and have voted for the fancy funny land of the Socialists. The party that helped decimate the French stockmarket and chase businesses away when it was last in power in the early 1980s (as Francois Mitterand - the man who instigated the Rainbow Warrior bombing - sought to nationalise major businesses).   France will now either follow the path of Greece, in strangling its already fairly stagnant economy some more, chasing its best and brightest to London, some more, or will actually face reality and introduce reforms that hitherto were too hard for the vain git Sarkozy to introduce.

France is full of myths, one is its great manufacturing sector - which as a proportion of GDP is no greater than the UK's - another it how its mixed economy staved off the worst of the financial crisis - when in fact France has parts of its economy (agriculture and the space sectors in particular) largely propped up by EU subsidies.  

Higher taxes, more regulation to protect those already in jobs at the expense of those without them, and a head in the sand attitude to fiscal balance, will help ensure France continues to lose competitiveness relative to Germany and the world.  It is probably a decade away from its final decisive crisis, as France's generous welfare state and corporatist monstrosity of an economic policy finally collapses in on its own contradictions.  Not much liberte, not so much fraternite, and perhaps egalite of poverty.

Egypt

How's this for a choice?  Want an Islamist President who has vowed to respect other religions, the rights of women and the new freedoms Egyptians went on the streets for?  Or do you want a President from the old guard, the old corrupt militarist regime that kept a lid on freedom of speech and ensured that its cronies were wealthy and comfortable?  Half of all Egyptians chose neither.  It appears that a narrow majority of the rest chose Islamism.

Some on the left in the West who rail in favour of womens' rights, secularism, tolerance, liberal values, peace for homosexuals and the like will celebrate this, to their shame.  Others will share the concern with those of us elsewhere on the political spectrum.

The overriding of the parliamentary election by the judiciary may be worrying, but if the Islamist has won the Presidential election, it may give some impetus for others to vote for a new Parliament that isn't so dominated.

However, I am not hopeful.  The simple reality is that democracy in Egypt is more likely than not to create a state run by those who think religion and state are the one and the same, who hold views of women (let alone gay people) as being subordinate and whose views on Jews, Christians and others who don't hold their religion are less than flattering.   

The result wont be clear until Thursday, but let's be clear - it wont mean more freedom for people in Egypt.

Sometimes culture is corrosive

One of the big news stories this week in the UK has been around the conviction of nine men in the Greater Manchester for systematic sexual exploitation of vulnerable underage girls.   

I don't want to go into the lurid details, but essentially these men, using two takeaway businesses owned by them, lured girls in their early teens into relationships and being passed from man to man, and with other men.  They plied them with liquor, bribed them with mobile phones, gifts and money, and the girls engaged in a wide range of sexual activities, including group sex.  The men almost acted as their pimps, and were deliberately predatory.  The face lengthy jail terms.

In one example, the BBC reports:

sentencing the ringleader to 19 years in prison, the judge called him an "unpleasant and hypocritical bully" who had ordered a 15-year-old girl to have sex with takeaway worker Kabeer Hassan as a birthday "treat".

However, the elephant in the room on this issue is about race and culture.

The men range in age from 24 to 59. All are Muslims, eight are Pakistani, one is Afghan. 

None of the girls abused were Muslim, they all appeared to be British.  

So?  Well the judge found that the men treated the girls "as though they were worthless and beyond respect" and that "One of the factors leading to that was the fact that they were not part of your community or religion"

In short, these men targeted girls, not just because they were young and impressionable, not just because they tended to come from broken or troubled low income homes, so were needy, but because they had blatantly misogynistic attitudes towards girls and women who are not of their ilk.

Pakistani Muslim girls, after all, are expected to remain virgins until marriage and to be under the control and supervision of their fathers until it is the time for their husbands.  English girls of course are, from the point of view of the men, sluts to be used and disposed of as objects for their satisfaction.

The fact that some of these men are married, with their own daughters, was irrelevant to them in their hypocrisy and dehumanisation of their victims.  One of these married fathers got a 13 year old girl pregnant.

Of course there are millions of men who rape and exploit women and girls, of all races and cultures.  Indeed misogyny is the norm in most countries outside the Western world.  I know no one who would try to claim that such behaviour is confined or dominated by Pakistani/Afghan Muslim men in the UK.

However, culture is a factor.  It is a factor in the men's behaviour, but sadly has also been part of the Police's response to early complaints about their behaviour.  The men have also claimed that the prosecution is "racist" and the conviction is racist because the jury happened to be all-white - as if the UK is dominated by the attitudes of the British National Party/National Front (neither of which can muster more than 2% of the total vote at the last general election).

Former Labour MP Ann Cryer says the Police did not proceed with prosecution of one of the men for fear of being branded "racist".  In short, the cultural relativism and hypersensitivity to the left's instant response to anyone of a ethnic minority accused of crime, cost time, pain and suffering to the victims.

However, the race industry supporters have stood by claiming it isn't about race and religion.    Leftwing journalist Sunny Hundal claims that it is irrelevant because Muslim men also rape Muslim girls, and that it was just misogyny.  Ken Livingstone sycophant/leftwing activist Lee Jasper simply claims it is not race.

Strictly speaking they are right.  It isn't race per se, but it is culture and identity.

The liberal values that most people in the West reflect are ones that treat women with respect as equals, and also treat young women and girls as deserving of protection and respect, rather than as objects for the satisfaction of men.

It is not a value shared by men people from most other cultures. 

Both law and practice seen in almost all non-Western societies is to treat women and girls as subservient.   In parts of Africa, raping virgin girls is seen as a cure for AIDS, indeed Chairman Mao once considered it appropriate to "cleanse" himself with girls in that way.  From the boundaries of the EU across the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, up through East Asia through to Japan, misogyny remains the norm.

Pretending that all cultures deserve respect maintains the corrosion of the bigotry and mindlessness so many perpetuate, which those of us proud of individualism should remember, is so young in our own cultures.  It was, after all, not that long ago that a girl going to the police about rape would be treated as if she asked for it - and it is sadly far from unknown for that attitude to still be expressed.

Fortunately, more than a few Pakistani Muslims in the UK have demanded that attitudes must change, that working class young girls who are vulnerable are not fair game for married fathers to rape, abuse and treat as if they 'asked for it' (as one young man of similar extraction volunteered to a TV camera last week). 

It isn't racist to point it out, as much as the real racists in the near corpse of the BNP are trying to milk it for. 

It's simply supporting the individual rights of those who get exploited by those who hold cultural values alien to the country they have chosen to reside within.  Values that should be alien to ALL countries - values that belong in the past, with slavery (and indeed the worship of a pedophile prophet).

West Bradford shames itself

I don't need to say much about George Galloway, he is one of the most repulsive politicians in Britain today.  As Christopher Hitchens once said "the man's search for a tyrannical fatherland never ends".  He has been a sycophant of Saddam Hussein, Bashar Assad, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.  He misses the Soviet Union - the stale stinking behemoth of blood stained lies, oppression, imperialism and terror.  He supported the Islamist terrorists who festered in Iraq after the Western invasion, he supports Hamas, he said the Syrian people are lucky to be ruled by Bashar Assad.  On top of it all, this Dundee Catholic fifth columnist lies - blatantly - denying that for which there is video evidence.  He blames 9/11 on US foreign policy.  He claims to not support the Iranian system, yet said explicitly he supported the campaign of Ahmadinejad on Iranian TV.  His direct relationship with the Hussein regime was demonstrated with evidence, but he continues to deny it.

So how did such an odious creature get elected in a low profile Bradford West by-election?  Simple.

He has a high public profile (he appeared in Celebrity Big Brother in 2006).  He spent money and time in the constituency spreading his latest brand, of being a teetotaller who has always supported Muslims, who opposed the war in Iraq, opposes Western forces in Afghanistan, supports Palestinian militancy and opposes Western intervention in the Middle East.  He played to the tribalist, anti-Western bigotry of many ethnic Pakistani voters in the constituency.  He benefited from a week of appalling mismanagement by the government, and the continued ineptness of Labour leader Ed Miliband.  It was a protest vote, apparently driven also by Galloway targeting young Pakistani voters who otherwise may not have voted.  It has been alleged that some of his supporters voted for him as a rebellious action, for his shenanigans with Celebrity Big Brother were looked down upon by some of his Islamic support base.

Bear in mind also that turnout was low (25% or so down on the general election), and it was meant to be a safe Labour seat, which motivates less supporters for major parties to bother voting.

Yet while much analysis will focus on why the major parties, especially Labour, did so badly, the real menacing implication is that a man who has long provided succour to Islamists and dictators, can command such overwhelming support.  Was there not sufficient media scrutiny of Galloway?  If there had been much more, would his campaign have been harmed (and is it not for the other parties to do that?)?  Or do his voters agree with him - that Iran doesn't have such a bad President, that Syrians are lucky to be ruled by Assad, that criticism of Syria is because of the "good things" Assad does, that Saddam Hussein deserved to be saluted for courage and indefatigability, that Hamas is a force for good, that Islamists who shot dead 58 people at a Catholic Cathedral in Baghdad were to be supported, or the ones who bombed 48 people at a restaurant, or who let off a bomb killing 54 Shia on a pilgrimage, etc?

George Galloway has always done well out of politics, he has connected himself to whoever he can who opposes open, free, liberal Western democratic capitalist societies, and embraced variously Marxist, Soviet, Islamist, Ba'athist dictatorships.  He says one thing on the broadcast outlets of his favoured dictatorships and another in the West.

So it's about time that proper efforts are taken now to hold this friend of thugs to account, to reject his evasion and deception, and expose him once again.  However, although I hope most of his supporters are naive young voters who see him as a high profile protest against the mainstream parties (and their parents), I fear more than a few embrace an agenda that is anti-British, anti-Western, sympathetic to Islamism and believers of the rampant conspiracy theory ridden nonsense that passes for "theories" in some parts of the world.  Is anyone confronting this?

Militant secularism? Much of the world could do with it

Baroness Warsi is a Conservative peer, a Minister and co-Chairman (yes!) of the Conservative Party.  She is a failed Parliamentary candidate and undoubtedly was selected to be a peer because of David Cameron's desire to make the Conservative Party look more inclusive and diverse, even though voters didn't want her to represent them.  So, in the peculiarly British tradition of shouting loudly about democracy, but ignoring it when one wants to promote people to power based on who they are not whether they have a mandate, she is in the House of Lords, as a Minister without portfolio, because she is a female British born Muslim of Pakistani descent.  Without a doubt her religion helped her gain power.   However, that isn't the current issue (Labour, after all, promoted Peter Mandelson to be a senior Cabinet Minister after he had lost his parliamentary seat.  All of the parties happily use peers to grant jobs for cronies that the public don't give mandates to).

She has recently visited the Vatican representing the Government, which itself is remarkable.  However, the big controversy is that she gave a speech, published as an article by the Daily Telegraph, expressing concern about "a militant secularisation" of society.  By that, of course, she means assertive atheism.  This comes from a background of a number of events, the most recent being a court case that prohibits local authorities from starting their council meetings with a prayer.  Others include cases involving private companies setting rules around wearing religious icons etc.

So what did Baroness Warsi say?

She says "we stand side by side with the Pope in fighting for faith".  Really? Who is this "we"?  Is it the Government?  In which case, to hell with the lot of you (so to speak).  The Liberal Democrats should pull out of the coalition immediately and there ought to be a few Conservative MPs who didn't realise they were fighting for religion, not for their constituents.  Is this "we" the Conservative Party?  Who does she think she represents?

What she is calling for is at best inappropriate.  The state should not be "fighting for faith", it should be neutral.  Religious belief is like political and philosophical belief.  It is personal, people use it to inform their own behaviour and to provide some comfort and fulfillment emotionally, particularly when dealing with difficult issues of life around grief, relationships, tragedy and events outside their control.  

She claims that "to create a more just society, people need to feel stronger in their religious identities and more confident in their creeds. In practice this means individuals not diluting their faiths and nations not denying their religious heritages.   This begs so many questions, as to what she means by a "just society"?  What evidence is there that if people "feel stronger" in their religious identities that this will result in things being more just?  Every country where Islam has the state fighting for it, literally by assaulting, torturing and executing those who reject it, there is not "justice".  There are countless examples of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Shintoists and others who "felt strong" in their religious identities and confident, who didn't "dilute their faith", but were fundamentalists, and happily spilt rivers of blood in the name of their religious faith.  

History is awash with people who took their religious identity and killed for it.  The UK itself has much recent blood spilt in this regard, with Northern Ireland crawling slowly out from the pernicious weight of Catholic/Protestant fundamentalism, "strong identities" that saw adults bullying children as they walk to school, if they weren't blowing people up or shooting them.   London of course has been a victim to Islamists murdering in the name of their religious identities.

Yet she goes on to say that Europe should be more confident and comfortable in its Christianity.  The reason being " the societies we live in, the cultures we have created, the values we hold and the things we fight for all stem from centuries of discussion, dissent and belief in Christianity."  That claim needs some closer scutiny.  She is quite right that Christianity, in its various sectarian versions, had has a profound influence on Europe.  Indeed, it is worth noting the various effects the three main strands have had on different parts of Europe.  Orthodox and Catholic Europe both demonstrate significantly less success, economically, than Protestant Europe.  Yet to pretend that the Enlightenment, a secular movement of reason, was not also a profound part of this, is to be wholly ignorant.  Before that, Christianity's influence had been predominantly authoritarian and had held back progress in science and technology, let alone justice for centuries.  Whilst Christians led the movement to emancipate slaves, there were many also who resisted granting women equal rights before the law and who embraced discrimination against Jews and others of different Christian denominations. 

It is difficult to argue that the significant leaps forward in confronting state sanctioned sexism, racism and criminal persecution of homosexuals were done, in many cases, with people of religion in strong opposition.  I don't doubt there is a significant strand of Christianity that actually does represent values that are universal and consistent with individual freedom, individual rights and property rights, and indeed ethical behaviour to others, but it has been extensively tarnished, blackened and corrupted by so much else that has been used to oppress millions.

It was the willingness to oppress people for religion that saw the Founding Fathers of the United States create a new land, independent, that was secular, founded by deists who did not want to bring the sectarianism of Europe into that land.  The Declaration of Independence was written by men of the Enlightenment, who whilst Christians, were not quoting the Bible, but were leaping forward humanity in a revolutionary manner by creating a state that existed to protect the rights and liberties of its citizens, not having them as subjects.

She claims the militant secularism is seen "in any number of things: when signs of religion cannot be displayed or worn in government buildings; when states won’t fund faith schools; and where religion is sidelined, marginalised and downgraded in the public sphere.".  I think if people want to wear religious symbols to work it should be up to their employers.  Signs of religion displayed in government buildings may exist for historical reasons, and nobody should get too worked up about that.  However, to purposely add them for "balance" is quite wrong. Similarly, if people want faith schools, let them fund them, but don't force people of other faiths or no faiths to fund schools, of any kind.  The problem would be resolved simply if parents got back their taxes that pay for schools so they could buy the education they want, rather than support schools that people may find objectionable.  

The wider claim that religion is "downgraded" in the public sphere is misleading.  It is entirely appropriate to have a secular state which is blind to religion.  However, if people want to embrace religion themselves using their own time, money and property, then they should feel free to do so. 

What she neglects is the fear Christians have in their private sphere in how the state appears to treat them relative to Muslims.  Many see Muslims happily preaching, as part of their religion, hatred of homosexuals, but when a Christian couple want to run a Bed & Breakfast and not allow homosexuals to share a room, they are pilloried even though it is their home.  Would an openly gay Muslim man be admitted to a British mosque?  Hardly and quite rightly that should be up to the mosque.   Christians should have the same rights to discriminate in their own properties as others.

Baroness Warsi says she is "astonished" that the "European Constitution" has no mention of Christianity.  I'm not.  It's entirely appropriate for an institution that encompasses 27 countries all with rather different heritages, and which one day is likely to embrace some that are not predominantly Christian at all.  However, it it questionable surely whether many of these "Christian" countries are so today.  France, the Czech Republic and Estonia all have significant atheist minorities.  How would Jews in Europe react to a "Christian" EU?  

However then she simply goes off the rails altogether putting up a strawman when there is an enormous elephant in the room that she ignores.  She says:

"one of the most worrying aspects about this militant secularisation is that at its core and in its instincts it is deeply intolerant. It demonstrates similar traits to totalitarian regimes – denying people the right to a religious identity because they were frightened of the concept of multiple identities."

"That’s why in the 20th century, one of the first acts of totalitarian regimes was the targeting of organised religion."

To claim, in effect, the likes of Richard Dawkins "displays similar traits to totalitarian regimes" is quite vile. Even more vile when she ought to know that the religion with the worst record for totalitarianism, is her own.  With the exceptions of Turkey, and the former Soviet and Yugoslav republics that are predominantly Muslim, every other Muslim dominant state in the world prohibits apostasy.   What can be more totalitarian than criminalising people leaving a religion that most were "born with"?  I reject any atheists who seek to close down places of worship or shut down peaceful religious expression.  However, I don't know of any who actually do seek this.  Who denies people a religious identity?  

In fact the law demands people "respect" religious identity, when it is no more deserving of respect that any other belief system whether it political, philosophical or scientific.  People in the UK are increasingly fearful of making jokes about Islam, or criticising it, because there are Muslims, and more than a few leftwing activists ready to throw "Islamophobia" labels at those who do so.  Yet the very same people will happily pillory Christians.  The fact that Baroness Warsi is a Muslim and can't identify this double standard is astonishing. 

Yet to make the claim that "one of the first acts of totalitarian regimes was the targeting of organised religion" ignores some truths.  Organised religion has been hand in hand with more than a few totalitarian regimes, albeit with some brave exceptions.  The Nazis were not without blessing from Catholic and Protestant clerics.  The Croatian Ustashe thugs had express endorsement from the Catholic Church, as the Serbian Chetniks did from the Serb Orthodox church.  Again, Baroness Warsi ignores the role Islam has had in being central to totalitarian regimes from Afghanistan to Iran, to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, to Syria and Sudan.  The Japanese militarist regime was hand in glove with Shintoism.  Yes, the communists suppressed religion, but beyond the USSR and Albania, religion was not the first target, but part of an orchestrated campaign to eliminate ANY private non-state sphere.   Her cheap shot that seems to equate secularists and atheists with Nazis and Communists is vile and uncalled for, and is one of the lazy arguments by some Christians against atheism.

For the mere claim of an absence of a belief in something does not imply embracing the belief in something else.  A lack of belief in ghosts does not mean a belief in vampires.

Yet she then claims that she doesn't want to reject secularism, but that religion "should have a seat at the table" and that the UK shouldn't be a theocracy.  Let's be grateful for that, but why should "religion" have this?  What religion?  Whose interpretation of it?  What does this mean? 

Why should faith, not reason and argument, drive public policy?  Why should something be a law becomes someone says that the deity he believes in says so? 

I am an atheist. I believe in secularism for all states.  I don't believe the power of government should be coloured by any religious beliefs nor should governments treat citizens on the basis of religion.  The fact that the UK is, in fact, a state with a state religion (with the head of state leading the state church) is almost irrelevant in terms of public policy and lawmaking, although not entirely. 

However, as an atheist I do see leftwing atheists pursue religion, by which I mean Christianity (they seem scared to pursue Islam so vehemently, with no need to guess why), with a vengeance that I think goes too far.  In a capitalist free society people should feel free to pursue their own lives according to whatever belief system they have, as long as they respect the rights of others to do the same and respect the individual sovereignty of adults over themselves, their personal relations and their property.   Whether or not those beliefs are based on the supernatural or whatever, is irrelevant.   This includes being able to discriminate against people you hire or trade with based on those beliefs.   

After all, despite the best efforts of the left to equate Islam with a race (and to be fair the fascist right using hatred of Islam to justify its own racism), religion is and should always be a personal choice.  

Baroness Warsi would be far better placed embracing the secularism that is at the heart of most European states, and telling the Muslim world that it should do the same.  The utter disgusting vileness of the "crime" of apostasy outranks anything experienced by people due to their religion in the UK.  It is telling that whilst politicians run round in circles expressing outrage for the totalitarian regime in Syria embarking on its latest killing spree (it's being doing it on and off for decades after all), none raise this issue with the legion of Muslim states running from the Maghreb to New Guinea.

If militant secularism took over the Muslim dominated world there would be an quantum leap forward in the rights and lives of millions of people, particularly women and girls in these profoundly patriarchal and sexist societies.  People would not longer be brutally imprisoned, tortured and executed for "insulting" a religion they don't believe in.  It would be far easier to confront the treatment of women as property, the genital mutilation of girls, the treatment of rape as a crime rarely prosecuted unless the father of the girl is a witness, the rampant domestic violence of these societies.   In addition, the senseless sectarian and racist bigotry that is seen most clearly in the mindless Shi'a/Sunni divide, but also in how some Muslims treat others who they think are beneath them (see how Dubai treats Pakistani labour for a clue on this).

So in conclusion, Baroness Warsi's only, small, valid point is the way that some in the West have been hectoring Christians going about their private lives.   However, secularism should not be fought, it should be embraced, and most particularly in the theocratic dictatorships she has seen fit to ignore.  Some of the very ones who take aid from her government (Pakistan) and who shelter those who are out to destroy our secularism and kill us, and impose their own theocratic patriarchal death cult.  The world would be a lot better off if more states were theocracies.

There is a gap in Western society in relation to ethics and morals, which is seen most profoundly in the feral underclass that feeds ungraciously off of the taxes taken to keep them fed, clothed and housed, who have been corrupted by the moral relativism and entitlement culture propagated by the left in the past fifty years.   Baroness Warsi would be better placed attacking that culture, one that the Conservatives have barely touched upon, that the Labour Party has successfully nurtured for decades.  Combined with the identity politics that rates ethnic minorities as inherently disadvantaged, and so lowers expectations of their performance and heightens expectations of state help, it has perpetuated for Labour an ongoing constituency of dependency that provides a ready made group of people forever reliant on government giving them money (and voting Labour to make sure of it).

However, that would rely on her actually having some real courage, and given she is a politician appointed by fiat, not by election, one wonders why she can't have it?