A few months ago, I posted a short extract from Vanessa Engle’s Lefties documentary series, which seemed to go down well, possibly due to the heady mix of affectation and farce. I watched the third episode again recently and, as it made me laugh and despair in more or less equal measure, I thought I’d share it in full. A Lot of Balls details the comically inept attempt in 1987 to launch a “radical” left wing tabloid, The News on Sunday. The project was, unsurprisingly, a disaster, but what’s interesting is why. Engle’s documentary teases out how staggering incompetence was a direct result of ideological pretension. This is perhaps best illustrated by the scene in which, with the paper’s first edition about to go to press, most of the staff is out of the office on a deafness awareness day. 

Enjoy.

Part 1:

Statement of intent. “Our truth.” Big Flame. Class consciousness.

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Part 2:

Wearing suits. Other people’s money. The proletariat in charge. “Because you’re black.”

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Part 3:

An unholy war. Avoiding London. Qualified staff. Black man versus white lesbian.

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Part 4:

“No, but…” Pilger’s horror. Dummies and factions. Ad hell.

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Part 5:

Indignation. Causes and committees. “Theoretical crap.” Deafness awareness.

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Part 6:

Remote concerns. Public sector money. Kinnock and competence. Falling apart.

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All three episodes –  Property is Theft, Angry Wimmin and A Lot of Balls  – can be viewed in full here.

Related: the rise of Thatcherism. (h/t, The Thin Man.)

Subsidise my mischief. It’s for the greater good.

In today’s Comment is Free, Jason Burke ponders various reactions to his Observer article on suicide bombing and attempts to fathom it.

Being called both a propaganda mouthpiece of “the war on terror” establishment and a hand-wringing liberal sympathiser with suicide bombers and evil Muslims suits me fine.

Why this should suit Burke, or anyone, isn’t made entirely clear, and to dismiss the writer as either of the above would be faintly ridiculous. Burke is often quite good on the political and social dynamics of extremism. What has very often been missing – conspicuously – is adequate reference to the role of theology as a key motive and the way Islam is taught and conceived by a great many people. As I argued at length here, the size of an extremist “fringe” and how it relates to mainstream conceptions of the faith, and its history, is a matter of some importance and has to be considered as it actually is, not as one might wish. And, as Tawfik Hamid, Tanveer Ahmed, Hassan Butt, Tahir Aslam Gora and others have explained, omitting the role of Islamic theology, whether for reasons of ignorance, ideology or embarrassment, leads one to inaccurate or simply perverse evaluations of what we are faced with and how it might be stopped.

Burke registers this omission:

What my piece in the Observer does lack, and it is something I was very aware of, is a section dealing with the role of Islamic theology in the process of radicalisation I was exploring.

But offers a less than satisfying explanation:

A longer version of the article – and here, no doubt, some will see evidence of either the politically correct Guardian–Observer liberal complex or the imperialist-capitalist state’s censorship or similar – did include a substantial section discussing this issue. But space in Sunday newspapers is, sadly, not unlimited, and my editors felt that most readers, in between Ikea and a post-lunch walk, would not be riveted by a long discussion of the concept of Dar ul-Harb Takfir, the argument over whether the Sword verses cancel out other, earlier Qur’anic verses, or concepts of nationalism in modern Islamic political thought. I do not think they were necessarily wrong.

But here’s the thing. If Islamic theology is deemed unlikely to rivet readers of the Guardian and Observer, then those same readers are necessarily ill-equipped to fathom Islamic radicalism, its ambitions and associated atrocities. If the subject is ignored and omitted as dry, somewhat esoteric and ever so slightly bonkers – as indeed it is – then those doing the ignoring and omitting are in a poor position, perhaps no position at all, to hold opinions of any seriousness on the phenomenon’s “root causes”.

I’ve mentioned Tawfik Hamid before and his latest article, a first hand account of the development of a jihadist worldview, is well worth reading. Hamid explains how his own religious education laid the ground for his later involvement with the terrorist group, Jemaah Islamiya. Here’s a brief extract:

I attended the private Al-Rahebat primary school in the area of Dumiat, which is about 200 kilometers north of Cairo, when I was six years old… Before each Islamic lesson began, the teacher would dismiss the Christian students, who were then obliged to linger outside the room until the lesson was over… it was the first time I perceived that my Christian friends were not my equals… In secondary school I watched films about the early Islamic conquest. These films promoted the notion that “true” Muslims were devoted to aggressive jihad… 

I remember one particularly defining moment in an Arabic language class when I was sitting beside a Christian friend named Nagi Anton. I was reading a book entitled Alshaykhan by Taha Hussein that cited the Prophet Muhammad’s words: “I have been ordered by Allah to fight and kill all people [non-Muslims] until they say, ‘No God except Allah.’” Following the reading of this Hadith, I decisively turned toward Nagi and said to him, “If we are to apply Islam correctly, we should apply this Hadith to you.” At that moment I suddenly started to view Nagi as an enemy rather than as a long-time friend…

These doctrines [of jihad] are not taken out of context, as many apologists for Islamism argue. They are central to the faith and ethics of millions of Muslims, and are currently being taught as part of the standard curriculum in many Islamic educational systems in the Middle East as well in the West. Moreover, there is no single approved Islamic textbook that contradicts or provides an alternative to the passages I have cited.

The whole thing.

A flavour of the school textbooks to which Hamid refers can be found in an essay I posted here last year:

During a recent visit to San Francisco, the Dalai Lama told a group of religious leaders that “[Islam is] like any other tradition – same message, same practice. That is a practice of compassion.” Certainly compassion and horror can be found among adherents of any religious ideology. But there is a difference between monstrous acts that ignore or invert the exhortations of a religion’s founder and monstrous acts that are entirely in accord with that founder’s stated vision.

For instance, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood directs young believers to a children’s website that celebrates homicidal ‘martyrdom’, just as Muhammad is said to have done, and exhorts young Muslims to imitate a prophet who “waged jihad against the infidels.” The site also informs youngsters that “the Jews” are responsible for all of the “corruption and deviance in the world” and that “murdering children” is “part of the Jewish religion.” It’s not clear how this message is to be reconciled with the Dalai Lama’s statement, or with the claims of the Brotherhood’s vice-president, Khairat el-Shatir, who, in an article titled No Need to be Afraid of Us, informed Guardian readers that “the success of the Muslim Brotherhood should not frighten anybody; we respect the rights of all religious and political groups.”

The Dalai Lama is presumably unaware of the severe limits to compassion demanded by several Islamic schoolbooks. One Egyptian textbook, Studies in Theology: Traditions and Morals, Grade II (2001), cites Muhammad and reminds children of their duty to “perform jihad in Allah’s cause, to behead the infidels, take them prisoner, break their power and make their souls humble…” (pp 291-22). Young readers are also reminded that “the concept of jihad is interpreted in the Egyptian school curriculum almost exclusively as a military endeavour… It is war against Allah’s enemies, i.e., the infidels.” Another cheering gem, Commentary on the Surahs of Muhammad, Al-Fath, Al-Hujurat and Qaf, Grade II (2002), warns youngsters against being “seized by compassion” towards unbelievers.

Contempt for non-Muslims is also commonplace in Saudi school textbooks. In July 2004, the Guardian reported the persistence of supremacist indoctrination, despite assurances to the contrary from the Saudi foreign minister. Six-year-olds are instructed that “emulation of the infidels leads to loving them and raising their status in the eyes of the Muslim, and that is forbidden.” Similarly xenophobic instructions have been found in contemporary schoolbooks in Palestine, Jordan and Pakistan, and in judicial texts endorsed by Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the nearest thing to an Islamic Vatican. Again, the size of an extremist ‘fringe’ and its relationship to mainstream conceptions of the faith have to be considered as they actually are, not as one might wish, or assume.

Andrew Bostom has more.

Tawfik Hamid is the author of The Roots of Jihad. His writing and audio material can be found at his website.

Related. And.

Further to this comment on the obligation to “mingle”, and via the Devil’s Kitchen, here’s Madsen Pirie on bright children as collective property. 

“It is wrong to allow bright children to go to special schools. This deprives the ordinary schools of their beneficial influence.”

If you regard children as the property of the state, existing to serve it, then it is explicable why the bright ones should be regarded as a scarce commodity, and rationed accordingly. The idea of allocating their “beneficial influence” equally through society follows from the same twisted logic. It is a pity that this is only applied to intelligence. Why should not the good-looking children be shared out equally, so their peer group has equal access to the pleasant sight of them? Perhaps the kind ones should be spread so that all may benefit equally from their sweet disposition?

The vicious notion is that children, whether bright or not, should be regarded as the instruments of the ends of others, instead of ends in themselves. Children do not exist to serve the purposes of the state; it is the other way round. The concern should be with what is of benefit to the individuals concerned, rather than with how they can be made to serve some ideological view of society. Behind the idea often lurks the doctrine of egalitarianism, and the feeling that children really ought not to be brighter than each other. With this comes the determination that nothing should be done to encourage it.

Further to this, a few thoughts culled from yesterday’s comments. 

There’s a debate rumbling over at Harry’s Place, part of which revolves around Ezra Levant’s character and motive, as if they were the issue on which one’s view should hinge. But if Levant wished to be gratuitously offensive towards the deceased founder of a dismal superstition, why shouldn’t he? That wasn’t his intention, of course, as is clear from the original article (which was about press freedom, cowardice and intimidation) and subsequent statements; but the point remains that once state bureaucracy presumes to divine a person’s innermost motives in this way, the road to hell is being paved.

The state cannot be empowered, or trusted, to avenge hurt feelings – or injured pride, or vanity, or delusions of heresy. And it cannot extend preferential protection to those who may choose to be “offended” in order to gain political leverage or to censor ideas they happen not to like. Being “offended” has often been the claim of bad people hearing good ideas, and those who find their censorious umbrage rewarded will be inclined to seek it out more loudly than before.

Vitruvius has provided the following quote, by H. L. Mencken,

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

Yet I’ve seen several commentators, chiefly on the left, indulging in self-satisfied ad hominem and hoping for whichever outcome will do most harm to Levant’s standing, as if the actual outcome and actual precedent were of no intrinsic importance. But those who hang their argument on whether or not they happen to like Levant, or on whatever they take his motives to be, are missing the fundamental point he’s raised, which exists whether or not he’s a scumbag or a saint. This isn’t about whether one feels Levant’s political views make him a bad person or a terrible dinner guest. This isn’t simply about personal animosity and the individuals in question. If Levant is subject to this bureaucratic harassment, then others may share his fate – people whose views and personality one may be less hostile towards. If I moved to Canada, I might conceivably find myself in a similar situation, given time. Would that be okay? Or would I warrant some exemption because I’m such a nice guy? 

If Levant can’t publish those cartoons, or other things deemed heretical or “hateful” by Islamist ideologues, then freedom of conscience and freedom of expression are profoundly compromised. If Levant isn’t free to “insult” or “defame” Muhammad, or to disdain the religion he founded, then a precedent will have been set and all Canadians will have a new problem. And it’s unlikely that this problem will be confined to Canada. If Syed Soharwardy and the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada prevail, rational debate will most likely be inhibited when similar subjects arise, as they no doubt will. As Levant makes clear, “the process has become the punishment” and the potential risk of similar, costly, experiences will affect decisions as to what may or may not be published and what facts may or may not be stated. The threat of nuisance complaints, considerable expense and state interference will influence serious public debate in areas of religious sensitivity – or at least in areas of Islamic sensitivity, which, unfortunately, covers quite a lot.

For instance, one would have great difficulty explaining in detail and with rigour why it is one isn’t a Muslim, or why the Qur’an is not the “uncreated” word of some hypothetical deity, or why one finds Islam to be an absurd contrivance. That so many people calling themselves “progressive” should hesitate to extend this basic right to someone they happen not to like is, if not offensive, then hazardous, self-preoccupied and somewhat depressing.