Further to yesterday’s post on the excellent Spectator debate, which I urge you to download, a few thoughts occur.

One of Tariq Ramadan’s favoured rhetorical ploys, employed during the debate, is to blather at length about the need for “dialogue” and “discourse” (as if no-one else had thought to suggest such a thing), before denouncing as “arrogant” almost any statement, question or discussion that might realistically address the fundamental issues. In response to this manoeuvre, Douglas Murray asks how a “dialogue” might begin:

“Where does [the dialogue] start? Would it start, for instance, with making a joke? Contra Mr Khomeini – not a funny man. Or, would it start with an article, perhaps? Would it start, perhaps, with a film? It did, a few years ago, with Submission, and Theo van Gogh was killed. Could it start with making a joke, perhaps? A joke in a cartoon? Well, apparently not, because we know there were burnings and killings and lootings and rioting across the globe in reaction to those cartoons. If you’re going to start a dialogue, what could you do that would be smaller than drawing a cartoon? This dialogue which we keep on being offered is not reciprocated.” 

Indeed. The “dialogue” Ramadan forever alludes to, somewhat vaguely, is by implication a dialogue on strictly Islamic terms – which is to say, on terms that are censorious, often circular and profoundly unrealistic. In this, Ramadan is far from alone. I’ve lost count of how many people seem to imagine that it’s somehow possible to challenge jihadist ideology and related horrors without mentioning Muhammad’s rather central role in the origination, sanctioning and perpetuation of those horrors, and without offending an apparently endless menu of other ‘sensitivities’. But if one cannot – dare not – draw attention to the link between sacralised atrocity and the exhortations of Islam’s founder, then what kind of dialogue is likely to be had?

Related. And. Also. Plus.

Those of you who missed the Spectator’s excellent live debate, We Should Not Be Reluctant to Assert the Superiority of Western Values, can download an mp3 here. Ibn Warraq, Douglas Murray and David Aaronovitch trade spirited arguments with Tariq Ramadan, Charles Glass and William Dalrymple. One audience member raises the question of whether such a freewheeling debate could be had in certain other societies without fear or threats of violence. Tempers do fray a little towards the end of the Q&A session – most notably when a rattled Tariq Ramadan shouts about his “humility” – but no shoes or chairs are thrown. Feel free to take notes. There may be a test later.

Douglas Murray’s article to accompany the debate can be read here, and Tariq Ramadan’s forked tongue is visible here. Update: see this.

Related. And. Also. Plus.

A reader named Peetbox thinks this site needs more music. Well, at least one musical item usually appears in the weekly ephemera round-up, spanning anything from Charles Trenet and Keiishi Suzuki to Herbie Hancock and Doris Day (alas, not together). But I agree with Mr, um, Box. There’s always room for more. To that end, here’s the video for Promesas by Chilean super-group, Los Mono. I suppose it might be described as bracing electro-jive. 

From the album Somos Los Que Estamos. More. And. Random monkey link.

This seems relevant. Wilfred McClay reviews Todd Gitlin’s The Intellectuals and the Flag, a critique, from the left, of the left’s intellectual malaise and the academic world that it dominates.

“The left embraced the smug disassociation from existing society epitomized in the sweeping call by Herbert Marcuse for a ‘Great Refusal’ of the confining ideals and crass manipulations of the modern capitalist political economy. But the embrace of Marcuse’s slogan has amounted in practice to a ‘great withdrawal,’ a narcissistic retreat into self-proclaimed ‘marginality,’ an obsession with ever more minute forms of identity politics and the infinite ‘problematizing’ of ‘truth,’ a reflexive opposition to America and the West, and an immurement in ‘theories’ whose radicalism is so pure that they never quite touch down to earth – follies all underwritten and protected by the perquisites and comforts of academia.”

More. Related. And. Plus. Also. Via Arts & Letters Daily.

Further to this and this, here’s a third clip from the BBC’s Planets series, taken from the episode Moon. Here, Farouk El-Baz explains how Apollo astronauts honed their geological skills – and how a sizeable piece of Flagstaff, Arizona, was given a radical lunar makeover.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

More background here and here. The entire Planets series can be downloaded here.

In the wake of the “Islam is Peace” PR campaign (discussed here) and Trevor Phillips’ attempts to rewrite history, today’s Times reports on yet another cause of Islam’s image problem:

“Some Muslim medical students are refusing to attend lectures or answer exam questions on alcohol-related or sexually transmitted diseases because they claim it offends their religious beliefs. Some trainee doctors say learning to treat the diseases conflicts with their faith, which states that Muslims should not drink alcohol and rejects sexual promiscuity.

A small number of Muslim medical students have even refused to treat patients of the opposite sex. One male student was prepared to fail his final exams rather than carry out a basic examination of a female patient. The religious objections by students have been confirmed by the British Medical Association (BMA) and General Medical Council (GMC), which both stressed that they did not approve of such actions.

It will intensify the debate sparked last week by the disclosure that Sainsbury’s is permitting Muslim checkout operators to refuse to handle customers’ alcohol purchases on religious grounds. It means other members of staff have to be called over to scan in wine and beer for them at the till.”

It isn’t clear who is to foot the bill for the additional staffing and training required to accommodate this latest sensitivity, and customers will, it seems, be expected to quietly accept the inconvenience – and the implied insult regarding their choice of beverage. Signs of customer impatience with this unfolding farce risk being construed as ‘Islamophobic’ and thus unspeakably wicked. And it is, I think, unlikely that Sainsbury’s will feel equally obliged to provide a checkout lane for customers who don’t wish to be delayed and inconvenienced by hypersensitive Muslim checkout staff.

“Critics, including many Islamic scholars, see the concessions as a step too far, and say Muslims are reneging on their professional responsibilities.” 

Indeed. Those who presume to inflict their superstitious vanities on others in this way should, of course, be prepared to deal with the practical consequences of that decision, i.e. finding another job more suited to their sensitivities.

“This weekend, however, it emerged that Sainsbury’s is also allowing its Muslim pharmacists to refuse to sell the morning-after pill to customers. At a Sainsbury’s store in Nottingham, a pharmacist named Ahmed declined to provide the pill to a female reporter posing as a customer. A colleague explained to her that Ahmed did not sell the pill for ‘ethical reasons’. Boots also permits pharmacists to refuse to sell the pill on ethical grounds.”

I wonder how well a Boots or Sainsbury’s customer might fare if they were to raise ethical objections to aspects of Islamic theology and its practical ramifications, say in terms of apostasy, sexual minorities or the retailing of food and medical treatments.

“The BMA said it had received reports of Muslim students who did not want to learn anything about alcohol or the effects of overconsumption. ‘They are so opposed to the consumption of it they don’t want to learn anything about it,’ said a spokesman. The GMC said it had received requests for guidance over whether students could ‘omit parts of the medical curriculum and yet still be allowed to graduate’.” 

Alas, the article doesn’t explore the arrogance that lies behind an assumption that one can claim a qualification that hasn’t actually been earned, or that one is entitled to retain a job one isn’t actually willing to do. But it does, by implication, shed light on practical reasons for the intellectual shortcomings of much of the Islamic world, and their self-inflicted nature.

Related. And. Also.   

How to deal with telemarketing calls. (H/T, Dr Westerhaus.) // Reposted by request: BT courtesy call goes horribly, horribly wrong. “Do you comprehend?” // Faces in places. // BBC TV idents. From the Fifties to the modern day. // Further to this, behold the future of re-entry. In emergencies. // Running countdown to fictional future events. Some overdue. (H/T, Grow-a-brain.) // World freedom atlas. Scan the world for freedom of expression, freedom of belief and individual rights. // Robert Spencer casts a critical eye over the “Islam is peace” PR campaign. // What does ‘jihad’ mean? “The 199 references in the most standard collection of Hadith all assume that jihad means warfare.” // The pearl of Allah. // Islamic comic book heroes. “Questions have been raised about the clothing the heroes wear.” // Nuns disagree. Things turn ugly. // A gallery of ejector seats. // How missiles work. // Exchanging Greetings and Introductions. (1960) How Earthlings greet. // Kavel Rafferty’s vintage record sleeves. (H/T, Coudal.) // Lava lamp packaging. The classic Century 102. // The American Package Museum. Gum, cocoa. tinned marshmallows. // The Birotron. Retro-electronica. It didn’t catch on. More. // Via Grow-a-brain, the, um, magnificent Belinda Bedeković. Video. Warning: it seems not to end. // And, via The Thin Man, Kathy Kirby gets groovy and bombastic.

Here’s a thing. Your very own moon. 

Photographed by Boris Bendikov. More. And. (H/T, Coudal.) 

Further to my rumblings about Professor Judith Butler and her obscurantist posturing, the fine people at Obscene Desserts have devised a new party game, juxtaposing her blathering, and that of her peers, with Communist propaganda posters. It seems to me the results would make excellent flash cards, and thus one could more readily memorise such gobbets of wisdom as,

“Libidinal dependency and powerlessness is phantasmatically overcome by the installation of a boundary and, hence, a hypostacized centre which produces an idealized bodily ego; that integrity and unity is achieved through the ordering of a wayward motility or disaggregated sexuality not yet restrained by the boundaries of individuation.”

Hours of fun. Related. And. Also. 

Brace yourselves, aesthetes. Via Marble River comes the mind-shattering return of the Ed Wood of comics, Mr Fletcher Hanks. A complete, and bewildering, adventure, first published in Fantastic Comics #1, December 1939, can be found here. “The Brain wants all Earth people destroyed.” And Dianna’s space belt won’t work.

More of Hanks’ unhinged dramas here and here.

The Fletcher Hanks anthology, I Shall Destroy All the Civilised Planets, can be ordered via Amazon and Fantagraphics. (H/T, Journalista!)