Les's 'J'accuse letter' to all Rochdale's Councillors

IS ROCHDALE COUNCIL GUILTY OF BAD FAITH?

J'accuse. by Zola. J'accuse, (French: “I accuse”) was a celebrated open letter by Émile Zola to the president of the French Republic in defense of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer who had been accused of treason by the French army. It was published in the newspaper L'Aurore on Jan. 13, 1898.  

On the 1st, December 2019. on this NV Blog Les May accused the Rochdale Councillors of 'institutional racism' for their failure to openly condemn a version of racism when it was applied to white northern workingmen employed as tree surgeons in the Rochdale ward of Newbold.  Mild mutterings in private e-mails really doesn't cut the mustard.  

A number of councillors have already replied to Les May's open letter on the 6th, Nov. calling on Rochdale's councillors to condemn the collective assault on the tree surgeons recorded on this NV Blog.  Meanwhile, another  Rochdale councillor who is Asian has quite separately engaged with me in an exchange of views on this matter below. 

Readers of this Blog, in the light of the savage attack in Newbold on the tree surgeons in October 2017, must judge the wisdom of the concluding utterance of this councillor:
'Brian I don't want to waste your time justice has been served and there are no tensions in newbod of the sort you suggest'

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On Fri 25/10/2019 at 14:04, I wrote:

Dear Councillor X,

How are you? You will no doubt be aware of the case below for which I provide the link.  Already there are sites taking note of this who perhaps lack the best of intentions. I suspect the people involved were not from Kashmir. However, the critics of this behaviour will not be so nuanced and on past experience will use a scatter gun approach. In the light of this, it is important that the Council should condemn in full council what has happened up Newbold in the strongest possible terms.  I'm sure that you will agree with this, and accept that attempts to sweep this kind of conduct under the carpet is worse than short-sighted. Please try to prevail upon your colleagues and get them to condemn the culture that allows this to take place?

Best wishes,

Brian Bamford:  joint-editor of Northern Voices. 

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On Fri the 25/10/2019 at 14:49 Councillor  X replied:

Thank you Brian  I am aware of this case and as a result the council,police and community have worked together.

I am a councillor ,not Kashmiri,Pakistani or Muslim councillor but a councillor who serves all people of Rochdale.

In your email I assume hints of segregation (but I know you better). However, are you suggesting that all muslim/Asian councillors should condemn it?

We are having a meeting with police to look at crime figures in my ward and drawing up a strategy to combat it.

Once again thank you for your email.

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To which I responded on Fri 25/10/2019 at 20:01L

Dear X,

I wrote to you as a friend rather than as a councillor and as I am someone who, because of my history which know about, has a certain affection for Kasmir.  Clearly as a councillor you must represent all of your consituents, but one of the offendents in this case , Habibur Rahman, claimed in Court that the victims  were 'white b******s' who were in his 'country'.  Now Mr. Rahman was clearly making a specific  georgraphical claim, and as someone who is an ethnomethodologist and a conversational analyst I find it curious.  I take this to mean that he exercises some control in Newbold.  Now let me be clear that I believe that all Rochdale councillors of all parties, should openly condemn this kind of thing, precisely because it strikes at the heart of all human decency and civilisation.

Best wishes,

Brian Bamford

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On Mon the 04/11/2019 at 07:16 I wrote:  I don't understand why you are so reluctant to invite me over to discuss the problems of Newbold. Clearly there is something seriously wrong in the ward. Later today I will be talking to the police about this case of the tree surgeons. As I write this I'm just hearing about the problems in Kashmir on Radio Four, I remember in the 1990s when you asked me to go over there with you. The bottom line is there must be an open and public condemnation of what happened in Newbold at the next Full Council Meeting which I believe is the 11th, December?

To which Councillor X replied on Mon 04/11/2019 at 08:29:  Brian I don't want to waste your time justice has been served and there are no tensions in newbod of the sort you suggest

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Tory Debates: 'Words have consequences'

Power Politics Smelling Around a Lampost

by Brian Bamford

DURING the Tory leadership debate on the 30th, June, the BBC was accused of bias and the Daily Mail ran an headline: 'BIASED BRAZEN CONTEMPTABLE' and an editorial entitled 'A farrago of deceit and naked BBC bias'.  The editor Geordie Greig wrote:  'One questioner was an imam ('Abdula from Bristol'), who took Mr (Boris) Johnson to task over his use of Islamaphobic language.'  

What the Imam questioner from Bristol asked was did Boris accept that 'words have consequences?'

Boris then admitted that some of his remarks might occasionally have caused some plaster to off the ceiling, but added that people sometimes chose to 'escalate' his comments. 

Ludwig Wittgenstein was once quoted as saying:   'A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.'

Despite Geordie Greig's protestations about BBC bias in the Daily Mail, the Imam was justified in asking his question which was of interest to the public.

more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/ludwig_wittgenstein_147252

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/ludwig_wittgenstein_147252

The roots of this question stem from a column in the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper on 5 Aug 2018, in which Johnson wrote that while he doesn’t support a burqa ban in Denmark, he does think they’re 'ridiculous' because they make women look like 'letter boxes' and 'bank robbers.'

But Johnson was also perfectly entitled to describe the effect the asthetic style of the burka had on him:  'If you say that it is weird and bullying to expect women to cover their faces, then I totally agree,' Johnson wrote.  'I would go further and say that it is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes.'

Months later in December 2018, Boris Johnson was cleared by an internal Tory Party internal inquiry of breaching the Conservative Party’s code of conduct by comparing veiled Muslim women to letter boxes and bank robbers when an independent panel decided the former foreign secretary was 'respectful and tolerant' and was entitled to use 'satire' in his newspaper column in August.

When I worked at Arrow Mill in Rochdale in the early 1970s, the Pakistani textile spinners there told me that at that time their women-folk wouldn't wear the veil because we natives would laugh at them.  At that time there were less Asian women in the UK, and what shocked most people was that the women usually trialed behind their men-folk when they where out walking in the streets.  It was years later when the fashion of the burka became more commonplace among Muslim women in the UK.

From a logical point of view  'words have consequences' because words are tools to shape meanings in the way a chisel would impact an impression on a piece of wood.  Polemics is the art of throwing eggs or delivering blows in the businesslike manner of a boxer (see Wittgenstein reference above).

In response to this we are told that the critics of Boris will tell us that they are offended and that what Boris writes is a form of 'hate speech'.  Well they may well make this claim as such people often do as they are very vocal.  Yet, others may thus equally respond, as Queen Gertrude did in Shakespeare's play Hamlet:.  'The Lady Doth Protest Too Much, methinks'. 

Most writers on Northern Voices have been clearly committed to libertarian anarchism as rooted in free speech, and question the squeamishness of those who make claims that they are perennially offended by something or other.  The squeamish are now categorised as 'snowflakes'. 

Yet are the squeamish simulating their 'offence' to close down free speech in the way that is available to any human being?  Here we are dealing with something like a private language or the philosophical 'problem of other minds'.  We have words that refer to sensations like being 'offended' or being 'in pain', but we have no way of knowing if these sensations are fake or not.

To throw into relief the possible artful practices of squeamish human 'snowflakes' let us consider what Wittgenstein asks about a dog:

'Why can’t a dog simulate pain? Is he too honest? Could one teach a
dog to simulate pain? Perhaps it is possible to teach him to howl on
particular occasions as if he were in pain, even when he is not. But the
surroundings which are necessary for this behaviour to be real
simulation are missing.'

We can however go further and distinguish between the artful human snowflake and the dog by what Russell B. Goodman writes about in his essay 'Thinking about Animals:  James, Wittgenstein, Hearne': 

'Dogs can be sneaky or deceptive, and that there are stories of
dogs pretending to be injured and doing other clever things. So
perhaps a dog can simulate pain. Would the dog then be dishonest?
Wittgenstein is making a revealing little joke here, based on the
incongruity of saying that dogs either are or are not honest. They
do not have a form of life in which honesty is a major component
in the way that for example, hiding bones and smelling lampposts
are.'

Thus honesty, hypocrisy, sincerity and what could be called human decency, do not form part of the dog's universe.  What could be said about Boris's comments on the Burka and the claim of his alleged Islamophobia is that he is there to entertain and is simply attention seeking when he talks about letter- boxes.  After this week's latest debate with Jeremy Hunt, Eamonn O’Domhnaill, 48, a finance manager from Ireland, was unimpressed with both candidates but said:
'I don’t believe Boris Johnson is taking this seriously - there has been far too much buffoonery.'.

We all know Boris is believed to have favoured remain in the run-up to the referendum.  It is tempting to suggest that there is a certain Fastaffian amorality about his politics which places him closer to Russel B. Goodman's dog smelling round a lamppost as he seeks the Tory leadership..

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ASIA BIBI LEAVES PAKISTAN

ASIA BIBI, a Pakistani Christian woman who spent years on death row after being convicted of blasphemy, has left the country, officials have confirmed.

Her conviction was overturned last year by the Supreme Court.  She was originally convicted in 2010 after being accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad in a row with her neighbours.

Asia Bibi has always maintained her innocence in a case that has polarised Pakistan.
Pakistani government officials did not reveal her destination, or say when she left.

But her lawyer Saif ul Malook told the BBC she had already arrived in Canada, where two of her daughters are understood to have been granted asylum.

Asia Noreen - commonly known as Asia Bibi - was kept at a secret location while arrangements were made for her to leave the country.

The Supreme Court's quashing of her sentence last October led to violent protests by religious hardliners who support strong blasphemy laws, while more liberal sections of society urged her release.

The trial stemed from an argument Asia Bibi had with a group of women in June 2009.  They were harvesting fruit when a row broke out about a bucket of water. The women said that because she had used a cup, they could no longer touch it, as her faith had made it unclean.

Prosecutors alleged that in the row which followed, the women said Asia Bibi should convert to Islam and that she made offensive comments about the Prophet Muhammad in response.
She was later beaten up at her home, during which her accusers say she confessed to blasphemy. She was arrested after a police investigation.

Acquitting her, the Supreme Court said that the case was based on unreliable evidence and her confession was delivered in front of a crowd "threatening to kill her".

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WHAT If the court refuses to allow the appeal?

 

 If the court refuses to allow the appeal, it will remove the last legal hurdle facing Asia Bibi.

PAKISTAN's Supreme Court will decide on January 29 whether to allow an appeal against its acquittal of a Christian woman at the centre of a blasphemy row, a lawyer involved in the case said on Thursday.

If the court refuses to allow the appeal, it will remove the last legal hurdle facing Asia Bibi, who is a prime target in Pakistan and remains in protective custody.

Bibi was on death row for eight years for blasphemy, a hugely sensitive charge.

The Supreme Court's decision in October last year to overturn her conviction ignited days of violent demonstrations, with enraged militants calling for her beheading, mutiny within the powerful military and the assassination of the country's top judges.

The government has since launched a crackdown on the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) party - the militant group driving the violent protests - charging its leaders with sedition and terrorism.

But authorities also struck a deal with the protesters to end the violence, forming an agreement which included allowing a final review of the Supreme Court's judgement.

On January 29, "the court will determine if our appeal against her acquittal is admitted", Ghulam Mustafa Chaudhry, the lawyer who filed the petition seeking an appeal, told AFP.

"Usually the court decides on the same day if the appeal is admitted or not," he added.

Under Pakistan's legal system any private citizen can petition the courts on any matter of public interest or human rights, as in the Bibi case.

However legal experts said it would be highly unusual for the Supreme Court to overturn its own decision, especially one that as carefully drafted as the Bibi ruling.

"It is very rare," lawyer Saad Rasool told AFP.

The three-member bench that will hear the petition will be headed by new Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, considered the country's top expert in criminal law and who helped draft the decision to acquit Bibi.

Approximately 40 people are believed to be on death row or serving a life sentence for blasphemy, according to a 2018 report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Speculation has been rife since Bibi's acquittal that an asylum deal with a European or North American country may be in the works.

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Asia Bibi Needs a Smartphone

by Les May

RAHAF Mohammed al-Nun is an 18 years old woman who has renounced Islam, fled Saudi Arabia, claims that if she were returned she would be killed, has been declared a refugee by the United Nations and has been granted asylum in Canada. Asia Bibi is 52 years old Pakistani woman who was on death row for eight years before being declared innocent of blasphemy by the Pakistan Supreme Court.  Since 2 November last year she has been in protective custody to keep her safe from mobs who refuse to accept the verdict of the court and want to hang her.

Whilst Rahaf has been enabled to start a new life Asia is still effectively a prisoner separated from her children and her husband.  So why the difference? Why has Rahaf attracted world wide attention and Asia been largely forgotten?

There’s a clue in a long article by Janet Street-Porter (JSP) in today’s Independent.  JSP slants her article so that Rahaf is to be seen as a woman fleeing from a male dominated society.  She even manages to bring in the 120 or so women at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre who, like Asia Bibi are separated from their family, as no doubt the men are too.  Rahef’s ‘crime’ is to simply want to make decisions about her own life. Asia Bibi’s is to be a Christian in a predominantly Muslim country.   The option she was given was convert to Islam or be tried for blasphemy. There’s no ‘feminist’ angle here.  It is, or should be, a human rights issue and deserving of our support for that reason.

There are two other reasons why these two women have been treated differently. When Rahaf reached Canada she was greeted by a government minister who went on to praise her countries diplomats.  Giving her asylum will not improve relations between Canada and Saudi Arabia. Pakistan has close ties with the UK, but Asia Bibi is something of an embarrassment to our government.   The Foreign Office has opposed offering her asylum, though it has been unwilling to go on the public record as to why it has taken this stance. Some people have viewed this as a willingness to ‘bend the knee’ to right wing extremists in Pakistan. I’m one of them.

The second reason is the simple fact that Rahaf has a smartphone and Asia Bibi does not. In one day Rahaf acquired 27,000 ‘followers’ on Twitter with her hashtag #SaveRahaf. For the Saudis the plight of one young woman had grown to an international incident overnight.

At present Asia Bibi is an innocent woman being held under what is effectively house arrest.  The president of Pakistan, Imran Khan, has shown himself unwilling to act to make sure she goes free immediately. Governments treat him with kid gloves in the hope of keeping him ‘on side’.  Saudi Arabia pumps money into the country to keep it solvent.   There’s little sign that the Bibi case will ever ‘go viral’ on Twitter. It seems being a Christian is seriously uncool amongst the Twitterati.

No doubt Rahaf’s story will get an outing in the Sunday papers this weekend and probably next week she’ll feature on Woman’s Hour.  As for Asia Bibi I’m not holding my breath as I wait for the feministas to notice.

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Scottish Nationalists call for Asylum for Asia Bibi

SCOTTISH National party MPs, according to The Guardian today, have written to Theresa May calling on the UK to grant asylum to Pakistani Christian Asia Bibi and her family, who have been in hiding in their home country since her acquittal on blasphemy charges last month.

A letter from SNP frontbencher Carol Monaghan, co-signed by the party’s other 34 Westminster MPs, warns that Bibi lives in extreme danger in Pakistan where “violent mobs are calling for her execution”.

Monaghan and her colleagues 'commend Canada, Spain and France for their offers of asylum, and note that Germany and Italy have reportedly held talks with Pakistan on the issue'.

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A Symbol of Global Repression

by Les May

THE title of this piece is that used by the ‘i’ newspaper to preface two extracts, one from The Times and the other from the Daily Telegraph.  Both relate to the case of Asia Bibi the Pakistani Christian woman who was held on death row for eight years accused of blasphemy before finally being acquitted by the Pakistan Supreme Court.   The acquittal resulted in mobs taking to the streets demanding that she be hanged.  The rioting mobs were only placated when the president of Pakistan Imran Khan said that her acquittal would be ‘reviewed’.  Since then she has been in hiding and her defence lawyer has fled to the Netherlands of fear of his life.

A report in The Telegraph quoted Jeremy Hunt the Foreign Secretary as saying:  ‘So often, the persecution of Christians is a telling early warning sign of the persecution of every minority. But I am not convinced that our response to the threats facing this group has always matched the scale of the problem’.

A Times editorial said ‘Asia Bibi’s case symbolises the fate of persecuted Christians around the world. It is welcome that the Foreign Secretary has clarified the Government’s stance whilst acknowledging the UK’s failings with regard to safeguarding Christian’s overseas.’

What is both surprising and disappointing is that it has been left to a Tory cabinet minister and two Tory supporting papers to take up the Asia Bibi case. The normally very vocal so called ‘liberal left’ with its obsession with identity politics has ignored her plight.  I am also aware that some time ago one of the Northern Voices editors contacted Jeremy Corbyn’s office for a response to the Asia Bibi case.  A reply is still awaited.

As I have mentioned before I have no axe to grind on this as I am an atheist.   But I cannot help noticing that all too often, because some Christians express views about homosexuality and abortion that some people do not like, Christians are seen only as persecutors of others and never as victims of persecution.

So far as I am concerned Christians are free to believe that they know what God thinks about homosexuality or abortion and to tell the rest of us if they are minded to do so.  I am free to ignore them. It’s called tolerance and stems from the belief that freedom of speech is having the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

Given that Asia Bibi is in fear of her life, yet her plight is ignored by the so called ‘liberal left’, puts into perspective the constant whingeing from assorted self interest groups about trivial incidents which they claim are ‘offensive’. A stray hand on someone’s knee or calling someone with full set of wedding tackle ‘he’ when they claim to be ‘she’, doesn’t really compare with having mobs on the street determined to hang you from the nearest lamp post.

Asia Bibi's solicitor to go back to Pakistan

 No date yet set for review of Asia Bibi case by Pakistan's Supreme Court

THE Pakistani solicitor, Saiful Malook, who successfully fought a long legal struggle to get Asia Bibi, the Christian woman at the centre of the current high-profile blasphemy case acquited, now says he will return home to represent her whenever the country's Supreme Court takes up a review petition against her.

Saiful Malook, who fled in fear for his life to the Netherlands following threats to him from radical Islamists after the Oct. 21 acquittal of Asia Bibi, said on Christmas Day that no date has been set by the court to hear the petition.

This announcement by Malook came as Asia, the 54-year-old mother of five, celebrated Christmas amid security despite being freed. Bibi had been on death row since 2010 on charges of insulting Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

The extemely radical Tehreek-e-Labbaik political party held violent nationwide protests demanding her public execution after her release.

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Not Cricket Councillor Rashid!

ON the 18^th, December, the ambitious Rochdale Councillor Aasim Rashid welcomed the resumption of flights to Pakistan from Britain after a 10 years suspension.   In a self-congratulatory Face-book entry he said:

‘it was part of our agenda when our Rochdale Delegation visited Pakistan in Oct. that British Airways should resume flights to Pakistan and the England Cricket team playing in Pakistan. Tony Lloyd MP, Allen Brett and myself had very detailed discussion with British high commission in Pakistan...

‘I would like to congratulate Overseas Pakistanis Minister Zulfi Bukhari for his team efforts. It is a huge example if we work together there will be a positive outcome.’

Councillor Rashid is lavish with his praise for an overseas minister who has a strange history.

Syed Zulfiqar Abbas Bukhari alias Zulfi Bukhari, was accused in the newspaper DAWN on November 20^th, this year, of not cooperating with the investigators of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) probing a case into his alleged illegitimate assets.

Mr. Zulfi Bukhari is a close friend of the current prime minister of Pakistan Imran Khan.  Earlier, in the July-25th, elections, he was in-charge of elections campaigns of PTI party chief Imran Khan for NA-53 Islamabad.  He is a dual British-Pakistani national with family in the UK.

The NAB notice mentioned that Zulfi Bukhari owns six offshore companies which were revealed in Pakistan by The News reporter Umar Cheema last year.

Bukhari had in 2016 defended having offshore companies and said that it was 'legal and common practice for companies & businessmen like myself to establish commercial entities in different jurisdictions.'

According to the ongoing NAB enquiry : “Consequent upon revelation of Panama Papers, various allegations leveled that the petitioner in connivance with others has established various offshore companies in the British Virgin Island (BVI).” 

Is this cricket?

It is to be hoped that the Rochdale MP Tony Lloyd and the noble boss of Rochdale, Councilor Allen Brett, know what they are getting into with Councillor Rashid and the curious politics of Pakistan.

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Back To The Dark Ages?

by Les May

A WEEK or so ago Imran Khan, Prime Minister of Pakistan said that his government was spearheading efforts to get countries to sign upto an ‘International Convention on Preventing the Defamation of Religions’. Given that he is the head of a country which has perhaps the vaguest and most draconian blasphemy laws in the world, this is not good news.

The depth of Pakistan’s commitment to religions other than Islam can perhaps best be judged from the fact that in May the Punjab assembly passed legislation with the title Compulsory Teaching of the Holy Qur’an Bill, which makes it mandatory for children to learn the Muslim religious text in schools. The bill incudes the passage ‘Being an Islamic country, the free and the compulsory teaching of Holy Qur’an will definitely be a source of the establishment of a society based on the teachings of Islam’.

No alternative programme has been announced for non-Muslim students of Punjab.

Khan’s real intention seems to be to protect both religious and political Islam from criticism in an effort to maintain peace in his country where rioters have taken to the streets to demand that a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, be hanged for blasphemy.

The notion that his words ‘There were prophets of Allah other [than Muhammad], but there is no mention of them in human history.  There is negligible mention of them. Moses is mentioned, but there is no mention of Jesus in history.  But the entire life of Muhammad, who was Allah's last prophet, is part of history.’ might be offensive to Christians and indeed to anyone who, to paraphrase Tom Paine, ‘refuses to have their lives willed away by the manuscript authority of the dead’, does not seem to have occurred to him. (If you are offended you’ll just have to do as I have had to do, ‘get over it’.)

Modern scholarship has a different view of the origins of Islam which throws doubt on Khan’s claim that Muhammad is ‘part of history’.  This is what Amazon has to say about the book The Hidden Origins of Islam: New Research into Its Early History;

Despite Muhammad's exalted place in Islam, even today there is still surprisingly little actually known about this shadowy figure and the origins of the Qur'an because of an astounding lack of verifiable biographical material.  Furthermore, most of the existing biographical traditions that can be used to substantiate the life of Muhammad date to nearly two centuries after his death, a time when a powerful, expansive, and idealized empire had become synonymous with his name and vision - thus resulting in an exaggerated and often artificial characterization of the prophetic figure coupled with many questionable interpretations of the holy book of Islam.

On the basis of datable and localizable artifacts from the seventh and eighth centuries of the Christian era, many of the historical developments, misconceptions, and fallacies of Islam can now be seen in a different light.  Excavated coins that predate Islam and the old inscription in the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem utilize symbols used in a documented Syrian Arabic theology - a theology with Christian roots.

Interpreting traditional contexts of historical evidence and rereading passages of the Qur'an, the researchers in this thought-provoking volume unveil a surprising - and highly unconventional - picture of the very foundations of Islamic religious history.

https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Origins-Islam-Research-History/dp/1591026342?tag=firstthings20-20#customerReviews

This book would undoubtedly fall foul of any international convention which enacted what Imran Khan is proposing, because it strikes at the beliefs of many Muslims, by questioning the origin of their faith.  That would mean that the authors and the publishers would be liable to prosecution.  The answer is not to ban it, but to provide the evidence that it’s conclusions are wrong.

Sadly Khan is only takIng to its logical conclusion a trend which is already well established in the West.   Increasingly we have people trying to grab the moral high ground by claiming that something they read or hear, and do not like, is racist, anti-semitic, islamo-phobic, mysoginistic, trans-phobic, homo-phobic, patriarchal or in the latest catch all phrase, ‘hate speech’, and should not be said.

These terms have become the first response of people who seem to think they have the right never to be offended, but are seemingly unwilling to engage in any kind of debate which might change their perceptions. It is not just ‘activist’ groups which behave like this, it is the default position of many columnists in the mainstream press.

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Islamo-phobia or Fear of Political Islam?

by Les May

ACCORDING to 'Pakistan Today (PT)', Imran Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, said at a conference a few days ago, “Moses got some mention, but Jesus Christ has no mention in history”, which may not be the most tactful thing to say in a country where mobs wander the streets demanding that Asia Bibi, who is a Christian, should be hanged for blasphemy even though the countrie’s Supreme Court has declared her innocent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXufFc-kAsc

Perhaps a little ‘tongue in cheek’ PT went on to say:

‘It merits a mention here that the two-day conference titled, "Finality of Prophethood and responsibilities of Muslims in light of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)", is the 43rd conference aimed at promoting religious harmony, tolerance, brotherhood and equality, respect for humanity, non-violence, unity, reconciliation and culture of dialogue’

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2018/11/21/video-pm-khan-draws-ire-over-controversial-remarks-about-jesus-christ/

What PT did not mention was that according to the 'Times of Israel', Imran Khan has also called for an international convention banning speech deemed insulting to Muslims.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/pakistani-pm-west-using-muslim-anger-over-blasphemy-to-spread-propaganda/

There is a direct translation of the relevant parts of his speech here;

https://www.memri.org/tv/pakistani-pm-imran-khan-no-mention-jesus-history-anti-free-speech-love-muhammad/transcript

What Khan is saying here is that the price for civil peace in Pakistan is our freedom of speech.  The people who have rioted and are demanding that Asia Bibi be hanged are by any reasonable measure on the extreme right wing politically. They make Tommy Robinson and his ilk look like babes in arms. Yet the Asia Bibi case has been largely ignored by the Left which seems more interested in building up Robinson’s profile.

One blog which claims to be ‘of liberal stance and independent mind’ has had a story about Robinson ever day this week, but has not found time to campaign on behalf of a woman who spent eight years in a cell with a death sentence hanging over her.

So far Robinson has not spotted the political capital to be made out of the Bibi case. If he ever does he’ll find that the Left has been too busy burnishing its anti-racist credentials to make any credible response to why it has not taken up the case for Asia Bibi and her family being offered asylum in the UK.

There is an alternative perspective on the Bibi story here;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg-fJp_Lkts

Who Are We Bowing Down To?

by Les May

'THAT’s not my question.'   It’s what Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee said when he told the BBC that there was concern among MPs that the Government appeared scared of the reaction of Pakistani mobs, adding that it must ask itself ‘very serious questions about who it was bowing down to’

Tugendhat has said that Asia Bibi was eligible for asylum in the UK ‘on every possible metric’.  He pointed out that the Government had willingly helped persecuted Muslims in the Balkans and defended the rights of homosexuals in countries where they are not tolerated, and added;  ’The idea that we shouldn’t change our policy in Pakistan simply because she is a Christian and simply because we are afraid of the mob strikes me as extremely odd’.

When the judge who freed her, Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, visited London last week he told MPs that she was not on an exit control list and was free to leave Pakistan with her family at any time.

Earlier this month Rehman Chishti the Conservative MP for Gillingham and Rainham, who is the son of an imam, quit as Party vice-chairman and trade envoy to Pakistan because of the Government’s refusal to offer refuge to Mrs Bibi and her family.

He has since said:  ‘She is free to leave but she needs a country to come forward, to morally and ethically do the right thing. I say this as clearly as I can – for the United Kingdom to say which other country would Asia Bibi like to go to is completely and utterly unacceptable, irrespective of what any other country may offer.  We have a moral obligation.  Why have we, in God’s name, not done the right thing to say – irrespective of what anyone else offers – we, the UK, will do the right thing in line with our great British values?  It was right for me to step down last week, when you try to get the Government to do the right thing and it would not do the right thing.'

He followed this up by pointing out that the Government willingly gave asylum to Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani Muslim shot by the Taliban for her work in campaigning for the education of girls, in spite of threats of reprisals.

When Asia Bibi’s husband, Ashiq Mashi, and her youngest daughter, Eisham Ashiq, who is 18, visited London in October, not a single British minister would meet the pair even in private.  To his great credit Rehman Chishti did meet them and has said that Eisham had tears in her eyes when he had to tell her that no one was interested in hearing her story.

The response of Theresa May and her government shames Britain.  It presents it as a weak nation unable to determine what happens within its own borders. Although I am happy to say I had a ‘good Sunday school education’, I am not a Christian, so in supporting Asia Bibi, I have no religious axe to grind.   But as an atheist I think I have something to fear from the feeble response from Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, the Prime Minister’s special envoy on freedom of religion and belief, who, speaking in the House of Lords during the launch of a report on global religious persecution defended the government in relation to the Asia Bibi case by saying ’It is entirely appropriate that maybe less is more’.  It was this which prompted Rehman Chishti to make the remarks I have quoted above.   It appears that some religions and (dis)beliefs are more equal than others to Lord Ahmed.

It’s not just this weak kneed government that deserves our censure.   The Labour party has been equally silent on this matter, as have the usually gobby women MPs, women journalists and professional feminists, who never miss any opportunity to parade their stance against ‘male oppression’.  Nor have we heard anything from those preening ‘activists’ who are always so ready to shout loudly about anything they can condemn as ‘Islamophobia’. 

 

How odd that apart from that by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, all the articles that I have read about the Bibi case seem to have been penned by men.

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