Guest Post- Jessica Valenti On "Why Are Men Always Committing Terrorism?"

Diana Ramazanova always dreamed of controlling her own destiny, but when she was growing up in Dagestan, she was told she should marry a man and support his ambitions. Today, many years after a move to Turkey that changed her life she has achieved her ambitions. By becoming Istanbul's first female suicide bomber.

Women are still scarce in the jihadi community: all of the 9/11 plane hijackers were men, few female radical preachers exist and none of the attackers who killed twelve priviliged rapists at Charlie Hebdo magazine were women. As shocking as it is, it can no longer be denied; many Islamic extremists are sexist.

Women currently make up less than 10% of Al Qaeda's senior membership and ISIS refused to even provide a breakdown of their senior leadership. Nor is the misogyny confined to the major organisations, an astonishing 98% of British Muslims would disapprove of their daughters joining ISIS, 1 in 4 female jihadis will experience rape, sexual assault or loud tutting, 20% of 50 is 10, 85% of boys were icky by a Feministing commissioned poll.

Nor are terrorists providing a safe space for women to work. Some estimates suggest that ISIS controlled areas of Syria and Iraq have levels of rape that are almost as high as US college campuses.

With few role models to inspire women like Diana, it may seem that the future of jihad is in patriarchal hands, but increasingly groups of young females are challenging the patriarchy and doing it for themselves, “Yes, initially many there was a good deal of scepticism about what we were doing,” Rovzan Dudaev 23 of the Chechen Black Widows, “so we built an organisation to support and nurture young girls who are interested in slaying degenerate infidel pigdogs for themselves,” With support and rigourous monitoring programmes it looks like the future of the caliphate my be in safe, female hands after all.

Quote Of The Day (Stupidity Edition)

When journalists are killed for expressing their views, it is one step away from burning books, said Annette Gerhard, 60.

On Not Publishing Islamic Cartoons

It is fully understandable that many publications have declined to print the cartoons of the prophet Muhammed both by Charlie Hebdo and by the Danish cartoonists. It is all very well for a semi anonymous commentator to argue that they should be courageous enough to publish them, but editors have to think about the risk not just to themselves but to their staff. Especially if they have foreign correspondents in Islamic countries.

The editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard, has been very direct about why his newspaper would not publish the cartoons:

what right do I have to risk the lives of my staff to make a point? 

What is much more objectionable is denying the reason why they are not publishing them- the threat of lethal violence committed by Islamic extremists.

However other publications refuse to admit that they have been intimidated into not  publishing them, the Daily Telegraph's Will Heaven* argued on Twitter that "if terrorists killed a pornographer, we wouldn't publish porn", implying that it is for reasons of good taste not fear of violence that they won't print them.

This is disingenuous. When the newspaper covers stories featuring offensive images of Christianity such as the infamous "Piss Christ" the image is published so readers understand what the story is about.The same is true when antisemitic material is the subject of a report.The same is true of most news organisations.

In a way it also slanders the artists by telling readers that although the artists obviously did not deserve to be killed for what they have done, their work is obnoxious and perhaps deliberately provocative when that is often very far from the truth.

Some people were even claiming that the Danish cartoons were racist, which was a slur against the cartoonist but not one which is easy to refute when the images are hidden. This one for instance was actually critical of the newspaper's decision to run the competition but the artist is under a death threat for the rest of his life anyway.


By all means refuse to put your life on the line in order to publish cartoons, but be honest about the reason why.

* I use him as an example purely because I saw his tweets this morning, a lot of newspaper made similar arguments back in 2005.

Charlie Hebdo

The Charlie Hebdo massacre disturbs me more than most terrorist attacks I must admit, because unlike the slaughter of random people it is something that could make people change their behaviour to avoid. People will be ever more unwilling to satirise a religion that needs more satire than most.

Appeasing Terror.

The decision by the last government to issue IRA terror suspects with de facto immunity from prosecution is sickening. At a time when Tony Blair's government was sending British soldiers to fight and die in Iraq and Afghanistan his government was colluding with those suspected of murdering British troops.

I don't really understand how a letter from the Northern Ireland Office can trump a prosecution, it looks like a political move to me. The main argument deployed by those who support what the government did is that it was a price worth paying for peace.

This isn't an argument that much merit- a better way of achieving peace is to defeat the terrorists. We are told it is impossible but pretty much all the European terrorist groups of the 1970s had been crushed and sidelined by the 21st century. They all did it without the wholesale corruption of their legal and political systems.

Even the most similar group to the IRA, the Basque separatists ETA are now beaten and trying to "negotiate" with the Spanish government. The Spanish have behaved with more courage and compassion for the victims than our government did and have refused to elevate them to more than thugs.

Unite Against Fascism- Inciting Murder Since....

This is an interesting turn up:

ITV News has uncovered a video showing Woolwich suspect Michael Adebolajo speaking at a demonstration at Harrow Central Mosque in 2009. The event was organised as a counter-rally against a planned protest by the English Defence League. 

We already know that Unite Against Fascism is a front group for the far left rape cult, the Socialist Workers Party, but their links with Adebolajo are new to me.

UAF were endorsed by various mainstream politicians including the prime minister even though their whole method is to illegally and violently stop people they oppose exercising their freedom of speech. They represent lawlessness and taking matters into your own hands. It's hard to be surprised that some of their friends have similar ideas.

The Politics Of The Street

Six Asian Muslim men have pleaded guilty to charges of planning a terrorist attack on an English Defence League* march in Dewsbury.

However violently attacking the EDL when they exercise the right to protest is tacitly supported or at least tolerated by many in the mainstream society. The organisation "Unite Against Fascism" has repeatedly launched violent attacks on the EDL yet that didn't stop the likes of David Cameron lending his support to this Socialist Workers Party front group.

Once people start romanticising street brawling as a means of opposing movements that you oppose it seems harsh to jail people for taking the idea half a step further.


* I'm not under any illusions about the EDL, which does include many out and out fascists. Fun EDL anecdote- I was in Penzance a few months ago for work reasons and briefly spoke to someone managing a pub.

He asked where I was from and when I replied "Northampton" his follow up question was "what do you think of all the blacks?", I mumbled a polite reply.

He then told me that his mate Chris, who was a shopfitter from Weston Super Mare, had founded the EDL before being marginalised by someone called Tommy from Luton who spent all the EDL's money on cocaine. Chris had now launched a secret breakaway group called the "English Volunteer Force".

Criminalising Terrorism- A Thought

The death of Margaret Thatcher has brought the IRA hunger strikes back into the news, with a lot on the far left of British politics and the far right of Irish politics blaming her for their deaths.

What the hunger strikers wanted was to be granted political status- not to be treated simply as common criminals.

Yet when after 9/11 the United States refused to treat captured terrorists as criminals but instead granted them a special status- in Guantanamo Bay- many people were outraged, and that includes almost all those on the far left who blamed Thatcher for letting the hunger strikers do the decent thing.

Enoch Powell Was Right.

About the treatment of Kenyan prisoners during the Mau Mau rebellion.

Two things the news reports don't mention about the Mau-Mau torture case currently winding its way through the legal system:

• The Mau Mau themselves were fairly nasty and hardly innocent victims (although many of the prisoners were wholly innocent).
• The leading voice in Britain denouncing the savage treatment of the Kenyan prisoners at the time was Enoch Powell, the supposed racist.

Dead Children Are Great For Point Scoring

Sunny Hundal writes about the Olso massacre:

But there is no suggestion that his actions were inspired by Melanie Phillips, nor am I making that claim.

In an article titled:

Oslo terrorist cited Melanie Phillips in his manifesto

I almost wonder whether he might be being disingenuous.

Less cynical and more honest approaches to the link between mainstream opponents of multiculturalism and immigration and Ander Breivik are here by Edmund Standing on the left and Ed West on the right.

Oslo & Jumping To Conclusions

Many people's initial reaction to the Oslo attack was to assume Islamists were responsible. This has led to a certain amount of gloating and scolding now that it turns out to be a blond, nationalist terrorist of the kind that populate Hollywood movies but are rather rare in real life.

I said almost immediately that it was probably either an Islamist or a lone nutjob and have been proven correct so this is not defensiveness on my part.

However that does not mean that those who initially assumed it was an Islamist attack have something to apologise for because it is not irrational or bigoted to assume that synchronised terror attacks in a Western city targeting civilians were perpetrated by the kind of groups who have most recently committed synchronised terror attacks, attacks on Western cities and attacks which focus on murdering civilians.

It was a rational assumption to make even though it turned out to be incorrect.


PS. I am not defending those who said that the attack was definately by Muslims without any evidence only those who said it was likely.

Oslo

Whilst nothing is certain at this stage, it seems as though the massacre in Norway was perpetrated by an extreme nationalist, Anders Breivit.

While a movement or political grouping shouldn'tbe discredited simply because someone like Ander Behring Breivit expressed admiration for or approval of them this will inevitably happen to some extent. His obsessions seem to have been immigration, Islam and multiculturalism. I hope very much that this does not make it harder to point out the flaws and failings in any of those subjects, althoug it will.

The one aspect of his online writings which I do hope become discreditiable after this is his tendency to believe that the other side is engaged in some kind of plot to destroy civilisation. In Brevit's world immigration to Europe wasn't being encouraged because the left believed that it would benefit both Europe and the immigrants but  because they hated in Europe and were determined to destroy it.

It is perfectly legitimate to argue that policies will have catastrophic results but believing that your opponents are actively trying to destroy civilisation is usually paranoid nonsense and is not going to lead to anything good.

Arrest The Queen

Surely laying a wreath at Dublin's Garden of Remembrance is in direct contravention of the Terrorism Act 2006 which prohibits the glorification of terrorism.

Okay I'm being facetious but it was wrong to lay the wreath. The people celebrated in that garden were terrorists of no greater moral standing than the Real IRA today, as the likes of Kevin Myers have pointed out:

There are many things that truly nauseate me about the celebrations for the Easter Rising. The most central is the misrepresentation of facts, as if the Rising was a civil-rights poetry-reading that was cruelly interrupted by British guns. The Proclamation was a late adornment to the Rising, not its inspiration, and the "volunteers" knew nothing about it.

Indeed, most of them had been unaware that this was actually a genuine insurrection, in which real people would be really killed. So here we have Pearse, the schoolmaster with his teenage pupils, suddenly all decked out for war, and here James Connolly, with the 14-year-old-son he had just "commissioned" -- God help us -- into the Irish Citizen Army, all embarking on a killing spree, which started soon after Pearse's largely unheard words. Thomas Playfair, aged 14, was hunted down and shot dead by Volunteer Holohan at the Phoenix Park. Constable O'Brien, unarmed, murdered in cold blood at Dublin Castle. Constable Lahiffe, unarmed, murdered in cold blood in St Stephen's Green. The arming and deployment of underage boys, the murder of unarmed civilians: these are violations of all the laws of war.

The Queen should not have been laying wreaths to honour a bunch of suicide terrorists who went on a killing spree in order to gain an independence for Ireland that was pretty much inevitable in any case (and probably would have happened by 1916 but for the First World War.

Death Celebrations- A Guide

Wrong: Celebrating the death of Osama Bin Laden.

Right: Celebrating (in advance) the death of Margaret Thatcher.

I Post Stuff

As I said earlier in the week my internet connection has been down so I've not been able to post stuff. The problem is now sorted. So things I was going to say but didn't include:

1. The strange behaviour of the US authorities regarding the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden and the disposal of his corpse is potentially damaging as it will fuel conspiracy theories and most conspiracy theorists end up hating America.
2. The AV referendum is today. I voted yes despite my contempt for the pathetic campaign YES2AV have run which has seemed designed to alienate rather than convert centre right voters.
3. The Canadian general election confounded my prediction and delivered a seismic shift that saw 2 of the 4 main parties suffer cataclysmic losses. The tantrums by Canadian left wingers are as hilariously over the top as those by their British counterparts following the London mayoral election in 2008. I'm sure the right does this sort of thing as well but I'm probably blind to it.
4. Let's abolish council houses.
5. I don't get what's so great about Pippa Middleton's arse- which has been one of the most searched for subjects this week.

On The Bin Laden Coverage

Watching the coverage of Bin Laden's death on BBC and ITV I wondered what was more distasteful- the fact that both stations (in response to viewers) were sneering at the "triumphalism" of Americans celebrating or the salivating over how it improves Barack Obama's reelection chances.

Pakistan- 2 Options

Bin Laden's compound was almost next door to a military bases. So either

1. Pakistan's military is so unconcerned about security, despite being a frequent target of massive suicide bombings, that they wouldn't think to investigate a mysterious high walled  compound right next to their military academy.
2. They were protecting him.

The Real Danger Posed By The Swedish Suicide Bombing

It might play into the hands of the EDL.

In fairness in this instance I can see why Muslims might be aggrieved by the coverage of the self detonation- Muslims are frequently criticised for not integrating into their host societies and adopting local culture so when someone does something as quintessentially Swedish as ending his existance in a desolate Nordic landscape shouldn't he be praised?

Fair Enough

What could possibly drive someone to detonate themselves in a Swedish street?

Suicide bomber lived in Britain: Islamic fanatic in Stockholm car blast was radicalised while studying in Luton

Ah Luton, enough said.

Ordinary People Are Easily Alarmed

On the subject of risible twats who hype jocular comments on Twitter into "death threats", the man who joked about blowing up an airport, Paul Chambers, had his appeal rejected. The judge who ruled against him claimed that "any ordinary person" would be alarmed by the comment.

That's right, a sitting judge has such a low opinion of the general public that she seriously argues that a random post on Twitter threatening to blow up an airport by someone who is frustrated at missing a flight is likely to be taken as being a literal threat to do just that, despite the fact that he clearly had neither the means or inclination to do either.

My belief in the abilities of the general public is not vast but even I don't think they're that stupid. As with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's claim to find the quote by Gareth Compton calling for her to be stoned to death to be a death threat- it is clearly untrue.

Incidentally in the case of Yaz, her gall is even more breathtaking than usual, she is accusing her victim of calling for her stoning because he mocked her actual apologetics for a real upcoming stoning of an Iranian woman!

Rather extraordinarily, Mr Compton has been suspended from the Conservative Party on the grounds that what he said was "not acceptable". Seeing as he was defending David Cameron against Yaz's insistence that he had no moral authority to criticise Iran for stoning women to death, then I can only assume that it is now official Tory policy that Dave has no moral authority.