40% of British Muslims want Sharia Law.

[minionofmidas]

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Not that that's been doing the Turks' integration much good... let's face it: integration of an immigrant group is largely something the majority group does. Failure of integration is largely something the majority is to blame for.

According to a recent poll by Professor Faruk Sen The Zentrum für Türkeistudien, which is really just Professor Faruk Sen (there should be a little cedille at the bottom of the S. It's pronounced Shen. Anyways.) 21% of Turkish immigrants and their decendants in Germany believe the German constitution can not be reconciled with the Koran, which provoked some CDU BaWü state politician into howls of anti-immigrant aggression. (EDIT - he basically said that these 20% of Turks in Germany should be deported right away.)
Mind you, there are about a million possible conclusions to be drawn from this figure (ie, "the Constitution must be destroyed", "we must work peacefully to change the relevant provisions of the constitution", "we live in a majority non-Islamic country, the Koran will just have to lump it", "and that's precisely why I don't consider myself a Muslima anymore").
Mind you, Sen has been polling that question every couple of years since 1977 or something, and this is the lowest figure ever recorded.
No matter.

[minionofmidas]

This is a sign that you Brit's need to stop hugging and kissing these people and start booting them out and to send them all home. 

Including the 60% (that's over half) who didn't say they wanted Sharia law?

Well only 41% said they did not want Sharia, I do not know how the others voted until I buy the newspaper in the morning. But 40% for is a sizeable minority.

Having said that I certainly don't agree with Kevin's opinion.

It's not just Muslims who are vulnerable to it. An Italian court recently decided that a child rapist could basically get off with a very light sentence just because his victim was not a virgin. This is in 99% Catholic Italy, very few Muslims there. Isn't that de facto the same type of thing that you'd get under Sharia law? So I wouldn't say it's an issue of being a Muslim or not. Although the pluralist Muslims do need to speak up more.

Yeah, the Rome Cassation Court was at it again. They've been throwing out verdicts against rapists with ridiculous reasons like this for decades. And most Italians are quite angry at 'em. (I remember one, about 10-15 years ago, where they aquitted a rapist because the victim had worn tight jeans, which "proved" it was consensual sex and no rape had taken place.)

[minionofmidas]

You know Daz, you can write very well, but I sometimes, just sometimes, wonder whether you actually can read.

[minionofmidas]

Ah yes, I'm sorry. I overlooked the "regardless of what they're saying" part. You can read, you're just paranoid. Probably a paranoid schizophrenic.

[minionofmidas]

In that case, you (and millions like you, all over the "West") are seeing the splinter in the other's eye and overlooking the [help with biblical English needed] in their own eye.

But that's what I've been saying for years... I have far more fear of Western anti-Islamic bigotry and fanaticism (especially when posing as / considering itself to be liberal (Euro sense) ) than I have of devout Muslims. And anybody claiming that all devout Muslims - that's really what this poll question comes down to - wants to "forcibly impose extreme values on society as a whole" (read: our society) no matter what they say is a) at least potentially a menace to world peace b) is using an argumentation that does remind me, as a German who knows his history, of National Socialism. (And my great granddad joined that party in the mid 1920s.)

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying "you're a Nazi" or "Afleitch and Pym (our Pym) are Nazis" or "Bush is a Nazi" or whatever. All I'm saying is, you - us; as in this society to which I belong - are on a pretty dangerous slope at the moment.

[minionofmidas]

Nobody said that EVERY devout muslim wants to impose his faith on everybody.

The issue of who controls the values and culture of society is exactly what this is all about.  These people want to forcibly impose extreme values on society as a whole, regardless of what they are actually saying.

I rest my case.

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I could make a better, but still not exactly good, case, that that appears to be the situation with neocons.

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I fear the danger at my own door, the one that threatens my own country and hometown, and some friends of mine.

I'm not saying everything is alright with Arab society (obviously. That'd be daft).

[minionofmidas]

I believe that we are in danger of loosing our liberal and democratic traditions if we don't fight for them.

These include a certain amount of respect, and a very high amount of tolerance for those with differing opinions - including for religiouses. In fact they're worthless, and not democratic and not really liberal without them (and your position is *exactly* the posing as / considering itself to be liberal position I was referring to above.)

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So you're a bigoted atheist then?
No wait, you're not an atheist... a bigoted wishy-washy Christian maybe?
I'm just looking for a good label for this new ism that I'm seeing all over the Western media ... none seems to exist yet. It's true that "racism" is inaccurate (though of course, certainly not for everyone with these views but certainly for some, racism is one of the streams of thought that feed into this new ideology.) but then so is anything with "liberal" in it.

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Using a certain definition of political Islam, and a certain definition of fascist, this is accurate, yes. No contest.

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Ah, but equating Hizb ut Tahrir with the whole of political Islam is patently absurd.

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They say the same about our society, you know? Not saying either view is right.

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if you're thinking of that case of under 18 year olds some months ago, they were homosexual rapists. Now don't get me wrong - I don't approve of the death penalty, I approve even less of the death penalty for crimes other than murder, and I approve even less than that of the death penalty for minors. And IIRC the evidence may have been dodgy in that case. That leaves more than enough to condemn. Then again, dodgy evidence and executions of minors occur in the country this website is registered in, and the death penalty for rape still has a lot of popular support there.

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No comment according to my stated policy

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And is the West not corrupt? Especially in its dealings with Arabia? If you think that you really need to get a grip, you know?

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I see you've quit talking about Iran - the closest thing to a democracy found in those parts really - and are back firmly with the Hizb ut Tahrir wackos

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That group is illegal in Germany.

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And here we're back at step a.
Read what Sharia ("Sharia law" is a waste of words, like "black-and-white striped zebra") means, to a Muslim - to the people who took this poll - , not to an uninformed Christian regurgitating the half-truths he's been fed by a hateful media, and repeat that claim. Start with Al's posts in this thread, they're a good starting point.

[minionofmidas]

Many others have fled to the west in fear of their life. May gay Iranians are actually members of gay rights groups in the UK

Yes. And good for them. And true over here, too. (Scandalously Germany, unlike the UK, doesn't always recognized prosecution for sexual orientation as a grounds for granting asylum, although sometimes they do. Was a case in the media here in Frankfurt really ... guy would have almost got deported back to Iran. Thankfully that didn't happen.)

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You were equating Hizb ut Tahrir with mainstream political Islam. Which is grotesque. Not to mention deceitful. Not to mention, really quite disgusting from someone who should know better.

[minionofmidas]

Lewis, all I can say is, enjoy living under Sharia.  And don't think they'll be very tolerant of your sort.

sigh ... not a f**ing issue here...

[minionofmidas]

You were equating Hizb ut Tahrir with mainstream political Islam. Which is grotesque. Not to mention deceitful. Not to mention, really quite disgusting from someone who should know better.

I was offering up Hizb ut Tahrir as an example only.

Yeah, but that's like offering the guy who shot Yitzhak Rabin as an example of Zionism. Or offering the guy who ruled Slovakia under the Nazis as an example of Political Catholicism.

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Define "wrong". Define "dislike". No matter how you define these though, it is certainly a legit position - but that's not saying much.

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Ah, but it's impossible to keep them apart. All policy has a basis in ethical/religious views. I prefer for people to be aware of theirs. (And I also prefer for people to keep theirs out of policy as far as they can, but that's a different discussion.)

[minionofmidas]

Lewis, all I can say is, enjoy living under Sharia.  And don't think they'll be very tolerant of your sort.

sigh ... not a f**ing issue here...

Right...and the Nazis were just misunderstood people who simply wanted to politically unite ethnic Germans.

Better parallel... German emigrants in England or France in the 1930s were not Nazi double agents.

[minionofmidas]

Identity. That's the better word. Or Tribe.

Of course, it's not as if this was their fault, let alone their fault alone. The Us vs Them definitions are usually set (of course!) by the dominant group, and so in this case as well.
(Thence in Germany, the Them category is still essentially "Ausländer", meaning the 1960s and post 1960s immigrants from the mediterranean, whether Muslim or Catholic or Orthodox, and usually the recent, nominally ethnic German, immigrants from Russia as well - but not including pre-1989 ethnic-German immigrants from Poland.) The stereotypical Ausländer, of course, is a Turk, but that don't mean an Italian is part of "us".)

[minionofmidas]

Funny law that... your article fails to mention it, but "insulting religious beliefs" is only illegal if the insult is deemed "suitable to endanger the peace" (ie, provoking those insulted into rioting, basically) - mind you, it's not necessary that anybody actually riots as a result. In this case, this was held to be the case (though nobody rioted, they just notified the police.)
What's more, while jail is a possibility, even in the case of a conviction there's usually just a fine. In this case, a fine was not considered sufficient due to the defendant's criminal record (arson, possession of unlicensed explosives - nothing to do with Islam. In fact, an earlier suspended jail sentence of his expired the very day of the trial.) Another odd note: He's a third cousin of Theo van Gogh.
One more note on the article: While he offered to sell his toilet paper on his website, he didn't actually sell any, nor does he seem to have ever had the intention to. It was just a childish prank really.

This is the first time that a jail sentence (suspended or not) was handed out for an insult to Islam, btw. 99% of investigations are for insults to Christians' religious beliefs. And over 90% of these do not end up in court because the prosecution correctly notes that the insult was not suitable to endanger the peace. I'm not sure when the last jail sentence was handed down - the last non-suspended one was probably several decades ago - , but I know authors of Titanic satirical magazine have been sentenced to pay fines almost every single year of its existence for insulting Christians' religious beliefs. Really, it's quite a ridiculous law, and I'd prefer to see it gone.

Btw, here's the cover of Titanic's march issue (I wanted to print this in this thread anyways, and I was thinking about losing some words about this court case as well)


("Religionen im Vergleich" is religions compared. "Fakten Fakten Fakten" is related to an old feud with FOCUS news magazine that I won't got into detail about here. The four dicks belong to Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism. Whether this is to say that Muslims have small dicks, hence their inferiority complex, or to say that Christians are the biggest dickheads on the planet, or something else entirely, is of course in the eye of the beholder, as is the identification of these things as dicks. The note in the lower righthand corner says "Please Torch Here".)

[minionofmidas]

Repeat ... the law was created with christian blasphemy in mind ... repeat ... it has been used almost exclusively for this purpose.

[minionofmidas]

Repeat ... the law was created with christian blasphemy in mind ... repeat ... it has been used almost exclusively for this purpose.

Has anybody done a year in prison for blaspheming Christians?  For the record, I hope not.  I believe in freedom of expression, not protection of the 'sensitivities' of certain groups.

I would have to check to be sure, but I would very much assume that people have ... in the 1960s and earlier. The law was probably created under the Kaiser... it may have had some teeth pulled since. Mind you, nobody's done a day in prison for blaspheming Muslims, ever. Mind you, I don't agree with this verdict. (Which is his own fault... he probably talked himself into a -suspended- jail sentence by the risible lies and fudges he did in court. Still wrong.)

[minionofmidas]

Hardly at all, really.
As I said, over 90% of attempts to prosecute somebody come from the Christian Right. (And over 90% go nowhere.)

Of course, it's possible that this may change in the future.

This case received little attention in Germany, btw, and what little attention it did receive was probably due to the Danish mess. (It has been pointed out that what Jyllandsposten did would have been illegal in Germany under this law, though it is not illegal - due to precedent, rather than the letter of the law - to report about what Jyllandsposten did... virtually no matter how biased your reporting.
The precedent goes like this: Paper A prints something.
Person X complains.
Paper B writes "Look at that little whiny prick, complaining about something like this" and reprints it.
Paper A may be in trouble, Paper B almost certainly won't be.