I know Julia, she has 4 kids...

Sir Michael
09 January 2012 at 17:07

"let me use this opportunity to tell you that you pulled an absolute dick move with that post Hasan."

yep, that's about on the money.

"Rick Santorum is a fruitloop"

careful now Sir M, lest Buckskins assumes Santorum must have worked in the confectionary industry...

@Jankaas
All opinions are subjective by definition,er...
Actually what Julia did by listing the atrocities is point out a very dark side to Islamist fundamentalism in that it attacks it's own, in response to Mustafa I think. I don't see her saying muslim = bad here at all as you then conclude. Why or how did u do that? You have pre-judged based I think on her later stats regarding Muslim responses, which you then disregard (I guess because you didn't like the raw data, assuming it's correct).
Then Jankass u say you can't see how she can cite think tanks that produce shocking statistics but then accept that Mosques can legitimately assist in marriage counciling. You see this as an unresolvable contradiction. Er, why?????
It is painfully frustrating to actually have to explicitly state that a spiritually inclined balenced person, of whatever denomination, is not the same as those who butcher children, and no one here as intimated so- indeed you seem to be guilty of labelling here, which is very poor...
"guess what they recommend to married couples facing relationship difficulties? it's this;
"Churches, synagogues, mosques and other places of worship are a good source for support and education." (from their study Does marriage matter?)
spot the contradiction? those hideous Muslims provide excellent marriage advice!"
It's not a contradiction IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM LOGICALLY OR OTHERWISE!!!! Then u get really shirty with Julia later, too personal, yet you have branded all muslims under one banner it seeems thus creating the contradiction IN YOUR MIND as a result of a generalisation!!! Julia actually has pointed out that SOME are bombers and SOME are useful for marriage advice, a MOST important role, that's all...
It's boringly frustrating though- Julia Harris didn't accuse marriage councillors of atrocities did she?? So how can u cocnclude a contradiction??? Zzzzzzzzzzzzz
When I talked about readers not being objective I didn't have you in mind- reading back u can fit into that category though.

Julia does not not present arguments to you Jackass. She makes a point of presenting facts (Which of course you can't relate to as your preference is fantasy) in the simplest manner possible.

When she can no longer make her points any more basic for you she correctly comes to the conclusion you're a Muppet. You can also take lessons from her posts by paying attention to her mature points of view and is never discourteous. You see she has no need of nastiness to kick your ass all over this blog. Do you find it belittling that a woman is doing this to all you of the muslim persuasion? It must be so irritating. I bet y'all would like to give her a good stoning. Well it ain't gonna happen. What a bunch of scum bags to do this to women.

test

Nice to see the British criminal classes making emselves useful for a change! Hope there was plenty of pork fat in the boiling oil.

Probe into jail attack on bomber
Dhiren Barot
Details of the attack on Barot were subject to a news blackout
An investigation is under way after an al-Qaeda plotter who planned to kill thousands of people in "dirty bombings" was badly injured in a prison attack.

Dhiren Barot, 35, from Kingsbury in north-west London, had been serving life at HMP Frankland near Durham.

He spent five days in Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary after the assault.

A news blackout was imposed for the duration of his hospital stay, during which armed police were present. Barot was returned to prison on Saturday.

The attack is now subject to an investigation by Durham Police and HM Prison Service.

Northumbria Police are not releasing details of his injuries, but they are believed to be scalds.

A security operation at the hospital involved armed police and the air support unit.

Armed police outside hospital
Barot's stay in hospital involved a major security operation

A police spokeswoman said the news blackout was aimed at protecting the safety of patients, hospital staff, prison staff and members of the public.

The Muslim Council of Britain has called for a thorough investigation of all attacks on inmates.

'Inmates' dignity'

Inayat Bunglawala, from the council, said: "There have been other incidents in the past as well, where prisoners have been attacked by their own fellow cell mates.

"It's vital that they [the prison authorities] investigate the attack... to ensure that prisoners, whatever they've been convicted of, are given basic safety and are allowed to pass their sentences in at least some dignity."

At his trial at Woolwich Crown Court Barot was described as a determined terrorist who prepared meticulous plans for al-Qaeda figures on a series of attacks in the US and the UK.

In the UK these included exploding gas tankers hidden in limousines, flooding the tube network and a radioactive "dirty bomb".

He was jailed for life, with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of 40 years, but this was reduced to 30 years following an appeal.

Relax Rob, when people disagree with them it's their only defense left. They can't deal with the truth.

Jackass. Des. = Good Good.
Buckskins. Sweet Julia. = Bad Bad.

andyg - "You wrote it...The worse [sic] thing you can do is try to explain why"

Really? Explaining something is the worst thing I could do?? I think this comment above exemplifies why so few journalists these days take commenters below the line seriously. Explaining something has become a crime, something to be belittled by unthinking, anonymous commenters.

Oh well...back to the real world...

The New Muslim suffragettes of the United Kingdom An increasing number of Muslim women activists are receiving death threats, fatwas and even hate-mail from extremist male and female Muslims. Their crime: Rescuing fellow Muslim women from violent and life threatening situations. http://www.101realestate.net/

I really feel sorry for the people who are trying to spread hate for creating an issue which shouldn't be an issue in the first place. Mehdi didn't say anything bad and yet you get people putting words in his mouth. He has just stated in this article that he didnt mean anything by it so what more do you want. I only judge people from the words that comes out of their mouth and I think you should all do the same. And as for the islamaphobic comments being thrown about, so what, its ok for you to be racist but when he mentions a 'FACT' in an article which has been reported for the last decade without any comment or even stating an opinion, its wrong. Double standards!
Doesn't surprise me to be honest, people hiding away behind a computer saying what they like.
Keep up the brilliant journalism Mehdi.

@ John Woods
Didn't something similar happen to Peter Sutcliffe?

"i say Islam is not bad by default, nor is Islam good by default. it's just another religion, they're all a load of old toot as far as i'm concerned. it's what people do with them that is key.”

Your spouting the same psycho babble bullshit again...The Nazi’s did good in the eyes of some, they created jobs, brought the country together and sought to return Germany to greatness. What was the world to do with the rise of Nazism then? Take the view that not all Nazi’s adhere strictly to the third Reich and so not generalize about it and them???

Leave the poor Nazi’s alone for fear of upsetting some Nazi’s because "its what people do with it (Nazism) according to you???

Or should we stand up for what’s right and say that Nazism = Bad and that as an ideology the bad far outstrips the good and it needs to be defeated. That we don’t blame all the people in the Nazi party as some of those people might see the light of day or not agree with what there doing but because the system is so extreme there is no way out of it.

We should say as an ideology those who support Nazism with all its terrible consequence need to be sidelined from any type of main stream political power.

Now insert Islamism into where I said Nazism and it will hold true.

You might not have the balls to stand up for what right, but some of us have the courage of our convictions to know what’s right and what is wrong.

So Yes, Nazism = Bad and yes Islamism = Bad

Should we keep quite about Islam based on this for fear or generalize or say these attacks were Islamically inspired?

2012.01.15 (Khanpur, Pakistan) - Sunnis set off a bomb next to a crowd of Shia pilgrims on foot, dismantling about seventeen.
2012.01.15 (Ramadi, Iraq) - Six guards and a civilian are killed when Fedayeen stage a suicide assault on a police building.
2012.01.14 (Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan) - Fedayeen suicide bombers kill four civilians and two police officers.
2012.01.14 (Yola, Nigeria) - Fundamentalists shoot two bar patrons to death.
2012.01.14 (Basra, Iraq) - A Holy Warrior detonates himself in a crowd of Shia pilgrims, massacring over fifty.
2012.01.13 (Baghdad, Iraq) - Sunnis detonate a car bomb near a bus stop full of Shia pilgrims, killing at least one.

Yes, but as you say, I'm just a troll, not a highly paid MSM professional ethnic minority hack with his own column.

@John Woods

"Where is Anders Breivik when you need him?"

just when i thought the tone could not possibly be lowered, you go and take it down several notches. what a wanker. which is probably what you were doing when you typed that.

Bee - you can have a civil ceremony. The state does not need to recognise nikkah. Most Muslim couples these days have both for nikkah for religious reasons and registration for legal rights.

I don't think shariah courts are needed. I'm Muslim, by the way.

Jankass: I daresay I could go lower than that...God, it's fun annoying lefties.

The deaths of Richard Everitt and Stephen Lawrence:

compare and contrast

By: Robert Henderson

The Death of Richard Everitt (see below) is an article I wrote in 1994. Compare and contrast the elite response to his death and that of Stephen Lawrence.

Richard was knifed to death by an Asian gang approximately 300 yards from my front door. The gang was large, perhaps as many as 15 members. The gang was known as the Drummond Street Posse and had gone out that night specifically looking for a “white boy” to attack because they felt they had been “wronged” by a white boy (http://www.mamaa.org/infalre.html).

The gang were arrested the same night for a separate incident and blood was found on 19-year-old Badrul Miah. This turned out to be a match for that of Richard. Miah, later boasted that he had “stabbed up some white boy”. http://www.mirror.co.uk/life-style/kids-and-family/2008/10/1...

After nine months the police had arrested 11 people in connection with the murder. The 11 dropped to six and after a committal hearing the number fell to 3. Eventually only two came to trial, Badrul Miah and Showkat Akbar. Akbar was found guilty of violent disorder and sentenced to three years, of which he served 18 months. Miah was sentenced to life but let out on licence after 11 years despite the trial judge describing it as an unprovoked racist attack (see Mirror link above).

The parents of Richard suffered beyond the loss of their child: “After the trial Mandy and Norman tried to move on but were the victims of threats and racial abuse. They had to leave the home where they raised their children and move out of London to Essex.” (http://www.mamaa.org/infalre.html)

Those are the bare facts of the Everitt murder. Compare the elite response to his murder with their response to that of Stephen Lawrence:

1. Only one person was convicted of the murder even though all were guilty of joint enterprise.

2. There has been no media campaign to bring the others to justice.

3. There has been no public inquiry into Richard’s murder.

4. The one person was convicted of Richard’s murder was released after 11 years without any media or political uproar.

5. There has been no concerted media campaign stretching over nearly two decades to bring the others in the gang to justice.

6. Unlike the Lawrence case where the Daily Mail accused the five suspects of murder in 1997 (http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/frontpage/lawrence.h...) , no representative of the national press or broadcasters called any other member of the gang which murdered Richard a murderer.

7. The gang members who attacked Richard were older than those accused of attacking Stephen Lawrence.

8. Unlike the Lawrence murder, British politicians from the word go not only refused to adopt the tone of moral outrage which they routinely do when the death of Stephen Lawrence is discussed, but actively tried to play down the racist aspect. Considerable pressure was put on Richard’s parents at the time to go along with the usual Maoist pc line that they were not racist and so on. The local MP, Frank Dobson, was most notable for his silence.

Jackass, the only one talking about "career" is yourself. Women in the "21st Century" manage kids and career. If you ever unglued your ass from that seat you would know this, but evidently you are doomed to live your life in the cyber world. You should get out more and engage yourself in the real world in lieu of your fantasy paradise.

" I'm sure Sweet Julia is happily married with a passel of kids."

ah, the only acceptable 'career' for a woman as far as you are concerned. you're ever such a relic SucksDicks, it's the 21st century, not The Waltons...

no idea what on earth you are droning on about there FucksQuick. once more in English?

@ Godless, unfortunately it doesn't matter what you say or what facts your present. People on the left always try to apologize, appease, make a comparable to something else so that fact's become fiction for fear of generalizing or offending a perceived majority.

In this way we never have any kind of clarity and understanding of reality, just a Wishy Washy Way of excusing the inexcusable.

^

"You might not have the balls to stand up for what right, but some of us have the courage of our convictions to know what’s right and what is wrong."

steady now Julia, unless you confirm the (false?) rumour that you are in fact a bloke? i'll keep on assuming that you are female, so best not go all macho on me now. it's embarrassing enough when male posters do this.

as ever you begin your 'assault' on me by inventing something rather bizarre, with which you stampede into the middle distance. you say;

"Your spouting the same psycho babble bullshit again"

firstly that is an outright lie, i had until that posts never written "i say Islam is not bad by default, nor is Islam good by default". then what you proceed to do with your inference of that statement is nothing short of laughable. you completely, totally, and utterly miss the point i made.

you further demonstrate how catastrophically you still don't 'get it' with your latest list of 'evil Muslim acts of violence'. (btw what sources do you get this info from? a single convenient one, or you collect this stuff?)

anyway, pls allow me to re-phrase, see if you do better with this version;

good humans do bad things despite being religious.
good humans do bad things despite not being religious.

capice?

"I think this comment above exemplifies why so few journalists these days take commenters below the line seriously."

It's a bit much to get all haughty and old media after you've engaged in a juvenile Twitter spat like this.

The point is not that you were using the story as ammunition against Santorum. It's that it was misjudged to list it alongside his outrageous views and semi-amusing trivia. "Look what wacky folk the Santorums are."

And it wasn't a great idea to then get all fighty and victimy about it. In particular, saying "Should I bother to respond?" - as if you're above it all - before writing an essay-length attack in green ink.

It all looks very silly and undignified.

First to Julia Harris Mehdi Hasan has never advocated the introduction of Sharia Law - criticise him if you will but get your facts straight. Second, Mehdi Hasan you really would have been better just ignoring your detractors - this has only made things worse. I can't believe how bad your judgement was with this - you can complain about the commenters (who almost universally thought what you said was in poor taste) but you just come across as petulant. I think it's possible you just meant to put Santorum's unorthodox grieving procedure as an interesting fact but it's like when a tabloid news item refers to "gay" celebrity X when the story has nothing to do with their sexuality - the perception is that it is sly and underhand. That's what you've been caused doing and you'd be better off apologising and saying nothing more.

No, but evidently you have your procedure down pat.