As readers of this blog will be aware, I’m currently attempting to put a journal to study witchcraft. In the interests of good research, I openly disclose the fact that I am a) part of the skeptical community and b) part of the Wiccan community. A skeptical Witch.

Rushyo basically has two issues with what I wrote: one is that the blog contained a “horrendously poor skeptical analysis”. The other is that, in my response to his first comment beneath the blog, I’m guilty of religious hatred/intolerance. I’ll try to address both of these.

The post in question contains a spell lifted from a witches’ website. The spell involves writing “a goal you desire” on a bit of paper and throwing it into a river or sea while reciting a rhyme. The spell is accompanied by the categorical statement that “the ink and paper dissolve into the water and the spell begins to work”.

No plausible mechanism by which this spell might achieve the desired outcome is suggested and it struck me that there was some small similarity with homeopathic remedies, in that both appear to rely on water having a power that has not thus far been confirmed by scientific research, in spite of extensive investigation of water at a molecular level.

A further similarity between homeopathy and this particular remedy may be inferred by the claim that the spell begins to work when the paper and ink dissolve, implying an inverse relationship between the degree of dissolution and the efficacy of the spell. The more dilute, the more potent. Sound familiar?

Anyway, I didn’t state this argument in as many words but expected instead that readers would see the point without explanation. I concluded with the suggestion that it wasn’t wrong to call homeopathy witchcraft after all.

In one of his comments below the piece, Rushyo says,

Your argument makes as much scientific sense as someone looking at Western medicine and using the description of the ‘cold treatment’, bringing people back to life, as a justification for calling all Western medicine a sham.

Rushyo’s objection, then, is that I generalised from a single example and, because one spell appears to bear some similarity to homeopathy, I shouldn’t assume they all do. Thus, the evidence I present to support the claim that homeopathy is witchcraft (or vice versa) is insufficient. This is a fair point and, had I been trying to make a serious case that homeopathy and witchcraft are pretty much the same on the grounds that they both rely on the ‘memory’ of water or on the notion that dilution makes things more potent, then I wouldn’t have supported my argument with a sample of one.

However, as most readers appreciated, my blog post was not intended to be taken seriously; not for a nanosecond, did it occur to me that anyone would and, so far as I know, nobody but Rushyo did. And he was so aggrieved by my perceived violation of skeptic principles that he left the kind of snarky comment that just begs for a put-down. Thus, I suggested he calm himself with a frog’s toe special. As a consequence, I found myself accused of “preaching religious hatred”. He even tweeted it.

In his own account of what happened, Rushyo writes:

I made quite sure my dismay was evident when I found somebody mocking witchcraft and comparing it with Homeopathy (something that has been thoroughly proven not to work) which they themselves stated was based on absolutely the most flimsy and pathetic evidence.

This quote suggests that it was more the mockery of witchcraft than the ‘bad science’ that offended Rushyo but, given his emotive comments beneath the article, that was pretty obvious already. Here’s an example:

So, essentially, you just wanted to preach a bit of religious hatred? Don’t mask this as skepticism, it puts the skeptical community to shame. I’m ashamed to be associated with you. Pathetic.

He later adds:

A skeptic that throws skepticism out of the window as soon as Witchcraft is mentioned is no better than Wiccan that turns around and throws the rede out of the window when it comes to issues of scientific interest (such as medicine).

It may occur to some readers, as it did to me, that a skeptic who threw skepticism out of the window as soon as witchcraft is mentioned would end up embracing witchcraft wholeheartedly, as Rushyo seems to have done. A skeptic who embraces and adopts a worldview first and starts a more thorough investigation only after having done so sounds like….well, I hesitate to say ‘an oxymoron’, given that when someone said the same thing on twitter, Rushyo responded first with this and then with this, which doesn’t get us any further.

In case anyone doesn’t get where the charge of religious hatred comes from, Wicca involves the “ritual practice of magic” (wiki). Ergo poking fun at witchcraft is insulting the Wicca religion. In his blog, Rushyo explains further

The insult related to my religion. What makes this attack astounding was that I was not shouting from a religious soapbox – I was shouting from a skeptical one. I felt that the article was the anti-thesis of skepticism for reasons which I will go into later. My argument was completely unrelated to my religious belief. Were I an atheist I would have felt exactly the same.

And there was I thinking that faith — belief without evidence — is the antithesis of skepticism. I’m very surprised to learn that I was wrong and that in fact mocking magic spells is the antithesis of skepticism. Good grief!

Seriously now, I think we can discount the claim that his argument was completely unrelated to his religious faith. Were it not for his religious belief, he would have either seen the piece as nothing more than a bit of fun or, if he really did take it seriously, calmly pointed out that my argument was fallacious. At least, that’s what any other skeptic would have done. By his own admission, what dismayed Rushyo was my “mocking witchcraft and comparing it with Homeopathy (something that has been thoroughly proven not to work)”.

I did indeed poke fun at witchcraft with references to newts’ eyes and making things disappear. And clearly Rushyo also sees the mere comparison with homeopathy as mockery of witchcraft, which I suppose it is, though my intention at the time was only to mock homeopathy by comparing it with medieval nonsense, which is how I view witchcraft. I’m afraid Rushyo’s explanation of it doesn’t make me view it any differently.

Witchcraft is the act of invoking power beyond the material world defined by science, often linked with a spiritual element, intended to perform a tangible task with a particular stated goal. As practised by Wiccans, Witchcraft is used to invoke the power of the Gods through prayer and ritual.

Interestingly, while Rushyo evidently thinks witchcraft isn’t a legitimate target for mockery, he seems to think homeopathy is. He says,

Homeopathy is the subject of ridicule because it has a weight of scientific evidence against it. Witchcraft does not (surprisingly!).

The claim that there is a lack of scientific evidence against witchcraft is arguable, to put it mildly but, even if it were true, should the fact that there is a lack of evidence against it protect it from mockery? I mean, if there hadn’t already been hundreds of trials of homeopathy, if it hadn’t already been proven to be a crock, would we (and by ‘we’ I mean people who identify as skeptics) treat it with any more reverence because it was untested? Of course not, because it’s scientifically implausible; it contravenes scientific laws and is therefore ridiculous. Just like witchcraft.

By the way, I have since seen a few other spells from the same source and concede that they don’t all rely on an unknown power of water, thereby undermining my original contention that witchcraft is homeopathy, which I happily withdraw, seeing as I didn’t really mean it in the first place. However, the spells do all involve some element of magic, as do homeopathic remedies, so the comparison — and, indeed, the reverse contention that homeopathy is witchcraft — aren’t as outrageous as Rushyo would have us believe. And they’re both suitable topics for skeptical humour, as are any number of other ridiculous quack therapies or ‘weight-loss eating plans’ making claims for which there is no evidence either way. These are mockable not so much because they haven’t been properly tested but because, if true, their claims would force us to re-write all our physics and chemistry text books.

So it seems Rushyo’s understanding of skepticism differs somewhat from my own. For the record, it was the explanation of skepticism on UK-skeptics that first resonated with me, leading me to adopt the label. It points out that skepticism is not a world view but a methodology. It starts with doubt and applies it to everything. Claims — whether they be about global warming, quack therapies or supernatural powers — are not taken at face value but must be supported with good quality evidence before they will be accepted:

assuming or holding the provisional position that a claim is false until proven otherwise is also the correct approach to take

As he is a scientist, I don’t think Rushyo could disagree with this, any more than I would disagree with the definition of skepticism Rushyo quotes from wiki (see below). What I do disagree with is his claim that he is attacking from a perspective of skepticism and that those of us who disagree with him are betraying true skeptic principles. From his comments:

I would give the topic the gravitas I feel it deserves. Call it a ‘Galileo complex’ if you like. The value of establishing facts over adopting society’s wider views has become a core tenant (sic) amongst Witches. Something I was under impression us, as skeptics, were supposed to champion as well.

(snipped)

If I may quote Wikipedia:

“Scientific skeptics attempt to evaluate claims based on verifiability and falsifiability and discourage accepting claims on faith or anecdotal evidence.”

and “Scientific skeptics do not assert that unusual claims should be automatically rejected out of hand on a priori grounds.”

Were I an independent observer I would surmise I was not talking to skeptics – in fact I might reasonably surmise I was talking to the polar opposite given those definitions.

As I said, I would agree with both those extracts from wiki and I don’t know why Rushyo feels they make some sort of case for him. To repeat, the starting point for skepticism is doubt. We don’t look at a proposal that claims throwing a bit of paper into the sea while uttering a spell will work in achieving a desired goal in life and think: “Hmmm….there’s no evidence against this idea so we should wait until it’s been tested before we mock it.” Rather we would argue that everything we know about the natural world indicates that this proposal is absurd and unworthy of investigation. That’s not to say we won’t change our minds if a scientifically plausible explanation were offered but, in the meantime, the proposal is worthy of ridicule. And if it were being funded on the NHS, it would, like the similarly implausible homeopathy, be a campaigning issue for skeptics.

To aid our understanding of why my ‘frog’s toe special’ suggestion qualifies as religious hatred, Rushyo helpfully provides the criteria by which he defines religious hatred/intolerance (he treats these words as synonyms) and proclaims that my comment to him meets every one. A perfect fit!

a) It has to be for the purpose of insulting.
b) It has to relate to a religion
c) It has to reference the person’s religion belief
d) It should display ignorance/prejudice

…to meet all these criteria for insulting a Muslim you might need something like the following: “Don’t worry, I’m sure your Mother and Father Mohammed will calm you down, Mohammed.” This statement would meet the above criteria – and it would similarly be considered unacceptable. In most circles.

Well not in mine because I don’t even understand it and my Muslim friends are pretty chilled about religious insults. (Less so about racism, say, because they recognise that religion in adult life is a choice, ethnicity isn’t.)

If I’m being totally honest, offending people’s religious sensibilities isn’t something that bothers me too much. This isn’t religious hatred, it isn’t religious intolerance, it’s religious indifference. We each of us choose our different worldviews and none of them should be seen as exempt from ridicule. If ridiculous ideas are to afforded special protection just because they are part of someone’s religion, can someone tell me where we would draw the line? Would the ‘religious ideas’ of  someone who decides to invent a new religion over breakfast be entitled to the same protection?

In conclusion, ‘hatred’ is a strong word and certainly not something I feel for mildly eccentric people and their barmy religion — as long as they do nothing to harm others. And, while I am grateful to Rushyo for making me thing this one through, I don’t think his claim that he is criticising from a skeptic’s perspective stands up to scrutiny His argument amounts to no more than special pleading that witchcraft should be exempt from mockery and because it’s part of his religion and, as one commenter here already said, that’s just creepy.

On the same day 37 years ago today, I went on my first march for women’s liberation in central London. We demanded an end to discrimination in education and the workplace, as well as contraception, abortion and nursery places for all who needed them. We protested about the demeaning way women were presented by various media and we challenged the ideology that women were responsible for the hateful way we were perceived and portrayed and for the sexual harrassment and violence visited upon us. 38 years ago, if I’d looked this far into the future, I would have expected International Women’s Day 2010 to be a day of celebration.

This post isn’t going to be an analysis of the successes and failures of the women’s movement. Suffice to say that I feel as if I live in a very different world nowadays to the one of my childhood — a world where so many people thought it was a waste of time for girls to get A’ levels, never mind go to university; a world where girls were told to aspire to marriage for “security” and to “give the children a name”; a world where women who reported sex crimes to the police came away feeling as if they were the criminals.

Undoubtedly, the bit of the world that I inhabit is a better place for women nowadays and the credit ultimately lies with all of us who’ve embraced the liberal and democractic values that are the legacy of the Enlightenment. However, that the world is still an agonisingly brutal and barbaric place for women the world over puts a dampener on things. And the absolute pits is that so many women living in liberal democracies — and benefitting from the reforms we fought for and won on their behalf — are kowtowing to a pernicious ideology that denies women our humanity and autonomy: the ideology that says ‘honour is between the the legs of women’* and we should cover ourselves from head to foot so that men can control their dicks.

Because — let’s be honest — that’s all it’s about. In the eyes of misogynists, women exist to serve men and fulfil a primarily sexual function. Women need to be cowed and controlled. Making them feel vulnerable and ashamed (or just beating the crap out of them) if they’re not covered up is but one way to do it.

A commenter on one of my previous blogs, who calls himself “Kope”, invited me to look at his blog and read how “Islam will win the clash of civilization”. There he sums up the ancient spiritual wisdom of his worldview very succinctly:

Women must take responsibility for their dress standards.
Dress like sluts, get treated like sluts. Its only natural.

To me the hijab represents the biggest symbol of women’s oppression and the most hateful insult to every woman who has struggled for justice and equality in the developed world. I initially assumed the news that Tower Hamlets were planning to build some great monstrosity of a hijab-shaped arch at the end of Brick Lane was a tasteless wind-up — some April fool story I’d missed at the time, perhaps. Alas, it was for real and I express my heartfelt thanks to every one of the 158 residents of the borough who objected. Whatever were those morons on the council thinking??

Naturally, there are varying degrees of loathesomeness in respect of this garment. I recall a Saudi student of mine who, while she was in London, wore the smallest headscarf she could get away with. She would have loved not to wear one at all, she said, but didn’t dare. That’s one end of the loathesomeness spectrum. Women wearing headscarves have become a familiar sight but I still hate to see the bloody things just because of what they represent — and I don’t mean the commitment to Islam, I mean the obsequious deference to misogyny. At the other end of the spectrum are the full-face veils and long robes she had to wear back home in Saudi, the like of which I never saw on the streets of London when I was a child but which are now almost commonplace. For crying out loud, they even brought out a burkha-wearing Barbie doll!

Let me just say that I am not concerned with what the Qu’ran says or how Muslims interpret it. Any argument that women should cover themselves up because that’s what it says in some old book is going to be lost on an atheist like me, especially when a high profile Muslim like Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is so comprehensive in her condemnation of the veil.  (Edit: See also Saira Khan in the Daily Fail, Why I, as a British Muslim woman, want the burkha banned…) As far as I’m concerned, if God expected women to cover themselve up, he wouldn’t have made sunlight so important for the production of vitamin D. I have Muslim friends and not one wears the hijab. Well, if they did, they wouldn’t be my friends. I don’t want to be friends with people who celebrate what I have agonised over and fought against all my life.

Nuzhat Ahmed on wife swap

Just as any religious argument will be lost on me, I know my own argument will be lost on many hijab wearers reading this. Some of them have never even engaged their brain long enough to question the wearing of these odious garments for religious reasons; they do so because they’ve been indoctrinated from early childhood. Raising a child to believe that they must hide their hair, let alone their face, to be sure of avoiding “hellfire” is, in my opinion, a form of abuse. Yet that is what is happening in Muslim schools in Britain today, if the one featured on the Channel 4 TV series last year is anything to go by.

Then there was that episode of Wife Swap when the hijab-wearing mother, Nuzhat Ahmed, confessed that, yes, her  hijab was hot but “hell is hotter”. For shame!

I managed a smile for the camera

By the way, in keeping with my open-minded approach to life, I prefer to conduct empirical research and, to prove it, here’s a photo of me wearing a niqab purchased for a fiver on ebay together with the note I made when I first tried it on:

“As every specs wearer knows, seeing the frames of your glasses as you peer through them is something you get used to. I guess it would be the same for looking out from behind a niqab. At the moment everything has a thick black frame and it’s bugging the hell out of me. But the worst thing is not being able to breathe freely. I’m suffocating. And I can’t wear my glasses because they keep getting steamed up. I’ve been wearing it a mere 15 minutes and already I have a headache. It’s coming off.”

But — hey! — you can get used to anything, right?

For many hijab wearers in liberal democracies, hijab has become the badge of the club they belong to; a way to distinguish themselves and each other from members of other tribes. Just what we need in a multicultural society — let’s emphasise our differences, why don’t we?

Ed Hussain’s book, The Islamist, is illuminating:

To packed halls we brought speakers from different Islamist groups who explained why women must cover their hair, be different from non-Muslim women, and earn God’s approval. At the time there were a handful of young Muslim women at college who wore the hijab. This commanded my full support, but questions from teachers, and sometimes students, made the practice increasingly confrontational. We put pressure on unveiled Muslim women to join the ‘sisters’ who wore the hijab or risk being seen as un-Islamic rather than practising, proud Muslims. The resultant upsurge of hijab wearing took even us by surprise as scores of fashionable free-fllowing hairstyles disappeared from view.

…The sisters who wore the hijab put their mothers and older siblings to shame — the fact that young, educated, confident women at Tower Hamlets College wore the hijab sent a message to the wider community. They saw our sisters on buses, on the roads and at weddings, and slowly the hijab became a symbol of defiance of Western values and of a return to Islam.

And some of those sisters may even delude themselves that, as long as they are covered up, they won’t arouse the interest or star in the gross fantasies of men they don’t fancy. Let Ed Hussain disillusion you:

If the hijab was supposed to make a woman less attractive, then it clearly had not worked. Several society members commented to me that the women looked extraordinarily feminine and more desirable in the scarf than without. I shared that sentiment, but dared not express it.

…The craving to unclothe the excessively clothed was cruel.

Not that those hijab-wearers whose faces are unveiled but who wear a bucketload of make-up will be unaware of the effect the mixed message might be having but, in fairness, not all hijab wearers go around looking like that. At least some are consistent and go easy on the slap (and the beautiful ones look beautiful in spite of wearing hijab and the plain ones look plainer because of it — just my opinion).

Ask a lot of young women why they wear hijab and they will give an answer similar to a commenter on another blog of mine, who posted from Egypt.

I want to explain why we do wear that (Niqab)
First of all,I wear it as god demanded me
More over,you may noticed those who were niqab more than others ,but you didn’t any of their body details
as they didn’t expose them except for their husbands,not by force,but by love.
Women quality ;as no one can deny;is by her thoughts,beliefs and spirit.Not by her body.So what disturbs any body whether to see her body or not?!
when i am married ,i feel that no one has the right to see my beauty but him(and of course my father brother and those who don’t ever marry me)

In a nutshell, if women cover up, they will be judged on what they say and do, rather than on their looks. A woman’s beauty should be a gift of love to her husband. I suppose the same goes for a woman’s ugliness.

In other words, men are in thrall to their animal natures and can’t see past what women look like and it is women’s responsibility to protect men from themselves because asking them nicely not to rape us won’t work — they can’t help themselves, poor bastards. All of which might have been convincing had I lived in some earlier century before the shameless unveiled women of the world had gained the success, power and respect that so many have today.

Another deadly weapon in the hijab-defender’s armoury is to point to the dark side, the negative consequences of Western sex-obsessed culture. I can’t be bothered to list these — suffice to say I agree there is a dark side to Western sex-obsessed culture. That kind of even things up a bit, doesn’t it? But it’s a bit like homeopaths who defend the worthlessness of homeopathy by pointing to the problems of conventional medicine. The ugly side of my culture doesn’t make the ugly side of your culture — whether it be ‘honour killings’, genital mutilation, executing rape victims or any of the other atrocities committed against women for no good reason — any less ugly. Prostitution, it seems, takes place everywhere.  But at least we don’t flog or execute our prostitutes.

Nor would I defend the raunchy dress and behaviour some young women adopt solely for the purpose of pleasing men but, as this tends to be a phase young girls grow out of, the suggestion that it typifies Western culture is just daft. Most women, young or old, don’t dress or behave like that but hijab-defending male commentators on Western culture seem oblivous to that fact, preferring instead to perve over pictures of naked female flesh and proclaim the superiority of a culture that would rather have women suffocating in hideous shrouds. Kope, whom I mentioned earlier, has helpfully provided plenty of pictures of nubile young women in various states of undress on his website, in order to illustrate “how Islam will win the clash of civilizations”. Here’s a typical caption:

The  judeo-christian’s sodomites half naked on the beach because of christian’s god does not require dress code for women and men

It’s not clear how he thinks those pictures demonstrate the greater glory of Islam but so what? At least he gets to have a wank.

One final thing: in case, you think I’m building up to calling for a ban on the burkha in Britain, I’ll end by disabusing you of that notion. I agree with Andrew Copson on this one. I don’t defend liberal values one minute only to flush them down the pan the next. Even though it is repressive, divisive, insulting and intimidating, I would defend to their death the right of these women to flaunt their vicimtisation in any way they choose.

Just don’t expect me to get used to it.

*’Honour is between the legs of women’ is a chapter title from Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom’s, Does God Hate Women? — a book I possess but have so far found too horrific to read.

On 31st October 2009, thousands of Muslims from up and down the country plan to converge in the heart of Central London in a spectacular procession to make their demands for the overthrow of the British establishment clear.

At the time of writing, that message, which was posted on 4 March 2009, is still on the website of Islamist nutjobs, al-Muhajiroun. But a few days ago they added another message, in the form of a press release, saying that it had

become apparent that certain right-wing/anti-Islamic organisations had become intent on preventing the march from going ahead, using threats of physical violence, including bomb and death threats to any member of the Muslim community who happened to attend the march.

In light of this, organisers of the March4Shariah campaign, after careful consultation, have decided to relocate the march in favour of securing the safety of the hundreds of Muslims who may have attended the march to voice their support for the Deen of Haq (Truth).

Well, I’ll be blowed! The Islamist warriors who, earlier this year, had bravely stood protected by police officers on a Luton pavement and screamed abuse at the 2nd batallion of the Royal Anglian regiment’s homecoming parade, chicken out after a few anonymous hotheads threaten them? I mean, hello! What did they expect? That they could march through London slagging off the country that has given them the freedom to do so and that nobody would mind?

I wonder if they thought we wouldn’t notice that the proposed “thousands” who “planned to converge” on London had, nearly eight months later, shrunk to “hundreds” who “may have attended” if only those nasty men hadn’t been all horrid and started threatening people. Not that I would ever, of course, condone the threatening of any sort of violence against anyone. Indeed, normally I wouldn’t hesitate to condemn such behaviour. But in this instance the condemnation sort of sticks in my throat and I can’t quite bring myself to voice it, for some reason. I don’t even know if these threats actually took place and, if they did, whether they were the real reason the march was cancelled. Who cares?

On Saturday, I was delighted to join Muslims, ex-Muslims and others in a protest against al-Muhajiroun.

The occasion was even more enjoyable knowing that the “spectacular procession” the Islamists had boasted of had been, let’s say, re-invented as a secret rally somewhere away from the public eye. Did it take place at all? I’ve no idea. To be strictly truthful, I admit I was a tiny bit disappointed not to get any photos of the nutjobs in their fancy dress costumes.

In order to comprehend just how batshit insane these people are, I recommend watching a bit of the video of the press conference that accompanies the latest press release and learn how only Allah can legislate and any Muslims in parliament or the House of Lords are not considered “true believers” because they have taken the role of legislator on themselves. The nutjobs also share some of their vision of how the UK will look under Sharia.

The pic is of Stringfellows nightclub with a police notice across it saying ‘closed’. The pink advertising board in front of it says, “Women’s college coming soon.”

Got it? Strip clubs and nightclubs (the same thing, as far as they are concerned) will be closed because they are disgusting places where women are exploited. UK under Sharia will be a an official ‘no fun’ zone and women will be educated separately.

It’s easy to snigger but it’s not their lunatic vision for the UK that matters rather than the fact that Sharia Law is creeping in and affecting the lives of people in this country and not in a good way, whatever the nutjobs might claim. At the launch of the One Law for All campaign at the House of Lords back in December last year, we heard disturbing stories from a Muslim woman about women in her community in the North of England appealing to religious tribunals over forced marriages and domestic violence only to be told to stay with their husbands and, believing that the Sharia court had the final say on the matter, that’s what they did. It doesn’t matter what rights women may have in reality if they don’t have the freedom — and in some cases the language — to access them.

The self-styled anti-fascists of the ultra left, by the way, don’t seem to have a clue about this. A typical view is expressed on this forum:

The threat of sharia is a bogey man to whip up people on the far right to support racist policies…The BNP and scummy little tory rags like the Sun, the mail, the telegraph make up stories about Muslims to help the right wing grow and to divide the working class.

On facebook, a page appeared advertising a Protest against March4Sharia and the EDL! It including a long diatribe explaining that the involvement of BNP members in the English Defence League (EDL) “reveals their true agenda; they are racists. Wherever such forces find room to organise, they pose an immediate physical threat to ethnic minorities, asylum seekers and others.” They also include a more reasonable point about how the dangers of the Islamists are exaggerated by the press and by the far right but, viewed as a whole, the piece gives the impression that these people neither know nor care that much about Sharia in Britain. The point that you don’t have to be a radical islamist to take advantage of Sharia law and that it’s enough just being a violent husband in a close-knit Muslim community anywhere in Britain, is lost on them. What the loony left seem to want is any excuse to go out and confront people they perceive to be right-wing racists or fascists. Whether such people are indeed racists or not, doesn’t seem to concern them in the slightest.

But the most disgusting thing about them was their disdain for the protest I joined myself because, according to them, the Muslims (and friends) for Secular Democracy,

in addition to failing to mention the English Defence League, essentially waves the Union Jack and endorses the British legal, political and social status quo. We do not believe that bourgeois liberalism can effectively challenge the growth of either Islamism or fascism, both of which feed off the social decay and despair of British society today.

I don’t know what became of the planned protest from the loony Trots because they never showed up. Perhaps they couldn’t get permission. They weren’t missed.

The 40 or so supporters of the EDL who did turn up to oppose Al-Muhajiroun seemed amiable enough. I eavesdropped on an interview with one of them in which he gave the standard EDL message that they are not racist, they welcome anyone of any race or creed who opposes Islamic extremists. It would appear the EDL have a tiny number of black and Asian supporters and on their website forum I’ve seen people they would describe as “moderate Muslims” warmly welcomed and encouraged to join. The accusations by anti-fascist groups that the EDL are a nazi organisation with links to the BNP are beginning to sound tired and a bit desperate.

The EDL who emerged earlier this year out of spontaneous protests in response to the Al-Muhajiroun demo in Luton, is not (as yet) a membership organisation. It doesn’t have a constitution or policies as such. It is just a loose association of working class and overwhelmingly male “supporters” and, having been observing them pretty closely for a couple of months now, I surmise that they include some people who are BNP sympathisers and many who are not. The BNP have publicly disdained them and threatened their members with disciplinary action if they attend EDL events.

The EDL focus is not on race but on Islamic extremism and the threat to British cultural heritage and way of life, which they seem to think is a lot greater than it is — thanks, no doubt to people like the Archbishop of Canterbury. The (self-appointed, it seems) EDL leaders are making every effort to package the group as a multiracial one and appeals for people to behave nicely are circulated before every demo, a number of which have taken place so far in several of Britain’s cities. (Behaving nicely in EDL terms means not shouting abuse at innocent spectators in hijab, or making seig heil salutes. It doesn’t preclude them shouting E-E-EDL and sounding like a bunch of lobotomised apes).

As I said in an earlier post, the most objectionable thing about the EDL is not their politics but their puerile nationalism. Frankly, most of them don’t have the brains to be political thinkers and that lack of cerebral power is something they have in common with both the BNP and the UAF, as far as I’m concerned. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which group’s supporters are the biggest overdosers on stupid pills.

In stark contrast, witness the wit and intelligence of the British Muslims for secular democracy as evidenced by this short promotional video for Saturday’s protest:

Finally, here’s a reminder:

Saturday 21 November 2009
Time: 1200-1400
Venue: North Carriage Drive, Hyde Park, London (Closest underground: Marble Arch)

“Show your opposition to Sharia Law and all religious based tribuanls….Demand one secular law and universal rights.” More here.

Related posts by skepticat:

EDL, UAF…WTF?

Loony Islamists mistake Humanist centre for Mosque

No Sharia: One Law for All!