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Part 2 of "Free Speech, The War on Terror and Islam" by Joseph B.H. McMillan:
The Problem Identified; Debate or Debacle; Arabs, Islam and the Nazis; Islam and the Dark Ages; Civilization and Tolerance under Islam; Conservatives "calling it as it is"?; Free Speech and Debate; The Consequences; A Solution?; Footnotes
"Debate or Debacle"
The spectacle centres on an article by an ex-Labour Member of Parliament, TV presenter and columnist, a Mr Kilroy-Silk, in the Sunday Express on the 4th January (8), and a ‘rebuttal’ by a Mr Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain, in the Sunday Express's Sunday 11th January edition(9). The suspension, and later dismissal, of Mr Kilroy-Silk as a BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) presenter added a sense of drama to the farce.
Essentially, Mr Kilroy-Silk made some unflattering remarks about Arabs and Mr Bungalawa responded, at the invitation of the Editor of the Sunday Express, with an Islamic 'party political broadcast'. Mr Kilroy-Silk spoke of Arabs; Mr Bunglawala spoke about Islam.
Far from being an example of informed free speech in action, as the Sunday Express would have us believe, this spectacle was a case of the blind leading the blind. It put in stark relief the real problem. A population historically and geographically illiterate as a result of the decimation of education. A people who, for a good few decades now, have been spoon fed propagandist drivel disguised as education. A people relieved of the burden of determined inquiry in order to establish facts on which to base informed judgments. A people told what to think, told what to believe, told what the ‘facts’ are, told what constitutes ‘tolerance’. And any deviation from this propagandist ‘education’ demonstrates “intolerance” which will “not be tolerated”.
So it does not surprise me to see the pot [Mr Bunglawala] calling the kettle [Mr Kilroy-Silk] black. Mr Kilroy-Silk, admonished Mr Bunglawala, should have spent more time “swotting up on his history”.
To remedy Mr Kilroy-Silk’s ‘historical ignorance’, Mr Bunglawala treats us to his, in fact the Islamic, version of history. A version peddled too by Britain's Prime Minister Blair in such great revelations of our troubled times as his article of the 12 October 2001 titled “Working for peace for Muslims and non-Muslims alike”.(10)
So, with gratitude to Mr Bunglawala for having set the historical record straight, and the Sunday Express congratulating itself on upholding democracy and free speech, we can all content ourselves with being better informed and profoundly tolerant.
But most important of all, we need not let the truth cloud this profound moment of enlightenment. Mr Bunglawala put it so well in the final two paragraphs of his 'rebuttal. To paraphrase, he tells us that “responsible governments” curtail free speech to avoid the “demonisation” of entire peoples which led to such horrors as the Nazi persecutions of the Jews in WW II. Or at least, I presume that is what Mr Bunglawala is referring to.
So the British people can rest in contented ignorance because there is no newspaper, politician, television channel, publisher, school or university that will provide the facts or provide the truth. And the British people, as with the people in the rest of the 'civilised world', are incapable of independently considering this spectacle for what it is. They long ago surrendered independent and informed thought to 'institutionalised thought'. Institutions, in turn, took the opportunity handed them to manipulate this subservient mass mentality to their own purposes. What they imposed was political expediency, sold as "justice". So ingrained and distorted has this 'thinking' become that it is pretty much a universally accepted wisdom today that distorted concepts of "tolerance and equality" are synonymous with justice. It brings to mind that philosophical injunction that "invoking justice in favour of an argument is like banging the table."
This trend is not recent. Albert Schweitzer identified it in the 1920's: "The general determination of society has put freedom of thought out of fashion, because the majority renounce the privilege of thinking as free personalities, and let themselves be guided in everything by those who belong to various groups and cliques."(11)
Thus, as Schweitzer notes, "Every year the spread of opinions which have no thought behind them is carried forward by the masses, and the methods of this process have been so perfected, and have met with such a ready welcome, that our confidence in being able to raise to the dignity of public opinion the silliest of statements, wherever it seems expedient to get them currently accepted, has no need to justify itself before acting."(12)
So we have become "like a rubber ball which has lost its elasticity, and preserves indefinitely every impression that is made upon it."(13) "Personality and ideas are then subordinated to institutions, when it is really these which ought to influence the latter and keep them inwardly alive."(14)
The abdication of thought has led to and been compounded by a dangerous ignorance of facts. That ignorance has been skillfully exploited by opponents, enemies, and alas, our own governments, such that "silly statements" gain the credibility of established 'facts and truths'.
And the general population has neither the inclination nor the tools to refute the received 'facts and truth'. In fact it goes further: "Silly statements" pass off as our 'fundamental values' when they are nothing more than "silly statements" driven by Liberal Fundamentalist dogma.
The Kilroy-Silk debacle dramatically demonstrates the dangerous delusional state of Western civilization and how it is so effectively exploited.
I will set out but a small selection of facts and truths which any historically literate society should have taken as the starting point in a debate such as that played out in the Sunday Express. They also happen to be central to the delusion gripping Western civilisation in relation to the "war on terror".
Click here for Part 3 of this article, "Arabs, Islam and the Nazis".
Copyright © Joseph BH McMillan 2002 - 2007 All Rights Reserved
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