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• 18 June 2011

  Beneath the din, decency is still listening

  I have received the following comment from an Icelandic reader:

  'I just wanted to tell you that, thanks to your articles and writings in defence of Israel that I was finally able to see what Israel has to live with every day of its existence and to make matters worse is hounded by the western left press every time it so much as raises a finger in its own defence.

  Published in: Melanie's blog

  
  

  18 June 2011
  
  

  Beneath the din, decency is still listening

  Published in: Melanie's blog

  
  

  I have received the following comment from an Icelandic reader:

  'I just wanted to tell you that, thanks to your articles and writings in defence of Israel that I was finally able to see what Israel has to live with every day of its existence and to make matters worse is hounded by the western left press every time it so much as raises a finger in its own defence. I just wanted you to know that it is possible to make people in the west see what the situation in Israel and Palestine is. Thank you.'

  I reproduce this here not in order to blow my own trumpet, but because it is very important that all those battling the current western insanity over Israel should know that it is indeed possible for them to influence public opinion -- even given the terrifying brainwashing that has occurred in western public debate which has turned truth and lies, victim and victimiser, justice and injustice in the Middle East upside down.

  Clearly, there are some people who are truly bigoted against Jews or whose brains have been turned to mush by anti-Israel group-think, and who are therefore impervious to evidence or reason. But there are many others who are simply unaware of the true facts – and because of the exclusion from public debate of these facts, the most frightening thing is that they don’t know what it is that they don’t know.

  That’s why those defending Israel against demonisation, delegitimisation and dehumanisation should take heart. However impossible it may seem to make yourself heard above the din of hateful propaganda, there are people who are listening carefully, and taking note. As was so notable during the Stalinist period, even when public debate is censored in order to control thought itself people manage somehow to intuit the truth. And today, the internet provides the means to challenge and undermine that thought-control by deploying facts and evidence in the blogosphere to wage war against the lies.

  From time to time, readers wonder why I devote so much of my blog to Israel and the Middle East. I happen to believe it is the defining issue of our time; that where people stand on Israel defines which side they are on in the titanic battle under way to defend civilisation. I also believe that this is a battle that will be lost unless the dominance of lies and propaganda in the public debate is challenged, and unless people are made aware at the very least that there is a very different story from the One Received Truth imposed upon the west by the Cultural Inquisition, aka the mainstream media and intelligentsia.

  That is why I write so much on this issue. And that’s why I am grateful to this Icelandic reader along with so many others who write to me in similar vein—and who thus demonstrate that decency and rationality in the all-too troubled west are still alive and kicking in these desperate times.

Recently published

• 18 June 2011

  Let UK Muslims enjoy freedom

  In both Britain and the US, there are now attempts to push back against the steady encroachment of sharia law.

  Published in: Jewish Chronicle

  
  

  Let UK Muslims enjoy freedom

  
  

  By Melanie Phillips, June 17, 2011

  In both Britain and the US, there are now attempts to push back against the steady encroachment of sharia law. In Britain, a Private Members' Bill has been introduced in the House of Lords by the cross-bench peer Baroness Cox to curb the increasing use of sharia courts to dispense family law and settle disputes in Muslim communities. This bill, which is being supported by secular groups and an Iranian and Kurdish women's rights group, will require government support if it is to become law.

  In the US, legislators in some 20 states are currently considering more than 40 bills that would ban or restrict the use of sharia law in their courts. Among many Jews, such moves are likely to engender an ambivalent or even hostile reaction. Such a response would be misguided and regrettable. For it arises from dangerously muddled attitudes in the Jewish community towards Muslims, sharia law and the proper place of Islam in British society.

  Jews are very properly sensitive to the dangers of prejudice and discrimination against other minorities. And very often they see in Muslim communities echoes of their own. After all, they say, don't we Jews also sometimes dress in strange and distinctive ways, follow religious practices that are not understood by the population in general and have our own religious courts, just like the Muslims?

  The answer to that last point, however, is an emphatic no. For the big difference between British Jews and Muslims is sharia law.

  Those who promote sharia say it supersedes the law of the land

  Contrary to the popular misapprehension, sharia is not like halachah and sharia courts are not like the batei din. Jews believe that the law of the land is the law. Decisions of the batei din are therefore essentially informal rulings; any binding decisions about family or other matters are made in accordance with the law of the land, which is acknowledged to hold sway.

  By contrast, Muslims promoting sharia believe that Islamic law must supersede the law of the land because sharia is divinely ordained and recognises no superior secular authority.

  That alone should be reason enough to oppose the operation of sharia courts. For if the law of the land is not recognised by a section of the population, society will at best fragment into areas of separate development and at worst eventually adopt Islamic values overall .

  Moreover, the principles of sharia are inimical to British and western society - not least when it comes to the status of women, whose testimony under sharia is afforded half the weight of that given by men.

  Two years ago, a report from the think-tank Civitas stated that decisions by Britain's 85-plus sharia courts were likely to be unfair to women and backed by intimidation. Lady Cox's Bill would create a new offence punishable by a five-year prison sentence if such courts falsely claimed or implied legal jurisdiction over criminal or family law.

  The peer says she is deeply concerned in particular that sharia courts are enforcing decisions that discriminate against women and, in effect, perpetuate the enslavement of women through systemic domestic abuse. She is also extremely troubled by the development of a parallel jurisdiction of Islamic law.

  These concerns should surely be shared by all who care about the survival of the basic tenets of a liberal democracy. So it would be troubling if Jews were to oppose such a Bill. Yet, to judge from previous positions taken by the British community leadership, it is likely that there will indeed be precisely such opposition, even if in public heads are kept well below this particular parapet.

  The reason is that British Jews are driven by their concern to do the decent thing by the Muslim community. And there may also be a feeling that by showing solidarity, as it were, between one minority religious court system and another, the Jewish community may help draw the sting of Muslim hostility.

  But many Muslims want nothing to do with sharia. They want to enjoy the benefits of western freedoms. They want equality for women. They want to be regular British citizens living under one law for all. Just like British Jews, in fact.

  So why should any Jew want the status and rights of British Muslims to be different from their own? False assumptions and moral muddle can never be the basis for doing the decent thing.

  Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist