Bartholomew's Notes

Sadly No has the full low-down on “Lionheart”, the BNP-supporting blogger who claims to be facing arrest over anti-Muslim statements on his blog (I blogged this here). One of the team has waded through Lionheart’s ramblings; it appears that despite his claim not to be in favour of violence, he is actually rather sanguinary:

I personally would be more than willing to go to the North of England and do what needs to be done for the mothers and children caught up in this Moslem savagery that needs to be eradicated and I know I am not alone in that respect.

…There are gangs of Moslem rapists and murderers walking the streets terrorising our society…Do we give in like most of Europe and accept the Islamification of our Nation? Or do we stand up and fight with every last drop of blood declaring ‘No Surrender’ no matter what the cost? A few summer riots will probably be the spark that lights the British fury that no British government or police force will be able to quench. Go quench the army of Islam before you pick on the British defenders of our lands.

…This is the Islamic enemy my community and country is faced with and the Moslem enemy which has forced my community into ‘Dhimmitude’. Things can only get worse from now unless action is taken and this Pakistani Moslem community’s actions are stamped out.

Meanwhile, the news that someone who wants us to “quench” Muslims in the UK “with every last drop of blood” is to be arrested under public order legislation dating from 1986 has led to further hysteria about “Eurabia” and how this is all a conspiracy to silence the “truth” about how British Muslims are all evil and involved in a conspiracy to take over the UK. Here’s Atlas Shrugs:

Atlas readers are familiar with the a brave heart, Lionheart. He has been a warrior on the war on the jihad in the UK and exposed the drug running that funded Islamic jihad in Britain and posted on the tsunami of sharia enveloping his beloved country. The Brits have submitted to Islam and they mean to shut down anyone who speaks for freedom, justice and liberty.

Meanwhile the absurd Irene Lancaster (whom I’ve blogged before) sees this as a sign of the “total and utter dhimmitude of Great Britain”:

…Then we have this – a blogger threatened with arrest for describing how his home town of Luton has been taken over…

Archbishop Cramner is less enthusiastic about the man, but he blames “cultural Marxists” for the arrest and suggests that Lionheart’s use of Bible quotes and display of “the flags of England and Israel” might be the reason he was targeted.

There are also attempts to link Lionheart’s arrest with the default libel case victory in London of Saudi businessman Khalid bin Mahfouz:

What is clear is that there is a consistent and concerted effort being carried out by the apologists for and enablers of Islamic terrorism to stop the spread of information about them, their activities, their beliefs, and their goals from being written about in the popular press…

As I noted a few days ago, Alyssa Lappen and Jed Babbin both managed to miss the point of the bin Mahfouz case spectacularly: such is their monomania, it became a story of “Muslims and multiculturalists” attacking free speech and “imposing Sharia”, rather than of a wealthy individual using restrictive libel laws that have benefited all kinds of powerful people for decades.

Personally, I would like to see the UK introduce protections for free speech along the lines of the American First Amendment. However, the historic fact is that in most democracies free speech has been balanced against other factors deemed to be socially desirable. Thus some countries have laws against Holocaust denial, to prevent Nazi revivalism; some have laws against blasphemy, to prevent inter-religious strife and to keep the wrath of God at bay; some have laws against mocking the monarch, to avoid possible civil disturbance caused by undermining the established order. Unless you have a society where free speech is treasured as absolute virtue in itself, as we see in the USA, this is hardly a surprising state of affairs. Since intercommunal hatred and prejudice against ethnic and sexual minorities are clearly social evils, the easiest response is (or at least seems to be) to limit freedom to express views that might tend to provoke these things. Thus Mark Steyn faces investigation for anti-Muslim views in Canada, a Swedish pastor gets sentenced to jail for attacking homosexuality (so much for “Euarabia” there, by the way), and French journalists get fined for the “racial defamation” of Israeli Jews (ditto). And in the UK, we see the (failed) prosecution of the leaders of the BNP. Of course, those of us who have a more “American” view of free speech will see such laws as counter-productive and confused and tending towards other evils that must be opposed, but that’s the context in which they come into existence and are applied; conspiracy theories about Muslims and “cultural Marxists” miss the point.

UPDATE (10 Jan): More today.

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