Bartholomew's Notes

Following on from my previous post, I note that Jeff Davis of Mosquewatch also has a YouTube channel, under the name “AmericanBNP” – a previous channel named “Mosquewatch” was removed for “terms of use” violation. The blog Mosquewatch also has postings by Davis on the subject:

I Stand With The BNP

I have no choice. No one else in the UK will take a stance against the Muslim hordes flowing into the United Kingdom. No one here in America will do the same as well. Our 2 party system is broken. All of our leaders, are nothing more than empty suits. If you are an American that loves the UK as I do, I suggest you back the BNP and support them. Time is not on our side. Wake up America, wake up Britain.

However:

If some people tell me that I am a nazi for supporting some ideas of the BNP….. Are all Republicans for open borders because President Bush won’t close them , OR KICK THE BUMS OUT ? For my fellow “Conservatives” DO YOU AGREE WITH EVERYTHING PRESIDENT BUSH DOES ? I don’t, nor do I agree with everything the BNP stands for.

Actually, I’m happy to accept that some British National Party supporters are simply stupid and ill-informed rather than racist. But is it a racist party, and its leaders have been known to make private pro-Hitler and thuggish comments that have been captured by secret filming. Party leader Nick Griffin – author of a booklet decrying Jewish control of the media – turned from anti-Jewish hatemongering to anti-Muslim rhetoric simply for tactical  reasons, as he explained at an American Renaissance conference:

The proper enemy to any political movement isn’t necessarily the most evil and the worst…The proper enemy is the one we can most easily defeat.

Mosquewatch has several other contributors – as well as the Swanksta there is Walid Shoebat’s son Theodore (or “Ted”) Shoebat, and a comic-book artist named Bosch Fawstin; Fawstin draws cartoons of a superhero named “Pigman”, who battles Islamic terrorism. Like Davis, Fawstin seems to think that going on obsessively and vacuously about how Islam must be defeated is some kind of actual contribution to fighting extremism.

Theodore Shoebat also has his own blog, Tedland Daily, where he cuts and pastes news stories about Islamic extremist atrocities and various right-wing opinion pieces (mixed in with attacks on evolutionary biology). This blog is directly linked from the Walid Shoebat Foundation website, so it would appear to have some official standing, or at least recommendation. But it should be noted Shoebat Jnr shares this blog with Jeff Davis, who posts under the name “”mississippimud2007”. Davis hasn’t mentioned his enthusiasm for the BNP on this site, and doubtless the Shoebats would be appalled – but isn’t it rather embarrassing?

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 Always nice to see my surname spelt right.

Apparently one of the MosqueWatch guys is unhappy with my suggestion that Walid Shoebat and his son hate Muslims, and that I called Pastor J. Grant Swank “absurd”:

Dick, we don’t hate all Muslims, we despise terrorist Muslims. Do you ?

An open challenge for you Sir.Mr. Bartholomew ,

Are you a former PLO member ? Walid Shoebat and Kamal Saleem ? They have more knowledge about the Koran, the Hadiths and Islam than you will ever learn in your life. Both of these people are against Islamic terror. You seem too be picking a fight with people that want too save your neck from the knife of Islamic terror when if falls upon you. You are ignorant about Islam. That is not a personal attack, that is a fact. You speak of things, which you have no knowledge of. I suggest you read a few books.

Start with the Koran, then follow up with Sahih Bukhari, and the rest of the Hadiths. Pastor Swank is a good and decent man. I find it interesting that you would rather defame a Pastor, and not defame the jihadist scum that would slit your throat while screaming “Allahu Ackbar”.

In ending , put your money where your mouth is. Stand up and show me your face. Make an account on youtube, or on clipser…get a video camera and make a video. It is an open challenge. Best of wishes for you and yours. Jeff Davis

A shorter version of the message also appears on the website of Walid Shoebat’s son, who is a Mosquewatch contributor. I have no idea whether “Jeff Davis” is a real name or a homage to the Confederate leader (or both), although I note that his short list of recommended blogs includes the pro-BNP English Rose. [UPDATE: I also now see he has a YouTube channel under the name “AmericanBNP“, although he objects to the suggestion this reflects poorly on him. His videos were originally posted at a channel called Mosquewatch, but this was closed down for “terms of use violation”. Also, he has some pro-BNP posts here.]

The “challenge” is rather weird – why do I need to “make a video” rather than respond in writing to any spectific criticisms? And what does my “face” have to do with it? I have no intention of making a video, but I’ll make a few points:

First, Walid Shoebat has the general knowledge that any ex-Muslim might be expected to have, particularly if he was brought up in a religious household, but he has shown no special expertise in the subject. His attempts to extrapolate from his own (alleged) experience to Muslim society in general are unconvincing – in particular, I noted his confident assertions on what Barack Obama must have learnt at school in 1960s Indonesia, despite the fact he knows nothing about Indonesia. When he adds that Obama’s pro-choice views are secretly motivated by support for Islam – based on no evidence whatsoever – it is clear that we are not dealing with someone who should be taken seriously. His forays into Biblical scholarship are simply preposterous, whether opining on the apocalyptic significance of the fact that some Muslims ride horses or giving a duff presentation on why “666” in the Book of Revelation is actually “In the Name of Allah” written in Arabic. The fact that Shoebat is “against Islamic terror” does not change these unfortunate facts.

Second, if I am such a “Dhimmi” (a silly misuse of the term, by the way), how come I wrote in support of Irshad Manji? How come I was perhaps the only blogger to follow the Islamist attacks on the polio vaccine in Nigeria in 2004? How come I wrote about Iranian support for Holocaust denial before the story was picked up by the mainstream media? How come I wrote favourably about a British documentary which uncovered extremism in some British mosques? There are other examples I could list.

Third, regarding Pastor Swank – readers can make up their own minds about whether a man who asserts (in “I said all Along B. Hussein = Muslim“, “B. Hussein” being his name for Barack Obama) that the White House is under a curse because there is a Koran on the premises is either “good and decent” or “absurd”.

Fourth, the existence of jihadists who “would slit your throat while screaming ‘Allahu Ackbar'” does not mean that the opportunistic and corrosive hate-mongerings of tub-thumping anti-Muslim right-wingers are therefore immune from critique, or that those who make such a critique are therefore guilty of supporting Islamic extremism. In fact, the likes of Mosquewatch are completely counter-productive as regards opposing Islamism and violent jihadism, just as the paranoid and self-promoting anti-Communist demagogues of the 1950s undermined efforts to educate people about the machinations of the Soviet Union. Religious extremism needs to be opposed by reason and careful analysis (although there’s also a place for satire). Just what sensible purpose does the video below – made by Shoebat’s son and available on Shoebat’s website – serve? (Note the inclusion of Charles Darwin as a Satanic influence alongside Muslims)

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