Bartholomew's Notes

From the Sun:

AL-QAEDA fanatics are plotting a deadly cyanide poison attack on the London Olympics, a Sun investigation has found.

The chilling online plot was uncovered as two convicted al-Qaeda terrorists were released early from jail and put back on the streets ahead of the Olympics.

…An extremist who called himself Abu Hija Ansari said the poison should be mixed with a handcream that would enable it to be absorbed through the skin.

…Our investigator used a false identity to access the website which has 17,000 members worldwide and known links to six al—Qaeda terrorists.

He said: “There is a contingent using this site who want to strike at the Games. The explicit nature of what is being said would indicate more than just sabre-rattling but a wish to do real harm to the event and the people at it.”

Those of us who can think back three years will recall the last time that the Sun uncovered a supposed terror plot by having an investigator poke around web forums – alas, it turned out that things were not what they seemed.

Of course, that in doesn’t mean that the new story should be dismissed – we all know that there are dangerous fanatics out there, and the Olympics is an obvious target. “Abu Hija Ansari” may just be a sanguinary fantasist sounding off, but he needs to identified and properly assessed as a matter of urgency.

However, the Sun leaves things hanging in a way that is not helpful: although there is a blurry screen-capture, the website is not named, and the quotes have all been translated from Arabic. We are completely dependent on one anonymous source, and given the Sun‘s history that is troubling. Who are the “six al-Qaeda terrorists”, and what is the nature of their “known links” to the unnamed site? Where has the “70,000 members” figure come from? Given the way the story stokes public alarm, we ought to be given as much information as possible.

Meanwhile, The Blaze has managed to botch the story, conflating the report about the postings with background details about how MI5 plans to monitor the Olympics: we thus get the headline “MI5 Foils ‘Cyanide Hand Cream’ Attack Ahead of Olympic Games“.

This is not the first time that a cyanide cream has been linked to al-Qaeda; in August 2002, William Safire discussed a “terrorist mission to set up facilities to weaponize poisons” in the mountains of Kurdistan. Safire claimed that terrorists had produced

a form of cyanide cream that kills on contact. A shipment of this rudimentary panic-spreader, produced by what interrogators say is a Qaeda-Saddam joint venture, was recently intercepted in Turkey on its way to terror cells in the West.

Following the invasion of Iraq, the Los Angeles Times reported that

A Special Forces major investigating [the terrorist group] Ansar [al-Islam] said chemicals found at Sargat are being analyzed by U.S. intelligence… The group, according to Kurdish officials, had been experimenting on animals with a cyanide-laced cream. Several jars of peach body lotion lay at the site beside chemicals and a few empty wooden birdcages.

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Joel Richardson (widely known as “Glenn Beck’s End-Times Prophet“) has a new book coming out in the autumn: Mideast Beast: The Scriptural Case For an Islamic Antichrist. One might have thought that the well would be dry by now, but the author of The Islamic Antichrist: The Shocking Truth about the Real Nature of the Beast (previously published in 2006 as Antichrist: Islam’s Awaited Messiah) has apparently managed to milk the subject further.

As before, the prophetic tome will be published by Joseph Farah’s WND Books, and Richardson’s website lists a number of endorsements: Chuck Missler of Koinonia House, who praises Richardson’s “sharp sword of diligent scholarship”; Walter C. Kaiser of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, who tells us there is “much to commend this argument for a final Islamic Empire”; Daniel Juster, Founding President of Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations and Director of Tikkun International, who advises that “prophecy teachers would do well to ask if he his not giving us a new way to look at the prophecies of the last days”; Joshua Lingel, adjunct professor of Christian apologetics to Islam at  Biola University, who judges that “Joel Richardson’s thesis cuts to the core of the issues at stake”; and, among others, Billy Humphrey, of the House of Prayer Atlanta Missions Base, who sees “a compelling argument for the Islamic Antichrist position”.

Missler is a veteran in the Bible “prophecy teacher” circuit, and he regularly takes part in events with WND‘s Jospeh Farah; Kaiser, by contrast, is an evangelical with a more scholarly reputation, and he has published in mainstream academic journals. Juster is a significant figure within Messianic Judaism; Lingel was featured on this blog recently when I discussed evangelical worries about “Chrislam”. The “House of Prayer Atlanta Missions Base” has a website here.

Richardson’s previous “Muslim Antichrist” books also come with blurbs; these are mostly by pastors and the owners of apocalyptic websites, along Phil Roberts, the then-president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (“this volume will immerse you in end times, Islamic style”). Both previous books were also graced with cover quotes from Robert Spencer. A number of endorsements are also listed on Richardson’s website, and include Walid Shoebat (blogged here) and Ergun Caner (blogged here).

However, Richardson is generous enough not to want the whole field to himself; he in turn recently endorsed a book by a certain Mark Davidson, entitled Hidden in Plain Sight: The Signposts of the Coming of the Antichrist Revealed. Davidson’s specialty appears to be the splicing together of Biblical symbolism with events of the past few years. Here’s a taste:

The First Signpost would certainly include the ending of the career of the rider on the white horse. That happened early on in America’s occupation of Iraq. Entering Iraq in March 2003 and toppling Saddam in April 2003, American forces finally captured him in December 2003.

Any end of the First Signpost would also include a withdrawal of the force used in Daniel 7 that made the lion stand on its hind legs and replaced its heart. Iraq, the former lion with wings, is now standing erect somewhat like a man, and indeed has a heart of a man, rather than that of a beast. That unnamed source of the force in Daniel 7 was the United States and its international coalition.

It should be noted, though, that not all Christian Right prophecy pundits are enthusiasts of the “Islamic Antichrist” theory – Hal Lindsey, who made his name by offering up a European Anti-Christ for 1970s evangelicals, reportedly complains that Richardson’s position is a “lie”. I suspect that 20 years from now Richardson will be pronouncing similar anathemas against prophecy books proving the existence of a Chinese Anti-Christ.

2006

1991

1988

1974

etc, etc…

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The Guardian, August 2011:

The government has reversed its position on moves to strip charities and medics of their exclusive responsibility for counselling women seeking an abortion, saying it will now advise MPs to vote against proposals from a Conservative backbencher if they are put before the Commons next week.

….On Sunday, in an apparent attempt to placate [Nadine] Dorries’s growing number of backbench supporters and avoid the amendment dominating next week’s parliamentary debate, the Department of Health said it wanted to introduce an offer of independent counselling, separate from the abortion providers, promising to consult on how best to do it.

An aide to [Health Secretary] Lansley confirmed that the move was partly in response to Dorries’s proposals, triggering accusations that the government was caving in to the anti-abortion lobby, which has backed the move…

However, Lansley’s “apparent attempts to placate” Dorries seem to have continued unabated; yesterday, the Care Quality Commission made an announcement:

CQC inspects termination of pregnancy services

The Secretary of State [for Health] asked CQC, as the regulatory agency with direct powers to inspect and seize evidence across the NHS and independent sector, to conduct these inspections as a priority.

Where our inspectors discovered pre-signed forms – indicating that providers might be breaking the law – we will share this information with the police and the General Medical Council.

CQC will also be considering what regulatory action we will be taking against these providers. We will be publishing individual reports on all providers inspected shortly and cannot legally identify non-compliant services until this point.

The practice of pre-signing forms has been public knowledge since at least 2007 (see below), and so it is not immediately clear why this was suddenly ” a priority”; the prompt may have been a recent report in the Telegraph revealing that some clinics are willing to perform abortions for reasons of sex selection.

The CQC’s statement was published the day after some of its findings were reported in the same newspaper:

The Daily Telegraph understands that more than 250 private and NHS clinics were visited and more than 50 were “not in compliance” with the law or regulations.

…[Lansley] said yesterday that the regulator had found that a number of clinics may be acting beyond the “spirit and letter of the law”.

“I was appalled,” he said. “Because if it happens, it is pretty much people engaging in a culture of both ignoring the law and trying to give themselves the right to say that although Parliament may have said this, we believe in abortion on demand.”

He said it was not just a matter of enforcing the law. “There is the risk that women don’t get the appropriate level of pre-abortion support and counselling because, if your attitude is that, ‘You’ve arrived for an abortion and you should have one,’ well actually many women don’t get the degree of support they should,” said Mr Lansley.

It’s not clear whether whether this quote was given directly to the Telegraph or derived from elsewhere, but either way the “more than 50” reference is clearly a leak to the newspaper.

Concerns about how doctors handle  the “HSA1” forms needed for a legal abortion to occur were discussed by the Science and Technology Select Committee in 2007. The committee’s report noted that

86. The Department of Health has ruled that both doctors are able to sign the HSA forms without seeing the patient, so long as they believe, in good faith, that the woman meets the legal grounds for abortion on the basis of the clinical notes. We have heard that the process of certifying abortions has become, in the words of the Christian Medical Fellowship, a “sham”. Dr Vincent Argent says that that the HSA1 form “is often considered to be just an administrative process where doctors make no attempt to form an opinion, in good faith, that the patient fulfils the grounds [for an abortion]”. He further claims to have witnessed HSA1 signing practices that include:

“Signing batches of forms before patients are even seen for consultation;
Signing the forms with no knowledge of the particular patient and without reading the notes;
Signing forms without seeing or examining the patients;
Signing forms after the abortion has been performed;
Faxing the forms to other locations for signature;
Use of signature stamps without consultation with the doctor.”

87. If requests for abortions are being ‘rubber stamped’ by doctors, either the requirement for two signatures does not play a meaningful role in abortion practice or the law is not being properly applied.

The committee concluded that the two-doctor requirement should be dropped rather than more rigorously enforced, although at least one member would have dissented; this would have been Nadine Dorries, who challenged Argent directly:

Dr Argent, you are claiming anecdotally that every day doctors up and down the country are breaking the law because it is a legal requirement that two doctors sign the signature, one would hope after having both seen and consulted with the patient. You are telling us that doctors every day break the law by carrying out this procedure. The reason why we have two doctors’ signatures is that this is not like going to have your appendix out or your tonsils out where you go to a doctor and you are informed of what is going to happen at the operation and then a doctor signs. This is actually taking a life. Are the two signatures not a requirement to protect the doctors also as well as the patient, given that we are talking about ending a life in abortion, not a procedure?

It should be noted that Lansley has avoided this particular line of argument, instead preferring to conflate the medical assessment with “pre-abortion support and counselling”.

Dorries has in the past few days used Twitter to publicise further the need for reform of the law; it is perhaps significant that Dorries’ first Tweet on the subject is timestamped at 8:10pm on 22 March, two hours before the Telegraph article was published:

Time to bring ’67 Abortion Act to Parliament to be debated and redrafted to deal with number of illegal abortions which take place every day (1)

One reason why the ’67 Act need to come to Parliament – abortion clinics break the law [Link to Telegraph added] (2)

[Anne] Furedi has admitted that BPAS Drs commit perjury and worse,cld be prosecuted under the offences against the person act http://bit.ly/GJ5eKe (3)

Dorries loathes Furedi (“breathtakingly stupid”, according to a recent Tweet), and so we can be sure that Dorries does not wish to see the law redrafted in a liberalising direction.

Dorries, as I’ve noted previously, has positioned herself as a pro-choice reformer; she does not have the support of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, and she in turn has denounced SPUC’s director John Smeaton as “shameful and cowardly”. However, in 2010 she misrepresented a pro-life religious counselling charity as being “neither pro-life nor pro-choice”, and so it is difficult to take her claims at face value. She also has links with the group Christian Concern, and she has expressed enthusiasm for Rick Santorum.

Following the abortion counselling debate in Parliament in August, a committee was created to look into the issue;  Diane Abbott was a member until January, when she withdrew claiming that it was “a front for driving through the anti-choice lobbyists’ preferred option”. Dorries responded that Abbott had been asleep during one of the meetings (personalised attacks on critics is a Dorries’ trademark: see here and here).

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UPDATE: See note at end of post

Here’s an odd one: the Sun (“exclusive by Luke Heighton”), the Daily Mail (“by Tom Gardner”), and Christian Concern (sourced to the Daily Mail) have all scrubbed articles quoting statements attributed to Baroness Caroline Cox at a symposium held at the House of Lords on Monday 19 March. The symposium, entitled “Islamist Resurgence: Shari’a and freedom”, was sponsored by the Christian Broadcasting Council, and featured Cox alongside Nazir-Ali and Canon Andrew White.

Cox is a veteran activist on a number of issues, in particular the plight of persecuted Christians through Christian Solidarity Worldwide. However, she is currently best-known for her opposition to shariah courts. These unofficial courts have been allowed to come into being because of the 1996 Arbitration Act, which allows for private arbitration or private  third-party arrangements in civil disputes; Cox has proposed an amendment which would make it clear that “any matter which is within the jurisdiction of the criminal or family courts cannot be the subject of arbitration proceedings”, and that arbitration should not be discriminatory as regards gender. I’m not a particular fan of Cox, but her approach here is reasonable: by focusing on generalities, her amendment is a proportionate response to a specific problem found with some of these courts, while maintaining the principle of private arbitration.

However, the quotes attributed to Cox in the scrubbed articles are rather less subtle: rather than refering to the problem that actually exists – which is that some Muslim women have been unfairly disadvantaged by decisions made by some of these courts – the quotes instead paint a lurid picture of a future Britain as Saudi Arabia, with rapists unpunished unless there are four witnesses, laws condoning honour killings, and whippings and stonings.

The quotes are excessive and fearmongering, and to many will appear foolish – but are they genuine? Have journalists been punked by a bit of bogus churnalism? Has some kind of legal threat been made? This habit of scrubbing webpages without any explanation, correction, or apology leaves things hanging in the air in a way that it is in no-one’s interest.

The scrubbed Christian Concern post included the following detail:

Baroness Cox is one of the most outspoken campaigners against the increasing use of sharia law in the UK.

Despite much opposition she invited Dutch Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders to show his documentary on Islam to the House of Lords in 2009. Islamists responded by gathering outside Parliament in protest, waving banners stating: ‘Islam will dominate the World – Freedom can go to hell’ and ‘Sharia: the true solution – freedom can go to hell’.

For some reason, the report fails to mention another group which gathered outside Parliament when Wilders came to town – not in protest, but in support. This, of course, was the English Defence League, although the group was not endorsed by anyone at the meeting.

Cox has a number of links with conservative groups and activists; she recently featured on Hope Not Hate, in a posting about the “Coalition 4 Marriage”:

Coalition 4 Marriage operates from 5 Park Road, Gosforth Business Park, Newcastle. It’s neighbour, at number 4, just happens to be the headquarters of the Christian Institute.

…One of the patrons of the Christian Institute is Baroness Cox, who in 1987 co-founded the Committee for a Free Britain, a right-wing Conservative pressure group which backed the Poll Tax, supported the Contras in Nicaragua and used anti-gay material during their anti-Labour campaign in 1987.

I discussed the Committee for a Free Britain last June; the organisation at one time employed Paul Staines, who is now famous as a conservative political blogger, smear-merchant, abusive thug, and libel bully. Staines was at the time a part of a young conservative activist scene in the UK, and Cox today employs another activist from the same libertarian milieu: this is Stuart Notholt, who travelled to last year’s independence celebrations in South Sudan on behalf of Cox’s Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (I previously mentioned Notholt in passing here).

However, the Committee for a Free Britain is ancient history: last November, by contrast, Cox attended David Horowitz’s “Freedom Weekend”, where the guest of honour was Glenn Beck. In 2008, Cox was part of a “summit” in Jerusalem organised by the vitriolic National Union MK Arieh Eldad.

UPDATE: A contributor to the “Expose” Facebook page asked Cox about the comments, and received a reply:

Thank you for your email of yesterday, raising your concern over the words printed in the Sun newspaper (21 March) which were attributed to me.

I emphasise that I did not make the remark and the Sun has apologised to me personally and I hope will publish a correction.

Yours sincerely,

Caroline Cox

However, as Islamophobia Watch notes, “the remark” appears to mean only the “whipping and stoning” comment which appeared in the Sun report. A press release from the Christian Broadcasting Council, which should be more authoritative than the Sun and the Mail, attributes other quotes of the same kind to Cox and to Nazir Ali. These comments present shariah as a license for indulging in rape and paedophilia:

Sharing the platform at the CBC Symposium was Bishop Michael Nazir-Al. Together they warned of the threat to rape victims if Sharia law were to be allowed in the UK.

‘Under Sharia Law if a woman wants to bring a charge of alleged rape she is obliged to provide four independent Muslim witnesses,’ said Lady Cox.

‘Failure to do so might result in the rape victim being accused of fornication and adultery,’ added Bishop Michael.

He warned that Sharia law could be used to justify child marriage. ‘You will have child marriage, because as soon as a girl begins her periods, she is eligible to be married. How will you maintain a minimum age for marriage?’

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The gang’s all here for this one; WND‘s Chelsea Schilling reports:

A former senior Pentagon official told radio talk-show host Glenn Beck where to find the shocking truth about billionaire George Soros’ influence on President Obama’s decision to deploy U.S. troops to Uganda – as he directed Beck’s listeners to WND.

On the March 9 GBTV show, retired Gen. Jerry Boykin, the former U.S. deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence – who has played a part in nearly every recent major U.S. military operation in the last four decades – said of WND’s Aaron Klein.

“He shows that there’s a more sinister side to this. And that is a George Soros connection to the whole influence on the administration of deploying U.S. military forces in there, certainly under the guise of going after Joseph Kony [leader of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army accused of major human rights atrocities], but I think there is some very good information in that article that shows there is a Soros connection to this whole thing. And, fundamentally, it’s about oil.”

Although a link to Beck’s programme is included, Schilling is discrete about the reason why Boykin and Beck were discussing Uganda: Beck was worried about the viral Kony 2012 video, and he suggested that it had perhaps been funded by Soros or created by “the White House”; Boykin implicitly concurred.

Alas, however, the two pundits appear to have been the last two individuals left on the planet to remain unaware that the video was of course created by Invisible Children, a group which has strong associations with conservative evangelical organisations. Right Wing Watch and Bruce Wilson have recently looked into these links, which include an appearance by Jason Russell at Liberty University last November; Boykin visited Liberty in the same month.

WND has a particular reason to downplay criticisms of Kony 2012, despite the site’s love of conspiracy theories; in 2010 Joseph Farah announced

the appointment of Megan Byrd, a young veteran wordsmith from Tennessee, as the new editor of WND Books, the subsidiary company that claims the highest percentage of best-sellers among all publishers in America.

Byrd comes to WND from a position as writer, editor and manuscript consultant with HighWire Ink… Prior to that, she served as staff writer and editor for Invisible Children, a media-driven, international nonprofit.

For more on this blog about Boykin, see here; for Beck, see here; and for Klein, see here. Klein’s 2011 article about Soros and Uganda is briefly discussed by Terry Krepel of ConWebWatch here.

UPDATE: Fark introduces the Boykin-Beck conflab thus:

One of the dumbest discussions you will ever witness: Glenn Beck and Jerry Boykin discuss how “Kony 2012” is a Soros-backed effort that will turn Kony into a Che Guevara-like figure

UPDATE 2: WND has now jumped on the bandwagon, with a piece from Molotov Mitchell on “Kony 2012: Soros’ Hipster War“.

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The Guardian has an article about Craig Monteilh, an informant tasked by the FBI with infiltrating mosques in California:

Monteilh’s story sounds like something out of a pulp thriller. Under the supervision of two FBI agents the muscle-bound fitness instructor created a fictitious French-Syrian altar ego, called Farouk Aziz. In this disguise in 2006 Monteilh started hanging around mosques in Orange County – the long stretch of suburbia south of LA – and pretended to convert to Islam.

…Yet, far from succeeding, Monteilh eventually so unnerved Orange County’s Muslim community that that they got a restraining order against him. In an ironic twist, they also reported Monteilh to the FBI: unaware he was in fact working undercover for the agency.

Monteilh was also given the go-ahead to seduce Muslim women to gather information.

The Guardian also notes some other US cases involving informants:

In the case of the Newburgh Four – where four men were convicted for a fake terror attack on Jewish targets in the Bronx – a confidential informant offered $250,000, a free holiday and a car to one suspect for help with the attack.

In the case of the Fort Dix Five, which involved a fake plan to attack a New Jersey military base, one informant’s criminal past included attempted murder, while another admitted in court at least two of the suspects later jailed for life had not known of any plot.

Infiltrators have also been used in other countries – the most famous case was perhaps in Canada, where evidence gathered by a Muslim named Mubin Shaikh helped to convict the “Toronto 18″. Shaikh was paid well for his work, although he received more money than he expected and his motive appears to have been a genuine desire to disrupt the plans of extremist co-religionists. Journalists raised concerns about entrapment; however, during a trial in 2009 the judge determined that Shaikh was credible and ruled that there had been no entrapment. Shaikh is today billed as a “Canadian National Security Consultant”, and he will be speaking at a panel event in London in April entitled “Muslims in the West – What is the Way Forward?” (as an aside, the event is being organised with the help of Charlie Flowers; Flowers has threatened to assault me if ever he meets me).

There was also a murky case in the UK in November 2006, involving a private self-described “terror-tracking” organisation called the “VIGIL Network”. BBC Newsnight interviewed an an unnamed individual who claimed to have infiltrated Hizb ut-Tahrir in Croydon on behalf of VIGIL; the programme further claimed that there was a plot to firebomb a local synagogue, and VIGIL’s director, Dominic Wightman, claimed in a private email that VIGIL’s “plant” had brought this to the police’s attention. However, despite these dramatic and incredibly serious revelations, no arrests or trials followed – and subsequent unrelated events showed that Wightman was personally dishonest (full story here. Wightman also had links to Flowers, although they later fell out).

A few months ago I made a Freedom of Information request about this, and received the following reply:

Although the incident described took place some five years ago we do not consider this matter to be resolved.  We believe that the disclosure of the information relating to the suspicious items would have a negative effect on the community relationships and would subsequently compromise our law enforcement capabilities – reducing our ability to prevent and detect crime, which is the core principle of UK policing.  Any disclosure that could disrupt the investigative process would not be in the public interest.

Happily, this also means that the police can draw a discreet veil over what may have been a problematic and counter-productive association.

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Robert Spencer’s JihadWatch, this morning:

Gunman with “possible terrorist links” murders 4 outside Jewish school in France

Islamic antisemitism boiling over? Maybe…

Same post, this evening:

Not Found

The requested URL /2012/03/gunman-with-possible-terrorist-links-murders-4-outside-jewish-school-in-france.html was not found on this server.

Apparently, the answer to Spencer’s question is “maybe not”, and so he scrubbed the article without bothering to update his followers with the latest developments: there is reason believe that the killer may be part of a gang of ex-paratroopers who were dismissed in 2008 for neo-Nazi behaviour (details in Le Point, cited in English in other news-sites).

This is Spencer’s usual method when he’s made an accusation that turns out not to be true or to be doubtful: in 2009 he deleted a bogus story about a mass paedophile wedding in Gaza, and at the end of 2010 he removed an account about a man acting strangely on a plane to Malta – a report used by Spencer said the man was a Muslim, but he turned out to be a Caribbean Christian. There are probably other instances; Spencer apparently sees no ethical need to correct any false impression or inaccurate information he may have left his readers with.

As I wrote previously, any blogger dealing in current affairs is likely to make a mistake from time to time; but what separates a serious person from a charlatan or demagogue is how one attempts to put a mistake right.

As for the tragedy in Toulouse, it is of course reasonable to suspect a jihadist motive. However, Spencer was obviously writing in bad faith: that’s why he framed the suggestion as a Muslim “boiling over”, and that’s why he removed the article without explanation when he realised the killer might not be a Muslim.

Alas, Google cache doesn’t have a copy of the post, although a few lines currently remain visible on the Google search results page. Some of the content has also been reposted on JBlog Central.

UPDATE: The BBC reports:

Police hunting a gunman suspected of killing seven people in southern France have surrounded a house in Toulouse.

According to the French interior minister:

…the suspect had made several visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“He claims to be a mujahideen and to belong to al-Qaeda,” Mr Gueant said.

“He wanted revenge for the Palestinian children and he also wanted to take revenge on the French army because of its foreign interventions.”

Spencer probably now regrets blinking, although the fact that the gunman also killed two Muslim soldiers might make the obvious polemical line slightly tricky.

UPDATE 2: Spencer now has several new posts on the subject, including one in which he has fun with foreign media for suspecting Neo-Nazis: “I do not blame them for thinking that it could have been Nazis, since they have so much in common with the followers of the Quran”. Of course, Spencer glosses over the fact that reports such as these also gave him a serious case of cold feet – which prompted him to delete rather than to inform.

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From last week’s Sunday Telegraph, and widely reported:

In a highly significant move, ministers will fight a case at the European Court of Human Rights in which two British women will seek to establish their right to display the cross.

It is the first time that the Government has been forced to state whether it backs the right of Christians to wear the symbol at work.

A document seen by The Sunday Telegraph discloses that ministers will argue that because it is not a “requirement” of the Christian faith, employers can ban the wearing of the cross and sack workers who insist on doing so.

…The Strasbourg case hinges on whether human rights laws protect the right to wear a cross or crucifix at work under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

…The Government’s official response states that wearing the cross is not a “requirement of the faith” and therefore does not fall under the remit of Article 9.

While presented as some kind of shocking leak, the “document”  merely restates the London Appeal Court judgement of Eweida v British Airways plc [2010] EWCA Civ 80. The text of the judgement can be easily found on-line, and includes the following:

The [industrial] tribunal heard evidence from a number of practising Christians in addition to the claimant. None, including the claimant, gave evidence that they considered visible display of the cross to be a requirement of the Christian faith; on the contrary, leaders of the Christian Fellowship had stated that, “It is the way of the cross, not the wearing of it, that should determine our behaviour”. (R1, 780). The claimant’s evidence was that she had never breached the uniform policy before 20 May 2006, and that the decision to wear the cross visibly was a personal choice, not a requirement of scripture or of the Christian religion. There was no expert evidence on Christian practice or belief (although that possibility had been canvassed at the PHR in June).

That was a direct quote from the original tribunal judgement; the Appeal Court concurred:

Neither Ms Eweida nor any witness on her behalf suggested that the visible wearing of a cross was more than a personal preference on her part. There was no suggestion that her religious belief, however profound, called for it.

And as for Article 9, the Appeal Court quoted The European Court of Human Rights in Kalaç v Turkey (1997):

“Article 9 does not protect every act motivated or inspired by a religion or belief. Moreover, in exercising his freedom to manifest his religion, an individual may need to take his specific situation into account.”

So: the “document seen by The Sunday Telegraph” in fact contains the unremarkable information that the UK government’s “official response” concurs with the normal understanding of Article 9 as expounded by the European Court since 1997, and that the government intends to defend the Appeal Court’s decision in Europe, rather than just cave in.

The Telegraph piece has subsequently been mischievously distorted, so that the lack of an automatic right becomes an actual ban; from Hungary, Politics.hu has an article reporting that

The co-ruling Christian Democrats are “shocked and appalled” by the British government’s claims that Christians should not wear a cross or crucifix openly at work because it is not a “requirement” of the Christian faith, party leader Zsolt Semjen said on Monday.

…The Daily Telegraph reported on Saturday that the British government is to argue in a case at the European Court of Human Rights that Christians should not be allowed to wear a cross or crucifix openly at work. The paper said that a British Airways worker and a nurse had taken their conflict to the European Court in Strasbourg after both faced disciplinary action for wearing a cross at work.

The Politics.hu article has been partially reposted by WorldNetDaily, under the heading “Hungarians Shocked At British Cross Ban”.

The Telegraph adds the detail that

The Strasbourg cases… are supported by the Christian Legal Centre which has instructed Paul Diamond, a leading human rights barrister.

As I noted just yesterday, a report by one of Diamond’s allies claims that Diamond has linked the cases to Islam in Britain; according to William Murray, writing on the Sharia Awareness Action Network website:

The conference [“Constitution or Sharia” – see here] was truly an international event. Barrister Paul Diamond from the United Kingdom spoke of the Islamization of London and his struggle in the courts to represent Christians whose rights have been taken from them.  He presented the case of British Airlines which permits employees to wear Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and other religious clothing, but prohibits them from wearing any cross or other item identifying them as Christians. The courts actually upheld British Airlines’ right to discriminate against Christians. Diamond has founded Christian Concern in the United Kingdom to assist Christians who are persecuted as the United Kingdom becomes more Muslim oriented.

This line has also been developed with typical vulgarity and hateful excess by Pamela Geller:

The cross is an insult to devout Muslims. Sharia in the West. Did anyone think this kind of submission possible after 911? And it’s worse than that… I won’t be a slave to barbarity, despite the traitors in power.

(Geller was originally part of the conference line-up alongside Diamond, although in the event she didn’t attend)

As I’ve written previously (at further length), my personal view (if anyone is interested) is that British society is in the process of trying to adapt to an individualistic culture in which people increasingly feel that their their professional lives should not completely stifle their sense of personal identity. This isn’t a bad development: terrible things have happened because people gave up any sense of individual responsibility once they were given a uniform and a job to do. It has long been recognised in the UK that there should be some accommodation for personal conscience (I blogged on this here), and the area where there is most likely to be a conflict here in is in the area of religion. It’s reasonable for Christians to fight their corner while these processes are still being thought through, but using the politics of resentment to drive the argument is unattractive.

UPDATE: Taking the Chinese whispers even further, Interfax reports from Russia that:

A picket in defense of Christians’ rights in the UK was held near the British embassy in Moscow on Wednesday.

The picket was organized by the Orthodox public movement Narodny Sobor in response to the decision made by the British authorities to fire people for openly wearing crosses, Narodny Sobor told Interfax-Religion.

…According to earlier reports, the British authorities intend to defend the legality of the ban on public wearing of crosses in the UK in the European Court of Human Rights.

I previously blogged on Narodny Sobor in 2007.

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From Network Norwich:

On Wednesday 14 March, Norwich charity, Call to Prayer hosted two events with the Founder and CEO of Christian Concern and the Director of the Christian Legal Centre, Andrea Minichiello Williams.

At a lunchtime meeting Andrea, a barrister, spoke to an invited gathering of Christian leaders from the city and in the evening spoke passionately to a group of around 100 Christians at an open event held in the House of Prayer, Fishergate. 

….Christian Concern is one of the founding partners of the ‘Coalition for Marriage’ campaign which encourages Christians to petition against the redefinition of marriage. 

…Another campaign promoted by Christian Concern is ‘Not Ashamed’, a declaration proclaiming ‘Jesus Christ is good news for our nation, that he is the only true hope and solid foundation for our society’. The declaration is supported by the wearing of wristbands and lapel badges displaying the cross. 

…In Norwich, the gathered audience seemed in full support of her message and went away with her final challenge ringing in their ears: “There is stuff to do…be creative. You don’t need to be involved in every campaign. Find your thing and do it. Don’t be overwhelmed and do nothing”.

The same site has further details of the “House of Prayer”:

A House of Prayer was officially opened in Norwich yesterday (February 2) at the Fishergate Centre as the culmination of 18 months of prayer and effort.

An audience of around 70 church leaders and supporters of Call to Prayer, which is the organization behind the Centre, heard from director Jill Gower and Jane Holloway, from the World Prayer Centre in Birmingham.

Gower previously headed “Eden Ministries”, which in 2005 helped to organise a protest in Norwich against the BBC broadcast of Jerry Springer: The Opera. According to a profile:

Two years ago Jill Gower was moved to “bless and build up the churches” through John McKay’s in-depth Bible teaching, The Way of the Spirit.

She studied the course with regular homework and Bible school attendance, noting that “God was speaking directly to his people which provided life rather than just head knowledge”.

McKay (who died in 2001) was a pastor at Kingdom Faith Ministries, which is led by Colin Urquhart in Horsham, West Sussex; Cornerstone Church in Norwich has a “covenant relationship” with KFM.

The Jerry Springer protest notwithstanding, this sort of neo-Pentecostal/evangelical church tends to be very different from the American “Christian Right” organisations with which Minichiello Williams has been making links; I doubt there would be much enthusiasm for the kind of rhetoric associated with, for instance, the EDL-supporting Tennessee Freedom Coalition, which Minichiello Williams met with in November.

However, the Norwich events are a good example of Minichiello Williams’ activism among ordinary Christians, and it remains to be seen whether her efforts will have any kind of politicizing effect. The “Coalition for Marriage” has had some success in framing the debate on same-sex marriage as an attack on religious conscience, while demands that Christian jewelry and accessories be given the same workplace exemptions as marks of religious observance by members of minority faiths has appeal in an era of assertive identity politics. (1)

In 2008, Minichiello Williams appeared in a Channel 4 documentary about conservative Christian activists in the UK; at that time, her public profile was relatively low. Now, her media presence is such that journalists seek her out for her opinion on what kind of person should be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. The 2008 documentary also introduced a fairly obscure back-bench MP with whom Minichiello Williams was working: Nadine Dorries.

(1) Christian Concern’s US allies are ratcheting up resentment by claiming that the purported inconsistency is evidence of a Muslim conspiracy to impose shariah; according to William Murray, writing on the Sharia Awareness Action Network website:

The conference [“Constitution or Sharia” – see here] was truly an international event. Barrister Paul Diamond from the United Kingdom spoke of the Islamization of London and his struggle in the courts to represent Christians whose rights have been taken from them.  He presented the case of British Airlines which permits employees to wear Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and other religious clothing, but prohibits them from wearing any cross or other item identifying them as Christians. The courts actually upheld British Airlines’ right to discriminate against Christians. Diamond has founded Christian Concern in the United Kingdom to assist Christians who are persecuted as the United Kingdom becomes more Muslim oriented.

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The British Freedom Party reports:

On Friday March 9 a media team from the Christian Action Network came to London to conduct interviews with various Counterjihad activists about the spread of sharia and the Islamization of Europe. Below is their interview with Paul Weston, the Chairman of the British Freedom Party.

The CAN interview with Tommy Robinson was posted yesterday at Gates of Vienna. Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff will be up next.

CAN previously interviewed English Defence League members in 2009, during a visit to the UK with Robert Spencer. CAN used the opportunity to invite EDL activists to a private dinner with Spencer and Douglas Murray, to the embarrassment of the two men; Murray’s Centre for Social Cohesion sent me a message asking me to clarify that “CAN asked Douglas to do an interview with them – upon seeing the presence of the EDL at the CAN discussion he refused to deal with them and left the venue.”

CAN was primarily known for anti-gay activism prior to taking an interest in Islam; CAN’s president, Martin Mawyer, has a history of virulent statements on the subject (in particular, in 1997 he denounced Ellen DeGeneres’ “FILTHY LESBIAN LIFESTYLE”), which Spencer initially dismissed in 2009 as “not jihad-related”. However, in 2010 Mawyer’s views were reported in Dutch media, prompting Geert Wilders to withdraw from the Los Angeles premiere of a CAN documentary entitled Islam Rising: Geert Wilders’ Warning to the West. The premiere, which had been organised by Pamela Geller and Spencer, was quickly cancelled, and Spencer affected to be shocked at the discovery of Mawyer’s “ugly, vitriolic… hysterical, self-righteous, abusive rhetoric”.

The British Freedom Party and the EDL now have several links with Christian Right activists. Weston and Stephen Lennon (“Tommy Robinson”) are regular guests on Michael Coren’s Arena TV show; Coren is a member of the more intellectual end of the Catholic right, and, like Mawyer, he is particularly known for his objections to homosexuality. Weston and Lennon are also friendly with the Tennessee Freedom Coalition’s Andy Miller (the TFC was in the news recently after arranging for local police to be trained in Islam at an evangelical church in Murfreesboro; the group also has links with the British organisation Christian Concern).

Sabaditsch-Wolff, meanwhile, was recently invested as a Dame of “the Knights of Malta — The Ecumenical Order”, by Nicholas Papanicolaou and none  other than Gen William “Jerry” Boykin; the two men are, respectively, the Order’s “Grand Master” and “Grand Chancellor”. Both men are close to the evangelist Rick Joyner, who is a “Deputy Member of the Supreme Council”. Joyner, who receives messages from God about how an earthquake will soon destroy the west coast of the USA, claims that he was introduced to the Order by an “Austrian baron”, and that his books were responsible for a “spiritual renewal” in the Order.

(Hat tip: EDL News)

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