Bartholomew's Notes

Well, it looks as though someone scraped together the necessary cash (there was a hitch) which will allow Walid Shoebat to dispense his wisdom at Western Michigan University:

The topic of the speech is Why We Want To Kill You and deals with the mindset of a terrorist. Introduction by General Gordon Cucullu. Admssion free.

Shoebat’s answer to the title’s question, of course, is because Islam is inherently violent – although Shoebat has remarkably managed to milk this monomanic assertion into a never-ending gravy-train (adding stuff about a Muslim anti-Christ when in church settings).

Cucullu, meanwhile, is yet another “security hawk” pundit on the right-wing circuit; a profile at “The Intelligence Summit (TM)” tells us that:

Gordon Cucullu is a former Special Forces lieutenant colonel with more than four decades of experience dealing with the tumultuous region of East Asia, including North and South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China and Southeast Asia. He is Senior Non-resident Fellow at the Center for Security Policy…Gordon is recognized as one of the leading authorities on the complex, dangerous threat posed by North Korea through its deadly connections to other American enemies in the war for the free world.

He recently wrote a book entitled Inside Gitmo: The True Story Behind the Myths of Guantanamo Bay; this was puffed a few days ago by the good Christians at OneNewsNow. There are some interesting cross-overs between these kinds of characters and church groups in America – just a short time ago I noted Shoebat’s appearance at Messianic venue in Florida, where the organiser also runs “Terrorism Preparation & Disaster Relief” seminars.

According to the Kalamazoo News, Shoebat’s Michigan jaunt has been organised by a student group called International Conservatives, led by a certain Chris McCann; I’ve also seen that “advance work” was apparently undertaken by “investigative journalist” and Frontpage-r Lee Kaplan.

The Kalamazoo News laughably calls Shoebat a “peace activist”. Here’s a video that’s embedded on the “peace activist’s” website (made by his son), which invokes a militarised Christian fundamentalism to oppose Muslims and scientists (Charles Darwin appears, Emmanuel Goldstein-like, at 3:08, wreathed in flames and with the words “give them the ability to filter out evil” superimposed over his face) :

UPDATE: An account of the meeting, in a letter to the Western Herald from student Andrew Lennox:

The audience was fairly diverse showing the variety of students at WMU.  Beginning the presentation a former Special Forces officer led the audience in the pledge of allegiance, something I hadn’t done since middle school

…There was a certain undertone where each statement made Muslims seem worse and worse. I noticed the younger students begin to leave row by row; but being an anthropology student I was determined to stay.  Suddenly I looked around and the room was filled with older white people nodding their heads and saying god bless America.

By the end of the speeches the crowd was yelping and whistling with patriotism due to the presenter’s constant references to American pride.  I felt very uncomfortable feeling like I had just watched George Wallace speak in 1963, there was an ominous anti Muslim feeling in the room.  After one Arab student’s outburst, he was shoved by a white student, and when the Arab student asked, “Who are you?” The second student shouted, “I’m America!” and the Arab student was escorted out by police.

UPDATE: Lee Kaplan responds (see comments). He points out that he is a “wellpaid journalist” and that Shoebat is a “bestselling author”, whereas I am an “unpaid blogger”. Does this not therefore prove that everything Shoebat says is true and that any criticism I may have can be discounted?

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From Melanie Phillips, at the Spectator:

Last July, a discreet meeting was held by a group of influential Anglican evangelicals to co-ordinate a new church approach towards Islam. The meeting was convened by Bryan Knell, head of the missionary organisation Global Connections, and others from a group calling itself Christian Responses to Islam in Britain. The 22 participants, who met at All Nations Christian College in Ware, Hertfordshire, were sworn to secrecy…The meeting had in its sights those ‘aggressive’ Christians who were ‘increasing the level of fear’ in many others by talking about the threat posed by radical Islam.

The aim was thus to discredit and stifle those Christians who warn against the Islamisation of Britain and Islam’s threat to the church. Those who do so include the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, the Africa specialist Baroness Cox, the Islam expert Dr Patrick Sookhdeo and the Maranatha Ministry…

I blogged this here. The story has doing the rounds for a couple of weeks, and it has been promoted because a journalist named Ben White gave Sookhdeo a bad review of his new book, Global Jihad, on the evangelical website Fulcrum. After the review was published, Sookhdeo was then “discredited and stifled” by being given right of reply on the same website. Two supporters of Sookhdeo wrote an essay which was duly published, but they also produced a second version containing extra sections of astonishingly crude attacks on White. Andrew Brown at the Guardian drew attention to the inflammatory version of the counter-review – but Phillips points out that Brown seems “to be driven by hostility to anyone who supported Israel”, so apparently we don’t need to go into that little embarrassment any further. Another, anonymous, article suggested that the bad review was part of a plot hatched at the Global Connections meeting to which Phillips refers, and this piece was distributed by email by Sookhdeo’s Barnabas Fund.

Phillips continues:

White then drew his review to the attention of a blogger, Islamist and Muslim convert called Indigo Jo. On his website, Indigo Jo anathematised Sookhdeo as the ‘Sookhdevil’. This attack was reproduced on various other Islamist websites and Sookhdeo has received a death threat as a result.

The tale is growing: “Indigo Jo” was rather rude about Sookhdeo, and Sookhdeo’s supporters did indeed try to puff this up  into some kind of threat, telling us that:

The criticism of Patrick Sookhdeo which appeared on Indigo Jo’s website – and the epithet he coined “Sookhdevil” – have now appeared on a number of other Muslim websites, some of which appear to be radical. One of them calls for Muslims to go and fight in Gaza.

However, there was no death threat mentioned then, and if there has been one since, how come only Phillips has heard about it? And besides, as I pointed out before, Sookhdeo’s hostile views about Islam have been public knowledge for years – Global Jihad is unlikely to add to any extremist threat he may be under. Compared to White’s temperate review, the whine about White putting Sookhdeo at risk was an unworthy and intelligence-insulting attempt to, erm…”discredit and stifle” a critic.

Meanwhile, Sookhdeo has issued a new statement, co-authored with Sam Solomon and a certain Dennis Wrigley:

A number of accusations have been circulating in the media about Sam Soloman, Patrick Sookhdeo and the Maranatha Community, the movement which Dennis Wrigley heads. Some of the accusations apparently have arisen in regard to discussions held at a closed meeting convened last July, which, among other issues, discussed a perceived growth of fear of Islam and Muslims felt among Christians in the UK. Some attributed this fear to aggressive teaching by Christians concerning negative aspects of Islam and advocated promoting an alternative approach.

What does this mean? The only “accusations” that “have been circulating in the media” concerning this affair were the shrill attacks promoted by Sookhdeo’s supporters against White and Global Connections. The statement continues:

The majority of those who attended the meeting advocated maintaining a variety of approaches, which included ones that are openly critical of Islam. We would like to state clearly that we recognize that any individuals that were advocating limiting criticism of Islam were speaking their own opinions and were not following any official policy of CRIB (Christian Responses to Islam in Britain) or of Global Connections.

Whoops! So while Phillips has treated her Spectator readers to news of a conspiracy against Christians who speak out against Islamism, Sookhdeo appears to have backed down from the allegation – albeit it in a rather grudging and indirect way (Sookhdeo’s back-pedalling is doubtless because several of the organisations at the meeting have issued statements: see here and here). But the authors soon return to form with a few more shock revelations:

We are living in a context of increasing hostility towards Christians both from secular society and from Islam. A key evangelist was threatened in public by a Muslim with a gun a week ago. A Christian leader who speaks out on Islam in Britain has received death threats. Another who writes widely on Islam had his offices burgled, apparently by Muslim extremists.

These are serious matters, and it’s frustrating that no specific details are provided.

I should add if the July meeting did indeed feature criticisms of Sookhdeo and Solomon that would in fact be quite reasonable. I blogged here about the disgraceful way that Sookhdeo misrepresented a Muslim book he’s been using as evidence of a Islamic conspiracy; Solomon provides alarmist briefings for the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship worthy of Walid Shoebat.

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Jihad Watch puts forward the unlikely suggestion that the notoriously right-wing Daily Mail has chosen to censor a story in order to avoid “offending” Muslims. The piece concerns Sabina Akhtar, who was murdered by her husband Malik Mannan after a campaign of threats and violence. According to the original Mail article, on one occasion:

…Using both hands to squeeze her windpipe he told her to read her Koran adding: ‘Read whatever other stuff you need to read now. This is your final hour.’ The arrival of his brother stopped the attack but Mannan left shouting: ‘I’m going to get a knife and when I return I’m going to slaughter you.’

This has now been changed to:

In the early hours of the following morning he attacked her again, telling her ‘This is your final hour’, but left after she made a desperate call for help to his brother, threatening to return with a knife and ‘slaughter’ her.

Inevitably, this revision has been seized on by right-wing bloggers as British appeasement of Islam; Jihad Watch even offers a trophy screenshot of the original wording as evidence of the sinister cover-up.  Pam Geller at Atlas Shrugs, with typical nuance, screams that:

THE DAILY MAIL, DHIMMI PRESS IN BED WITH THE ISLAMIC SUPREMACISTS, REMOVES REFERENCE TO MUSLIM HUSBAND TELLING HIS  WIFE TO READ THE QUR’AN AS HE STRANGLED HER

But if this is all part of a PC plot to appease Muslims, how come that the Koranic reference which the Mail dare not name appears in…the liberal Guardian?

The court heard that Akhtar, 26, reported her husband to police last year, telling them he had battered her 25 times and made threats on her life. On one occasion, in July, he told her to prepare for death by reading passages from the Qur’an, adding: “I am going to get a knife and when I return I am going to slaughter you.”

And in…the BBC?

He would squeeze her windpipe when they were arguing and made at least three threats to kill her…

In July last year he told her to prepare for her final hour by reading passages from the Koran and said: “I am going to get a knife and when I return I am going to slaughter you.”

And in…the Mirror?

The next morning, Mannan attacked again. Using both hands to squeeze her windpipe he told her to read her Koran warning: “This is your final hour.” The attack stopped when Mannan’s brother arrived, but he left shouting: “I’m going to get a knife and when I return I’m going to slaughter you.”

However, an earlier report in the Manchester Evening News put it like this:

The court heard he grabbed Sabina’s throat and ordered her to read passages from the Koran. “This is your final hour’,” he is alleged to have told her.

The jury was also told he said to Sabina: “I am going to get a knife and when I return I am going to slaughter you.”

It should also be noted that there is a significant difference between (a) “he…ordered her to read passages from the Koran” and (b) “he told her to prepare for her final hour by reading passages from the Koran”, adding this would be her last chance to read “whatever other stuff you need to read” – (a) suggesting some kind of bizarre religious ritual and (b) more of a generic “say your prayers” type of threat. When Sabina was finally murdered, in September, it was by being stabbed in the chest; there is no indication of any “ritual” or “honour” aspect to the killing. Perhaps, at some point, the Mail realised the details were ambiguous and amended its wording – unaware that thousands of American readers were slavering over the Koran detail.

Incidentally, I don’t chase after these things in order to “defend Islam”, despite what some others have suggested. What I will defend, though, is the need for careful reporting and sensible evaluation over rumour, hysteria, and scaremongering.

(slightly updated)

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A dramatic banner headline on WorldNetDaily:

Famed pastor, author predicts imminent catastrophe

The pastor is none other than David Wilkerson, whose 1963 biography The Cross and the Switchblade (as ever, “as told to John and Elizabeth Sherrill”) remains an evangelical paperback classic . WND tells us that Wilkerson has a blog, where he has just revealed a message from the Holy Spirit:

“An earth-shattering calamity is about to happen,” he writes. “It is going to be so frightening, we are all going to tremble – even the godliest among us.”

Wilkerson’s vision is of fires raging through New York City.

“It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires – such as we saw in Watts, Los Angeles, years ago,” he explains. “There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting – including Times Square, New York City. What we are experiencing now is not a recession, not even a depression. We are under God’s wrath. In Psalm 11 it is written, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?”

…”God is judging the raging sins of America and the nations,” claims Wilkerson. “He is destroying the secular foundations.” Wilkerson urges everyone to stockpile a 30-day supply of food and other necessities to deal with the catastrophe he foresees.

“I do not know when these things will come to pass, but I know it is not far off”…

Presumably “the secular foundations” is a dig at the recent electoral set-backs of the Christian Right; WND of course loves the idea that Obama might be the true architect of the current economic woes that Wilkerson is capitalising on. We’ll also assume that the 1965 Watts riots are invoked because of their severity, rather than because Wilkerson wants specifically to predict “race riots”, although the connotation is unfortunate.

Wisely, however, WND declines to quote Wilkerson’s underwhelming opening sentence:

For ten years I have been warning about a thousand fires coming to New York City.

Ten years? How about more than twenty years? Here’s the opening of his 1985 Set the Trumpet to Thy Mouth:

America is going to be destroyed by fire! Sudden destruction is coming and few will escape. Unexpectedly, and in one hour, a hydrogen holocaust will engulf America — and this nation will be no more.

It is because America has sinned against the greatest light. Other nations are just as sinful, but none is as flooded with gospel light as ours. God is going to judge America for its violence, its crimes, its backsliding, its murdering of millions of babies, its flaunting of homosexuality and sadomasochism, its corruption, its drunkenness and drug abuse, its form of godliness without power, its lukewarmness toward Christ, its rampant divorce and adultery, its lewd pornography, its child molestations, its cheating, its robbing, its dirty movies, and its occult practices.

Or how about 35 years? In his 1974 The Vision, Wilkerson predicts:

Nature will release its fury with increasing intensity over the next decade. There will be short periods of relief, but almost every day mankind will witness the wrath of nature somewhere in the world.

That book also predicted “the biggest, most disastrous” earthquake to take place in the USA.

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It’s been nearly a week now since Tim Ireland published extracts from an alleged audio interview with Glen Jenvey, who stands accused of posting to a Muslim website forum as “Abuislam” in order to create evidence for a front-page Sun story about Muslim extremism. “Abuislam” had been linked to another poster at the same forum, “Richard Tims”, who had been promoting a website owned by Jenvey some months before, but in recent a message sent to Tim Ireland via Jeremy Reynalds (of the neo-Pentecostal ASSIST News Service) Jenvey denied being Tims. The audio flat-out contradicts this; the apparent voice of Jenvey clearly states that “Richard Tims” is a false name that he uses.

Since the publication of the audio, Jenvey has again been in contact with Tim – he doesn’t deny the authenticity of the recording, but there is no confirmation or explanation of any sort. Jenvey’s former and current associates aren’t saying much, either: Dominic Whiteman has been careful to stress that their association ended a while back, and that their work together remains valid “Whatever the result of the [Press Complaints Commission] investigation [into the Sun story]” – hardly a ringing endorsement. Jeremy Reynalds, who backed Jenvey with an absurd article claiming that Jenvey was the victim of a conspiracy concocted at the Guardian newspaper, has not yet felt the need to inform his readers about the latest developments; there’s also nothing from Jenvey’s associate “Lionheart”.

The Jenvey audio also raises some other interesting connections, as he explains his role in uncovering evidence of Jihadi activity:

I was… I basically… I basically uncovered all the films. With…. a university professor whose cousin, Sherard, is the British Ambassador to Afghanistan, but at that stage was the British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. If I don’t think the cops are taking me seriously… or not acting on information given over to them or MI5… we bypass them and I will use one of my number of diplomatic contacts… or it will go to Sherard. And if that fails, I then go to the press.

And later:

…Mike went to the MI5 in two thousand and… I think he went in 2006… [snip] ‘cos I arranged a meeting…for Mike to go and visit MI5 and hand over tapes.

Tim sums up nicely what this means:

The process described here deserves summary; when the police do not regard certain evidence to be useful/usable for some reason, they will be bypassed and high-placed contacts within our diplomatic corps will be put to work to see if justice can’t be meted out by some other means. If those avenues fail, it will be time for trial by media.

Given the big cloud now hanging over Jenvey’s credibility – made darker and heavier by his bizarre lashings-out since – this is rather serious; and as I noted recently, the Sun is currently being sued over the website forum story. Tim has emailed the British Ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, for an explanation. He has also emailed Patrick Mercer, the Tory MP who has links with Jenvey and a particular interest in matters of terrorism and intelligence. Tim says that “Patrick Mercer’s people are kindly looking into the matter, but not a word has reached me from Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles or his staff.”

Instead, Tim is now looking into chasing “the alleged cousin/’Mike’ for comment”. But who could the cousin be? Details are scarce, although Sir Sherard’s family background is provided on this genealogical website. It’s somewhat incomplete; the maternal relatives are missing, and none of the listings for paternal first or second cousins fit the bill. It’s interesting to see, though, that Sir Sherard is descended from a certain Captain Cowper Phipps Coles, who died in 1870. Captain Coles has achieved posthumous fame on an internet list of “10 Inventors Killed By Their Own Inventions“:

Cowper Phipps Coles was a distinguished Royal Navy Captain who invented a rotating turret for ships during the Crimean War. After the war, Coles patented his invention and set about building his own ship using this revolutionary design, having seen it adapted for other Royal Navy ships. His ship, the HMS Captain, required several unusual and dangerous modifications however, including a so called “hurricane deck” which raised the ship’s centre of gravity. On the 6th September 1870, the HMS Captain capsized, killing Coles and most of its 500 person crew.

Captain Coles has many descendants, as listed here.

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Moscow’s police chief Vladimir Pronin makes a public statement somewhat beyond the usual brief of police officiers:

It’s unacceptable, gay pride parades shouldn’t be allowed. No one will dare to do it, such “brave-heart” will be torn to shreds…Our country is patriarchal, that’s sums it up…I positively agree with the Church, with the Patriarch, politicians, especially with [Mayor] Luzhkov, who are convinced that man and woman should love each other. It is established by God and nature.

The is not the first time that Pronin has made a priority of speaking out on the subject; in 2007 he wrote to Luzhkov that

“Representatives of public, Russian Orthodox Church and other religious beliefs are against the conduct of the gay parade which is propagating relations contradictory to the norms of morality and unacceptable for the society,” he says in his letter to the mayor.

He then goes on to say: “Units of GUVD in Moscow are constantly controlling mass public actions in the city, monitoring media and Internet with the aim to take measures of preventive character and non-admission of illegal actions on the part of representatives of sexual minorities.”

Mr. Pronin then says that he estimates that 120 extra personnel from militia regiments and the OMON will be needed each day to prevent any illegal demonstrations during the Gay Pride.

Moscow was lucky that Pronin had the resources for such vigilance – in 2003, he had explained that crime was increasing due to a shortage of police officiers.

On the other hand, there’s no problem with the far right holding a rally in the city; as was reported last year:

At a rally of about 400 far-right nationalists in Moscow’s Triumph Square on April 19, speakers called for the murder of various government officials, praised terrorist methods, and demonized Jews, according to the national daily “Kommersant” dated April 21…Rally participants included members of the National Great Power Party of Russia, the Union of Orthodox Standard Bearers, and the neo-Nazi Slavic Union (“SS” in its Russian abbreviation). They held signs condemning “Jewish fascism” and the “Jewish mafia” and calling on Slavic women to “guard the purity of your race.” Speakers called for the release of Vladimir Kvachkov who was sentenced to prison for his role in an assassination plot against a government official, an ethnic Jew.

Olga Kasyanenko of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration called on Russians to “Arm yourself! Defend your families!” and concluded with the ultranationalist slogan “Russia for the Russians!” Another speaker called for nationalists to prepare for war. Leonid Simonovich, head of the Union of Orthodox Standard Bearers, read a poem envisioning the murder of several government officials through a terrorist bombing campaign. Nikolai Kuryanovich, a former State Duma deputy, also addressed the rally that blatantly violated Russia’s laws against extremist activity by calling for the overthrow the constitutional structure of the state, and inciting ethnic hatred. Nevertheless, police reportedly did nothing in response.

(I blogged the Union of Orthodox Standard Bearers – and Simonovich’s toy-monkey impaling antics – here)

Pronin’s response? Here:

…chief of police Vladimir Pronin denied that there is an organized neo-Nazi movement in Moscow, according to an April 10, 2008 report by the Russian Jewish web site Jewish.ru. Speaking on TVTs television on Tuesday, Mr. Pronin said that, “There is no organized skinhead movement in Moscow, there are just individual excesses.” He added that in the first two months of the year, Moscow police registered around 60 crimes motivated by extremism, and that prosecutors opened three hate crimes investigations. As usual, he tempered these numbers by emphasizing that foreign citizens are more likely to commit crimes than Russian citizens, according to police statistics.

And while Pronin has time to issue statements warning about teh gay, we see rather less vigour in tracking down those responsible for killing journalists and lawyers; as was reported in January:

Rights activists have compared Monday’s murder of Stanislav Markelov to the 2006 slaying of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya. They fear the investigation into his killing, like many others involving victims who have pressed to hold authorities accountable for their actions, will hit a dead end.

…Moscow police chief Vladimir Pronin told a news conference on Wednesday that authorities had little evidence. “All the investigation has to go on is the data from video cameras,” Pronin said, Interfax reported

After the 2004 shooting of American journalist and Forbes editor Paul Klebnikov, Pronin was alleged to have made comments (later denied) following the arrest of a couple of Chechens, leading to a rebuke from the chief prosecutor. Pronin has also spoken against a recent call for journalists to be given guns to protect themselves:

“I don’t think we need to give journalists weapons. Law enforcement agencies must ensure their safety,” Vladimir Pronin told RIA Novosti.

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Ray Comfort (last blogged here) has discovered  a conspiracy against him; as he explains on WorldNetDaily:

“If you look at the reviews on Amazon.com,” he said, “you could come away thinking that this is worst book ever written. It has masses of one ‘stars’ with scathing reviews, saying things like ‘Comfort is a charlatan’ and ‘Dreadful piece of drivel.'”

…On the Reddit.com website he found the answer: a conspiracy among atheists to drag his book down through their responses on the Amazon website.

A participant identified as “The Milkman” wrote, “Let’s all vote one star on this piece of s—.”

 …”Atheists spammed my blog, spammed our website and sent abusive e-mails about our new billboard, so I suspected some sort of atheist conspiracy on Amazon, and fortunately I found it,” Comfort said.

However, it’s not all bad news:

“The atheist who wrote the foreword backslid,” Comfort said. “I sent him a copy, and a week later he wrote to me and said that he was no longer an atheist.”

The former atheist is not named, but he is a certain Darrin Rasberry of Iowa State University’s Department of Mathematics. Rasberry recently complained that anti-religious “diatribes” had replaced “the art of philosophical study”. He made a number of postings to a blog called Debunking Christianity – his sceptical swansong was a mathematical refutation of Alvin Plantinga’s Ontological Argument (don’t ask me if it’s valid or not).

So why the hostility to the book? Comfort explains that people like to pretend that God does not exist so that they can indulge in ” sinful delicacies” – specifically, “pornography, fornication, lying, theft”. He also has another challenging question for those who subscribe to evolutionary biology over a literal reading of Genesis:

“…Every male dog, cat, horse, elephant, giraffe, fish and bird had to have coincidentally evolved with a female alongside it (over billions of years) with fully evolved compatible reproductive parts and a desire to mate, otherwise the species couldn’t keep going. Evolution has no explanation for the female for every species in creation,”

Why penises are self-evident but vaginas baffling to science is not, alas, explained – perhaps this sheds some light on Comfort’s banana fixation…

Meanwhile, Richard Dawkins has responded to Comfort’s debate challenge:

$10,000 is less than the typical fee that I am ordinarily offered for lecturing to a serious audience (I often don’t accept it, especially in the case of a student audience, because I am a dedicated teacher). It is not, therefore, a worthwhile inducement for me to travel all the way across the Atlantic to debate with an ignorant fool. You can tell him that if he donates $100,000 to the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (it’s a charitable donation, tax deductible) I’ll do it. A further condition is that it will be filmed by Josh Timonen for my website, RichardDawkins.net, and distributed by Josh as a DVD, if he thinks it is funny enough. To this end, it would be nice if Mr Comfort would reprise the ever popular Banana Sketch.

Richard Dawkins

Comfort believes that Dawkins has made these conditions because he is afraid and wishes to avoid the confrontation.

Comfort has also spoken further about his famous argumentum ex mus?:

For years I have held a Coke can in one hand and a banana in the other, and compared the two. Both have a tab at the top. The banana has a wrapper with perforations, is biodegradable, etc. It was a parody – the point being, if someone designed the Coke can then obviously Someone designed the banana. In the mid 1990’s I published the parody in booklet form called ‘The Atheist Test’ and sold over a million copies. When we put it into our TV program, atheists removed the Coke can, and sent the clip all over the Internet, saying ‘Ray Comfort believes that the banana is proof of God’s existence.’ I guess atheists don’t appreciate parody.”

So, a banana is evidence for intelligent design and thus it really is “the atheist’s nightmare”; but insofar as the argument fails, that’s just because atheists can’t recognise parody. I must confess I can’t quite grasp this subtle point.

Giving one-star reviews to books they haven’t read, removing the very important contextualising coke-can from the banana sketch – clearly atheists are now running scared, and will stop at nothing in their quest for porn…

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At the Westminster Journal, Dominic Whiteman clarifies his connections to Glen Jenvey:

I met Glen Jenvey  summer of 2006. I have met him in person on five occasions in my life. We worked part-time together (mostly using telecommunication) only on the recording of Omar Bakri Mohammed’s Paltalk lectures – giving the recordings to Scotland Yard in November 2006 and passing some recordings to the media -between the summer of 2006 and March 2007 (notably contributing together to the BBC Newsnight programme of November 14th, 2006). We’ve not collaborated on any projects together since – Glen is more into internet and video research while my team and I tend to use physical sources to collect pointers. Glen works mostly for himself – I work as part of an investigative team… Amongst the cyber mosque lecturers were the (now both jailed) Abu Izzadeen (Trevor Brooks) and Mizanur Rahman. The project was a spoke…of a hub collectively known by the name VIGIL. Glen initiated the Paltalk project and saw it through to its end. Glen and the nameless others comprised this particular spoke but were never part of the VIGIL  hub. VIGIL’s other spokes were comprised of a variety of individuals – ranging from retired military and intelligence personnel through to linguistics and legal experts.

This “VIGIL” organisation came to public attention late in 2006, when it was featured as the main source for a Newsnight investigation into Islamic extremism, particularly Hizb ut-Tahrir.

I’ve always tried to be fair-minded about this kind of investigative work – obviously there are Islamic extremists out there, and if someone wants to poke around in their business looking to expose what they’re up to, good luck to them. Indeed, I wrote a positive blog post about Jeremy Reynalds’ efforts in this regard back in 2005, and when in 2007 I wrote critically about Denis MacEoin’s report for Policy Exchange on extremist materials for sale at British mosques I was careful to add that I considered the report to be “temperate in tone” and of some real use  (unfortunately when a specific problem was highlighted by another Newsnight report, MacEoin was very poorly served by PE’s Dean Godson, who gave a repellent and blustering performance on the show).

However, it’s also obvious that the field is going attract a fair number of cranks, self-aggrandizers, fantasists, and those more interesting in stirring up anti-Muslim feeling than contributing sensibly to a subject of urgent public concern. I’ve written about some of these characters on this blog over the years, and that’s also why I cast a sceptical eye over VIGIL  following the 2006 Newsnight piece; I found the website graphics to be overdone, some of the rhetoric to be rather weird, and some of the links disturbing. I asked the question “who invigilates VIGIL?“; Whiteman appears to answer directly:

VIGIL projects were always made clear to the respective authorities, who we were set up to aid – so, yes, we were invigilated, whether by the police, OFCOM orothers…

He adds that VIGIL has no “Zionist” agenda; Jenvey’s support for Israel (“If the Philistines don’t like it, they should just find somewhere else to live”) was highlighted by Hizb ut-Tahrir. Whiteman also explains that he is no longer a “hub director” of VIGIL, and that he has had only occasional contact with Jenvey since then, via email. He also tells us that he is not “Richard Tims”, that a Wikipedia account using his name has nothing to do with him, and that a story claiming he and Jenvey are lovers is a concoction (Whiteman in fact is married). And as for the “abuislam” story:

On collecting hidden videos off jihadi websites Glen’s skills were second to none. I have no idea with whom he is in contact nowadays. Whatever the result of the PCC investigation I look back on the excellent work we did those years ago together with considerable pride and satisfaction, knowing it was solid and waterproof – that it caused Bakri and his ragtag benefits claimants some considerable (and merited) strife.

This is rather less than a statement of confidence in Jenvey; indeed, Whiteman appears to be distancing himself from him, while being careful to assert that their past involvement does not discredit the work they did together. And of course, a jihadi video remains a jihadi video, even though the person who finds it might be questionable.

It’s nice finally to see some openness – cryptic websites, it seems to me, look rather silly and simply raise questions about credibility.

Whiteman also tells us what he’s up to nowadays:

My role is to organise fieldwork – on a private contractual basis – for investigations into particular subjects. Some of these subjects happen to involve extreme Islamism; some do not. In the last two years these subjects have included investigations as diverse as exposing terror fundraising networks in London and Islamist hate literature stocked in Britain’s libraries. Most of the UK team I work with are Muslim.

(The Westminster Journal article has some minor formatting problems with word spacing, which I’ve fixed in the quotes above)

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Audio evidence concerning “Richard Tims” revealed

Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads has received a strange email from Jeremy Reynalds, associate of Glen Jenvey:

Hello Tim,

I have been in contact with Mr. Jenvey. He says that he is not Richard Tims, that law enforcement officers are looking into your site’s “hate comments” about him, and that he will be in touch with you soon.

Best regards,

Jeremy Reynalds

This is all quite a saga, as I have blogged a number of times recently: Jenvey – a self-styled “anti-terror” expert and pundit in the controversial Obsession DVD – claims to have found evidence on a Muslim website of a plot to target British Jews, and this formed the basis for a Sun frontpage in January. The owners of the Muslim website, however, claimed that the author of the militant postings – a certain “Abuislam”-  had posted previously as “Richard Tims”. “Richard Tims” had spammed the site some months before to promote a website which Tim Ireland discovered turns out to have been owned by Jenvey. The Sun has removed the story from its website, the Press Complaints Commission is investigating, and Sir Alan Sugar – subject of the Sun headline “Terror Target Sugar” – is planning to sue the paper.

Jenvey’s response to all this has been quite extraordinary. He appears to believe that the Muslim forum is a front for al-Qaeda, and therefore that anyone who questions his “discovery” must therefore support terrorism. In particular has claimed that the PCC is guilty of “hate crime” because it is investigating the complaint, and he has alleged that the Guardian ran a short report on the investigation in its media section because the paper’s editor secretly knows that “Abuislam” is a former Guardian columnist. Tim tells us that Jenvey has indeed lodged a complaint with the police. But despite weaving these bizarre conspiracy theories, Jenvey has been silent about who Richard Tims actually  is – until now.

However, the plot thickens, and Tim has also exclusively revealed an audio recording which purports to be an interview between Jenvey and an unknown journalist. In the recording, a voice which purports to be that of Jenvey explicitly admits to using “Richard Tims” as a “false name”. The voice also boasts of links with “a university professor whose cousin, Sherard, is the British Ambassador to Afghanistan” (that would be, as Tim notes, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles), whom he claims to take evidence to when “I  don’t think the cops are taking me seriously”. He also tells the interviewer that he had arranged for someone called “Mike” to “go and visit MI5 and hand over tapes”. One can’t help thinking that this unwelcome scrutiny is going to end up embarrassing a lot of people…

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Florida Today reports that Walid Shoebat is due to make a couple of appearances at Brevard County, Florida:

He will speak 10 a.m. Saturday at Kol Mashiach synagogue in Melbourne and 10 a.m. March 8 at Church of Christ and 1:30 p.m. at a conference held at the Central Community Church in Cocoa.

“His topic will be more geared toward the Bible, Islam and prophecy,” said Kathy Mardirosian, a spokeswoman for Project Restoration, a Brevard-based group. “Walid is an expert at this topic and has an understanding that most in the western world doesn’t have. It gives him a unique insight into terrorism.”

Indeed, and I’ve chronicled his “expertise” at some length: his gems include the observations that Obama is definitely a Muslim who is using abortion as a plot to kill off Americans, and that Arabs and Nazis both like to use horses. As regards “Islam and prophecy”, he takes the view that “666” in the Book of Revelation is in fact a misreading of the Arabic for “In the Name of Allah”; he tells us that he discovered this after consulting ancient manuscripts, although one that he has cited – the Codex Vaticanus – in fact does not include the Book of Revelation. His “unique insight into terrorism”, meanwhile, is based on some supposed (and challenged) dabblings with the PLO in the 1970s, before – although having been “brainwashed” to hate the West – he moved to the USA and married a Roman Catholic.

“Kol Mashiach synagogue” is a Messianic place of worship, while “Project Restoration” promotes a “Hebrew Roots” form of Christianity that appropriates Jewish culture in its worship practices (a trend I wrote about here). Mardirosian is prominent local Christian Zionist, and she was apprently in large part responsible for the town of Cocoa twinning with Beit Shemesh in Israel. She is also a member of the local chapter of Brigitte Gabriel’s “American Congress for Truth” organisation, through which she recently held a “Terrorism Preparation & Disaster Relief” seminar in conjunction with Brevard Citizens Against Terror, at which Lee Boyland was a keynote speaker (Boyland is apparently a nuclear engineer and former member of the Defense Atomic Support Agency’s Nuclear Emergency Team, and he is the author of The Rings of Allah: Usuma bin Laden’s 14 Year Master Plan! He also has links with Paul Williams, whom I blogged on here).

Shoebat’s had a busy few weeks – recently he was at the Oxford Union, and after that he gave a talk at the Humboldt State University, which is close to where his American great grandfather was apparently mayor (Shoebat hasn’t told us this person’s name, although he assures us he was a great friend of Winston Churchill, no less). This talk was apparently not well received; the local Times-Standard carries a letter from one attendee:

To my dismay, the crowd at HSU was incredibly rude and disrespectful. They were not objecting to the fact that Shoebat was once a terrorist, but that he was defending Israel and pointing out the negative aspects of Islamic fundamentalism. While the protests in front of the Van Duzer Theater were not surprising, the students entered the theater and despite requests for civility, they chose to continuously yell insulting remarks at the speaker throughout his speech. Instead of giving his speech as planned, Shoebat was frequently distracted and responded to the shouts and demonstrations. At one point, a group of five or six went in front of the stage, holding up banners and shouting down the speaker.

An over-heated Indymedia report tells it like this:

One after another, Walid lashed out on the students who lined the walls to ask questions. Many people had already walked out on him in protest already, but those who stayed to hear the questions saw an unforgettable spectacle. Not one student’s question wasn’t evaded and twisted into a fallacy or a mundane and unnecessary attack on the character of the questioner…His response to many respectfully asked and well thought out questions was a consistently unsuccessful attempt to belittle and discredit the questioners. He called some questioners stupid, some uneducated, some nuts. Some he attacked on a personal level even before they spoke into the microphone, making it obvious that he was already lost to his ‘dark side’ and unable to regain any meaningful purpose to be on stage aside from maintaining a large scale argument, which he embraced.

One of the most gut wrenching responses he gave was when he personally attacked a questioner from the Philipines who politely greeted him and, in his Walid’s defense, asked him to express from his heart what he feels about Islam, virtually begging him to show a softer, rational side and giving him a much needed get out of jail free card. Walid took the breath out of the student and the audience when Walid accused him of not knowing Islam and being a fake.Walib’s heartless character really shined through as he let himself exhibit a passive aggressive tantrum on stage.

It was not Walid, but the Conservative’s Club members who directed the event that stepped in to call an end to the whole scene, turn off the mics, get Walid off the stage and get people out of their seats.

As the vibe was so vivid, many people stuck around the theater afterwords and were treated to a beautiful gathering of rational people who are awake to what just happened to our campus. Protesters formed a line of signs and lit candles as about a hundred or so people prayed before a courtyard staircase and stepped up, one by one, to voice what they felt in their hearts and to add their voice to our united desire for a free Palestine and an end to such attacks of propaganda on our campus…

Shoebat was planning to be at Western Michigan University on 10 March, but apparently there’s been a hitch:

A Speaking Event to be held at Western Michigan University on March 10th 2009, which includes two former terrorists Walid Shoebat and Kamal Saleem who speak regularly on University campuses about the threat of Islamic terrorism, has been threatened with cancellation due to the pulling of grants, which were allocated by the University…

The grant of $8311 was passed 4 to 1 by the appropriations committee of the WSA (student activities administration of Western Michigan University). The grant approval was also sent in writing and signed by the finance director of the WSA. On Thursday evening Feb 19, the organizers of the event on campus received an email from the WSA revoking the grant because of a technicality.

Based on the letter signed by the WSA committee of appropriations by default the University appears to be deliberately attempting to stifle the free speech both organizers – The International Conservatives, and the speakers…

Keith Davies, Shoebat’s handler, has responded thus in a letter to the university:

…I am very concerned about a meeting with International Conservatives leader Chris McCann which was held Thursday, the 26th of February with three members of your administrative departments. The meeting which took place I would regard as very troubling and tantamount to intimidation in its content if not its tone. It also reveals the tremendous bias based on the personal views of these particular administrators who overreached when it came to the issue of free speech. Based on case law there is no balance between sensitivity and free speech; free speech trumps sensitivity under the first amendment, so the members of the administration were treading on the side of inappropriate intimidation of a group’s right of free speech by even attempting to ask a student to consider his actions on the issue of content of a poster because of the”sensitivities”of others.

I would like to remind you that Martin Luther King’s views in his day were regarded as “hateful” by the actual haters. I would contend this to be exactly the case in this situation. Martin Luther King’s right of free speech had to be protected when he too came under pressure.

It is beyond belief that members of your administration would side with a group of students, probably representatives of the Muslim Student Association, as well as the radical “Peace Center” on campus who we know called Mr. Shoebat and Mr. Saleem “frauds” at an organizing meeting of the International conservatives for this event, and indicated directly by email that they oppose the March 10th event. Again, similar slurs were used against Martin Luther King, the same as against our speakers, when he was outspoken on civil rights. Former terrorists who are now willing to speak out for their former enemy obviously will evoke a response from those that might support terrorism. You might possibly consider that the people who expressed fear concerning the event might be supporters of terrorism and now use fear as a way of touching the nerves of your administrators which prompted them to call the meeting with Mr. McCann. Or, possibly even worse, is that some or all members of the administration who called this meeting might even side with the terrorist sympathizers, which is a position that could be construed from their personal view of the content of the posters. I do hope not…

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