"Other residents in the road were evacuated for their own safety to a nearby mosque"

One of the many things I have noticed from reading far too many newspaper and online articles every day, is that when people die in house fires, they are disproportionately likely to be Pakistanis/Bangladeshis. It appears to be acceptable behaviour in their community to get revenge by burning somebody's house down.

There's no clue as to the identities of the victims in this incident, but the fact that neighbours were evacuated to a nearby mosque is a bit of a clue.

Some days, I really do despise the BBC

From the BBC

What do British Muslims really think? It's a question that news organisations have repeatedly tried to answer since the terror attacks of 9/11 and 7/7, and one that suggests that maybe the person asking isn't a British Muslim.

Some Muslims have expressed their weariness at these regular enquiries about their opinions, which they believe may be motivated by a desire to demonise them in the eyes of the non-Muslim population or to portray Muslims as a community with a single homogeneous opinion. But others believe these surveys are an important way of raising difficult and important questions about divides within society.

This whole debate has been re-opened by a new poll, but this time some Muslims have chosen to use humour to respond to findings which they feel are not representative of their attitudes.

This is nothing less than apologia by the BBC. A poll has been conducted by Channel 4, generally a fair-minded, generally liberal-minded broadcaster which said that 52% of Muslims would like homosexuality to be illegal. Now, if a Muslim said that say, they get demonised as suicide bombers, they'd have a point. You can even say "we aren't all like that". But you can't say that Muslims are demonised as against homosexual rights when most of them are.

Commenting on the results, Trevor Philips, former head of the Equality & Human Rights Commission, told the newspaper: "I thought Europe's Muslims would gradually blend into Britain's diverse landscape. I should have known better."

But in an apparent attempt to prove him and the poll findings wrong, some British Muslims are taking to Twitter to highlight what they have in common with their countrymen - a sense of the ridiculous, and an appreciation of the banal aspects of everyday life. A Conservative politician, Baroness Warsi, the former Minister of State for Faith and Communities, kicked it off.
Tweet

What the fuck? Sorry, but a few tweets from a few of the more liberal minded people doesn't prove him wrong. A few tweets aren't data compared to 1081 adults who represent a broad cross-section of the population. It's like me tweeting my republican opinion as though that represents what the county thinks of the Queen.

Lord Phillips, who will present the documentary on Wednesday, wrote in the Sunday Times that the poll illustrated truths that some would find uncomfortable. "Liberal opinion in Britain has, for more than two decades, maintained that most Muslims are just like everyone else... we now know that just isn't how it is," he wrote. His comments were seized on by, among others, the disgraced former leader of the far-right English Defence League.

Sorry, but disgraced, how? Other than imprisonment for mortgage fraud, how is he disgraced in this context? If anything, he's become a better citizen, moving more towards democratic change. Or does the BBC mean "disgraced" as in "someone we don't like"?

And what he actually did was write Lord Phillips's word, like what, that means, precisely what exactly? That Lord Phillips and him are buddies? So, finally, you're saying that Tommy Robinson isn't a racist, but just concerned with Islam, like he's been saying for years while being smeared as a racist?

This was the response from the Chair of the Muslim Women's Network UK.

"I wish people would stop promoting the 'us and them' narrative that only promotes hatred & creates divisions"

Right, and what percentage of Jews, Christians, Sikhs and Hindus would like homosexuality to be illegal? Or looking at the survey, how many of those people would tell the police if someone they knew joined a foreign, terrorist army? More, or less than 34%?

You can't go objecting to people having an "us and them" narrative when a reasonable size percentage of your group have a bunch of views about some pretty basic stuff that fall outside of what everyone else thinks.

This isn't the first time a survey about British Muslim's opinions has stirred up controversy on social media. In December 2015 the Sun newspaper published the headline "1 in 5 Brit Muslims' sympathy for jihadis", triggering a huge backlash on Twitter. Its reporting of the results was later deemed "significantly misleading" by the Independent Press Standards Organisation following a slew of complaints.

As opposed to this poll, which found that 23% of Muslims would like areas of the country under Sharia Law instead of British Law? Or how about the Telegraph one a few years ago that said that 40% of Mulims wanting Sharia law in some parts of the country. Sorry, but you can keep suggesting that people saying this are knuckle dragging racists, but after a couple of polls, it's starting to look like you're in the wrong.

A different survey commissioned by the BBC in February 2015 found that 93% of Muslims living in Britain believed they should follow British laws. In the same survey, 27% said they had some sympathy for the motives behind the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Full results of the poll can be downloaded here.

Nice try, but wanting a different system of law isn't the same thing as accepting the system you live under. We're all OK with 7% of people feeling they don't have to follow the law? And hey, it's only a quarter of Muslims who have some sympathy for people who murder people over free speech. No biggie.

And I'd just like to add: I know some Muslims and I've worked with some good guys who were Muslims. I don't have a blanket view of Muslims. But to pretend that there isn't a problem with at least some sections of Muslims when you've got these sorts of percentages is just the worst sort of politically correct denialism.

Daily Mail on superlative form.

Spotted by Chef Dave in The Daily Mail:

It could be a scene from the heart of one of Los Angeles' infamous ganglands - but this chilling video was in fact shot in a north London suburb just yards away from a busy shopping centre.

A gunman who is believed to have been wearing Muslim dress was filmed chasing four teenagers past houses and parked cars before appearing to shoot one of them as they cowered next to a house.

The shocking footage, taken outside Edmonton shopping centre around 2pm, showed the man following the young boys as they desperately tried to flee the scene, which is less than half a mile from a nearby primary school…

As he pulls the trigger, a shot rings out - but the man, who is wearing jeans and a T-shirt, manages to escape. The victim then desperately tries to scramble up the pavement away from his attacker, who appears to give up before running up a nearby busy road. The rest of the group can be seen getting into a car to escape the suburb, where the average house price is £280,000.

Fun Online Polls: The global financial crisis & Muslim migrants

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

What caused the global financial crisis which has seen the UK mired in recession for the last seven years?

The global land price and credit bubble, mortgage backed securities etc. - 81%
UK government deficits of a few percent of GDP in the years before the crisis - 5%
People under 25 claiming benefits rather than looking for a job - 4%
Other, please specify - 10%8

Correct. So treat the cause, not the symptoms.

Which is the opposite of what UK governments (of whatever party) have been doing for the last seven years.
* Taking away benefits from the under-25s is something the Tories are doing quite ruthlessly (aka 'bayonetting the survivors). Despite the fact that most of them were still at school back in 2007-08 and thus can be absolved of any blame.
* If government deficits were a minor or secondary cause, then why have they run a cumulative total deficit of over fifty per cent of GDP over the last seven years? (considerably higher than what Labour was doing until 2008).
* Seeing as the land price/credit bubble was the actual cause, why have UK governments done their level best to prop up house prices and prop up speculation and banks by depressing interest rates?

Strikes me, they are making things worse and just delaying the inevitable. Perhaps until 2025-26?
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Muslim migrants have been in the news a lot recently. History shows that they are not very good at fitting in Western/non-Muslim countries and tend to stay "within their own communities", so we can assume that Muslims prefer to live among other Muslims.

So fair enough, people are fleeing the war zones (I know that I would), but that's only part of Syria/Iraq. Surely your easiest option is to move to a more peaceful area in Syria/Iraq; your next option is move to a neighbouring Muslim country; your next option is the easy overland route to a Muslim country further afield (from the Atlantic to Pakistan, if you gloss over Malaysia/Indonesia).

From Wiki:


So why are so many of them taking the most difficult journey across continents and oceans to north-west Europe, where they will never fit in anyway? And yes, that is more or less a rhetorical question.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

House fires

A headline in the Daily Mail just caught my eye:

Woman who died alongside husband and mother in 'murder suicide' house fire had been STABBED to death… Mahnaz Rafie died from multiple stab wounds it has emerged

Which reminded me of something else which has struck me over the years from scanning too many news articles: if you see a headline about more than one person dying in a house fire, the chances are they are Muslim (UPDATE: Kj point out "or Sikh") women and children. The other over-represented group is the elderly.

BBC 13 September 2013

Four people die in house fire in Wood Hill, Leicester. Neighbour Soheb Ali... added... "They were a really good family. They were religious; went to the mosque."

Newsshopper 20 June 2013

TRIBUTES from community leaders have poured in for a mother-of-five who died in a house fire in Plumstead on Tuesday (June 18). Caroline Kaur and her 23-year-old daughter Hayleigh were killed in the flames that destroyed their family home in Purrett Road.

Daily Mirror 23 May 2013

A teenager has been arrested on suspicion of murder following a house fire which killed a mother and her five children.

Sabah Usmani, 44, died in a horrific house blaze alongside her daughter Hira, 12, and sons Muneeb, nine, and Rayyan, six. Son Sohaib, 11, and daughter Maheen, three, sadly died of their injuries at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow.

Coventry Telegraph 21 May 2013

Tributes paid to 'lovely lady' who died in Nuneaton house fire… The victim has not yet been formally identified but was named locally as Mona Soundh, a 57-year-old Asian mother of two sons and two daughters and a grandmother, who had lived in the large semi-detached villa for 20 years.

And so on. How many of these are arson I do not know, I would suspect most of them.

"It was premeditated, not panic"

... says our spotter, Sarton Bander.

From Yahoo.com:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — A panicking cow killed a Palestinian man who was trying to slaughter the beast on Saturday during the Muslim celebration of Eid al-Adha, a Gaza health official said.

Muslims around the world slaughter sheep, cows and goats during the four-day holiday that began Friday to commemorate the sacrifice by their Prophet Ibrahim — known to Christians and Jews as Abraham.

But accidents are common as people frequently buy animals to slaughter at home instead of relying on professional butchers. The festive atmosphere surrounding the site of the slaughtering also tends to make the animals fidgety.

In addition to the death, Gaza heath official Ashraf al-Kidra said that 150 other people were hospitalized in the Gaza Strip with knife wounds or other injuries caused by animals trying to break away.

"Starkey makes 'cultural' link to gang jailed for sexually exploiting girls"

From The Guardian

Historian calls on schools to teach English history to aspiring Premier League footballers to make them 'English citizens and English men'

David Starkey has risked fresh criticism for describing footballers engaged in sexually exploiting young girls as "acting within their cultural norms".

Speaking at a conference for private school headteachers in Brighton, the historian said their actions were evidence of "what happens when [a country like Britain] has no sense of common identity". "Nobody ever explained [to these men] that just because they are doing a job which requires a mental age of twelve does not that they should be knobbing under-age girls," Starkey told his audience of more than 100 headteachers.

He called on schools to teach English history to budding footballers so that "they are... first and foremost English citizens and English men" instead of seeing statutory rape as a stepping stone to a career as a football player.

Last year, a gang of six footballers from Reading were jailed for the gang rape of two twelve-year old girls.

The Sliding Scale of Islam

James Higham has correlated the number of Muslims in a country (as a percentage) with their impact on society. Scroll about a third of the way down this post.

Draw your own conclusions, but it seems to me that the 'tipping point' may be as low as four or five per cent.

"Police apologise over offensive puppy ad"

Do these miserable buggers realise that the police are sometimes referred to as "pigs"?