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Underground > Switchboard >

Kilroy's Anti Arab Rant

  
  

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sleazenation
12:04 / 15.01.04
But worse, although many here felt Kilroy's article is unacceptable, Barbelith was in no way involved in publishing it - Whereas Greenman's decision to post an evil twin of the Kilroy article here forces barbelith to come to some kind of a decision on whether to continue to host an article equiviolent to the Kilroy piece here.

I think there is a case for asking greenman to delete his post.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
12:21 / 15.01.04
Indeed, the heavily militarised Israeli state is paid
for by the West - what do exactly does it contribute, apart from
slowly dragging the the rest of us into WW3? Can you think of anything?
Anything really useful? Anything really valuable?

Well, nearly all the fresh herbs in my local Budgens are produce of Israel. So if you're making pasta sauce, then the answer is 'fresh basil, oregano and rosemary'. Just off the top of my head.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
12:35 / 15.01.04
I think there is a case for asking greenman to delete his post.

Only if we also delete all the quotations from Kilroy's piece above, and that would make the discussion a little tricky, eh?
 
 
sleazenation
12:48 / 15.01.04
flyboy - i don't agree

I don't see the use of quotations when discussing one article that is arguablely racist in any way equivalent of publishing an entire 'new' article that is arguablely equally racist.

Another thing that is probably worth noting is that in making his post Greenman has effectively rotted this thread.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
12:48 / 15.01.04
That's rather a change of position from your starting point, Money $hot.

No, no, it just looks that way

Does this affect your argument that muslims living in the West should not complain about such matters because their (ethnic, or possibly religious - answer cloudy try again later) relatives in the Middle East do not have the same freedom??

Didn't intend to put across that argument. Intended to point out that the same freedoms which allow The Muslim Council of Britain to exist overtly, and be given a voice in the national daily newspapers regrettably but unavoidably also enshrines the same freedoms for jackasses like Kilroy-Silk.

The fuss is now so enormous it's funny. Reprinted words from an article written while we were busy dropping munitions and heavy ordnance on an entire country in order to remove a deck-of-cards number of individuals from governance, with reports of 15000-20000 civilian casualties, is the focus of attention for confusing a whole population with a select few members of it's governing officialdom?

The pen is truly mightier than the sword.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
13:04 / 15.01.04
an entire 'new' article that is arguablely equally racist.

It's not "an entire 'new' article", though! It's a pastiche of Kilroy-Silk's, some of it lifted word for word from the original. GreenMann hasn't used speech marks of HTML to indicate that this isn't just him saying this, but even if he HAD written this, I don't think it's Switchboard policy to remove things just because they're offensive or even factually inaccurate, otherwise I'd delete 90% of the arguments used by people who defend Israeli or US or UK foreign policy here...
 
 
sleazenation
14:54 / 15.01.04
I'd argue that greenman's post is both a) entire in that it it apes the entirety of the Kilroy piece rather than quoting selectively from it and b)'new' in that it is a new piece of writing, albeit one that that uses another piece of writing (in this case Kilroy’s article) as its base - hence my use of the scare quotes.

It is a pastiche but 1) I’m not entirely convinced that it is completely satiric in content. 2) it arguably does not engage with either the topic or the Kilroy piece, rather than using it as a jumping off point from which to practice the old maxim that ‘turnabout is fairplay’.

But perhaps most importantly, I never said Greenman’s post should be removed. I simply stated there was a case for asking him to delete it.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
22:05 / 15.01.04
I'd like Greenmann's post to stay, I think it's perfectly valid and has a place in this thread despite being an uncomfortable post. Rather than delete it I would quite like to see all words that have been changed or manipulated italicised so that they're easily recognised.

I've just been watching Andrew Marr, Portillo and Diane Abbott discuss this issue and they all had a similar stance to me in that they thought it was a poor piece of writing and that the BBC was fine to suspend Kilroy's show. I'm surprised but they all emphasised the blatant lies in the original article. Good for them.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
23:35 / 15.01.04

Didn't intend to put across that argument. Intended to point out that the same freedoms which allow The Muslim Council of Britain to exist overtly, and be given a voice in the national daily newspapers regrettably but unavoidably also enshrines the same freedoms for jackasses like Kilroy-Silk.

Sorry, I must have missed something. Is there a national newspaper that gives the Muslim Council of Britain a weekly column? The Guardian is probably your best bet, but even there we have a sort of asymmetric warfare going on...

I think you may be confusing "Muslim" with "anti-western terrorist". It's understandable - lord knows, Kilroy made much the same mistake - but it's not an ideal situation. Possibly I have missed the part where the Muslim Council of Britain argued that Britain should be invaded in order to impose a better model of living upon it; I'm afraid I am not au fait with all their press releases.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
06:03 / 16.01.04
Whatever.
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
11:36 / 16.01.04
Take it outside, Haus, he's answered your question perfectly clearly. Stop deliberately misunderstanding him to wind him up, it's rotting the thread and making you look childish.

I think it's pretty clear from their separate comments on the subject that, while the BBC have taken their action because Kilroy-Silk is mandated under the terms of his contract not to bring the Corporation into disrepute - not because they desire to silence his views or to punish him for being racist, per se - others have said that he should be punished for writing it in the first place.

Trevor Phillips of the Commission for Racial Equality has advised that he'd like to see Kilroy-Silk prosecuted for inciting racial hatred ("I have to say, if it's deemed not to be a breach of the laws on racial hatred, we will have to have a pretty good look at those laws.")

Meanwhile, the Muslin Council of Britain have, amongst other items, posted this on their website: "The Muslim community in Britain has been facing unprecedented levels of abuse, intolerance and physical hostility since the 9/11 atrocities. Our mosques have also been repeatedly vandalised, set fire to and in a couple of instances, bleeding pigs heads have been thrown through front doors of mosques and into the prayer halls. Even the dead in their graves have not been left in peace as we have had our cemeteries desecrated. Partly for this reason, responsible governments do not allow unlimited freedom of speech but enforce laws which clearly forbid incitement to racial hatred."

Now, whether you support the MCB and the CRE, amongst others, in calling for Kilroy-Silk to be censored/censured, or whether you believe, as Money $hot appears to, that he should have the freedom to say whatever he chooses, the fact is that the issue is being debated as an issue of free speech.

In other news, I also think there's a case for asking Greenmann to, at the least, alter his post - or for possibly moderating it to be clearer in intent and PMing him to advise. Out of context, it isn't as clear as I'd like, and this sort of thing can get people into trouble. A bit of a tidy-up seems to be in order.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
16:17 / 16.01.04
Breaking News: Kilroy has quit his show. It might be amusing if it were to continue with a different presenter, Taggart-style.
 
 
GreenMann
18:49 / 18.01.04
Whatever the rights and wrongs of criticising Israel, I'm just sooo glad that Kilroy's had to pack his job in for his racist article, screaming tabloid headlines just make it all the sweeter!

Hopefully, his career will now take a nosedive and he'll be totally ruined...to think he used to be a Labour MP!
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
20:23 / 18.01.04
Take it outside, Haus, he's answered your question perfectly clearly.

No, Jack. He hasn't. He has changed his position to another no more coherent. Asking people to make their position clear is not childish, any more than lecturing me on how I should behave is. They are both, in a way, didactic. Responding in a Revolution thread with "whatever" *is* childish, but there you go. There have been lengthy discussions about whether this is an issue of free spech, none of which seem to have engaged M$'s interest, but there we go again.

Flowers - I assume that that is the plan, although it may well no longer be called "Kilroy", so not exactly a Taggart situation. this is a face-saving deal, whereby neither Kilroy nor the BBC has to back down. Instead, Kilroy-Silk keeps getting the royalties and the producer's credit, and his production company's flagship gets a future, but the BBC doesn't have to have him as a presenter, a level of visibility that would be likely to inflame the situation further. What I do find interesting and a bit scary is the number of newspapers that lined up behind Kilroy...
 
 
sleazenation
08:30 / 19.01.04
So, how long before we see Kilroy on Sky?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
08:53 / 19.01.04
What I do find interesting and a bit scary is the number of newspapers that lined up behind Kilroy...

You're not alone. It really makes me wonder what people think racism is? Then I recall the attitude towards refugees bandied about by the papers in this country and I realise that this is unfortunately typical. They're the enemy you know, they're not really human, they dance when they hear that people have died.
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
12:06 / 19.01.04
---mostly off topic, I'm afraid. Please excuse me everyone, but I'm really pissed off and I'm just going to splurge for a second. Feel free to skip this post, if you like---

No, Jack. He hasn't. He has changed his position to another no more coherent.

Rubbish. Ze first said that "Perhaps someone could remind the Muslim Council of Britain that in the UK, unlike in a vast majority of muslim states, we have (ostensibly) freedom of both speech and the press."

You took issue with this, replying that "Kilroy was not speaking out against muslims. He was speaking out against Arabs. His distinction was ethnic, not religious. Second up, why exactly should muslims in Britain never complain about representations of Arabs (or muslims) because they share a religion and possibly although not necessarily an ethnicity with other people in other states which do not have a free press?"

Firstly, hir post doesn't make the 'Kilroy error' - it doesn't mistake Arabs for Muslims. It makes reference to the MCB's involvement in the case, nothing more - you were the one who assumed that Money $hot had made the above error.

Secondly, Money $hot hadn't actually said they should never complain, and ze confirms that later on in his next post: "I did not state that I felt The Muslim Council should not object (as they did). I suggested that they needed reminding of widespread implications that free speech and free press affords those who hold views entirely objectionable to whole swathes of a population. Admittedly, this isn't too clear in the originial post. I don't object to their objection, per se. It's their desire to censor and legally punish the author of that with which they disagree."

Ze's saying that ze doesn't agree with their desire for a criminal prosecution of Robert Kilroy-Silk, not with their objection to Kilroy-Silk's views, which ze makes it pretty clear he agres with are objectionable.

Ze then says "I think it's perfectly acceptable for him to stand by his hideous prose and it should encourage more debate and comment of this nature than "Ban this article!" and CRE investigation." So Money $hot believes free speech fosters debate.

You jumped on this, saying that ze was changing his mind, and making your previous assertion again - "Does this affect your argument that muslims living in the West should not complain about such matters because their (ethnic, or possibly religious - answer cloudy try again later) relatives in the Middle East do not have the same freedom??"

Well, ze'd already clarified that. As quoted above. So you've either not read hir preceedings posts, or you're wilfully misunderstanding zim. Pick one.

Ze reiterates hir previous response to clarify: "Didn't intend to put across that argument. Intended to point out that the same freedoms which allow The Muslim Council of Britain to exist overtly, and be given a voice in the national daily newspapers regrettably but unavoidably also enshrines the same freedoms for jackasses like Kilroy-Silk."

The you make another unwarranted assumption - and by this time you'd have to be horribly naive to think it wasn't a case of wilfully trying to perpetuate a disagreement: "Sorry, I must have missed something. Is there a national newspaper that gives the Muslim Council of Britain a weekly column?"

First, they were given an opportunity to respond, in the Sunday Express the week after the offending piece. My post above quotes from the end of it, and it's reproduced on their website. Go have a look, it's pretty good. Secondly, ze didn't say they had a weekly column in a national newspaper. That's your assumption. Again. Hir reference to being "given a voice" is clearly a reference to their free speech in this country, which is all ze's been talking about all along.

You're also implicitly calling hir a racist (by repeatedly saying that's ze's made the same error as Kilroy and confusing Muslim/Arbs/terrorists), and doing so on such skimpy grounds that it beggars belief. Hir response ("Whatever"), far from being childish, is a reasonably mature response to the childish baiting ze's been getting from you from his first post. Money $hot tried clarifying hir point, ze tried repeating it, ze tried self-deprecation (with a bloody emoticon, for God's sake) to avoid an argument, and you still kept pushing. Rather than falling for your goading and rotting the thread, ze just refused to engage with it. Smart puppy.

Accountability is a big part of the concept of free speech, and I don't necessarily agree with everything MS is saying above. I just loathe the way you attacked him in such a petty and vindictive manner. Sadly, it's symptomatic of the way you react to a lot of people on this message board.

---Sorry about the lengthy post, everyone who's got to the end. Well, everyone except for you, Haus, obviously...---
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
12:38 / 19.01.04
The Express said they'd had 50,000 messages of support for Kilroy, therefore he should get his show back. Did they say we shouldn't go to war in Iraq when several times that number of people marched in London.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
19:28 / 19.01.04
[sorry, rot]

Well, I'm glad we cleared that up, Haus.

I knew one of us was being childish, looks like it was me, eh?

[/rot]
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
19:30 / 19.01.04
Ah, now I read Jacks' post...

(The check's in the mail. My round).
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
21:58 / 19.01.04
It is a shame that Jack has decided to go from criticising the argument, which is a very difficult and tiring thing to do, to criticising the person, which is very easy and LOTSAFUN. It is also a shame that MS has hurtled down into the dank cleavage of the resulting arse of least resistance. Now let's all pretend we are in a bar, and talk about what sort of drinks we would buy each other.

Or we could stay on-topic. Alas, my tolerance for the Fimble end of Barbelith is not what it was right now, because I am tired. So...

Firstly, hir post doesn't make the 'Kilroy error' - it doesn't mistake Arabs for Muslims. It makes reference to the MCB's involvement in the case, nothing more - you were the one who assumed that Money $hot had made the above error.

Read again:

that in the UK, unlike in a vast majority of muslim states, we have (ostensibly) freedom of both speech and the press.

He is conflating Arabic states, Muslim states, Arabs living in the UK and Muslims living in the UK. By stating that muslims living in the UK should not complain because a Christian would not have the same rights in a muslim state (or an Arab state - some Arab states are Islamic, some Islamic states are not Arab). Kilroy is talking about Arabs, but MS starts talking about msulim states. Eyes. Screen. Read. Laziness does not cure laziness like vinegar on jellyfish stings.

Ze's saying that ze doesn't agree with their desire for a criminal prosecution of Robert Kilroy-Silk, not with their objection to Kilroy-Silk's views, which ze makes it pretty clear he agres with are objectionable.

Read again:

It's their desire to censor and legally punish the author of that with which they disagree.

Not a desire for a legal prosecution. A desire to censor and punish. Censoring is different to a legal prosecution. this is insanely fucking simple, and I am so very bored that you are so eager to start a fight that you managed either to ignore it or forget it. Censorship is a very different matter to legal prosecution. One might argue that the threat of legal action if one says something is the same as a criminal prosecution, but it very obviously isn't. "Censor" here is a handy bit of rhetoric, most obviously because, having been published, Kilroy could by definition not be prevented from being published.

I feel I should point out that I am not calling Money $hot a racist. I am calling him a slacker, and now I am calling you a slacker too, because you are twisting the content of his and my posts to suit this Macho Man Sky-elbow fixation. Let's look at that again in slo-mo:

First, they were given an opportunity to respond, in the Sunday Express the week after the offending piece. My post above quotes from the end of it, and it's reproduced on their website. Go have a look, it's pretty good. Secondly, ze didn't say they had a weekly column in a national newspaper.

Money $hot stated that the freedoms that allow the BCM to exist overtly and make comments in national newspapers also allow Kilroy to enjoy the same freedoms. My subsequent question, which was a little rhetorical but not so rhetorical as throwing in lazy comparisons with Saudi Arabia (which, I feel I should point out, would be speaking German if it wasn't for us) or whacking in "censorship" to raise a few liberal hackles, was that the British Council of Muslims clearly does not get the same level of exposure (a weekly column, which is for future reference a column once a week rather than for the first and probably only time in the Express, and a daily television show, which is why we are here today) as Robert Kilroy-Silk. Kilroy-Silk's freedom is a lot nore free, as far as I can see, because far more widely expressed. Hence the term "assymetric warfare", a little rhetorical but not so blah blah fishcakes.

And I'm already bored to tears and going to bed, because this is dull, Jack, dull as dirt, dull as ditchwater, dull as daytime television, and you are not going to get any joy out of it, and nor am I, and nor is anyone else.

Badly-thought out, badly-phrased posts in the Revolution are entitled to be kicked into shape. People get better. This is one reason why Barbelith has generally managed to maintain a reasonably high standard of discussion most of the time. Aporia is one of the tools of that discussion. And you are free to beat your chest and throw yourself in front of imaginary bullets as often and as loudly as you want to, but hopefully that is not going to change because of it.
 
 
admiraladz
15:50 / 20.01.04
With the immediacy of information dissemination and news gathering and access, it seems to me that the major issue here is that people no longer worry that they might actually be wrong/inaccurate before they open their mouths.

My qualification ? … Mr Kilroy-Silk previously said he "regretted" the Sunday Express article, in which he called Arabs "suicide bombers, limb amputators, woman repressors".

… maybe he should have thought about it for a little longer before he hit ‘send’.
 
 
sleazenation
16:01 / 20.01.04
admiralz - its not that simple though - Kilroy has blamed the sending of the article on his sectary who apparently sent an article that had already been published in the same column some six months previous. Apparently few people complained about the article at that time.

So Kilroy is both claiming A)it wasn't his fault the article was published on the occasion that it provoke such complaint and B) It was published once already and no-one complained so that makes it ok.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
20:39 / 20.01.04
Can I even be bothered? What would it really achieve, in the final anal-ysis? Aw shuicks, I got time to kill.

Apologies to anyone bored senseless by this increasingly scatological threadrot. Normal service will return shortly.

He is conflating Arabic states, Muslim states, Arabs living in the UK and Muslims living in the UK. By stating that muslims living in the UK should not complain because a Christian would not have the same rights in a muslim state (or an Arab state - some Arab states are Islamic, some Islamic states are not Arab). Kilroy is talking about Arabs, but MS starts talking about msulim states. Eyes. Screen. Read. Laziness does not cure laziness like vinegar on jellyfish stings.

Er, no. 'He' is talking, utterly specifically, about Muslim states, countries or borders governed by a Muslim, non-secular administration. The vast majority of which prohibit the very freedoms which allow the Muslim Council of Britain (who involved themselves in the furore over an anti-Arab rant in the Express newspaper, I assure you it was nothing to do with me, so who'd have thunk it? Muslim Councils guilty of the canflation you accuse me of...) to exist and object publicly to any damn thing they please. My issue, for the head numbingly last time, is with an organisation steeped in a doctrine which has yet to fully experience the so called 'Enlightenement' where church and state are completely seperated, using freedoms afforded it by a country which provides them, unlike almost every country governed by it's doctrine, to restrict those same freedoms in another.

Now, if you could quote and maybe, if the mood takes you, bold or italic or underline the part of my post where I state[ing] that muslims living in the UK should not complain I'd be very happy. No assumptions or anything now, just a direct quote, cheers.

It's their desire to censor and legally punish the author of that with which they disagree.

Not a desire for a legal prosecution. A desire to censor and punish. Censoring is different to a legal prosecution

This is mind buggering in it's obtuseness. 'Censor and legally punish'. So you can't join the dots between 'legally punish' and 'legally prosecute', then? Mmmm, I can see how that is a bit of a leap, requiring vast inferences on your behalf. Apologies for being so ephemeral in meaning.

Incidentally, (tear me down, I know, my word states it, it's a discussion board on the interweb), the reason I chose to use Saudi as an example of the situation I was trying to discuss, is because my brother in law worked there for seven years, and I visited him on numerous occasions to do a few gigs (he is also a musoid). So I assure you, Haus, I promise, I know the difference between a Muslim and an Arab and a state governed by either, and an "anti=Wetsern Arab terrorist".

Shall we not carry on? I don't really think we're getting anywhere, i am also bored, and I think I'll just bow out of this thread and perhaps, as you suggest, think longer and harder before posting in the Switchboard which you call Revolution.

Vive la difference, and all that.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
21:36 / 20.01.04
Ill-fitting mod hat: The Revolution is the group of fora devoted to discussion of current affairs, theory, science et hoc genus omne: the Head Shop, the Laboratory, the Switchboard, the Magic.

Referrign one back to Sleazenation: Well, quite. Although I seem to recall that the article first came out at about the same time that Iraq was invaded, when I suspect that the British Council of Muslims was probably a bit busy, which suggests that maybe the lesson we learn from the absence of outcry is just that people who would be offended by Kilroy-Silk's views, of whatever stripe, are not habitual readers of the Sunday Express. In a way, that's quite handy - rather like those Japanese adverts for whisky and cigars hat celebrities used to make under a comforting guarantee that it would never be shown in the US, before the global media village came along. Likewise, there is of course the possibility that these ar enot in fact Kilroy's views, and that he was playing to the audience much as Julie Burchill's column for the News of the World was at least somewhat unlike her column for The Guardian. Of course, "I was making it up to please an audience I belive to harbour these views" is not a *great* excuse, but it might help to reconcile incongruities between Kilroy-Silk the former potential Labour Prime Minister and Kilroy-Silk the right-wing demagogue.

Hoom. On a slight but hopefully ontopic tangent, ITV apparently thinks it might be the big loser if Kilroy goes; the BBC, since it does not sell adverts, can point to the ratings without actually worrying about the elderly (i.e. no cop for buying stuff) audience, whereas ITV is seeking to woo buyers - housewives and young women - oat the same time. A replacement for Kilroy might eat into that audience ownership, depending on its own aims... it's a side-dish to the whole thing. The Beeb can be indifferent to the actual nature of its output in that slot, as long as the ratings hold up, which maybe makes it easier to get rid of Kilroy as he is not, as, say, John Leslie (prediluvian) or Anne Diamond might not be, as they had an impact on the value of advertising being sold...
 
 
Bed Head
22:05 / 20.01.04
I hope the pair of you are going to have some fantastic make-up sex tonight, if you’re both quite finished now.

As I see it, this whole story has only really served to strengthen Kilroy’s profile in the tabloids as the straight-talking scourge of all misguided liberal fools. With that kind of public identity, his financial prospects as a wandering red-top columnist have just rocketed, and he doesn’t have to bother presenting that stupid fucking show any more, with the BBC thoughtfully insisting some other creep asks the questions. However, his production company will still be raking in the cash for years to come for what must surely be the cheapest show to make on British television (and why the BBC can’t manage to produce something like Kilroy in-house is beyond me). Gahd, it’s all bad news. I expect nothing more from newspapers in this country, but still the fact that this guy with these views can be held up as any kind of champion depresses the hell out of me.

And, yeah, I expect the BBC’s replacement for Kilroy to really skirt the edge of illiberality, if it’s established how this both improves ratings and makes Mr bloody-Kilroy-Silk even richer.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
22:15 / 20.01.04
Muslim Councils guilty of the canflation you accuse me of...) to exist and object publicly to any damn thing they please. My issue, for the head numbingly last time, is with an organisation steeped in a doctrine which has yet to fully experience the so called 'Enlightenement' where church and state are completely seperated, using freedoms afforded it by a country which provides them, unlike almost every country governed by it's doctrine, to restrict those same freedoms in another.

Yes. And I'm confused again. I am confused because you are making the MCB responsible for the behaviour of nations (except for Turkey, that is. Not sure about Pakistan, either. Help me out, here. Is Pakistan a muslim country? How about Libya? I mean, we are talking about muslim states rather than Arab states, yes?) of which their members may not be, are not I assume in general, citizens. It's a very odd way of going about things; because I am an atheist, should I be responsible for the actions of the French? So, that's my problem the first here.

It also seems odd, if we assume that the MCB might possess the odd liberal muslim, to say that, because muslim states (by which we seem to be describing a particular kind of muslim state found primarily around the Gulf of Persia) tend not to be on the liberal side of a number of issues (votes for women, say, or a legal system based around retribution rather than rehabilitation, or indeed freedom of religious expression), that *all* muslim voices in any country should be sternly reminded that they would not be able to complain about the sort of opinions someobody is expressing about them about that person's race or belief if they happened to be citizens of another country that they are not citizens of, and therefore that they should be more circumspect.

Which is where I do not understand the "quid pro quo" idea. In exchange for not having their freedom of religious expression proscribed, they should not protest when an article apparently aiimed at stirring up hatred against an ethnicity that happens to overlap culturally and to an extent religiously (generally and in this article)? I don't see that incitement to racial hatred should not be mentioned as some sort of thank you for not being oneself subject to state oppression. In fact, I find the whole idea bewildering. Surely one's duty as a good *citizen*, regardless of whether or not one is also being a good *muslim*, is to ensure that the laws of the land are applied equally to all? And the laws against incitement to violence, if you feel that these are being infringed, as much as any other, if you saw them as being infringed?

I'm not sure where any legal challenge may be. I do know that it seems odd to suggest that an Arab, a muslim or a muslim Arab should be less entitled than a good Gaelic liberal humanist like myself to complain about an article apparently aimed at smearing Arabs (and failing adequately to make clear a distinction between muslims and Arabs). The idea as you seem to be holding it is that this is the abuse of a legal concept aimed at "censoring" Kilroy-Silk. I do not see, however, Kilroy-Silk being censored. I see him getting front pages in newspapers with circulations in the millions. If this is censorship, it is shit censorship.

However. At the risk of going offtopic, if we are going to state that muslim nations have not experienced an "enlightenment" (presumably one comparable to the Age of Reason in Western Europe), which I don't think is, by the way, an entirely accurate statement, and therefore that muslims living in Britain should remember that the states of which they are possibly no longer citizens are not "enlightened" (or post-enlightenment; not sure what would be the more comfortable term here), and so they should pause before criticising/threatening with the laws of the land Robert Kilroy-Silk, because a similar complaint about an article atacking Christians in Saudi Arabia (or similar but not necessarily Arab muslim nation, for which confusion of Haus see above) would receive short shrift, a bad thing? By the enlightenment model, what we need to do is convince muslims in Britain of the values of Western enlightenment, one of those being the existence of laws to protect racial or religious minorities from rhetoric likely to lead to their persecution, so that they can then pass those virtues on through cultural links to their unenlightened coreligionists? vide the potential examples of Hamid Karzai and Ahmed Chalabi...

It's all a bit confusing. Thank you, however, for addressing the issues rather than responding "whatever", and keeping the personal abuse to a reasonable minimum.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
15:08 / 02.02.04
Mildly interested to note that Kilroy has been invited (according to him) to 'numerous' Arab TV stations/programmes to discuss his article and the views he presented within it.
 
  

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