Pat Condell: "Ha Ha Islamophobia"

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I'm not making an argument, I'm just not understanding yours. It just seems pointless to say that objecting to overly PC attempts to censor national culture (like getting rid of nativity scenes) somehow discredits someone intellectually. Do you think banning nativity scenes is desirable?

Condell has criticised people who try to erase things like Christmas from local culture because he believes in freedom of expression.

You ought to know your enemy. If you're going to criticise Condell at least learn what he actually thinks.

FACT: The first country to recognize America as an independent country was Morocco - a country that was and still is Muslim.

I'm not making an argument, I'm just not understanding yours. It just seems pointless to say that objecting to overly PC attempts to censor national culture (like getting rid of nativity scenes) somehow discredits someone intellectually. Do you think banning nativity scenes is desirable?

I've just been reading a news report about some American atheists who have been trying to get a public Christmas Nativity scene removed because they say it makes them feel excluded and intimidated and offended and blah blah blabbedy-blah, boo-hoo-hoo.

Can't you just feel the emotional trauma these poor people must be suffering?

No, me neither.

Oddly, however, it is still enough to make you weep. This is what happens when atheism meets political correctness. I don't know if it has a name, but then it's so ugly it doesn't really need one.

And, as an atheist myself, I can't help but feel horribly tainted by association. And believe me, I'm as atheist as it's possible to be. I think religion is utter nonsense, and I claim the right to criticise, ridicule and insult it as much as I like, but not the right to stamp out harmless aspects of it, which is why I'm a secularist, and not a totalitarian.

I have a copy of the Bible in my house because it's part of my cultural heritage, not because I think the Bible is true any more than I think Shakespeare's plays are true, but I wouldn't be without them either. I like churches, especially the sound of church bells, and I don't want to see them bulldozed, but I do want to see the power of the Church not only bulldozed, but ground into a fine dust and buried in the deepest part of the deepest ocean on the furthest planet it's possible to find.

Religion needs to be kept in check when it tries to step on people or when it tries to elbow its way into their lives uninvited. The Nativity doesn't do this. It doesn't even come close. It's part and parcel of the Christmas furniture. It's part and parcel of the culture that I and most people in the western world were born and raised in, and it only excludes people who want to be excluded. It's not even as if it's a permanent fixture like, say, the Ten Commandments outside a court house. It will be gone in a couple of weeks. And yes, we all know that the story itself is ridiculous. The entire tableau is utterly barmy and worthy of open mockery and ridicule, but to claim that it sends a message of intimidation and exclusion and therefore must be banned is both infantile and sinister, and it simply isn't true. Yes, some people may choose to be offended, but some people are offended by anything, and, frankly, they can go to hell.

We get this crap every year, though. If it's not from atheists it's from leftist academics or some other equality nazis who hate their own culture so much they can't wait to abolish it. This time last year I remember linking to a story which, at the time, I thought was the most outrageous piece of social manipulation I'd seen for a while, where some idiots at a Canadian university... (Social psychologists, they call themselves... No, I don't know what it means either, so I looked it up and I'm still none the wiser, but I'd be willing to bet that if all the social psychologists on the planet were to disappear in a puff of smoke nobody would be worse off)... Anyway, these clowns concluded from their "scientific research" that Christmas trees should be removed from public places because they make non-Christians feel, guess what, excluded, and this inevitably damages their emotional well-being. Well, of course it does. How awful for them. And doubtless this also makes them feel terribly offended, not to mention intimidated and insulted and threatened, and let's not forget marginalised. It sounds like a fate worse than death, doesn't it? Except that it's not true, because I'm a non-Christian - I couldn't be more non-Christian if I was from Mars, and I can tell you that I don't feel in the least bit excluded or intimidated or threatened or marginalised by Christmas trees or carol singers or Nativity scenes or any other Christian aspects of a traditional Christmas. I expect to see these things in the public square where they belong. Indeed, I insist upon it. And if they're not there, if they've been removed because some self-righteous atheist fanatic or some finger-wagging diversity fascist has chosen to be offended and get the plug pulled, that's when I feel excluded and marginalised and intimidated and insulted and terribly terribly offended. And all this inevitably plays absolute havoc with my emotional well-being.

So please, militant atheists and cultural masochists alike, please do me and everyone else a favour, leave Christmas alone for Christ's sake, and stop making fools of yourselves. Peace, and a merry Christmas to everyone, but especially to Little Baby Jesus.

Condell has criticised people who try to erase things like Christmas from local culture because he believes in freedom of expression.

I also don't think he's very well off and he did grow up in poverty.

FACT: The first country to recognize America as an independent country was Morocco - a country that was and still is Muslim.

Not sure where to post this... not sure if it deserves a thread of its own. I just found out my 8 and 6 year old boys are being terrorized by the older muslim boys next door, constantly threatening to "cut his infidel head off".

Islamophobia? Yeah - I'm starting to fear Islam because they all too often threaten to kill innocent people. Early teenagers mentally torturing kids? Physically assaulting my boys' pet cat? These kids are well on their way to pure evil... and it's being taught to them from SOMEONE. "Religion of peace"... my ass!

I fear for my kids' safety!

On september 10, 2001 no one in New York City feared Islam. The same was not true on September 12, 2001.

ruveyn

The people of 1930's Germany were no more fallible yet they were convinced to hate the Jews with even greater venom.

Not sure where to post this... not sure if it deserves a thread of its own. I just found out my 8 and 6 year old boys are being terrorized by the older muslim boys next door, constantly threatening to "cut his infidel head off".

Islamophobia? Yeah - I'm starting to fear Islam because they all too often threaten to kill innocent people. Early teenagers mentally torturing kids? Physically assaulting my boys' pet cat? These kids are well on their way to pure evil... and it's being taught to them from SOMEONE. "Religion of peace"... my ass!

I fear for my kids' safety!

Not really - the Jews were always disliked and despised in Europe, and there had been long-standing anti-Semitic sentiment in the Establishment and from various parts of authority for decades (and, indeed, centuries) before the 1930s. Hitler just used sentiment that was already long, long established to have a go at the Jews.

Islam has been allowed to extend its reach in the West at the pleasure of the Establishment due to, primarily, immigration from often-poor Muslim countries. It is not the same thing.

Oh, it's also worth noting that most of the anti-Semitic attacks in European countries are committed by violent young Muslims and not by white skinheads and neo-Nazis, influenced by the anti-Semitism in its holy books. I would suspect that neo-Nazis and other racists make up most of the remainder.