Mick Hartley

Well, this is a huge surprise. From the Times:

The two candidates vying to lead the Muslim Council for Britain have praised Iran and said mixed gender New Year celebrations were “un-Islamic”.

Dr Muhammad Adrees and Dr Mohammed Wajid Akhter will face their first hustings ­on Tuesday in the race to become secretary-general of the group, which claims to be the largest democratic voice of British Muslims. However, a report by Policy Exchange, the think tank, has uncovered “deeply disturbing” remarks by the pair, according to a former Muslim MP.

In comments from 2022, Akhter called being a Muslim an “act of revolutionary defiance … at odds with the prevailing culture” and advocated that British Muslims identify primarily as Muslim rather than as British….

In speeches in 2023, Akhter said Muslims should “organise” and “unite” into a “powerful community” which would “change from the hand that is begging to the hand that is giving”.

Adrees wrote a glowing report on the dictatorial Iranian regime in 2017 after a trip to Tehran. In an article for Islam Today he praised Ruhollah ­Khomeini, the former supreme leader of Iran, and “the Iranian Revolution, when the great leader led the nation to its destiny”. He wrote warmly in support of the republic and spoke of how it respects minorities, despite claims that the country had carried out executions for blasphemy that year.

This video reached 1 million views on Instagram, and I’m sharing it here because it provides an important history lesson about the Middle East conflict.

The more we understand the past, the better we can shape the future. pic.twitter.com/pYOK0UOLHQ

— Loay Alshareef لؤي الشريف (@lalshareef) January 5, 2025

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Oh yes. These hornbeams from yesterday at Queen's Wood. Too wet today.

David Patrikarakos at UnHerd – The West still doesn’t understand Iraq:

Last year was, on balance, a miserable one for the world. And while only a fool attempts to predict the future in geopolitics, I am firm in the conviction that 2025 will be worse.

If 2024 was depressing, it was also instructive, in the Middle East at any rate. There, we saw the deepening of a trend which I suspect will come to characterise 2025 even more strongly: the shattering of political and policy beliefs so long and dearly held that they have amounted to orthodoxies. For the smart politician or state, this allows for sparks of opportunity amid the gloom.

Towards the end of the year, I was in Erbil, the capital of Kurdistan in Northern Iraq, discussing the supposedly imminent withdrawal of coalition troops from the country. Under Operation Inherent Resolve, Washington keeps 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria, where the UK has 1,000-1,200 and 150-200 respectively. Their job is to work alongside local partners, like the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), to prevent a resurgence of the terror group ISIS. Coalition forces also fill critical gaps in Iraqi security.

But Iran, which dominates Iraq through its proxy Shia militia groups, has long wanted us out. In September, the US and Iraq agreed to conclude the formal coalition mission by September 2025, though some troops will remain in advisory roles. The first phase of withdrawal has already begun. A final withdrawal means that Iraq will fall almost completely into Tehran’s grip. My interlocutor was Kurdish and, unsurprisingly, this worries him — as it does millions of Sunnis.

There are, you see, many Iraqis who not only have no problem with Western intervention in their country, but don’t want it to end.

But I was surprised later when a Sunni Arab friend told me that many Iraqis love Trump because, in January 2020, he whacked Qasem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s Quds Force and the man responsible for so much violence in their country. No matter that Trump brought in a so-called “Muslim ban”, his Western “intervention” in Iraq was more palatable to a section of its people than Iran’s far more localised — and constant — meddling.

This speaks to a broader, unignorable truth: the reality on the ground in the Middle East is often not just merely different to what we read, believe or are told in Oxbridge Area Studies departments, but entirely at odds with it; as is our relationship to the region, and how that is often received by the people there.

So, talking of the "shattering of political and policy beliefs so long and dearly held that they have amounted to orthodoxies", how about the orthodoxy that the 2003 Allied invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam was a horrendous error? It's absolutely set in stone now; you will not hear a word in its favour. Well, tell that to the Kurds. Tell that to the Sunni Trump supporters who welcomed the killing of Qasem Soleimani. 

The opposition to the invasion at the time focused on the horrors of a war against Saddam, but the regime collapsed with remarkable speed. It was hollow – like Assad's regime in Syria. Should the Allies have planned better for the sftermath?…have retained more of Saddam's men for the rebuild? Well, yes, no doubt. But it was always going to be a nightmare with Iran next door. A Sunni regime, that they'd been at war with just a couple of decades back, ruling over a Shia majority, finally overthrown?…of course they were going to take every opportunity to interfere. And of course they did. 

And yes…Syria. Iraq and Syria were the two Ba'athist dictatorships. Of the two, at the time, Saddam's regime was surely the more brutal – as anyone who read Kenan Makiya's Republic of Fear or Cruelty and Silence will attest – with psychopathic sons Uday and Qusay waiting in the wings. The West overthrew Saddam, but Obama declined to intervene in Syria, having learnt the orthodox line that Iraq had been a disaster. Result? The disaster of Syria dwarfed that of Iraq: some 600,ooo slain, millions fleeing the country, Putin testing out his aerial bombardment of civilians and hospitals ready for Ukraine…

Patrikarakos is having none of it. That's clealry not one of the orthodoxies he has in mind:

The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a historic mistake. We should not have done it. But we did, and in so doing we removed a brutal and sadistic dictator, but one who nevertheless kept chaos at bay. Chaos that, lest we forget, is built into the Iraqi state, carved illogically from three Ottoman provinces, and filled with a toxic mix of Sunnis, Shias and Kurds. Iraq was constructed (by us and the French no less) as if it were designed to be a sectarian tinderbox; and once Saddam’s controlling authority was gone, that tinderbox erupted. Last year, on the 20th anniversary of the invasion, I reported for UnHerd from Baghdad where my fixer Ammar told me something that has lodged, ineradicably, in my mind ever since. “We had so much hope in the beginning,” he said. “Then the country turned to a path of blood, and then people started to want Saddam back to keep order. Even with all the misery he brought.”

Well OK. But note that “We had so much hope in the beginning”. Should we really have left Saddam in charge, defying UN sanctions, terrorising his people with a secret police force and a prison system of torture and death that put Syria's in the shade? And who's to blame that it didn't work out after Saddam's overthrow led to that hope in the hearts of so many Iraqis? Yes, we should have done better. But might Iran not take some of the blame? The Iraqi politicians, even?

Ah….where's Christopher Hitchens now we need him?

Of-course "UNRWA’s work is irreplaceable for Palestine refugees". Without UNRWA, none would be refugees. 95% of them are not refugees by any international standard already, and other 5% would have long ago been settled had they been treated according to international practice. https://t.co/ogmL0xJNx4

— Dr. Einat Wilf (@EinatWilf) January 4, 2025

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This is interesting and perhaps surprising from Anthony Blinken. Notable also that the only question from the NYT interviewer, clearly assuming/hoping that this was to be another Israel-bashing opportunity, was about Netanyahu supposedly blocking a ceasefire deal that would have led to the release of the hostages (ha!), a point which Blinken was quick to deny. "No, that's not accurate". Also, from Blinken, "one of the things that I found a little astounding throughout, for all of the understandable criticism of the way Israel has conducted itself in Gaza, you hear virtually nothing, from anyone, since October 7th, about Hamas. Why hasn't there been a unanimous chorus around the world for Hamas to put down its weapons, to give up the hostages, to surrender? I don't know what the answer is to that." Well….

Antony Blinken, who is neither a supporter of Netanyahu nor particularly sympathetic to the Israeli government, revealed to the NYT that Hamas is the main reason a ceasefire has yet to be reached.

You can disagree with the Israeli government’s conduct, but the fact remains:… pic.twitter.com/mTrk5zjDYr

— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) January 4, 2025

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"You can disagree with the Israeli government’s conduct, but the fact remains: Hamas is the key obstacle to reaching a deal."

Something completely different.

Table-tennis aficionado Howard Jacobson turns his attention to darts after Luke Littler's Ally Pally triumph. A world-champion darts player writes home…

You have commented over the years on my adiposity. How can a pair of fleshless neurasthenics such as you, who chew their fingers to the bone for art’s sake, have produced someone my size? Eat less, you have pleaded. Exercise more, you say, forgetting how many miles I walk every day from the oche to the dartboard and back. My dear mother and father, do not think I am fat because I am indolent or because I cannot say no to cakes and ale. I am fat because I love darts.

You don’t need me to tell you that Julius Caesar wanted men about him that were fat. “Sleek-headed men” he feared because they thought too much. Sleek-headed men, for that very reason, make poor darts players. There comes a moment in the life of every darts player when he loses his instinctive rhythm, cannot remember how he throws, how tightly he holds his darts, how much flight he gives them. Many a promising career has ended that way. Had listened to you, I would not be Champion of the World today. Let a darts player lose his insouciance and he’s finished. And whoever saw an insouciant thin man?

Our bulk belies our subtlety. More than that: our bulk is integral to our subtlety. Some law of nature decrees that for one dart to follow another into those two inches of darting ivory which determine the difference between success and failure, between genius and mediocrity, they must be thrown by fat men. You cannot think darts into a treble or a bullseye. You dare not pause long enough to give reflection a sniff. You must throw with a sort of cultivated disdain that is not given to the thin.

If only, my dear parents, you had snatched enough time from your cerebral labours to watch a game of darts. Actually watched one. You would, had you done so, I am sure, have marvelled at the contrast between the overflowing physical abundance of the man throwing and the refined and dainty precision with which he throws. It is a contrast at once aesthetically satisfying and philosophically baffling. How can it be? See an arrow fly in slow motion, see how much it arches and how far it deviates, and it is a miracle it ever finds its target. Would you not imagine the thrower of such a missile to be a person of near supernatural exactitude? And now look who he is!; ‘Tis I, your clumsy and in all other regards bumbling and maladroit son.

The crowd who cheer me don’t bother their heads with any of that. They pour beer down their throats and sing Stand up if You Love the Darts. But you, mother and father, aficionados of art in all mysterious manifestations, are just the people to understand dart’s artistry and yet, out of small-minded snobbery, you look away. And so you miss the marvel and the rare beauty of it. A cheetah can run, a tiger burns bright in the forests of the night, but only your fat, clumsy son can, without raising a sweat, hit a treble-20 from eight feet away whenever he wants to.

I've cycled up round Ally Pally a few times over the past couple of weeks, and the darts crowd are always fabulous: a phalanx marching up the hill all dressed as traffic cones, or smurfs, or in Ali G outfits, or with dartboards round their heads. Mostly blokes, but by no means all blokes. Already good-naturedly boozed up, with loads more boozing to come.

Janice Turner had this mid-week in the Times:

I love everything about the darts. I love how men who, because of their looks and physiques and social class only get to be minor characters in TV soaps, are fist-pumping heroes here. I love how the audience is seated at long tables, drinking great pitchers of beer, as if at a Hogwarts feast. I admire the players’ lightning mental arithmetic and laser focus despite a raucous, silly crowd. I like Michael van Gerwen’s phrenologically fascinating head and Luke Littler’s pretty eyes. I wish only for a Joan Rivers red-carpet interviewer to ask the fancy-dressed fans why they chose traffic cones/prawns/Mexicans/Oompa Loompas as their team uniform. Otherwise it is a perfect bullseye.

This Telegraph report from Sam Ashworth-Hayes and Charlie Peters on the rape-gang scandal makes desperately grim reading.

Across the country, in towns and in cities, on our streets and in the state institutions designed to protect the most vulnerable members of our society, authorities deliberately turned a blind eye to horrific abuse of largely white children by gangs of men predominantly of Pakistani heritage.

Over time, details have come to light about abuse in Rotherham, in Telford, in Rochdale and in dozens of other places. But with the stories released in dribs and drabs, and the details so horrific as to be almost unreadable, the full scale of the scandal has still to reach the public.

The following paragraph makes for difficult reading. But you should read it, if you can. It’s drawn from Judge Peter Rook’s 2013 sentencing of Mohammed Karrar in Oxford.

Mohammed prepared his victim “for gang anal rape by using a pump… You subjected her to a gang rape by five or six men. At one point she had four men inside her. A red ball was placed in her mouth to keep her quiet.”

Her story is horrific. It is also far from unique.

Take “Anna”, from Bradford. Vulnerable and in residential care, at the age of 14 had made repeated reports of rape, abuse, and coercion. When she “married” her abuser in a traditional Islamic wedding, her social worker attended the ceremony. The authorities then arranged for her to be fostered by her “husband’s” parents.

In Telford, Lucy Lowe died at 16 alongside her mother and sister when her abuser set fire to her home in 2000. She had given birth to Azhar Ali Mahmood’s child when she was just 14, and was pregnant when she was killed.

Her death was subsequently used to threaten other children. The Telford Inquiry found particularly brutal threats. When one victim aged 12 told her mother, and the mother called the police, “there was about six or seven Asian men who came to my house. They threatened my mum saying they’ll petrol bomb my house if we don’t drop the charges.”

Yet in a pattern that would repeat itself, Telford’s authorities looked the other way. When an independent review was finally published in 2022, it found police officers described parts of the town as a “no-go area”, while witnesses set out multiple allegations of police corruption and favouritism towards the Pakistani community. Regardless of the reason, the inquiry found that “there was a nervousness about race… bordering on a reluctance to investigate crimes committed by what was described as the ‘Asian’ community”. […]

This resistance to an obvious truth repeated itself across the country. By 2010, a West Midlands Police report showed that authorities were aware that grooming gangs were approaching children at school gates.

But as the report stated, “the predominant offender profile of Pakistani Muslim males… combined with the predominant victim profile of white females has the potential to cause significant community tensions”. As a result, the report remained unpublished until released in response to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests five years later.

In Manchester, a 2019 report concluded gangs were left to roam the streets in part because officers were told to look elsewhere. One detective constable was quoted by a report as saying “the offending target group were predominantly Asian males and we were told to try and get other ethnicities”.

It's a long article: there's plenty more. Grim, grim, grim.

James Marriott in the Times gives a scathing review to The Telepathy Tapes, a podcast from one Ky Dickens:

The Telepathy Tapes is animated by contempt for all the values that underpin science: respect for evidence, a willingness to be wrong, a commitment to what is actually true instead of what you wish were true. In a happier time Dickens would have merely been an anonymous crank. Right now her podcast is at the top of the charts in Britain and America….

Over the course of the podcast Dickens relates a series of “experiments” that “prove” autistic children can correctly guess which numbers and words their parents are thinking of. In fact, video clips posted online apparently show the parents “cueing” their children in various ways — by subtly pointing or shifting their bodies. Naturally there is plenty of breathlessly recounted anecdotal evidence as well. One mother, Monisha, attests that on one occasion she was watching television and discovered that her son, who was upstairs in another room, knew all about the programme even though he had not been sitting next to her. “Whoever is looking for data,” Monisha says, “Achille is the data.” Statisticians like to observe that the plural of anecdote is not data. Well, the singular of anecdote is certainly not data.

All this is accompanied by much chuckling, patronising commentary on the foolishness and small-mindedness of scientists. “The reigning philosophy in science is something called ‘materialism’,” Dickens explains wearily. This means scientists dedicate themselves to “things we can measure and observe”. How ludicrous of scientists to dedicate themselves only to things they can measure and observe. The idiots! “Telepathy,” Dickens says laughing, “falls waaay outside the materialism lane.” Sadly, “there’s just not a lot of support” for people who “are thinking outside the box”.Somewhat inevitably listeners can provide support themselves through the crowdfunding appeal on the Telepathy Tapes website, which aims to raise a modest $450,000. After all, who could think of a worthier or more urgent medical cause than funding research into telepathy?

Dickens turns out to have remarkably grand ideas about her place in scientific history. “If what the families were saying was true,” she exclaims breathlessly, “this research could completely shift our paradigm, how humanity sees itself and consciousness.” After all, she says, “it’s not abnormal for scientific breakthroughs to be met with scepticism. That happened to Galileo when he proposed that the sun and not the Earth was the centre of the universe. It happened to Gregor Mendel when he introduced his theory of genetics.” For the avoidance of doubt, Ky Dickens is not the next Galileo.

And telepathy is only the beginning. Soon we’re onto the subject of whether non-verbal autistic children can see ghosts (of course they can) and the magical qualities of stones and crystals. One mother explains to Dickens that stones have “a very unique set of traits” and transmit mysterious vibrations. “I googled this myself and it’s true,” says an awed Dickens. Write that on the gravestone of our civilisation.

Echoes here of the old Facilitated Communication scam, which was supposed to allow people with communication problems like autism to "speak" through a keyboard while being guided by a facilitator. Unsurprisingly it turned out that these facilitators were the ones doing the communication.

There is widespread agreement within the scientific community and among disability advocacy organizations that FC is a pseudoscience. Research indicates that the facilitator is the source of the messages obtained through FC, rather than the disabled person. The facilitator may believe they are not the source of the messages due to the ideomotor effect, which is the same effect that guides a Ouija board and dowsing rods….

Facilitated communication has been called "the single most scientifically discredited intervention in all of developmental disabilities".

The mention of Ouija boards is apt. Different age, same old credulity.

Autism, perhaps understandably, has attracted more than its fair share of crank theories – most famously Bruno Bettelheim's Refrigerator Mother Theory, which blamed autism on lack of maternal emotional warmth: a doubly cruel acccusation for the unfortunate mothers of autistic children.

More nonsense to fill in that daft ideas shaped hole, alongside gender theory…

BBC reporting on Israel….it's the same old story. From the JC:

The BBC has apologised to a rabbi after ambushing him live on air about Israel in an interview which was pitched to be about Chanukah, the JC has learnt.

Rabbi Gideon Sylvester, the United Synagogue’s Israel Rabbi based in Jerusalem, was approached by a BBC producer about taking part in a series of interviews with faith leaders based in Israel about how the holy period would be celebrated given the ongoing war.

But during his interview with journalist Ben Brown on December 23, Rabbi Sylvester was not asked once about Chanukah.

In an email to Rabbi Sylvester seen by the JC, a senior news editor at the BBC said: “I am sorry that your interview with us last week was not what you were expecting.

“It was always our intention to discuss recent news events as well as faith, and challenge views as necessary. However, having watched your interview back I can see that we focused a little too much on politics and should have allowed you more time to explain the impact of the conflict on Hanukkah,” the email said.

Speaking to the JC, Rabbi Sylvester said it was “outrageous” that Brown implied Israel was responsible for starting the war it’s currently in….

Referring to attacks on Israel by Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran, Rabbi Sylvester told the JC: “Its unclear what [Brown] thinks Israel should do in the face of these attacks and whether he thinks 10 million Israelis should just pack up their bags and be redistributed around the world.”

He went on: “What was bitterly unfair about the [last question] was that it implied Israel was the barrier to peace and that Israel was the one who started the wars.”

Before Rabbi Sylvester could answer the question, time ran out in the segment.

“What I meant to say is that the enemies we’re fighting are dedicated to Israel’s destruction. This isn’t a battle about borders. That’s what makes the question so ridiculous, because there is no compromising with people who want your complete destruction.”

But he didn't get the chance. The interviewer makes the accusations, then…time's up. 

Rabbi Sylvester’s appearance on the BBC was the final in a series of three interviews with other faith leaders, including Reverend Dr Munther Isaac and Dr. Imam Mustafa Abu Sway.

Isaac is the Palestinian pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. Sway, also Palestinian, is a member of the Islamic Council at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

While the reverend and the imam were speaking, visuals of religious celebrations and buildings were shown on screen. Meanwhile, when the rabbi spoke, visuals of IDF tanks and military operations were shown.

They can't help themselves. It's so deeply embedded in BBC thinking and in BBC reporting on Israel.

Marie van der Zyl, the former president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, accused the BBC of anti-Israel bias and called the interview “inappropriate”.

“The purpose of the interview was to talk about the Chanukah festivities in Israel. It was entirely inappropriate, that no questions were asked about Chanukah and that visuals of tanks and soldiers were in the background,” she told the JC.
“This treatment was in complete contrast to the interviews with other faith leaders.
“Unfortunately, the BBC‘s anti-Israel bias continues unabated. No mention was made of the trauma inflicted on Israel since Oct 7 nor the plight of the hostages.
“The BBC has a duty under its Charter and Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code to contribute to the public good which, includes promoting an understanding of different cultures and diversity.
“There is a continuing blind spot when it comes to Israel. Our audiences have a right to expect high-quality, impartial and accurate content.”

Writing on Facebook after the interview, Rabbi Sylvester said: “I was told that I was there as a rabbi to talk about celebrating Chanukah while Israel is at war. When I got on for the live broadcast, there was no mention of Chanukah, just a barrage of aggressive political questions.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) condemned the BBC for “anti-Jewish” bias and said it would be writing to the broadcaster.

A spokesperson for CAA called the interview “absolutely despicable”.

"This is one of the starkest examples of anti-Jewish BBC bias that we have ever encountered. When you invite a Rabbi to discuss Chanukah in wartime, the bare minimum is to ask questions about Chanukah."

Yes, you would think so.