ON THE WEB - Marc Sidwell's review of Mark Steyn's America Alone for the Social Affairs Unit

Mark Steyn should not write off Europe just because she has a nasty temperature - Marc Sidwell explains why: America Alone - Mark Steyn

America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It
by Mark Steyn
Pp. 224. Washington, DC: Regnery, 2006Hardback, $27.95

Is demography destiny? Mark Steyn, columnist to the world, certainly thinks so. In America Alone, he lays out a bleak future for European dhimmitude - fortunately brightened by Steyn's trademark wit. He points out our collapsing birth-rates, despite (and perhaps because of) generous welfare systems that rely on a successor generation to pick up the tab. He sets this alongside comparatively high birth-rates among Muslims and increased Muslim immigration to Europe as our politicians attempt to make up the welfare deficit. Shake it together with multiculti paralysis before twenty-first century Islamism and, suggests Steyn, you have a cocktail mixed by Molotov, the kind already being tossed around in the French banlieues.

However, Steyn's argument seems to have been given a remarkably easy ride up the bestseller charts. As his book starts to attract attention in the UK, where its predictions are a matter of vital interest rather a wry joke on a distant and reluctant ally, Steyn can expect a more searching reception. Johann Hari has already attempted a takedown of the book's thesis for the New Statesman, one of the few occasions I recall a critic engaging with Steyn on the data.

So how seriously should British conservatives take America Alone? Is it time to buy a one-way ticket to Colorado, or will Europe, the western motherland, refuse to be bundled into a burqa?

Read the whole article on the Social Affairs Unit's website, here
Also remember the interview Mark Steyn gave to The New Culture Forum last november,
Mark Steyn talks to The New Culture Forum

300—the most civilised film in decades, writes Marc Sidwell

Frank Miller’s bold and bloody reinvention of the Battle of Thermopylae hits British cinema screens this week, fresh from two record-breaking weekends at the American box office. Certificate 15 (‘R’-rated in America) this is a violent and at times sexy film aimed at a youth market. From its takings, the producers did not mistake their fan base.

The film is an unrelenting, two hour epic remythologising the historical record. Frank Miller’s graphic style is brought to vivid life thanks to groundbreaking use of blue screen technology, supplemented by influences from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. For those whose stance is instinctively ironic and cynical, the straightforward heroism celebrated here will be disconcerting. For those who know the value of sacrifice and the price of freedom, the experience is thrilling. This is a modern film that reconnects with the essence of Western civilisation.

For what makes this film exceptional are the classical foundations upon which it draws – the American scholar, Victor Davis Hanson, was a consultant – and the resonance they evidently have with a fresh generation of westerners, officially unschooled in Herodotus and Homer. If our education system has given up on the value of a classical education, the runaway success of 300 proves that the values of the mass of the West remain those of Ancient Greece, even in the Age of Barbie. Freedom, Beauty, Excellence and Reason are all celebrated here—four exceptional touchstones of the West that come to us from tiny Greece, thanks to the resistance of the Spartans.

One of Miller’s sources was an essay by William Golding, ‘The Hot Gates’ – a literal translation of Thermopylae. Golding reminds us of simple historical fact: ‘A little of Leonidas lies in the fact that I can go where I like and write what I like’. When the freedoms to write what we like and go where we like are once more under threat, it is no surprise that Thermopylae should return to inspire us. The West, for all our forgetfulness, is one civilisation, stretching back two and a half thousand years to the shining example of Greece. The last time the Spartan epic was re-enacted, it served to stiffen sinews in the Cold War.

300 reminds us too that for all the current misperception of America as global bully, the West is in truth the eternal underdog. In a world always ready to fall back into tyranny and superstition, only the Greeks and their inheritors know the value and the power of individual human beings. When we are set free, we can bring down giants, but we always play David to the world’s Goliath. Refusing to kneel before the Persian horde, Gerard Butler’s Leonidas and his buffed-up men are an army of Michelangelo’s Davids. They are simultaneously the progenitors and inheritors of the best of the West. Their reception in 2007 is proof that ordinary westerners retain a sense of their civilisation and its essential values. Our elite gatekeepers may find the unofficial western motto—freedom or death; war is not the worst of evils—hard to grasp. 300 shows that everyone else gets it. There is hope for us yet.

Charlie Hebdo : Yesterday's crucial verdict

Yesterday in Paris, a court’s decision cleared Philippe Val, the editor of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, of “publicly abusing a group of people because of their religion” when it published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed a year ago. The case was brought by the Paris Grand Mosque, the Union of Islamic Organisations of France (UOIF) and the World Islamic League.

The judges were right in finding that the limits of free expression were not exceeded in this case. Their verdict accords with the French Republic’s values and is important for French society as a whole. Hopefully it will set a judicial precedent. Their ruling is in no way a defeat for one single community, rather it is a victory for press freedom, for the general principle of freedom of speech and furthermore for all those who remain determined not to appease Islamo-fascists and all religious fundamentalists in France and around the World.

The Paris Grand Mosque said it would not appeal, although not surprisingly the more radical UOIF announced that it would.

When he left the court yesterday, Philippe Val, who was facing a possible sentence of six months in prison and a fine of 22,500 euros, expressed his satisfaction and confidence in the French judicial system, commenting: “We have been vindicated by the court.”

It is also important to note that this verdict comes at a crucial time for France, just one month before the Presidential election. It was encouraging to see that many politicians, including UDF presidential candidate François Bayrou and French Socialist Party leader François Hollande, voiced their support for the magazine during the two-day trial on 7 and 8 February, and that Nicolas Sarkozy, the UMP presidential candidate, also indicated his support, commenting that he preferred “an excess of cartoons to a lack of cartoons.” At the same, it is unfortunate that, during this Presidential campaign, these same candidates have been so cautious in not mentioning the rise of communities who increasingly aim to separate themselves, and the risks that this represents to France, the French Republic and its core idealistic values.

Franck Guillory


Postscript

The outcome of this key trial for the defence of press freedom follows a similar decision by Danish judges acquitting the editors of the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, the first newspaper to publish controversial cartoons of Mohammed.

The lawsuit concerned three of the six Mohammed cartoons which the weekly published on 8 February 2006. Two of the three had appeared in Jyllands-Posten in 2005. One of them showed Mohammed wearing a turban in the form of a bomb about to explode. The other showed him saying: “Stop, stop, we have run out of virgins.” The third, which was on the cover, was by French cartoonist Jean “Cabu” Cabut. It showed Mohammed with his head in his hands saying: “It is hard to be loved by idiots.”

Gerard Baker has an excellent piece in today’s Times

Although it’s mostly concerned with the BBC, Baker's general point about the opinion-setting powers of a metropolitan elite, and their attitudes to the rest of the country, hits the target. As anybody who has worked in television will know, there is in fact little to choose in this respect between those who work in the BBC and most other areas of broadcasting now, but the crucial difference is that, as a public service, the BBC is paid for by us whether we like it on not.

Great City. Shame about the BBC

For someone who has not lived in the city for more than a decade, the occasional trip to London is a reminder of how richly it deserves its new reputation as the world’s capital.

As my colleague James Harding wrote in times2 this week, there’s a vibrancy about London these days that easily eclipses New York or Paris or Tokyo. To many residents, perhaps, life in London may be a struggle against rising crime and a crowded Tube and overpriced housing, but from an international perspective, it is truly the world’s preeminent urban locale.

In fact, in anything other than the most literal, geographic expression of the term, London is really no longer an English city at all. Its great economic dynamo, the City, powers corporations from Shanghai to Seattle. Its labour force, drawn to it by the opportunities of its free markets, is much more polyglot and multinational than any other urban concentration in the world.

But there’s salt to this strawberry. London’s political culture has been uprooted from its English heritage. It is run — if you can call it that — by a sort of postmodern communist Mayor, whose political voice — minus the annoying nasal whine — would sound right at home in Paris, Bologna or San Francisco. It hosts a metropolitan elite that loftily gazes three ways: outward, at the supposed superiority of anything not British; inward, at its own ineffable genius; and down its elegantly pampered nose, at the provincial trivialities that consume the dreary lives of the rest of the population.

But worst of all; much more, much more baleful than any of these irritations, is the political, cultural and intellectual hegemony exercised by the ultimate self-serving metropolitan monopoly, the BBC. Much worse because, unlike mayors and snobs, its domination of the rest of the country is so complete and so permanent.

On a recent trip back to Britain, I happened to hear on the BBC an interview with Helen Mirren, shortly before her Oscars triumph. Amid the usual probing sort of questioning that is the currency of celebrity journalism (“How do you manage to look so young? Is there anyone since Shakespeare who has come close to matching your talent?”) one particular gem caught my attention.

Dame Helen was asked how difficult it had been to play such an “unsympathetic character” as the Queen, the eponymous heroine of her recent film. She replied, quite tartly, that she didn’t find the Queen unsympathetic at all and launched into her now familiar riff about how she thought Elizabeth II really, surprisingly, quite agreeable.

It was a little incident, a small crystal in the battering hailstorm of drivel that pours daily through the airwaves. And yet to my mind it signified something so large. It had nothing to do with politics or Iraq or America. It was so telling in its revelation of prejudices and presumptions precisely because it was on such a slight matter as the sensibilities of an actress.

It betrayed an absolutely rock-solid assumption that the Queen is fundamentally unsympathetic, and that anyone who might still harbour some respect for the monarch — or indeed for that matter, the military or the Church, or the countryside or the joint stock company or any of the great English bequests to the world — must be some reactionary old buffer out in the sticks who has not had the benefit of the London media’s cultural enlightenment.

More than that, the question — all fawning and fraternal and friendly — contained within it an assumption that, of course, every thoughtful person shares the same view.

You really do have to leave the country to appreciate fully how pernicious the BBC’s grasp of the nation’s cultural and political soul has become. The groupthink and assumptions implicit in almost everything broadcast by BBC News, and even less explicitly by much else of the corporation’s output, lie like a suffocating blanket over the national consciousness.

This is the mindset that sees the effortless superiority, at every turn, of benign collectivism over selfish individualism, exploited worker over unscrupulous capitalist, enlightened European over brutish American, thoughtful atheist over dumb believer, persecuted Arab over callous Israeli; and that believes the West is the perpetrator of just about every ill that has ever befallen the world — from colonialism to global warming.

I’m often told, when I take on like this, that I’m ignoring the quality of BBC output. But I spent almost a decade in the employ of the BBC and I can say, without demeaning my gifted colleagues at The Times, that it has probably one of the highest concentrations of talent of any institution in the world. But that, of course, is the problem. It perpetuates its power by attracting and retaining an educated elite that is distinguished by its unstinting devotion to collectivist values. I’ve no doubt it does what it does very well. It is what it does I object to.

A necessary word here about our sponsor. Anything critical of the BBC written by an employee of Rupert Murdoch is instantly dismissed. It’s not an unreasonable instinct. Outside Murdochland it is solemnly assumed that each morning the drones of News Corporation are given their marching orders on how to interpret every event so that it conforms precisely to the commercial and political instincts of the proprietor.

In the real world, not only does the Murdoch media have only a fraction of the reach of the BBC, but a casual glance at its output demonstrates it is far less monolithic in its outlook than is the BBC.

Fortunately, in the US this week, I was struck by an article on the oped pages of The New York Times, the very citadel of leftish political correctness. Written by an apparently completely sane professor at a prestigious US university and entitled “Biased Broadcasting Corporation”, it assailed the BBC’s Middle Eastern services for their consistently antiWestern tone and content.

When the editorial pages of The New York Times accuse the BBC of anti-Western bias it is worth taking notice. It is a little like Osama bin Laden accusing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of being a bit harsh on the Jews. It suggests that in other, even pretty unlikely, parts of the world, people are waking up to the menace to our values represented by the BBC. The British sadly, seem curiously content to remain in thrall to it.

In the Times today

University is accused of censoring anti-Semitic Islam lecture, by Sean O'Neill

The University of Leeds was accused of infringing free speech last night when it cancelled a lecture on “Islamic anti-Semitism” by a German academic.

Matthias Köntzel arrived at the university yesterday morning to begin a three-day programme of lectures and seminars, but was told that it had been called off on “security grounds”.

Dr Köntzel, a political scientist who has lectured around the world on the antiSemitic ideology of Islamist groups, told The Times there were concerns that he would be attacked. He said that he was “outraged” that his meetings had been cancelled and had yet to receive an explanation.

The university, which acted after complaints from Muslim students, denied that it was interfering with the academic freedom of Dr Köntzel, and said that proper arrangements for stewarding the meeting had not been made.

The lecture, entitled “Hitler’s Legacy: Islamic antiSemitism in the Middle East”, was organised by the university’s German department and publicised three weeks ago. A large attendance had been expected.

Dr Köntzel, a former adviser to the German Green Party, said: “I have been told that it has had to be cancelled for security reasons. It seems there were concerns that there could be violence against my person.

“I have lectured in lots of countries on this subject. I gave the same talk at Yale University recently, and this is the first time I have been invited to lecture in the UK. Nothing like this has ever happened before – this is censorship.

“It is a controversial area but I am accustomed to debate. I value the integrity of academic debate and I feel that it really is in danger here. This is a very important subject and if you cannot address it on university property, then what is a university for?”

Dr Köntzel, a research associate at the Vidal Sassoon International Centre for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said that he had been shown two e-mails that had been received, which objected to his lecture.

One, apparently written by a student, said: “As a Muslim and an Arab this has come to me as a great shock. The only intention that you have for doing this is to increase hatred as I clearly regard it as an open racist attack.”

Ahmed Sawalem, president of the university’s student Islamic Society, confirmed that he had contacted the office of Professor Michael Arthur, the Vice-Chancellor, to register an official complaint.

“The title of the talk is provocative and I have searched the internet to read his writings and they are not very pleasant,” Mr Sawalem said. “We are not opposed to freedom of expression. We just sent a complaint, we did not ask for the talk to be cancelled.”

The university authorities contacted the German department on Tuesday and asked for a change in the title. The department agreed to relabel the talk as “The Nazi Legacy: the export of antiSemitism to the Middle East”.

Yesterday morning, the head of the German department, Professor Stuart Taberner, was called to a meeting with the Vice-Chancellor’s staff and the head of security. After the meeting, Dr Köntzel’s lecture and workshops were cancelled.

Annette Seidel Arpaci, an academic in the German department, said: “This is an academic talk by a scholar, it is not a political rally. The sudden cancellation is a sell-out of academic freedom, especially freedom of speech, at the University of Leeds.” A spokes-woman for the university said that it valued freedom of speech and added that the cancellation of the meeting had been a bureaucratic issue.

“The decision to cancel the meeting has nothing to do with academic freedom, freedom of speech, antiSemitism or Islam-ophobia, and those claiming that is the case are making mischief,” she said.

18 Doughty Street interviews Mark Steyn

From over the pond, in Washington, 18 Doughty Street talks to Mark Steyn. Fascinating watch. That's here

And remember too the interview Mark gave us last november about his last book America Alone. (Re) read it here

South Bank Show on Mark Wallinger

The artist Mark Wallinger, whose installation paying tribute to Brian Haw’s anti-war protest is currently on show at Tate Britain, is the subject of this coming Sunday’s South Bank Show. The programme goes out at 11.10pm on ITV 1. We talked to the programme’s producer and director, Susan Shaw.

Susan, why did you decide to do a programme about Mark Wallinger, and why at this time?

To be honest, the Mark Wallinger film was not my idea. As I am known to be connected in the art world, Melvyn Bragg wanted me to make the film. I had a long and chaotic relationship with the art critic Matthew Collings in the 90s and witnessed the birth of the so called YBA movement of which Mark Wallinger was a part. It was felt that Mark's huge and controversial new installation at Tate Britain (a very prestigious commission) would provide an excellent focal point for the film. The work is called "State Britain" suggesting an Orwellian, paranoid view of contemporary British politics.

Mark's installation is a forensic remaking of Brian Haw's peace protest at Parliament Square before it was disassembled and seized by the police in 2006 - they were able to do this under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, which created a one kilometer exclusion zone around Parliament Square, forbidding spontaneous protest. Under the Act, permission has to be obtained in advance of any protest from the head of the Metropolitan Police.

The Tate Britain installation is, for want of a better expression, political art. When art and politics collide, does it make a difference to how you approach the making of a programme?

Yes, absolutely. As broadcasters we are legally required by OffCom to present a balanced view of political issues although I would say this requirement is unevenly applied. Mark's new work at the Tate is a passionate, quasi religious protest against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This presented a challenge which I relished. In order to present a strong counter argument to Mark's anti war anti Blairite stance, I brought in the brilliant young writer and commentator Douglas Murray. He makes a political critique of Mark's new work, saying that Brian Haw is a totally inappropriate icon of freedom of speech, as a) he continues to protest at Parliament Square although his display was reduced from 45 to 3 metres and b) the greatest threat to freedom of speech in this country comes from Islamism, and not from Blair's legislation or the police. Douglas also makes a very powerful point when he says that strategy and serious conversation about our contemporary political dilemmas have been replaced by emotion in works like Mark's "State Britain". Of course, I also had to give voice to Brian Haw and Mark Wallinger's views - even if I disagreed with them.

Would you say that the art establishment is largely at one with Wallinger’s message?

I would say that there was an awkward assumption by the artist that my own political orientation would be Soft Left, Anti-war and Anti-Blairite. Ironic, as I am employed by a Labour Peer who voted for the war. I think it is fair to say that Mark was taken aback by Melvyn's line of questioning on "State Britain", which was challenging. The YBA movement as a whole was produced by Thatcherism in interestingly contrary directions. While not a single artist that I know of in that movement could be described as expressly Thatcherite or Conservative, and many of the works they produced were direct attacks on Conservative policy, they also epitomised the entrepreneurship that was encouraged by Thatcher, famously organising their own shows in the late 80s and early 90s without the assistance of commercial galleries. Moreover, the sponsor that enabled the explosion of success in their careers was the man who orchestrated Thatcher's electoral victories; Charles Saatchi. Damien Hirst, the leading light in the YBA movement is a famously good businessman and is now one of the richest men in England. The YBA's have enthusiastically embraced their new wealth and are not known for involvement in charity or for political activism at a grass roots level, although Mark Wallinger is perhaps an exception - as a sincerely committed socialist who still makes his political convictions explicit in his work, and unlike Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, has not embraced what can loosely be described as celebrity culture. Although my political views radically differ from Mark's, I do respect him for this. He was also one of the finest painters of his generation but interestingly, he has given painting up in favour of works produced by teams of assistants according to his ideas (as with State Britain) - which is now the norm, for artists like Damien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread and Tracey Emin. They have effectively rejected hand crafted works in favour of industrial production which generates huge earnings for themselves and much, much lower incomes for the artists and technicians that actually make their work. We touch on these issues in my Mark Wallinger film but there simply wasn't time for a thorough going discussion of the economics of the art world now (a television hour is now 48mins 30secs after commercial breaks). I wanted to leave space for a thorough going discussion of the issues surrounding freedom of speech, raised by "State Britain".

You’ve worked in arts programming for a long time. How, in your view, are the arts and arts broadcasting in general handling the Iraq war, and the issues thrown up by the growth in radical Islam?

Personally, as a feminist, I am profoundly disappointed by the quality of discussion surrounding radical Islam in the media. It staggers me that the majority of the chattering classes who are happy to grandstand on the Iraq War and Islam, remain ignorant of the basic tenets of Islam and in particular, the fact that the life of a woman is considered under Sharia Law to be worth half that of a man. It seems to me that while the British Media is very happy to give voice to radicalised Muslim women, those fighting for the right to wear the veil even if teaching in our schools, for example, there has been an absolute failure to represent the views of feminists like myself who regard the veil as a symbol of the undeniable second class status of women under Islam (in all its permutations, sorry) and I have a queasy feeling, echoed by Minnette Marrin at this week’s New Culture Forum event on the theatre, that this is due to fear, after Theo Van Gogh's execution and decapitation for daring to explore these issues in "Submission".

I encountered an intense sensitivity about references to Islam in my Mark Wallinger film. I had to fight to keep references to Van Gogh and the reaction to the Danish cartoons in the film in the context of a discussion of freedom of speech. All of these ironies are summed up for me in one of the favoured slogans of protestors against the Danish cartoons (99.9% male of course): Freedom of Speech = Freedom to Insult. Yes, it does, and the freedom to insult is part of our cultural tradition and heritage in Britain as it also enshrines our freedom of speech. As a woman I have to endure what I see as the insults of radical Islam and yet negotiate what is now an institutionalised paranoia around offending Muslims. In Britain the Suffragettes secured the vote for women through immense personal sacrifice; Emily Davison threw herself under the hooves of the King's horse in 1913 and died for the rights currently enjoyed by women in Britain, including Muslim women, whom I would suggest, would certainly prefer to have divorces and sexual offences considered under British Law rather than Sharia, which deprives them of so many of the human rights we take for granted.

I am also deeply disappointed by the response of the art world to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There have been few works even addressing the issue - in this sense Mark Wallinger's new work is significant, even if one disagrees with it. Too many of our visual artists are too busy making obscene amounts of money and too enthusiastically embracing the cults of personality and celebrity to bother sticking their necks out in any particular direction, except in the expression of an unpleasant and arrogant contempt for the patrons and collectors who have made them wealthy and famous. These are strange and troubling times.

END.

Enlightening Transcript

The New English Review has a transcript from Channel 4's Dispatches - Undercover Mosque.

A Dispatches reporter attends mosques run by organisations whose public faces are presented as moderate and finds preachers condemning integration into British society, condemning democracy and praising the Taliban for killing British soldiers.

N: Kuffaar is an Arabic word meaning: non-believer, an infidel (generic
meaning: non-Muslim) –
AU: “Those kuffaar, they do whatever they want
to do.”

N: It’s a term our reporter was to hear being repeatedly
used in a derogatory way –

AU: “They are liars, they are terrorists
themselves. They will come before the people and talk and they are lying, you
can’t believe them … These are pathological liars.”

N: Green Lane Mosque calls itself a centre for inter-faith communications
welcoming people of all religions, but our reporter filmed there over four
months and found this speaker, Abu Usama, was their main English language
speaker. He says Christians and Jews are enemies to Muslims.

AU: “It has come to pass that the Christians and the Jews, America, the UK, France,
Germany, they have come against the religion of Islam. Why give up your religion
and your long legacy of Islam to please someone who is an enemy to you?”

The full text is there
This film was discussed on Culture Clash by Peter Whittle and his comrades on January 16th along with the US documentary Iraq in Fragments.

Politics and the Theatre: What's Left? Tuesday, February 27th 6.30 for 7.00pm

You are invited to

‘POLITICS AND THE THEATRE: WHAT’S LEFT?’

A discussion with playwright Richard Bean, Associate Director of the Royal Court Ramin Gray, Sunday Times columnist Minette Marrin and playwright Shelley Silas

Tuesday, 27th February, 6.30 for 7pm

The Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 28 Russell Square, London WC1 (nearest tube Russell Square)


Last year, the National Theatre’s director Nicholas Hytner said that one thing he would really like to see there in the future would be a ‘good, mischievous, right-wing play.’

The implication in Hytner’s statement - that such a production would be an unusual occurrence, a naughty aberration, a guilty pleasure - would certainly have confirmed many in their conviction that when it comes to politics, the theatre stands firmly behind left-liberal lines. Recent productions in both the subsidised sector and the West End would seem to bare this out. My Name is Rachel Corrie, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You, Guantanamo, Stuff Happens, Playing with Fire…the political approach in these plays remains unvarying. And when there is criticism of the prevailing orthodoxy, it comes firmly from the Left.

But if this is all true, why are there no alternative voices? Is there, or should there be, such a thing as a right-of-centre play? Are there untouchable subjects in the theatre? Would different political approaches bring in new audiences? And why are voices on the Left apparently silent about important issues thrown up by radical Islam and the growing debate about multiculturalism?

Shelley Silas’s theatre plays include Calcutta Kosher and Falling. She has also written extensively for Radio Four - her plays include a co-adaptation of Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet (with John Harvey.) She compiled and edited an anthology of short stories, 12 Days. Her new play, Made in Glasgow, will be produced by Tamasha Theatre in 2008.

Richard Bean has had four plays produced at The Royal Court as well as plays at the National, Bush, Newcastle Live! and at Hull Truck. He was awarded the Critics' Circle Award for Best Play for "Harvest" last year. His political sex farce which looks at the accession of Turkey into the European Union will be produced by Hampstead Theatre in July this year.

Ramin Gray is Associate director of the Royal Court. He is director of Alastair Beaton’s King of Hearts, which opens this week at the Hampstead Theatre

Please RSVP at events@newcultureforum.org.uk
We would kindly ask for a £5 donation on the evening towards drinks.

London Rally for Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer - Thursday, February 15th

Who is Kareem? And why will we demonstrate?

Kareem is a 22 year old Egyptian law student and blogger who was arrested last November in Alexandria for criticizing the Egyptian government on his weblog. This is not the first time he has been arrested. His writings also led to him being expelled from Islamic University of Al-Azhar earlier in 2006. Since his arrest in November, he has been kept in solitary confinement and has been denied access to his lawyer and to his family. Several Middle Eastern human rights organizations have expressed concern for his life. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders have all condemned his arrest. Two US congressmen (Republican Trent Franks and Democrat Barney Frank) have written a letter to the Egyptian Ambassador in Washington, pleading for Kareem's release. His trial has been postponed several times, most recently to February 22.

A group of concerned citizens from various nations has organized a global demonstration on Thursday, Feb. 15th, asking the Egyptian authorities to free Kareem immediately and drop all charges against him. Respectful and dignified rallies have been confirmed in New York City, London, Rome, Washington, Ottawa and Bucharest. Efforts are being made to find volunteers in other cities who would be willing to take the lead and plan more rallies. Since this is a worldwide demonstration, it doesn't matter if an individual rally is relatively small. The goal is to send a clear signal that people across the world are aware of this flagrant assault on liberty in Egypt, and that as friends of the Egyptian people, we wish to see their government right this wrong.

When?

The London Rally for Kareem

Thursday, 15 February. 3pm to 6pm.

Where?

The Egyptian Embassy, located at 26 South Street, London W1K 1DW.

The Embassy is just a short walk from either Marble Arch (Central Line) or Green Park (Piccadilly, Victoria, or Jubilee Lines). See a map of the area.

If you're at LSE, you can walk over with a group that will leave from the Peacock Theatre at 2pm.

Contact for more information on the London Rally: Andrew Perraut's Rally for Kareem

More on the worldwide campaign - Freekareem.org

And of course Kareem's blog

Culture Clash on 18DoughtyStreet tonight at 9pm

Is Islamic Fundamentalism a threat to the Arts?

The issue of how the arts should respond to the problems posed by Islamic belief and Islamic fundamentalism, and whether or not they should fear censorship, or in fact exercise pre-emptive self-censorship, is something which is now exercising the minds of many in the cultural arena.
Arguably the biggest cultural issue facing us is also one which could be the most dangerous. Two years ago Theo Van Gogh was murdered because of his film ‘Submission’. Last year, the Berlin Opera was threatened because a production of Idomeneo featured a depiction of Mohammed. Here, a crucial part of Tamburlaine at the Barbican was cut. Filming of Monica Ali’s book was moved from Brick Lane due to protests.
Should the arts ignore protest from Muslims?
Or it is purely a question of exercising tact?
Furthermore, nowhere, it would seem, are the arts dealing with such issues as, say, Muslim treatment of women, or the position of gays. There is a deafening silence. Why is this?
Is it fair to say that, while Madonna provokes her usual faux outrage by getting up onto a crucifix in the full knowledge that they’ll be no consequences, it’s unlikely that we will ever again see a depiction of Mohammed in a cultural context? With me to discuss these issues are journalist and historian Ruth Dudley Edwards, award-winning author and playwright Shelley Silas, Sunday Times columnist Minette Marrin, and producer and former BAFTA chairman Michael Attwell.

Watch it HERE

Introduction to the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace

Founded in 1998, the CMIP (Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace) examines the content of school textbooks used in the Middle East, to determine whether children are being taught to accept and recognize the right of the “other” to exist. They believe that education should be utilized to encourage an attitude of tolerance, pluralism, and democracy, and to promote peaceful means of solving conflicts.

As a non-profit, non-political organization, their purpose is to identify what is being taught in the schools with regard to recognition and acceptance of the “other” by drawing on the text itself, rather than the interpretation of it. Pioneers in the field of textbook analysis, CMIP endeavors to present a clear picture of how different countries instruct and educate their youth with regard to different religions, societies, cultures, democratic values and the “other”.

After Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia, their latest report focuses on Iran and looks at the Attitude to the 'Other' and to Peace in Iranian School Textbooks and Teacher's Guides.

Overview

War Curriculum

The Iranian school system prepares its students for a global war against the West in the name of Islam. This is the main finding arrived at, following an overall research
conducted on 115 Iranian school textbooks and teacher's guides of all grades. Although all the books and the vast majority of the teacher's guides were published under the apparently moderate former president Mohammad Khatami, they all reflect the teachings of Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of Revolutionary Iran.

In Khomeini's vision, Iran is destined to lead that global struggle against the
oppressors in the name of Islam. This role is part and parcel of the Islamic Revolution, and the victory over the oppressors will also be Islam's victory in this world. Hence, Iranian education should be aimed at preparing the students for participation in that war.

The Attitude to America and the West

Numerous "others" are referred to in Iranian school textbooks – religious and ethnic,
inside and outside Iran, in historical and contemporary contexts. Yet, two specific
"others" – the United States and the West in general, and the Jewish-Zionist-Israeli
"other" – attract special attention.

America is the "Great Satan", the "World Devourer", the "Arrogant One", in short – a
target for hatred indoctrination. America is the arch-oppressor worldwide, leader and partner of other oppressive powers such as Britain and France.
The West, including Czarist Russia and the former Soviet Union, is responsible for
much suffering: Colonialism, exploitation and impoverishment of Third World nations,
encroachment on the world of Islam – including Iran – in history and at present,
cultural attack against Muslims and others, world hegemony, environmental abuse, etc.

The Attitude to Israel and the Jews

The Jews are mostly referred to in the context of their relations with the Prophet of
Islam in Arabia, where they are negatively portrayed: "…After some time, the Jews'
pretext-seeking, hostility and treachery were exposed…" (History of Iran and the
World, Grade 10 (2004) p. 109). Zionism is described as an idea "that is based on the
establishment of the Jews' greater homeland, and on this ethnic group's dominance over the world" (Social Studies [Humanities], Grade 12 (2004) p. 41) – which reminds us of anti-Semitic texts, such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Israel, which is not recognized in any way and whose name does not appear on any of the maps, is portrayed as a danger to the whole world of Islam and as a tool in the
hands of its enemy – America.

To read the full report or earlier reports, http://www.edume.org

Full support for French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo on the day of trial for publishing Mohammed cartoons

We ought to support the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo , which goes on trial in Paris today in a civil lawsuit by the Grand Mosque of Paris and the Union of Islamic Organisations of France. This is an inconditional support for this leftist publication as it is accused of deliberately trying to hurt Muslims “in their collective attachment to their beliefs” by publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a special issue a year ago.

Most of the cartoons were the ones which the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published in September 2005, sparking protests in many Muslim countries. The front page one was by French cartoonist Jean “Cabu” Cabut.

Charlie Hebdo is committed to free expression and to the right to satire and we condemn the many different kinds of intimidation that have been targeted at this weekly. The public area must remain open not only to dialogue but also to controversy.

Charlie Hebdo’s decision to reprint the Danish cartoons was taken at an especially fraught moment. Some 10 news media had been banned or suspended in countries such as Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia for reproducing the cartoons. Journalists has been arrested in countries such as Jordan, Algeria and Yemen.

By publishing the cartoons, Charlie Hebdo chose to resist the attempt to impose silence by means of threats. This is what counts. The public arena must remain free.

The trial that opens today is a test of freedom of expression in France and we hope that the courts will protect this principle, as the Danish judges did on 26 October 2006 when they acquitted Jyllands-Posten’s editors and ruled that its Mohammed cartoons were not offensive to Muslims.

Ever since the cartoons first appeared in Jyllands-Posten, there has been a never-ending debate as to whether it is permissible to publish opinion pieces or cartoons that could offend the religious sensibilities of part of the population. After the publication of Robert Redeker’s op-ed piece in Le Figaro last September, the French courts are now having to take a position on this issue.

In today’s trial, the plaintiffs are requesting 30,000 euros in damages and the publication of key passages from the court’s ruling. Charlie Hebdo published its special issue on the cartoons one week after they were published by the French daily France Soir on 1 February 2006, in a decision that led to the dismissal France Soir’s editor, Jacques Lefranc.

PS: One could imagine that this trial would give an opportunity for the French Presidential candidates to air their views on Islamo-fascism and religious fundamentalism. They don't and they won't - 'Leave Islam out of the Presidential campaign', requested Dalil Boubakeur, Head of the Conseil Francais du Culte Musulman - the national Muslim council. Amen.

UPDATE: THIS AFTERNOON, NICOLAS SARKOZY EXPRESSED HIS SUPPORT TO CHARLIE HEBDO.

Tonight on Culture Clash

Tonight on 18 Doughty Street we’re going to be looking at an art installation at Tate Britain which has certainly caught the eye of the media – artist Mark Wallinger’s recreation of Brian Haw’s so-called ‘peace protest’ which has been a permanent feature of Parliament Square for the past few years. A much-needed retort to a warmongering government, or a ghastly eyesore and the work of a misguided eccentric, depending on your point of view, the protest has been copied lock stock and barrel by Wallinger and stuck in a gallery with the aim of saying – well, what exactly?

But first we’re going to discuss an event which, oddly, received virtually no press coverage at all. A couple of Saturdays ago, the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone sponsored a one-day conference at the QE2 Conference Centre which asked the question World Civilization of Clash of Civilizations? 5,000 people came to attend seminars and meetings, and to listen to a debate between Livingstone and Respect party member Salma Yaqoob on the one hand, and Middle eastern expert Daniel Pipes and writer and Culture Clash regular Douglas Murray on the other, on whether the West and Islam were set on a collision course. No prizes for guessing who was arguing what – but the event certainly acted as a valuable barometer of the state of mind of the rainbow coalition which surrounds Red Ken.

Watch Michael Gove's speech to The New Culture Forum

Alex Story produced a four-part film on Michael Gove's speech to The New Culture Forum - 'Are we seeing the emergence of an anti-Islamist intelligentsia?'

Watch Part I here


then go to YouTube for Part II, Part III and Part IV.

Michael Gove's New Culture Forum speech in The Spectator

In The Spectator this week, an edited extract from Michael Gove’s talk ‘Are we seeing the emergence of a new anti-Islamist intelligentsia?’ given to the New Culture Forum last monday.

The new anti-Islamist intelligentsia
Michael Gove

The durability of Conservatism has depended, to a great extent, on it being a disposition rather than a philosophy. What marks Conservatives out, across the generations, and whatever the environment they operate in, is an attitude of mind rather than an adherence to dogma. And that disposition — sceptical, cautious, pragmatic, sensitive to the local and the particular — has been politically successful because it has been in tune with human nature.

But Conservatism, as a disposition, has its limitations. British Conservatism in particular, even though it has been one of the most electorally successful varieties ever, has its own particular flaws. British, particularly English, conservatives tend to
be especially suspicious of intellectuals. Only in the British Conservative party could the nickname ‘Two-Brains’ be construed, however affectionately, as a put-down. And British Conservatives have, with honourable exceptions, tended to a particularly pessimistic view of human nature and the potential for progress. From Lord Salisbury to Iain Gilmour and even Chris Patten, the sense that the barbarians were at the gate has imbued thoughtful Tories with a gloomy view of
the future.

Both those Conservative characteristics, distrust of intellectualism and spiritual pessimism, may have led many Conservatives to miss one of the most significant trends of the past five years — the emergence of a new intellectual movement which gives grounds for optimism in one of the most difficult battles of our times.

Scarcely noticed by most on the Right, a new coalition of thinkers has been emerging from within the Left deliberately to challenge the Left’s greatest contemporary failure. It is perhaps understandable why many on the left might wish to belittle, or
drive to the margins, this new movement. But for those of us who are not tribally tied to the Left, this new turn in intellectual thinking deserves to be welcomed.

A distinguished array of thinkers and writers who have grown up attached to left-wing principles of equality, secularism, respect for universal human rights, opposition to religious obscurantism and support for liberal democracy have been finding their
voices in the last five years. Since the atrocities of 9/11 have focused the world’s attention on the murderous tactics and mediaeval ideology of Islamist terrorists, a number of figures on the left have felt moved to denounce what they see as the, at best, equivocal and, at worst, morally complicit treatment of extremism by many of their former comrades.

This week sees the publication of one of the most powerful denunciations of the manner in which the Left has lost its way. Nick Cohen’s What’s Left? scrupulously anatomises the way in which anti-Americanism, and the doctrine that my enemy’s enemy is my friend, has driven people whose political inspiration was a belief in progress to make excuses for forces that are trying to use murder to propel us back into the Dark Ages. As he argues,

Why is it that apologies for a militant Islam which stands for everything the liberal Left is against come from the liberal Left? After the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington why were you as likely to read that a sinister conspiracy of Jews controlled American or British foreign policy in a superior literary journal as in a neo-Nazi hate sheet? And why after the 7/7 attacks on London did leftish rather than right-wing newspapers run pieces excusing suicide bombers who were inspired by a psychopathic theology from the ultra-Right?

Cohen’s is a brave voice, but not a lone one. In the upper reaches of the British press, Cohen’s outlook is shared, to a significant extent, by writers such as David Aaronovitch and John Lloyd as well as everyone’s favourite drink-soaked Trotskyist popinjay, Christopher Hitchens. Few writers have been as fiercely effective as Hitchens in skewering the moral frailty of those who marched to keep a torturer in power:

In the past decade or so had this ‘anti-war’ rabble had its way, we would have seen Kuwait stay part of Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo cleansed and annexed by ‘Greater’ Serbia and the Taleban retaining control of Afghanistan. You might think that such a record would lead its adherents to be dismissed as a silly and sinister fringe but instead it is they who pose as the principled radicals and their opponents who are treated with unconcealed disdain in the universities and on the BBC.

The positions taken by Hitchens, Cohen and others in the press have, more
recently, been reinforced by the bravery of other writers who have risked
placing themselves outside literary London’s comfort zone by being brave enough
to reject the moral relativism of so many on the left. Ian McEwan, Martin Amis
and, of course, Salman Rushdie have all argued, in different ways, that
Islamism is a totalitarian ideology, like fascism and communism before it,
which seeks to deny human freedom. McEwan has denounced the way in which the
Left is ‘morally selective’ in its outrage, denouncing America with greater
fervour than it can ever muster for criticising the record of Saddam or the
Taleban. Amis has been typically fearless in attacking those ‘people of
liberal sympathies, stupefied by relativism, who have become the apologists
for a creedal wave that is racist, misogynist, homophobic, imperialist and
genocidal’.

What marks all these writers out, apart from their courage and their literary stature, is their heritage as authors of the broad Left. They are figures of intellectual weight
whom the Left cannot plausibly paint as blinkered reactionaries, and whose
critique, therefore, demands to be taken seriously.

But will it be? There are signs that the intellectual challenge to left-liberal appeasement of Islamism is gathering growing support. The range of voices who have signed up to the muscularly liberal Euston Manifesto is one indication that the
Pilger/Chomsky/Guardian comment pages consensus is much less representative of
progressive opinion than it pretends. And, more recently, both Gordon Brown and
Ed Balls have called for an intellectual response to the challenge of Islamism
which stands comparison with the cultural resistance to communism developed by
Western intellectuals during the Cold War.

But victory in the Cold War depended not just on the voices of Western intellectuals, crucially it depended on Western governments giving support to those dissident voices which were struggling to be heard in the Eastern bloc. Where are the political leaders now who will defend liberal and progressive voices in the Islamic world in
the way in which Reagan and Thatcher championed the Sharanskys and
Sakharovs? The real heroes of the anti-Islamist intelligentsia are Arab
thinkers like Shaker al-Nabulsi who are challenging totalitarianism within
the Islamic world. If the West is really serious about winning hearts and
minds in this generational struggle, then it needs to show its support for
those who, in the least propitious circumstances, still have the bravery to
cry freedom.

from The Spectator, January 25th 2007

Daniel Johnson reports on Michael Gove's speech

Extracts from Daniel Johnson's comments in Contention, the COMMENTARY's blog.

The New Anti-Islamist Intelligentsia by Daniel Johnson

Yesterday Michael Gove, a Tory member of Parliament and the author of Celsius 7/7, a hard-hitting study of the London subway
bombers, asked an audience of the New Culture Forum a highly pertinent question: “Are we seeing
the emergence of a new anti-Islamist intelligentsia?”
Gove answered his own
question emphatically in the affirmative, and provided chapter and verse, too.
What adds lustre to his thesis is the remarkable fact that the most prominent
voices now being heard in protest against the scandalous alliance of the Left
with Islamo-fascism are themselves for the most part intellectuals with
impeccable Left-liberal credentials. Gove singled out the journalists Nick Cohen
(whose book What’s Left? How the Liberals Lost Their Way chronicles the
Left’s great self-betrayal), David Aaronovich (who defected from the Guardian to
the Times of London), and Christopher Hitchens, who needs no introduction for
American readers. Nick Cohen is also a leading light among the group of liberal
academics and writers who last year signed the Euston Manifesto,
distancing themselves from the Leftist consensus.
Most remarkable of all,
three of the most celebrated British novelists—Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, and
Martin Amis—have all come out strongly against Islamism. Amis even describes himself as an “Islamismophobe,” but the real objects
of his hatred are the “middle-class white demonstrators last August waddling
around under placards saying ‘We Are All Hizbollah Now.’” As he observes,
“People of liberal sympathies, stupefied by relativism, have become the
apologists for a creedal wave that is racist, misogynist, homophobic,
imperialist, and genocidal. To put it another way, they are up the arse of those
that want them dead.”
All of these prodigal sons are more than welcome in
their return to what those who have always defended it fondly persist in calling
Western civilization. Like many others, I have not forgotten Martin Amis’s essay
“Fear and Loathing,” published in the Guardian a week after
9/11, in which he wrote: “The message of September 11 ran as follows: America,
it is time you learned how implacably you are hated. . . . We would hope that
the response will be, above all, non-escalatory.” He and his intellectual
compatriots have come a long way since then—at least on seeing the threat of
radical Islam for what it is.

COMMENTARY is America’s premier monthly magazine of opinion and a pivotal
voice in American intellectual life. Since its inception in 1945, and
increasingly after it emerged as the flagship of neoconservatism in the 1970’s,
the magazine has been consistently engaged with several large, interrelated
questions: the fate of democracy and of democratic ideas in a world threatened
by totalitarian ideologies; the state of American and Western security; the
future of the Jews, Judaism, and Jewish culture in Israel, the United States,
and around the world; and the preservation of high culture in an age of
political correctness and the collapse of critical standards.

Michael Gove at The New Culture Forum

Michael Gove was the speaker last night at the New Culture Forum on the question of whether we are witnessing the emergence of an anti-Islamist intelligentsia. Held at Portcullis House, the event attracted over a hundred people; guests included Lord Trimble, Sir Andrew Green of Migration Watch, Claire Fox of the Institute of Ideas, Sunday Times columnist Minette Marrin, Ramin Gray, Assoc. director of the Royal Court Theatre, Spectator TV critic and author James Delingpole, Conservative A-Lister Sayeeda Varsi, the National Theatre’s Chris Campbell, writer and commentator Douglas Murray, the distinguished Egyptian academic Bat Ye’or, and the editor of ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie.

Gove’s speech was filmed by 18doughtystreet Talk TV, and ConservativeHome and The Croydonian today carry a detailed account of the evening. We’ll be returning to the event later in the week here at the NCF website.







Michael Gove, Sayeeda Varsi and Sir Andrew Green, Tim Montgomerie - 18doughtystreet Talk TV and ConservativeHome, Claire Fox - Institute of Ideas - and James Delingpole, Peter Whittle - director of The New Culture Forum.

Balls

David Aaronovitch in the Times today:

At the weekend the Chancellor’s main man, Ed Balls, was talking about the struggle against Islamist ideology. He drew a parallel between today and the Cold War. During the Cold War, he said, we’d fought against totalitarianism (what do you mean “we”, paleface?) with the weapons of culture. We’d used publications, books, films, everything we could, to join ideological battle with Soviet-style Communism. Had we done the same thing, he asked, in the fight against Islamism and authoritarianism?

The answer is no, we haven’t. We’ve been too busy complaining about the trains.

Many thanks to Marc Sidwell for pointing out to us this end paragraph from Aaronovitch’s piece in the paper today. But what films, books and cultural weaponry is Ed Balls referring to exactly? Which anti-marxist, anti-soviet movies did I miss? What books extolling the cultural and moral supremacy of the values of liberal capitalist societies did I not read? Which plays, novels, and BBC series dealing with the slaughter of 40 million Russians and maybe 70 million Chinese under communism did I not get to see?

The historian Robert Conquest is excellent on the cultural self-laceration of the West during the Cold War period (see, for example, The Dragons of Expectation).

But if you're with Ed, then please do send us your memories and cultural highlights of the great struggle carried on by the western cultural elites in the war against Left-wing totalitarianism. Now think hard!

What we want to read...

This week in The Spectator, two of our favourite most recent reads get very interesting reviews. Graham Stewart on George Walden's Time to Emigrate and Michael Gove on Mark Steyn's America Alone - THE dream ticket for NCF's Team members.

Our Best of:

I know that for many of my fellow panty-waisted, cheese-eating, surrender monkeys being harangued about our propensity for cultural suicide by cheerleaders for Bush can grate a little. But it would be a mistake to dismiss the author of America Alone as simply a jester at the court of King George W.(...)

That many of Steyn's conclusions will be unpalatable to the European consensus only underlines how much a failure to face harsh truths has characterised the European response to the scale of the terrorist threat we face.(...)

One of the biggest questions in contemporary European politics is how our societies manage relations between Muslim citizens and others, and that’s been reflected in the debate over the veil, the agonised questioning which followed the death of Theo van Gogh, and the controversy over the Danish cartoons.(...)

Steyn’s specific contention is that the problem is not so much multiculturalism as biculturalism. The danger as he sees it is the inherent tension between an increasingly liberal and hedonistic, yet diffident and uncertain, de-Christianised civilisation and an increasingly religiously zealous and culturally assertive Islamist movement. (...)

And a mention to Melanie Phillips in Michael's conclusion, what a treat!

But Steyn, like Melanie Phillips in her very different way, has done us all a service by ensuring that questions some would prefer to pass over are posed in a way it is impossible to ignore.

The full text is available here

And of course, you can still register to hear Michael Gove at The New Culture Forum on January 22nd - Are we seeing the emergence of an Anti-islamist Intelligentsia?

FG