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July 30th, 2014
You can read the backstory and inspiration for this one here.
PATRON NEWS. All the patrons who pledged $10 or more per month, and who told me which comic they’d like printed, had their prints sent out in the post yesterday. A large number of you haven’t yet said which print you’d like signed and sent, which is a bit worrying. Are you not getting the messages from Patreon? Maybe you should check your spam folder?
This month’s raffle prize, for patrons of $4 and over per month, is a signed personalised copy of Vol 4 – Big Al. The draw will be on 1st of August. Good luck!
Sadly, being 100% correct is sometimes not funny. Irony abounds. Author – more humour please – this being “spot-on” is simply too accurate to merit a smile!
Love the Guardian front page as well…………
The article claims the views of the Trojan Horse people are not Islamic. Really how does one discern True (TM) Islam from false, is there some objective test – thought not. This is the usual ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy. A pox on both their houses
This cartoon makes me wish I’d studied rhetoric in school. Then I might be able to come up with a succinct, effective rebuttal that might persuade the audience against Mo’s views (and might even persuade him). Lacking that, I direct Mo to the previous cartoon about free speech 🙂 .
Seriously, could it be that one of the reasons for the poor quality of public discourse these days is that so few people study rhetoric and debate anymore? People in developed countries seem to have gotten good at not being taken in too often by advertisements with pictures and/or video, but appear to be swayed too often by arguments and rhetorical devices that 16th and 17th century students would have recognized immediately and discounted.
Teaching that kind of thing to children in state schools? What could possibly go wrong?
Nothing new here Two Cents Worth. Don’t know when it started, but I remember in the early 1970s, when a Marxist-Leninist gang of students – claiming to represent the entire student body but “forgetting” to ask the rest of us what we thought – occupied the administrative wing of a new UK university and thereby deprived the us all of teaching for several weeks. The first thing they did was erect huge posters demanding “NO VICTIMISATION”. It’s a cheap cowardly trick aimed at disarming decent people, and we should not let ourselves be taken in by it.
Well done, Author – and Sarah Khan in the Telegraph. Keep up the good work. Don’t let these slimy bastards get away with their sick-making hypocrisy!
And while on this subject, wasn’t Ann Widdecombe playing the same victimisation card last week?
“Islamophobia — a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.”
Actually, this week’s cartoon is not very funny. Instead, it is sad. It demonstrates accurately, like almost nothing else I have seen, just how pernicious political correctness can be. PC is a kind of subtle censorship that prevents people from expressing opinions – even reasonable ones. To suggest that a point of view, held by another, is misguided, particularly if it deals with culture, race or religion, opens one to a charge of bigotry. And such a charge brings any argument to a close.
To avoid being called crazy, or a crook
Write something called a “holy book”
Their’s one born every minute
Waiting for some one to sucker it
To being a pious schnook.
A line by line syllable count of the latest …thing… by NBH: 11, 8, 7, 9, 7.
I’m cannot endorse this lates effort, Nassar. Also, rhyming ‘minute’ with ‘sucker it’? Aaargh!
If a phobia is an irrational fear, well, I think fear of Islam is quite rational. ‘Course that’s not what they mean. It’s very unfortunate that people have chosen to use “homophobia” to mean bigotry.
@holms
Dunno.
minute
su’crit
… it’s how you tell ’em …
Don’t give up so easily, David. If you recognise that charges og bigotry, Islamophobia are being thrown at you to “censor” or disarm you, deflect reasonable criticism etc. you should say so. Try saying “What PC bullshit!” It might disarm your critic(s), (You never know.) It might encourage others to hit back (Verbally and reasonably, of course!) At least, it would almost certainly make you feel better.
Holms:
Any regular will tell you that it is not productive to count NBH’s syllables, or criticise the rhymes. His verses are not limericks, but a 5-line form of his own invention, which you seem to acknowledge by calling it a ‘…thing…’ . Heaven knows, we’ve all tried to explain the form, but he
a) is immune to instruction or entreaty,
b) never replies (any more) and
c) has a very limited grasp of English pronunciation, spelling, stress patterns, and shades of meaning.
Despite these handicaps, he does sometimes hit the nail on the head.
Yes, I for one love NBH’s poems.
His contributions are very welcome in my corner of our local.
I can happily ignore arguments going on elsewhere when in the company of friends.
A webcomic that may be an apt comment on this cartoon and the previous one is on the Web at http://xkcd.com/1357/
When viewing the webcomic, let your cursor hover over the drawing, and you’ll see a pop up box with a continuation of the text.
Author,
I love your stuff. Keep up the good work sticking it to insane voodoo nonsense. The BTL comments are also tremendously enlightening and entertaining.
James Orphin asks how true islam can be recognised. As an atheist, I ask, is there a true version of any religion, a religion being a falsehood in the first place?
Yes, the Guardian is by far the worst newspaper for publishing articles explaining why there is nothing wrong with the Islam, and if there is a problem it’s somebody else’s fault.
But something most remarkable is also going on. Am I the only one who’s noticed it?
The great majority of comments on these articles are critical or negative! Guardian (website) readers are not so deceived (or that stupid). And the “recommendations” that readers give to comments they like, make criticism of the Islamic line overwhelming.
This was one of the highest scoring comments on a report “Muslim Council of Britain rejects findings of Trojan horse report”
“Islam has no place in UK institutions and dare I say in the eyes of most British people no place in modern Britain. To what extent does a tolerant society tolerate an intolerant faction of that society? If the Muslim leaders do not condemn this it means they approve and it means they are incredibly damaging”.
And on an article “Stigmatising Muslims won’t solve problems in Birmingham schools”
“Stigmatising Muslims won’t solve problems in Birmingham schools”. You have a point there. But how do you solve the problem of a section of society that wants to remove themselves from that society based on weird oppressive religious belief?
Here’s a thought to keep one awake Alah’s and JHV’s wrath for not clearing out Boko, bad priests and corrupt televangelists? . Spin is much of “news”.
.. and, in other news, “how many demons can dance with angels
on a pin” and “how to nail jelly to the ceiling”.
I’ll freely admit to chronic islamaphobia. I’ve read the Qur’an, I’ve read the commentaries, and I’ve tried to discuss a few concepts with local imams (not one of whom seemed to value humour of any kind; a failing common to all religious management).
So I’m fully qualified, I think, to say that nothing scares me more than the slippery entry into politics and custom of so-called “islam”.
“Peace”, my pale pink bum!
Cephas Atheos“So I’m fully qualified, I think, to say that nothing scares me more than the slippery entry into politics and custom of so-called “islam”.”
You are not the only one. The scariest aspect is that those in the halls of power seem to be collaborating in their own destruction for the benefits of the moment: money, temporary power that will vanish once the bogeymen take over, prestige that is equally as ephemeral and access to the goodies those bring. I know politicians are greedy, selfish, venal and mostly stupid but this strikes me as particularly thick.
Sucking off of the Islamic teat for a transient high is worse than traitorous, it is completely suicidal.
Like the imaginary war between the Christian Good and Evil, this is a binary situation; they want us all dead or converted with absolutely no possibility of compromise.
It is a basic tenet of the faith.
We have but one choice with two options: we surrender utterly and vanish from the universe forever under the static, granite heel of their pre-Lithic deity or we convert them to reason, effectively eliminating the false faith of Islam.
If we go under all hope for the species, for all species, dies with the last unbeliever.
The only reason Islam is “at peace” with us is because they are weaker than we, they are unsure they would win an ultimate jihad; when they are, we – the Wiccans, the anilmalists, the weaker sects in Islam, the Christians and the infidels – will die.
It’s a binary logic. They go or we die.
And with the monies from oil greasing their way into our institutions, with the creepy collaborators lick-spittling their owners’ way into the heart of our cultures, the end is inevitable.
We are dead.
Or, it might be nice …
Religion of peace, my arse. ‘Peace’ is one of those ‘hooray’ words that religion pays lip-service to in order to secure temporal power. Like so many ‘hooray’ words – freedom, justice, equality – when this word spills from the lips of a politician, religious or temporal, one can be sure that what s/he means is not the same as what the rest of us mean.
I don’t understand why people think Islam is any more scary than any other fundamentalist religion. Most Muslims are no different to anyone else; their religion is a once a week thing and they just want to get on with life. Yes, there are some really scary extremist Muslims who want a theocracy and advocate the murder of people who do not agree with them but there are also Christians who do exactly the same thing. Anyone seen any news from Uganda lately??????
The only difference between the two sets of nutjobs is that (at this moment in time, only) Muslim extremists have more power to hurt us in Western countries than do Christians (unless you count the USA where people in KKK outfits are taking guns to ‘protect’ the country from Mexicans crossing the border).
Pretty much spot-on, Mary. They’re all as crazy and power-power mad as each other. The only difference is that the Muslim extremists are more than ready to permanently silence the opposition (although the Israeli Jews are currently running them a close second), which is why you’ll hear comedians on the television tell plenty of jokes about all religions except the one.
I heard something strange the other day. I was watching a cookery programme and one of the presenter-chefs – a guy called Valentine something-or-other – was being shown by an Egyptian Muslim how to make some traditional Egyptian dishes. For reasons best known to himself, Valentine something-or-other was referring to the meat not as halal, but as ‘approved’.
Weird!
Had a run-in with a nutter in town last week. He was preaching in the market place and started on about how science had ‘proved’ that evolution was false. Of course I couldn’t let that pass without comment so decided to argue the point with him. I haven’t time now to go into details, but after a while I noticed that quite a crowd had gathered to hear our ‘debate’ and were obviously enjoying the spectacle judging by the quite voluble laughter to his increasingly inane arguments.
Long story short: he ran off and hid in Greggs bakery, and I got a round of applause from the audience and thanks from a lot of stall-holders who’d been forced to listen to his bullshit every market day for the last few weeks.
I’m told he didn’t show for either last friday’s or saturday’s market.
Acolyte, if he ate in Greggs he might never be seen again.
Be rasonable, I thought he might have come out with a crucifix fashioned from sausage rolls to exorcise m, but unfortunately he had neither the wit nor reason to come up with what could have been a very good joke on me.
Reminds me of a troll we used to have around here……….
By the way, loved your verse for this one, Nassar!
Kipling won my heart when he rhymed “sinew” with “in you”. Sorry, NBH, but rhyming “minute” with “sucker it” doesn’t even come close.
It seems your first two lines are often jewels of meaning and structure, but your efforts fall apart after that. Is it that you give up too easily?
Hello Darwin, how’s the shoulder coming along?
Acolyte, thanks for asking. I’m seeing improvement, as in less constant pain, but I still can’t raise my right arm. I suspect that it’s buggered unless there’s a surgical intervention. September I see a specialist again. He may opt for stitching a tendon back together.
How’s the sciatica?
I don’t know, man. Now my Facebook adversary is angry just because I used the phrase “bloodthirsty god of Abraham.” This from a Christian. I’ve got him trying to defend human sacrifice, because Jesus went willingly. I don’t see how that makes it better. Then he eats bread that symbolically represents human flesh. I used to do that too. Now I find it disgusting. Am I wrong?
Chiefy, I’m glad you gave up your symbolic cannibalism. How could that possibly be wrong.
Mary 2, I used to think that, until I had to go on a car journey with a colleague who taught in a muslim Sunday school. We were listening to the news in the bosses car when a news article about Israel/Gaza strip came on the radio. The guy just went off on a 5 minute rant about how the Jews had/controlled all the money in the world and should be wiped from the face of the earth. What got me was that the guy seemed to be a moderate integrated person, just like to play football with his mates. It shocked the rest of us into silence, until the boss stooped him. The thing that worries me is that he teaches in a Sunday school for children, this is the indoctrination that is going on and we all thought he was a reasonable person.
Mike N., yes that’s scary. Apparently the lot who flew the planes into the office buildings had been under the radar in America, going to night clubs and looking just like any other “integrated” American. It’s enough to make a man paranoid.