Transcript - 'Mosque in Athens' Debate (2012)

ꕤ Transcript SOURCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNo59pQcyKE 'Mosque in Athens' Debate  27 Nov 2012 Douglas Murray British writer, journalist and commentator atheist ('cultural Christian', formerly Anglican) Douglas Murray's comments re Islamic extremism in Netherlands mean that he has to have a police guard when travelling there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Murray_%28author%29 TRANSCRIPT [for quotations, confirm audio] 25:39 Douglas Murray There, that's better.  Apologies for not being able to speak Greek and for not being able to work the microphone. It's very nice to be in Athens. I want to open by thanking the organisers for inviting me, for inviting our side, particularly thank, obviously, Intelligence Squared and also the British Council. I should also say at the outset, I also feel rather sorry for our opponents tonight, who have been appallingly set up, clearly, by the motion that we have been given. The motion that we are debating tonight is not whether or not the mosque should be built, the motion is that only good can come from building it. And it seems to me, that the only people who could possibly believe that are people who are extraordinarily naive, people who are extraordinarily ignorant, or something altogether worse. Now, I'm not a cultural relativist. I don't believe that all civilisations are equal.  I don't believe all cultures are equal.   That doesn't mean I don't believe we can't all get along. But I don't believe that we have to pretend, among other things, in debating things like this evening's motion, that we do not ourselves in Europe have a history that we would wish to defend, a culture we might wish to be proud of and to protect, and even to make value judgements about other ideas, other religions, other cultures. Now, it's my belief that Europe is based on the fundamental principles of Judeo-Christian civilisation and of Greek culture, and from this wonderful symbiosis of values, the history of Europe, the culture of Europe, has emerged. I believe, furthermore, that states have the right to decide, to at least have a say, in their own future; that waves of illegal immigration do not mean that cultures which have had such immigration immediately have to concede to the incomers. It's also, I should stress at the outset, is an important debate to have, because there is a problem that Europe is experiencing with Islam.  And I think we have to tackle this head-on. Islam is a very, very complex thing. Let nobody say that we on this side are essentialising Muslims, or generalising about Muslims, or aren't aware of the huge variety of practices and beliefs within Islam. But to create a massive centre at public expense in Athens at this moment should at least be questioned. We should at least be able to address whether or not it would seem to us to be like a good idea. Let me give you an example -- from my own country, from Great Britain -- of this kind of thing going on, because in Britain we have many mosques, many Muslim organisations are funded by the government, and I wanted to give one example of the sort of thing which the Athens mosque might yet become on this benevolent idea that if the government is behind it, only good can come from it. There's a mosque in London called East London Mosque.  The London Muslim Centre is attached to it. It has received a lot of public funding.  It's routinely hosting all sorts of great dignitaries, from the British political class -- and outside. The American Ambassador in London recently graced it with a visit.  The shadow Justice Minister recently graced it with a visit.  The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, graced it with a visit.  Even Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, is a regular. There's a veritable drive time at this mosque.  It's hard to get to it for the number of dignitaries cars that are forever drawing up outside. But is it the case that despite all of these grand official benedictions, it is a place from only which good can come? No.  Not at all. You just have to look at the type of people who preach there. I'm just looking over the last few years. Recently, Sheikh Khalid Yasin a popular preacher, who also preaches the virtues of public beheading, saying that it would be a grand thing to have in Britain because it would teach people not to murder if they saw heads rolling down the streets. It's hosted Sheikh  Al-Sudais, who believes that Jews should be annihilated. It's hosted Yasir Khadi, who's a holocaust denier. It's hosted among others, Bilal Philips, who is a proponent of suicide bombing. And it's also, perhaps most famously, hosted Anwar al-Awlaki, a man who is currently on the kill or capture list of that notorious hawk, President Obama. Just earlier today in London, a young man called Rajib Karim, was convicted of an attempt to bring down airlines -- blow up airline planes -- with the assistance of that man, Anwar al-Awlaki. So, it's clearly not the case that just because officialdom is involved that mosques are centres of wonder, loveliness and peacefulness, a sort of Anglican Church meets the Green movement. [audience laughter] It's also, I think worth noting, one or two of the oddities of Islam internationally at the moment and particularly in this regard. Islam, when it is in a minority, is extremely good at talking about tolerance. In a minority, Islam loves to talk about the tolerance that people must show towards the minorities. One of the things, however, if you look around the world -- and I'm sure I don't need to tell you this -- is that whenever Islam is in the majority, minority rights are nowhere to be seen. It's a one-directional talk of minority rights. When Islam is in a minority, it talks of the importance of human rights. When it is in a majority, those human rights -- including the most basic human rights, like the rights of women to be considered equal beings -- are thrown right out the window. And I think we also have to bear in mind that there is a problem in the world today of the direction in which organised Islam across the globe is growing. I think that there are many problems in the religion, as in most religions. Most religions have problems of some type to get over. But in Islam there is a particular problem of a magnetic literalism, which keeps on drawing people back to the violent tenets of the faith. You'd better hope, ladies and gentlemen, that your mosque here is a first internationally and that nobody with any unpleasant statements -- any unpleasant ideas -- could possibly come to it. You'd better hope that it's not like the US, for instance, where the Muslim Brotherhood movement, for instance, which Tariq's grandfather founded, recently was unearthed as saying that the job of Muslims was to make a civilisation conquest in the West. You'd better hope, ladies and gentlemen, that nobody would agree with, for instance, with Prime Minister Erodogan -- not a minority, not an unimportant figure -- when he says the mosques are our barracks, the domes are helmets, the minarets are bayonets and the faithful are soldiers. And, finally, you'd better hope that one of the most influential men today in Islamic terms, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi wouldn't have anything to get near this mosque -- any excuse to get near it -- because he said just recently in a fatwa on the signs of victory of Islam:      It means that Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror and a victor, after having been expelled from it twice.  Once from the south from Andalusia and a second time from the east, when it knocked several times on the doors of Athens. Ladies and gentlemen, you don't have to be naives and you don't have to be ignorant to notice that knock is happening again, and you don't have to open the door to it. Thank you. [applause] 34:35 ___________________________________ Khalid Yasin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_Yasin Sheikh  Al-Sudais https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Rahman_Al-Sudais Anwar al-Awlaki (al-Qaeda), Yemen cause of death:  Hellfire missile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki Rajib Karim - British Airways terrorist plot http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/feb/28/british-airways-bomb-guilty-karim Dr. Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips  - Jamaican-born Canadian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilal_Philips Said Ramadan Egyptian  - major figure Muslim Brotherhood {son-in-law of Muslim Brotherhood's founder, Hassan al-Banna} {father of Tariq Ramadan, prominent Egyptian-Swiss academic / Prof. Contemporary Islamic Studies} https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Said_Ramadan Tariq Ramadan prominent Egyptian-Swiss academic Prof. Contemporary Islamic Studies Oxford lecturer Islamic Studies {MA in Philosophy & French literature / PhD in Arabic and Islamic studies} advisor to the EU on religious issues sought for advice by EU on commission on "Islam and Secularism" 2005 - UK government task force European Muslim Network - founder & President (Brussels-based think-tank that gathers European Muslim intellectuals and activists) Govt Prohibition List 2009 - persona non grata in Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria. Persona non grata in Israel. prolific writer authored over 30 books, mainly in French https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariq_Ramadan Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister of Turkey since 2003 "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers..." 1998 conviction & minor jail-term for inciting religious hatred. [Isam-Watch] *Switzerland banned minarets in 30 November 2009 referendum, claiming that it's a symbol of Islam's political domination.  [Isam-Watch] Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi Egyptian Islamic theologian radical Muslim Brotherhood ideologue based in Qatar http://archive.adl.org/nr/exeres/788c5421-70e3-4e4d-bff4-9be14e4a2e58,db7611a2-02cd-43af-8147-649e26813571,frameless.html ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- ꕤ

Video - Mosque in Athens, Full & Related Articles

ꕤ Article SOURCE 'Mosque in Athens'  Debate - Intelligence Squared FULL VERSION 27 Nov 2012 Transcript Douglas Murray Link  |  here Last Updated: Tuesday, 18 July 2006, 11:24 GMT 12:24 UK Athens Muslims to get a mosque By Andrew Burroughs BBC News, Athens Ottoman mosque turned into museum This Ottoman era mosque is now a museum Plans for the first mosque in Athens since Turkish rule under the Ottoman empire have been given the go-ahead by the Greek parliament. Over recent years immigration has brought hundreds of thousands of Muslims to the Greek capital. But while freedom of worship is guaranteed by Greece's constitution as a member of the European Union, proposals for a new mosque have proved controversial in a country whose population is 96% Greek Orthodox. There are mosques dating from Ottoman times in the old part of Athens known as Plaka. The Fethiye or victory mosque dates back to 1458. But today these buildings are for tourists not for Muslim prayers. One is now a museum of Greek folk art. Athens is the only EU capital without a purpose-built place of worship for its Muslim population. The city's 200,000 or so Muslims have been meeting in disused basements and whatever space the community can find. Technically these buildings lack proper legal permission to function as places of worship, though the city authorities, aware of the problem, have allowed meetings to continue while a solution is sought. Demonstrations In the run-up to the Olympics, and under pressure to portray Greece as internationalist and conciliatory, the then socialist government chose a site for a Saudi-sponsored mosque and Islamic centre east of Athens to be visible from the international airport. That provoked demonstrations by nearby residents of the staunchly conservative town of Peannia. Today there's a small Greek Orthodox chapel on site, built to commemorate the protests which thwarted the mosque proposal. On special occasions a bell is rung, and on the hilltop a cross now defiantly looks towards the airport. "We are Orthodox Christians here," says Angelo Kouias, a Peannia resident, involved in the protests. "We believe that when you arrive at the frontier of Greece it would be better to see a church to symbolise our country rather than a mosque." "We don't want another Kosovo here close to Athens," says Dr Athanasius Papagiorgiou, a surgeon and president of the group which opposed the plan, the religiously conservative Association of St John. "Kosovo used to be a centre for the orthodox faith, and today it's nothing." Lost privilege Professor George Moustakis represents a different face of orthodoxy - a campaigner for interfaith understanding who joined a petition in favour of a mosque 17 years ago. "I've always opposed the connection of church and state here in Greece, which has meant the church took the decision about other denominations and other faiths and their buildings for worship," he says.  [But for all his airy-fairy ideals, he is paving the way to connection of Islam to state] "Parliament has now voted and the church lost that privilege. So there is no problem about the mosque, the government supports it, so does the Orthodox Church."  [All sold out to the Saudis?] With the church veto gone and support from the current centre-right government, Naim El Ghandour - who in daily life imports high fashion fabric designs - is the man coordinating plans for a new mosque to be built in the north of Athens. "The Muslims of Athens are Greek tax-payers and we have a right to pray in a respectful building," he says "We're asking the government for financial help. We're not looking for foreign sponsors, this will be a Greek mosque for Greek Muslims." [Solution:  live in Saudi Arabia & pray there.  Greeks are not Muslims.  All taxpayers are not equal.  No such thing as 'Greek Muslims'.  What a scam.  Greeks do not deserve the imposition of Islamic culture, religion and political power upon native Greeks, hundreds of years after fighting off Islamic invasion.] The saga of the Athens mosque finds echoes elsewhere in Europe. The city of Grenada in Spain has just witnessed the opening of its first new mosque since the 15th Century when the Spanish re-conquered the Iberian peninsula from the Moorish Islamic rulers who built the historic mosques and palaces of Andalusia.  [Sacrilege.  I'm not religious, but I see this as a desecration.  A desecration of European territory, history, culture and society.] The new mosque opened for worship only after two decades of objections from the local authorities on planning grounds. And in Italy a mosque planned for seven years in Colle di Val d'Elsa in a picturesque corner of Tuscany has divided the local community. There the local authority supports the need for a mosque but there have been objections from residents. It is a scenario likely to be repeated around the EU as the need for immigrant labour draws into the community those of a different faith, who then naturally wish to take up their equal right to a place of worship. [What, Latin America hasn't a population that would work in Europe?] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5190256.stm Published December 14th 2013 08:51pm Greek neo-Nazi party protests Athens mosque Shouting 'Greece belongs to the Greeks' and 'No mosque in Athens,' Golden Dawn's supporters stage rally Some 700 members and supporters of Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn protested Saturday against the construction of Athens' first official mosque, the state-run Athens News Agency reported. Shouting "Greece belongs to the Greeks" and "No mosque in Athens", protesters gathered in the Eleonas neighborhood in central Athens where the mosque will be constructed, according to the agency. Lawmaker Eleni Zaroulia -- the wife of Golden Dawn leader Nikos Michaloliakos -- and three more of the party's elected deputies reportedly participated in the protest. Michaloliakos is currently in pre-trial detention, charged with running a criminal organisation following a musician's murder by one of the group's supporters in September. In November, the government announced that a Greek consortium had been chosen to lead the construction of Athens' first mosque, 13 years after plans were first announced. Five previous attempts to find a business group to back the project had failed. Athens is one of the few European capitals without an official mosque, but in recent years several non-official places of worship have appeared in the Greek capital thanks to an increasing numbers of immigrants from countries such as Pakistan. [One of the few European capitals without an official mosque?  No wonder the clerics are issuing victory fatwas.] In 2011, the Greek government was forced to adopt a law ensuring the mosque's construction. But concerns over where to place the mosque and protests from the far right led to the failure of five contract tenders. The only official mosques in Greece are situated in the northeast region of Thrace, where a minority group of Muslim Turks live. http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/europe/131216-greek-neo-nazi-party-protests-athens-mosque Construction of First Mosque in Athens to Start Soon By Philip Chrysopoulos - Aug 5, 2015 Construction of the first mosque in Athens will start as soon as final details of the much-delayed project are ironed out and the building permit is about to be issued. It has been seventy years since it was decided to build a mosque in Athens. The delays have been a constant source of tension with the Muslim world. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation has been highly critical of the delays, with the Minister of Culture, Education and Religious Affairs Aristides Baltas stressing that these delays are used to defame Greece. ['seventy years' must be a mistake.  must be 7 years. / So Greece is being *bullied* into mosque building, given 'tensions with the Muslim world'.  Greece, tell them you'll comply when there's a magnificent church of victory erected in Mecca.] In recent years the tender for the construction had been repeated five times and a successful bidder was selected in November 2013. The project has a budget of 964,000 euros and it will be constructed on a plot of land owned by the Greek Navy. It is located in the area of Eleonas in Athens where a former Navy workshop building will be converted into a mosque. The last detail remaining is the settlement of a stream that should not cause any more delays. The building of the Athens mosque is one of the priorities of the SYRIZA government and Alexis Tsipras has promised that he will complete it. The project, however, is met with many reactions from the Greek Orthodox Church. Metropolitan Bishop of Piraeus Seraphim has appealed to stop the construction. http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/08/05/construction-of-first-mosque-in-athens-to-start-soon/ ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT About to watch the full video, having seen a clip of Melanie Phillips speak on the subject.  Initial impression:  Western civilisation is finished.  Europe is finished. The British Council is in the service of Saudi Arabia. Project 'Our Shared Europe' is a joke.  Especially coming from a nation that has allowed this to develop:  Britain White Flight Muslim Enclaves in Britain Sharia Courts / No Go Areas, Britain http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5177/no-go-zones-britain Neocon agenda British Council propaganda serves the interests of  those that do not have to live with the consequences of their demented policies -- yet. Europe permitted itself to be flooded by Muslim immigration and has dutifully permitted construction of mosques, while Athens is the sole remaining European capital that hasn't capitulated to Saudi Arabia -- and that presumably includes even Moscow, which recently opened a mosque. Greece is being bullied into constructing an Islamic edifice, despite the obvious and understandable opposition of the Greek people. Saudi Arabia is behind this mosque project and is most likely behind all the mosque projects in Europe, as radical Islamic clerics issue fatwas declaring victory of Islam over Europe. The EU is an organisation that promotes the interests of foreign entities and the destruction and Islamisation of Europe. Europe needs to reconfigure -- fast. Putin Opens New Mosque in Moscow Amid Lingering Intolerance By NEIL MacFARQUHARSEPT. 23, 2015 President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia spoke on Wednesday about Islam and the war in Syria at the opening of Moscow’s largest mosque. By REUTERS on Publish Date September 23, 2015. Photo by RIA Novosti/Reuters. Watch in Times Video » MOSCOW — Against rather long odds, including a hostile mayor, a vocal constituency irritated by Muslim rituals, and criminal rackets loath to see valuable real estate lost to charitable organizations, Moscow inaugurated a glittering, elaborate new mosque on Wednesday. It took 10 years to come to fruition, in fact. The opening was a singular event in a city where a wave of bombings by Muslim extremists that started around 2000 generated an animosity toward the faith that never entirely abated. Flanked by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, President Vladimir V. Putin used his speech at the inauguration of the mosque, which he called the biggest mosque in Europe, to emphasize that Russia would develop its own system of religious education and training to counter extremism. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/world/europe/putin-opens-moscows-most-elaborate-mosque.html?_r=0 Hey, Vlad, this the same Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey who declared and was convicted & imprisoned in 1998: mosques are our barracks, the domes are helmets, the minarets are bayonets and the faithful are soldiers. What a f*cking sell-out for gas pipes, Russia. And it's destined to blow up in your face spectacularly. Russia thinks it can appease Islam with 'religious education and counter-extremism training'. Just as Europe is finished, Russia is finished. Bibi, nuke the planet.  lol ꕤ