Moondog - perhaps you would like to explain why it is that you see non-Welsh speaking people moving into your beautiful Welsh countryside as genocide ? And yet here you are pretending that you like multiculturalism ?
You don't even like non-Welsh speakers in your village (or town or wherever it is you live in Wales) ? So, I wonder how happy you would be if a bearded, oh my God, MULSIM man and his family, who speaks very little English let alone Welsh, moved in next door to you in Wales ? May be he has already have which is why you are so cheesed off ?
I love a good debate, especially when the person I am talking to is intelligent and provides EVIDENCE (history, politics, law, whatever) rather than ANECDOTES to prove her/his point. There is a big difference between the two.
I am not an apologist for Islam or Muslims or atrocities committed under the name of Islam or any other banner. I do not like Sharia Law (as a lawyer who doesn't support capital punishment I would be a hypocrite if I did) nor do I support the oppression of women in any society.
But let's get something straight for everyone who thinks that saying any thing in support of Muslims is just being PC: bad legal systems, wars in the name of religion, the oppression of women, atrocities against ethnic minorities, etc have existed in Europe and throughtout what we now call the civilised world.
In fact atrocities still exist in the civilised world. Over 7,000 Muslims were murdered in a matter of hours BECAUSE THEY WERE MUSLIMS right here in the heart of Europe just a few years ago. Now, aren't we more civilised then "them" ?
My objection is that there are people on this website and elsewhere in our wonderful civilised Britain, who attribute atrocities ONLY to Mulsims and Islam without any regard to history, culture, political systems, geography etc.
To me that is racism pure and simple. This is exactly what members of the National Front are very good at doing: because women are dressed a certain way they MUST be oppressed, their men MUST be aggressive a...holes, they blow themselves up so they can enjoy 72 virgins in paradise (believe me there are easier ways of doing that - you can get yourself a ticket to Bangkok or Sri Lanka or somewhere else where there is a good trade going on in child prositution and if you are willing to pay, you can get yourself even more than 72 virgins right here in this world !! ).
I don't talk about Muslims or any other religious group in this manner, because I don't wish to be an apologist for the National Front.
ps - there has always been a debate among Muslim scholars about the true meaning and transaltion of the Hadith with respect to the meaning of the verses which contain the so-called "72 virgin" reference. There is a piece of research being undertaken right now somewhere in Luxemburg I believe by European academics who argue that the Arabic and Aramaic translations of that particular text are very different. Even the word "Houri" which can be translated into "virgin" means something completly different in Aramaic.
It will be interesting to see the academic debate which follows this research as it is clearly the basis for so much racist abuse aganist Muslims.
Another crucial point: the vast majority of Muslims, like the vast majority of Christians and Jews lead lives that do not involve them in politics. Even more importantly, millions of Muslims are secular both in their private lives and in their attitude towards politics. This is becoming increasingly important throughout Muslim countries where the young and women especially are fighting their own battles to reform their legal systems in favour of incresaing human rights. This is fact not fiction.
Lets' be very clear: questioning, analysing, debating are very different animals to criticising in the hope that one can prove a racist "we are superior to them" point.