The war on Christmas: Largely a load of balls

Come on, people. Are we really still doing this? Despite Christmas being in everyone's faces everywhere from Detroit to Dubai*, from Canberra to Cape Town, from Toronto to Timbuktu, people still insist on whining about the alleged war on Christmas.

Stop it. Please. Give it a rest. You are being ridiculous and childish. You are embarrassing yourself. If someone wishes you "Happy holidays!" instead of "Merry Christmas!", you are not being oppressed. If any location that is not actually a church does not want to display a nativity scene or hold a carol-singing event, you are still not being oppressed. Christmas has not been cancelled.

Unhappy about the commercialisation of Christmas? Er, don't buy any presents then. It's not compulsory. Upset about the festival of gluttony that is Christmas dinner in your country? Go spend the day volunteering at a soup kitchen. Nobody is forcing you to spend piles of money on presents or food.

If you are a Christian living in Daesh-occupied territory, in Saudi Arabia or North Korea, then yes, you are being oppressed if you want to celebrate Christmas. But these aren't the people who generally whine about the war on Christmas, probably because they are busy trying to survive if they live under the rule of the Daesh losers, King Salman or Kim Jong-un. They are three regimes where being a Christian can cost you your life. I am yet to come across a "war on Christmas" whiner who is in genuine mortal danger for being a Christian or observing any of the traditions of the festive season.

If you can decorate your house in lights galore, put up a Christmas tree, display a nativity scene, nobody has attacked you for saying "Merry Christmas", and you can freely attend Christmas church services and sing carols, you are not a victim in a war on Christmas. You are not a victim at all. Why don't you speak up on behalf of the real victims - the Christians who are not safe in brutal regimes - instead of carrying on like a spoilt brat who didn't get the right bike from Santa?

On Christmas Day, someone will probably be killed by Daesh for being a Christian or for being the wrong type of Muslim. On Christmas Day, there will be no church services in Saudi Arabia. On Christmas Day, there will be Christians in North Korea languishing in prison for their beliefs. That is real oppression.

To compare a cheerful "Happy holidays!" greeting and to bang on about "political correctness gone mad!" is to be revoltingly insulting to those who are in real danger, who do not have freedom of religion, who have to hide their faith for fear of arrest or worse.

Enough of the hollow whining about a war on Christmas. It's as tinny as cheap tinsel.





* I know Dubai is in the UAE, which is a Muslim country. Christmas is indeed a big deal in Dubai. I used to live there, I have never seen so many big Christmas trees in my life and there are plenty of churches for those who choose to observe the season.



Photography by George Hodan

Thoughts on Paris after the inevitable atrocity

Here, in no particular order and with absolutely no sense of optimism about anything I say having any kind of influence, are some musings on the aftermath of the horrific events that took place in Paris on Friday.

1. Firstly, let us refer to Islamic State as Daesh for they really hate it. This is something people from across the political spectrum agree upon. Hell, I even agree with Tony Abbott on this one. That said, it is important to recognise that they are indeed attempting to create a state, they have had some success in doing so over relatively large areas, and, therefore, it is important to treat them like any other vile, repressive state. We should not recognise their sovereignty over the land they have stolen. We should not trade with them. We should join with the people who have lost everything in doing all we can to help them return home and for prosperity and peace to prevail.

2. We need to call on the countries that surround Daesh's territory to come together as one on this issue, even if they disagree on many other issues. Saudi Arabia, in particular, cannot continue enabling Daesh's ongoing existence - they have played a major role in creating what is essentially a more violent version of the absurd Wahhabism that has turned Saudi into a gruesome laughing stock, even among its Arabian Gulf neighbours. And Saudi's neighbours have played their role in enabling poisonous ideology to spread, even if this has sometimes occurred by complacency rather than design. In any case, no one country or small group of countries should ever play the role of the global policeman.

3. And just as we need to acknowledge that Daesh's ideology is a particularly vile theocracy that is just as political as it is religious (if not more political than conveniently religious...), the West needs to acknowledge its role in destabilising the Middle East. This has been going on for a while now. And all we are left with are crude hypotheticals to which we will never know the answers. These include: Would 9/11 have happened if Gore than Bush was president? Regardless of who was president and 9/11 still happened, what would have happened if America took a truly Biblical turn-the-other-cheek approach and didn't plough into a misguided war with Iraq? What the hell has killing Osama bin Laden achieved apart from a mic-drop moment for Barack Obama? What intelligence has died with bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and even the relative minnows, such as Mohammed Emwazi?

4. Merely attempting to bomb our way out of the current state of affairs is probably not going to be particularly effective. Daesh should have its lines of communication cut off too. In the aftermath of this weekend's events in Paris, some idiots seemed amazed that murderous thugs in the Middle East could communicate with murderous thugs in France. It is the same mentality that leads to people saying moronic things such as: "Those people cannot be refugees if they have mobile phones!" as if modern telecommunication only happens in the West. Bombs are raining down on Daesh targets in Raqqa as I write this post but it will not be enough. The city was already bombed last November and the main casualties were civilians.

5. Likewise, Daesh should have its weapons supply lines cut off. This will be quite the task but it is essential. Daesh's arsenals are made possible because of modern transportation as well as weapons from eastern European arms manufacturers getting safe passage into Syria through Turkey, Libyan armouries ending up in Syria, captured arms from the US and Saudi ending up in extremists' hands, arms supplied by funding from Saudi extremists with Saudi laws against such funding not really being enforced at all, Daesh sympathisers in Pakistan and Afghanistan obtaining US surplus from the black market in Quetta and Peshawar...

And then there is the money to be made from the global arms marketplace that supplies the "good guys", but war has always been great for business.

6. There has been some good and responsible reporting on the events in Paris amid the bloody awful reporting. Tragically, Sky News word-puker Kay Burley tweeting a picture of a dog with the words "sadness in his eyes" was not even the daftest thing she did this weekend. She also asked someone lining up to give blood why they were giving blood. Merde, I dunno, Kay. Because they were really looking forward to the banana afterwards?

7. The relentlessly hungry beast that is 24/7 news coverage has given rise to some awful journalism, in particular on the issue of passports found at the scene. Most distressing was an Egyptian passport found at the Stade de France that some reporters were quick to link to the terrorists, except it turned out to belong to a spectator who is currently critically injured. Unfortunately, the nonstop model of news means that being first tends to take precedence over being accurate.

8. Andrew Marr got it so wrong this morning on BBC when he said that Paris is the only story today. No. It is not. There are other ongoing stories that have a Paris terror angle, such as the government's rush to pass the snoopers' charter even though such powers proved ineffective in France this weekend, what impact cuts to police, the military, and the NHS will have if a similar attack happens in the UK, and the refugee crisis. But even so, there are still other stories both in the UK and abroad that still need to be reported and it would have been good to see coverage of other news especially when the news channels inevitably started repeating themselves and news tickers remained unchanged for hours.

Amol Rajan, who often makes sense, described 9/11 on Marr's programme as an attack on capitalism. No. It was not. The twin towers were an easy target for amateur pilots. It was an attack on so much more than that. Equally, Bono describing the attack on the Eagles of Death Metal concert in Paris as an attack of music was head-up-the-arse nonsense of the highest order.

9. Despite what you may be seeing, hearing and reading in mainstream media sources, there are plenty of brilliant journalists out there who are working tirelessly to cover stories other than Paris. Lebanon, Yemen, Burma, Iraq, South Sudan, Kenya, the list goes on of places where newsworthy events are taking place. Despite what many a moaner says, other stories are being reported - but you might have to actually do some damn research and find some alternative news sources or recognise that it was covered in mainstream news outlets but you might not have bothered to pay attention. Additionally, local and regional news sources are often easily found online - and when you do find these stories, share the hell out of them. In this free market world of news, consumers have the power to give all manner of news the airplay it deserves.

10. An interesting quote from Richard Dawkins that sprung up this weekend deserves more analysis: "They're the ones who don't take their religion seriously." He was referring to the religious people, in particular Catholics and Muslims, who he deems to be "good". My instinctive interpretation of "not taking religion seriously" is to refer to the people who happily identify with a particular religion but don't follow every single example of their faith's book to the letter.

They are, for example, the Muslims who drink alcohol, the Muslims and Christians who have sex outside of marriage or blaspheme when they're angry or surprised, the people who may indeed have conservative attitudes to issues such as homosexuality but do not believe that execution is an appropriate punishment despite some of the more startling passages from their holy books, the people who may indeed be offended at jokes at the expense of their faith but do not seek to kill or even arrest anyone over such humour.

The phrase "don't take their religion seriously" is a glib soundbite but my broader interpretation probably encompasses more religious people than we realise, even those who may bristle at being described in that manner. It strikes me as a lazy shorthand term for moderate religious people but, in my experience, moderates are actually the majority. It's just that moderate voices, especially in the wake of terror attacks, are seldom heard. Noisy idiots, such as Anjem Choudry, end up getting airplay as representing entire faiths and all this achieves is a recruitment drive for Daesh.

11. It's OK if you don't put a French flag filter on your Facebook profile photo. It's OK if you do. Whatever you do, don't be dick about it. There are enough of those in the world already. See Bono etc.



Photo by Lode Van de Velde

We're at war with IS. So what now?

We are at war again. Gulf War Three. Because nothing much was really made better with Gulf Wars One and Two. But here we are again, starting with air strikes because they are more palatable to the public. Air strikes are very good at killing innocent people but don't worry your pretty little heads about that. After all, Bush and Obama have both been pretty prolific with their drone attacks over the last 13 years. This is nothing new. What are a few more planes between allies, eh? You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs and all that.

But the reality is that there will be boots on the ground. We can share pictures on social media all we like of the Emirati woman who pilots a fighter jet, we can rejoice in the poetic justice of a woman dropping bombs on vile excuses for men whose attitude to women is stuck in the Dark Ages, we feel comfortable with air strikes as a sanitised form of warfare. It is just like a computer game, isn't it? The fighter pilots don't look into the eyes of the people they kill. But air strikes are just the start in the war on IS.

If you have an appetite for this war, you need an appetite for the realities of ground offensives, of deadly foot patrols, hand-to-hand combat, guerilla tactics, of soldiers playing the awful balancing act of gaining trust among terrified communities while not trusting those who seek to destroy and maim us. This is what we are signing up for when we join this war.

The war against IS will not be quick and it will not be pretty. Given that air strikes did not root out Saddam Hussein from a pitiful hole in the ground or see off Osama bin Laden in a house in Pakistan, this latest conflict is bound to be more than a few planes dropping bombs. It could be argued that killing Saddam and bin Laden was a mistake as we will never know what intelligence died with them, but it's too late to reverse those decisions now.

Do we trust that this time things will somehow be different and the allies will be able to eliminate IS leaders and completely disable this latest evil? I don't know and I don't think our leaders do either. With the Syrian situation muddying the waters, it will make the job of determining who to trust and who to eliminate even tougher.

But in the meantime, we need to be far more reasonable closer to home. If I was a Muslim who had no desire to kill people - and I would include every Muslim I know in that category, both observant and nominal - I would be sick and tired of the constant calls for "moderate Muslims to speak out against the violence." As a religion of 72 sects, no one Muslim can speak out for all Muslims any more than one Roman Catholic or one Presbyterian speaks for all Christians.

And, secondly, here in the UK more than 100 Muslim leaders issued a statement to the Independent newspaper calling on IS to release Alan Henning, who we now know has been beheaded, as well as condemning the previous executions and challenging the IS interpretation of jihad.

So if any newspaper, TV or radio programme wants to interview someone who can offer a moderate perspective from the Islamic community, you have a list of more than 100 to choose from. Knock yourselves out. Get your underpaid researcher to find their contact details. Surely one of them will be available for your time slot.

Do not instead trot out Anjem Choudary yet again. I am starting to think both Choudary and Nigel Farage have their own dressing rooms at the BBC.

Choudary's hateful views get a ridiculous, unbalanced level of airplay and he is a very effective radicaliser of young people, a fine recruiter for IS. This is because he is charismatic, articulate and smart. You may not agree with any of his awful opinions but he is not an idiot. He knows exactly what he is doing and he does it well. He makes extreme views sound reasonable to vulnerable minds. He remains calm, he smiles, he gives politician's answers to simple questions, he answers questions with more questions, he lets the interviewers become agitated. He appeals to disenfranchised young people who feel they have nothing to lose and, equally, he appeals to privileged young people seeking to rebel.

He exercises his right to free speech at public demonstrations all the time. If other Muslim leaders were allowed his level of exposure, we might have a sporting chance at a more balanced dialogue here. Anjem Choudary is a troll, a warped Islamic version of Ann Coulter. They are two sides of the same extremist coin and they are effectively silencing other voices.

And while this noise carries on, remember, we are still at war. This will be our reality for a long time yet. And if it comes with the soundtrack of Anjem Choudary's analysis, the end will really be nowhere in sight.


Photography by William Morris.