Yes, Muhammad did ascend to heaven on a winged horse | Mehdi Hasan

I’m not a big fan of Mehdi Hasan. But I think he acquitted himself pretty well here. At least he seems to have done the research. 

Richard Dawkins I am a big fan of, and have been for decades. He’s famous for his books on evolutionary biology. But most famous for his books on atheism, especially “The God Delusion”. 

I’m a long-time atheist myself. Since at least 1958. So of course I agree rather more with Richard than with Mehdi.

This debate took place at the Oxford Union in November 2012. I saw it long ago. I’m posting again because it just appeared in the algo, and it’s fun. And evergreen important. Faith vs Science? What’s not to like? 

I think that today, 14 years later, the audience would be more unruly. More openly hostile, likely more hostile to Richard than Mehdi. Just a guess. Based on recent Oxford union debates I’ve seen. Things have just gotten sharper, more polarised, more verbally and physically violent. Sad. 

On the issue of the Winged Horse, Richard missed a trick here. He could’ve said it’s aerodynamically impossible for avian wings to lift the mighty mass of a horse. If Mehdi counters with “Oh well, it was a miracle, after all”, the counter-counter is “Then why bother with any wings at all?”.  

And, if feeling cruel or mischievous to a pious Muslim, you could add: “Kind of like putting lipstick on a pig. Isn’t it?”

By the way, the Kenyan guy posting this says Richard is “wrong about biological sex”. No, he’s not. I have no idea what makes this random dude an expert. Sheesh. The science is as clear about this as it is about anything. Mammals are Class with two biological sexes. They have been for at least 210 million years. 

"Vehicle" goes rogue and plows into Berlin crowd...

... kills and maims dozens. 

Strange how these "vehicles" seem to have a mind of their own and plow into LGBT Pride parades and Christmas festivals. That's what we read in the headlines. A "vehicle" plowed into the crowd. Nary a mention of who might have been at the wheel or why....

Vince Dao can talk about this openly. As I cannot; this elderly, white, heteronormative, male. I mean, I can, but I’ll be labelled an “elderly, white, heteronormative, male” who has no right to speak because “no lived experience”. 

Vince's parents are Vietnamese refugees from the 1970s. They've done well in America, as has Vince himself and he talks of the family's gratitude to the U.S. for taking them in, and allowing them to prosper.  

Not so everyone. Many hate the west. Hate the country that's given them refuge. And try to kill random of its citizens. Guess who? I let Vince tell you. Spoiler: if you jumped to a conclusion, you're likely correct. 

Despite which the MSM in Germany and the U.K. tries to paint this as somehow the fault of media in the west that's not as leftie as the mainstream broadcasters. Which is absurd, but, I guess, a distraction. 

“Woke activists cope and seethe…”.   Greg Foreman 

Islamist is attacks. Berlin, London, New York. Winston Marshall. Winston talks of how “radical, extremist vehicles” keep on attacking crowds in the West.

Why Islam is not compatible with the West

The Short is here. 

Above: a short, simple and clear explanation. Why Islam is not compatible with the West.

By Benedict Beckeld.

Shorter Beckeld: Islam is both a proselytising religion, AND a political religion. In that, it’s unique amongst the Abrahamic religions. 

Christianity is proselytising, but not political. (Give unto Caesar what his Caesar's and unto God what is God's)

Judaism is political, but not proselytising. It's super-hard to convert to Judaism. 

Islam is both proselytising AND political. It's a totalitarian system of life. It's super-easy to convert to Islam. Once you're a Muslim you have a whole swathe of stuff you have to do, because you're Muslim. One of those is to try to convert those around you. If necessary, by war, by Jihad. 

THAT's why Islam is incompatible with western societies. Which make a clear and clean distinction between the Church and the State. Between what’s private between you and whatever god you believe in; and your public duties, rights and obligations. 

Happy "Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Establishment Day"

The girls above, on our very own Discovery Bay beach, July 1, 1997, will now be in their early thirties! Wearing Hong Kong bauhinia flag and Union Jack shirts. Behind them, folks wearing China and British flag shirts.  Credit: South China Morning Post.

By the way, I prefer “Happy Reunion Day”. Much simpler and just as correct. The headline phrase is typical apparatchik jargon… 

From my post last year:

Happy "Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Establishment Day". A Hong Kong holiday. 

28 29 years ago that Hong Kong was handed over to the Chinese government, by the UK government. 

In Chinese it's 回归, Hui Gui, which is much simpler and much more descriptive. It means "the return of Hong Kong to our beloved motherland". 

28 29 years ago, last night, Jing and I sat in a Wanchai Bar, watching the proceedings. All the Chinese army waiting on the Shenzhen side, to cross over into Hong Kong on the stroke of midnight. 

It was a very wet, rainy night. Prince Charles was here for the handover, and famously described the Chinese bureaucrats at the ceremony as "appalling old wax works". It would be good if he was as honest today about Islam in Britain as he was then about those appallling Chinese apparatchiks. 

Jing was pregnant with John, who was born two weeks later. 

The Chinese largely kept out of Hong Kong politics, until forced to do so by the riots of 2019. But even then, I think it's fair to say, they handled that with a light hand, given what they could have done and many people, including people here in Hong Kong, were calling for them to do. 

One simple thing to note: unlike most post-colonial places, Beijing has not demanded the change of a single name of a single street or building in Hong Kong. It's still Victoria Harbour, Victoria Park, Queen Elizabeth street, Pottinger St, Des Voeux road, and so on. I'd guess there's been more renaming in Australia than here in Hong Kong. 

It's not rich vs poor, it's makers vs takers | David Friedberg

David Friedberg: It's not rich vs poor, it's makers vs takers.

@friedberg:

The great lie is that there are two sides to society, that is the rich and the poor.

And the great truth is that there are two sides that are the makers and the takers.

The lie is that the rich are unfairly rich and the poor are unfairly poor, and therefore, the poor must take from the rich.

But the truth is that it's the takers that tell you that lie, that the real truth is that artists, plumbers, electricians, woodworkers, computer scientists, people that build, people that make from all walks of life, all income levels, all wealth brackets, are the makers.

And the takers are what Sacks calls this intelligentsia, the analysts, the espousers, the armchair mechanics, the critics, the commentators, the politicians. They are the takers.

They are the people that watch the rest of society make stuff, build stuff, specifically doing things that create value for other people in society. That's what a maker is.

Who allocates capital better? Makers or Takers? Success-motivated individuals or power-obsessed governments? Case in point:

A socialist may object: “private companies also fail”. Indeed they do. And when they do, they forfeit their money. Theirs and their backers’ money. When governments fail, they waste your money. Our money. 

Herat Horrors. Women killed for clothing choice

Your humble blogger, in Herat, Afghanistan, 1975

I thought about Herat because of recent horrid news that Afghani women in Herat are being shot, beaten, killed, imprisoned, because they're not following ever more draconian rules on what they can or can't wear. 

"Women in Afghanistan have officially lost all rights": link to the post by Jahanzib Wesa, summing the situation there for women. It's grim. 

Wesa asks: where's the outrage? Where's the U.N.? Where are the progressive women in the west? Why aren't they speaking out?

It got me remembering when we were there in Herat in 1975. It was pretty much the same then as it is now. 

But, you know, I didn't really think about it much at the time. Just seemed like, well, that's their culture. Because that's what they told us. I guess if we'd been asked, we might have voiced some doubts about the Burka. But we weren't asked so we didn't voice. 

It was over 50 years ago. Islam was not much of a thing. And the "culture" they told us about, they didn't tell us that it was Islam that made them suppress women like this. If anyone thinks that wearing those "Spook" costumes is no big deal, talk to women who've done it and have since liberated themselves. 

And then look below at how women are being treated by armed thugs, still, today, in 2026. Fifty years on. It seems, if anything, worse than when we were there half a century ago. It's their culture, innit.

The Ford Anglia we drove London to India, in 
the Khyber Pass, nearing Herat

Khyber Pass transport, 1975 (it's the same today...)

Full burka, Herat 1975, as today. Caption not mine...

Herat, courtyard of our lodgings. Ray, Sally, Robyn
and Herati locals. 

Herat, June 2026. 

Herat, June 2026

By the way, the photo of me at the top... that's before I got Amoebic Dysentery in Herat and had to rest-up for 6 weeks, eating only hard boiled eggs, and dosing on opium that my travel mates were kind enough to go out and score for me (though tbf, it was pretty easy). 

I found opium a Very Nice Drug.... (The dysentery not so much).

For me, amoebic dysentery kept recurring for years. One thing it did: kept me slim. When I arrived back in Australia, I shocked my family be being rake-like, a kind of hat-stand skinny. 

==================================

ADDED. I asked AI if it's still a problem in Afghanistan:

Yes, amoebic dysentery (amoebiasis) is still endemic in Afghanistan. It continues to be a widespread public health issue due to challenges with water sanitation, limited healthcare infrastructure, and poor hygiene. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

"Women in Afghanistan have officially lost all their rights" | Jahanzib Wesa

Women in Afghanistan have officially lost all their rights: - They are no longer allowed to attend school after the 6th grade. - They cannot leave their home without being accompanied by a male family member. - They are forbidden from speaking in public, and it is now illegal for their voice to be heard by other women. - They cannot receive medical care without the presence of a male guardian. - Ban on entering certain parks, gyms, and leisure venues. - Restrictions on long-distance travel without a male escort. - Massive reduction in the presence of women in media and television. - Some female journalists and presenters have been forced to cover their faces on screen. - Women's protests strongly repressed in several cities. - Reinforced segregation between men and women in many public spaces. - Increased difficulty in obtaining certain jobs, starting a business, or participating in political life. - Some schools or professional training programs reserved for women have been closed. - Restrictions on music, artistic, and cultural activities involving women. - Strengthened controls on social media and the public expression of Afghan women. Nice to be a woman over there in 2026... And the list is still very long!

Via Jahanzib Wesa

See also my next post: Herat Horrors: Women Killed for Clothing

Iran: “An Islamic terrorist theocracy that worships death” | Lisa Rosen

Iran’s Supreme Leader Khomeini proudly states that never-ending bloodshed and mass executions are divine Islamic worship, the very essence of “the teaching of Islam.”

This is the open glorification of human sacrifice.

This is why the Ayatollah regime publicly executes opponents, protesters, journalists, rape victims, and gay people with medieval brutality.

This is also exactly why Iran arms and funds Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria.

The regime is not interested in “resistance.” It is building a barbaric Islamist empire that spreads its savage Sharia laws by fire and sword across the region and beyond.

The world must stop pretending Iran’s Islamic Republic is a normal country. 

It is an Islamic terrorist theocracy that worships death. It must be confronted, isolated, and ultimately defeated.

Click

The ENTIRE history of Islam…

The ENTIRE history of Islam…in 68 minutes.

Dr William Federer knows how Islam and describes it well in this breezy lecture, above. 

He gets a bit Biblical at times and I could do without that. But I understand it and I’m fine with it. 

If Christianity was ever Martial, or if it ever was aggressively proselytising, it surely is not now. There’s just one Martial faith, just one aggressively proselytising religion in the world today, and that’s Dr Federer’s  topic: Islam. The history of.

In 68 minutes.

I have no problem with Islam…

 I have no problem with Islam…

Really! 

Banging on here for 17 years about Islam. But I have no problem with it?!

Well… I’m just like Imtiaz Mahmood: 

I have no problem with Islam. 

I’m just against beheading, stoning, marrying little girls, sexual slavery, taqiyya, slave trading, rape, forced conversions, jihad, burqa, attacking other religions, child abuse, women abuse, animal abuse, multiple wives, murder, Sharia, terrorism, brainwashing, intolerance, greed, anti-science, torture, illiteracy, gluttony, genital mutilation, inbreeding. 

Does that make me Islamophobic?  

Click

Africa: where rape victims are stoned to death

Shortly after the Bearded Men took over in Iran, in 1979, a book came out called “The Stoning of Soraya M”. I read that book and it stuck in my mind ever since. That a woman in Iran could be stoned to death because of alleged adultery. In the 20th century. 

The case below is even worse. A younger woman… a girl of 13. And an alleged rape of the young girl. In Somalia. While her father and brothers looked on. In Africa. In the 21st century…

Is it true? We have the NBC’s word for it. Also it’s consistent with what we know happens around the Islamic world. 

Rape victims are often accused of adultery under Sharia law if they report being raped by married Muslim men.

Here is a shocking example:

A 13-year-old girl in Somalia was raped by a married Muslim man. Instead of punishing the rapist, an Islamic Sharia court sentenced the little girl to death. The Muslim rapist accused her of “seducing” him by appearing in public, and the court agreed — convicting her of adultery.

Hundreds of Muslim men gathered to stone her to death as an offering to Allah. 

They laughed, cheered and shouted “Allahu Akbar” as she screamed in agony until her last breath. Not one man stepped forward to save the 13-year-old rape victim.

Everyone in the village heard her cries for help before the execution. Instead of intervening, they tied her hands behind her back and chained her feet. The local imam directed the men to dig a hole and bury her up to her waist so she could not move or dodge the stones aimed at her head.

For hours before and during the stoning she begged for mercy, looking toward her neighbors, her father, and every Muslim man taking part. Until her final breath she cried out, but no one rescued her. Of the hundreds of men present, none showed compassion. 

The participants gladly joined this Islamic act of worship, ignoring her pleas and rejoicing with “Allahu Akbar” while brutally killing her.

This is not an isolated barbaric act.

This is Sharia law in practice — where the victim is punished and the rapist protected if he is married.

Not all cultures are equal.

Some protect the innocent.

Islam punishes the raped girl and calls it justice.

The West keeps importing this ideology while pretending it is compatible with our values.

It is not.

Share this. The world must see the true face of Sharia and stop the denial. Click

Zionism = the right to CONTINUED existence

Israel’s right to exist is based on:

• History
• International recognition 
• Morality
• Law: Uti possidetis juris
• Power

And… the Old Testament of The Bible. Not persuasive to an atheist like me (also a Zionist), but persuasive in a region steeped in religion. Where even the enemy, Islam, recognises the Bible. Indeed the Koran is a hodgepodge of half understood cribs from the Bible. Including the Jewish Torah. 

Israel is older than 70% of the countries in the United Nations. It is a living place. An important and influential country politically, technologically, economically, strategically, existentially. 

The Real Reason Muslims fight Israel

Islam is the obstacle to peace — not Israel or Zionism.

This is Dr. Tawfik Hamid, an Egyptian expert on Islam.

In this powerful old video he cuts through all the lies and exposes the truth.

The whole “Free Palestine” thing is absolute hogwash.

It is not about the land. It never was.

It is about Islam’s death cult.

The Palestinians are simply Arab Muslims who believe that killing Jews guarantees them a place in Islamic paradise. Click 

French poison. The “logic” that created Woke

An Occasional Reader, an Israeli, resident in Tel Aviv, asked me the other day: “why did the world turn so suddenly and completely against Israel?”. She thought it was “difficult to understand”. 

I said I thought it was easy to explain. Even if each of the individual reasons is complex, the overall is easy to understand. It’s the “Red-Green alliance”. Red being the lefties. Green being Islamist. 

They share a common enemy. The west. 

The West is Enemy to the Reds because they believe in socialism, communism, and so the need to overthrow capitalism. Which means overthrowing the West.

The West is enemy to the Greens because Islam must dominate the whole world. The West defends freedom of religion, especially Judeo-Christianity. So they must overthythe West to overcome their main enemies, the enemies of Allah.

Part of the brainwashing of the Left, so that they buy-in to overthrowing the West, has been “the long march through the institutions” by a soft and sneaky form of Marxism. The Marxism of post-Modernism. Cultural Marxism. Neo-Marxism. 

Which Brivael Le Pogan describes below. Writing in French. Translated by X:

I want to offer my apologies, on behalf of the French, for giving birth to French Theory (which in turn gave birth to the worst of all ideological monstrosities: wokism).

We gave the world Descartes, Pascal, Tocqueville. And then, in the intellectual ruins of post-1968, we gave Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze. Three brilliant men who forged, in the elegance of our language, the ideological weapon that today paralyzes the West.

We must understand what they did. Foucault taught that truth does not exist, that there are only power relations disguised as knowledge. That science, reason, justice, the medical institution, the school, the prison, sexuality—everything is merely a staging of domination. Derrida taught that texts have no stable meaning, that every signifier slips away, that every reading is a betrayal, that the author is dead and the reader reigns supreme. Deleuze taught that we should prefer the rhizome to the tree, the nomad to the sedentary, desire to the law, becoming to being, difference to identity.

Taken individually, these are debatable theses. Combined, exported, and popularized, they form a system. And that system is a poison.

For here’s what happened. These texts, unreadable in France, crossed the Atlantic. The departments of Yale, Berkeley, and Columbia absorbed them in the 1980s. They found there a soil that did not exist among us: American Puritanism, its racial guilt, its obsession with identity. French Theory married this substratum, and the child of that union is called wokism.

Judith Butler reads Foucault and invents performative gender. Edward Said reads Foucault and invents academic postcolonialism. Kimberlé Crenshaw inherits the framework and invents intersectionality. At every step, the matrix is French: there is no truth, there is only power, so every hierarchy is suspect, every institution is oppressive, every norm is violence, every identity is constructed and thus negotiable, every majority is guilty.

That’s how three Parisian philosophers, who probably never imagined their practical consequences, provided the operating software to an entire generation of activists, university bureaucrats, HR managers, journalists, and legislators. That’s how we ended up with a civilization that no longer knows how to say whether a woman is a woman, whether its own history is worth defending, whether merit exists, whether truth can be distinguished from opinion.

It’s shit for one simple reason, and it must be stated calmly. A civilization stands on three pillars: the belief that there exists a truth accessible to reason, the belief that there exists a good distinct from evil, the belief that there exists a heritage to be transmitted. French Theory set out to dynamite all three. Not out of malice. Out of intellectual play, fascination with suspicion, hatred of the bourgeoisie that had nurtured them. But the result is there. An entire generation learned to deconstruct and never learned to build. An entire generation knows how to suspect and no longer knows how to admire. An entire generation sees power everywhere and beauty nowhere.

I apologize because we French bear a particular responsibility. It’s our language, our universities, our publishers, our prestige that gave this nihilism its chic packaging. Without the legitimacy of the Sorbonne and Vincennes, these ideas would never have crossed the ocean. We exported doubt the way others export weapons.

What is being built now, in Silicon Valley, in AI labs, in startups, in workshops, in all the places where people still make things instead of deconstructing them—that is the response. A civilization is rebuilt by builders, not by commentators. By those who believe that truth exists and is worth devoting oneself to. By those who embrace a hierarchy of the beautiful, the true, the good, and are not ashamed to transmit it.

So, forgive us. And back to work. 

H/t @Brivael

”America’s Cultural Revolution” by Christopher Rufo, covers this topic. A good read.

Greens (and BBC) deny Reality of Islam

 

Watch. And Marvel.

Anti-semitism is caused by… the fact that “We’re living in Rip-off.Britain”. 

Apparently…. Rising price of eggs … leads to anti-semitism. Apparently…

According to Greens leader Rachel Millward.

This is the Green-Red alliance. Where…

Green = Hamas, etc. The whole panoply of Islamic supremacism. 

Red = the Greens. Confusing, I know. But you get the picture. 

By the way. Come the revolution. Come the victory of Islam, the first to be lined up and shot will be the Lefties. The Greens. As per Iran in 1979. When the Ayatollah came to power and killed his erstwhile allies, 30,000 of them. The Iranian leftist leaders. 

The most foolish Islamic beliefs

 

“The most foolish Islamic beliefs”. Yeah, well. It’s a target rich environment.

I started this blog a couple decades ago. To record issues about Islam. As in the ideology. The thought system. Not the people. The ideas. The belief system.

The vid above is a pretty good selection and well researched.

Fact-checked by me and authorised as ☑️.

Fun stories about Islam: Angels & Demons. Slavery & Conquest | William Federer

 

I know most of this stuff. I learned something, after all, from 17 years of writing about it. From the Koran, to the Hadith, from Ibn Ishaq's Life of Muhammad, to the Umdat al-salik, the sacred manual of Islamic Sharia law. 

I've not heard Dr William Federer before. He's good at telling a fun and compelling story. A scary one, too. 

One we need to understand and treat seriously. Because, bottom line, it's "Islam must conquer the world".  That's the aim of the religious ideology foundd by Muhammad. Only then, according to pious Muslims, will there be peace. Islam style. 

That's it. That's the story of Islam and its aims. One we're witnessing, at a surge, in front of us now. 

Over to you, Dr Will. 

"THE ISLAMIC SLAVE TRADE IS WORSE THAN YOU THINK" | Ali Tabrizi

 

Ali Tabrizi is an Iranian-Australian YouTuber and everything he says on here about the Islamic slave trade is true and verifiable. 

Slavery in the Islamic states lasted far longer, and was far higher in number, than ever the Atlantic slave trade was. It was those hated European colonialists who stopped the slave trade in the Islamic middle east. 

It is revealing that the Left in the west refuses to acknowledge, let alone condemn, the Islamic slave trade. Which continues to this day. Eg, openly and legally in Mauritania. 

Just more hypocrisy. And wanting to highlight anything that weakens the West, like the now-defunct slave trade, while ignoring anything nasty about the Islamic world, like the still-continuing slavery. 

You’re Not Allowed to Say This… The REAL Reason This War Exists | Mosab Hassan Yousef

 

I post this as a history lesson in Islam as the "final revealed religon". And what this means for all non-Muslims in the world.

A history lesson in "Why the Muslims try to kill or subjugate all Jews". 

I've been banging on about this since the beginning of this blog. 

Why? 

Because it's in all the doctrines of Islam -- the Koran, the Hadith, the Sirah, the life of Muhammad, the Sharia -- and in all the actions of Muslims when they attack via terrorist acts in the west. They make it clear. "We are not here in [the U.K., Europe, wherever] to take part. We're here to Take Over". 

Mosab Hassan Yousef is the so-called "Son of Hamas". Because he's the son of one of Hamas' foundational leaders. He's a hafiz -- one who has memorised the whole of the Koran. He knows whereof he speaks. 

Muslim believe, because Mohammad told them so, in the Koran, that Islam is the latest revealed Abrahamic religion and it abrogates -- it cancels -- the previous religions of Judaism and Christianity. This is a very dangerous belief because it leads to their attempts to physically silence, to kill, those Christians and Jews who continue to believe that they have the right, the obligation, to carry on with their religion. 

“I will speak more plainly than most” | leekeen

Those Brits who peacock as left wing opponents of the far right are among the most disgusting people in humanity

The fact that you march alongside the Islamic fundamentalist supporters of the ayatollahs - those who stabbed Salman Rushdie in the eye, who hang gays and butcher women, who fire rockets upon Israeli civilians and funded Hamas, who massacred thousands on the streets of Tehran - makes you champions of the most reactionary forces on earth 

Read and watch…