Reading the poem, I can't help but think if it were written today Harrison would be accused of Islamophobia and racism. 'How can you say there's anything wrong with Bradford? You're spreading division'. You can almost imagine the guy being cancelled and ending up doing interviews on GB News.
You’re much too charitable. I suspect he wouldn’t have changed his mind one bit. I have learned over the years that it is an absolutely pointless endeavour to try and persuade a liberal zealot to abjure his/her beliefs. It’s impossible (hence, I despise the “debate me, bruh!” mentality). In the liberal zealot’s mind progress has been preordained. These people truly believe that in time liberalism will without doubt prevail—because, in their view, it is peremptorily superior in terms of reason and morality. “Bumps in the road” will never deter or disabuse the liberal zealot. All the evidence in the world isn’t enough to convince the liberal crusader of abandoning his/her faith. Liberalism is a religion. The most powerful and insidious religion Man has ever created.
That poem is embarrassingly Sixth Form. He borrows from William Blake, who would have found Harrison's atheist posturing risible, childish. Still, time has his way with us all, I remember feeling safer in Muslim areas than in white chav ghettos, 20 years ago, today I'd probably see the Pakistani enclaves as a bigger danger, to England if not to me personally.
Very good article, balanced, mature. Must have been tempting to put the old Linlithgow boot in on a naive boomer.
Just a small point. Your use of the phrase ‘haven’t yet’ was a very powerful literary device, giving added emphasis to the point being made. Excellent stuff.
To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me. - Principia Mathematica, by Isaac Newton
Newton responding with unusual, for him, humility to those who thought he was a genius.
Sadly no one thought to apply this humble thinking to Rushdie's dire and tiresome tome on islamic verses. If they had they could have pointed out that judaism, hinduism, buddhism, jainism, confucionism, taoism, shintoism etc etc etc all have equally Satanic verses that people quietly ignore but that come out in times of crisis and are used as excuses for evil. Look at the genocide in Palestine over the last 80 years with its leaning on the judaic verses pertaining to the Amalek etc and the buddhist attacks on religious minorities a few years back if you doubt that.
Cancer cells don't evolve away from the chemotherapy (poisons) sent in to kill them or from the diet changes people make eg going Keto. No, under stress they open up ancient DNA pathways to reboot their cell instructions to overcome the poisons or dietry restrictions. These are instructions from back when their ancestors were not part of a well regulated body and so were tossed and turned and battered from every direction on a regular basis. People are like cancer cells. When they are part of a properly regulated society with common rules equally applied to all they function to help the whole but when that regulation fails either wholly or in part some of those cells, or groups of people in a society, fall back to old fearful and less cooperative instruction sets and it is every cell or tribe for themselves.
You stop cancers only by blocking off multiple paths back to their old instruction sets which is why combining weaker versions of chemo with Ivermectin and fenbendazole work so well as you are making it a better bet for the cell just to die rather than try to continue on battling the multiple things blocking it.
That is how you overcome old instruction sets, you can't rid the cell or the people of them very easily, but you can make it extremely costly for them to follow those old instruction sets and so convert them to your way of thinking or die. Islam was aware of this centuries ago when they decided to stop killing people and start charging them for being them and so more and more people decided to become muslims rather than pay the additional taxes etc. What worked for islam will work against islam ........... and all the other myriads of more or less Satanic religions of the planet which is all of them except Christianity. And no catholicism inspired by Saul and his faked conversion, as faked as any Trump assassination attempt, is not and never was and never shall be Christian.
So the solution is simple, ........ get rid of the two tier systems infesting the West and replace it with a one tier system where promotion is based on merit and only on merit and punishment is based on the crime and only on the crime with zero regard to race, sex or whether or not your wife smells "fragrant" as she lies on oath in the High court.
If you think Islam is no more a threat than the other religions you mentioned you are just as naive as Tony Harrison. Religions are not equal. Islam is a uniquely violent and supremacist religion that poses a threat to all people on Earth. And the Buddhists you mentioned are 100% justified in fighting back against the Muslim invasion of their country. As one Buddhist monk from Burma said concerning the Muslims there, "You can be filled with peace and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog." And the "Satanic Verses" is not a general term for the bad parts of religious texts, it is a reference to a specific story from Islamic tradition where Mohammed was deceived into giving a false revelation from Satan that it was permissible to worship three of the old goddesses of Meccan polytheism. He later retracted the revelation. Reminding Muslims of this story drives them into a rage, but it's from their own texts.
"Look at the genocide in Palestine over the last 80 years with its leaning on the judaic verses pertaining to the Amalek etc and the buddhist attacks on religious minorities a few years back if you doubt that."
Re the Buddhist attacks - are you referring to the attacks on the Rohingya in Myanmar/Burma? LOL. They deserved it. They started the problems by trying to force Buddhists to accept Islam, etc. and the Buddhists finally revolted, giving the Rohingya what they deserved. The Rohingya were intruding on Buddhist territory and making trouble, as they always like to do. The violence erupted in 2017 and I am surprised it took the Buddhists that long to do something about the problem.
The truth is often stranger than fiction. When the guy who has spent years murdering Christians suddenly has a miraculous conversion, possibly because he isn't killing enough of them, you can bet it was to destroy Christianity "from the inside" ...... an inside that should never have existed because Christ told the Samaritan woman at the well that soon there would be no need of special places to worship God or priests etc to come between us and God. Saul set about building the very thing that Christ abhorred, Christ wanted a church of the heart not a church of stone with a leadership class that could do as the pharisees had been doing for thousands of years previous, taking his people for a prey.
The fact that so much of what Saul said was in direct contradiction of what Christ himself said you can bet I am correct. Not one stone shall be left standing upon another ......... for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. Christ also told the woman that the jews would be instrumental in bringing people to God and by their genocidal actions that is indeed what is happening.
Some people are only put on this earth to show the rest of us how not to be. To be or not to be ....... that is the question.
"Admittedly, it is “low-hanging fruit” to attack this bit, but that only begs the question of why a man of Harrison’s intellect wrote it." No, it raises the question. Didn't you discuss this with Greg Johnson a couple of years ago?
I think you've germinated another hardy perennial essay! I will share this one; it seems like a perfect gateway to your work for some types. It really is the type of essay that makes it understandable for you to take longer amounts of time between publishings. It's simply not possible to constantly churn this level of quality out!
Sorry for the 'lick-arse' comment. It was just a pleasant Sunday morning surprise.
If anyone is "gormless" its the dimwitted twits of the ruling class. It takes a special kind of idiotic chutzpah to complain about ignorant religious fundamentalists whilst packing the nation with them, piled high to the rafters. It's downright disgusting.
Reading the poem, I can't help but think if it were written today Harrison would be accused of Islamophobia and racism. 'How can you say there's anything wrong with Bradford? You're spreading division'. You can almost imagine the guy being cancelled and ending up doing interviews on GB News.
That's a very interesting angle. I hadn't thought of it!
You’re much too charitable. I suspect he wouldn’t have changed his mind one bit. I have learned over the years that it is an absolutely pointless endeavour to try and persuade a liberal zealot to abjure his/her beliefs. It’s impossible (hence, I despise the “debate me, bruh!” mentality). In the liberal zealot’s mind progress has been preordained. These people truly believe that in time liberalism will without doubt prevail—because, in their view, it is peremptorily superior in terms of reason and morality. “Bumps in the road” will never deter or disabuse the liberal zealot. All the evidence in the world isn’t enough to convince the liberal crusader of abandoning his/her faith. Liberalism is a religion. The most powerful and insidious religion Man has ever created.
That poem is embarrassingly Sixth Form. He borrows from William Blake, who would have found Harrison's atheist posturing risible, childish. Still, time has his way with us all, I remember feeling safer in Muslim areas than in white chav ghettos, 20 years ago, today I'd probably see the Pakistani enclaves as a bigger danger, to England if not to me personally.
Very good article, balanced, mature. Must have been tempting to put the old Linlithgow boot in on a naive boomer.
Just a small point. Your use of the phrase ‘haven’t yet’ was a very powerful literary device, giving added emphasis to the point being made. Excellent stuff.
Thank you.
To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me. - Principia Mathematica, by Isaac Newton
Newton responding with unusual, for him, humility to those who thought he was a genius.
Sadly no one thought to apply this humble thinking to Rushdie's dire and tiresome tome on islamic verses. If they had they could have pointed out that judaism, hinduism, buddhism, jainism, confucionism, taoism, shintoism etc etc etc all have equally Satanic verses that people quietly ignore but that come out in times of crisis and are used as excuses for evil. Look at the genocide in Palestine over the last 80 years with its leaning on the judaic verses pertaining to the Amalek etc and the buddhist attacks on religious minorities a few years back if you doubt that.
Cancer cells don't evolve away from the chemotherapy (poisons) sent in to kill them or from the diet changes people make eg going Keto. No, under stress they open up ancient DNA pathways to reboot their cell instructions to overcome the poisons or dietry restrictions. These are instructions from back when their ancestors were not part of a well regulated body and so were tossed and turned and battered from every direction on a regular basis. People are like cancer cells. When they are part of a properly regulated society with common rules equally applied to all they function to help the whole but when that regulation fails either wholly or in part some of those cells, or groups of people in a society, fall back to old fearful and less cooperative instruction sets and it is every cell or tribe for themselves.
You stop cancers only by blocking off multiple paths back to their old instruction sets which is why combining weaker versions of chemo with Ivermectin and fenbendazole work so well as you are making it a better bet for the cell just to die rather than try to continue on battling the multiple things blocking it.
That is how you overcome old instruction sets, you can't rid the cell or the people of them very easily, but you can make it extremely costly for them to follow those old instruction sets and so convert them to your way of thinking or die. Islam was aware of this centuries ago when they decided to stop killing people and start charging them for being them and so more and more people decided to become muslims rather than pay the additional taxes etc. What worked for islam will work against islam ........... and all the other myriads of more or less Satanic religions of the planet which is all of them except Christianity. And no catholicism inspired by Saul and his faked conversion, as faked as any Trump assassination attempt, is not and never was and never shall be Christian.
So the solution is simple, ........ get rid of the two tier systems infesting the West and replace it with a one tier system where promotion is based on merit and only on merit and punishment is based on the crime and only on the crime with zero regard to race, sex or whether or not your wife smells "fragrant" as she lies on oath in the High court.
If you think Islam is no more a threat than the other religions you mentioned you are just as naive as Tony Harrison. Religions are not equal. Islam is a uniquely violent and supremacist religion that poses a threat to all people on Earth. And the Buddhists you mentioned are 100% justified in fighting back against the Muslim invasion of their country. As one Buddhist monk from Burma said concerning the Muslims there, "You can be filled with peace and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog." And the "Satanic Verses" is not a general term for the bad parts of religious texts, it is a reference to a specific story from Islamic tradition where Mohammed was deceived into giving a false revelation from Satan that it was permissible to worship three of the old goddesses of Meccan polytheism. He later retracted the revelation. Reminding Muslims of this story drives them into a rage, but it's from their own texts.
"Look at the genocide in Palestine over the last 80 years with its leaning on the judaic verses pertaining to the Amalek etc and the buddhist attacks on religious minorities a few years back if you doubt that."
Re the Buddhist attacks - are you referring to the attacks on the Rohingya in Myanmar/Burma? LOL. They deserved it. They started the problems by trying to force Buddhists to accept Islam, etc. and the Buddhists finally revolted, giving the Rohingya what they deserved. The Rohingya were intruding on Buddhist territory and making trouble, as they always like to do. The violence erupted in 2017 and I am surprised it took the Buddhists that long to do something about the problem.
Second Peter 3.16 affirms Paul's letters. Apart from the strange remark about St Paul, this was an interesting comment.
The truth is often stranger than fiction. When the guy who has spent years murdering Christians suddenly has a miraculous conversion, possibly because he isn't killing enough of them, you can bet it was to destroy Christianity "from the inside" ...... an inside that should never have existed because Christ told the Samaritan woman at the well that soon there would be no need of special places to worship God or priests etc to come between us and God. Saul set about building the very thing that Christ abhorred, Christ wanted a church of the heart not a church of stone with a leadership class that could do as the pharisees had been doing for thousands of years previous, taking his people for a prey.
The fact that so much of what Saul said was in direct contradiction of what Christ himself said you can bet I am correct. Not one stone shall be left standing upon another ......... for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. Christ also told the woman that the jews would be instrumental in bringing people to God and by their genocidal actions that is indeed what is happening.
Some people are only put on this earth to show the rest of us how not to be. To be or not to be ....... that is the question.
"Admittedly, it is “low-hanging fruit” to attack this bit, but that only begs the question of why a man of Harrison’s intellect wrote it." No, it raises the question. Didn't you discuss this with Greg Johnson a couple of years ago?
Fixed.
I think you've germinated another hardy perennial essay! I will share this one; it seems like a perfect gateway to your work for some types. It really is the type of essay that makes it understandable for you to take longer amounts of time between publishings. It's simply not possible to constantly churn this level of quality out!
Sorry for the 'lick-arse' comment. It was just a pleasant Sunday morning surprise.
If anyone is "gormless" its the dimwitted twits of the ruling class. It takes a special kind of idiotic chutzpah to complain about ignorant religious fundamentalists whilst packing the nation with them, piled high to the rafters. It's downright disgusting.