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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Samizdata quote of the day

The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men

Winston Churchill

18 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • Paul Marks

    How the left manage to square their belief in the rights of women with their view that all cultures (including Islam) are equally valid, is one of the many baffling things about the world.

  • Bruce

    I suspect it’s all about a shared love of absolute power.

  • Regional

    It’s very easy to have social conscience with other’s money or a human rights lawyer on half a mill a year or a humanities professor when the taxpayer is funding your stipend.

  • RAB

    The quote has to do with this…

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2614834/Arrested-quoting-Winston-Churchill-European-election-candidate-accused-religious-racial-harassment-repeats-wartime-prime-ministers-words-Islam-campaign-speech.html

    Doesn’t it? I’d love to see this one come to court though, and see the CPS wriggle about bringing the case in the first place. But let’s face it, Free Speech is fucked in this country and damned near all others that consider themselves liberal and free.

  • Nick (Blame The French) Gray

    You can have Free Speech so long as it doesn’t incite hatred- i.e., so long as you praise Mohamedanism to the skies! You don’t want to incite hatred, do you?

  • Phil B

    You don’t have free speech but you do have permitted speech. You are allowed to parrot politically correct opinions as long as you don’t “offend’ the protected sacred cows of the left.

    The quote is from Churchills “The River war” and is available as a free download from the Gutenberg press. Well worth a read for the point of view of the history and insights it contains and Churchills beautiful prose. He uses words with precision and grace rarely seen nowadays.

  • Paul Marks

    Bruce yes – although the Marxists (the Frankfurt School P.C. “Critical Theory” education system and media crowd) and the Islamists are both planning to betray the other. But for now their shared hatred of the “capitalist” West matters more.

    However, the Frankfurt School academics are quite happy with anti Semitism (which they rename “anti Zionism” or “anti capitalism” – which pictures of long nosed bankers and so on, for the “Occupy” thugs). “But the Frankfurt School was founded by Jews” – the modern Frankfurt School do not care (and the founders were, of course, not practicing Jews anyway), people like Edward Said are the modern hero figures.

    As for un P.C. language – it depends who is being “racist” (or whatever), under the doctrines of the Frankfurt School a “victim group” (victims of “capitalism” of course) can never be wrong (as long as it is “Progressive”). So when Mr “Lenny” Henry says he wants more “black” people in entertainment jobs this is NOT racism, but when a UKIP candidate replies “well emigrate to a black country then”, this IS racism.

    Not logical? You forget (dear reader) that Marxism rejects logic (“capitalist reason” – the Nazis used to call it “Jewish reason” and also rejected it) – in favour of dialectic.

    Last point – beware some of those who claim to be ENEMINES of the Frankfurt School Marxists (and the Islamists).

    Many of these are Black Flag people (Fascists – or “ethnic nationalists”) or their friends – and at least one friend of the Fascists (one who lives in Kent and calls himself a libertarian) used to work for the Islamists himself.

    Indeed Islamists of the very area that Winston Churchill fought in. The campaign of extermination of Christians and moderate (i.e. nominal) Muslims in the Sudan and surrounding lands is not just recent – it was happening in the time of Churchill (he fought against it) and indeed for centuries of war before Churchill’s time.

    Those who were paid by Churchill’s Islamist enemies, and are friends with Churchill’s Fascist enemies are unlikely to be admirers of Winston Churchill.

  • The quote has to do with this…

    Correct.

  • Paul Marks

    Quite so RAB.

  • The Sanity Inspector

    Paul Marks:

    How the left manage to square their belief in the rights of women with their view that all cultures (including Islam) are equally valid, is one of the many baffling things about the world.

    No mystery. Leftists don’t want to get their throats slit anymore than we do.

  • Deep Lurker

    The Sanity Inspector/Paul Marks:

    I’d say it’s because the left doesn’t believe in the rights of women any more than they believe in freedom of speech. (Back in the Sixties “The correct position for women in the Movement is horizontal” after all.) Instead they use these things as clubs to beat up on their opponents to the right – their white male western European (or Anglosphere) opponents only.

    The left’s view, when it comes down to it, is that women have no rights which non-white men are bound to respect.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Churchill is sometimes accused of holding off-colour views on foreigners and difference races and religions; his analysis of the horrors of fundamentalist Islamists seem to be spot-on, though.

    For all his faults, Sir Winnie was right on the issues that mattered. Such as this one.

  • “A member of the public took offence at the quote, taken from Churchill’s The River War and called police.”

    I mean, like, seriously, wtf? Who calls the police when they find something offensive?

  • Mr Ed

    Who calls the police when they find something offensive?

    The mentality that gave us (myths of) Pavlik Morozov, the Soviet snitcher killed by his parents.

  • Rich Rostrom

    Rob Fisher @ April 30, 2014 at 8:08 pm:I mean, like, seriously, wtf? Who calls the police when they find something offensive?

    Quite a few people in present-day Britain. Three years ago, a singer at a beach bar performed performed the 1974 disco hit “Kung Fu Fighting”. Some passers-by took offense, and the singer was arrested.

  • Mr Ed

    Rich Rostrom:

    This sort of incident seems to be happening more and more, and all that happens is that the papers make a fuss if they hear about it, and we hear that things have ‘calmed down’, but if we are to maintain the rule of law, the perpetrators of these incidents, and the complainants will only stop if there is a bill of attainder brought against them, with mandatory imprisonment until death (not a ‘life sentence’) or permanent exile being the only outcomes that seem proportionate to me.

    Whilst it may be harsh and it may be a weapon turned against decent people, at least a bill of attainder would require a higher number of votes than a jury.

  • Pat McCann

    When Barack Hessian Obama moved into the White House, one of the first things he did was to return the bust of Winston Churchill that was in the Oval Office to the British Embassy. It had been on loan From Great Briton. Now I know why it was returned………

  • Laird

    “Great Winston’s bust is on the shelf,
    And I don’t feel so well myself.”

    (Apologies to Arthur Guiterman)