While the media has been following spurious and mendacious accusations of anti-Semitism made against Ken Livingstone and Naz Shah, the real anti-Semites on the British Fascist right have been making speeches demanding the very real, and murderous persecution of the Jews. Last month, the anti-racist, anti-religious extremism magazine and blog, Hope Not Hate, reported how Jack Renshaw, one of the leading lights of the Nazi ‘youth’ organisation, National Action, had made a bitterly anti-Semitic speech at a rally in Blackpool.
Renshaw is young, so young in fact that he looks barely old enough to vote. Sadly, the murderous bilge he utters cannot be overlooked as mere youthful innocence. In his speech stating that the refugee problem was part of a wider disease, which he declared was ‘international Jewry’. He followed this up by stating that during World War II ‘We were on the wrong side.’
Now the organisation reports that it has got hold of a copy of speech Renshaw made this February to the Yorkshire Forum, where he encouraged his fellow stormtroopers to go hunting Jews in order to develop the ‘killer instinct’. He also declared
“Hitler was wrong… he showed mercy to people who did not deserve it…we have hindsight.. we see what the Jew did when offered mercy. We need to learn from the mistakes of the National Socialists. We must not show the Jews any mercy. He is nature’s social vermin. He needs to be irradiated”.
He then also called for a “Holy War”.
As well as being repulsive, this clearly violates the laws against hate speech and promoting racial hatred. It’s also incitement to violence to people, who very often have a long history of extreme violence against Jews, Blacks, Asians, Leftists, anti-Fascists and just about anyone or everyone who isn’t them. Hope Not Hate state that they’ll be passing this on to the police. Hopefully, they’ll take action and Renshaw will have at least a little talk with Inspector Knacker.
As well as being a vicious anti-Semite, Renshaw has also tried to promote Fascism by dressing up as St. George. Apart from looking thoroughly ridiculous, this kind of overlooks the fact that the original St. George was a Roman squaddie in what is now either Turkey or Syria. He’s also the patron saint of various other nations, including Georgia in the Caucasus. The peoples of that part of the former USSR were the subject of Russian racism, which used to refer to them disparagingly as ‘Blacks’ because of their darker complexions and hair. Somehow, I don’t think Renshaw would appreciate the irony of being a Fascist dressed as someone from the Middle East, whom he and his National Comrades would sneer and despise for their racial origins today.
I found this meme against rising xenophobia, and, by implication, UKIP over at the SlatUKIP site. It follows a number of similar posters that have been put up around the country, showing individual immigrants, and the vital work they do. Like firemen, lifeboatmen, internet entrepreneurs and so on.
This one is of England’s very own patron saint, St. George.
Yup. St. George is an immigrant. His cult was brought to England and popularised by knights returning from the Crusades. Before then, England’s patron saint was St Edmund, an Anglo-Saxon king, who had been martyred by the invading Vikings.
The real St George was a Roman soldier from what is now Turkey, who was executed during the Roman persecution of Christianity for refusing to give up his Christian faith. Over time, the legend grew up around him that he was a knight, who rescued a damsel from the dragon.
Along with St George, the Crusades saw other influences from the Eastern Orthodox churches enter England and the Roman Catholic West. The churches built by the Knights Templars, the crusading order made notorious through later accusations of devil worship and works of pseudo-history like Holy Blood, Holy Grail, were built in a beehive shape, like those of the Syriac and Armenian churches.
And across the Channel in France, several of the new churches built in the 12th century were for Coptic Christians from Egypt, or were at least built according to their churches’ plans.
A few years ago, one of the Beeb’s programme on medieval history also showed that there were clues that some, at least, of the masons working on England’s cathedrals in the 12th century – I think it may have been York minister – were Arabs, due to Arab influences in the building’s design and possibly some remains of Arabic script found on some of the stones. Certainly there was a artisan recorded in London, as ‘Peter the Saracen’. It’s also about this time that the first images and written records of Black people in England appear. There used to be a section about Black people in England on the website of the National Archives, including a miniature picture of one from a 12th century manuscript.
And one of England’s medieval kings even received communion from a Syriac clergyman, Rabban Sauma, when he visited England in the 12th or 13th century.
Which all shows that people of Black and Asian descent have been around in England much longer than Nige and the other Kippers think.
The Independent reported today that ISIS had released a video of themselves destroying the ancient Babylonian city of Nimrud. Its destruction was reported back in March, but this is the first time footage has been shown of it. The video shows the terrorists attacking the city and its antiquities with pneumatic drills, anglegrinders and sledgehammers. They then laid explosives, and blew the site up.
Irinia Bokova, the director general of UNESCO, the section of the UN that oversees the world’s cultural heritage, denounced the destruction, saying that the “deliberate destruction of cultural heritage constitutes a war crime”.
I’ve already blogged about ISIS’ destruction of Nimrud, and the other cultural treasures of Mosul, and the Christian and Muslim shrines to the patriarch Seth, revered by Moslems as the prophet Sheth, St. George and others. ISIS have claimed that they are destroying these antiquities because they are somehow blasphemous or un-Islamic. In fact, they are attacking them purely because these monuments don’t conform to their own, extremely narrow religious views. They’re a deliberate, calculated assault on the cultural heritage and identity of Iraq’s people. ISIS fear them because they present an alternative, secular national and religious pluralist identity to the absolute conformity ISIS wish to foist on them.
It’s also been suggested that more worldly, venal motives were involved in Nimrud’s destruction. ISIS may have been looting the site to raise money to buy more arms by selling the antiquities illegally. They levelled the city to disguise what they’d done. So their claim that they were destroying the city for religious reasons may have been just a load of lies to disguise what they really are: a bunch of thieves and grave robbers.
Archaeology in Iran
ISIS’ contempt for the region’s heritage contrasts with Iran, where, with some qualifications, archaeology is still valued. John Simpson in one of his books described the way an angry mob was ready to destroy the depictions of the Persian shahs at Naqsh-i-Rustem in the 1979 revolution, but were prevented from doing so by the carvings’ guard. He stopped them by telling them that they were instead depictions of Hassan and Hussein, the two sons of the Imam Ali, the founder of Shi’ism.
In the 1990s there was a minimal Western archaeological presence in Iran, though I believe it has been expanded since then. I once bumped into one of the lecturers in the archaeological department at Uni nearly ten years ago, who had just returned from excavating an early Islamic city in Iran.
And a few years ago the British Museum loaned the Cyrus Cylinder, shown below, to the Islamic Republic.
The Cyrus Cylinder records the conquest of Babylonia by the great Persian king Cyrus, or Kourash, as he is known in Persian. After the conquest, he issued an edict permitting the peoples exiled in Babylon to return to their homelands, returned their gods, and assisted in the reconstruction of their temples. These included the Jews, who returned to Israel, for which the Persians are praised in the Bible.
I was taught at College that Islam similarly regarded Zoroastrians as ‘Peoples of the Book’, who, like Jews and Christians, worshipped the one God, and whose worship was therefore protected.
British Museum’s loan of the Cylinder to Iran was of major diplomatic and cultural significance. Firstly, it was party of a general thaw in relations between Britain and the Islamic Republic. Secondly, it also showed the confidence that the Museum in the Cylinder’s safety. The repatriation of cultural artefacts looted by Western scholars from the other cultures around the world is a major issue in archaeology and the heritage sector. Many nations and ethnic groups are rightly angered at the appropriation of valuable or important religious items from their cultures, including human remains. A few years ago, for example, BBC 2 screened a series looking behind the scenes at the British Museum. Amongst the Museum’s other work, it showed the delicate negotiations surrounding the repatriation of the remains of Aboriginal Tasmanians to their descendants.
Other items remain, and their retention is immensely controversial. The Elgin Marbles is a case in point.
The Museum has, however, a policy of not returning antiquities to countries where their safety can’t be guaranteed. The looting and destruction of ancient monuments and archaeological finds is a real problem, particularly in the developing world. And it isn’t unknown here either. There have been digs in Britain, that have been wrecked and the finds looted by Nighthawks. There have also been a number of curators and museum directors, who have been caught illegally selling off objects from the very collections they were supposed to be maintaining.
The loan of the Cyrus Cylinder to Iran, by contrast, showed that the British authorities had every confidence that their fellows in Iran would respect and value it, and that Britain and Iran could have good relations in the exploration of that nation’s ancient past and its treasures.
This is another excellent reason why the Repugs are stupid to want another war with Iran. Apart from destabilising yet another nation and brutalising its people, purely for the profit of the oil and arms industries, it could result in the same destruction of antiquities as in Iraq.
And as in Iraq, the world would again be much the poorer.
A week or so ago I blogged about the horrific implications of the ISIS terrorist attack in Yemen, and the Saudi airstrikes against the Houthi rebel forces. ISIS are horrific, not just because of the mass death and terror they inflict on the territories they occupy, but also because of the massive cultural vandalism they also commit.
In Iraq they have smashed immensely valuable Assyrian antiquities and bulldozed the ancient city of Nimrod in order to cover up their looting and destroy the remains of the country’s pre-Islamic history. They have also destroyed mosques and shrines to St. George and Seth, one of Adam’s sons, who is revered in Islam as the Prophet Sheth. Yemen is also rich in history, as the centre of civilisations going back thousands of years. Its city, Marib, was the capital of the kingdom of Sheba, whose Queen visited King Solomon in both the Bible and the Qu’ran. There is thus a similar possibility that ISIS could attempt to destroy these ancient and vastly important remains as well.
I also blogged on the airstrikes against Yemen by the Saudis, and the terrible threat they also pose for peace in the Middle East. The Houthi are Shi’as, who have been marginalised and persecuted by the Sunni Gulf states. The attack on them by the Saudis could act as the catalyst for a wider war between Shi’ah and Sunni that could tear apart this entire region.
In this video from The Young Turks, they also discuss this possibility and the other political implications of the airstrikes. It hasn’t just been Saudi Arabia that launched the attack. They were also assisted by the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco and Sudan, as well as Egypt. Pakistan was also considering sending ground forces if Iran became involved, while Turkey promised to provide logistical support. Iran, meanwhile, has possibly been supplying aid to the Houthis, but this is unclear.
The Turks point out how dangerous this situation is, especially when Turkey and Pakistan are both being drawn into it. Both are ‘tangential’ to the Middle East. Turkey in particular is a relatively modern, secular country, which has tried to position itself as a European as well as Middle Eastern country.
The Turks point out that the Saudis have probably acted because this time they can’t get America to wage war on their behalf, as they have so many times in the past. And aiding them would be very much against America’s interests. America needs to avoid a confrontation with Iran as it is negotiating with them over the country’s nuclear programme. Furthermore, both America and Iran are fighting ISIS in Iraq. The last thing America needs is to take part in attack on Yemen, and so find itself fighting the entire Shi’a population of the Middle East, as well as ISIS and al-Qaeda.
The one positive aspect to this is that America has not blindly done what the Saudis want. Several of the posters on the Islamophobic sites, were former members of the American armed forces. They had served in Saudi Arabia, and bitterly resented the arrogance with which the Saudis boasted they had the Americans wrapped around their little fingers and could get them to do their bidding. If America finally shows some independence from the Saudis in Middle Eastern policy, this might make some a little less prejudiced towards Muslims generally through experiences serving Saudi oil aristocrats.
Yesterday came the news that a suicide bomber had killed forty people at a mosque in Yemen. The country is currently torn in a civil war between its Sunni population and government, and the Houthi tribe, who are Shia. It was first feared that the bomber was a member of the latter. He wasn’t. Nor was he a member al-Qaeda, who were also initially suspected of involvement.
It was ISIS, yet again.
This is extremely disturbing. It’s not just that forty innocents were murdered and a house of worship desecrated for no other reason than that they and it belonged to a different faith, though this is bad enough. It’s because ISIS also attempts to destroy the very culture, including the ancient monuments, of the peoples it conquers and rules. I’ve blogged several times this week, including today, about the cult’s destruction of the Assyrian antiquities in Iraq, their smashing of art treasures in a museum in Mosul, the bulldozing of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrod and their destruction of the mosques and shrines to the Patriarch Seth, revered in Islam as the Prophet Sheth, St. George, also revered in Islam as Jerjis, and the Prophet Jonah, known in the Qu’ran as Yunus. They also attempted to demolish one of the earliest minarets built in Iraq, but were fortunately prevented by the local people.
Yemen is also vulnerable to this destruction. It is, like the rest of the Middle East, a country with ancient and rich history. The city of Marib was the capital of the ancient South Arabian civilisation of Saba, known in the Bible as Sheba, whose queen visited King Solomon to test him with ‘hard questions’. This episode is also mentioned in the Qu’ran, and the Muslim name for the Queen is ‘Bilqis’. According to the chapter in the Qu’ran, the Surat al-Naml, which means ‘The Ants’ in English, Solomon could understand the language of birds. He was brought news of the Queen of Sheba by the hoopoe. the same sura also describes the destruction of the town’s great dam, the remains of which are still extant. The South Arabian languages spoken in the Gulf are also the origin of the modern majority languages of Ethiopia, Amharic, Tigre, and Tigrinya, which are all descended from the medieval language, Ge’ez. And the Ethiopian people themselves in their national epic, the Kebra Nagast, or ‘Glory of Kings’, traced their descent from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
The British Museum has a gallery devoted to the ancient cultures of Yemen, and a little while ago they staged an exhibition of its antiquities and the archaeology of this rich and ancient country. Any attack on these would be yet another blow against adab and the culture, not only of Islam and the Arabs, but of the world.
I’ve posted a number of pieces condemning and commenting on ISIS’ destruction of the priceless monuments and archaeological treasures in Iraq. These include not only the ancient Assyrian artefacts in Mosul and the ancient city of Nimrod, but also the shrine of the Adam’s son Seth, venerated in Islam as the Prophet Sheth. I’ve found this short video about this cultural vandalism on Youtube. It’s from a Christian perspective, but it does report not only the destruction of the ancient Assyrian monuments of especial interest to Christians and Jews, but also the Islamic mosques and shrines that have been destroyed. These now include the tomb of Saint George, venerated in Islam as Jerjis, and the mosque dedicated to the Prophet Jonah, revered in Islam as Yunus. Here it is.
The piece also suggests that ISIS had already looted the site for artefacts, which they could sell on the international antiquities market in order to raise money for their war against everything good, decent and civilised. They trashed Nimrod, the video alleges, in order to cover up their looting.
I’ve also seen reports elsewhere that the Islamist terror groups are funding their war through pillaging and selling the region’s antiquities.
Regardless of the reasons for its destruction, this is just a monstrous attack on culture and civilisation, that has left the world and all its peoples poorer.
Electric Eden by Rob Young (London: Faber and Faber 2010) is a detailed examination of modern British folk music, going from the 19th century collectors like Cecil Sharp and Vaughn Williams to modern folk-rockers like Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention and non-folkies, like Julian Cope and Kate Bush, who nevertheless express the strange, esoteric spirit of much of British folk music in their strange, esoteric mysticism and utopian yearning for a Britain of myth and legend. The blurb states:
In this groundbreaking survey of more than a century of music-making in the British Isles, Rob Young investigates how the idea of folk has been handed down and transformed by successive generations – song collectors, composers, Marxist revivalists, folk-rockers, psychedelic voyagers, free-festival-goers, experimental pop stars and electronic innovators. In a sweeping panorama of Albion’s soundscape that takes in the pioneer spirit of Cecil sharp; the pastoral classicism of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Peter Warlock; the industrial folk revival of Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd; the folk-rock of Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, Shirley Collins, John Martyn and Pentangle; the bucolic psychedelia of The Incredible String Band, the Beatles and Pink Floyd; the acid-folk of Comus, Forest, Mr Fox and Trees; The Wicker Man and occult folklore; the early Glastonbury and Stonehenge festivals; and the visionary pop of Kate Bush, Julian Cope and Talk Talk, Electric Eden maps out a native British musical voice that reflects the complex relationship between town and country, progress and nostalgia, radicalism and conservatism. A wild combination of pagan echoes, spiritual quest, imaginative time-travel, pastoral innocence and electrified creativity, Electric Eden presents and passionate and intelligent landscape reading of this island’s music, and the spirit that informs it.
I’ve posted this up as a partial antidote to the pseudo-folksiness of the English Democrats’ election video, which I’ve reblogged from Tom Pride’s site. The good Mr Pride had put it up with the question of whether it was the worst party political broadcast ever. It isn’t, but offhand I can’t think of one. The video relies on a very few stereotypical images of England – White Cliffs of Dover, Churchill, St George, Spitfires and a monument to the war dead. It’s a very narrow, very Conservative view of English national identity. And also extremely modern – most of the imagery is that of the Second World War. English, and British folk identity is far broader and richer than that, as Electric Eden shows. Sharp, I believe, was actually a Socialist trying to recover the songs of the British working people. The folkies of the 1950s were similarly inspired by Left-wing political views. Many of them were Marxists, inspired by American folk musicians and were aficionados of Black American Blues music. This was the music of poor, Black America, and the British revivalists turned to exploring their own folk music as Blues’ British counterpart. Furthermore, many of the British folk-rockers in the 1960s were fans and pioneers of what is now World Music, and a few converted to the mystical religions of these extra-European cultures. The book mentions a couple, for example, who converted to Sufism, Islamic mysticism.
The book is a bit contentious in its claim that the British folk revival, or the folk genre, is now over. It isn’t, as you can hear by listening the folk bands that are still very much a part of the music scene, particularly in Bristol. It has to be said that it’s nowhere near as big as it was in the 1960s-70s, when Pentangle, Fairport Convention, and Steeleye Span were at their height. It has also passed on elements and attitudes to other pop genres. There was, for example, a definite folk element in the music of the Goth rock band, All About Eve in the 80s and 90s. Electric Eden demonstrates how rich, varied and esoteric British folk, folk-rock and folk-influenced pop is, far richer than the limited, trite and reactionary images presented by the parties of the populist far Right.
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