That’s a complete misinterpretation of secularism. The whole purpose of it is to ensure that no one group has a benefit over any other in any given society. All religions in a secularist society are equal.
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Daws, any military unit of ours which gets sent into this volatile situation risks having to take part in this conflict: both sides are capable of firing missiles at our ships and aircraft while the shooting is still going on. The time for humanitarian assistance is after a ceasefire - a proper one, not a Middle East version where fighting still continues (see the 1973 Yom Kippur battle of the UN ceasefire after Sharon and his armoured corps crossed the Suez Canal for details). Until then, we need to stay well out of the way. Britain doesn’t have either the military strength or political will that the USA has to be involved in the region.
I must have been looking at only the moderate opinion on this conflict, which of course gets ignored by political leaders everywhere.
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That might be how secularism works, it’s not the reality of secularism in France.
Current British foreign policy is that we are involved east of suez again, we either are or we are not.
It’s also important to prevent a wider regional conflict to show Iran in particular that their is world involvement and interest.
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In France though, that secularism is being used to discriminate against Muslims somewhat. Especially in terms of religious clothing.
If France was truly secular, it wouldn’t matter how a a Muslim, particularly Muslim women dressed in order to express their faith. But the French are putting more and more restrictions on exactly that.
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There are multiple forms of secularism. Whilst examples do exist where the basic premise is political indifference, France and other countries have a model that encourages complete neutrality in all aspects of life. Both of these versions, plus the one in Benelux which affords special options to minority religions, are forms of secularism
So let’s try not to get tangled up in a “no true Scotsman” argument.
And to a point further up, I’ve had many discussions about this subject matter in the past.
There’s a huge difference between protecting against the very real attempts to cast Jews as simultaneously all-powerful, planet-running etc while also somehow being vermin, undeserving of respect and equal rights. But to guard against that by creating an inability to point out the literal ills being carried out and, where appropriate, point out how they were treated in the past and should, therefore, know better, is unacceptable.
It brings great shame to see the parallels, no matter how some might try to claim making that observation is racism.
It’s hardly neutral. It only appears neutral from the point of view of those who the discrimination does not affect. It just doesn’t affect them in the same way.
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I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree here, as we’re not going to change each others’ opinions and we’re clearly in topic drift territory now.
Well it’s clear that their is support for Hamas out there.
Interestingly the immigration minister and the home office are looking at revoking Visas for those turning up waving Hamas (as opposed to Palestinian) flags since it’s an offence under terrorism legislation.
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Have I? and you haven’t?
You try living in some of the Northern towns.
To be fair, some of your posts do quite closely resemble the comments coming from elements of XRW.
Islamic terrorism has had much less of an impact in this country than Irish Republican terrorism did, yet people seem to get far more wound up about the Muslims than the IRA. Makes you wonder why…?
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Probably because these days the Paddys aren’t much of a risk compared to the “Islamic” fundamentalists (I’m loathe to call them Islamic as there’s very little Islamic about their behaviour.)
Though I accept with many people there is a healthy dose of comparing Dulux colour charts.
From a purely technical perspective one is current and one isn’t.
However the other 2 major differences are desire and capability.
The goal of PIRA particularly on the mainland was generally disruption and while they didn’t shirk from getting blood on their hands they didn’t usually (there are exceptions) go out to cause mass civilian casualties. They had the capability to cause mass casualties and chose not to (bombs in train station toilets not bombs on moving trains for example).
Compare that to Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorism where the goal is all about mass casualty events. However as I’ve said before the capability isn’t their to do what they want to do. They don’t have easy access to automatic weapons or explosives and they are dependant on the home made kind, which have fizzled rather than exploding more often than not. That’s why we have seen failed attacks (Tiger Tiger, Parson’s Green and Liverpool Women’s hospital) and marauding terrorist attacks using vehicles and knives (Borough Market & Westminster Bridge).
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You’ve listed some terrorist attacks, but have missed out, or ignored, extreme right wing terrorism. That suggests a narrow viewpoint, whether unconsciously or worse consciously. If it’s conscious, that suggests a deeply concerning viewpoint.
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Hamas are the insurgent political and military organisation the IRA wish they could have been; many of the tactics and techniques are the same for both, but scaled up by Hamas to what we are seeing now: the direct link of a political party to a terrorist organisation which enacts its policies; the implementation of the Principles of War of Security and Surprise; the ruthlessness towards both their enemy and their own people in carrying forward the strategic mission; the organisation into autonomous 350 man ‘Brigades’ (also the IRA name for that size of unit); the widespread foreign support which excuses the vilest atrocities. The ground over which they fight in Palestine resembles densely populated urban areas in N Ireland, surrounded by fences, guard towers, forts and checkpoints.
The IRA, in its published propaganda, always tried to look like a regular military unit, wearing berets and combat jackets, and they definitely understood the principles of Concentration of Force and Offensive Action: an IRA illegal vehicle checkpoint was photographed by a British Army surveillance aircraft, the IVCP being covered by an ambush party of 16 men, two of whom were armed with M60 machine guns.
Hamas’ unit identifying patch shows a hooded terrorist holding an M16 rifle, looking more like a 1970s Provo displaying the fruits of the Noraid supply line from the USA than a Middle Eastern fighter. But then during my time there was a large shipment of Kalashnikovs and Semtex seized from a Libyan freighter in UK waters, so the cross-pollination of methods worked both ways. The Iraqi insurgents picked up IED techniques that the IRA had developed over the years within a year of the 2003 invasion.
All these factors must be overcome before there is any hope of a Northern Ireland style peace process or two state solution between Israel and Palestine. I don’t think it will ever happen, and it’ll be because of religious beliefs. The religion of the British Isles is Christianity, which teaches forgiveness and redemption of sins: meeting your bitterest enemies halfway, if they are prepared to meet you. It’s the only one of the three similar religions which doesn’t preach revenge: there’s no Jihad or ‘Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’ in the New Testament. Those who think that Western countries are ‘secular societies’ don’t realise they’ve grown up as Christians whether they realised it or not, just by accepting our laws and morals.
Hence we in the West can enact post-conflict developments such as the post-WWII reconstruction of West Germany and Japan, and the Northern Ireland Peace Process: our societies, whose secular beliefs are based upon Christian religious principles allow us to at least make an effort in that direction. We got some way to implementing that in post-invasion Iraq, and are still involved there on the ground even now.
I don’t think Rishi understands what kind of people he is willing to support with no reservations: Netanyahu is pretty much expounding the same line of unrestricted revenge upon his enemies that his forefather preached before the Walls of Jericho. But then Rishi, being Hindu, would get Kali or Shiva on the case in a similar situation. He’d have to: the UK Armed Forces need all the force multipliers they can get. 
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Grounded, 10% of suspected terrorist activity being investigated by the Police in Great Britain is linked to the Extreme Right Wing (XRW), so make of that what you will in terms of their actual threat to our society, values and way of life.
There’s no real lingering threat from Irish organisations, and the rest of the 90% are Islamic or various lefty-type activists: we’ve never really had any hardcore Communist terror groups such as they had in other Western European countries during the Cold War. Sinn Fein was only just socialist enough to garner training and equipment support from the Warsaw Pact countries, but not much more.
The terms ‘extreme right wing’ and ‘fascist’ are misapplied to the XRW as groups: if I was to the extreme right of the Conservative Party, I would advocate freedom from state control of institutions and taxes, which no-one really wants: look at what happened to Liz ‘n’ Kwasi when they so much as suggested economic liberalisation the other year.
If I was a fascist, I would want authoritarian state controlled capitalism. The economic model for fascism is the Corporate State. Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal all had this system when they were dictatorships. China adopted a similar authoritarian state capitalism when they finally realised that Communism merely leaves everyone equally miserable, and results in zero growth of a country’s GDP.
The corporate state system actually has a form of democracy: members of parliament are selected in proportion to the country’s industries - manufacturers get so many, the medical profession their share, agriculture, the judiciary, women, skilled trades, and so on. Members of these groups vote for candidates who have a thorough knowledge of and representation of their members’ interests. East Germany had this system within their command economy; hence they could claim to be the German Democratic Republic.
The major fault with fascism is that it relies on the ‘One Infallible Leader,’ usually someone with the same prejudices as their public, so the whole state ends up being slaves to those prejudices: National Socialism very quickly became Hitlerism, Socialism with Chinese Characteristics has to follow Xi Jinping Thought, which allows no variation of method or opinion, and so on.
So next time you bump into your local XRW representative, ask him what his socio-economic beliefs are, and what checks and balances he proposes to introduce in order that fascism doesn’t get taken over by the Leader’s human fallibility. 
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TLDR: are you saying that the UK’s extreme right wing terrorists aren’t fascist enough or just aren’t organised enough yet?
My point was that focussing wholly on terrorism from one source, and implicitly one culture, is a very narrow viewpoint.
I think he’s saying the ‘right wing’ label is entirely inappropriate for people who advocate for big government interference in everyone’s private business.
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He is saying they are so small and ineffective as to not really be relevant, which isn’t incorrect.
XRW Terrorism barely registers when placed alongside the remaining NI extremist groups or our Islamic Terrorists.
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