SNP's unconvincing Order snub
Efrafandays reports the SNP’s unconvincing reaction to the news that the Orange Order, in Scotland, will encourage its members to vote for anyone other than a nationalist, in the forthcoming general election. Party sources are suggesting that comments from Grand Master, Ian Wilson, represent an embarrassment for Labour (and presumably the other unionist parties), rather than a blow to the SNP.
Alec observes that Salmond’s party is not without its own bedfellows known for an intransigent take on religion. The Scottish-Islamic Foundation is intricately linked to the SNP and has received a full third of all ‘equality’ funding since 2007. Its spokespersons have advocated the introduction of Sharia Law to Scottish jurisprudence and championed state funded Islamic schools, despite evidence that such institutions can exercise a radicalising influence.
Whilst the SIF is entitled to pursue its chosen projects, the SNP’s patronage exemplifies its approach to sectional interests. Rather than consider all Scots equal, individual citizens who happen to be possessed of certain religious, ethnic and cultural characteristics which should be protected and cherished, and appealing for support on that basis, the nationalists see a society made up of atomised communities. Through a system of patronage the party attempts to ‘franchise’ group interests (and money) to its preferred NGO (or Quango), in return for its support for separatism.
Ironically, if the Orange Order were not, by definition, unionist, it is exactly the type of religious / sectional organisation which Salmond might seek to court for nationalism.
Alec observes that Salmond’s party is not without its own bedfellows known for an intransigent take on religion. The Scottish-Islamic Foundation is intricately linked to the SNP and has received a full third of all ‘equality’ funding since 2007. Its spokespersons have advocated the introduction of Sharia Law to Scottish jurisprudence and championed state funded Islamic schools, despite evidence that such institutions can exercise a radicalising influence.
Whilst the SIF is entitled to pursue its chosen projects, the SNP’s patronage exemplifies its approach to sectional interests. Rather than consider all Scots equal, individual citizens who happen to be possessed of certain religious, ethnic and cultural characteristics which should be protected and cherished, and appealing for support on that basis, the nationalists see a society made up of atomised communities. Through a system of patronage the party attempts to ‘franchise’ group interests (and money) to its preferred NGO (or Quango), in return for its support for separatism.
Ironically, if the Orange Order were not, by definition, unionist, it is exactly the type of religious / sectional organisation which Salmond might seek to court for nationalism.
Comments
With the patronage offered to the SIF, and especially the Saeed family, it's like the Stormont being farmed out to hardline DUPers and the fringes of the Orange Order.
That the orange order should seek to affect voting patterns is in itself a sign of the cancer that it has become in Scotland.
The sooner that ALL marches in Glasgow and West Central Scotland are banned the better. The people following these parades are a disgrace and bring shame to scotland.
Does this include founding members such as Anas al Tikriti, Ismail Patel and Saeed himself? Al Tikriti believes Al Qadeda in Iraq doesn't spend enough time in Iraq targetting American and British troops:
http://www.muslimbrotherhood.co.uk/Home.asp?zPage=Systems&System=PressR&Press=Show&Lang=E&ID=4692
Patel knows what Jews should believe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCLNX9xyd6c&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG5Vo1APvow&feature=player_embedded
Saeed calls the targetted killing of civilians "martyrdom operations":
http://www.osamasaeed.org/osama/2006/10/israels_shiftin_1.html
If that's too opaque, maybe you could consider the founder of the Muslim Association of Britain (remember, Saeed was a regional organizer), Kemal el Helbway who considers the murder of Jewish children as young as three to be acceptable, and who has been invited on SIF junkets:
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1922.htm
Then there's another guest, Alamin
Belhaji, the head of the Libyan branch of the Muslim Brotherhood:
http://scottishislamic.wordpress.com/2008/01/11/self-leadership-one-day-course/
Or the senior members of the Brotherhood-affiliated Council for American Islamic Relations, which has been linked to the Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial in the USA:
http://www.scottishislamic.org/index.php?go=events&id=21
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Land_Foundation_for_Relief_and_Development
Or Mohammed Salwar, named fugitive Hamas commander and believer in "the Jewish evil":
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/07/10/were-being-sued-by-hamas-uk/
Failing all of that, what about Saeed's own description of Anwar Awlaki as a "man of peace"?
http://www.osamasaeed.org/osama/2006/11/imam_anwar_arre.html
http://www.nefafoundation.org/reports.html#awlakibackgrounder
>> with the Orange Order, a largely white men only memberhsip club?
How very dare you!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4554863.stm
Grand Lodge also has a calendar out of famous Orangemen including Dublin born Dr Barnardo (yes that one)and the various Prime Ministers of New Zealand, Canada and New Foundland who were in the Order and the Mohawk Orangemen in Canada and also the African Orangemen in Ghana and Togo (there goes the usual KKK analogies that always pop up) Also Rev Rev Brian Kennaway, the author of The Orange Order - a Tradition Betrayed listed several prominent Catholic convert who were Grand Chaplains in both Scotland and Ireland in one of his article for the Grand Lodge of Ireland Education Committee comparing Orangesim with Freemasonry! Another good read is `The Faithful Tribe` by Ruth Dudley Edward a Dublin born Roman Catholic!
As gratifying as it is to think I've elicited yet another stock response from Orangeism, I don't think asking whether power sharing is required in another of the UK's yokel parliaments is akin to the usual diatribes aimed in the order's direction.
I always had had a niggle about revolting Presbyterians giving loyalty to the hierachy, and even Masonic influences of the Orange Order. I know of Wolfe Tone's disdain towards the RC peasantry, and also of his Anglicanism... what were his thoughts?