ISIS With A Silent I: Why Islam Must Take Responsibility For ISIS

20th November 2015 – Mali – 22 killed – Shooting

13^th November 2015 – France – 130 killed – Shooting

12^th November 2015 – Lebanon – 37 killed – Bombing

31^st October 2015 – Metrojet Flight 9268 – 224 killed – Bombing

10^th October 2015 – Turkey – 102 killed – Bombing

26^th June 2015 – Tunisia – 38 killed – Shooting

7^th January 2015 – France – 12 killed – Shooting

14^th April 2014 – Nigeria – 276 kidnapped

15^th April 2013 – USA – 5 killed – Bombing

July 2012 – Various – 50 killed – Violent protests in response to a rubbish film that denigrated Muhammad

30^th September 2005 – Various – 200 killed – Mass violent protests in response to the publication (in Denmark) of cartoons depicting Muhammad.

N.B. On the 14^th February 2015 the responsible cartoonist was allegedly targeted again in the Copenhagen shootings

7^th July 2005 – England – 52 killed – Bombing

11^th September 2001 – USA – 2977 killed

14^th February 1989 – Various – 37 killed – Ayatollah Khomeini (Supreme Leader of Iran) issues a fatwā calling for the assassination of Salman Rushdie having committed the crime of publishing a book that in one section re-narrates the life of Muhammad.

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If the left can’t agree on Corbyn then they can certainly agree on these two things:

1. Islam is not responsible for any of the aforementioned atrocities
2. It is the West’s or the victim’s fault that these bad things have happened

This is not a new response and has in fact been argued for over 20 years. It was Salman Rushdie’s fault that he received a fatwā; he shouldn’t have written a book about Muhammad and insulted 1.6 billion Muslims. Similarly, if you were to keep in touch with the news over the past two weeks you would know that the real reason ISIS exists is because of European Islamophobia/Iraq/Afghanistan/Assad/political instability/economic desperation.

If we can be sure of anything, it is that Islam plays little to no part in the worldwide crisis we have before us. Right?

As Medhi Hasan puts it: “The so-called Islamic State is “Islamic” in the way the British National Party is “British” or the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea (DPRK) is “democratic” … Why the willingness to believe the hype and rhetoric from the spin doctors and propagandists of ISIS?”

It is common knowledge that anyone who suggests that Islam might be the problem is simply another Islamophobe. Now while this unfortunately tends to be true (see Britain First, Donald Trump etc.), the original proposition that Islam must take some responsibility for ISIS should be entirely uncontroversial. It is clear that this would be a very different war if Islam did not exist, and it is plausible that any strategy focused on critiquing Islam itself could be effective in dissuading potential ISIS recruits.

Now, before I go any further.

Obviously the vast majority of Muslims are not violent. They do not want to destroy the West.

Obviously the demonisation of Muslims and the closure of our borders is not a solution. Most victims of ISIS are Muslims and it would be completely wrong to confuse these victims of terrorism with the perpetrators. It’s despicable how few refugees the UK are helping in this time of international crisis.

However, it is disingenuous for commentators on the left to repeatedly tell us that Islam is not at fault. We can no longer allow ourselves to call this genocidal caliphate ISIS with a silent I.

“How could a terror group like ISIS speak for 1.6 billion Muslims?”

Of course they can’t. By this logic there isn’t really anyone that can speak for all Muslims. But if 0.1% of all Muslims bought into radical Islam then you would have 1.6 million radicals. Note that this doesn’t necessarily mean 1.6 million active terrorists, but 1.6 million Islamists that support more violent literalist interpretations of Islam. 0.1% would still be a significantly concerning number of people that subscribed to dangerous and violent views. My point being that it does not matter that extremist groups do not represent the majority of Islam, if even a small percentage do adhere to extremist views then we all have reason to worry.

Unfortunately, according to an oft-quoted Pew survey (2013), 0.1% could be a gross underestimation. Having surveyed over 38,000 Muslims over 39 countries they found some rather troubling prevalent beliefs.* Here are a couple of points I want to highlight from the report.

While on first glance this graph appears to be reassuring (in the sense that there are only 4 countries where over a quarter of respondents think that suicide bombing is often/sometimes justified) note that 1% can still amount to a lot of people. Also notice that while the title says most Muslims state suicide bombing is not justified, the graph actually tells us that most Muslims think suicide bombing is never/RARELY justified. I believe that is quite different.*

It is important to remember that interpretations of Sharia can be quite varied, but let’s not forget that for some it can include: imprisonment for blasphemy, death for apostasy (leaving Islam), limited legal rights for women, imprisonment for homosexuality, and stoning for adultery. This is not an exhaustive list but should give you a flavour of what Sharia’s about.

There are in fact several countries that currently implement Sharia law.

In Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh you can be executed for blasphemy.

You can be punished in the UAE for adultery or pre-marital sex with flogging.

In Qatar the punishment for alcohol consumption or ‘illicit’ sexual relations is flogging.

“ISIS are not a religious movement, they are a political movement that uses religion”

The aforementioned examples of the implementation of Sharia law bring me to my next point. It is wrong to say that there is a disconnect between Islam and politics. They are interconnected and influence each other. At the very least Islam is helping to sustain political beliefs and legal systems that we in the West would consider primitive.

There is of course some truth in the complaint that there is something of a disconnect between some of the ISIS recruits and Islam. In fact, MI5 published in a report that many ISIS recruits had little knowledge of the Qur’an and one news story amusingly highlighted a couple of martyrs that saw fit to buy an “Islam for Dummies” book.**

Unfortunately, we are still left with the question of why does using Islam work? For their marketing strategy to be effective we have to assume that there are people out there that respond to their message, which is patently an Islamic message. ISIS are not searching for just anyone to fight for the nations of Syria and Iraq against the oppression of Assad and the West. They are searching for Muslims to fight for Muslims. This is not an issue of nationality, this is a matter of shared belief.

At this point we could consider whether this war is merely a symptom of the in-group versus out-group mentality that we are all born with. For some this condition is manifested by nationalism, for others by football rivalries, for past generations by Marxism, and for this generation of extremists by Islam. This is a powerful argument that is capable of explaining why people from different countries, raised in both the Middle-East and the West rally to a singular call to battle. Superficially, it also somewhat lets Islam off the hook as it suggests we are dealing with a psychological phenomenon that is not particular to Islam. This makes the next point more important. While it may be an eternal sickness of the human race that we feel we need to fight over group differences, it is essential that we find ways to weaken ideologies that lead to widespread violence. And it is much easier to critique the assumptions of Islam than it is Marxism. If you hold the atheist position that there is very little evidence for a god then it becomes much simpler to denigrate any violent ideology that is predicated on this belief.

“They do not preach REAL Islam”

This is exactly what ISIS say about all the good Muslims in the world. This complaint does not solve anything. It is brilliant that most Muslims choose to ignore the more vile sections of the Qur’an, but can we really be so alarmed that some Muslims have chosen to read them literally?

I’m personally a little surprised that everyone doesn’t take their religion literally. If I was told that there was a book in this world that was dictated/inspired by the creator of the universe and ultimate moral authority, and it contained rules I must follow in order to avoid an eternity (I’ll repeat for emphasis…ETERNITY) of pain/fire/boredom. I do not know on what grounds I would ignore any of the injunctions made in this book. But like I said, thank goodness people do!

The Qur’an doesn’t start well to be honest. Page 3 in my Qur’an has this gem:

“As for those that disbelieve, it does not matter if you warn them or not: they will not believe…They will have great torment.” (2:7)

It doesn’t get much better from there!

“God is the enemy of the unbelievers.” (2:98)

“Fighting is obligatory for you , much as you dis-like it . But you may hate a thing although it is good for you , and love a thing although it is bad for you . God knows, but you know not “ (2:216).

“Such are those that are damned by their own sins. They shall drink scalding water and be sternly punished for their unbelief” (6:70).

While I once again wish to re-iterate that most Muslims are peaceful and in no way are represented by these quotes in the Qur’an, it is a bit cheap to claim that Islam is the religion of peace and that it is a complete shock that anyone would find justification for violence in it.

ISIS and Creationism

If I have not convinced you that Islam is responsible for ISIS then allow me to phrase the debate another way. What if we were talking about Creationism?

Creationism is the belief that the universe and all life was created by God, and more specifically that human life began with Adam and Eve. We might not say that every Christian is a Creationist***, but nevertheless we can say that there are enough Creationists in the world spreading their beliefs to cause the science-minded of us to worry. There might be other factors than religion itself that predispose someone to becoming a creationist, for instance the environment that they are raised in. It may even be that they do not really believe but that the view is so prevalent in their community that it would be very socially costly to disavow Creationism. We would not say that biblical literacy is more likely to make you a Creationist, as the majority of Christian scholars do not subscribe to the view of pure Creationism. However, it would be very unusual if we asserted that Creationism had nothing to do with Christianity. That it was a perversion of Christianity. That most people don’t believe in it and that therefore there cannot be any link between the religion and the sincerely held erroneous belief.

It would be utterly bizarre if we didn’t at least consider the possibility that the way to stop the spread of Creationism was to critique Christianity itself.

The truth is that this is all very complicated. There isn’t one reason that people join ISIS and similar death cults.

Western warmongering played its part, economic instability may play its part****, Assad’s and Saddam’s sectarian genocidal dictatorship has undoubtedly played a massive part, but we are not being honest unless we admit that Islam has also played its role in the formation and sustaining of Islamic State.

We cannot deal with this crisis competently until we have an honest discussion about what makes this war so attractive to ISIS recruits. That discussion must involve the role of Islam and such a conversation would surely conclude that these militants are not fighting for Iraq, they are not fighting for Syria, they are fighting for Islam.

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“We are not killers. We are defenders of the prophet, we don’t kill women. We kill no one. We defend the prophet. If someone offends the prophet then there is no problem, we can kill him. We don’t kill women. We are not like you. You are the ones killing women and children in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. This isn’t us. We have an honour code in Islam.” 

Cherif Kouachi (Charlie Hebdo massacre)

“I and thousands like me are forsaking everything for what we believe. Our drive and motivation doesn’t come from tangible commodities that this world has to offer. Our religion is Islam, obedience to the one true God and following the footsteps of the final prophet messenger. Your democratically-elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world. And your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters. Until we feel security you will be our targets and until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people we will not stop this fight. We are at war and I am a soldier. Now you too will taste the reality of this situation.”

Mohammad Sidique Khan (7/7 bomber)

“It has become clear that the West in general and America in particular have an unspeakable hatred for Islam….It is the hatred of crusaders. Terrorism against America deserves to be praised because it was a response to injustice, aimed at forcing America to stop its support for Israel, which kills our people…We say that the end of the United States is imminent, whether Bin Laden or his followers are alive or dead, for the awakening of the Muslim umma (nation) has occurred”

Osama Bin Laden

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* I’ve actually picked a Pew survey that is relatively favourable towards Muslims. Another Pew survey (2002) found much bleaker results.

The worst thing about this survey is that once again ‘No’ includes rarely justified. Taking Jordan as an example, if rarely justified was counted as ‘Yes’ then the line of percentages would read: 65 26 8.

I encourage everyone to read the full Pew report (2013) as it contains a lot of interesting information about modern Muslims. It’s not all doom and gloom, the report found that the majority of Muslims don’t think there is a tension between devout and non-devout Muslims; few Muslims believe that their faith is incompatible with modern society and science; there is also widespread support for democracy. My point in selecting the two examples I did was to suggest that there is clearly a strong link between classical Islamic beliefs and the modern Muslim’s belief in Sharia and (to a lesser extent) martyrdom.

** Though should we assume that increased academic knowledge of Islam relates to more sincere belief?

*** I mean this in the purest sense as presumably every Christian is a Creationist to some extent.

**** Sam Harris points out that Ahmed Omar Sheikh (who organised the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl) studied at London School of Economics, Hezbollah operatives that die in violent operations are less likely to be from a poor background and more likely to be educated to a secondary school level, and the leaders of Hamas are all college graduates. Therefore suggesting that belief is a more powerful motivator than socio-economic background. Though this should be clear to us by now as militants are being recruited to ISIS from all over the world.

Can Everyone Please Stop Moaning About These Stupid TV Debates!

This issue has already taken up too much time on the news and I can’t stand it.

David Cameron doesn’t want to be thrown to the lions on TV and get slaughtered by anyone that wants a piece.

This slightly cowardly move clearly does not show him to be the bold, daring, charismatic leader that we may all want, but it also doesn’t make him aloof, uncaring, or stupid.

It is my personal opinion that the leader and the principle opposition should be forced to do a televised debate at every election. These televised debates are a much better advert for politics than Prime Minister’s Questions and they get the young involved. BUT we should never be surprised that the majority party does not want to do them, there are obvious and pragmatic reasons for this. We are basically asking the turkey to vote for Christmas.

Cameron has nothing to gain from these debates. NOTHING. His role will be to stand there and let every other party throw shit at him (hopefully metaphorically). These debates are king-makers and king-breakers, where the charisma of one person for one hour may help you decide whether to vote for that random MP that lives near your house.

Think of how the Liberal Democrats hadn’t had a sniff of power for decades, but on the back of Nick Clegg’s flooring of the main parties in the 2010 debates they have afforded themselves significant influence of government policy.

Think of how Gordon Brown became reduced to a man with a terrible, child-scaring smile by the media.

Think of how Nigel Farage is a man who would be nothing without TV. After spending numerous unglamourous hours on television being condemned as a lizard-faced racist he has managed to build a solid platform for UKIP. He has even managed to wipe the floor with previous debating champion Nick Clegg on the issue of the EU, as well as securing victory in the European Parliament elections for the party you thought everyone hated. All this success is born out of Farage’s ability in front of a camera, and he now leads the party that scares everyone.

If you’re not quite done thinking yet, then you could even think of how the Green party found great popularity for not being allowed on TV with Dave Cameron, an issue that greatly upset him. I count this as the second most bizarre and dull news story of the past year.

What I’m getting at is that yes, it would have been great for him to accept the schedule. It would be better for the electorate, and frankly I think it would have been better for him. We all know he would have wiped the floor with Ed Miliband, anyone that needs evidence of this just needs to watch any replay of PMQs over the past 5 years. Just to cover myself against left-wing retribution, I didn’t mean that he would have won because the coalition has nailed governance and that everything is perfect. Ed Miliband is just shit at debating: you know it, I know it, and he probably knows it.

But Cameron had two options and both were a gamble.

1. DEBATE

Take on the debate and risk being made to look like a moron on TV, whilst simultaneously raising the profile of Labour and other parties.

OR

Take on the debate and boss it

2. CHICKEN OUT

Leave the debate and bet on the fact that if they ’empty chair’ him, that no-one in the world can be bothered to listen to Ed drone on for an hour about how things would obviously be great if he were in charge. I don’t know about you guys but I’m watching for the scrap! It would be a bit boring to watch a fight between one people.

OR

Leave the debate and thanks to the sheer willpower of the news everyone moans about him not being on TV without rest for a month, until the public inevitably pick up sound bites from Ed Miliband’s solo debate from the news and Labour experience a tidal wave of support.

However, ingeniously he went for option number 3. He’s attempted a best of both worlds option by debating every person and their mother on television. 7 parties on stage! 7! Just think, if they all moan about what they would do to make the world perfect for 5 minutes each, then boom, 35 minutes gone. That leaves no time to bully Cameron over the tie he is wearing, or whether he can see #thedress properly.

So listen, feel free to hate Cameron but he did not make a crazy decision designed to insult the electorate. Feel free to think that this move is a comment on his character and that you should not vote for a man that is so camera-shy. You can even feel free to imagine that he tremors at the thought of debating Miliband for the 100^th time. But please recognise that he’s in a terrible position and it’s unnecessarily moany of us and the news to bang on about it for this amount of time.

It’ll be interesting to see whether the next party to rise to power 100% commits to the debates next time round.

Any thoughts or vile hysterical rantings? Please comment below.

Democracy In All But Name

Greetings loyal blogjects! How are we doing? Super-dee-duper.

Today’s subject is the royal family and why I think they’re rubbish. Our American cousins from across the pond no doubt agree with me as they have been monarch free since 1776, but I am concerned that only a few people in my own country can see this (consistently a mere 1/5 of the population). My aim will be to demonstrate that the possession of a Royal family is highly anachronistic, wasteful and humiliating. Or if that falls through then I hope to at least make the surviving cavaliers among you cringe that little harder when a representative leader of our country gaffes or when masses of Brits congregate outside a hospital awaiting the ascension of Wills on to Pride Rock General so he can present Simba/George to the nation.

The most fundamental point underlying all of this is that surely in this day and age we can see that having one person at the top of a political tree is hugely archaic and embarrassing. Our culture despises the dictator yet admires the monarch? This seems to be a gross contradiction in principles. We have had royals in charge for a loooooong fricking time but it is not sufficient to suggest that just because a practice has continued for a long time that it is sensible by nature (see the death penalty and slavery). True – this is not the kind of tradition that you were really thinking of dear reader, more so the kind of pleasantly auratic, homely traditions like drinking on Christmas morning. Well for me it is no consolation to think that the Royals sit cheerily at the top table of democracy looking cute whilst being endearingly and ever-so-slightly racist just so that I may feel warm and fuzzy inside, I have always been a present man.

 Now I know we all agree that having an unelected leader to rule for the masses is wrong. It is at this point that I feel I should remind us all of her main responsibilities: passing laws, head of the army, head of the church. The golden three! Imagine the minutes we have sat crying to ourselves over how the citizens from ‘those’ countries never had a chance with one person perpetually in charge of those things. But wait…she’s not REALLY in power is she Dave? This would all be pretty awful if someone did have power over all three of those things without needing to particularly worry what the public thought, but no such system exists in our country? You are right dear reader! The crux of our constitutional monarchy is that we have a government made of the people for the people (House of Lords aside of course) and they do all the running around, the debating, the double-checking of legislature and then the King/Queen signs off on it. The monarch gratefully receives the castration of their powers with a gentle smile but not before confirming that forever more they will not say anything subversive about governance nor will they even dare to have an opinion about any political issue…a public one anyway.

In Jeremy Paxman’s book On Royalty* he asserts that according to his research the Queen has NEVER in her reign said anything even slightly politically interesting. Think of that! Since 1952 the nominal leader of our nation has not thought to speak out or publicly influence the politics of this country. Maybe sweet fuck all happened? I suppose there was the cold war, the civil rights movement, the space race, various nuclear disasters, apartheid, 9/11, Iraq (episode I and II), and the banking crisis. Now fair enough many of these enormous landmarks are world events and it’s not that crazy that she wouldn’t shout about them but please do keep in mind that she doesn’t seem to have had anything to say about the way her own country has been led for 61 years. We can only assume that she has positively agreed with every government that has ever been in office. She is both left and right, red and blue(/yellow). She is Thatcherite, she is Blair…ite. She agrees with what the present government is saying and will heartily renounce her previous convictions when she joins a future government that climbed on to its perch only by lambasting the previous lot. I sincerely recommend that when you start tossing the blame at various MPs for borderline-retarded decisions that you also throw stones at the Queen. By signing off on everything ever we can adjudge her as being implicitly responsible for stagflation in the 70s, privatisation, EU membership, various middle-eastern wars and the credit crunch. If we’re going to shake our collective fists at representative ministers of this country we should also have a go at the very top of the government shouldn’t we? You simply can’t have it both ways, “oh this country couldn’t do without her leadership but her real genius is that she doesn’t lead”. Ready to call for a re-election of your monarchy yet?

Paxman tells a story about how he sought out the youngest monarchy in the world to try and understand why anyone has one. Albania began its search for a privileged ruling class in the early 20^th century (English gentlemen preferred). Predictably a military coup led to the establishment of their Royal family and rather amusingly the man that took power was an international affairs correspondent for the Times whose job it was to report on Albanian issues. Having received a request for a report describing the ongoing search for a monarch the newly instated leader replied, ‘All good here. I am King now’. Decades later sexy Paxman spoke to a descendant of this person and asked why it’s better to have a King than an elected official. His reply was that it was important that the leader should lead as a matter of duty and should not have anything to gain from the position. Now we can see this is ludicrous. Ultimate power is quite a carrot! I can’t bring myself to think that having someone born into a position is a good idea, we’d never want it for anything else. Can you imagine what it would be like to have a surgeon that only gained the position because their parents had been surgeons? Oh they’re doing it for duty, which is most noble and it is far better that a dutiful surgeon whips out my appendix than a surgeon whose every thought would be on the enormous pay cheque awaiting them outside of the theatre. Maybe everyone in government should be born into it? I can see it now! Everyone from prime minister to minister of education could be born into the role. Then we’d never have to worry about the self-interest of anyone again!

Now allow me to appeal to the thing you hold most dear my incredibly intelligent and attractive reader – your wallet. I’m sure you know that about 50p of your tax payments per year go to her royal highness (creepy title for a leader), that doesn’t sound too bad does it. The total sum given to the royal household is slightly more disconcerting, the crown’s official books tell us that we contribute around £40 million per year to the most privileged family in the country, this would be annoying enough even if they actually did anything! But Republic actually estimate the total cost to be around £200 million as the crown fails to include costs for things like their round the clock security, parties and excursions to far off lands. The past two years have been enormously expensive for hosting the Royal family with events such as: the Royal wedding, jubilee and birth of a future head of state (all good things come in threes). You may be interested to know that it cost £7 million to ensure the security of the Royal wedding, which was entirely taken out of the police budget, NOT the Royal purse. To add insult to injury they own £7 billion worth of land! Their property portfolio extends to key properties in London, farm land and much of the coastline (none of which they have to pay inheritance tax on like the rest of us). They make an absolute fortune from it, much of which goes to the state. Now that’s great and everything but ask yourselves why do they own it in the first place? What right do they have to British land that they do not explicitly own? Well I’ll tell you, they have it because we live in a country that hasn’t fully grown out of its embarrassing medieval traditions.

To make things worse it’s actually incredibly difficult to find out what the real costs of the monarchy are as the freedom of information act does not apply to them! Think of that! Even if it’s in the public interest we don’t have the right to know what the royal household is spending its money on. When they were briefly open to the public we discovered that the Queen had enquired as to whether the state poverty fund could be used to heat Buckingham Palace and that Prince Charles had repeatedly lobbied ministers. Incidentally, please reflect on the fact that our newspapers were outraged to discover that the future head of state was trying to influence the politics of this country, that should provide some perspective as to what we really think of an unelected leader getting mucked in. Furthermore, if you would be so kind dear reader to reflect on the fact that future King Charles is politically interested. We may laud the current ruler for not being into politicking but Charles could have a real influence on how this country handles the issues he’s spoken on including but not restricted to: nanotechnology, environment and alternative medicine. Generally, any sane person must be able to recognise that making an offering of tax worth millions to a family whose head of house is estimated to be worth $450 million is laughable. Basically, one Queen is worth 9000 nurses or 8000 policeman. Which would you rather your 50p per year paid for?

I shall promptly assault the most common argument for why we should have an unelected, super-powerful, god-endorsed family running our country. Tourism. They bring in loads of money! Chill out and let the people flock to join the queues that wind through the streets of Britain, she is our Mickey Mouse! It’s largely overestimated how much tourism the Queen brings in. First of all, how does anyone know that all the tourists are here to see our fearless leader? Is that the only reason they came? Would we remove the arrivals department at Heathrow if we didn’t have a monarchy down the road? Of course not. No-one is actually going to meet the Queen. If you come for that then you’ll be disappointed to find out that what you’re going to see is the outside of Buckingham Palace. Will you be able to get in? Probably not. The property is closed off to the public for most of the year and when there are open days then only a fraction of the grounds are actually open to the public. Not the greatest resort it could be! It’s estimated that Buckingham Palace attracts 0.4 million visitors per year, compare this with the Louvre in Paris, previously the residence of the French Royal family before things got a little heated. It is considered one of the greatest museums in the world and receives 8.5 million visitors per year. It’s not like we have nothing to show! Buckingham Palace houses one of the greatest art collections in the world, if we did consider the Royals to be a cash cow that’s only good for tourism then we certainly should start milking them better. Ponder the fact that the highest earning Windsor resort is Legoland not Queenland.

All I want is for the Royal family to shrink politely into the background and live as the harmless celebrities they are**. We acknowledge that they’re not actually powerful and that if they dared to use their powers there’d be a revolution. So what’s the point in having them? The Queen would still be allowed to open motorways and supermarkets up and down the country. She could still visit presidents all round the world if they wanted her. It would just be off her own back! What are we afraid of? Do we think she’ll quit if we don’t pay her taxes?! Not very dutiful. I am perfectly content for the royals to continue as purveyors of fuzzy family values, but not for them to continue as political leaders, it’s just not what they’re best at. As a previous trainer of the new staff in the royal household put it, “we are in the business of making people happy”.

I promise you, we will do fine without her! We have a lot to be proud of in this country, we are a nation worth celebrating. However, we can’t claim to have fully joined the enlightenment movement until we toss off the self-imposed shackles represented by our monarchy. We are a country that has led internationally for centuries in everything. We took a stand as one of the world’s ethical leaders during both world wars. We have pioneered in innovation and science, arguably producing the two greatest scientists ever in Darwin and Newton. We abolished slavery and championed civil rights long before the more eye-catching Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King did so for the Americans. We invented all the best sports: football, cricket, rugby, tennis, baseball. We even hosted the first iteration of the modern olympics for goodness sake!

There is much to be proud of as a Brit. But the notion that I should sit quietly by my union jack sweetly smiling to myself whilst I listen to my bulldog belt out God Save Our Gracious Queen upsets me. Surely we have the most creepy national anthem in the world! No-one would think it was so great or cosy if the words were God Save Dave Cameron or any other leader for that matter, how odd to sing about the head of the country rather than the country itself! Furthermore, our government puts on a weird panto every year to celebrate how we nearly became a truly democratic republic. Basically, it’s all about how the house of commons refuse to allow the monarch to enter their chamber any more. This is represented by a door being slammed in a gentleman’s face before he tells the Queen (panto villain) that the public won’t be taking her shit any more. The Queen says cool and then goes on to read what the government will be looking in to for that year. Please remember this is the official state opening of parliament for one of the leading countries in the world! This practice is frankly embarrassing to broadcast on national TV, why do we still do this?! The American equivalent would be to have Obama dress in blue 18th century attire and chase the red coats into the sea before reading out the declaration of independence! Note – there always follows grovelling letters testifying to how it was the greatest reading of a list ever when it’s really not.  Whilst I’m on this thread, her Christmas speeches aren’t incredible either, they’re nice and everything but hardly inspiring. I struggle to remember a single one! Normally some stuff about how family is important, charming, but no-one would listen to it if it were anyone else giving the speech, I’d rather watch Jingle All The Way.

Finally, I want to explain the rationale for the title of this piece. In several arguments about this subject I have been told that it’s not a big issue and that I should stop worrying about it. Now in practical terms these people are quite right, it does not compare to many issues that surround the world at this very moment. But in principle I struggle to think of anything bigger, it is highly embarrassing to be led by a person whose only right to be there was established by the violent kings of times gone by. She was not picked by the people and I am resigned to the fact that her great grandson George is going to be my leader one day. I don’t know what he’s like, maybe he’ll be fantastic, maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll be the kind of servant torturing psychopath that other ‘democracies’ like North Korea have got used to. I remember when gay marriage was the headline in this country. I was told then that it’s not a big issue and that they basically have marriage it’s just not called marriage. Yet I insisted that there was nothing more important in principle than giving homosexuals that equal right. I repeat it now, we may have an acting democracy, we all know that the politicians are the real leaders; we know that they make the decisions and that the Royals are there for decoration, we are in theory a pure democracy. But in terms of principle we must be categorised with the medieval civilsations of times gone past, it’s important for this country to grow and throw off the training wheels that royalty provide to governance. Currently, we are a democracy in all but name, weakly choosing to have a monarch represent us. I believe it is integral to our own self-respect as a nation that we become a democracy in practice and in name.

Scenarios I would like:

Best: The powers of the Royal family are taken away and they are told to move from their publicly-owned to privately-owned estates. They can live out the rest of their days as an incredibly well-off family – the upper class dream.

Meh: We AT LEAST take away their tax benefits, there’s no way we can be content as a country with the most privileged family in Britain not being subject to the same rules as the rest of us. Call on the anger you feel when you hear about expenses scandals and dodgy tax-cutting deals!

Now I shall pack up and head for the border. Next time you hear from me I expect I will be trapped in the stocks or my head will be on a spike outside Buckingham Palace. Feel free to toss your rotten tomato my way! It’s only through debate that this issue will ever be settled.

TTFN!

*In the interests of full disclosure I’m going to break down and admit that I haven’t read the book. I have merely watched a lecture he gave about the book on youtube. HAVE YOUR WAY WITH ME INTERNET!

**I feel it is worth noting that this celebrity status is not always healthy. I don’t want to fully commit myself to this view but I know that some claim that the public response to Diana’s death was not wholly appropriate. It was a response unlike any other seen in this country, much greater people that have contributed more to the world will get nothing like that mourning. Some people even claim to have been threatened for choosing to work on her memorial day! Members of the press accuse the public of forgetting how they felt about her leaving the Royal family for the repugnant Dodi Fayed. Something forgotten largely by the country that sent its condolences to the wrong address…Buckingham Palace. The most amusing example given is from a journalist who wrote the week before her death that she had behaved shamefully and like a whore at a time when the princes needed solidarity. Following her death, this same journalist engaged in the self-flagellation that the rest of the country did by wishing that this angel’s candle had not blown out in the wind. Now, I am too young to really have taken in the mood of the country at this time but I thought it was an important view to put out there, maybe the celebrity status of the monarchy is excessive.