Attacks in Paris

The Saudi's have an appalling human rights record and seemingly finance extreme Islamic groups but on the question of arms sales I could understand that the US view might be that since they have the money and will buy the weapons anyway it is probably better to sell direct rather than, say, see Russia or China meets those needs and with it gain some influence with the Saudi regime.  

Mike 

Nothing in question time I found offensive and don’t recollect any appalling comments. I know nothing about the views of Mehdi Hasan, (Kevins link doesn’t work), but on the evidence of last nights program he talks a lot of sense.

While Andrew Neals comments where admirable, they won’t actually achieve anything, it’s not as though everybody doesn’t hold the same views.
On the other hand, QT panels unanimous agreement that demonising every Syrian refugee for the actions of a few, hopefully will.

Try this FC - should work

https://soundcloud.com/spectator1828

Here's a transcript of part of it (although the clip is worth listening to for the vehemence of Hasan's expression):

‘The kuffar, the disbelievers, the atheists who remain deaf and stubborn to the teachings of Islam, the rational message of the Koran; they are described in the Koran as “a people of no intelligence”, Allah describes them as not of no morality, not as people of no belief – people of “no intelligence” – because they’re incapable of the intellectual effort it requires to shake off those blind prejudices, to shake off those easy assumptions about this world, about the existence of God. In this respect, the Koran describes the atheists as “cattle”, as cattle of those who grow the crops and do not stop and wonder about this world.’

And he's supposed to be a moderate!

I agree with most of what you have said in this thread Kevin.

However. on the above point - the reason the KOSA has loadsamoney is because they have loadsofoil and we have given them loadsamoney in exchange for loadsofoil.

Now I know that its slow progress, but the KOSA is moderating the disgusting parts of its culture, mainly due to diplomatic pressure from the west. When I first went to Oman and The Trucial States in 1968, they were much as KOSA is today, and at that time the UK was there in force, but brought about change through diplomacy, education and persuasion. Walking away won't bring the necessary change in the KOSA but I appreciate it will be a longer, slower process than elsewhere in the Gulf.

Same applies to many other countries.

Being very sceptical (about most things) and rarely believing anything I read on the internet, I tried to find out the context in which that part of the sermon was taken. Wasn't entirely successful, but came across this.

The full speech is actually more critical of Muslims than than the west – and uses the word ‘cattle’ of unthinking Muslims too. Here are some more key quotes:

We just follow the crowd, we are the cattle that Allah condemns in the Quran, and we can’t be. We can’t be. We have to acquire knowledge every day, night and day. And Rasoollah [the Holy Prophet] says…you have to go as far afield as China.

…

I watched this programme [“Science and Islam”, BBC4] and I really enjoyed it: a well-made programme, presenter very good…and yet I watched it with a sense of despair and a sense of sadness. Because this programme was pure history, every contribution was from the past, and the elephant in the room is the current Islamic contribution to knowledge and science and learning. Where was that in the series of programmes? It wasn’t there because fundamentally there isn’t one. That is the tragedy of our community today.

…

The Middle East, despite all its oil wealth…is an intellectually stagnant area of the world, where one in three Arabs, 65 million human beings, Muslims, are functionally illiterate, of which two thirds are women. 10 million children in the Middle East have never stepped foot inside a classroom, inside a school. That is the modern Muslim legacy. The Middle East…is now intellectually closed off to the outside world. … Closed off to the world – and let s not hear any of this nonsense about foreign literature, or foreign books, or foreign languages, being alien to Islam. It is the only way to learn, to open your minds to non-Muslims, to open your minds to other cultures, to learn foreign languages.

…

It is no surprise then that when you look at the Muslim world you see that we 1.2 billion Muslims have just 10 Nobel prizes to our name….and our Jewish brethren who we spend so much time fighting and arguing with, 12 million Jews in the world, they have 150 Nobel prizes to their name….We are not under-armed, we are under-educated. We have lost our ability to think, to acquire knowledge, to advance intellectually, and then we wonder why our community is in such decay, why globally wherever you find Muslims we have such problems. It’s not a secret, it’s not a conspiracy, its clear to anyone who looks at the numbers.

…

Just think about our priorities as a community, as a Muslim world, think about our priorities,: because when you look at our priorities….you look for example in the field of research and development…the West as an average spend around 2% of their GPD, their national income, on research and development…no Muslim country spends more than 0.5% of its national wealth on research and development…instead we spend the money on what? On killing, bombs, bloodshed, destruction, warfare, arms. Take Pakistan, for example, the “Islamic” Republic of Pakistan, with shamefully high levels of child illiteracy, and one of the world’s worst child labour problems, and yet it spends 20% of its GDP on its military and 2% of its GDP on education.

Of course, I don't actually know if the above quotes where actually part of the sermon.

The US has been waging war for 15 years but Russia is bloody minded?

Yes.  Yes, they (Putin) are.  Compared to the United States. Do you think any recent Russian military action is more legal or justified than the US wars in Afghanistan or Iraq?  Or anywhere near as restrained?  Take a look at their methods in the Georgia and Chechnya as a contrast. 

Bernie Sanders isn't a kleptocrat war monger.  Maybe you should vote for him.