Alex Salmond Submits to Allah's Will in His End of Ramadan Message

Alex boasts of how he's giving away even more Scottish taxpayers' money to Pakistan. He concludes the broadcast by saying "insha'Allah", Arabic for "As Allah Wills".

On behalf of the Scottish Government, I am delighted to send my sincere and warmest wishes to Muslims across Scotland, and around the world, who are marking the end of Ramadan by celebrating Eid ul-Fitr.



Scotland's Muslims, and our many other minority ethnic and faith communities, are valued and appreciated by this Government for their contribution to our culture, society and economy.



The holy month of Ramadan encourages Muslims to reflect on the poor and hungry throughout the world and the burden they bear.



So this year's Eid will be a poignant occasion for many Muslims, as we remember those whose lives have been left devastated by the recent flooding in Pakistan.



Charity is at the heart of Ramadan, and at the close of Ramadan, Muslims give Sadaqa-Ul-Fitr, a donation that allows those who are struggling to make ends meet to also enjoy the festivities of Eid.



And, this year, Mosques throughout Scotland are collecting for aid to Pakistan. Here at the Blackhall Mosque in Edinburgh, where I am recording this message, I have been privileged and humbled to see the work that is going on to collect goods and money and to see that they are delivered to Pakistan.



The scale of suffering in Pakistan is immense and ongoing. So far, Scots have given - with typical generosity - over £3.9 million to the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal and we must continue to do all we can do to help those whose homes and communities were destroyed by these floods.



The Scottish Government made £807,000 available last week to assist the Pakistani aid effort. We are in regular contact with Scottish aid agencies working in Pakistan, to monitor the situation on the ground, so that we can help to provide further assistance where and when needed.



So let me repeat my best wishes to Muslims across Scotland who will be enjoying festivities with family and friends this Eid, whilst our hearts and thoughts are also with the people of Pakistan. Eid Mubarak to everyone.

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Alex Salmond And His New Friends From the Maldives

More on the Maldives

I've been reading up on the persecution of Christians and other non-Muslims in the Maldives in light of the fact that the SNP is giving Scottish taxpayers' money to it.

Open Doors, a charity that campaigns for persecuted Christians worldwide, ranks the Maldives 6th in its list of countries where the persecution of Christians is worst!

All citizens must be Muslims in this archipelago. Legislation forbids the practice of any religion except Islam; churches are forbidden; and the import of Christian literature is prohibited. New regulations governing religious practice were unveiled by the government in 2010, and stricter policies were also imposed on tourists after some were caught bringing in Bibles. The few indigenous believers are isolated from one other and are monitored both by the authorities and the locals.

In 2010 a teacher from India was forced to flee the Maldives after angry parents tried to attack her. They accused her of attempting to spread Christianity because she had drawn a cross on the blackboard to teach the children the directions of the compass!

The Maldives, which is at the forefront of a campaign to get the international community to act on a looming global warming crisis, has a more immediate problem on hand. A rising tide of religious extremism is driving this tropical paradise of a low-lying string of islands down the road to a new conservatism.

What is more, the spread of militant Islam in the country and the appeal of a radical strain of Islam are drawing Maldivian youth into global jihadi groups.

"Hundreds of Maldivians" have been recruited by the Taliban and are fighting in Pakistan, Maldivian President Mohammed Nasheed told the CNN-IBN news channel during his recent visit to India.

...

A puritanical version of Islam has taken root. Signs of conservatism are more evident on the streets of the capital, Male, today than they were even a few years ago. The number of burqa-clad women has been increasing steadily as has that of bearded men.

Forum 18 reports that even migrant workers are denied religious freedom:

Just as Maldivian citizens do not have the right to religious freedom – Sunni Islam in the state-approved form is the only permitted faith – migrant workers too are denied this right. The Maldives prevents the import of non-Muslim books and other religious items, for example by searching foreigners' luggage for "un-Islamic" materials. Migrant workers are banned from practising non-Muslim faiths even privately, while the lack of privacy in which many live makes it almost impossible to worship "unnoticed by locals", as one migrant worker put it to Forum 18 News Service. Some 80,000 migrant workers – mostly Muslims, Buddhists, Christians and Hindus from South Asia – make up about a quarter of the country's population, but are mostly in low-status jobs and find it difficult to challenge human rights violations. The government has not acted on United Nations recommendations to grant migrant workers religious freedom.

SNP Giving Foreign Aid to Islam-Dominated Country Where Other Religions Are Prohibited By Law

Reading through the SNP's 2011 manifesto, I was struck by one section which discussed the SNP's grant of foreign aid to "developing nations". Special support seems to be lavished on the Maldives. Their manifesto says this:

And we will increase our efforts to support developing nations
as they respond to the challenges of climate change. We have
heard the calls from many for Scotland to create a Climate
Adaptation Fund. Given the pressures on the Scottish
Government’s budget we will work with partners in business,
charitable foundations and non-governmental organisations so
we can co-ordinate efforts to build a Scotland-wide climate
adaptation fund. And as part of our commitment to climate
mitigation we will take forward initiatives to share Scottish
knowledge, skills and expertise.

We have recently announced funding for an innovative scheme,
in partnership with the University of Strathclyde, to deliver
community-owned and maintained solar panels to provide
access to renewable energy in rural Malawi. This is delivering
skills, revenue and health improvements in the communities
involved, and the next stage is looking at further requirements
for trials ahead of a potential scaling up of the project. This is
exactly the sort of action we believe is needed to deliver local
energy solutions as part of our contribution to global action on
climate change.

We will support the Maldives to develop renewable marine
energy and go carbon neutral by 2020, and we will take
forward our recently-signed agreement with the InterAmerican
Development Bank (IDB) to promote Scottish expertise in the
development of clean energy technology and
projects in Latin America and the Caribbean. And, we will
further develop Scotland-Malawi links, with a particular focus
on food production and food science in the face of climate
change. The Moredun Institute will work with Malawi to take
forward this important work.

Not knowing much about the Maldives, I looked it up on Wikipedia. Surprise, surprise: it turns out to be an Islam-dominated country where strict sharia is in force.

Islam is the only official religion of The Maldives. The open practice of all other religions is forbidden and such actions are liable to prosecution under the law of the country. A small but growing number of Maldivians do question their faith, using the internet as a means of communication but rarely in a public way. According to the revised constitution, in article two, it says that the republic "is based on the principles of Islam." Article nine says that "a non-Muslim may not become a citizen of the Maldives"; number ten says that "no law contrary to any principle of Islam can be applied in the Maldives." Article nineteen states that "citizens are free to participate in or carry out any activity that is not expressly prohibited by sharia or by the law."

The requirement to adhere to a particular religion and prohibition on public worship in other religions is contrary to Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which the Maldives has recently become party and was thus addressed in the Maldives' reservation in adhering to the Covenant claiming that "The application of the principles set out in Article 18 of the Covenant shall be without prejudice to the Constitution of the Republic of the Maldives."

The Maldives is one of the countries which tops the government restrictions index on religious freedom.

So the SNP is wasting taxpayers' money supporting one of the most rigid Islamic regimes on earth! Cardinal Keith O'Brien recently called for foreign aid to made contingent on respect for religious pluralism. But this is clearly not a priority for the SNP.

What Their 2011 Manifestos Say About The Immigration Policies of Scotland's Political Parties

In view of the upcoming election, I have been looking through the manifestos of the various political parties in Scotland to see what they have to say about immigration and islamification. In relation to the major parties, the SNP, the Conservatives, Lib Dhims and Labour, the answer - surprise, surprise - is nothing. The words immigration, immigrant, Islam and Muslim are not mentioned anywhere in the manifestos of the four major parties, despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that all of them agree immigration is a good thing.

The Lib Dhims do offer a brief mention of asylum seekers. They will:

Continue to work with the UK Government to ensure an integrated and sensitive approach to the treatment of asylum seekers, particularly in cases where children are involved, and ensure that asylum seekers have access to good legal advice early on and throughout the asylum process.

Labour says this about discrimination:

Scottish Labour will tackle racial or religious
prejudice, intolerance and discrimination,
not only because of the impact on the lives
of those who experience it, but because it
holds us back as a nation. We will support
initiatives to tackle racial and religious
discrimination in the workplace and in
communities and will continue support for
schemes that celebrate the diversity of
Scotland’s culture and its people. Scottish
Labour will conduct a review of the Scottish
Refugee Integration Strategy to reflect
on the effectiveness of current action and
to explore how integration work can be
sustained and developed.

The Scottish Greens have this to say about asylum seekers:

Global injustice and war lead to people coming to
Scotland as asylum seekers and refugees. Scotland must
welcome those fleeing persecution in their own countries,
while working to tackle the forces that persecute people.
We’ll deliver devolved services that take the rights and needs
of asylum seekers and refugees seriously, as well as putting
pressure on the UK Government to provide a genuinely
humane asylum system.

We’ll support moves to build a coalition of countries and
regions willing to adopt a policy of boycotts, disinvestment
and sanctions in relation to the Israeli Government to
encourage an end to illegal settlements and negotiations on
a final status for a Palestinian state. Some aspects of this can
be taken forward immediately in Scotland through public
procurement measures which are already under devolved
control.

It's notable that the SNP are now apparently dispensing foreign aid to third world countries. So Scottish taxpayers are being mugged once for foreign aid at the British level and then again at the Scottish level. I will discuss this in a separate post.

Only UKIP and the BNP talk about immigration explicitly in their manifestos. UKIP says this:

Restrict immigration so Scotland will be for the Scots and the British first

End Labour’s mass immigration, which let in three million in 13 years.

Freeze permanent settlement for five years to sort out the system.

Increase Border Agency staffing as necessary to control immigration.

Introduce strict visa controls.

Admit key workers only, for fixed periods only.

Deport illegal immigrants and foreign criminals.

Require all citizens to learn English.

Publish all official communications in Gaelic
or English only.

Scrap State promotion of multiculturalism.

As you would expect, the BNP talk quite a bit about immigration:

This is another reason for the significant hikes in council tax bills (which, not surprisingly coincided with a massive increase of immigration to this country,
again, with the blessing of the SNP).

The presence of ‘cheap’ East European labour (which proponents claim brings
economic benefit) in reality only adds to the cost of providing essential services,
at a time of high native unemployment. In addition, this influx has increased local
unemployment and benefit dependency amongst our own poor, which in turn
increases the burden borne by our taxpayers.

Lastly, local authorities have implemented a range of costly politically-correct
schemes and grants to ethnic minority and multi-cultural groups, causes, projects
and initiatives, including foreign language courses and interpreters. The SNP
has frequently been at the forefront of these initiatives, which well demonstrate
the bogus nature of its claim to support the national interests of Scotland and the Scottish people.