Pat Condell Quotes

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About Pat Condell

Patrick Condell (born 1949) is an English stand up comedian, writer and secularist. He has caused controversy with outspoken monologues on various video websites denouncing religion and political correctness, while also defending atheism.

Born: 1949

Categories: English people, Comedians, Internet personalities, Living people, Vegetarians, Critics of Islam

Quotes: 86 sourced quotes total (includes 3 about)

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'Faith' is merely fear dressed up as virtue.
Religion disapproves of original thought the way Dracula disapproves of sunlight.
Sharia … is, of course, invalid because it's God's Law, and God doesn't exist.
Being called close-minded by religious people is a bit like being called yellow by a bunch of bananas.
Why am I anti-Islam? Well, for the simple reason that Islam is anti-me, and it's anti every fundamental value I hold.
What is the difference between a Doctor of Medicine and a Doctor of Theology? One prescribes drugs, while the other might as well be on drugs.
It's at times like this, isn't it, when you realize just how much we need the United Nations - about as much as we need an ear infection.
You know, I found out recently that the word "heretic" comes from the Greek word "airetikós", meaning "able to choose" - which pretty much says it all, don't you think?
It does seem quite ironic to me that the very people who clearly have made no attempt to think for themselves are always the most vocal in demanding respect for their "ideas".
But it seems to me that if God had intended for you to cover your face then, in His wisdom, He would have provided you with a flap of skin for the purpose.
according to current birthrate projections, France will be a majority Muslim country anyway in about 50 years … I get a lot of e-mails from Americans who think that Europeans are spineless. And I think they're right.
If you're looking at the Bible for a guide to living a compassionate, wise and humane life, well, frankly you've got more chance of finding a lap dancing club in Mekka or a virgin in a catholic orphanage.
Pat Condell is unique. Nobody can match his extraordinary blend of suavity and savagery. With his articulate intelligence he runs rings around the religious wingnuts that are the targets of his merciless humour. Thank goodness he's on our side.
This guy (Pat Robertson) obviously wants to be a prophet so bad. I wonder if he walks around at home dressed up in a bed sheet, talking Aramaic, maybe parting the waters in the bathtub occasionally, just to keep in practice?
So, what do you think the British government did in the face of this open threat to public order? Go on, have a guess. That's right, they caved in like a bunch of spineless pussies! I couldn't have put it better myself.
People keep framing this as a religious freedom issue, but there's a difference between practising your religion - which everyone has the right to do - and rubbing your religion in people's faces as a triumphalist political statement, which is what's happening here.
I admire anyone who's genuinely trying to achieve spiritual enlightenment and live a peaceful life. But religious dogma is a barrier to that. The last thing a dogmatist wants is for anyone to be enlightened, any more than a pharmaceutical company wants anybody cured.
My name is Patrick, and I'm a biped carbon-based life form. In my spare time I enjoy walking upright and being warm-blooded … I live on planet Earth, a piece of rock orbiting a giant fireball in the middle of nowhere. I feel I belong here.
Freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of identity. This is my Holy Trinity, each one an intrinsic aspect of my god: Freedom, the Holiest of Holies. Yes it bloody well is. It is absolutely sacred and inviolable, beyond any negotiation or compromise, now and forever. Amen.
So, I hope the Hindus have it right, because if there's any justice in this world, you (Islamists) will be reincarnated as a female, homosexual Jew, and then you'll find out what a pain it is having to deal with violent, primitive dickheads like you. (to domestically violent Muslim men)
The fact that a Jewish state needs to exist at all - and it does need to exist - is an indictment of all humanity, and especially the Catholic Church, whose centuries-long programme of aggressive Jew hatred has been ingrained right into the European psyche so that it takes almost nothing to bring it out.
Brash. Uncompromising. Brilliant. Hilarious. Pat Condell has found a simple formula for success: stating the obvious without restraining himself with the conventions of unwarranted piety. Pat flenses sacred cows, and after slicing away the fat and gristle of tired apologetics and mindless tradition, he exposes the hollow carcass of a culture's hypocrisy... and we laugh.
One person I do feel a little sorry for, though, is the Archbishop of Canterbury, the most important clergyman in Britain and he's only got two lousy palaces to live in. What sort of life is that for a man of God? I bet if Jesus came back, even he'd be embarrassed for him; I bet he wouldn't be able to look him in the eye.
But if I could make just one small positive suggestion. Everybody knows that Saudi Arabia is very rich in certain mineral deposits - notably of course, sand. Oh my goodness, it's got so much sand, it could export the stuff. Or, even better, it could import a load of water and cement, mix itself into a giant block of concrete, and do us all a huge favour.
They shouldn't need photographs to prove this guy is dead. They should have kept the body. They should have brought the son-of-a-bitch back to New York, pickled him in alcohol, and mounted him on top of the Ground Zero mosque with a pork chop in his mouth and a fireman's axe up his ass - or is that just me? Facing Mecca, of course, because we wouldn't want to be disrespectful.
If we can't bring ourselves to say what's in our hearts when it truly matters, then we've already given up our freedom and with it the freedom of future generations, which is something that we've got no right to do. We didn't earn this freedom; it was handed to us on a plate by people who did earn it with their lives. We don't own it; we're custodians of it: it's not ours to give away.
Despite what the Palestinian public-relations industry, i.e. the western media might tell you, this isn't about territory, and it isn't about justice or human rights, because Arab societies don't know the meanings of those words. It's about Jew-hatred, as mandated by the Qur'an, and as preached in the mosques and taught to the children in Arab countries, day in and day out, generation after poisoned generation. The Arabs don't hate Jews because of Israel. They hate Israel because of Jews.
Right now, especially in the Middle East, things are shaping up quite nicely to blow us all to kingdom come. Except no Kingdom is going to come because this is the Kingdom, it has already come and we are already living the dream. Religion knows this but it doesn't want us to know it because then it would no longer have any reason to exist. So instead, it seeks to position itself between us and our experience; a self-appointed filter, a parasite.
The whole point of female concealment in Islamic society is that men are not expected to take responsibility for their sexual urges, so any woman who is not covered up from head to toe is asking to be raped. The burka, therefore, legitimises rape. It apologises for rape. It justifies rape. Are you listening, feminists? And this makes it, in my opinion, as offensive a public statement as a Ku Klux Klan uniform or a Nazi swastika, and I think it should be treated with exactly the same revulsion and contempt.
I oppose Islam, for the simple reason that Islam opposes me and everything I believe in. I don't care how Muslims feel about that. I don't care how anyone feels about it, nor should I be required to. In my opinion, Islam's disgusting treatment of women is a crime against humanity, nothing less. It's a thousand percent wrong, there's no grey area, it's unconscionable and unforgivable, and it's poisoning the whole world. It's not different or relative, it's backward and uncivilised. There's no excuse for it, and no excuse for defending it.
I do feel somewhat guilty that I'm not more grateful to Jesus, but I just wish he had asked me before he went ahead with it [being crucified], because now I feel like I'm being billed for something I didn't order. Because that's the deal, isn't it? If you're a Christian, you're born already in debt to Jesus, and it's a debt you can only repay, in full, by dying. That's some deal you've got yourself into there; that's like being asked to pay off a mortgage for a house you already own.
Anyone who criticises Islam publicly can expect to be threatened with physical violence. If that's not terrorism, then what is it? In the world of the cultural terrorist, if you oppose the oppression of women and minorities, you're an enemy of religious freedom; if you despise violent superstition, you're a racist; and if you reject religious totalitarianism, you have a mental illness. Let me tell you something, when you get to the stage where anyone criticising your beliefs is automatically deemed to have a mental illness, that is a sure sign of mental illness.
You probably know that this week Britain has been terrorised by an underclass of welfare-dependent, drug-addled criminal scum who have been allowed to run riot in the streets because the police haven’t been allowed to do their job and protect the public. The media is full of speculation about why it happened and what is the root cause. Well, that’s easy. The root cause is stupidity. A complete lack of imagination. A stunted, feral view of the world that amounts to self-inflicted moral and mental disablement. And it’s the direct product of an entitlement culture that rewards idleness, encourages victimhood, and compensates criminals.
Andy and his little gang of bearded apes have made it clear that they intend to patrol the streets of London enforcing Sharia and preventing people going about their lawful business. I'll be interested to see how that works out for them. I've known a few Eastenders in my time, and I can't think of anyone - with the possible exception of Geordies (that's people from Newcastle) - who are less likely to tolerate having their pint of beer, their betting shop and their song and dance interfered with by a bunch of puffed-up bearded blowfish in pyjamas. And that's just the women.
I think we've turned into a society of craven cowards. I hope that doesn't offend. Actually, I hope it does offend … because, you see, I can still remember the shock of the Rushdie Affair 25 years ago. The very idea that anybody could be killed for writing a book was surreal and horrific. Now we take it for granted that if you say the wrong thing about the religion of peace you'll get death threats and you might actually be killed, so you keep your mouth shut if you know what's good for you. All for the sake of tolerance and diversity, of course.
Multiculturalism in Europe is dead in the water, as every recent election has shown. Even the politicians are admitting it now. Some people cling to the illusion of it still, the way the Soviets clung to the illusion of Communism, but it’s over, and these show trials and violent street attacks are symptoms of its death throes. They’re the desperate acts of desperate people who’ve totally lost their way. Criminalizing opinion is an open admission that lawmakers have lost control, and created a situation they can’t handle. But that’s what happens when the people are never asked for their opinion, and, when they give it, it’s ignored.
Surely the most comically deluded people on this planet, outside creationists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Scientologists, are idealistic left-wing gay people who think they share a common cause with Muslims as two oppressed minorities, when opinion polls tell us that most Muslims are disgusted by homosexuality and think it's completely unacceptable. Among U.K. Muslims, disapproval is 100%. Admittedly, that's from a sample of only 500 people, who all happened to agree unanimously, but that's hardly representative. After all, not all Muslims were included, so we can't reasonably extrapolate anything from it without being racist. That's a relief. I thought we might have to face an unpleasant truth there for a second, didn't you?
The European Union is very popular with politicians, because it's very good to politicians. It was created for their benefit. It's not so good to voters, because it denies them a voice - another reason it's popular with politicians. These days, we in Europe no longer make most of our own laws. We have them handed down to us by people we haven't elected and can't remove. The people we do elect are powerless to change anything, even if they wanted to, and most of them don't want to, because they've got their snouts in the trough of a corrupt organisation whose accounts haven't been signed off for the last sixteen years.
Faith is the grip that clergy have over you. It's the invisible rope around your neck that pulls you along the road they want you to travel, for their benefit, not yours. It's a dead-end word. It's a word of bondage. It's a word that lets you believe what you've been told to believe, without feeling that you've been told what to believe, but you have, and you can stop pretending any time you like. It's not a virtue, that's the last thing it is. It's an abdication from reality. It's a dumb act of self-hypnosis. It's a cowardly cop-out. It's gullibility with a halo, and hiding behind it is like pretending to be an invalid.
We need to stop pretending - because that's what we're doing: pretending - that all cultures are equal, when we can clearly see they're not. Islamic culture is not equal to Western culture; it encourages violence against women, against Jews and homosexuals. It sanctions polygamy and marrying old men to young children in a disgusting travesty of human relations. Anyone in the West advocating these values would very quickly find themselves in jail. It's not equal - it's inferior - and given Islam's openness about its totalitarian agenda, this is not something that should be encouraged in any way. It should be discouraged by firm legislation and by rigorous enforcement of the law. Remember, the law?
We're talking about terrorism carried out in the name of Islam, by Muslims, and justified using their holy scripture. But apparently it's got nothing to do with Islam. Well, I'm sorry, but just because every Muslim doesn't support it doesn't mean it's not Islamic. People say you can't judge Islam by its followers, but that's like saying you can't judge a football team by its results. Islam is its followers. Because there's no central authority the Koran is open to interpretation by men, who, being human, will always interpret to suit their own cultural prejudices. So Islam is its followers. It's a representation of how they interpret their holy book. And therefore, the only way it can be judged is by their behaviour.
Once again we see Islam self-detonate (if you'll pardon the expression) and show once again why it's about as welcome on this planet as an asteroid. Once again we see thousands of Islamic nutcases take time out from beating up their wives to show their sensitive side. How? By smashing up the towns they live in, egged on by clerical ignoramuses whose motives are even lower than the literacy level of their followers. And once again we in the civilised world are being urged to censor ourselves out of respect for a religion that violates the human rights of half the people on the planet and that doubles as a political ideology indistinguishable from Nazism. It would be funny if it wasn't so obscene.
All you good-hearted western liberals who keep banging the drum for the poor Palestinians; I sympathize with you, because you're doing it for the right reason. But you're being exploited, just as the people in the West Bank and Gaza are being exploited, by people who have no intention of negotiating peace, because they're driven primarily by crude, irrational religious hatred. When you protest for Palestine, you know you'll be in the company of people calling for Jews to be gassed. Do you think that's an accident? You're dealing with something here beyond politics, and beyond reason - something truly ugly that drives a spike through all your cozy left-right assumptions. And your naivety is helping to stoke it, like bellows to a fire.
Mark Twain said that faith is believing what you know ain't so. Well, political correctness is doing what you know ain't right. In every western country, Islamic extremists are allowed to exploit religious privilege for political ends by claiming to represent all Muslims, and the media always treat them as if they do. These groups give themselves official-sounding titles and talk a smooth line in community harmony, while doing all they can to prevent integration: to keep Muslims apart and ghettoised in a separate society, with a separate identity, separate rules and standards. In other words, they exist to cause division in society; to drive a wedge between communities that doesn't need to be there, any more than they need to exist as organisations.
The more you try to shut people up, the louder they're going to shout. Wouldn't you? So you must know that, sooner or later, you're going to have to start listening. And besides, it's your moral obligation. The free exchange of opinion and information is the very lifeblood of the society to which you owe everything you have. It's the oxygen that gives us clarity and strength. Restricting it is like closing down synapses in the collective brain. It's an act of sabotage and nobody has the right to do it any more than they have the right to arbitrarily ration water or air. No judge, no politician, no police officer and certainly no braying mob of sanctimonious, privileged, middle-class, left-wing, students who think they know best for everyone.
Radical Islam has seen us for what we are: a soft touch. It sees that political correctness is like a drug that we just can't stop injecting, even though we know it's going to kill us. And they're taking full advantage of that, turning our sense of fairness against us, and making us despise ourselves for one of our best qualities. And any concession made will be seen as a sign of weakness to be exploited further, because there is no dialogue with radical Islam. It doesn't want to be agreed with, it wants to be obeyed. It thinks it has the God-given right, aptly enough, to make the rules, not just for Muslims, but for everyone, and some of us, frankly, thing that's a little bit too much to ask.
When it's claimed, as it was last week on British television, that Muslims in Britain are victims of British intolerance - yeah right, 1600 mosques worth of intolerance so far, and still building - I think the truth is that, if they are victims of anything, it's Muslim intolerance, because if you are an ordinary Muslim, then surely the last thing you need is a bunch of Islamists speaking for you, because everything they do and say reflects back on you. When they try to force unwanted Islamic values into our education system, for example, or when one of their representatives crudely insults this country by comparing it with Nazi Germany, that reflects on all Muslims, because these people speak for all Muslims. Don't they? No? Well maybe somebody should tell them that.
It's often said of Jesus that he could have saved himself, but he chose not to. And if you read the Gospels it's clear that he could have talked himself out of that crucifixion quite easily, but he was just too stubborn. The Romans didn't really want to kill him at all, but in the end they went along with it because he was being such a prick about it. The truth is he couldn't wait to get up on that cross. In fact, I think Christianity only exists because Jesus Christ just happened to be a masochist. I think he took one look at the hammer and nails and he couldn't believe his luck. He thought, "Well, in three days I'll be in Heaven, but until then I'm going to enjoy myself."
I used to be a lot more critical of Israel, and I used to believe there was a fairly simple two-state solution, because I used to believe the Arabs were acting in good faith. I still want to believe that, but the evidence tells me I'd be a fool to believe it, because I've seen that every concession Israel makes is met with more demands and more excuses not to negotiate. They could have had peace ten times over if they wanted it, but they don't want peace, they want victory, and they won't be happy until Israel is wiped from the map. A member of Fatah central committee said as much on television recently, but as he said, they keep that to themselves, and tell the rest of the world a different story.
The European Union is not, in fact, a union at all, but a continent-wide political coup. What began as a common market has now metamorphosed by stealth into a supranational political dictatorship, a parasitical organism living on the backs of the European nation states, sucking their lifeblood and slowly killing them off; a bureaucratic tyranny that wants to "harmonise" out of existence the national identities that have made Europe a continent of genuine diversity and a cultural crucible whose values have shaped the entire western world. But they want to put a stop to all that in the European Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and this is why European laws are never enacted in response to any kind of organic need in society, but as top-down directives intended to impose indiscriminate uniformity for its own sake.
When you allow millions of people to immigrate from places where they mutilate their daughters as a matter of course; where they kill them in a heartbeat over some twisted sense of honor; and where rape victims are treated as criminals; it doesn’t take a genius to know that you’re going to be importing these values and attitudes as well, wholesale, unless you take steps to prevent it. And that’s something we’ve spectacularly failed to do in Europe. Indeed, we’ve encouraged it by fostering separatism and ghettoization in the guise of our old friend, Multiculturalism. And as a consequence, Islamic violence against women and girls is an ugly reality in Europe. And for anyone to use the law to try and suppress discussion of it is not enlightened or tolerant or liberal. It’s shameful and stupid and cowardly and unforgivable.
Any religion that endorses violence is incapable of delivering spiritual enlightenment - how obvious does that have to be? - and it has no right even to call itself a religion. Without the shield of religion to hide behind, Islam would be banned in the civilized world as a political ideology of hate - and we have no obligation to make allowances for it, any more than we do for Nazism. It's a bigger threat to our freedom than Nazism ever was. Yes, both are totalitarian, and both divide the world unnecessarily into us-and-them, the pure and the impure, and both make no secret of their desire to exterminate the Jews. But we were all more or less on the same side against the Nazis, whereas the Islamonazis have got plenty of friends among people in the West who ought to know better.
Free speech means being able to express an honest opinion—in case you didn’t know—and my honest opinion is that Wahhabi Islam is such an obvious mental affliction, that science ought to be looking for a cure. It’s a truly horrible, heartless and cruel ideology that despises human kind, especially the female half, and I believe its presence on this planet is a stain on all humanity; and when it finally passes, as one day it surely must, because nothing that unnatural and inhuman could possible last forever, its memory will linger like a bad smell, as a warning for generations to come; like a ghostly gibbet by the roadside of history, a bony finger of death, beckoning us back to a more brutal and primitive past. It’ll serve as a grim reminder of what happens to human beings when religion is allowed to go too far.
To call these riots infantile and imbecilic is to give them a dignity they don’t deserve. They can only be described as Islamic. Let me get this straight. We’re supposed to show tolerance and respect for a religion that doesn’t know the meaning of either word and goes out of its way to prove it every day? We’re supposed to amend our values to accommodate a religion that accommodates nothing and nobody? Dream on, people. It’s not going to happen, because with Islam it’s always a one way street. We’ve learned that lesson the hard way. We can’t afford any more tolerance and respect. We’ve been sucked dry. And we’ve become weary of manufactured Islamic grievance. It’s such a bore that now when we hear some bearded buffoon or some bag-headed bimbo telling us how offended they are we can’t even be bothered to laugh any more.
If the Catholic Church hadn't so consistently and virulently condemned the Jews for killing Jesus, there would have been no Holocaust. There would have been no reason for anyone to think about picking on Jews. And that means today there might be no Jewish state, and no Middle East conflict. That's quite a lot to have on your conscience, isn't it? How fortunate for the Catholic Church that it doesn't possess a conscience, but at least it gives ordinary Catholics an opportunity to feel guilty about something real for a change, if they feel so inclined, and to reflect on the reality that the Jews didn't kill Jesus at all. The Catholic Church killed Jesus, and has spent the last two thousand years dragging his entrails through the dirt. And if he came back tomorrow, he'd be the first to say so. You know it's true. We all do.
The Koran tells Muslims to hate Jews because they're Jews, not because of Palestine. It doesn't mention the Palestinians. And if Israel disappeared tomorrow, Jews in Sweden and all over Europe would still be harassed and abused by ignorant hate-filled Muslim immigrants for being Jews, and for no other reason. And then all you multicultural dhimmis-in-waiting would have to find another mealy-mouthed excuse to look the other way. Fortunately for Jews, they've had a lot of practice at taking abuse and they've got fairly broad shoulders, which, of course, they'll need to carry around all those Nobel Prizes. Statistically a Jew is thousands of times more likely than a Muslim to win a Nobel Prize, and there can be only one reason for that, can't there? That's right, Islamophobia. Clearly the Nobel committees have an irrational prejudice against religion-induced ignorance, and they're obviously in need of some urgent cultural awareness and sensitivity training.
In the London borough of Tower Hamlets, which has now been completely taken over by Islamic extremists and where the police are afraid to do their job because doing their job might be Islamophobic, cultural terrorism is practised openly, with gay people attacked and abused in the streets, women threatened with murder for not covering their face, and just recently a teacher was beaten into a coma with a brick, a knife and a metal rod for having the temerity to be a non-Muslim teaching religion to children. This is what Islamic cultural terrorism brings, and is bringing to cities all over Europe. If the far right were behaving like this, you just know the police would be all over them. Well, I've got news for the Tower Hamlets police: This is the far right - the religious far right - and it doesn't get any further right, or any further wrong, than that.
One thing that really doesn't help is when some patronizing, multicultural fascist decides to ban something innocuous because they think it might offend Muslims. These are the same people, no doubt, who decided that kitchen staff in hospitals and schools should serve the cruelty of halal meat to everyone because it's uneconomical to serve it separately, and Muslims must never be offended. Or the people who offered Muslim-only days in public swimming pools, excluding everybody else because, it seems, some Muslims actually are offended at having to bath among kaffirs and infidels. Now, technically that's not racist of them, because Islam is not a race, so that's okay then. But anyone who criticises it is a racist, because language means whatever we want it to mean in the topsy-turvy world of multicultural hypocrisy, where everyone in the West is automatically guilty of crimes committed by their ancestors, should be deeply ashamed of their identity and spend their whole lives apologizing for it.
But I don't want to be too hard on Islam here, for two reasons: firstly because I don't want to be murdered by some hysterical, self-righteous, carpet-chewing, book-burning muppet with shit for brains. And secondly, I do think we need to make allowances for Islam, because we have to remember Islam is quite a young religion. So, maybe right now it's just going through a difficult age, a little headstrong, full of itself, thinks it knows all the answers, but I'm sure it'll learn. I think years from now, a lot of intelligent Muslims will be looking back on all this Medievalism and Jihad nonsense with embarrassment and shame, like the Germans do with the Nazis, and maybe then we can all have a good laugh about it, but in the mean time I think that any religion that demands earthly vengeance and retribution for any reason is not really a religion at all, but an illness and should be treated as such.
I'm beginning to understand how Americans must have felt living under King George. What was that again - no taxation without representation? The War of Independence wasn't America against England. It was Englishmen resisting the oppressive regime of their autocratic German king - asserting their human rights, in modern parlance. America may be a melting pot now, but it began with a defence of age-old English liberties; liberties that were promptly written into the Constitution - something we never got around to doing in Britain, so we no longer enjoy the same liberties Americans do. We don't have a constitution. We don't have a First Amendment. What we have, and what the whole of Europe has, is the Lisbon Treaty, a kind of top-down constitution that has been imposed on us against our will. And, unlike the American Constitution which empowers the people, the European constitution disempowers the people, and empowers the unelected bureaucrats and career politicians for whose sole benefit it was created.
Indeed, if there's one thing a euro politician despises and fears more than anything it's the democratic will of the people. And this is because many of those who run Europe today were politicised by sixties pseudo-Marxist utopianism, which they're still determined to impose on the people - for their own good - regardless of what the people might want. They believe in centralised state control: society as a project - their project. It's the mentality that ran the old Soviet Union, and it's the mentality that has driven the European Union forward against the wishes of the European people, imposing a constitution on the whole of Europe that hardly anyone was allowed to vote for, and imposing a single currency on the whole of Europe that's now falling apart at the seams. But they won't abandon it because they consider it a vital step on the road to full political union, and the abolition of all European nation-states under a central socialist dictatorship.
If we had any kind of justice system worth the name in this country, anyone convicted of taking part in these riots would automatically lose entitlement to state benefit for life and their house would be demolished. That would be justice. And if it violated their human rights, hey, so much the better. However, what will happen, if past form is anything to go by, is that a few hundred dregs of society will go through the courts and get derisory sentences, while the rest of them take their new plasma TVs and go back to their normal lives terrorising the people around them - which they can do, because there’s nobody there to stop them. And then everything will go back to normal for everyone except the victims - the people who have been murdered, or who have been burnt out of home and business - because the police weren’t there to protect them, because there aren’t enough of them, and because they’re not allowed to.
The biggest hate crime against Muslims in America is the existence of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. If you’re a Muslim American who wants to live in peace and freedom - and, presumably, that’s why you’re in America in the first place - these people are your worst enemy. They’re parasites on your identity. They don’t represent you - they claim ownership of you. Everything they do and say reflects back, badly, on you. Yet you are the only thing giving them a veneer of respectability. Without you, these fanatics would be standing on street corners shouting at people. They invoke the phony lie of Islamophobia in order to marginalize and ghettoize you and to make you feel like a victim, because their whole existence depends on you being a victim. They claim to challenge the stereotyping of Muslims - and how do they do it? By stereotyping Muslims as professional complainers and malcontents who always want special treatment; who can’t take the slightest criticism; and who are aggressively litigious to the point of obsession. These people are the problem. They’re not the solution.
There's an ideological fervour about this prosecution that's almost religious in its intensity, because let's be clear, this is a heresy trial by any other name. They can't refute Mr. Wilders' statements, so instead they've resorted to the kind of cheap legal stunt we'd expect from the likes of Mugabe to shut their opponent up. They've accused him of being divisive and inflammatory, and yes, sometimes the truth can be divisive and inflammatory if it has been suppressed for long enough and has become sufficiently taboo, as it clearly has in the Netherlands, because according to the prosecution it doesn't even matter that what he says is true; what matters is that it's illegal. Well, when the truth is against the law, then there's something seriously wrong with the law, because when the truth is no defence, there is no defence, and the law has no anchor, so it will drift wherever the wind of political expedience blows, and this week it blew straight into a crooked courtroom in Amsterdam, where justice will now be made to fight for its life, starved of the oxygen of truth that gives it life.
Compared to the number of Muslims and Christians on this planet, not to mention Hindus and Buddhists, Jews are a handful of people. They're a tiny percentage of the population. Nearly half of them live in Israel, a country the size of a county, and more are being driven there every day, especially from Europe, where it has become fashionable to use the Israeli government's behaviour as an excuse for the kind of open anti-Semitism we've become used to hearing from Muslims. At anti-Israel demonstrations in Europe you're likely to hear calls for Jews to be gassed. We've even had the spectacle of a Dutch member of parliament in the front line of such an event. In Sweden, Israeli athletes can no longer even compete without being attacked by violent mobs because the police can't, or won't, protect them. Hate crimes against Jews outnumber those against Muslims, and many of them are carried out by Muslims for no other reason than they've been taught from childhood to hate Jews. Meanwhile, day in and day out, we have to listen to their endless hypocritical horseshit about Islamophobia. It's enough to make you want to throw up.
They say great minds think alike. That's also true of tiny minds, and it's especially true of closed ones. I'm always impressed by students who know so much about the world they feel no need to listen to anyone else's opinions, aren't you? Especially when they feel compelled to actively shout them down. That's confidence for you. [...] Anyone who's unwilling to hear an opposing opinion has no business attending a university, unless they're planning to graduate with honors in bigotry. And they have no business teaching at one either. There's nothing liberal, intelligent, enlightened, civilized or progressive about shutting somebody up because you don't want other people to hear their opinions. Who are you to decide who should and shouldn't be heard? Who made you emperor? It's not only an incitement to public disorder, it's a form of assault and a violation of the civil rights of everyone around you. And, anyway, if we deem some opinions unacceptable, where do you draw the line and who draws it? You? No. Everybody will draw their own line and then your opinions will be shouted down. What will you do then, call the police? Good luck with that.
Just this week in the UK, we've been told that a leading supermarket chain is allowing Muslim staff not to handle alcohol if they don't want to, so you can bet your life they'll be lining up around the block to not want to. We've also had a pharmacist refusing to sell birth control because of religion; we've had a muslim dentist refusing to treat a woman because she wasn't wearing a headscarf; and now we've been told that muslim doctors are refusing to treat certain types of people because of their precious faith. We in Britain have a technical term for this bahaviour, it's called "taking the piss." We don't like people taking the piss, it gets up our nose and gives us the hump - it's a cultural thing. If muslims are really as down trodden as the Saudis would have us believe, why are there currently plans for a Saudi-funded mega mosque to be built here in London, the largest mosque in Europe, no less. Eat your heart out, Denmark, we know you'd love to have it but we're getting it instead, and it's going to be built right next to the site of the 2012 Olympic Games.
I think religion is utter nonsense, and I claim the right to criticise, ridicule and insult it as much as I like, but not the right to stamp out harmless aspects of it; which is why I'm a secularist, and not a totalitarian. I have a copy of the Bible in my house because it's part of my cultural heritage, not because I think the Bible is true any more than I think Shakespeare's plays are true, but I wouldn't be without them either. I like churches, especially the sound of church bells, and I don't want to see them bulldozed, but I do want to see the power of the Church not only bulldozed, but ground into a fine dust and buried in the deepest part of the deepest ocean on the furthest planet it's possible to find. Religion needs to be kept in check when it tries to step on people or when it tries to elbow its way into their lives uninvited. The Nativity doesn't do this. It doesn't even come close. It's part and parcel of the Christmas furniture. It's part and parcel of the culture that I and most people in the western world were born and raised in, and it only excludes people who want to be excluded.
Well it's a gloomy, rainy old day to be here in London, but it could be worse; I could be in Saudi Arabia where men are men, and women are cattle. Can I say that? The Saudi Arabian Human Rights Commission - now there's a collection of words to boggle the mind, but apparently this organization does actually exist - intends to complain this month at an event in Copenhagen that Muslims living in Europe are denied human rights and are not allowed to freely practice their religion. How about that, folks, we're being lectured on human rights by Saudi Arabia! What's next, animal welfare from the Koreans? I mean, does it get any more surreal, you ask? Well, yes apparently it does, because they also want us to stop linking Islam with terrorism. Pretty rich coming from the guardians of Islam, and the guardians of terrorism. Now, in a sane society, the guy who stands up to make this speech would be bum-rushed out the door the moment he opened his mouth, or even better, run out of town on a rail and dumped in a river. But this is Europe, and we will probably listen to what he says, take it all on board and change our ways to accommodate them, as usual.
'Racist' used to be a powerful word that would have stopped any civilised person in their tracks, but now, when I hear it, my initial reflex is to think less of the person using it, and to wish they would invest in a dictionary to save embarrassing themselves any further. Nobody is a racist for objecting to religious privilege, or for wanting everyone to obey the same laws, or for wanting full and equal human rights for everyone without exception. And nobody is a racist for not wanting to eat the cruelty of halal-slaughtered meat without being told about it, or for asking someone to show their face in public, or for not wanting to be treated by hospital staff who haven't washed their hands properly because of their stupid religion. And nobody is a racist for asking the police to do their job and uphold the law. Two thousand young girls in Britain were genitally mutilated last year, a crime that's supposed to carry a fourteen-year prison sentence. Nobody has been prosecuted because police and social workers don't want to cause offence and damage community relations. How thoughtful. How sensitive. Damaging a few thousand young girls, on the other hand, or should I say maiming them for life, is apparently a price worth paying for community cohesion, or should that be cultural terrorism?
There are many reasons why the religion of Islam impoverishes western society, but the main one, in my opinion, is that it degrades and debases women, except, of course, for left-wing women, who happily degrade and debase themselves defending Islam, like turkeys defending Christmas. A woman in Islam needs to be covered from head to toe because men are not expected to exhibit any kind of basic self-control. I get a lot of correspondence from angry Muslim males and I've lost count of the number of times I've been told that western women are asking to be raped because of the way they dress. No other religion teaches people to think like this. Recently here in Britain, we've had a rash of Muslim gangs pimping and raping young girls in northern England. I do mean Muslim gangs, and not Asians, as the media keep reporting. There are no Sikhs or Hindus involved in this, and to call them Asians to avoid naming the real problem is a slander on Hindus and Sikhs. These men do it because they regard non-Muslim women as subhuman trash. And this poison is coming directly from their religion, a religion whose values are dictated and imposed by some of the most narrow-minded, psychotic human beings on this planet. And, coming as I do from an Irish Catholic background, believe me, that's saying something.
But just because I believe that religion is a cynical perversion of the human spirit that exists purely for the benefit of the paracites we know as clergy, doesn't mean I'm not looking for answers to the big questions just like everybody else - you know, the questions that religion pretends it has answers to, because it knows that for some people, anyone answer is better than no answer at all. Questions like, Why are we here? Where did we come from? Where are we going?...Is there an afterlife, and if so, is it fully licensed for alcoholic drinks? That last bit may seem like a trivial concern to you, but not to me, because I live in a society where many people enjoy a social drink from time to time - not a huge amount, just enough to kill a horse. And in these enlightened days of the twenty-first century, when everyone's human rights and cultural identity are so very important, I don't see why I should have to abandon my culture, just because I'm dead. It's only the afterlife, not Saudi Arabia. Let's keep things in perspective. Of course in reality, we know that there will be beer in heaven, and lots of it, otherwise it wouldn't be heaven, would it? It's almost not even worth pointing that out, but I thought I would anyway, just in case someone wants to take the opportunity to be offended.
The truth can often be painful when you don't want to hear it, but you're going to bloody well hear it anyway. And the truth is that Jews have contributed more to humanity than any other group of people. Way more than Muslims. Vastly more than Muslims. We're talking different planet more than Muslims. Jews receive a disproportionate number of Nobel Prizes - real ones, I mean, not the bullshit Peace one - because they're at the top of sciences, medicine, technology - you name it. Wherever there's progress in this world you'll often find some Jew in there making all the difference. Israel today is a world technological leader alone in the Middle East like a diamond in a sea of mud. Compared to Jews, Muslims are passengers on planet earth getting a free ride. Even the wealth of the Muslim world comes pouring straight out of the ground. If it didn't, they wouldn't have any. It's pathetic, and it's no wonder the Muslim world is so quick to petulant, childish anger. They must have a very poor self-image, and who can blame them? But they're the only ones who can do anything about it. They can choose to drag themselves into the 21st century and leave this filthy garbage behind, or they can carry on humiliating and degrading themselves with hysterical Jew hatred, and we'll carry on judging them on it as an embarrassment to the human race.
It's often claimed that many people in the West are converting to Islam, and it's true that some are, but it's also true that many Muslims in the West are leaving Islam, but you don't hear so much about them for obvious reasons. Some of them have been brave enough to make themselves known, and reach out to help other Muslims who want to escape the tyranny of their religion, and, like them, it's the religion I have a problem with, not the people. So no, I don't hate Muslims - thanks for asking - I wish them well. Even the fanatics who stand at the roadside with their dopey little banners and bulging eyeballs, calling for death to the West - I even wish those boneheads well, in that I wish them good mental health, if that isn't too wildly optimistic. And of course I know that there are lots of moderate, peaceful Muslims. Indeed, many of them are so moderate and peaceful, they're invisible and silent, and that is part of the problem. And just because there are lots of peaceful Muslims, it doesn't mean the religion itself is not an aggressive, fascist ideology that threatens all our freedoms, nor does it mean that western governments aren't falling over themselves to make excuses for it, pretending that Islam has nothing to do with the violence inspired and sanctioned by its scripture, and repeatedly carried out in its name.
In a nutshell, gay people, Islam wants your blood and if you're ever stupid enough to go to an Islamic country and let them know you're gay you'll find that out the hard way. It doesn't give a damn how tolerant or inclusive you are. It just wants you dead for being who and what you are and it's no more open to persuasion on the matter than you would be open to persuasion about letting sewer rats run around your house. You've got more chance of celebrating Christmas in a pub in Saudi Arabia than you have of finding common ground between Islam and homosexuality and you've got absolutely no excuse for pretending otherwise, because there's nothing nuanced about the Islamic position. There is no ambiguity. There is no grey area. There is no common ground. There is no shared struggle. There are no bridges to be built and there won't be any until you stop being gay. Would that option be on the table at all? For the sake of, you know, community cohesion? After all, by being gay you're being culturally insensitive, disrespectful, divisive, provocative, offensive, Islamophobic and racist. What can I say, people? The bottom line is, if you don't want to be a filthy racist, you're going to have to stop being gay. And when you think about it, it's really not that much to ask. After all, if you're not willing to compromise on your sick and sinful gayness, how can you reasonably expect Islam to compromise on wanting you dead?
I've had a lot of emails from people who seem to think that I hate Muslims, when nothing could be further from the truth - not even the official reason for the war in Iraq, which is about as far from the truth as Pluto is from the Sun. But this illustrates, I think, a quality that we have as human beings - we tend to read into a thing what we want to see there, rather than what's actually there, which is of course what makes the so-called "Holy" Scriptures so dangerous. Let me make this crystal clear: I have no problem with Islam - with the Islam where people just get on with their lives and pray everyday, and don't bother anybody else; nor do I have a problem with any religion that has the common decency to mind its own business. But that's not the Islam I'm talking about, and I think we all know this. I'm talking about the repressive, violent, intolerant Islam that considers human rights an insult to God. The Islam that wants homosexuals killed, along with adulterers and anybody else who thinks they're entitled to a private life. But I don't hate anyone, because hate is for losers. Hate is just fear with attitude. If you hate something, you're afraid of it, which makes you nothing but a big pussy, and whatever you hate and fear, you know you're going to attract it, because if you invest that much emotion in something, it's coming your way. The Islamic fundamentalist, he hates America. America is coming his way. Here in Britain, we hate intolerance. Guess what's coming our way.
Somebody said [to Condell] recently, "Clearly you just don't understand what a person's faith actually means to them. For me," she said, "it's like the water of life." And I thought, what a great phrase - "the water of life", without which, of course, there can be no life. But even the water of life needs to be contained and properly managed, or it can run out of control, get into places where it doesn't belong and cause real damage. For example, if the water of your life gets together with the water of other people's lives, and they form a deluge, a rushing torrent of righteous certainty that sweeps all before it, including reason, well then it's not so much the water of life anymore, is it? It's rapidly turning into the water of death, as everything in its path is crushed - original thought, rational inquiry, free speech and their tattered remnants are strewn upon the rocks of scripture and blind dogma. What's needed here, obviously, is a dam to contain this water of death, convert it back into the water of life, and give us all a chance to switch on a lightbulb in our minds. And that's where secularism comes in. It's everybody's friend, believer and non-believer alike, which I think makes it the real water of life. At least almost as much as this stuff here - beer. Cheers. (Picks up a glass of beer and drinks from it) Mmmm! Now that's what I call the water of life. A merry Christmas to everyone, especially to all you Islamist crackpots who think celebrating Christmas is a sin. Of course it is - that's why it's fun! Peace.
Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, the moment the Church was established it became a political organisation, which meant that the consolidation of power and influence quickly became much more important than the message - message? What message? Oh, that message. Of course, yes - and inevitably, this led to bickering about status, and who got to wear the big ring and the fancy hat - you know, the really important stuff - until before long, rival popes were facing each other with massed armies on the battlefield - in the name of Christ, naturally. Even at this point, if Jesus had come back, he would have said: "What are you people doing? I haven't been gone for five minutes and already you're hacking each other to pieces like a bunch of savages! You've missed the point so completely" he'd say, wouldn't he? "You're so far wide of the mark it's way beyond embarrassing" he'd say, "I feel as if I'm talking to chimpanzees" he'd say. No offence, by the way, to any chimps who may be watching. And this is early days, don't forget. Jesus wouldn't yet know anything about all the other horrors that were about to be enacted in his name in the coming years. The Crusades, the Inquisition. He wouldn't know about the systematic suppression of knowledge and free thought that would characterise his church for the next two thousand years. He wouldn't know about the conquest of the New World, where the sacred cross of Jesus slashed and burned its way through entire populations in a way that modern jihadis can only dream about, imposing itself with unparalleled cruelty on civilisations half a world away that, even today, still don't quite know what hit them.
The social justice brigade have been quick to blame the rioting on the usual suspects: inequality, unfairness, lack of opportunity. “This is happening,” they say, “because these youngsters are unemployed.” No, it isn’t. Who needs a job when you can deal drugs? That’s where the real money is. Besides, if they had to look for employment they might have to learn to read and write. “OK, then, it’s happening because they’re disengaged from society.” Oh, are they? How awful for them. Hey, come to think of it, that might have something to do with all the drugs! A TV reporter actually stopped one of them in the street and asked him why he was doing it, and he replied: “I’ve got no money.” And I thought: “Aw, isn’t that awful? My heart goes out to the poor little lad. He’s got no money, because he spent all his money on a Blackberry phone and a gram of heroin, innit. You’ve got money, you parasites. You get state benefits because other people work to pay for your room and board. You’ve got no job because you’re unemployable, and that’s because you’re inadequate. You’ve got no backbone, no morals, no knowledge, no intelligence, and you can’t be trusted. You’re like rats who shit in their own nest. And you’ll never make anything of yourselves because there’s nothing there to begin with. And for that you can blame your stupid ignorant parents, not your lack of opportunity. There are people on this planet who can only dream of your 'lack of opportunity', you disgusting parasitical halfwits. Go tell the starving people in Somalia that you've got no opportunity. Tell the ten year-old in Pakistan making mud bricks eighteen hours a day for no pay. Tell these people that you have no opportunity, you pathetic pampered human vermin.
Some people have a way of really getting up your nose, don't they? One such person is Mr. Anjem Choudary, a British-born Islamist with a very big mouth and some very harsh opinions about how people should live their lives. And he's been popping up in the media a lot recently with his pompous little voice and his bushy little face, so stern, so righteous, telling us all what a corrupt society we live in, while fully enjoying all its benefits. His latest lecture is that gay people should be stoned to death - yes, he's a real charmer. I don't know if he's going to be prosecuted for hatespeech for saying this - you know, the way a non-Muslim would be - or if the police think that upholding the law might cause offense and upset community cohesion; you'll have to ask them that, if you can find them. Meanwhile, Choudary wants beer-drinkers, like me, publically flogged - ouch, now it gets personal - and wants all women to be forced to dress like nuns, and won't rest until he sees the flag of Allah flying over Downing Street. You know, with such aggressive opinions, a man is bound to have some inner tension. Maybe he should relax with a few pints of cider and a packet of spliffs, you know, like in the old days, because we recently found out that before he became an Islamist dickhead, this guy was quite the party animal; alcohol, cannabis, casual sex, pornography, you name it and he sucked it in and blew it out in bubbles by all accounts. They say that there's nothing as bad as the enthusiastic convert, although it's a shame he's not quite devout enough in his new beliefs to have himself retrospectively stoned to death for that behaviour, and do us all a huge favour. It's fair to say this man is not well liked in Britain and if the government were sane enough to put him on a plane and dump him in the middle of the desert, where he rightly belongs, I bet someone orbiting in a spacecraft would hear the spontaneous applause eminating from this tiny island, because born here or not, he's about as welcome in this country as a fly in a kitchen, and he serves the same purpose: a poison spreading nuisance who makes people sick.
If the televangelists are guilty of producing some simple-minded, self-righteous Christians, then the atheist authors are guilty of producing self-congratulatory buffoons like Condell.
On the other hand, and let's face it, there's always another hand, unless you're a Saudi Arabian shoplifter of course, hurt feelings can be quite traumatic. I've heard that it can take seconds, sometimes even minutes, to get over it.
Here in the UK, we've now got an evangelical television channel - it's the kind of thing that will be very familiar to everyone in the United States, especially if you've ever turned on your TV set on a Sunday morning, and seen one holy man after another, urging you to send money so that Jesus can buy a new cadillac. Apparently, Jesus can't save the world until he's been properly kitted out with a million-dollar mansion, and a private jet - some small print in the Gospels that we must have missed.
One guy said, "I'm from Saudi Arabia and I'm proud of my country." Well, good for you, but forgive me for asking why. If you live in Saudi Arabia, what on Earth have you got to be proud of? If you couldn't dig money straight out of the ground, you'd all be starving. The only thing your country has to offer the world is oil. Well, it's not the only thing, but we don't need any sand, and we're all up to here with Jihad, thanks very much.
So I really don't care about anything he [God] has got to say, and if he came down from heaven right now, in a big pair of hobnail boots, waving the book of Judges in my face, I'd simply tell him what I tell every other evangelising prick I meet: "No thanks. I'm not interested in your phony salvation. I'd prefer damnation. Now piss off, I've got some sinning to do."
People say, "Well, you only focus on the bad things about Islam", and yes, I have to admit that if you ignore the bad things — the aggressive separatism, supremacism, and social intolerance, the relentless special pleading and phony grievance mongering, the psychopathic level of misogyny, the honor killing and genital mutilation (sanctioned by the Prophet, incidentally), the rabid gay and Jew hatred, the intimidation and censorship, and the constantly present threat of violence over social issues — well, there isn't much wrong with Islam, it's perfectly kosher (if you'll pardon the expression). The trouble is, when you take these things away, there's nothing left.

End Pat Condell Quotes