Pat Condell has a few words for the people who got YouTube to ban his last video, and a bit of a clarification on his views about the religious apartheid kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

YouTube has deleted Pat Condell’s latest video, for “terms of use violation.”

Which apparently means, “criticism of Saudi Arabia.”

So here it is again.

The crusty old atheist has another good rant, on the British government’s appalling decision to give sharia courts the power of law.

UPDATE at 10/1/08 12:47:00 pm:

YouTube has deleted this video. Here it is at Blip.tv:

Sharia courts now have the power of law in Britain: Revealed: UK’s first official sharia courts.

ISLAMIC law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence. Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court. Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.

It has now emerged that sharia courts with these powers have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester with the network’s headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Two more courts are being planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, whose Muslim Arbitration Tribunal runs the courts, said he had taken advantage of a clause in the Arbitration Act 1996.

This Religion of Peace Moment is brought to you by Muslims attending British universities: Third of Muslim students back killings.

ALMOST a third of British Muslim students believe killing in the name of Islam can be justified, according to a poll. The study also found that two in five Muslims at university support the incorporation of Islamic sharia codes into British law.

The YouGov poll for the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC) will raise concerns about the extent of campus radicalism. “Significant numbers appear to hold beliefs which contravene democratic values,” said Han-nah Stuart, one of the report’s authors. “These results are deeply embarrassing for those who have said there is no extremism in British universities.”

The report was criticised by the country’s largest Muslim student body, Fosis, but Anthony Glees, professor of security and intelligence studies at Buckingham University, said: “The finding that a large number of students think it is okay to kill in the name of religion is alarming. …

In addition to its poll of 1,400 Muslim and nonMuslim students, the centre visited more than 20 universities to interview students and listen to guest speakers. It found that extremist preachers regularly gave speeches that were inflammatory, homophobic or bordering on antisemitic.

The researchers highlighted Queen Mary college, part of London University, as a campus where radical views were widely held. Last December, a speaker named Abu Mujahid encouraged Muslim students to condemn gays because “Allah hates” homosexuality. In November, Azzam Tamimi, a British-based supporter of Hamas, described Israel as the most “inhumane project in the modern history of humanity”.

The British legal system welcomes its new overlord: Sharia law SHOULD be used in Britain, says UK’s top judge.

The most senior judge in England yesterday gave his blessing to the use of sharia law to resolve disputes among Muslims.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips said that Islamic legal principles could be employed to deal with family and marital arguments and to regulate finance.

He declared: ‘Those entering into a contractual agreement can agree that the agreement shall be governed by a law other than English law.’

In his speech at an East London mosque, Lord Phillips signalled approval of sharia principles as long as punishments - and divorce rulings - complied with the law of the land.

In the apartheid theocracy of Saudi Arabia, a Turkish barber has been condemned to death by beheading for blasphemy.

HATAY - A Saudi Arabian court on Thursday ratified the conviction of Turkish barber Sabri Bogday, who was sentenced to beheading in Saudi Arabia on charges of “cursing the name of God.”

Bogday has been in jail for 13 months in Saudi Arabia after a quarrel with a neighbor near his barber shop. Bogday was accused of cursing the name of God.

Bruce Bawer has an excellent piece at City Journal on “creeping sharia,” the cultural and legal front of the global jihad—and it isn’t only happening in Europe: An Anatomy of Surrender.

Islam divides the world into two parts. The part governed by sharia, or Islamic law, is called the Dar al-Islam, or House of Submission. Everything else is the Dar al-Harb, or House of War, so called because it will take war—holy war, jihad—to bring it into the House of Submission. Over the centuries, this jihad has taken a variety of forms. Two centuries ago, for instance, Muslim pirates from North Africa captured ships and enslaved their crews, leading the U.S. to fight the Barbary Wars of 1801–05 and 1815. In recent decades, the jihadists’ weapon of choice has usually been the terrorist’s bomb; the use of planes as missiles on 9/11 was a variant of this method.

What has not been widely recognized is that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa against Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie introduced a new kind of jihad. Instead of assaulting Western ships or buildings, Khomeini took aim at a fundamental Western freedom: freedom of speech. In recent years, other Islamists have joined this crusade, seeking to undermine Western societies’ basic liberties and extend sharia within those societies.

The cultural jihadists have enjoyed disturbing success.

The joint Newsweek-Washington Post venture “On Faith” has featured an all-star cast of radical Muslims and blatant antisemites like Arun Gandhi, whitewashing Islamic fundamentalism and attacking Christianity and Judaism, all in the name of “interfaith dialog.”

So today it’s no surprise to find them promoting Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, arguing in favor of bringing the medieval code of sharia law to Britain: Archbishop of Canterbury Was Right.

The recent and controversial call by Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, primate of the Church of England and spiritual leader of 80 million Anglicans, for incorporation of Sharia law into British law will not be the last utterance in favor of Islamic law. Nor should it be. The addition of Sharia law to “the law of the land”, in this case British law, complements, rather than undermines, existing legal frameworks. The Archbishop was right. It is time for Britain to integrate aspects of Islamic law.

UPDATE at 9/13/10 9:40:36 am:

Due to new information, I edited this post slightly to correct a mistake. A complete explanation is here.

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s vision of sharia in Britain is quickly coming true: New sharia row over Chancellor’s plans for ‘Islamic bonds’.

A new sharia law controversy erupted last night over Government plans to issue special “Islamic bonds” to pay for Gordon Brown’s public-spending programme by raising money from the Middle East.

Britain is to become the first Western nation to issue bonds approved by Muslim clerics in line with sharia law, which bans conventional loans involving interest payments as “sinful”.

The scheme would mark one of the most significant economic advances of sharia law in the non-Muslim world. It will lead to the ownership of Government buildings and other assets currently belonging to British taxpayers being switched wholesale to wealthy Middle-Eastern businessmen and banks.

The Government sees sharia-compliant bonds as a way of tapping Middle-East money and building bridges with the Muslim community.

But critics say the scheme would waste money and could undermine Britain’s financial and legal systems.