Arse-kissing exercises are never pretty to behold, but the one currently being lavished on King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia by the British Government is more sickening than most.
On the day the corpulent tyrant King arrived in the UK, the Independent revealed that one in four British mosques contained hate material.
Researchers uncovered propaganda calling for homosexuals to be murdered, women to be subjugated and denouncing Jews and Christians as the enemies of Islam. A call was uncovered for jihad against “tyrants and oppressors”, which is “best done through force if possible”.
Most of the material, according to Policy Exchange – the centre-right think-tank – is produced by agencies closely linked to the Saudi regime, and included virulently anti-Semitic propaganda produced by the Saudi ministry of education.
Some of the literature discovered espoused the creation of a separate state for Muslims, governed by sharia law. The concluded
Saudi Arabia is the ideological source of much of this sectarianism .
Ahead of the king’s visit, Kim Howells, the Foreign Office minister, told us Brits that we should work more closely with the Saudis, because we “share values” with them.
In a separate article in today’s Independent, Robert Fisk says:
And what values precisely would they be, I might ask?
He adds:
In what world do these people live? True, there’ll be no public executions outside Buckingham Palace when His Royal Highness rides in stately formation down The Mall. We gave up capital punishment about half a century ago. There won’t even be a backhander – or will there? – which is the Saudi way of doing business. But for King Abdullah to tell the world, as he did in a BBC interview yesterday, that Britain is not doing enough to counter “terrorism”, and that most countries are not taking it as seriously as his country is, is really pushing it. Weren’t most of the 11 September 2001 hijackers from – er – Saudi Arabia? Is this the land that is really going to teach us lessons?
The sad, awful truth is that we fete these people, we fawn on them, we supply them with fighter jets, whisky and whores. No, of course, there will be no visas for this reporter because Saudi Arabia is no democracy. Yet how many times have we been encouraged to think otherwise about a state that will not even allow its women to drive?
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
October 31st, 2007 at 11:51 pm
At times I think practical politics is merely an exercise in applied hypocrisy.
I suppose it is inevitable when the party in whose favour we are being hypocritical has us over a barrel - a barrel of oil - so to speak.
November 1st, 2007 at 7:01 am
Read Mark Steel in the Indie. As usual, he gets to the nub of something by examining it from a comedian’s point of view.