On Tommy Robinson Again – and Others Like Him

As is so often the case when dealing with public controversies, one has to repeat oneself over and over again. Those who are impatient with reading things carefully, or thinking clearly, or seeing the big picture, will so often twist and distort what you have said, that all you can do is keep repeating yourself, and hope that some of it sinks in.

So let me once again seek to clarify myself, not just on one particular recent controversy, but about other similar matters in general. The particular issue is of course the arrest of Tommy Robinson. The more general discussion has to do with supporting others, working with others, and so on.

Allow me then a few more brief words about Tommy Robinson if you will. I do this to at least make clear my own position about him, and others like him. And my position goes something like this: Some folks consider Tommy to be perfect, a saint, a superstar. But I realise he has made mistakes, he has sometimes not been as wise and prudent as he could have been, and so on. He has even admitted this himself.

Other folks think that he is just a troublemaker, a racist, a redneck, and that he fully deserves his punishment(s). But I see him as someone who really does care about what is happening in his country, and who is greatly – and rightly – concerned about creeping sharia and the horrific rape gangs there.

So he is neither a complete saint nor a complete sinner, at least in terms of what he is saying and doing. He is one guy trying to stand up against some really nasty things, and I sure wish there were many more like him out there. He is willing to stick his neck out – and pay the price – while most other folks are apathetic wimps or lousy cowards.

Perhaps more importantly, let me address another issue that keeps arising here. I have had numerous critics challenging me, saying he is not a Christian, etc., so why support him? They foolishly say we cannot support such folks, and we could not have him speak in our churches, etc.

Well, dah… Um, I never said he was a Christian. As far as I know, he is not one (I am happy to stand corrected here). So it goes without saying that we should be praying that he does become one. It would be absolutely terrific if he becomes an on-fire, Spirit-filled, born-again follower of Jesus Christ.

However, in the meantime it seems to me that we can rightly applaud his courageous stance and his willingness to speak up, while most folks are silent. In this regard he puts most of us to shame, even most Christians. I am more than happy to sing his praises in this respect.

That does not mean I think he is perfect, or a saint, or someone who can do no wrong. So I of course can only give him qualified support. When he does good stuff, I will make mention of that and encourage him along the way. When he does that which I am not too thrilled about, then obviously my support tapers off at that point.

In the same manner I can more or less support all sorts of other people who clearly are not perfect and who are not Christians. They are doing a lot of good in various areas, but in other areas I may not be so supportive of them. Plenty of folks come to mind here. Consider just a handful:

The Dutch politician Geert Wilders is one case in point. He is not a Christian, his party supports things like homosexuality, but he has done a tremendous amount of good warning Europeans – and anyone else who will listen – about the dangers of Islam and stealth jihad.

The same with Melbourne conservative columnist and non-Christian Andrew Bolt. He often says things that are more true and more in line with Scripture than most Christians do! And consider someone like the Canadian intellectual Jordan Peterson who is doing such a great job of ruffling the feathers of all sorts of loony lefties.

Sure, he is not a Christian, and he is into evolution, etc. But he is one of the best public controversialists we have at the moment who is taking on the radical feminists, the gender benders, and so many others. I wish we had a lot more like him – and yes I wish they were all Christians as well.

But God can use non-Christians. He is even able to use Balaam’s ass if he chooses. He is not restricted to just using his own people to get truth out there. He can even have the stones cry out as Jesus said. But see more on this here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2017/12/01/time-rahab-awards/

And non-Christian conservative commentators like Brendan O’Neill from the UK also comes to mind here. So too do various Jewish conservatives, such as Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager in the US, or Melanie Phillips in Britain. I sure am glad they are there, speaking out and taking a stand.

I repeat: to support such folks does NOT mean of course that I support every single thing about them, or every single thing they say or write. No one is perfect and without blemish, and I do not fully agree with anyone – not even myself at times!

But some folks want you to only support those who are perfect. In which case, we will be supporting no one of course. Such folks do not exist. We live in a fallen world and we deal with fallen people. So there will always be a mix of good and bad in everyone, and that includes what they think, write or say.

As one friend of mine put it when I wrote about such matters:

The reason you have to say such things is because a major proportion of society is infected with hero worship/hatred. Most people, even many Christians, engage in such a polarised view of visible public figures they cannot conceive of assessing them on a point by point basis, they assume you operate as they do. Eg., you either love Trump madly or you think he is the devil incarnate. It makes me not want to speak with the person exhibiting such views because it broadcasts a lack of objectivity.

As to being willing to work with other people who are not fully onside, I have written plenty about this previously. It is called co-belligerency. We work with others on limited campaigns, etc, even if we do not fully agree in other areas. See these pieces for more on this:

http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2009/11/27/on-biblical-cooperation-and-separation/
http://billmuehlenberg.com/2015/12/12/co-belligerency-again/
https://billmuehlenberg.com/2016/08/28/culture-wars-theology-working-together/

And let me finish by mentioning a related matter. Often I will have Christians attacking me for getting into various public debates, or appearing on various secular radio or TV programs to debate certain folks on certain issues. They think it is a waste of time and that I should just say no to such invites.

My short answer is this: I will do what God calls me to do, and ignore the armchair critics. Of course the leftist media is a cesspit. Of course they want to use and abuse me on these shows. And in terms of just a secular strategy, conservatives can certainly discuss whether they should boycott them altogether.

I am not just a secular conservative – I am also a Christian, and if God leads me or others to go on such secular programs, then we will do it in obedience to the King of Kings. If God is guiding us to do these shows, then we had better do them. And if God is in it, then of course it is never a waste of time. Sharing truth in the public arena in that case is not unproductive. God is able to use the seeds planted there for good.

So what if we get sneered at and abused in the process? Getting truth in the public arena is vitally important, and that is a good reason to go and do these programs, and endure all the hate and vitriol. Sure, we must always be prayerful, careful and discerning as to which public debates we enter into, and which we decide to forego.

That I seek to do as I get these sorts of requests. After prayer and thought, I make a choice: some I go on, and some I knock back. But why does the following story keep coming to mind in the light of such constant criticisms?

A woman once approached the great evangelist D. L. Moody to air a grievance. The woman said to him, “Mr. Moody, I don’t like the way you do evangelism!” “Well, ma’am, let me ask you, how do you do it?” Moody asked. She replied, “I don’t!” Moody responded, “Well, I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it!”

In sum, I will applaud and support someone like Tommy Robinson on various occasions. That does not mean I think everything he says and does is just peachy. But I am glad he is bravely taking a stand while most other folks cower in fear, or simply don’t give a rip.

In that sense, three cheers for Tommy.

[1554 words]

35 Replies to “On Tommy Robinson Again – and Others Like Him”

  1. “He is willing to stick his neck out – and pay the price.”
    If as his public defender solicitor pleaded with the judge, that a prison sentence could be a death sentence, he will have paid the ultimate price.
    But wiser heads in government may override what appears to be an activist judge.
    A petition to release him has over 1/2 million signatures already. Last thing they want is a media martyr.

  2. Nothing to add except, spot on brother! Please keep up the wonderful work, your messages are well balanced and logical. I recently asked a colleague what they did not like about a particular policy in the US some time back, and the response was ‘I hate him’ [it] i.e. President Trump. I then asked what don’t you like about this policy, no reply, just they hated the man and thus anything that that administration produces. The level of belligerency toward someone [or a policy] without cause or at least some basic objective refuting fact is fatuously astonishing. Tommy appears to genuinely care for the girls and the community who have suffered tremendously under a politically correct craven leadership. As a Christian, I will keep him, and you Bill, in my prayers. God bless.

  3. I am a big fan of Dennis Prager, although he does not know Christ. He often exposes how the left loonies are ruining our Western values.

    Andrew Bolt too – a fair and honest journalist.

    Tommy has been unjustly arrested. Should Christians only defend other Christians? Ridiculous!

    Thanks again Bill for another great article.

  4. Thanks Bill, for once again writing a thoughtful article. I totally agree with you. Please keep doing what you are doing!!
    A quote from C.S. Lewis, “If you read history, you will find that Christians who did the most for the present world, were those who thought the most of the next.”
    May God continue to bless you!

  5. Obviously a praying sign is not recognise here, so I want you to know that I am praying for you.

  6. Hi Bill, my prayer is that you’ll keep doing what God has called you to do,
    Bless you mate, Kel.

  7. Thanks Bill for such a balanced view honouring Christ and also holding up a standard. This is the point isn’t it? I think Tommy is one of the most gutsy men in England and I as a Christian man thank God for him because God has used the least perfect for many a venture that was close to His heart. In the end, it is about Truth and Justice and Tommy is simply prepared to lay down his freedom and comfort, not because he is a fool, but because he wants justice. I support Justice and Tommy’s efforts. Thanks for all the balanced input on this. And, I pray for Tommy Robinson and his family and that God makes a way for Him. Peace.

  8. Another non-Christian is ardent Atheist U.K’s Pat Condell who has produced many videos of Islamic inhumanity, the madness of the Left and of which he was a part earlier in his life, the madness of governments, fascist nature of the LGBTQI and the goodness of Israel in contrast to her neighbours. I haven’t seen any of his anti-Christian which are more anti-religion because clearly he holds many Christian values at heart. To produce all these videos shows he is not afraid to upset the status quo. Here is an example as he pulls down the notion of Marxism.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trAyp5XXQgo

  9. Dear Bill,
    I really pity you, and admire your patience and grace. I wish I had as much as you do. I also feel sad for those whose make you write all these ‘please explain’ articles. But I guess this is what you need to do. I experienced this myself during the SSM campaign repeating myself incessantly often to deaf ears, alas with much less grace. Keep up the good work Saint Bill 🙂
    Best regards,
    Pascal.

  10. Thanks Bill, I totally appreciate your honesty, integrity and highlighting these issues to us all. Thank God for all those brave folk e.g. Tommy Robinson, Andrew Bolt, Jordan Petersen et al.
    I regularly pray for you and them. Bless you and your family. : )

  11. A great article Bill. It’s sad that you have to spend so much time speaking to Christians in order to defend your approach to non-Christians. I think that Jesus taught His disciples a valuable lesson about tolerance of others in Mark 9:38-40. Yes, God is not limited to just working through Christians in order to achieve His purposes.

  12. Agree with everything you say re Tommy. Keep up the good work Bill.

  13. Thanks again guys.
    BTW, some folks have mentioned the new piece by Albrechtsen basically saying Tommy has deserved his imprisonment. This is how I responded to one such person about this: “Yes I am aware of her piece, and read some of it – before it got hidden behind a paywall! Needless to say I do not fully concur with all of it (or at least what I was able to see). But I will leave it to the legal experts to debate the finer points of all this. And she has been at best a half-hearted conservative over the years, so she is hardly my first port of call when I want someone on my side. However I will NOT let pieces like this detract from the main point here – that there are massive problems in the UK with Islam and rape gangs; that Tommy and others have long been targeted; and that the powers that be do NOT want their voices heard. The Islamic takeover of the UK continues apace, and I prefer to side, as much as possible, with people like Tommy who are – albeit imperfectly – doing what they can to warn us of the great evil unfolding there.”

  14. Bill like your article, I sometimes see myself agreeing with many non Christians/atheists who see Islam as a threat way more then people who claim to be Christian. No joke, I had a Christian claim that Christian countries should let in more muslims into their countries because its the “Christian” thing to do and somehow makes you the better human and if muslims kill your family and rape your daughters, deal with it because Jesus told us Christians would suffer. I’m honestly glad that the Christians during the Crusades didn’t have this attitude otherwise muslims would of taken over the entire world right now.

  15. Write to the British Home Secretary, also a Muslim, and tell him what you think of British Justice, the Gang Rape of hundreds of thousands of white British children over 4 decades, who have had their lives totally destroyed with the cooperation of the Home Office and the Police and the Local Authorities and the Children Services. Also tell him what you think of his police state that imprisons and silences those who raise questions about this.

    sajid.javid.mp@parliament.uk

  16. Tommy Robinson is guilty of contempt of court and maybe even a breach of the peace. But when what is defined as contempt of court and breach of the peace has become so twisted by a judiciary that is nothing more an arm of the Equality and Human Rights mafioso, who ride rough shod through law themselves and have become kangaroo courts, who are biased, prejudices and judgemental in favour the criminals rather than the victims, we are no longer obliged to respect them. Lawless is the only word that can be used described our judiciary, Crown Prosecution Service and Police . They no longer protect the public but the criminal.

    Once Tommy is inside prison the gulf becomes even wider, with Mohammedans, murderers and rapists given all manner of human rights, whilst any person put inside for upholding Christian values will be fortunate to come out of prison unscathed.

    The case of John Hirst highlights perfectly the evils of the Human Rights lawyers.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8108439/John-Hirst-faces-police-investigation-over-YouTube-video.html
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkV8-ZGmBsg
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjBEcLvPTAA

    None of this has happened suddenly. In Britain it began in 1967 with Roy Jenkins completely turning morality on its head. Murder inside the womb was made legal as was homosexuality. Laws on censoring pornography were weakened; laws binding marriage were loosened and capital punishment was repealed. Many murderers and rapists of children should have suffered capital punishment a long time ago.

    This following was written in the Telegraph as long ago as 2003 and since then the situation in Britain has become worse:

    “The policy of early release of prisoners has had a catastrophic effect on the safety of the general public: 14 per cent of violent criminals freed early are convicted of fresh violence within two years of their release.
    As The Sunday Telegraph’s Alasdair Palmer states: “Scores of men, women and children have been assaulted, raped and murdered as a result of the policy of releasing dangerous criminals before their sentences are completed” – a policy initiated and endorsed by Jenkins.
    In addition to this tally, we must add the hundreds of innocent lives lost as a result of the abolition of capital punishment, which Jenkins zealously campaigned for and whose reintroduction he so resolutely opposed as Home Secretary in 1974.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3586178/Roy-Jenkins-made-Britain-a-far-less-civilised-country.html

    David Skinner UK

  17. Essentially it appears that any jury that has knowledge or understanding of anything, will be disqualified. The judge will require a jury whose mind is a clean slate, a tabula rasa. It will require a jury whose beliefs, values or notions of reality have been completely wiped clean, in case any of their independently acquired understanding should “prejudice” a case.
    We will soon all be wired up to a central computer where a consensus of public opinion is manipulated and controlled by the elites.

    David Skinner UK

  18. I hope and pray that Tommy Robinson becomes a National Treasure like Churchill, he deserves to be for just for his courage alone.

  19. Thanks again guys. A few more thoughts on this, which may yet be turned into another article! While the left has always hated folks like Robinson and other whistle-blowers, what really irks me are the so-called conservatives and Christians who are more than happy to bash them as well

    The truth is, some folks make it their mission, however imperfectly, to expose things like horrific rape gangs. And some folks prefer to be armchair critics and attack these watchmen. The former group will heavily pay for this, often with their very lives. The latter group sacrifices absolutely nothing. I know which group of people I will side with, every day of the week.

  20. A very heartfelt thankyou Bill for not only upholding the truth of God’s infallible Word but also providing a balanced Christian worldview on topics that will deeply affect our Judeo-Christian culture.
    You’ll no doubt be aware that the British PM Teresa May has totally betrayed the country she “leads” by appointing Muslim Sajid Javid as the newly appointed Home Secretary on 30 April 2018. A classic case of putting the fox in charge of the hen-house when he’s the one responsible for policing, immigration, anti-terrorism, MI5 and the list goes on!

  21. here is my letter to Sajid Javid

    “Sajid Javid

    Dear Home Secretary

    Your Government and Police Force look like (and are) a fascist dictatorship over your silencing and treatment of Tommy Robinson. The petition to release him from the trumped up charge and kangaroo court proceedings of last Friday now has 499,975 signatures at the time of writing.

    Screen Shot 2018-05-30 at 07.17.26 [now 540,000]

    There have been spontaneous demonstrations throughout the world against your tyrannical attempt to crush the legitimate discussion of the Muslim Rape Gang Culture over decades in all cities and towns in the UK, perpetrated by Pakistani Muslims where hundreds of thousands of white British children have had their lives totally destroyed by these monsters.

    These matters have now been thoroughly described in many books largely thanks to books like Easy Meat and Why Muslims Kill for Islam and by Tommy Robinson and his friends. It is true we live now in a post shame culture where you and your Department, the Home Office, have turned a blind eye if not actively colluded with Islam and these rapists to allow such terrible, terrible things to happen to our daughters for decades and decades. This is wickedness in the extreme.

    Your treatment of Tommy Robinson not only on Friday and ongoing but for the years before shows the total venial, heartless and contemptuous corruption of our political and ruling class. It doesn’t help that you are a muslim, what do you say about your brothers ?

    Your sincerely
    Naomi King”

  22. Here is another excellent video, a interview with the writer of Easy Meat, Peter McLoughlin which sets out the history and scale of the epidemic in Britain of rape jihad against all non muslim schoolgirls. It also goes into the culpability and enabling of this over 5 decades (!) by our wicked ruling political class and their agents in the police and local government.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIhvUysq_UM
    ‘Exclusive Interview! Talking Telford and UK Rape Gangs with Author of Easy Meat: Peter McLoughlin’

    God bless all and keep up the good work. I pray that the truth will at last come out and fathers will start protecting their daughters.

  23. Bill, I generally agree with what you write and see the world in very much the same way. But there is an alternative view of the Tommy Robinson affair as articulated by Melanie Phillips in the link attached ( see http://www.melaniephillips.com/mob-hysteria-both-sides-aisle/. )Basically she wrote . .

    “In a worldwide storm of outrage, Yaxley-Lennon has been presented as a martyr of free speech – the victim of a police state which locked him up in order to silence him and prevent him from telling the country a set of vital but unpalatable truths. Not just his supporters but a number of well-known commentators and other public figures in America, Britain and elsewhere now look very silly as a result of their unfamiliarity with English legal procedure.

    For the reason Yaxley-Lennon was locked up was nothing to do with free speech or the nature of his political views. It had everything to do instead with defending the rule of law and the principle of a fair trial. . .

    The UK goes to considerable lengths to give individuals a fair trial on the basis that no-one is allowed to say a defendant is guilty unless and until he or she is convicted; and nothing must be permitted to interfere with the conduct of a trial including saying or doing anything that may influence or intimidate jurors, defendants or witnesses.

    Yaxley-Lennon was convicted of thus interfering with a trial last year and given a sentence of three months, suspended for 18 months on condition that he committed no other offences during that period. The judge at the time said this:

    “You should be under no illusions that if you commit any further offence of any kind, and that would include, I would have thought, a further contempt of court by similar actions, then that sentence of three months would be activated, and that would be on top of anything else that you were given by any other court.

    “In short, Mr Yaxley-Lennon, turn up at another court, refer to people as ‘Muslim paedophiles, Muslim rapists’ and so and so forth while trials are ongoing and before there has been a finding by a jury that that is what they are, and you will find yourself inside. Do you understand?”

    Yet Yaxley-Lennon did indeed commit a further contempt of court last week – to which he pleaded guilty and expressed his remorse – by expressing his views in a way that once again threatened to derail an ongoing trial. That’s why he was arrested and jailed so fast. It had nothing to do with suppressing his views. It was not because he was merely “reporting” on a case. It had everything to do with upholding the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial.

    Unfortunately, the rules safeguarding a fair trial in Britain are simply not understood at all in the US, where such restrictions on what can be said during criminal proceedings are totally unknown and the right to free speech under the First Amendment carries all before it.

    This lack of understanding has helped fuel the mindset, shared by Yaxley-Lennon’s British supporters, that their hero is the victim of a state-sponsored conspiracy to silence opponents of the Islamisation of Britain. Accordingly, they believe – ludicrously and offensively – that anyone who does not take this view of these events and instead criticises him for a very serious contempt of court is a lickspittle of state oppression and Islamisation.”

    I think we need to consider carefully how we view such issues. The men were already on trial . . . there was no intrinsic need for Tommy to be doing what he was doing unless or until the trial was concluded and had resulted (in his opinion) in a miscarriage of justice. That would have been the time for further comment and protest.

    There is much wrong with the UK including excessive political correctness and kow-towing to other religions. But attacking the rule of law is not the way to correct such issues.

    Tim Bartlett, UK

  24. Thanks Tim. Of course I have already discussed this at various times now, so I don’t wish to keep repeating myself. But let me again beg to differ: Even when conservatives try to slam Tommy for possible laws being broken, they are not always helping matters much. In certain circumstances, I would much rather break a law if necessary to do something to help prevent great evil – in this case, to do something to help countless girls being raped and killed. Sometimes things come to that place.

    To suggest otherwise is NOT a conservative position. We do not – certainly as Christian conservatives – say rule of law is absolute and inviolate. One might as well argue that Bonhoeffer broke the law so he deserved his execution, and we should just forget about all that Nazi business. Sometimes civil disobedience is necessary to help stop tremendous evil.

    And as I have said repeatedly now, I may not approve of or condone everything Tommy has said and done, but at the end of the day I prefer folks who care enough about horrendous evil to speak out, than all those armchair critics who shoot the messenger and usually do nothing to really turn things around.

    So consider this to be a possible case of legitimate civil disobedience if you will. All true conservatives, including Phillips, should know that there is a place for this. It may not be done perfectly, but we do not live in a perfect world. But thanks for your thoughts, and see more on this here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2015/09/09/the-state-unjust-laws-and-civil-disobedience/

  25. Hi Bill, interesting that you mention Melanie Phillips and Janet Albrechtsen in one of your comments above. I only just penned an email to MP, with a cc to JA, from which the following is an excerpt.
    “I’m sure I have said enough to indicate my sympathy for Tommy Robinson, warts and all, and my utter frustration with the, dare I say ‘dhimmi,’ leadership and complicit MSM of your country and mine in relation to this issue.
    Janet Albrechtsen, in her article, however, did not simply admonish those of us who had “cried foul” at Tommy’s arrest, she balanced it with some criticism of the failure in leadership that has brought this about. I found this excerpt from her article particularly telling: “Robinson also has been stopped by police from walking down streets where extremist ­Islamic preachers walk freely, and Robinson’s flyers are confiscated while Islamist pamphlets are handed out without obstruction, leading Murray to say this: “As we say goodbye, I cannot help reflecting that our society would never have heard of Tommy Robinson if it had dealt with Islamic extremists with anything like the severity it has meted out to him.” That’s what we are protesting, albeit, it seems, sometimes on the wrong legal grounds. I have also signed the petition for his protection while prison. “

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