Writer, blogs at https://nitter.cf/t.co/ei2vTAJd0C, theologian, Mging Ed Grove Books, Gen Syn, ABs Coun, slave of Christ, husband, father, dog owner, gardener, chocoholic
Nottingham
Joined January 2014
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“As I prepare to take my leave of our shared home place, I find comfort in an old Greek proverb: ‘A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they will never sit’,” Seamus Mallon's autobiography ended.
Dr Ian Paul retweeted
1/ Clause 5 of the draft conversion bill imposes extensive corporate liability. This is an aspect of the bill not getting a lot of attention, so I'm grateful to Tanya for having me on her show to discuss how draconian and chilling the effect of this law would be on workplaces.
NEW EPISODE! Will New Law Make 'Trans' People Unemployable?
Could the Conversion Practices Bill create big risks for employers - and trans-identified employees? White-knuckle discussion with Dennis Kavanagh @Jebadoo2 premieres at 7.30pm TONIGHT (Tuesday 3 November) on YouTube! Links ⬇️ See you shortly...
Dr Ian Paul retweeted
This bill will criminalise ordinary parenting.
@kathleen_stock1 is quite right to point this out.
In these days of fluid teenage identities, it is ridiculous to think that a parent challenging a teenage's professed sexual orientation might be a criminal act. The Conversion Practices Bill is a menace in more ways than one. Me in the Times ⬇️
thetimes.com/comment/columni…
What is the composition of the new General Synod? What difference will this make over the next five years?
psephizo.com/life-ministry/s…
Dr Ian Paul retweeted
When will the demands stop?
Everyone knows the transatlantic slave trade was wrong. Britain played a huge role in stopping it.
So when it comes to the question of reparations, my answer is no.
It’s time for the Commonwealth to start looking forwards, not backwards.
Dr Ian Paul retweeted
The demands will stop when our politicians stop signalling to the world that we are weak, naive and riddled with guilt.
No one voted for this.
British politicians of all stripes need to put the British people first in every area of policy: immigration, economy, defence, energy and welfare.
Dr Ian Paul retweeted
If Christians should not be able to pray certain sorts of prayers, imagine the criminal charges to be brought against Muslims and Jews who are concerned with sexual morality. The draft Conversion Practices Bill is as much an affront to freedom of religion as it is to parenting.
Dr Ian Paul retweeted
Ending slavery cost Britain more than it ever profited. Demand for compo is blackmail mol.im/a/16260311 based on my latest @iealondon paper. Political leaders need to start defending British history and get off their knees.
Dr Ian Paul retweeted
Perhaps that flicker was the realisation that the discussion had moved from protecting people against abuse to deciding which expressions of religious faith the state should permit? If you're not deeply disturbed by an activist apparently explaining to Parliament which forms of Christian prayer she considers acceptable and which might warrant criminalisation then perhaps you need to rethink your life.
Of course coercion and abuse must be prohibited, but prayer, repentance, self-denial and the call to conversion are fundamental to Christianity. Who is to decide when these become unacceptable, and on what theological authority? This is deeply Orwellian!
The state has a duty to protect religious freedom, not to appoint itself the arbiter of acceptable religious belief and practice.
Dr Ian Paul retweeted
Founder and former chair of the Ban Conversion Practices Coalition, Jayne Ozanne, says the Government’s draft Conversion Practices Bill does not go far enough to criminalise prayer.
She has previously called for even “gentle, non-coercive prayer” to be criminalised under a ban.
Dr Ian Paul retweeted
Shaimaa Rabah is a newly elected councilwoman in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, and a member of Fatah, who was part of a limited set of local municipal elections inside Gaza back in April. After Al Jazeera aired a documentary featuring exclusive footage from Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades about the life of slain military leader Mohammed al-Deif, Shaimaa Rabah shared a Facebook post condemning what she viewed as the glorification of Hamas, which she blamed for Gaza’s devastation. She described the program as “a rich meal of animal feed for the Muslim Brotherhood” and criticized Al Jazeera’s efforts to portray Hamas as heroic despite the destruction and suffering that followed its rule and the 10/7 terror attack.
In response, Hamas and its supporters pressured members of Shaimaa Rabah’s clan with a wave of threats and harassment to compel her to delete the post and issue a public apology, which she did. Even that has not satisfied her critics, who are now demanding her resignation from the Deir al-Balah municipal council, arguing that her status as the council’s first elected woman does not entitle her to disparage the memory of those they regard as “martyrs.”
This episode is a reminder to those who believe elections can produce meaningful political change while Hamas retains effective control over Gaza. Democracy is not the foundation of a free society but the product of one. It depends on the prior existence of independent civil institutions, a free press, freedom of expression, and mechanisms for holding power accountable.
I have shared this concern with Dahlan-affiliated Fatah reformists, EU officials, Arab ministers, and others who advocate elections as a solution to the Palestinian Authority’s legitimacy crisis and the search for an alternative to Hamas. In today’s Gaza, any non-Hamas voice can be rapidly silenced, making meaningful reform, let alone a challenge to the entrenched “resistance” narrative, nearly impossible.
Before any credible democratic process can take place, Hamas’s system of control must be dismantled. Until then, the most realistic path forward is a transitional administration focused on restoring basic services and rebuilding a truly free civil society while removing the coercive structures Hamas and its patrons have spent decades creating.
Dr Ian Paul retweeted
Not mentioned: she sustained her self-inflicted injuries while attempting to carry out a suicide bombing. Israel didn’t burn her body, she did, while trying to murder people and screaming Allahu Akbar.
Israel burned her body, imprisoned her, deprived her of her freedom, and subjected her to beatings and abuse behind the bars of its prisons. The scars of burns and torture have become a testimony to the pain and suffering she endured
She is Israa Jaabis the woman whose body they tried to break, but whose dignity they could never take away
She is the Queen of the Earth, crowned not by physical beauty, but by her resilience, the strength of her will, and her humanity
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Israa Jaabis was severely burned in a 2015 car explosion near an Israeli checkpoint. She was convicted of attempted murder for allegedly detonating a gas canister. Jaabis claims it was accidental. Her scars are from that event not prison torture or beatings.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israa_Jaa… aljazeera.com/features/2023/…
Dr Ian Paul retweeted
Imagine working in the CPS & police and being told you now have to decide **which prayers** should be part of a criminal charge…
Jayne Ozanne is so blithely full of certainty it’s frightening. I think it shocked Danny Beales MP
Dr Ian Paul retweeted
Leadership
Slavery was an evil in which people from every continent and region participated. We should be honest about the whole history, not select the parts that are politically convenient today, especially given Britain's leading role in ending the transatlantic slave trade.
If Caribbean countries are asking Britain for a formal apology for Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, will they also be asking the same of the descendants of African kingdoms, rulers and merchants who captured, sold and profited from the trade?
On demands for reparations, whether through cash or debt relief, we have been down this track before. Twenty-five years ago, Jubilee 2000, Drop the Debt and Make Poverty History argued that cancelling the debts of poorer countries would give them a fresh start. More than $100 billion of debt was eventually written off, but many of those countries have since built up even bigger debts. Labour are already spending too much on Britain's welfare state, now is not the time for Andy Burnham to be providing global welfare.
There is no reason British taxpayers today should be held financially responsible for things that happened generations before any of us were born. And I have even less patience for political elites in commonwealth countries who don’t know how to make their own citizens prosperous now looking for another opportunity to blame Britain.
As Prime Minister, Andy Burnham should be Britain’s greatest defender. Instead, he is writing articles saying we need to confront our history (as if we haven't done enough of that) and considering another formal historical apology. Tony Blair already expressed Britain’s deep sorrow and regret for our role in the slave trade nearly twenty years ago. There is no need to do so again.
This is all another navel-gazing distraction. The Commonwealth should be looking forward, not endlessly backwards. That means economic partnerships to make us all richer and deeper military and security cooperation against common threats. If every Commonwealth summit becomes an exercise in presenting Britain with demands for cash then we need to start asking if it is worth the effort.
Dr Ian Paul retweeted
Gazan teachers across the Strip have ensured that the youngest generation is schooled in the "culture of death.” Gazan hopes for peace and reconstruction require that they be de-radicalised, while the world defends itself from the threat this generation poses to global security.
Deradicalisation and demilitarisation go hand in hand.
Dr Ian Paul retweeted
Of an estimated 35 million Africans trafficked into slavery across the Atlantic, Sahara and Indian Ocean, the British share was about 9 per cent.
Britain was also the first major power to abolish both slave-trading and slavery permanently. It then led the world in suppressing them, spending an estimated £90 billion in today’s money combating the transatlantic trade alone between 1806 and 1867.
Yet King Charles will arrive in Antigua this week facing demands that Britain pay reparations for its historic involvement in slavery.
To single out the British, of all peoples, is outrageously unfair. The King should acknowledge the evils of the past while urging the Commonwealth to confront slavery in the present.
Read my thoughts at The Biggar Picture: nigelbiggar.co.uk/p/king-cha…
Dr Ian Paul retweeted
Wow, the headline BBC News website coverage of the King's speech in Antigua completely passes over the King's praise of the Royal Navy for helping to end slavery, and his call to accept the complexity of history, with the good as well as the wrongs.
Dr Ian Paul retweeted
Is wasted money the problem with the Church of England? psephizo.com/life-ministry/i… via @psephizo
Dr Ian Paul retweeted
If this is all accurate, it is one of the most flagrant attacks on academic freedom and attempts to use university promotion procedures to enforce ideological conformity. It should be opposed with every weapon available.
telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/11…
Dr Ian Paul retweeted
As a Nigerian, fully grounded in African history and a current British higher rate tax payer I couldn’t agree more with Kemi.
Funny that the world is obsessed with the trans Atlantic slave trade and no one talks the trans Saharan.
Everyone was complicit, let’s move on
Thank
Dr Ian Paul retweeted
Slavery was universal… can’t blame one country or race or region
