Mail on Sunday offers students cash to spy on Muslims

The Mail on Sunday has been accused of fuelling Islamophobia after offering students hundreds of pounds to spy on Muslim student societies in an attempt to uncover evidence of “extremism”. The newspaper promised student journalists £100 per meeting to pose as Muslims and secretly record meetings of student Islamic societies to see if any radical organisations were recruiting there.

The offer came in an email from junior reporter Sophie Borland, who graduated from UCL in 2004. It said: “What the editor wants is to pay student reporters to go undercover to one or two meetings of various societies. The reporters would be paid £100 per meeting but IF something came up that turned into a story obviously they would be paid a lot more.”

The email referred to a ‘tip off’ that radicals would be targeting London campuses. Borland referred to “rumours flying around a lot”. The Sunday Times reported on radicals allegedly operating undercover at UCL in the autumn, but Borland said: “If you take a look at their article it really wasn’t based on much. The Sunday Times went really big on it but it wasn’t anything really.”

The Mail on Sunday’s Education Correspondent Glen Owen specifically targeted Imperial College’s Muslim students and Queen Mary’s World Revival Society.

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Uncle Sam sends Muslims to timeout

“Next time you read an apocalyptical article about the impending doom of the world due to the ‘clash of civilizations’ between the Muslims and [insert non-Arab, non-Muslim nation here] take a moment and think for yourself: amidst the debates about free speech and freedom of the press that have been circulating around the globe over the past few months, a double standard has been applied to a large part of the global community. The portrayal of Islam in the media has long been questionable, but the situation in Denmark is the straw that broke the camel’s back. The cartoons and the resulting chaos represent the escalation of a deeper problem.

“Why has Islam become the demon monolith of the world which threatens to destroy all that is good and peaceful? People identify Islam with something that threatens their very being and all that they stand for: democracy, equality and liberty. Yet, this fear is perpetuated by the stereotype of a fight between good and evil, the world against Islam, a stereotype which has come to distort world public opinion.”

Sarah Dajani and Emily Norris in the Daily Princetonian, 10 March 2006

Christians warned of threat of Islamic aims on society

Unless Christians start taking their faith seriously, Britain could become a Muslim nation, a senior cathedral cleric has suggested. The warning is sounded by the Subdean of Lincoln Cathedral, Canon Alan Nugent, in this week’s Chapter Letter which will be distributed to members of the cathedral congregation this Sunday.

Canon Nugent says that during the demonstrations by Muslims following publication in some European newspapers of cartoons caricaturing the prophet Muhammad, “much was made” of some of the “brutal and violent” posters carried by protesters. But other posters were not commented on – and to Canon Nugent they were “significant”.

He says: “They warned that Britain would before long become Islamic. There is no doubt that Islam is a missionary faith and the conversion of unbelievers is a major factor in its spread. It is not surprising that many Muslims may well harbour the hope that this country could be converted to the faith of the Prophet….”

Church of England Newspaper, 10 March 2006

Fighting terror or pushing bigotry?

Dan Gillerman“It’s hard to conceive how the United States will win a ‘war of ideas’ in the Islamic world when American leaders flock to a Washington conference where Muslims are publicly insulted and the U.S. officials fail to voice objections to the bigotry.

“That’s what happened at this week’s annual meeting of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee whose invitees included Vice President Dick Cheney, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, former Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards, Virginia’s ex-Democratic Gov. Mark Warner, and Sens. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and Susan Collins, R-Maine.

“In a luncheon speech on March 6, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman [pictured] entertained the AIPAC crowd with what the Washington Post described as ‘straight talk’, including a comment that came close to equating Islam with terrorism. ‘While it may be true – and probably is – that not all Muslims are terrorists, it also happens to be true that nearly all terrorists are Muslim,’ Gillerman said to the crowd’s delight.”

Robert Parry at Consortiumnews.com, 8 March 2006

The insulting remark was in fact a quote from Abdelrahman al-Rashid of al-Arabiya TV – which tells you something about the role played by pro-western Arab intellectuals like that.

Daniel Pipes finds comfort in Muslims killing Muslims

John Walsh on America’s leading Islamophobe, in Counterpunch 9 March 2006

Whether it is accurate to describe Pipes as a neocon in questionable, though, in the sense of advocating an aggressive US foreign policy aimed at removing hostile regimes under cover of imposing democracy. He has always been sceptical that “brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene” are ready for democracy.

Nick Cohen lines up with Mad Mel

As we’ve repeatedly pointed out on this site, Islamophobia is the issue over which a whole section of the Left has lost its political bearings and adopted positions barely distinguishable from the racist Right.

Nick Cohen is of course a prime example. In his latest Evening Standard column, he denounces liberals for opposing the imprisonment without trial of the Tipton Three at Guantánamo Bay (“the Americans had reasonable grounds for picking them up”) and for attacking the intended illegalisation under the government’s proposed new anti-terror law of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an organisation that has repeatedly stated its opposition to terrorist attacks such as the London bombings. As for 7/7 itself, Cohen lectures us that it had nothing whatsoever to do with the crimes of western imperialism but was solely motivated by the “psychotic ideology” of Islamism.

A very similar argument is presented by Mad Mel, with whom Cohen increasingly finds common ground, in today’s entry in Melanie Phillips’s Diary.

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Fears for Belmarsh Muslim inmates

BelmarshThe chief inspector of prisons has raised concerns about the treatment of Muslim inmates at Belmarsh maximum security jail in London.

Anne Owers says there is evidence of bullying and the prison is struggling to deal with the large proportion of Muslims held on terrorism charges. She said prison officers did not understand the social and religious behaviour of Muslim inmates.

BBC News, 9 March 2006

Begg ‘told FBI he trained with al-Qa’eda’

Moazzam BeggThe Daily Telegraph tries to counter the impact of Moazzam Begg’s new book Enemy Combatant by quoting from a “confession” that he signed under torture while held by the US in Afghanistan.

The Telegraph tells us that “US officials insist [the confession] was not obtained under duress”. Moazzam Begg has described his treatment as follows:

“… they interrogated me severely for almost the whole month and kept me in separate solitary confinement. They tied me up with my hands behind my back to my legs, kicked me in the head, kicked me in the back, threatened to take me to Egypt to be tortured, to be raped, to be electrocuted. They had a woman screaming in the next room whom I believed at that time was my wife. They bought pictures of my children and told me I would never see them again. All sorts of things like that.”

For recent interviews with Moazzam Begg see here and here.

Muslim vote tips the balance in Netherlands

“Yesterday’s municipal elections in the Netherlands were won by the Left. The Labour Party (PvdA) gained more than 500 town hall seats, an increase of 50 per cent compared with 2002, while the far-left Socialist Party (SP) doubled its number of seats. The Christian-Democrat CDA of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende and his government coalition partner, the free-market Liberal VVD, suffered heavy losses…. Today the center-left newspaper De Volkskrant writes that the immigrant vote has tipped the balance in favour of the Left. This should not come as a surprise. All across Europe, immigrants tend to vote for the Left.”

Paul Belien berates Muslims for exercising their democratic rights and voting against parties of the anti-migrant Right.

He adds: “The center-right VVD, the party of famous Dutch policians such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali … received only 1% of the immigrant vote.”

Brussels Journal, 8 March 2006