Monthly Archives: March 2006

Bigotry toward Muslims and anti-Arab racism grow in US

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Juan ColeJuan Cole writes: “The constant drumbeat of hatred toward Muslims and Arabs on the American Right, on television and radio and in the press, has gradually had its effect. This according to a Washington Post poll. Even in the year after September 11, a majority of Americans respected Islam and Muslims, but powerful forces in US society are determined to change that, and are gradually succeeding. As they win, Bin Laden also wins, since his whole enterprise was to ‘sharpen the contradictions’ and provoke a clash of civilizations. Some 25% of Americans now say they personally are prejudiced against Muslims. And 33% think that Islam as a religion helps incite violence against non-Muslims, up from 14% after September 11. The Bush administration policy is to continually insinuate that the Muslim world is the new Soviet Union and full of sinister forces that require the US to go to war against them.”

Informed Comment, 9 March 2006

See also “Negative perception of Islam increasing”, Washington Post, 9 March 2006

Islamophobia masquerading as free speech

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Soumayya Ghannoushi“The truth is that today racism, intolerance, xenophobia, and hatred of the other hide behind the sublime façade of free speech, the defence of ‘our’ values and protection of ‘our’ society from ‘foreign’ aggression. Let us not be deceived about this rhetoric of liberalism and free speech. The Danish cartoons have nothing to do with freedom of expression and everything to do with hatred of the other in a Europe grappling with its growing Muslim minorities, still unable to accept them.

“Muhammad, who had been depicted in medieval legends as a bloodthirsty warrior with a sword in one hand and a Quran in another, is now made to brandish bombs and guns. Little seems to have changed about Western consciousness of Islam. The collective medieval Christian memory has been recycled, purged of eschatology and incorporated into a modern secularised rhetoric that goes unquestioned today.”

Soumaya Ghannoushi at Aljazeera, 9 March 2006

Standing up against hatred

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Right-wingers tried to fan the flames of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate at the University of California-Irvine (UCI) on February 28, sponsoring a meeting titled “Unveiling the Cartoons”. Following the lead of a few college newspapers that reprinted cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad as a terrorist, the UCI College Republicans sponsored the public meeting to display the offensive caricatures.

But Arabs, Muslims and their supporters didn’t take this provocation sitting down. As many 1,000 people turned out to counter the racists’ message, outnumbering the Republicans’ audience. “We are standing up against racism and hatred. We are not going to let it happen, not here,” said Quanita of the Muslim Student Union (MSU). Students at the protest wore armbands to express their solidarity and held banners saying “Stop Islamophobia!”

Socialist Worker (US), 10 March 2006

Jihad Watch denounces ‘Dhimmi Esposito’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

John EspositoRobert Spencer offers a characteristically restrained critique of John L. Esposito, who is generally agreed to be the leading western academic expert on Islam:

“The dhimmi Saudi shill John Esposito, whose word still reigns supreme in the White House, and who has praised the suicide-terror-endorsing Sheikh Qaradawi as a ‘reformist’, has now fallen so low as to echo paranoid conspiracy theories about Daniel Pipes being behind the printing of the Danish cartoons. He also recommends that Muslims promote themselves more aggressively in the West. And I’m sure that he will be ready to help with that promotion.”

Dhimmi Watch, 8 March 2006

Clarke criticises Danish ‘mistake’ over cartoons

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The British government has accused its Danish counterparts of making “a serious mistake” in the way it handled relations with Muslim countries after the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. The home secretary, Charles Clarke, criticised the decision by the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, to snub a request from 11 Muslim countries for a meeting after the cartoons were published in the Jyllands Posten newspaper in September. Mr Clarke told a public meeting in Willesden that Mr Rasmussen had not even responded to the request.

Guardian, 8 March 2006

And why hasn’t this appeared on Dhimmi Watch? Is Robert Spencer prepared to sit idly by while British politicians sell out western civilisation to the Muslim hordes?

Postscript:  This was quite unfair on Robert. Shortly after our comment was posted, he laid into Clarke: “Britain’s Home Secretary criticizes Denmark’s Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen for not throwing freedom of speech overboard and rushing into dhimmitude.”

Dhimmi Watch, 9 March 2006

Why the Lib Dems?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A few days ago Liberal Democrat spokesperson Kishwer Falkner attracted some media attention when she stated that Muslims should have “broader shoulders” when it comes to issues of free speech such as the Danish cartoons – a statement that Osama Saeed rightly dismissed as “patronising drivel”.

I missed Kishwer Falkner’s speech at the Trafalgar Square rally against Islamophobia on 11 February (I’d sneaked off for a coffee). However, a contact has provided this account: “She came on directly after Azzam Tamimi and attacked him from the platform for his lack of ‘self restraint’ (without of course specifying what this meant). She ended her tedious and patronising speech with the inspiring slogan ‘Moderation is more important than militancy’ – and walked off to a chorus of boos.”

I notice that another leading Lib Dem, Evan Harris MP, is billed as a platform speaker at the so-called “March for Free Expression” in London on 25 March, which has been called basically in support of the right to incite hatred against Muslims.

I can understand why Muslim communities have been alienated from Labour by the actions of the Blair government, but why anyone should regard the Lib Dems as any sort of alternative beats me.

Muslim woman denied job for scarf sues

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim woman who claims she was denied employment after she refused to remove a head scarf worn for religious reasons is accusing a Des Moines convenience store chain of violating her religious rights. In the lawsuit, Aaliyah Withers-Johnson claims officials at Git-N-Go Convenience Stores Inc. told her she could not work for the company if she insisted on wearing the head scarf, known as a hijab, worn as part of her Islamic faith. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Des Moines, accuses the company of racial and religious discrimination.

Withers-Johnson, who also is black, claims she wore the scarf to her initial job interview for a position as a store clerk on March 11, 2005, was offered a position and told to report six days later for training. But at the training session, Withers-Johnson claims she was immediately pulled aside by a company official and told she would not be able to start ‘”because of the thing you are wearing on your head,’” the lawsuit said.

Des Moines Register, 6 March 2006

‘Left’ Islamophobes fall out

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Even the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty baulks at some of the alliances formed by their friends in the Worker Communist Party of Iran.

In an open letter to Maryam Namazie, Martin Thomas of the AWL writes: “The organisers of the ‘March For Free Expression’ (against political Islam) planned for 25 March are advertising you as a prominent supporter – alongside the Freedom Association, an extreme right-wing movement best known for its strike-breaking efforts during the Grunwick strike of 1977.”

Martin also takes issue with Namazie’s decision to sign the anti-Islamism manifesto first published in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten: “The manifesto’s twelve initial signatories include several right-wing figures – not, to be sure, as right-wing as the Freedom Association, but clearly alien to the labour movement.”

AWL website, 5 March 2006

For details of the “march for free expression”, see here.

For our comments on the anti-Islamism manifesto, see here.

‘What are we to do about Islam?’ A right-wing bigot explains

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Social Affairs Unit has reproduced the speech given by Douglas Murray, author of Neoconservatism: Why We Need It, at the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference on Europe and Islam in the Netherlands last month. It includes gems such as the following:

Why is it that time and again the liberal West is crumpling before the violence, intimidation and thuggery of Islam? … It is late in the day, but Europe still has time to turn around the demographic time-bomb which will soon see a number of our largest cities fall to Muslim majorities. It has to. All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop…. Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board: Europe must look like a less attractive proposition. We in Europe owe – after all – no special dues to Islam. We owe them no religious holidays, special rights or privileges. From long before we were first attacked it should have been made plain that people who come into Europe are here under our rules and not theirs. There is not an inch of ground to give on this one.

Social Affairs Unit, 3 March 2006

Mad Mel is impressed: “You have to look hard to find such moral clarity within today’s British Conservative party – or indeed most of the British establishment.”

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 6 March 2006

Telegraph apologises to Bewleys

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Noble Qur'anRemember the outrageous interview with Patrick Sookhdeo in the Sunday Telegraph a few weeks ago, in which he launched an attack on The Noble Qur’an: A New Rendering of its Meaning into English – a highly-regarded translation by Abdalhaqq and Aisha Bewley? (See here and here.) Well, yesterday’s Telegraph published an apology, acknowledging that “Dr Sookhdeo’s remarks did not refer to The Noble Qur’an, A Rendering of its Meaning in English, but to a completely different translation”, together with a letter from Abdalhaqq Bewley taking the paper to task over its treatment of Islam and Muslims.

Sunday Telegraph, 5 March 2006

The Telegraph also publishes two other letters that it says have “been received since a website wrongly accused Dr Sookhdeo and the Sunday Telegraph of calling for a ban on the Koran”. Presumably this a reference to Islamophobia Watch. In fact our post made no reference to the Telegraph calling for a ban, but only to Sookhdeo, who was quoted as saying: “The Government has done nothing whatever to interfere with the sale of that book. Why not? Government ministers have promised to punish religious hatred, to criminalise the glorification of terrorism, yet they do nothing about this book, which blatantly does both.”

Yusuf Smith comments: “It appears that Sookhdeo was indeed referring to a different translation which had the same English title (the Noble Qur’an, as opposed to Holy Qur’an for example) though not the same sub-title (‘A New Rendering …’). Most likely this was the infamous, ear-jarring, propaganda-laden Khan-Hilali translation…. The problem is that Sookhdeo clearly referred to the subtitle of the translation, which has very little commentary (unlike Khan & Hilali), which does give the impression that it was the content of the Qur’an which Sookhdeo was suggesting was the issue, not commentary alongside the text. So people were justified in fearing that the Qur’an itself was under attack and not one person’s writings.”

Indigo Jo Blogs, 5 March 2006