Monthly Archives: March 2006

Guantánamo detainee told Geneva rights ‘irrelevant’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A senior US military officer at Guantánamo Bay told a detainee that he did not care about international law and that the Geneva conventions did not apply to proceedings at the military prison, according to thousands of Pentagon documents released over the weekend by the US government after a court action by the Associated Press news agency.

The outburst by the air force colonel came during a hearing to determine the status of Feroz Abbasi, a Briton held for more than two years without charge or trial, and who was released last year. The officer was presiding over a tribunal convened to decide whether detainees were enemy combatants, as alleged by the Bush administration. Critics dismissed the hearings, called combatant status review tribunals, as kangaroo courts.

Guardian, 6 March 2006

Islamophobia Watch helps target Tatchell for murder (really!)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

OutrageLast week the Peter Tatchell Human Rights Fund Campaign Report 2005 was published. Among the list of Peter’s marvellous accomplishments over the course of the year, the report includes the following nugget: “The website, Islamophobia Watch, regularly (but falsely) denounces Peter as anti-Muslim. It is feared this could make him a target for Islamic fundamentalists who monitor the website to compile their hit-lists.”

Peter is of course noted for keeping a low profile – indeed, within a Left not short of inflated egos and narcissists, his self-effacing approach to political activism is one of his most appealing qualities – and without the efforts of Islamophobia Watch we doubt that anyone would have the slightest idea who Peter Tatchell is. Furthermore, were it not for our harsh criticisms of Peter’s attitude towards Islam, we are convinced that the majority of Muslims would long ago have recognised him as the friend and sympathiser that he is.

As for the claim that “Islamic fundamentalists” monitor our site to “compile their hit-lists”, some might suspect that this is a baseless slander on Peter’s part aimed at silencing his critics. However, as anyone familiar with Outrage’s campaign against Yusuf al-Qaradawi can confirm, Peter is the last person in the world to make an accusation against anyone without solid evidence to back it up. We look forward to to Peter providing his own list of the fundamentalists who use our site for the purpose of targeting people like himself for murder.

Stop the appeasment of Muslim fanatics, Jerusalem Post writer urges

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“…. experience has proven experience has proven that all governmental attempts to appease radical Islamists have not advanced the well-being and security of Western democracies. Rather, such appeasement policies have served to weaken Western, liberal values and threaten the viability of Western societies.

“In Europe, the official reactions to the Muslim cartoon riots exposed this reality. Rather than telling the Muslims who took to the streets and called for the annihilation of Denmark and the waging of global jihad where they could shove it, Europe’s leaders bowed before these violent, intolerant people while expressing contrition and sorrow over the Islamic sensitivities that had been offended.

“In Britain the media refused to publish the pictures of Muhammad – out of sensitivity for Muslim feelings, of course. The newspaper editor who published the pictures in France was fired. In Norway, the editor who published the pictures was forced to publicly apologize to Norway’s Muslim leaders in a humiliating public ceremony. Franco Frattini, the EU’s Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security said it would be useful for the press to ‘self-regulate’ in attempting to find answers to question of ‘How are we to reconcile freedom of expression and respect for each individual’s deepest convictions?’

“And so, the European reaction to the Muslim rampages has involved slouching towards the surrender of their freedom of speech. Not only has Europe’s appeasement of radical Islam not protected its liberal values, it has undermined the democratic freedoms that form the foundations of European culture. From a security perspective, the consequence of the silencing of pubic debate on the challenge of radical Islam is that Europeans are now effectively barred from conducting a public discussion about the chief threat to their political traditions and physical survival.”

Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post, 3 March 2006

For a similar analysis, see the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty website, 2 March 2006

Churches condemn far-right party

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Staffordshire’s church leaders have condemned the British National Party for distributing leaflets depicting a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad. A Diocese of Lichfield spokesman said the 5,000 leaflets also criticised plans for a mosque in Stoke-on-Trent. The BNP had offered the local council £100,000 for the land in Hanley which was earmarked for the Mosque, he added. The Bishop of Stafford said people should “stand against the evil trying to divide us”.

Church leaders from several faiths met at the proposed site for the mosque on Wednesday to offer prayers for peace and unity. In a statement they said: “It is wrong and irresponsible that this cartoon has been produced by the BNP with the intention of causing hurt to our Muslim brothers and sisters and to divide a community who are working hard to cement the existing good relations. Right-minded people will see through this blatant and desperate exploitation.”

BBC News, 3 March 2006

‘Cartoon jihad: hunting the kids’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jens RohdeThe claim by Jens Rohde, political spokesman for the governing Danish Liberal Party, that “a daughter of one cartoonist was sought out by 12 Moslem males – they were looking to get to her. Fortunately she wasn’t at school” was repeated by right-wing US blogger Michelle Malkin, under the headline “Cartoon Jihad: Hunting the Kids”, and was widely repeated by the numerous other Islamophobes who infest the blogosphere.

The accusation was without any basis in fact, as Jens Rohde himself subsequently admitted. Even Robert Spencer has been forced to concede that the report was nonsense:

“The story about the threatening of the daughter of one of the Danish cartoonists, which I have now removed, turns out to be false. Its source, the Danish politician Jens Rohde, has misinformed the public – according to the cartoonist whose daughter is the subject of the story. In reality, 12 Muslim men did not come to the girl’s school looking for her. Instead, the whole thing was a dispute among two groups of ten- and eleven-year-old girls, and it had nothing to do with cartoon rage.”

No such retraction has been forthcoming from Malkin, however.

Anti-Muslim manifesto

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Another anti-Islam stunt involving a roster of characters, “left”, right and liberal, who have featured regularly on this website. They have signed a manifesto denouncing “the new totalitarianism”. It begins: “After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.” Maryam Namazie of the Worker Communist Party of Iran, who is one of the signatories, has posted the text on her blog, accompanied by the announcement that the manifesto would be “published in Charlie Hebdo, a French leftwing newspaper”.

Maryam Namazie’s blog, 2 March 2006

In fact, the manifesto first appeared in Jyllands-Posten, the right-wing Danish paper responsible for publishing the offensive anti-Muslim cartoons. The manifesto has also been enthusiastically welcomed by the likes of Little Green Footballs, Jihad Watch and Western Resistance.

In his book The Future of Political Islam Graham Fuller defines an Islamist as a person who holds the view that “Islam as a body of faith has something important to say about how politics and society should be ordered in the contemporary Muslim World and who seeks to implement this idea in some fashion”. Islamism is thus a category that includes a huge variety of ideologies and individuals, from Tariq Ramadan to Osama bin Laden.

As Soumaya Ghannoushi pointed out in an article entitled “The many faces of Islamism”, published in the Guardian last October: “Islamism, like socialism, is not a uniform entity. It is a colourful sociopolitical phenomenon with many strategies and discourses. This enormously diverse movement ranges from liberal to conservative, from modern to traditional, from moderate to radical, from democratic to theocratic, and from peaceful to violent. What these trends have in common is that they derive their source of legitimacy from Islam.”

By lumping all these trends together under the heading of “totalitarianism”, the signatories to the manifesto merely demonstrate their own ignorance and bigotry. It is all too reminiscent of Cold War propaganda that depicted all proponents of radical politics, from liberals leftwards, as “commies” who were intent on destroying democracy and imposing a totalitarian political system.

US cites exception in torture ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

guantanamo-bayBush administration lawyers, fighting a claim of torture by a Guantanamo Bay detainee, yesterday argued that the new law that bans cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody does not apply to people held at the military prison.

In federal court yesterday and in legal filings, Justice Department lawyers contended that a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot use legislation drafted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to challenge treatment that the detainee’s lawyers described as “systematic torture.”

Government lawyers have argued that another portion of that same law, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, removes general access to U.S. courts for all Guantanamo Bay captives. Therefore, they said, Mohammed Bawazir, a Yemeni national held since May 2002, cannot claim protection under the anti-torture provisions.

Washington Post, 3 March 2006 

Islamophobia on a US campus (2)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A student’s column in the Oregon State University campus newspaper has prompted protests by Muslim students, who say it is offensive to their faith.

The piece headlined “The Islamic double-standard” was written by OSU microbiology student Nathanael Blake and published in the Daily Barometer on Feb. 8. The column accused Muslims of expecting special treatment after a Danish newspaper published cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. Riots over the cartoons amounted to “savagery,” Blake said. “Bluntly put, we expect Muslims to behave barbarously,” his column said.

On Thursday, about a dozen students – including members of Muslim and Arab student groups – held a vigil on the campus to protest both Blake’s piece and the Danish cartoons. They handed out flyers that stated “While staying loyal to the main values of freedom of expression that founded this country, we also feel the need to reflect on the values of tolerance and acceptance on this campus.”

Continue reading →

Islamophobia on a US campus

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Irvine protestA student panel discussion that included a display of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons descended into chaos, with one speaker calling Islam an “evil religion” and audience members nearly coming to blows.

Organizers of Tuesday night’s forum at the University of California, Irvine, said they showed the cartoons as part of a larger debate on Islamic extremism. But several hundred protesters, including members of the Muslim Student Union, argued the event was the equivalent of hate speech disguised as freedom of expression.

Tensions quickly escalated when the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, founder of the conservative Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, said that Islam was an “evil religion” and that all Muslims hate America. Later, panelists were cheered when they referred to Muslims as fascists and accused mainstream Muslim-American civil rights groups of being “cheerleaders for terror.”

Fox News, 1 March 2006

See also “Cartoon display protested”, Los Angeles Times, 1 March 2006

Vatican accused of helping Islamic radicals

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Vatican has disconcerted Italian politicians – and some of the Roman Catholic church’s most senior prelates – by endorsing a proposal by radical Muslims for a weekly “Islamic hour” in schools with a strong Muslim presence. “If in a school there are 100 Muslim children, I don’t see why their religion shouldn’t be taught,” said Cardinal Renato Martino, a minister in the Vatican’s government, the Roman Curia.

The speaker of the Italian senate, Marcello Pera, who has launched a movement for the defence of Europe’s Christian values, said the suggestion was “the diametric opposite of any kind of attempt at integration”. In a note posted on the internet, he said it “tended, on the contrary, t11o reinforce the idea of an autonomous Muslim community inside the Italian state”.

Guardian, 11 March 2006