Yearly Archives: 2006

Christians, not Muslims, suffer discrimination – and it’s time to fight back!

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Olga Craig complains that it’s Christians, not Muslims, who are being discriminated against in Britain today:

“The cause for such a difference in treatments, many believe, lies with Christianity itself, with its own over-eagerness to encompass multi-faith movements. Damian Thompson, the editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald, said: ‘The fact that Christians are persecuted and harassed, while Muslim extremists are left alone to spread their propaganda, can be partly attributed to the incredible wimpishness of Anglican and Catholic bishops in Britain, who have spent decades wringing their hands and apologising for the sins of Christianity – and, now that it is under threat, they simply do not know how to speak up for it forcefully,’ he said. ‘Much of the damaging appeasement of extreme Muslims can be traced back to the multi-faith movement embraced so vigorously by the liberal clergy in the Seventies and Eighties. Offending Muslim sensibilities frightens Church leaders far more than acts of terrorism.’…

“Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, believes that ‘any society must be based on its values. And for the UK they are Judaeo-Christian. The pluralism of the Seventies and Eighties marginalised Christianity. Then secularism came along and effectively neutralised it. So, now we have a moral/spiritual vacuum and anything that is seen to be Christian can be attacked.’…

“One who has fought back is Major Malcolm Hampton, of the Salvation Army. When his band was asked to play carols at the switching on of the Christmas lights in Oakengates, Shropshire, he refused, because the local council had rebranded the event as ‘winter celebrations’ to avoid offending non-Christians. It was, Mr Hampton felt, the final straw. ‘We decided to take a stand’, he said. ‘We are a Christian church and it is a Christian festival which we did not want to see undermined or demeaned. They decided to remove the word Christmas from the event and we thought it was the thin end of the wedge. Enough is enough’.”

Sunday Telegraph, 10 December 2006

The obstacles to ‘defeating Islam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

David Selbourne, author of The Losing Battle with Islam, offers ten reasons why the West will succumb to the advance of Islam. For example:

“The second reason why, as things stand, Islam will not be defeated is that the strengths of the world community of Muslims are being underestimated, and the nature of Islam misunderstood. It is neither a ‘religion of peace’ nor a ‘religion hijacked’ or ‘perverted’ by ‘the few’. Instead, its moral intransigence and revived ardours, its jihadist ethic and the refusal of most diaspora Muslims to ‘share a common set of values’ with non-Muslims are all one, and justified by the Koran itself.”

Times, 9 September 2006

Maligning Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yusuf Smith replies to an article by Ben MacIntyre in the Times claiming that, despite the occasional talk of a Muslim “fifth column” in Britain, there has been no scare remotely comparable to those surrounding German spies in the early years of World War II and the “Red Scares” of the 1950s:

“As a Muslim who has been paying close attention to the media since Sept 11, I’d beg to differ that society has moved on much since then. The key difference is that Britain is not facing an invasion from a regular or well-equipped army, as Britain did from Germany or the Spanish Republic did from the Nationalists who first coined the term ‘fifth column’. The situation is more of a small, international criminal syndicate capable only of occasional, but devastating, acts of terrorism. Most British people know, whatever the media is telling them, that most Muslims couldn’t possibly support such a thing.

“While ‘official pronouncements on the threat of Islamic extremism have been deliberately nuanced, and carefully measured’, the same cannot be said for the media treatment of the situation, which has been marked by ignorance and by sensationalism across the board. Newspapers have routinely given space for bigoted and inaccurate articles written by people with an agenda, notably Amir Taheri and Patrick Sookhdeo, who have often used the space to lay into ordinary Muslims, not just the extremists…. the fact is that it has become fashionable, and acceptable, to malign an entire religious community in the press.”

Indigo Jo Blogs, 9 September 2006

Martin Amis on Islamism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

martin amis“Until recently it was being said that what we are confronted with, here, is ‘a civil war’ within Islam. That’s what all this was supposed to be: not a clash of civilisations or anything like that, but a civil war within Islam. Well, the civil war appears to be over. And Islamism won it. The loser, moderate Islam, is always deceptively well-represented on the level of the op-ed page and the public debate; elsewhere, it is supine and inaudible. We are not hearing from moderate Islam. Whereas Islamism, as a mover and shaper of world events, is pretty well all there is…. we respect Islam – the donor of countless benefits to mankind, and the possessor of a thrilling history. But Islamism? No, we can hardly be asked to respect a creedal wave that calls for our own elimination…. Islam, in the end, proved responsive to European influence: the influence of Hitler and Stalin. And one hardly needs to labour the similarities between Islamism and the totalitarian cults of the last century. Anti-semitic, anti-liberal, anti-individualist, anti-democratic, and, most crucially, anti-rational, they too were cults of death, death-driven and death-fuelled.”

Martin Amis in the Observer, 10 September 2006

Here, “Islamism” is ignorantly conflated with terrorism. Judging by the article, Amis’s sources of information on this question are Paul Berman’s book Terrorism and Liberalism and Sam Harris’s The End of Faith. Perhaps he should read a little more widely on the subject. He would discover that, to quote Soumaya Ghannoushi, “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….”

Richard Seymour describes Amis’s piece as “an utterly clueless essay that casually asserts this and that idiocy about the West and Islam with evidently no more thought than the average Sun leader writer”.

Update:  See Pankaj Mishra, “The politics of paranoia”, Observer, 17 September 2006

Former Iranian president urges US Muslims to fight Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

KhatamiIran’s former president decried a wave of “Islamophobia” that he said is being spread in the United States by fear and hatred of Islam in response to terror perpetrated by Muslims. “In the crime of 9/11, two crimes were committed,” Mohammad Khatami said. “One was killing innocent people. The second crime was masking this crime in the name of Islam.”

Under smothering security, with dozens of uniformed police and plainclothes American security personnel provided by the State Department, Khatami spoke Friday night at an event sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations called “The Dialogue of Civilizations: Five Years After 9/11.”

Associated Press, 8 September 2006

See also interview with Mohammad Khatami, Washington Post 5 September 2006

Fascists reject ‘appeasement’ of ‘barbaric medieval desert religion’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP Islam Out of Britain“This is a conference of appeasement to the communities which harbour individuals who will stop at nothing to bomb our cities and kill innocent people to force their religion on an unwilling population…. Thousands of Londoners and visitors alike still bear the physical and mental scars of the 7/7 Islamic terror attacks on the Tube yet our well paid senior police officers sit down to cornflakes and toast with so-called community leaders representing ethnic and religious minority groups that are prepared to bomb, kill, rape and maim to get their way.”

The British National Party takes exception to the news that Tim Godwin, Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, will be the special guest at the Second Annual London Peace Talks, a breakfast meeting for leaders of communities, faith groups, and public services at the Greater London Authority on Monday 11 September.

Instead, the fascists call for “a firm policy which can only come from a nationalist government that our capital city and our country is not up for discussion, not open to questions of ownership and that we are not going to make one single concession to those who choose to temporarily live here who adhere to a barbaric medieval desert religion”.

BNP news article, 8 September 2006

For Canadian Muslims, guilt by association

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“When Ahmed Farooq crosses the Canada-U.S. border, he isn’t surprised when he is singled out for questioning. He is, after all, a young, single, Muslim man born in Saudi Arabia who fits the racial profile of would-be terrorists. But the fourth-year medical resident at the University of Winnipeg never expected to be hauled off a United Airlines flight for praying. That’s what happened last month, after a fellow passenger complained that Dr. Farooq was trying to ‘control the aisles’ when he exchanged seats to pray next to a window.”

Globe & Mail, 8 September 2006

US conservative says right-wing Islamophobes discredit conservatism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The most repugnant trend in the American shouting match that passes for a debate on the struggle with Islamist terrorism isn’t the irresponsible nonsense on the left – destructive though that is. The really ugly ‘domestic insurgency’ is among right-wing extremists bent on discrediting honorable conservatism. How? By insisting that Islam can never reform, that the violent conquest and subjugation of unbelievers is the faith’s primary agenda – and, when you read between the lines, that all Muslims are evil and subhuman.

“I’ve received no end of e-mails and letters seeking to ‘enlighten’ me about the insidious nature of Islam. Convinced that I’m naive because I defend American Muslims and refuse to ‘see’ that Islam is 100 percent evil, the writers warn that I’m a foolish ‘dhimmi’, blind to the conspiratorial nature of Islam. Web sites list no end of extracts from historical documents and Islamic jurisprudence ‘proving’ that holy war against Christians and Jews is the alpha and omega of the Muslim faith. The message between the lines: Muslims are Untermenschen.”

California Republic, 8 September 2006

‘Most Brits don’t trust Muslims’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Daily Star reports an opinion poll revealing that 79% of respondents said they’d feel uncomfortable living next to a Muslim. The Star has no doubt where the blame for this lies. In addition to the effects of 7/7:

“Many moderate Muslims seem intent on leading separate lives. They send their children to faith schools, clad their women in burqas and talk of bringing Sharia law to Britain.”

The incitement of anti-Muslim bigotry by right-wing rags like the Star of course plays no role at all.

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‘Burka’ is the mark of female oppression – Express columnist

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A burka is the mark of female oppression

By Virginia Blackburn

Daily Express, 7 September 2006

I LIVE in a nice part of London known as Little Tehran. The place has a pleasant atmosphere – the Iranians who live here arrived after the 1979 revolution and are sympathetic to the West.

They brought much that is good with them, including a couple of excellent Persian restaurants, shops where you can buy caviar at about a tenth the price of elsewhere and a work ethic that means they are determined to succeed in their new life.

But, just occasionally, I see something that chills me as much now as it ever did: a woman wearing the full burka.

Even the most politically correct of people know in their hearts that the burka is possibly the strongest visual indication of female oppression in the world.

In countries where it is commonplace, and in some cases mandatory, women are not allowed to vote, drive or leave the house unaccompanied by a male relative.

Adultery, like homosexuality, is punishable by death. Forced marriage, an event better classed as rape, is common – as is female circumcision. Rape itself is almost impossible to prove and shames the victim, not the criminal.

The burka is the sign of a medieval society – although even in the Middle Ages in this country, women were treated better than they are now in certain countries in the Middle East.

But no one has been allowed to say any of this for fear of being labelled racist, dismissive of another culture, or a Little Englander. Only a very few who saw what was really going on looked on and despaired.

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