Yearly Archives: 2006

Racist graffiti on arson mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Hampshire mosque set alight by arsonists last month has been vandalised again in what police described as a racist graffiti attack.

A man attending prayers at the Albirr Masjid Mosque in Sarum Hill discovered the graffiti on Saturday night. The attack coincides with the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and is the second one on the Basingstoke mosque in less than two months. Police are still investigating an arson attack on the mosque on 12 August.

Insp Annabel Berry said: “We take all graffiti attacks seriously, but especially those that target particular sections of our community. I would like to reassure people that although this is the second attack on the mosque in the past couple of months such events are rare and we are investigating”

Hampshire Constabulary are appealing for anyone who was in the area between 2100 and 2200 BST on Saturday and who may have seen something suspicious to contact them.

BBC News, 24 September 2006

Update:  See also “Mosque targeted in racist graffiti attack”, Basingstoke Gazette, 25 September 2006

‘Battle to block massive mosque’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“A plan to build a ‘mega mosque’ in east London has become mired in controversy with allegations that it is being bankrolled by Islamist groups in Saudi Arabia. Opponents say it would promote a radical form of Islam. They accuse its backers of not consulting local people.”

Jamie Doward writes in the Observer, 24 September 2006

This piece is little more than a rewrite of Andrew Gilligan’s scare story that appeared in the Evening Standard back in July, complete with a quote from the discredited “expert” on Islam, Patrick Sookhdeo. You’d have thought that the Observer‘s home affairs editor might have done a bit of original research into the subject and maybe even challenged racist stereotypes about the threat from Muslim radicals, rather than just recycle second-hand Islamophobic fantasies. Or then again, perhaps not, given that one of Doward’s predecessors in that post was Martin Bright.

Barroso defends pope, attacks Muslim ‘extremists’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BarrosoJose Manuel Durao Barroso, the EU Commission president, has strongly defended Pope Benedict XVI, saying Muslim criticism was unacceptable. “Attacking the pope because he refers in a discourse to a historical document is completely unacceptable,” Barroso said in a newspaper interview on Sunday. “I was disappointed that there were not more European leaders who said: ‘Obviously the pope has the right to express his opinion’. The problem is not the comments of the pope but the reactions of the extremists … We must defend our values.”

Al-Jazeera, 24 September 2006

See also Associated Press, 24 September 2006

‘1 in 10 British Muslims won’t shop a terrorist’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Tens of thousands of British Muslims would NOT shop someone they believed took part in a terror attack. A shock News of the World poll today reveals almost ONE IN TEN would not tell the police if they suspected a fellow Muslim was involved in an atrocity. With a million Muslims over 16 in Britain, it suggests a staggering 90,000 would turn a blind eye. And the figure is even worse among Muslims aged between 16 and 24, with 15 per cent saying they would not tell. Our poll also shows six per cent – or 60,000 Muslims – think attacks like the July 7 bombings are justified.”

News of the World, 24 September 2006

See also Press Association, 24 September 2006

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Stations say ‘jihad’ car ads go too far

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Some Columbus radio stations have rejected as insensitive an advertisement for a car dealership that invokes Islamic references. The general manager of the dealership, though, says the promotions – which he called “tongue-in-cheek” – will air on some stations beginning next week.

In the spot, Keith Dennis of Dennis Mitsubishi talks about “launching a jihad on the automotive market.” Sales representatives “will be wearing burqas all weekend long,” the ad says. One of the vehicles on sale “can comfortably seat up to 12 jihadists in the back.”

“Our prices are lower than the evildoers’ every day. Just ask the pope!” the ad says. “Friday is fatwa Friday, with free rubber swords for the kiddies.”

Jeff Wilson, general manager of Radio One stations WCKX (107.5 FM), WJYD (106.3 FM) and WXMG (98.9 FM), doesn’t intend to air the spot. “We won’t play that,” Wilson said. “With no disrespect to their creativity or their desire to build business, everything we’re about is promoting the values of diversity. To air things of that sort would go against our mission statement.”

Representatives of WSNY (94.7 FM), WBNS (97.1 FM), WWCD (101.1 FM), WJZA/WJZK (103.5/104.3 FM), and WODB (107.9 FM) also said they won’t air the ad.

But Aaron Masterson, general manager of Dennis Auto Point, which writes and produces its own commercials, promised that the commercial will air. “It starts next Friday morning,” Masterson said. “As far as I can see, the top 10 stations – minimum – in the market. We made it very clear we wanted market saturation to get the point across.”

Columbus Dispatch, 23 September 2006

‘We’ve stopped standing up for Britain’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Minette Marin (2)Minette Marin is upset by a report that Gloucestershire police have turned down some white would-be recruits, on the (according to her, self-evidently absurd) basis that they want to raise ethnic minority recruitment to 7% of the total by 2009 (last year the figure was 1.6%). She writes:

“What, in this lamentable story, is this guilty obsession with race, this daft and patronising determination to exclude and demoralise the indigenous people? It is actually imposed in Gloucestershire by people who are mostly white males themselves. What is wrong with them? Why are they unwilling to hold the line against thoughtless, intrusive, guilt-ridden, destructive stupidity? One word for it is self-hatred. Another is decadence.

“It is for the same reasons, whatever they may be, that we are so obviously failing to hold the line against the extremes of Islam. We no longer carry high the standard of free speech for fear of offending people, usually Muslims. Stalwart citizens have recently felt it their duty to reprimand the Pope and a former Archbishop of Canterbury for discussing Islam and violence – for even raising such offensive questions.

“The results, for which we have only ourselves to blame, are alarming. Anyone who heard it must have been horrified by a British Muslim haranguing John Humphrys on Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday. Abu Izzadeen, the Jamaican convert who had heckled the home secretary at a meeting with Muslims, sounded even more terrifying on the air. Aggressive, illogical and blustering, he expressed his hatred of our government and its ‘crusade’ against Muslims. He thinks free speech and democracy are incompatible with Islam.

“When Humphrys asked him what was wrong with democracy, with trying to change things through Britain’s democratic process, he replied that ‘democracy means sovereignty for man, Islam means sovereignty for sharia … The UK doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to Allah’, and Allah has put Muslims on earth to implement sharia (Islamic law). So, Humphrys insisted, ‘the Islamic process but not the democratic process?’ ‘Yes’, said Izzadeen confidently, ‘that’s right’.

“It would be comforting to assume that Izzadeen is solitary and ignorant. Unfortunately he isn’t. An NOP poll for Channel 4 found that almost one in four British Muslims believed that the slaughter in London on July 7 was justified. Muslim community leaders can say what they like about Islam being all about peace; it’s perfectly clear that not all Muslims see it that way. For a long time now they have spread rage and resentment among their people and we have lacked the will and the instinct for self-preservation to resist it.”

Sunday Times, 24 September 2006

These days, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish the outpourings of “mainstream” right-wing commentators like Marin, with her indignant concern for the oppression of “the indigenous people”, from the sort of filth you read on the BNP website.

Mosque set ablaze in Brittany town of Quimper in western France

Posted on by Bob Pitt

QUIMPER, France — Intruders set a mosque ablaze in this city in western France early Sunday and scrawled swastikas on the outside walls, officials said.

Firefighters called to the scene at 4:20 A.M. local time extinguished the blaze, said Philippe Paolantoni, deputy prefect of the region, in Brittany. The prosecutor’s office opened an investigation.

Damages to the mosque were modest despite four separate fires set inside the Penhars Mosque, one of two Muslim places of worship in Quimper.

A window was found open, apparently used to access the inside of the mosque, Paolantoni said, adding that a passerby alerted firefighters after seeing swastikas scrawled on the outside walls of the mosque and flames inside.

There are occasional reports of attacks on Muslim places of worship in France, as well as on Jewish synagogues, and authorities have increased surveillance

The attack on the Quimper mosque came as Muslims in France began celebrating Ramadan, the annual period of fasting.

Associated Press, 24 September 2006

Spain’s former PM Aznar criticizes Muslims for demanding pope’s apology

Posted on by Bob Pitt

AznarFormer prime minister Jose Maria Aznar has criticized Muslim demands for the pope to apologize for his remarks about Islam.

Speaking Friday night at the Hudson Institute, a thinktank in Washington, Aznar noted the nearly 800-year Moorish occupation of Spain, which began in the year 711 with an invasion from North Africa.

He said in English: “I never (heard) any Muslim apologize (to) me (for) conquer(ing) Spain and to maintain a presence in Spain during eight centuries.”

“What is the reason … we, the West, always should be apologiz(ing) and they never should … apologize? It’s absurd.”

He also criticized an initiative launched by his Socialist successor, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, to encourage dialogue between the West and Muslim countries. It is called the Alliance of Civilizations and has been formally adopted by the United Nations.

Aznar said some Muslim countries such as Iran are too radical to engage in dialogue with. “For me the alliance of civilians is a stupidity,” Aznar said.

International Herald Tribune, 23 September 2006

Congressional report stitches up US Muslim community

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Marc LynchThe House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has released a new report, “Al-Qaeda: The Many Faces of an Islamist Extremist Threat”. Marc Lynch is less than impressed:

“Some of the sourcing is hilarious. You’d think that the House Intelligence Committee could do a better job of sourcing a translation of a major statement by Osama bin Laden than the website jihadunspun (footnote 5), wouldn’t you? But there’s one place where the report does go a bit farther: on the alleged threat of homegrown American Muslim extremism. I’d go so far as to say that the lazily produced padding about al-Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiya, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (!), and even Iraq, was just thrown together as a vehicle to deliver a set of rather extreme views about the threat posed by the American Muslim community…. The whole narrative thrust of the report hypes the threat of homegrown terrorism and the need for more intense scrutiny of the American Muslim community.”

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