“I reject the references over the past week to ‘Walthamstan’ in the media, which seem to be painting east London as an isolationist Pakistani Muslim community and a haven for terrorists.”
Vanessa Walters in the Guardian, 18 August 2006
Yearly Archives: 2006
Islamists = Nazis, claims Stephen Pollard
Stephen Pollard provides a popularisation of Martin Bright’s view that political Islamism in all its forms is the inspiration for terrorism: “Did we not learn in the 1930s the consequences of such contact with those who seek to destroy us?”
No excuse for anti-Muslim prejudice
“I was absolutely horrified by the poll results cited in a recent article. USA TODAY reported that ‘39% of respondents to the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll said they felt at least some prejudice against Muslims’. It said that 39% also ‘favored requiring Muslims, including U.S. citizens, to carry a special ID’ as a means of preventing terrorist attacks in the United States. Further, the poll found that about one-third of respondents ‘said U.S. Muslims were sympathetic to al-Qaeda, and that 22% said they wouldn’t want Muslims as neighbors’ (‘USA’s Muslims under a cloud’, Cover story, Life, Aug. 10).
“How can these respondents live with themselves?
“Do these 39% fear and hate the Muslim ‘boogeyman’ so strongly they would demonize Muslims by invoking the use of special IDs similar to practices during the Holocaust? If 39% of our country don’t mind throwing out the constitutional rights of our fellow citizens, what’s next? Internment? Indeed, why stop at Muslims? In this climate of fear, every outsider is seen as a potential threat…. Like the remaining 61%, I will not sit quietly and let this infectious disease of fear and mistrust contaminate my soul or destroy my country.”
Letter in USA TODAY, 16 August 2006
‘Radical Islam plagues UK’
Radical Islam plagues UK
By James Forsyth
New York Daily News, 16 August 2006
Straight after 9/11, American Muslims proudly flew the Stars and Stripes. New York cabbies plastered their cars with patriotic decals. In Britain, days after the security services busted a plot that could have been as deadly as 9/11, so-called Muslim leaders delivered an open letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair demanding that Britain change its “foreign policy to show the world that we value the lives of civilians wherever they live and whatever their religion.” Or to put it more bluntly, pull out of Iraq, denounce President Bush and abandon support for Israel.
Here’s the hard truth: Britain now has the biggest “community relations” problem of any Western country – a problem compounded by the fact that the vast majority of my fellow Britons are in denial about it.
MCB defends open letter
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, replies to Polly Toynbee:
“The open letter to the prime minister – which I signed alongside more than 40 Muslim groups, MPs and peers – has been subject to deliberate misinterpretation, suggesting a willingness among Muslim leaders to excuse violence and promote a simplified view of how extremism takes root. Toynbee’s accusation – that the letter sails ‘perilously close to suggesting the government had it coming’ – may be an unintentional misrepresentation but it is a grave one.
“The letter articulated the need to base foreign policy on principle. It condemned attacks on civilians wherever they take place. It also sought acknowledgement that, though the causes and motivations are complex, British foreign policy contributes to the radicalisation of Muslims here and elsewhere. The welcome debate that followed the letter illustrates that this has been widely accepted.”
Message from Mackenzie to Muslims – stop trying to kill me
“I am becoming increasingly irritated at being told that we must not do anything to ‘alienate’ Muslim communities. I wonder if we could look at it from another perspective: Could the Muslims stop alienating me and, more importantly, trying to kill me?
“Let’s get one thing clear. The vast majority of this country have done nothing but welcome people to these shores no matter how evil their background and religion. And how have we been repaid? Instead of being thanked for taking them from their poverty-striken villages in Pakistan a minority of second generation Muslims try to change our way of life to their backward and prehistoric view of humanity. It’s time we stood up to them….
“The suicide bombers come from one ethnic group. Terrorist leaders may wise up one day and start persuading white people to carry out their slaughter but until then what is the point of wasting precious resources on the overwhelming majority in this country…..
“Certainly I would like to see some young Muslims in this country restricted from flying to Pakistan. And if they did go they would have to wear electronic tags so that intelligence authorities would be able to keep track of them. If these guys had nothing to hide why would they care? Even if it is an infingement of personal liberty, surely that’s better than the ultimate infringement – mass murder.”
Kelvin MacKenzie in The Sun, 17 August 2006
US neocon ignorance about British Muslims
“Thirty percent of Britain’s Muslim population is under 15; 92 percent is under 50. About half are of Pakistani origin, and about half of the younger population does not feel allegiance to Britain as their native country. Instead many dream of the coming of the Muslim caliphate, which they expect will transform Europe, and introduce Shariah law.”
Helle Dale explains the background to the alleged terror plot.
Washington Times, 16 August 2006
Note the reference to the prominent Muslim Labour MP “Shahid Malouf”! But then, according to Ms Dale, Muslims are only “technically speaking” British citizens, so why bother getting their funny foreign names right?
Plane ‘plot’: media targets Tablighi Jamaat
“Media discourses about Islam … typically see acts of terror committed by some Muslims in a vacuum, ignoring the root causes of such terrorism. Such acts cannot be condoned but they must be seen, at least in part, as a response to the oppression that Muslims in many parts of the world today face, and as a protest against continuing Western imperialism and state terrorism. Adopting a purely law-and-order approach to the problem without addressing its root causes is, it must be realized, no solution at all. And targeting the TJ, the world’s largest Islamic movement, as a ‘font of terrorism’ on the basis of the alleged activities of a few individuals in some way associated with it is bound to make matters more complicated, further exacerbating the resentment and sense of persecution that many Muslims today in large parts of the world feel.”
Yoginder Sikand replies to ignorant attempts to associate Tablighi Jamaat with terrorism.
‘Lefty lexicon’ lands Orange executive in big trouble
Mobile phone company Orange has suspended its community affairs manager after he posted what he termed a “lefty lexicon” on the blog site ConservativeHome which includes a description of Islamophobics as “anyone who objects to having their transport blown up on the way to work.”
Since Inigo Wilson posted his diatribe on what he sees as the abuse of language by “lefties” and especially the “rights industry”, Orange has received a flood of complaints from customers.
A campaign against him was mounted on the website of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPACUK). Yesterday it emerged that Mr Wilson has been suspended pending an internal Orange investigation. A spokesman for MPACUK said Mr Wilson’s views were extremely unhelpful at a time when British Muslims are increasingly being subjected to bigotry and prejudice, and bordered on racist.
Over at Harry’s Place, David T “on balance” comes out in defence of Inigo Wilson: “I hope that Mr Wilson does not lose his job … to the extent that free expression is the principle at stake, the content of the speech is largely an irrelevant consideration.” Can you imagine David T taking a similarly “balanced” view if Wilson had been accused of anti-semitism?
Terrorism? Blame Pakistanis, says Stephen Schwartz
“With the foiling of the alleged conspiracy by radical Islamists to devastate transatlantic air travel – at the height of the US–UK tourist season – Britain has emerged, a little more than a year after the London Tube bombings, as the apparent main target for jihadist terror in Europe.
“This has little to do with British policies, poverty, discrimination or Islamophobia. Simply put, a million or more Sunnis of Pakistani background, who comprise the main element among British Asian Muslims, also include the largest contingent of radical Muslims in Europe. Their jihadist sympathies embody an imported ideology, organised through mosques and other religious institutions, rather than a ‘homegrown’ phenomenon, as the cliché would have it….
“Imported Muslim clerics are the basis of the threat. Islam in the UK is overwhelmingly influenced by imams and other religious officials born in Pakistan and trained in that country or in Saudi Arabia. Pakistani Sunni mosques in Britain are major centres for jihadist preaching, finance, incitement and recruitment.
“… the leaders of British Islam — exemplified by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) — have assumed a posture of truculence, obstruction and indignation when any suggestion is made that jihadist sympathies infect their ranks…. It may be impossible for General Musharraf to rid his country of jihadist violence. But Britain need not and must not permit Pakistani religious gangsters to continue their control of British Islam.”
Update: For Yusuf Smith’s comments, see Indigo Jo Blogs, 20 August 2006