Yearly Archives: 2006

Racist threat before mosque arson

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Albirr mosque arsonPolice investigating an arson attack on a mosque are looking into threats made to occupants of a nearby property.

Three hours before the Albirr Mosque was set alight on Saturday, a man tried to force his way into a property in Goat Lane, Basingstoke. Hampshire police said the man made racist and religious remarks to those inside and references to recent anti-terror arrests in London.

The blaze occurred in the roof of the mosque and police believe the perpetrator, who has not been found, may have received burns.

BBC News, 17 August 2006

See also “Mosque targeted in arson attack”, Basingstoke Gazette, 16 August 2006

Update:  See “Racist graffiti on arson mosque”, Islamophobia Watch, 24 September 2006

‘Britain says: we’re at war with Islam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Thus the headline to an article by Gabriel Milland in today’s Daily Express which begins: “The majority of Britons believe that the UK and the West is in a global war with Islam.”

This claim is based on a YouGov poll for the Spectator, which found that three out of four respondents believed that Britain is engaged in a battle “against Islamic terrorists” (emphasis added).

The venomous media voices who think no Muslim is worth talking to

Posted on by Bob Pitt

With the government’s policy of engagement with Muslim community under strain, Madeleine Bunting takes on the “media commentators pouring out a flood of venomous advice on exactly why no Muslim is worth talking to anyway”. She points out that “there are many people in this country who have no interest in listening to any Muslim unless they can chorus their own loathing and suspicion of Islam – the former Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the case par excellence”.

Bunting writes: “Some of this armchair advice to government can be pretty briskly dismissed, such as the paranoid fantasies of the rightwing Daily Mail commentator Melanie Phillips in her book Londonistan or those of the Conservative MP Michael Gove in his book Celsius 7/7. Both authors haven’t troubled themselves to get much beyond revived imperial delusions of demented, violent Muslims (check out Britain’s history in India, Sudan or Egypt).

“More insidious is the comprehensive attack on Whitehall’s policy towards the Muslim community over the last decade by the New Statesman‘s political editor, Martin Bright. He argues that the government should have no truck with any Muslim organisation in the UK that has had any involvement with any person who has ever been influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood, the political Islamist organisation.

“That rules out the Muslim Council of Britain, the Federation of Student Islamic Societies and other mainstays of the government’s ‘engagement’ policy of the last 10 years. It would even include intellectuals such as Professor Tariq Ramadan (grandson, no less, of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood), who was a member of the government taskforce set up to tackle Islamist extremism last year, and a star turn on its travelling roadshow for young Muslims.

“We are talking sweeping here. In fact, implement Bright’s advice and you’ve got a pretty small tea party for your next round of engagement.”

Guardian, 16 August 2006

In response, right-wing blogger Scott Burgess rallies to the defence of “Martin Bright’s groundbreaking work” and denounces Bunting as one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “British fifth columnists “.

Daily Ablution, 16 August 2006

Marines’ Islamic Prayer Center ‘sends a bad signal’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An announcement that the U.S. Marine base at Quantico, Va., has refurbished a building to be used as a prayer room for Muslim soldiers and civilians on base is a “bad signal,” one critic has concluded.

The Marines announced earlier this summer that one of the buildings on the base had been repainted so that Muslims would have a place to pray and hold religious services. The new “Islamic Prayer Center” is the first of its kind on a Marine base, and “serves to express the Marine Corps’ recognition of diversity among service members and the commitment to provide continued support to all Marines regardless of race, religion, ethnicity or gender,” the base announcement said.

However, Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer said he wonders why the Marines do not seem concerned such facilities might to used to generate anti-American sympathies. “It’s going to go up as part of a testament to American multiculturalism and so on without any indication of the possibility that this could be a source of what we’re fighting against,” he said. “It just sends a bad signal.”

World Net Daily, 16 August 2006

Allison Pearson wrestles with her Islamophobic inclinations – and loses

Posted on by Bob Pitt

allison pearsonAllison Pearson writes: “Several opinion polls have measured Muslim anger with Britain. No survey has yet recorded the rest of British society’s anger and distress with Muslims. Yet you only have to start a conversation on the subject to unleash a flood of feeling. ‘I never thought I’d say this, but…’ People who don’t consider themselves racist are wondering how to deal with these new and dismaying thoughts.”

This is “a tragedy for the UK, which has done so much to accommodate its immigrant groups. Too much, probably. We failed to spell out the cultural norms we expect everyone to respect, with horrendous consequences. That letter from Muslim MPs warning the Government to change its policy on the Middle East because it was ‘inflaming extremists’ was a bloody cheek, quite frankly.

“Millions of Britons are angry with Tony Blair over Iraq. But he is our democratically elected leader and the foreign policy of this country is not going to be decided in a mosque in Waltham Forest. As for the suggestion by Dr Syed Aziz Pasha that Britain should introduce Islamic laws on family affairs, which apply only to Muslims, well, words fail me. Where would the concessions end? All women to cover their heads? Jews thrown into the sea? Burqa King? The Moral Maze presented by Michael Burqa?”

Daily Mail, 16 August 2006

Contempt for democracy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anas Altikriti“The weekend response of the Foreign Office minister Kim Howells to a letter from British Muslim leaders that says the prime minister’s policies share the blame for the threat and reality of violence may have sounded clever to him, but the letter is a reflection of the anger and frustration spreading in the community. Among the signatories were those who had previously argued that there was no link between domestic terrorism and foreign policy.

“John Reid also attacked the letter, arguing that it is for the democratic process to decide our foreign policy, not terrorists. He is right, but most people in Britain, and the government’s own security services, believe that policies of war and occupation in the Middle East and wider Muslim world are fuelling the threat we are facing.

“Anyone in the Muslim community attracted to violence as a way of changing those policies needs be persuaded of the necessity of engaging in democratic politics – as most British Muslims have been doing. But the prospects of bringing them on board are not helped by the contempt for democracy and for the people’s views that the Blair government has demonstrated. In the interests of us all, the government must listen and change course now.”

Anas Altikriti in the Guardian, 15 August 2006

Muslims warn over being singled out at airport gates

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A leading British Muslim group last night warned the government to think “very carefully” following reports that the Department for Transport was in talks with the aviation industry to introduce a method of passenger profiling which could be used to single out Muslims for security checks.

The Muslim Council of Britain said the procedure, which includes “behavioural pattern recognition”, would inevitably lead to discrimination. Inayat Bunglawala, its spokesman, said the government risked alienating “the community whose help it needs in combating the terrorist threat”. He said: “Before some kind of religious profiling is introduced, a case has to be made; and we are certainly not convinced by the arguments for this kind of profiling. First of all, Muslims are not an ethnicity, as was shown by the arrests in last week’s raids; there are many white converts to Islam.”

Mr Bunglawala said that many Muslims already felt “unfairly targeted” because of their appearance, and that some form of profiling was already in effect. “This kind of thing must be intelligence-led, not appearance-led … I hope the government has thought very carefully about this.”

His remarks were echoed by one of Britain’s most senior Muslim police officers. Chief Superintendent Ali Desai of the Metropolitan police told BBC2’s Newsnight that profiling would create a new offence of “travelling whilst Asian”. He added: “That’s unpalatable to everyone … What we don’t want to do is actually alienate the very communities who are going to help us catch terrorists.”

Guardian, 15 August 2006

Imperialist platitudes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“No comments better encapsulate British government refusal to either comprehend or take seriously the letter sent by Muslim organisations and politicians to the Prime Minister than John Reid’s pompous utterances. Mr Reid did his best to stress the ‘alien’ nature of the government critics by lecturing them that it is ‘not the British way’ to change policy under threat. Of course it isn’t. It normally takes a discreet phone call from the White House, in the face of which our entire foreign policy is open to rewrite.

“‘No government worth its salt would stay in power, in my view, and no government worth its salt would be supported by the British people if our foreign policy or any other aspect of policy was being dictated by terrorists’, he continued, as though the critics had suggested that any policy should be dictated by terrorists.

“Only a wilfully obtuse reading of the letter could inspire such an interpretation. The Muslim representatives were simply spelling out what Britain’s security services have already told the government – namely, that there is a link between this country’s pro-US foreign policy and the escalating terrorist threat…. Lecturing Muslim leaders to do more to combat the virus of extremism in their communities is a slimy substitute for the government facing up to its own responsibility for mass murder and opting to change its ways by adopting an ethical foreign policy.”

Morning Star editorial, 15 August 2006