Yearly Archives: 2009

This counter-terror plan is in ruins

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The British government’s brand new counter-terrorism strategy is already in disarray – and ministers have only themselves to blame. The souped-up plan to fight al-Qaida, confound dirty bombers, halt suicide attacks and confront “extremism” in the country’s Muslim community was unveiled by the prime minister with much fanfare on Tuesday. But even before the 175-page “Contest 2” document had been launched, the credibility of its promise to engage with the Muslim mainstream had been thrown into question by the decision of Hazel Blears, the communities secretary, to cut all links with the Muslim Council of Britain.

Blears had been gunning for the MCB, the country’s main Muslim umbrella body, which has shown increasing independence in recent years, particularly in relation to British foreign policy. The pretext was a statement about Israel’s onslaught on Gaza signed by the MCB’s number two, Daud Abdullah, which Blears interpreted as a call for attacks on British ships if they were sent to intercept arms supplies to Hamas. Ten days ago, in a tone more associated with Raj-era colonial governors than democratic politicians addressing independent community bodies, Blears delivered an ultimatum to the MCB: either it sacked its elected deputy general secretary or all contacts would be severed.

Never mind that Gordon Brown’s idea about policing Palestinian waters has been kicked into the long grass of international talks; or that Abdullah, a Caribbean-born veteran of Grenada’s leftwing New Jewel Movement (later overthrown by Ronald Reagan) made clear he was not calling for such attacks – let alone attacks on Jewish communities, as Blears claims in a letter in today’s Guardian. All links have now been suspended. And if there were any doubt that the attempt to isolate Britain’s most significant Muslim body was linked to the new anti-terror policy, the timing of the ultimatum for the eve of the launch made clear that for Blears they were all of a piece.

Seumas Milne in the Guardian, 26 March 2009

Tories witch-hunt Ibrahim Moussawi (again)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ibrahim MoussawiJacqui Smith was tonight warned against exercising “double standards” as an Islamic extremist prepared to travel to the UK. Ibrahim Moussawi, a known hardliner with links to Hezbollah, has been invited to speak at a London university.

Earlier this month, she banned the far-Right Dutch MP Geert Wilders from coming to Britain to show his film about Islam as it would threaten “community harmony”. But the Conservatives warned that to ban those who threaten community harmony, while letting in those who glorify terrorism or are part of terrorist groups, would send out the “wrong message”. There must be “no double standards on extremists”, warned Tory security spokesman Baroness Neville-Jones.

Moussawi, who has already made at least two trips to the UK, has been invited to speak on political Islam at the School of Oriental and African Studies next month.

Yesterday, in a letter to Miss Smith, Baroness Neville-Jones said: “You will be aware that Mr Moussawi has links to Hezbollah, which is a proscribed terrorist organisation in many countries. Mr Moussawi has also, over the years, made a number of remarks that are extremist, anti-Semitic and inflammatory.

“In October last year you introduced what you described as ‘tough new measures’ to deny entry to extremists. These measures included ‘creating a presumption in favour of exclusion in respect of all those who have engaged in fostering, encouraging or spreading extremism and hatred’. Mr Moussawi has so engaged. In line with your ‘tough new measures’, I trust that if Mr Moussawi applies for entry, you will use your powers to exclude him.”

Daily Mail, 24 February 2009

It appears to have escaped Neville-Jones’ attention that Wilders intended to enter the UK with the explicit aim of inciting hatred against the Muslim community.

Is there any suggestion that Ibrahim Moussawi will be inciting hatred against the Jewish community on his proposed visit to the UK? No. Is Neville-Jones able to demonstrate that he has incited hatred on previous visits to the UK? Again, no. So the charge of double standards is entirely baseless.

The last time the Tories witch-hunted Ibrahim Moussawi was when he visited London to address a World Against War rally in February 2008. Neville-Jones told the Home Office: “it is vital that the Government always makes the security of the UK its top priority. That means stopping those who are likely to foment extremism or promote violence from coming here to speak.”

Here is the speech Ibrahim Moussawi gave at that rally. Perhaps Neville-Jones can direct us to the sections of the speech that promote violence and extremism?

‘Apartheid culture’ existed at Met police station, Muslim officer tells tribunal

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Scotland Yard’s claims to have put its racist past behind it suffered a blow yesterday when it was alleged that senior officers allowed a “culture of apartheid” at a police station where white officers threatened black colleagues and refused to ride in the same van.

The allegations will be heard at an employment tribunal tomorrow and will embarrass the force, whose head, Sir Paul Stephenson, yesterday said the Metropolitan police was no longer institutionally racist. He was speaking at a conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the Macpherson report into the bungled Stephen Lawrence murder investigation.

The allegations of discrimination and victimisation to be heard at a tribunal this week – which the Met will deny – centre on Belgravia police station in central London. A Muslim police community support officer (PCSO), Asad Saeed, claims white officers framed him by alleging he had abused and threatened to assault a drunk vagrant in a McDonald’s burger restaurant in central London.

The officer was ordered to be dismissed, but later reinstated on appeal. Both of the internal police discipline hearings heard allegations of racism that Scotland Yard thought belonged to the canteen culture of two decades ago.

Alfred John, chair of the Metropolitan branch of the Black Police Association, said: “It displays all the hallmarks of a very familiar and disturbing picture.”

Saeed’s MP, George Galloway, said: “It is quite clear there was a culture of overt racism in the station which was tolerated, if not encouraged, by senior management. Asad was wrongly dismissed from the police service.”

Guardian, 25 February 2009

Update:  See “Police played ‘spot the black officer in the dark’, tribunal hears”, Guardian, 2 March 2009

Update 2:  See “Police community support officer Asad Saeed loses discrimination case”, Times, 29 October 2009

Express is shocked by case of torture victim – he ‘costs taxpayers money’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Treated Like RoyaltyA former Al Qaeda suspect was flown back to Britain on a luxury jet yesterday – at Government expense. Now taxpayers face a massive bill for his new life on benefits.

Alleged torture victim Binyam Mohamed, 30, stepped off a twin-engined Gulfstream at an RAF base after more than six years as a US prisoner being held in Guantanamo Bay. Accompanied on the flight by two Foreign Office officials, two Metropolitan Police officers and a doctor, Ethiopian Mohamed’s return to his adopted country cost an amazing £120,000.

Tory MP David Davies said: “I don’t think it should be a source of pleasure to anyone that this man has returned to the UK. He is an Ethiopian national who was lucky ever to be in Britain in the first place. If he was flown back to Addis Ababa, I think we would all breathe a sigh of relief.”

Fellow Tory MP Philip Davies said: “It’s absolutely ludicrous. This guy isn’t a British citizen, he just happened to be residing in Britain. I cannot see any advantage to the British taxpayer in him coming here. The likelihood is that he will be on benefits and we will be forking out for him while the country is going bankrupt.

“And is he a danger to public safety? Will the Government be putting him under 24-hour monitoring by the security services with the extra strain that on taxpayers’ money? It is an astonishing decision.”

Susie Squire, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Binyam Mohamed has already cost the British public quite enough without the luxury of private jets. A cheaper way should have been found to bring him back.

“This man is not even a British citizen, and yet is going to continue to be a massive financial burden on law-abiding taxpayers in this country. We’re in a recession and people need money to feed their kids, not foot the bill for chartering planes and round-the-clock surveillance.”
Daily Express, 24 February 2009

Update:  For comment on this and other similar articles, see ENGAGE, 24 February 2009

‘How Britain’s mosques foster extremism’ – by Ed Husain

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Sectarian, conservative leadership is driving confused young Muslims into the arms of radicals.” Thus the standfirst to Ed Husain’s scaremongering piece in the Times.

The Quilliam report Mosques Made in Britain, on which the article is based, predictably dismisses the work of the Mosques and Imams Advisory Committee, and in a footnote accuses two of MINAB’s constituent organisations, the MCB and MAB, of failing to condemn suicide bombing. But generally speaking, and admittedly on a first quick reading, the report is otherwise quite measured.

But that wasn’t good enough for Ed Husain. He had to spin the report to fit the Islamophobic agenda of the Murdoch press, feeding into the right-wing myth that the entire Muslim community in the UK represents an extremist threat to wider society. And this is a man who is in receipt of large sums of public money, supposedly to fund his efforts at building social cohesion. He really is an utter disgrace.

Cf. “British mosques promote community cohesion”, MCB press release, 23 February 2009

Download the Charity Commission report here.

Update:  See also “Young Muslims at the mercy of extremists because of out-of-touch Imams” in the Daily Telegraph, 25 February 2009

Ban this preacher of hate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Over at Harry’s Place, under the headline “Qadhi Must NOT Enter the United Kingdom“, David Toube calls on home secretary Jacqui Smith to ban the Houston-born Islamic teacher Sheikh Yasir Qadhi from Britain.

Smith has already banned Dutch far-right racist Geert Wilders who wanted to come here and incite hatred against Muslims, and homophobic US pastor Fred Phelps whose aim was to incite hatred against the gay community. According to Toube, Yasir Qadhi too is visiting the UK to incite hatred and he should be excluded along with Wilders and Phelps, on the basis that they are all “active and proselytising bigots”.

What extremist activities will Yasir Qadhi be engaging in here in the UK, I hear you ask – where will he be delivering his hate-filled message?

Well, for example, on Thursday he will be at the London Muslim Centre where he is the guest speaker at a fundraising dinner for The Citizens Foundation, a charity committed to “delivering quality education to the poorest in urban slums and rural areas of Pakistan”. The Citizens Foundation “believes in gender equality and has a girl students percentage of 50%”, and its education program is “open to all persons and communities, regardless of their race, color, creed, religion or location”.

Scary, huh? Let’s just hope Jacqui Smith takes Toube’s advice and bans this preacher of hate.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Yasir Qadhi has visited our country to spread his extremist ideology. Harry’s Place denounced him last November when he was a featured speaker at the Global Peace and Unity event in London. The speech Yasir Qadhi gave there is available on YouTube. Watch this video and ask yourself: can there be the slightest excuse for the home secretary allowing this man into the country?

Protest by East End artists at National Theatre

Posted on by Bob Pitt

National Theatre refuses to debate racist play ENGLAND PEOPLE VERY NICE with East End artists

Artists from the East End will be holding a protest outside the National Theatre at 5pm on Friday 27th February in the run up to the platform discussion at 6pm with Richard Bean, the writer of the play. At a meeting on Friday 20th February Nicholas Hytner, the boss of the National, refused to organise a proper joint debate in the next few weeks on a play that is anti-irish, anti-Bangladeshi and Islamophobic, and which the Evening Standard described as cruel and abusive, and intent on attacking immigrants.

Playwright Hussain Ismail, who will be leading the campaign, said: “Hytner is scared of a debate. We are from the East End and we know that it is the most multicultural place in the world. Brick Lane in particular is the centre of the multicultural universe. It’s the coolest place on the earth and that’s why people come from all over the world to hang out there. Bean and Hytner haven’t got a clue about the East End. That’s why the play is bonkers!”

“We want a right of reply ­ a proper debate ­ not a 40 minute platform discussion where the director just asks some bland questions to the writer and we all go home. We want a vigorous and robust debate with Bean and Hytner and us on the same platform with the media and public present on mass.”

Organisers of the protest are asking everybody to come celebrate multicultural London and demand that East End artists have the right to a debate, and challenge misrepresentation of their communities. They are asking protesters to bring whistles and drums to stand up for multiculturalism.

Protest details:
5pm 27th February
National Theatre, Southbank, London SE1 9PX
Embankment and Waterloo tube stations.

For more information contact:
Hussain Ismail
hussain@soulfiretheatre.org.uk

Sun backs Wilders

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sun cartoon

“Britain recently disgraced itself by banning democratically elected Dutch MP Geert Wilders from entering the country. His planned ‘crime’ was to screen a short documentary at a private viewing in the House of Lords…. Our cringing surrender to this authoritarian, book-burning mentality was ordered by mealy-mouthed Home Secretary Jacqui Smith under pressure from Labour peer Lord Ahmed…. Wilders’ visit would have gone unnoticed but for Jackboot Jacqui, whose Government has prostrated itself to accommodate Islam’s nastier fringes….

“It gave oxygen to rabble-rousing imams who brainwashed thousands of young British-born Muslims, not least the 7/7 murderers. It turned a blind eye to migrants who refuse to assimilate and instead colonise whole suburbs and cities where welfare has become a way of life. It encouraged multi-culturalism which, far from spreading tolerance, has entrenched primitive tribal customs, including forced marriages and honour killings. As a result, our security services are at breaking point keeping tabs on an army of shadowy troublemakers who flit back and forth to Pakistan — many to be trained in OUR mass murder.

“… it is impossible to disagree with what Wilders has to say about extremists. He told an American audience recently: The Europe you know is changing. You have seen the landmarks. The Eiffel Tower and Trafalgar Square and Rome’s ancient buildings, the canals of Amsterdam. They are still there. And they still look very much the same as they did a hundred years ago. But a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world very few visitors see.

“Throughout Europe a new reality is rising, entire Muslim neighbourhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. It’s the world of headscarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands – or slaveholders, if you prefer – walk three steps ahead.

“With mosques on many street corners, shops have signs you cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighbourhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe. These are the building blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe, street by street, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, city by city.

“There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe. With larger congregations than there are in churches.And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: We rule.

“Sounds about right to me.”

Trevor Kavanagh in the Sun, 23 February 2009

British mosques promote community cohesion

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MCB welcomes independent Charity Commission report on Muslim centres of worship

The Muslim Council of Britain today welcomed the findings of an independent Charity Commission survey of mosques in Britain. The survey shows that mosques contribute to their local communities through a wide range of services and activities in addition to providing space for worship, from sport and leisure activities to healthy living programmes and assistance for senior citizens.

The survey charts how an overwhelming majority (94%) deliver educational programme for children and young people and three in five (61%) carry out women’s groups/activities. It is also a welcome information that increasingly more and more mosques have young people (52%) and women (15%) represented in their management responsibility. Far from being a source of separation, mosques are integral to community cohesion and development.

Dr Manazir Ahsan, the Chair of the Muslim Council of Britain’s Mosques Committee said, “I fully concur with Dame Suzi Leather the chair of the Charity Commission that ‘this new survey reveals the important contribution that Mosques are making to communities across England and Wales’. We agree with the primary conclusion of the report, that mosques should not only be a place of solace and worship, but should also benefit local communities, irrespective of faith. We are in no doubt that some mosques — with very little resources — require the necessary help and assistance to serve its users and the local community. To that end, we endorse the Charity Commission call to mosques to engage with the Commission and benefit from its services in order to have proper policies in place.”

“Despite the good work emanating from the majority of our mosques, and regardless of authentic, and citable evidence such as those presented by the Charity Commission, I am in no doubt that bigots and doommongers will nevertheless continue to peddle Islamophobic hysteria, insisting that mosques are incapable of promoting community cohesion. We must prove these naysayers wrong by opening up and welcoming all people to our mosques.”

MCB press release, 23 February 2009

See also “Survey reveals mosque insights”, BBC News, 23 February 2009

Download the Charity Commission report here.

Mad Mel explains the rise of the BNP

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Melanie Phillips Jihad in Britain“Last week, the British National Party won a council seat in Sevenoaks, Kent…. Around the country, the BNP is making an ever stronger political showing. Last month, it only narrowly failed to take a council seat in Bexley, South London, and last week it did well in wards in Yorkshire, the Midlands and Lewisham, another South London borough. It is also strongly tipped to win at least one European Parliament seat in the forthcoming elections.

“The reason for its increasing success is obvious. Like all populist, neo-fascist parties, the BNP is opportunistically exploiting the failure by the political establishment to address issues of pressing and legitimate concern to the public…. Britain is changing before our very eyes. As a result of the current rate of immigration, within half a century the projected steep increase in the UK’s population will be entirely made up of people not born in Britain – most of whom will have come from the Third World.

“Meanwhile, the fanatically imposed doctrine of multiculturalism has brought about the erosion or denigration of Britain’s history, religion and identity, leaving generations of children – both indigenous and immigrant – appallingly ignorant of the common culture they need to share.

“It is entirely reasonable to want one’s country to express its own culture through its institutions, laws and practices. Yet those who defend this principle are called ‘racist’. Britain is witnessing an alarming growth of separate Muslim enclaves ruled by a parallel Islamic Sharia law. It is entirely reasonable to want one system of law for all. Yet those who say so are called ‘Islamophobic’.”

Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail, 23 February 2009

Of course, Phillips omits to mention one important factor in the rise of the BNP – the legitimisation of their racist politics by bigoted right-wing commentators like herself whose anti-Muslim tirades are often barely distinguishable from the sort of thing you might read in a BNP propaganda leaflet.