Mad Mel on multiculturalism

“Angela Merkel has got the point. Multiculturalism has failed, she states flatly, as she surveys western Europe going down under the tide of radical Islam. Rather than liberal society creating the utopia of harmonious cultural pluralism, it is being swallowed whole by the giant predator whose voracious mouth it encourages, in the spirit of tolerance, to open ever wider in the unshakeable belief of western liberals that the jaws about to snap shut around their necks are actually stretched wide in a smile.”

Melanie Phillips at her Spectator blog, 18 October 2010

A further reply to George Readings

In a piece for the Guardian’s Comment is Free, George Readings of the Quilliam Foundation has finally got round to replying my Socialist Unity article (crossposted at Islamophobia Watch) in which I defended the noted Islamic scholar and Al-Jazeera TV star Yusuf al-Qaradawi against an attack from Readings.

Readings misrepresents my views – and more importantly those of Qaradawi himself – but at least he has attempted to rebut my criticisms with reasoned argument. This is certainly an improvement on Quilliam’s previous methods, which have involved trying to politically blackmail a London Assembly member for whom I worked into taking action against me, and then, after he told Ed Husain to take his threatening email and shove it, hiring libel lawyers in an attempt to shut me up.

Continue reading

Wilders dissociates himself from EDL’s Amsterdam demonstration

EDL in Bradford
EDL supporters clash with police during protest in Bradford in August

A demonstration to be held in Amsterdam by the ultranationalist English Defence League (EDL) has met with strong disapproval from Dutch anti-Islam Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders. “I have no involvement with this demo, I’ve never been in touch with the EDL,” the MP told daily De Telegraaf on Tuesday. The protest is planned for Saturday 30 October, just before the verdict is due in a hate-incitement court case against Mr Wilders next week.

Continue reading

Geller has nothing against halal food (it says here)

Campbell Soup Co., the Camden, N.J., food giant, has been fighting a grass-roots boycott of its products after its Canadian subsidiary rolled out a line of soups certified as halal, meaning they’re prepared according to Islamic dietary laws.

Campbell Co. of Canada introduced the soups in a few Canadian markets in January, although American bloggers didn’t catch up to the news until earlier this month. That’s when the tempest in a tomato-soup can started.

Blogger Pamela Geller began calling for a boycott earlier this month via her widely read site, Atlas Shrugs. Other bloggers soon joined in.

The halal soups, designated with a special label, are available only in Canada. The company has no plans to offer a similar line in the United States, said John Faulkner, a company spokesman.

In an interview, Geller, who was instrumental in whipping up opposition to an Islamic community center and mosque in Lower Manhattan, said she has no objection to the halal certification itself. Rather, she said, she opposes Campbell’s decision to have its Canadian products certified by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an organization that government prosecutors alleged had ties to the terrorist group Hamas in a 2007 conspiracy case.

“No one is suggesting they refrain from this line,” Geller said. “No one is suggesting they not have halal food. I’m not against halal food any more than I’m against kosher food. My issue is who’s doing the certifying.”

Washington Post, 18 October 2010


Yup, that’s the same Pamela Geller whose response to the Mail‘s recent scaremongering about halal meat in the UK was to complain about non-Muslims having to consume “meat slaughtered in a barbaric, torturous and inhuman method, Islamic slaughter. Ugh.”

Wilders responsible for rise in anti-Muslim hatred say witnesses

Muslim witnesses said Monday that a Dutch lawmaker’s anti-Islamic comments had led to attacks and intimidation, and they pleaded with judges to convict him and give him a symbolic fine of one euro.

“Arson. Attempted arson. Vandalism. Disturbances. Incivility to people attending mosques. Obscenities. Intimidating behavior – they have all become everyday occurrences” as a result of Wilders’ public remarks, said Mohammed Enait, speaking for an alliance of Dutch mosques that had asked to testify as victims in the case.

Enait said Dutch Muslims have suffered tangible damage as a result of Wilders’ repeated negative remarks about Islam. He said there are countless incidences of “children being cursed at while they walk. Stories from women … who are spit upon, mocked because they wear headscarves.” Enait, who is from Rotterdam, said the mosque he attended as a child had been burned down.

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance found that there has been a “dramatic increase in ‘Islamophobia’ in the Netherlands” since 2000.

Several prominent Muslim organizations have asked the new government, which took office last week, to examine the problem, citing an incident earlier this year where a dead sheep was left on a site where a mosque is being built in the city of Roosendaal. Last month, a mosque in Groningen was burned in an arson attack, and as recently as last weekend, a bullet was fired at a mosque in the city of Dordrecht.

The conservative minority government relies on the support of Wilders’ Freedom Party to pass bills in parliament. It has not reacted to the request from the Muslim groups.

Associated Press, 18 October 2010

Update:  See also Dutch News, 19 October 2010

Fox News host who claimed all terrorists are Muslim says he ‘misspoke’

Brian KilmeadeA Fox News Channel host apologized on Monday for saying last week that “not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim”.

Brian Kilmeade, a co-host of “Fox & Friends”, said he “misspoke”. “I don’t believe all terrorists are Muslims. I’m sorry about that if I offended or hurt anybody’s feelings,” he said on the program Monday morning.

A liberal group that monitors Fox News, Media Matters, was skeptical that it was just a slip of the tongue, however, because Mr. Kilmeade made the same statement twice on Friday, hours apart from each other. Media Matters said Mr. Kilmeade “has a history of offensive and inflammatory comments regarding Islam and Muslims”.

On Friday Mr. Kilmeade was reacting to the fellow Fox host Bill O’Reilly’s spat on “The View” the prior day, when Mr. O’Reilly said “Muslims killed us on 9/11”, prompting two co-hosts to walk off the set.

Mr. Kilmeade said, “They were outraged that someone was saying that there was a reason, there was a certain group of people that attacked us on 9/11. It wasn’t just one person, it was one religion. Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim.”

Hours later on his radio show Mr. Kilmeade said “Not every Muslim is an extremist, a terrorist, but every terrorist is a Muslim. You can’t avoid that fact,” according to Media Matters.

New York Times, 18 October 2010

Update:  See also Huffington Post, 19 October 2010

‘Qaradawi won’t talk to Jews’

Well, so Harry’s Place claims. They quote that reliable source, the Elder of Ziyon blog, as follows: “The 8th Annual Doha Conference on Interfaith Dialogue is to start tomorrow, but prominent Islamic Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi is boycotting the conference, according to Palestine Today. The reason? Because there will be Jews there!”

In fact Qaradawi’s position on interfaith dialogue is quite clear. Back in 2005 he stated that he objected to dialogue with Israel’s chief rabbi because “he supports the murder of Palestinians on a daily basis, supports the destruction of homes and the eviction of people, and supports the crimes and the barbaric slaughter that are taking place every day. How can I shake his hand and sit down with him?

But Qaradawi said he had no problem engaging in dialogue with representatives of the Jewish community who oppose the repression of the Palestinians: “I welcome Jews who dissociate themselves from what Israel is doing, and I welcome being with them.”

He concluded: “I oppose dialogue with Jewish rabbis living in Israel, who support the crimes committed by Israel. With them there is no possibility [of dialogue]…. We will hold a dialogue with those who are reasonable among them, as well as with the Christians, as indeed I have been present at a number of conferences for Islamic-Christian dialogue. But with those ‘who do evil’, as Allah said, we shall neither argue nor shall we have any dialogue.”

The source of these quotes? None other than the Middle East Media Research Institute, an institution that is of course highly regarded by the contributors to Harry’s Place.

Police face legal threat over Birmingham spy cameras

West Midlands Police is facing legal action if it does not remove all cameras controversially put up in largely Muslim areas of Birmingham.

More than 200 covert and overt cameras were installed in Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook, paid for with government money to tackle terrorism.

The force said the covert ones had been removed after uproar from residents. But Liberty plans to start a judicial review if there is no commitment made to remove the rest within two weeks.

BBC News, 18 October 2010

Express backs Merkel on multicuturalism

Mired in guilt over the crimes of the nazis, most Germans have gone along with edicts of multiculturalism. They have not dared even to question whether Flooding their country with immigrants from very different cultures, often with contradictory values, and making little attempt to integrate them into mainstream society was a good idea. now continued migration on a huge scale and a high birth rate among Muslim incomers, mainly from Turkey, have led to a crisis in German society.

The country’s leader, Angela Merkel, has had to break a longstanding taboo by admitting multiculturalism has “utterly failed”. Mrs Merkel has spoken out in defence of a Germany defined by “the Christian image of humanity”.

Almost everything Merkel says about Germany could equally be applied to Britain. in our case it was guilt over empire that was used as the pretext to justify the multicultural experiment.

But all over europe ruling political elites have failed to achieve a happy accommodation between the expectations of indigenous populations and those of Muslim immigrant communities. now race relations are suffering terribly and both groups feel victimised – immigrants largely because they have never been challenged to adapt to new surroundings and native populations because they have been treated as second-class citizens in their own countries.

Radical steps to promote integration of immigrants into a more enlightened way of living are the only way forward and Mrs Merkel is to be congratulated for recognising so. it is time for British political leaders to do the same.

Editorial in Daily Express, 18 October 2010