Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Showdown at Columbia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Columbia UniversityWhen David Horowitz returns to Columbia University next Friday to mark his organization’s much-hyped “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” (IFAW), he will find a determined and “dangerous” opposition, coming from a coalition of concerned students and up to nine of Horowitz’s “101 Most Dangerous Professors”.

“NOT ON OUR CAMPUS”, counter the flyers being circulated by the hundreds from Columbia’s Intercultural Resource Center, as students prepare for a major speakout and counter-event on Friday. Many here see Horowitz’s visit as an insult and an injury to a campus community still reeling from a slew of racial attacks this semester, most recently a noose hung on the door of a Black professor at Teachers’ College.

“What it does,” added Noah Baron of Columbia Students for a Democratic Society, “is it builds on people’s fears… And it makes it more difficult to discuss things that are already difficult to discuss … racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and things like that.”

Many students at Columbia don’t buy the “Islamo-Fascism” talk in the first place. The term only gained currency after President Bush picked it up as a mantra in 2006. Rahel Aima of Columbia SDS sees it as a fiction: “Islamo-Fascism is constructed … [They say]  ‘We don’t like Islam, we think fascism is bad, let’s put them together’… And they’re like, ‘If you’re not with us, you’re fascists’.”

With IFAW, Horowitz, an ex-Leftist-gone-Right, is taking on two of his favorite enemies: Left-wing faculty and Muslim youth. In a recent statement, he claimed that “the progressive left is the enabler and abettor of the terrorist jihad”, and in the same document, he called the Muslim Students Association (MSA) a “front for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas”.

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Islamophobic party poised to make gains in Swiss elections

Posted on by Bob Pitt

SVP posterPeter Beaumont warns against the threat from Christoph Blocher and the racist Swiss People’s Party (SVP):

“… the reason why Switzerland is suddenly important is not because of its politics – it’s because it represents the most visible manifestation of the nasty Islamophobia currently rising throughout Europe, that has connected self-avowed liberals such as Martin Amis in the UK with men like Blocher in a spectrum of fear and xenophobia. Tomorrow, it seems likely that the most Islamophobic mainstream party on the European continent will win the largest number of votes by wrapping itself in a fake past. It is a warning to us all.”

Comment is Free, 20 October 2007

See also “Interview with Swiss Justice Minister Christoph Blocher: ‘We must tell the Muslims we are a Christian nation'”, Der Spiegel, 17 October 2007

Jewish Voice for Peace opposes ‘Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jewish Voice for PeaceNo to intolerance and Islamophobia!

On October 22-26 the so-called Terrorism Awareness Project will send extremist speakers to campuses across the country to spread a message of intolerance and Islamophobia, in a campaign billed as “the biggest conservative campus protest ever.”

The list of speakers includes:

• Ann Coulter, who recently made quite a splash with her unabashed Jew-hatred;
• Robert Spencer, who calls Islam “the world’s most intolerant religion”;
• Rick Santorum, who compared homosexuality to incest and bestiality;
• And of course, David Horowitz whose long history of racism has included attacks on affirmative action and the statement that “guns don’t kill black people, other blacks do”.

These and other hate-mongers will be demonizing Islam and portraying a one-sided and bigoted view of a faith held by billions of people around the world.

Join Jewish Voice for Peace in our condemnation of this campaign of racism and bigotry!

Blair accuses Iran of fuelling ‘deadly ideology’ of militant Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tony Blair has accused Iran of backing and financing terrorist attacks, and warned that the threat of militant Islam is similar to that posed by fascism in the early 20th century.

In his first major speech since leaving office, Mr Blair said that Iran was prepared to destabilise peaceful countries in support of the “deadly ideology” driving Muslim extremism.

Speaking at a charity event in New York, Mr Blair said that the US, Britain and their allies risked being “forced into retreat” if they do not show “even greater determination and belief” in their common values. Mr Blair, who is now an envoy for the Middle East Quartet, said: “Analogies with the past are never properly accurate and analogies especially with the rising fascism can be easily misleading, but in pure chronology I sometimes wonder if we’re not in the 1920s or 1930s again.”

He said: “This ideology now has a state, Iran, that is prepared to back and finance terror in the pursuit of destabilising countries whose people wish to live in peace.”

Guardian, 19 October 2007

See comments by David Cox and Inayat Bunglawala at Comment is Free, 19 October 2007

Conservative Muslims back Ahmadinejad shock

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Conservative Muslim ForumWell, that’s the line the Daily Telegraph is taking anyway, and Conservative Home is joining in. What’s got them so worked up is the document submitted by the Conservative Muslim Forum in response to An Unquiet World, the report of the Tories’ National and International Security Policy Group chaired by Dame Pauline Neville-Jones.

The CMF’s response hits some nails on the head. It has a good line on Israel and Iran, which particularly outrages the Telegraph and Conservative Home (though the Torygraph is no less appalled by the CMF’s proposal that the history curriculum in schools should give “full recognition to the massive contribution that Islam has made to the development of Western civilisation”).

Conservative Home for its part is dismayed by the CMF’s defence of the Muslim Council of Britain, who were grossly misrepresented by Neville-Jones’ policy group, providing the basis for an ignorant attack on the MCB by David Cameron. The CMF asks:

“What is the evidence for the statement ‘the MCB does not have as one of its aims, the integration of members of Muslim communities into the wider society of the UK’? … it should be noted that one of the formal aims of the MCB is ‘to foster better community relations and work for the good of society as a whole’, which is what integration is about. The Policy Group did not specify what MCB activities they consider to be incompatible with integration. The Conservative Party should recognise that the MCB is well-respected by many Muslims and non-Muslims.”

Also by implication the Conservative Muslim Forum opposes Cameron’s call for a ban on Hizb ut-Tahrir: “… it is the mark of a mature and liberal democracy that it accepts people’s freedom to disagree. If a political party wishes to campaign, constitutionally, for the abolition of democracy in the UK and its replacement by a totalitarian system, why should it not be free to do so?”

Neville-Jones’ An Unquiet World report contains a ludicrously inaccurate attack on Dr al-Qaradawi. To which the CMF replies: “While we may disagree with many of the views of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, it is inaccurate for the Policy Group to question his status as a leading Islamic scholar…. Yusuf al-Qaradawi is considered a leading scholar by many Muslims, including other Muslim scholars.”

Conservative Home complains: “It is deeply troubling to learn of a group within the Conservative Party giving comfort to this extremist.”

An Unquiet Word: A Response can be downloaded from the Conservative Muslim Forum website.

For earlier criticisms of Neville-Jones’ report by Conservative Muslims, see here.

Martin Amis – neither a racist nor an Islamophobe (it says here)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“We are used to attacks on freedom of speech these days. At present Martin Amis is coming under heavy attack from radical Muslims for his trenchant criticisms of the violence that is inseparable from extreme Islamism….

“In so doing, he has attracted the ire of Professor Terry Eagleton – a mediocre but always modish literary critic. Having, in my view, distorted Amis’s words, Eagleton claimed that the author was ‘hounding and humiliating’ Muslims – and the usual suspects have followed in his wake with shrieks of ‘Islamophobe’ and ‘racist’.

“Amis is neither. For while Islam is one of the world’s great religions, he is surely correct when he says that Islamic extremists are ‘anti-Semites, psychotic misogynists and homophobes’. He has every right to say our society is more evolved than repressive and brutal Muslim states like Saudi Arabia, which is being permitted through political inertia to fund Europe-wide centres peddling the pernicious doctrine of Wahhabism (which promotes global Jihad) to impressionable young men.”

Ruth Dudley Edwards in the Daily Mail, 19 October 2007

For an alternative view, read Soumaya Ghannoushi at Comment is Free, 18 October 2007

Martin Amis launches fresh attack on Muslim faith

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Martin Amis (2)The author Martin Amis has claimed he feels “morally superior” to Muslim states which are not as “evolved” as the Western world.

Responding to long-running accusations that he is Islamophobic, Amis launched a fresh invective against the Muslim faith and many of its followers. The 58-year-old defended a proposal he made last year that Muslims be deported and strip-searched in a crackdown on terrorism. His latest comments came in a TV news interview last night and during the Cheltenham Literature Festival last week.

In an interview with Jon Snow on Channel Four News, Amis declared: “I feel morally superior to Islamists, by some distance. There are great problems with Islam. The Koran recommends the beating of women. The anti-Semites, the psychotic misogynists and the homophobes are the Islamists.”

Days earlier, Amis shocked festivalgoers in Cheltenham with claims that Muslim states are less “civilised” than Western society. “Some societies are just more evolved than others,” he said. “These societies are arming themselves with weapons like the AK47 and blowing people up on buses and Tubes.”

When one member of his audience suggested not all Muslims were terrorists he retorted: “No one else is doing it. Here in the West we have the most evolved society in the world and we are not blowing people up.”

Condemning his comments, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain said: “Amis clearly seems to believe many Muslim communities are primitive. But just because some extremists have committed terrorist acts does not give him licence to denigrate an entire faith community. He should be ashamed of himself.”

Daily Mail, 18 October 2007

Watch the Channel 4 interview with Amis here.

‘Defeat Islam’ says Hirsi Ali

Posted on by Bob Pitt

There’s an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (hat tip: The Angry Arab) in the November issue of Reason magazine. The following exchange takes place in response to Hirsi Ali’s insistence on the need for Islam to be “defeated”:

Reason: Don’t you mean defeating radical Islam?

Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period. Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace.

Reason: We have to crush the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, “defeat Islam”?

Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they’re the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, “This is a warning. We won’t accept this anymore.” There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.

Principal of NY Arabic school says she was forced out

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Debbie AlmontaserDebbie Almontaser, who resigned under fire from her position as principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA), New York’s Arabic-themed school, has spoken out publicly for the first time. In a statement read from the steps of City Hall she said:

“On Feb. 12, 2007, the Department of Education announced the establishment of KGIA. In the days following, right-wing blogs began spinning KGIA as an Islamist school with a radical extremist jihad principal. And local New York City papers fanned the flames with headlines like: ‘Holy war! Slope Parents Protest Arabic School Plan’, ‘A Madrassa Grows in Brooklyn’, and ‘Arabic School Idea Is a Monstrosity’. From the day the school was approved to the day I was forced to resign, The New York Sun plastered my picture on its website with a link to negative articles about KGIA.

“Leading the attack was the ‘Stop the Madrassa Coalition’ run by Daniel Pipes, who has made his career fostering hatred of Arabs and Muslims. The coalition conducted a smear campaign against me and the school that was ferocious. Members of the coalition stalked me wherever I went and verbally assaulted me with vicious anti-Arab and anti-Muslim comments. They suggested that, as an observant Muslim, I was disqualified from leading KGIA, even though the school is rigorously secular, and its namesake, Khalil Gibran, was a Lebanese Christian. To stir up anti-Arab prejudice, they constantly referred to me by my Arabic name, a name that I do not use professionally. They even created and circulated a YouTube clip depicting me as a radical Islamist.

“Then in early August, The New York Post and the Stop the Madrassa Coalition tried to connect me to T-shirts made by a youth organization called Arab Women in the Arts and Media. The T-shirts said, ‘Intifada NYC’. Post reporters aggressively sought my comment. Because the T-shirts had nothing to do with me or KGIA, I saw no reason to discuss the issue with the media. I agreed to an interview with a reporter from The Post at the D.O.E.’s insistence. During the interview, the reporter asked about the Arabic origin of the word ‘intifada’. I told him that the root word from which the word intifada originates means ‘shake off’ and that the word intifada has different meanings for different people, but certainly for many, given its association with the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, it implied violence. I reiterated that I would never affiliate myself with an individual or organization that would condone violence in any shape, way, or form. In response to a further question, I expressed the belief that the teenage girls of AWAAM did not mean to promote a ‘Gaza-style uprising’ in New York City.

“Although The Post story distorted my words, it accurately reflected my view that I do not condone violence. That should have been the end of the matter. D.O.E. officials should simply have said that it was clear that neither I nor KGIA had any connection to the T-shirts. They should have pointed out that I had devoted my entire adult life to the peaceful resolution of conflict and to building bridges between ethnic and religious communities. In other words, they should have said that the attacks upon me were utterly baseless. Instead, they forced me to issue an apology for what I said. And when the storm of hate continued, they forced me to resign.”

New York Times, 16 October 2007

See also CAIR  Communities in Support of KGIA  andMuslimMatters.org