“A British Airways plane was delayed after three of Sheikh Badr Bin Khalifa al-Thani’s most valuable wives refused to sit next to male passengers. Which was out of character for the Qatari royals, really. You see, earlier they had graciously consented to make their accommodations with decadent western ways – while shopping in the designer boutiques of Milan. A trivial story, highlighting an un-trivial trend: the move towards Muslim separateness.”
Jasper Gerard in the Observer, 29 July 2007
The Muslim Council of Britain responds to the report An Unquiet World by the Conservative Party’s National and International Security Policy Group (pdf here). They accuse the Tories of “pursuing a McCarthyite track to cast aspersions on our patriotism and our commitment to an integrated British Muslim community”.
Christians are being urged to stand up against what a visiting author says is a Muslim push to take over the world. Pastor Stuart Robinson, Australian author of the book Mosques and Miracles, has drawn about 200 people to a conference in Greenlane this weekend aimed at revealing what he says are the true dangers of Islam.
Meanwhile, rebel British left-wing MP George Galloway is expected to attract about 450 people to a rival meeting in Freemans Bay tonight to condemn Mr Robinson’s “islamophobia”.
Mr Robinson’s two-day Mosques and Miracles conference has been organised by missionary groups Open Doors, Middle East Christian Outreach, Asian Outreach and Interserve, with support from the Vision Network of evangelical churches. He said most Westerners did not understand that Islam taught that peace would prevail in the world only when the Muslim religion predominated.
He said Muslim theology “teaches that war has to be prosecuted against the infidel until the day of judgment when Jesus Christ returns”. Unlike Christianity, which offered salvation simply through faith, he said Islam taught that the only sure way to paradise was to die as a martyr for the faith. “That becomes an enormous recruitment device for a lot of the suicide bombing that we see,” he said.
But Mr Galloway, a Catholic who has backed the Palestinian cause for 32 years, said New Zealand’s 45,000-strong Muslim community was moderate and law-abiding and had never carried out any terrorist acts. “Have you seen any signs of New Zealand’s Muslims launching a jihad [holy war]?” he asked. “Of course you haven’t. These people [Mr Robinson’s followers] are trying to place fear and hatred in the hearts of ordinary New Zealand people against peaceful neighbours.”
Christian schools are perfectly acceptable but other faith schools, especially Muslim ones, are a big mistake and should be scrapped if the Government wants to encourage a unifying British identity, according to the man reckoned by many to be the world’s leading moral philosopher.
Commenting on the damage that he believes is being done by Muslim, Hindu and Sikh schools, set up because the Government wanted to give them parity with Christian institutions, Professor Amartya Sen said: “I am actually absolutely appalled.”
Trying to curb Islamic terrorism in Britain by going through Muslim organisations and defining the identities of immigrants only on the basis of religion had been another serious error.
The Pope’s private secretary has given warning of the Islamisation of Europe and stressed the need for the continent’s Christian roots not to be ignored, in comments released yesterday.
“Attempts to Islamise the West cannot be denied,” Monsignor Georg Gaenswein was quoted as saying in an advance copy of the weekly Sueddeutsche Magazin to be published today. “The danger for the identity of Europe that is connected with it should not be ignored out of a wrongly understood respectfulness,” the magazine quoted him as saying.
He also defended a speech that the Pope gave last year that linked Islam and violence, saying it had been an attempt by the pontiff to “act against a certain naivety”. In the speech during a visit to Germany in September, the Pope appeared to endorse a view, contested by most Muslims, that Islam’s followers spread their religion in its early days by violence.
Smith told to stop dithering over prisoner
By Louise Nousratpour
Morning Star, 27 July 2007
THE High Court ordered Home Secretary Jacqui Smith yesterday to stop dithering and decide whether a British resident being freed from Guantanamo Bay can return to live in Britain by August 9.
Campaigners urged the minister to act swiftly to allow Jamil el-Banna’s return and also to demand that the US release at least five other British residents who have been held for several years at the torture camp.
Mr Justice Beatson gave Ms Smith until 4pm on that date to either revoke Jamil el-Banna’s refugee status or confirm that he will be allowed to return and live with his wife and children – all of whom are British nationals – in London.
The judge set the deadline as he gave Mr el-Banna’s solicitors permission to seek judicial review of the government’s failure to confirm that he will be allowed to return.
The Home Secretary did not oppose the application.
Legal justice campaign Reprieve, whose members have represented British detainees in Guantanamo, welcomed the High Court decision.
Senior counsel Zachary Katznelson said: “The Americans say Mr el-Banna is not a threat to anyone. All Britain has to do now is say he can come home to his wife and children. What are they waiting for?”
Is nowhere safe from the encroaching Muslim hordes? How long before our sleepy seaside resorts fall victim to the imposition of shariah law?
Darcus Howe reports on the political forces behind the anti-mosque campaigns in Newham and Dudley.
See also the Christian Science Monitor for yet another misrepresentation of the facts regarding the “Newham mega mosque”.
MI5 contributed to the seizure of two British residents by the CIA, which secretly flew them to Guantánamo Bay in a move with “serious implications for the intelligence relationship” between Britain and the US, a cross-party committee of senior MPs said in a damning report released yesterday.
The security service passed information to the Americans on Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi, and Jamil el-Banna, from Jordan, as they flew to the Gambia to set up a business there in 2002. Both had lived in Britain for many years.
Mr Rawi was released from Guantánamo in March after evidence emerged in a British court that he helped MI5 monitor Abu Qatada, the radical cleric. Mr Banna is still held in the US base on Cuba. Though the US has said he can leave, the British government said his UK residence status had expired because of his absence.
In its report yesterday, the parliamentary intelligence and security committee said MI5 was “indirectly and inadvertently” involved in the rendition of the two men by passing on the information, which included claims about their Islamist sympathies. In unprecedented criticism of Britain’s security and intelligence agencies, the committee said both MI6 and MI5 “were slow to appreciate [the] change in US rendition policy” – a reference to the practice of seizing terrorist suspects and flying them to secret destinations where they risked being tortured.
Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of Reprieve, which represents prisoners open to abuse, said last night: “The report makes clear some awful facts about the arrest and rendition of Jamil el-Banna and Bisher al-Rawi. The British government sent the Americans incorrect information that led directly to the arrest of these men … Jamil remains in Guantánamo Bay while the UK dithers about whether to allow him home to his wife and five British children. The UK started this chain of suffering. It must end it and bring Jamil back.”
“There is some evidence that Ed Husain will become even more useful as time goes on.”
The Islamist receives a sympathetic review from the right-wing think-tank the Social Affairs Unit.