Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Middle East myopia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The Middle East is at the heart of world politics, a strategically sensitive region plagued by much unrest, war, and a never-ending chain of foreign interventions. That it should be the subject of ongoing comment, analysis and argument is understandable. Yet a cursory look at what gets said and written about it reveals a worrying pattern of simplification, generalisation and reductionism.

“Nowhere is this trio more manifest than in analyses of the region’s intellectual and political map. This is largely read through an arsenal of readymade terms and concepts – ‘terrorism’, ‘fundamentalism’, ‘extremism’, ‘Islamism’, and all the other ‘isms’ – legitimised by a daily staple of images of shouting mobs, angry bearded men, burning books and pairs of terrified eyes peering from behind black veils.

“The trouble is that the terms through which we approach this complex landscape perpetuate a state of ignorance; misleading instead of guiding, and distorting instead of explaining. What they paint is a desert of intellectual aridity and a swamp of political stagnation. The Middle East thus appears as a sea of ‘fundamentalist’ darkness, with a few glimmers of ‘secular’ enlightenment, a shrinking ‘liberal’ minority besieged by an ever-expanding ‘Islamist’ majority.”

Soumaya Ghannoushi at Comment is Free, 23 July 2007

Victim of US bloggers’ cartoon hits back

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Shakeel BhatWith his clenched fists, wild eyes and gnashing teeth he has become the face of Muslim fury, protesting against the enemies of Islam. Shakeel Ahmad Bhat has been on the frontline of political activism in Srinagar, India, for more than a decade. His constant presence, captured by photographers and beamed across the world, has caught the imagination of rightwing bloggers who have dubbed him Islamic Rage Boy and turned him into an internet phenomenon.

But the 30-year-old Kashmiri activist is puzzled, not angered, by his overseas fame. In his first interview with a British newspaper, he says he is carrying out Allah’s wishes. From his home in Fateh Kadal, Malik Angan, he says: “I am not happy with people joking about me or making me into a cartoon, but I have more important things to think about. My protests are for those Muslims who cannot go out onto the streets to cry out against injustice. This is my duty and I believe Allah has decided this for me.”

A spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Ibrahim Hooper, says: “I find the term Islamic Rage Boy offensive, as would anyone who applied the term to their own faith. It’s an Islamophobic product by Muslim-bashers on internet hate sites.” He compares the cartoon to the anti-semitic imagery of 1930s Nazi Germany. “The cartoon is part of an overall growth of anti-Muslim rhetoric in this country. Someone is trying to link Islam with violence and anger and profiting from it.”

He quotes a recent Newsweek poll, which paints a complicated portrait of US attitudes towards Muslims: 63% of Americans surveyed believe most Muslims do not condone violence and 40% believe the Koran does not condone violence, but 28% believe it does and 41% felt Muslim culture glorifies suicide. Mr Hooper says: “While the majority is not hostile towards Muslims, there is a minority who are, and cartoons like this do not help. You cannot combat one form of extremism with another.”

Guardian, 23 July 2007

Muslims eat children

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Although the recent WND report of al-Qaida terrorists allegedly baking a young boy and serving him as a meal to his relatives was too horrific for some to believe, a major Christian ministry is citing another example – and also claims such a practice has its roots in the historical stories of Islam.”

World Net Daily, 19 July 2007

And yes, that “major Christian ministry” is Patrick Sookhdeo’s Barnabas Fund.

See also Lawrence of Cyberia, 21 July 2007

Salmond response to airport attack ‘boost for radical Islam’ says academic

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Scotland UnitedAlex Salmond has boosted the cause of radical Islam in Scotland in his response to the Glasgow Airport attack, a leading Scots academic on religious affairs has claimed.

In a fiercely controversial commentary, Tom Gallagher, the chair of Peace Studies at Bradford University, said that Salmond had courted “radical voices” in the Muslim community following the attempted bombings, lending them a false layer of legitimacy. He also accuses Salmond of deliberately setting out to exploit the attack to win favour with Muslims in Scotland, comparing the First Minister’s style at one point to former Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The comments triggered a furious backlash last night, with claims they amounted to Islamophobia. Salmond’s aides meanwhile described them as “ridiculous”.

Gallagher’s attack, published on the website Open Democracy, was aimed primarily at the Scottish leader of the Muslim Association of Britain, Osama Saeed, who was also an SNP candidate in this year’s Scottish elections. Saeed was among the most prominent figures to speak for the Muslim community following the bombings, which he unreservedly condemned. However, Gallagher accuses Saeed of being an “unapologetic advocate of the hardline Islamism” and accuses him of deceiving Scots following the attack by hiding his real agenda. He attacks Salmond for giving Saeed a platform.

He said: “The Muslim community has been done a great disservice by the SNP which has courted the more radical voices in the community and the result is that it will alter the balance of power in the Muslim community. I’m all for Muslims playing a full role in Scottish life but I think we need to do all we can to question those who just want Muslims to be oppositional and to have international loyalties.”

Saeed has now accused Gallagher of Islamophobia, saying there was no basis for the academic’s attack. He added: “What he is arguing is that everyone who believes in Islam needs to have some kind of witch-hunt placed over them.”

Scotland on Sunday, 22 July 2007

Predictably, Gallagher finds support at the virulently anti-Muslim US website Jihad Watch.

For Osama Saeed’s comments, see Rolled Up Trousers, 22 July 2007

Terror strikes provoke spate of racist attacks

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Glasgow shop fireSince the failed terrorist attack on Glasgow airport, Strathclyde police have had to deal with more than 200 racial incidents, many of them carried out as reprisals on innocent members of the Muslim community.

Verbal and physical assaults, along with damage to property ranging from graffiti to a vehicle being driven into a shop belonging to Asians and set on fire, have been reported across the city.

Just over 10 racially motivated crimes per day, on average, have been recorded since the airport bomb attack compared with a daily average of less than seven racist incidents during April, May and June.

‘I am concerned about the rise in the number of racist incidents,’ said John Neilson, Strathclyde’s assistant chief constable. ‘However, I am also encouraged at the number of victims who have come forward and reported their experiences to the police.’

Observer, 22 July 2007

See also “Attacks on Muslims increase in Strathclyde after airport attack”, Independent, 23 July 2007

An inability to tolerate Islam contradicts western values

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“For Muslims to protest against the Danish cartoonists’ depiction of the prophet as a terrorist, while carrying placards that threatened another 7/7 atrocity on London, represented a nihilistic failure of integrity. But equally the cartoonists and their publishers, who seemed impervious to Muslim sensibilities, failed to live up to their own liberal values, since the principle of free speech implies respect for the opinions of others. Islamophobia should be as unacceptable as any other form of prejudice.

“When 255,000 members of the so-called ‘Christian community’ signed a petition to prevent the building of a large mosque in Abbey Mills, east London, they sent a grim message to the Muslim world: western freedom of worship did not, apparently, apply to Islam. There were similar protests by some in the Jewish community, who, as Seth Freedman pointed out in his Commentisfree piece, should be the first to protest against discrimination.”

Karen Armstrong in the Guardian, 21 July 2007

BNP is linked to petition against new ‘mega-mosque’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

English_RoseRight-wing extremists have manipulated a Downing Street petition to stir up racial hatred over the building of a “megamosque” in east London, an investigation can reveal.

More than 270,000 people have signed a petition on the Number 10 website that calls for the scrapping of plans to build Europe’s largest mosque close to the main site of the 2012 Olympics.

But the Standard has learned that the anti-mosque campaign has been infiltrated by the British National Party, which has told its members to sign the Downing Street petition. The petition was originally posted on the No 10 site by a Right-wing extremist called Jill Barham.

The BNP today admitted orchestrating a campaign to get its members to sign the petition. An email had been sent out to supporters with links to the petition on the Downing Street website. The party used a similar tactic to try to influence a poll on the Evening Standard‘s website that had simply asked: “Are you in favour of the £100million mosque?” The poll was withdrawn after the discovery of the extremists’ attempts to manipulate the outcome.

BNP leader Nick Griffin said: “We have publicised the petition on our website encouraging people to sign and we have had a small part to play in that [reaching 270,000 signatures]. We also had an email campaign to get our people to sign it.”

Asked whether he was aware of the English Rose blog or if Ms Barham was a BNP activist, Mr Griffin said: “Even if I knew who she was I wouldn’t tell you. She may be involved in the BNP at a local level but I just don’t know. I can neither confirm nor deny.”

The website of Lancaster Unite Against Fascism says that it believes the BNP’s local candidate, Chris Hill, is a friend of Ms Barham. The group said today its inquiries indicated Ms Barham ran two websites English Rose and Cry For Freedom, both of them which it described as “rabidly anti-Islamic”.

Evening Standard, 20 July 2007

A leader in the Standard asserts that “the BNP’s involvement should not detract from the real public concern about this venture promoted by Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic group with strong links to the fundamentalist Saudi Wahabi [sic] sect. Tablighi has been accused by French intelligence of being an ‘antechamber of fundamentalism’, while two of the 7/7 bombers allegedly visited its Yorkshire HQ. The police and security services must advise planners on whether extending this group’s activities could create a security threat.” The leader goes on to warn against “turning part of West Ham into an Islamic monoculture”.

See also Reuters, 20 July 2007

For Barham’s response to the Standard piece, see English Rose, 21 July 2007