Jakob Illeborg examines the case of Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, who has been denounced by right-wing Danish politicians for stating that she will continue to wear the headscarf if elected to parliament.
Author Archives: Bob Pitt
Years after 9-11, American Muslims increasingly targets of hate
“Sometimes it takes a real yahoo to wake up a village. So, just wanted to say thanks to the person who sent Altaf Ali, executive director of the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a death threat last week. It carried the usual ‘Death to Islam’ rantings. But this one also had the chilling message: ‘Altaf Ali is a walking dead man.’
“Good job. We needed the wake-up call. Needed to remember that, six years after 9-11, Muslims in America continue to be the targets of violence and abuse. We especially need it now, with President Bush threatening a veto of legislation that would expand the national hate crime law.”
Ralph de la Cruz in the Florida Sun-Sentinel, 8 May 2007
Preston mosque attacked
A councillor has condemned vandals who attacked a Preston mosque which has been at the centre of a planning row.
The windows of the Masjid-E-Salaam mosque in Fulwood have been smashed three times in the past six weeks. This follows the approval of controversial plans to demolish the current building in Watling Street Road, to make way for a large, traditional looking mosque and Islamic school in the conservation area.
College ward councillor Bobby Cartwright said: “It’s absolutely appalling. The people who have done this should be found and reprimanded. The people who have done this should be found and reprimanded.”
Despotic secularism
“I am now more convinced than ever that there is no secularism, per se, ever associated with democracy, openness, tolerance and other lofty political values, and no religion, per se, ever linked to intolerance, irrationality, violence, fanaticism and all that is deficient and disturbing. Neither has a monopoly over virtue or evil. Secularism may be allied to repression and despotism; religion to democratisation and openness. In Turkey today, the generals, secularism’s self-appointed ‘absolute guardians’, are the ones threatening to suspend the democratic process and overthrow the elected government and the Islamist-rooted AKP government the one defending democracy and pluralism, and appealing to the nation to uphold them.”
Soumaya Ghannoushi at Comment is Free, 7 May 2007
See also Lenin’s Tomb, 2 May 2007 and Austrolabe, 5 May 2007
Meanwhile, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown takes a different view of despotic secularism: “Our universities do nothing as Muslim women are compelled or pulled into wearing head and body covers. We do not defend our secular state. They do in Turkey, though some with unwarranted viciousness, which is self-defeating. I hope they can save their country’s political pillars being lent on with such strength by Islamicists. They still have a chance and can avoid, I hope, the charms of the Iranian Islamic idyll. We must, too.”
Don’t be fooled by propaganda on Islam
“There is an ongoing slander campaign against Islam, claiming that it is a religion that promotes violence and hinting that it seeks world conquest.”
Charley Reese writes in the Baxter Bulletin, 8 May 2007
LGF endorses Panorama
Little Green Footballs describes yesterday’s Panorama documentary as “a scary little show … on the refusal of British Muslims to integrate into mainstream society, and their takeover of the town of Blackburn”.
See also “Political correctness stifling debate over segregation in our towns”, Daily Mail, 7 May 2007
Hijab and Islamophobia
“I can’t quite figure out how holding criminals who happen to be Muslims responsible for their crimes translates into the ‘all Muslims are terrorists’ attitude now rampant. Nor do I understand how criticising the oppression of women who among other things may be forced to wear hijab against their will, automatically makes hijab a symbol of the oppression of women by Islam. To me this sounds like the same old demonising and essentialising of the ‘other’ that has gone on for centuries. You know, the tropes that persist until today. They position all African peoples as inferior savages; all travellers (previously known as gypsies) as thieves and dishonest; all Jews as ‘shylocks’ etc. Curious, that considering the overwhelming list of crimes committed against humanity by people with white skin from the 15th century to today’s Iraq, this type of ‘logic’ never leads to the conclusion that ‘all whites are depraved and deranged murderers and thieves’.”
‘At last the veil banned in class’ – Express celebrates
“Muslim veils can be outlawed from school classrooms, head teachers were told last night. The Government’s legal chief confirmed that the full-face niqab can be justifiably ruled out on the grounds of school uniform policy.
“Lord Falconer, a Cabinet minister, said that this also included other Islamic religious garments such as the full-length jilbab gown. He claimed that common sense rather than concerns about human rights should govern what pupils wear to school.”
A leader in the Express applauds Lord Falconer’s position:
“This is a very welcome development. For, while wearing the veil is a matter of personal choice – and accepted in our country which is famed for its tolerance – there are times when it is obvious that this Muslim symbol clashes with the British way. Sometimes it as simple as being able to see the faces of our fellow citizens as we go about our daily business. The school classroom is one such area, the courtroom is another.
“There are times when members of the Muslim community go too far and the Daily Express is not afraid to say so. The setting up of Islamic courts applying Sharia law is one such example.
“The Lord Chancellor has now made it possible for schools to say ‘No’ to the veil. Head teachers have been told that common sense does not conflict with human rights. In other words, they have been given the green light to just say ‘No’ when the occasion demands it.”
‘In bed with the enemy’
“Imagine if Mayor Bloomberg invited a Muslim cleric from Egypt known for his advocacy of female genital mutilation, wife-beating, ‘martyrdom’ bombings in Israel and Iraq, and the murder of homosexuals and converts from Islam to be an honored guest of the city. New Yorkers would naturally rebel against the mayor, who would certainly survive politically. But what if he did something even more brazen and perverse: invite the cleric back. Surely, it couldn’t happen here. But it did happen in London last year under the aegis of left-wing mayor, Ken Livingstone. Livingstone considers Yusuf al-Qaradawi (the cleric’s name) a huggable, ‘moderate’ liaison between East and West. Anyone arguing otherwise Livingstone accuses of xenophobia or – a ridiculous term now gaining traction in the United Kingdom – ‘Islamophobia’.”
Yet another right-wing boost for Nick Cohen’s book, What’s Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way, this one by Michael Weiss in the New York Daily Post, 6 May 2007
Of course, the visit by Dr Qaradawi actually took place in July 2004. But when you have such a lightminded attitude to the facts in general why bother getting the date right?
Ruth Dudley Edwards echoes Mark Steyn’s paranoid Islamophobic ravings
“In my many conversations with like-minded people about the threat that radical Islam poses to the British way of life – and, indeed, to European civilisation – we frequently end by despairingly agreeing that the West seems intent on committing political and cultural suicide. When we look starkly at the demographic statistics, the wimpishness of our Establishment in the face of the threat, the perversions perpetrated by political correctness and our own passivity, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that within a couple of generations, Islam will be in control in Europe….
“Consider first at a few chilling statistics. Europeans are failing to reproduce. Just to keep the population steady, you need 2.1 live births per woman. However, in 2005, the European average was 1.38. In Ireland it was 1.9, France 1.89, Germany 1.35 and Italy 1.23. Britain scored in the middle of this range with 1.6, but that was because – like France – we have a large Muslim population with a high birth rate. Indeed, Muslims are outbreeding non-Muslims throughout Europe….
“Confronted with this demographic-revolution and official statistics which showed there were too few young people to support an ageing population, European governments decided to embrace immigration as an inherent good without giving any thought to the consequences. As a result, politicians and businessmen assured us that we had to have economic growth in order to prop up ever greater public spending and that it could be provided only by importing large numbers of workers from abroad. But why wasn’t there a national debate about whether it was wise to mortgage our cultural future for the sake of a mess of financial pottage?
Where were the politicians arguing against the doctrine of multiculturalism which holds that upholding majority values is somehow illegitimate? Who among the liberal elite’s commentariat were challenging the moral relativism that flew in the face of sense and sensibility by insisting that the culture of Shakespeare, the King James Bible, Keats’s poetry, Turner’s paintings and Elgar’s music was no more important than – and probably morally inferior to – the cultures of other imported, minorities?