Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Two released without charge after Birmingham anti-terror raid

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Gareth PeirceTwo of the nine terror suspects arrested in last week’s Birmingham raids have been released without charge, their solicitor said today.

In a statement after their release from Coventry’s Chace Avenue police station in the early hours of today, the men said there had been no mention to them by police of a plot to kidnap or behead any soldier.

Their solicitor Gareth Peirce said: “They have left the police station without any better understanding of why they were there than when they first arrived seven days ago. Not a word was ever mentioned to either of them about a plot to kidnap or the grisly suggestion of a beheading or even of a soldier at all.

“Both have been met with a consistent refusal over seven days for any explanation for their arrest. They are convinced that others in the police station must be as innocent as they and urge that they also be swiftly released.”

Times, 7 February 2007

See also Liberty’s criticism of government briefings to the media: BBC News, 6 February 2007

Contempt for our culture

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Muslims are set to be the focus of political polarisation for years to come: every time under a new title, from terrorism, to integration, to faith schools, to the veil. This politically lucrative subject is favoured by politicians from the BNP to Blairites. Latest to join is the Conservative leader, David Cameron. Bar the warm words, his speech last week could have been delivered by a Howard or a Duncan Smith, betraying the same rigid notion of national identity, contempt for cultural pluralism and hostility to immigration.”

Soumaya Ghannoushi in the Guardian, 7 February 2007

Answering Michael Gove

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Michael GoveContinuing the witch-hunt of Dr Mohammad Naseem, the chairman of Birmingham Central Mosque, Michael Gove demands to know “What kind of moderate is he?”

Answer: This kind of moderate.

Gove also poses the question: “What does it say about Birmingham Central Mosque that this man is the chairman?”

To which we might reply: What does it say about the Conservative Party that a paranoid anti-Muslim bigot like Michael Gove is a Tory MP?

The roots of terror: Islam or Islamism?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“In national-socialism (Nazism), the story was of a ‘master race’ betrayed and stabbed in the back by an enemy within. Jews had to be eliminated and Europe had to be conquered to usher in the new order where the master race would rule again as it did in Germany’s glorious antiquity. In global Islamism, the villain is the west and it can be eliminated only by a military defeat or else by the conversion of every non-Muslim to Islam. The operating vision of Islam here is not the faith practiced around the world in diverse forms, but Islam as defined by Osama bin Laden: an intolerant, puritanical and fanatical sect holding a monopoly of virtue.”

Meghnad Desai at Open Democracy, 6 February 2007

The fact that Islamism itself comes in “diverse forms” is evidently lost on Desai.

‘Violence is inherent in Islam – it is a cult of death’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Violence inherent in IslamThus the headline to an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali by David Cohen in today’s London Evening Standard. The strap reads: “Human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali issues a stark warning about the growing threat of Muslim extremism in Britain”. Bullet points under the headline are:

• Islamic faith schools must close • Sharia law could happen here • Multiculturalism has failed • Islam is the new fascism

Cohen tells us: “Having grown up within Islam, Hirsi Ali believes she is uniquely placed to warn the British public that they are living under a ‘great deception’ about the true nature of Islam. ‘They have deceived themselves that the men arrested in the beheading plot last week and the 7/7 bombers are a fringe group of radical Muslims who’ve hijacked Islam and that the majority of Muslims are moderate. But they’re not. The plot to murder Muslim soldiers in the British Army is consistent with the purest teachings of Islam’.”

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Sarkozy defends Muhammad cartoons

Posted on by Bob Pitt

French interior minister and presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy has defended a weekly sued for printing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Two French Muslim groups are suing Charlie Hebdo magazine for defamation over the cartoons, printed a year ago. Mr Sarkozy noted he was often a target of the magazine but said he would prefer “too many caricatures to an absence of caricature”.

Mr Sarkozy’s letter drew concern from one of the Muslim groups behind the legal action. “He should remain neutral,” Abdullah Zekri of the Paris Grand Mosque was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. The official French Council of Muslim Faith (CFCM) voiced anger at what it said was government interference and convened an emergency meeting.

Editor Philippe Val told the court the cartoons critiqued “ideas, not men”. Speaking at the opening of the hearing, Mr Val asked: “If we no longer have the right to laugh at terrorists, what arms are citizens left with? How is making fun of those who commit terrorist acts throwing oil on the fire?”

The illustrations originally appeared in the best-selling Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005 to accompany an editorial criticising self-censorship in the Danish media. One image shows the Prophet Muhammad carrying a lit bomb in the shape of a turban on his head decorated with the Islamic creed.

Muslim groups said Charlie Hebdo‘s decision to publish the cartoons “was part of a considered plan of provocation aimed against the Islamic community in its most intimate faith”. It was “born out of a simplistic Islamophobia as well as purely commercial interests”.

“This is an attack on Muslims,” UOIF President Lhaj Thami Breze told the court according to Reuters. “It is as if the Prophet taught terrorism to Muslims, and so all Muslims are terrorists.”

BBC News, 7 February 2007

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Flawed methodology behind Policy Research report

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In a letter to the Guardian, Tariq Modood and Ziauddin Sardar question the methodology behind the recent, much-publicised Policy Research report Living Apart Together. They point out:

“The Cabinet Office’s Equality, Diversity and Prejudice Survey 2006, produced by Professors Dominic Abrams and Diane Houston, confirms that out of all social groups Muslims are at a higher risk of stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination on all relevant markers. In this light, we would urge the media to act more responsibly in its dissemination of research on Muslims and Islam.”

The complete version of the Populus poll on which the Policy Exchange report was based is now available online, by the way.