Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Australian mosque to get police guard for bikini rally

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lakemba mosquePolice have been asked to protect Australia’s largest mosque next weekend because of concerns that a bikini march staged to coincide with the anniversary of the Cronulla riots may get out of control.

The caretaker of Lakemba Mosque, the Lebanese Muslim Association, says it is taking no risks, requesting at least 32 police officers to protect the place of worship on Saturday and Sunday. Association president Tom Zreik said he met police on several occasions to ensure there would be adequate numbers of officers present to defuse problems and arrest troublemakers.

“We are treating this as something that is funny and hilarious but also taking precautions,” Mr Zreika said of the bikini march. “Some people may see this as provocation and the last thing that we want is to see anyone being attacked.”

The organiser, Melbourne grandmother Christine Hawkins, has asked women nationally to dress in bikinis and colourful beachwear and rally outside large mosques to show their disgust at comments by leading Muslim cleric, Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly, who likened women to “uncovered meat”. A white supremacist website has promoted the march.

Members of Sydney’s Muslim community began raising their concerns last week, with hundreds joining an internet discussion to find a “peaceful avenue” to protect their mosque.

Sydney Morning Herald, 3 December 2006

The old ‘multiculturalism causes terrorism’ myth

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Commenting on the report “Migrants face new ‘Britishness’ test” the Telegraph takes the opportunity to repeat the usual right-wing, anti-multiculturalist nonsense about the causes of 7/7:

“The terrorist bombings of London’s transport system on 7 July, 2005, and their failed sequel two weeks later, brought a sharp public realisation that Britain’s attitude to absorbing immigrants needed to be rethought.

“For innocent civilians to be murdered in their scores in an indiscriminate attack was appalling, but even more shocking was the revelation that these acts had been planned by British-born Muslims: young men who had been raised and educated in this country, but clearly did not feel themselves to be a part of it. In the analysis and debate that followed these traumatic incidents, the scale of the problem became evident.

“Large communities of migrants were living in virtual cultural isolation in Britain. Often making no attempt to learn English, or to accept the national identity that they had adopted, these immigrant groups had been left to their own devices.

“The policy of multi-culturalism, which saw itself as tolerant and benign, had in effect encouraged them to remain tied to their old national or ethnic loyalties, rather than to participate in mainstream British life. The consequence of this failure to assimilate was a pernicious alienation that bred underachievement and a sense of grievance.”

Editorial in Daily Telegraph, 5 December 2006

Muslim and Jewish groups unite to condemn Prager

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Conservative radio host and blogger Dennis Prager has now been criticized by both prominent Muslim and Jewish groups for his Townhall.com column attacking incoming Rep. Keith Ellison’s announcement that he will use a Quran during his ceremonial swearing-in as the first Muslim member of Congress.

Today, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Prager should lose his presidential appointment to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council because of “his intolerant views toward Islam in American Society.” Friday, the Anti-Defamation League said Prager’s position is “intolerant, misinformed and downright un-American.”

USA Today, 4 December 2006

Grieving dad can’t find son’s grave

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sajawal HussainA father, who has been unable to locate his baby’s grave since vandals removed the headstone, said he was heartbroken by another attack on the same Bradford cemetery.

Sajawal Hussain, 49, said he was devastated when he saw the destruction caused by vandals at Bowling Cemetery in Rooley Lane. About 40 gravestones in the Muslim part of the cemetery had been toppled and shattered, prompting a police investigation and high-visibility patrols.

Mr Hussain said the vandalism brought back memories of when the headstone on his son’s grave was stolen earlier this year. He said: “I can’t find my son’s grave any more, I don’t know where it is. It’s heartbreaking, words cannot explain.

Mr Hussain’s son, Ali Shan Ramzan, died in 1986 when he was only 16 hours old. His twin sister survived. Mr Hussain, who has two other daughters and two sons, said the stone marking his son’s grave had been quite small. “It was for a small child, it was just a stone,” he said.

After the marker was removed by vandals Mr Hussain spoke to his son’s funeral directors and cemetery managers who gave him the plot number and location of his son’s grave. But he said it was impossible to pinpoint the exact spot.

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Church bookshops stop selling Qur’an

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Britain’s oldest chain of church bookshops is to remove the Koran from its shelves because it believes it is “inimical” to Christianity. The decision not to stock any non-Christian holy text has been taken by SPCK Bookshops, formerly part of the 308-year-old Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. In practice, the Koran is the only text affected because those of other religions such as Judaism and Hinduism were rarely stocked by the shops, which are located near many British cathedrals or in their precincts.

The new policy follows the society’s sale of a majority stake in the chain on November 1 to the St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust, which is tied to the Eastern Orthodox church. “Stocking books which are inimical to Christianity, which without question the Koran is, could well create the wrong impression among some that we endorse the belief systems of other religions as equal or viable alternatives,” said Mark Brewer, the Texan lawyer who chairs the trust.

The stated aim of the trust is to take the bookshops back to the missionary roots of the SPCK and reverse the advance of Islam and secularism. The new approach is likely to offend some in the Church of England who promote a more accommodating approach to Muslims, but echoes recent calls by John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, and Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, to recover Christian values.

Sunday Times, 3 December 2006

Posted in UK

Prayer rooms would only aid terrorists, says Robert Spencer

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Following the forcible removal of six imams from a US Airways flight, officials at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport have said they will consider setting aside a private area for prayer and meditation. Robert Spencer is not impressed:

“Imagine how convenient it would have been for Muhammad Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari and the rest of them on 9/11 if they had had access to a place like this. They would have had a nice Muslims-only room where they could gather and arrange their boxcutters and other necessary materials in peace, go over details of strategy – and get in their final prayers. Now that would have been thoughtful airport service.”

Jihad Watch, 2 December 2006

Except that, if Spencer had bothered to read the report, instead of just gleefully seizing on an opportunity to asociate Islam with terrorism, he would see that the airport officials are not proposing a “Muslims-only room” but rather a private area for prayer and meditation generally.

‘The hidden truth of the veil: it’s all politics’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Britain, for all its faults, is not a society in which women are pestered or harassed as a matter of course. When we walk outside we have to contend with a tuneless wolf whistle at worst. For a woman here to argue that simply uncovering her face will automatically inflame the men around her to dangerous levels of lust is absurd: indeed, it is ostentatious modesty inflated to the point of vanity. To feel compelled to wear the full veil in Britain is the sexual equivalent of attending a Quaker meeting accompanied by three heavily-armed bodyguards.

“Behind this absurdity lurks something rather more worrying, however: the persistent agenda of a minority of Islamic fundamentalists to emphasise difference and push the boundaries of secular society. The arguments over Muslim women’s clothing have really been thinly disguised political battles, such as the 2002 attempt by the schoolgirl Shabina Begum to force her school to permit her to wear a cumbersome garment called the jilbab in contravention of school uniform. Begum’s brother, who was extremely vocal in court, was a reported member of the Islamic fundamentalist group Hizb-ut Tahrir….

“A clear, constant distinction between the sartorial obligations of private time and work time would surely relieve us all of mounting irritation, and deprive these wearisome attention-seekers of the substance they seem most eager to breathe in through the niqab: the oxygen of publicity.”

Jenny McCartney in the Sunday Telegraph, 3 December 2006

Ministers ‘failing to reach Muslims’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Official attempts by Whitehall departments to engage with the Muslim community following the 7/7 bombings are slated in a government-backed report published tomorrow, which says that conflicting messages are being sent out.

Bringing it Home, a report by the think tank Demos, which has been part funded by the Department for Communities and Local Government, claims:

“In the meeting rooms of Whitehall, ministers were assuring Muslim leaders of the need for partnership, but in press briefings they were talking of the need for Muslims to ‘get serious’ about terrorism, spy on their children and put up with inconveniences in the greater good of national security.”

Observer, 3 December 2006

The report (pdf) can be consulted here.

Posted in UK

Get to know Muslim neighbors, curb the paranoia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“America has to learn that Islam is not only the world’s second largest religion, it also is the second largest in the U.S. and is growing at the fastest rate. More than three-quarters of American Muslims were born here. Thirty-three percent of U.S. Muslims are people who were born in America and converted to Islam. These Muslims are here to stay; they are not going anywhere. We all have to learn to live together with mutual respect and understanding.”

Sarwat Husain in San Antonio Express-News, 3 December 2006

Newly elected Muslim lawmaker under fire

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Keith EllisonThe first Muslim elected to Congress hasn’t been sworn into office yet, but his act of allegiance has already been criticized by a conservative commentator.

In a column posted Tuesday on the conservative website Townhall.com, Dennis Prager blasted Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison’s decision to take the oath of office Jan. 4 with his hand on a Quran, the Muslim holy book.

“He should not be allowed to do so,” Prager wrote, “not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American culture.” He said Ellison, a convert from Catholicism, should swear on a Christian Bible – which “America holds as its holiest book…. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don’t serve in Congress.”

USA Today, 1 December 2006

See also Think Progress, 30 November 2006