Author Archives: Bob Pitt

‘Fanatics – fit in or ship out’, says Jon Gaunt

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jon_Gaunt“The Dutch are right to ban the Burka and we should do the same. It’s not a religious obligation and is increasingly being worn as an act of defiance against the majority way of life.

“Hiding your face isn’t about modesty, it’s about cowardice and a refusal to engage with the host society. It is intended to separate out these women from the mainstream. It is a sign of subjugation, even indoctrination, that women are second-class citizens.

“Well, at the risk of upsetting these extremists, I’m afraid I want to live in a society where women are equal and where my two beautiful girls have the same opportunity as boys. I can’t see how they can get that if they’re dressed to make them almost invisible from modern society.

“Inayat Bunglawala, a man obviously, from the Muslim Council of Britain, has reacted with horror to the Dutch proposals, saying: ‘One of the most wonderful things about living in Britain is freedom of association.’ How the hell can you associate with someone whose face you can’t see? How does dressing like a 14th-Century Dalek encourage freedom of association? The answer is that it clearly doesn’t.

“Our politicians should stop playing to the minorities and listen to the majority of Brits who are sick to the back teeth of this vocal but small band of religious extremists who want to spread division at every opportunity. We should ban the Burka, lift the veil and tell these fanatics to fit in or ship out.”

Jon Gaunt in The Sun, 21 November 2006

Far-right racists make gains in Belgium on anti-Muslim platform

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Vlaams BelangAnti-immigrant sentiment is spreading across Europe, boosting support for populist, right-wing parties. One of the most successful is in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium. Backers of the party, known as Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest Party) criticize Muslim immigrants for failing to assimilate. In the Vlaams Belang’s stronghold of Hoboken, on the outskirts of Antwerp, the party soared in local elections last month. It won 41 percent of the vote, far ahead of all other parties.

Sitting at the bar of a smoky cafe, school bus driver Eric Delawer says this working-class town used to vote socialist. But in recent years, with the influx of large numbers of Muslim immigrants, he says the people of Hoboken have turned to Vlaams Belang. “The immigrants don’t integrate,” he says. “They separate themselves from us. They want to stay among themselves. I say, if they don’t adapt to our customs, the only option is to send them back to their home countries.”

“We are not in favor of the famous multicultural society,” says Filip Dewinter, the party’s leader. “We do not have a problem with legal immigrants if they are willing to assimilate to our culture, our way of life, our values,” he says. “But we can’t allow that they come to our country, that they come to Europe, and they keep their own culture, their own religion – Islamic religion – which is not always compatible with our way of life, our culture.”

NPR, 21 November 2006

Mad Mel goes to Philadelphia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

madmelMelanie Phillips has been wowing her right-wing audience at Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum in Philadelphia. Joseph Puder reports:

“‘Britain stands at the precipice.’ Such is the view of British journalist Melanie Phillips in her recently published book, Londonistan, in which she argues that Britain and Europe are facing a civilizational test – and they are in danger of failing….

“In her book, Phillips pieces together the story of how Londonistan developed. Britain, she points out, is experiencing a collapse of self-confidence and national identity. The result is a paralyzing multiculturalism as well as a powerful instinct for appeasing extremists. In her remarks last week, Phillips suggested that the current climate threatens to ‘undermine the alliance with America and imperil the defense of the free world’….

“What Britons do not grasp, Phillips argues, is that they are in a war with an enemy that seeks to destroy them and impose an Islamic way of life governed by Sharia law – the latest polls indicate that 40 to 60 percent of British Muslims want Sharia law to govern Britain – thereby destroying their democratic institutions and nullifying their individual freedoms. ‘We do not understand in Britain that we are fighting a religious war. Instead, we’re appeasing it’, Phillips said.”

Front Page Magazine, 21 November 2006

6 imams removed from flight at US airport after 3 conduct traditional prayers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Six Muslim imams were removed from a US Airways flight at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and questioned by police for several hours before being released, a leader of the group said.

The six were among passengers who boarded Flight 300, bound for Phoenix, around 6:30 p.m. Monday, airport spokesman Pat Hogan said.

A passenger initially raised concerns about the group through a note passed to a flight attendant, according to Andrea Rader, a spokeswoman for US Airways. She said police were called after the captain and airport security workers asked the men to leave the plane and the men refused.

“They took us off the plane, humiliated us in a very disrespectful way,” said Omar Shahin, of Phoenix.

The six Muslim scholars were returning from a conference in Minneapolis of the North American Imams Federation, said Shahin, president of the group. Five of them were from the Phoenix-Tempe area, while one was from Bakersfield, California, he said.

Three of them stood and said their normal evening prayers together on the plane, as 1.7 billion Muslims around the world do every day, Shahin said. He attributed any concerns by passengers or crew to ignorance about Islam. “I never felt bad in my life like that,” he said. “I never. Six imams. Six leaders in this country. Six scholars in handcuffs. It’s terrible.”

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, expressed anger at the detentions.

“CAIR will be filing a complaint with relevant authorities in the morning over the treatment of the imams to determine whether the incident was caused by anti-Muslim hysteria by the passengers and/or the airline crew,” Hooper said. “Because, unfortunately, this is a growing problem of singling out Muslims or people perceived to be Muslims at airports, and it’s one that we’ve been addressing for some time.”

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Dutch Muslims condemn ‘populist’ burqa ban move

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim leaders in the Netherlands have condemned a proposed ban on burqas, describing the eve-of-election pledge as an opportunistic overreaction and a populist attempt to win the anti-immigration vote.

The announcement on the burqa from the outgoing government took many politicians by surprise because the twin issues of Islam and immigration had barely featured in the campaign up to that point.

But the integration of Muslims in the country remains a sensitive issue two years after the murder of the film-maker Theo van Gogh, whose film Submission criticised Islam.

On Friday, the hardline, outgoing, immigration minister, Rita Verdonk, said the cabinet had decided it was “undesirable that face-covering clothing – including the burqa – is worn in public places for reasons of public order, security and protection of citizens.”

She added: “From a security standpoint, people should always be recognisable and, from the standpoint of integration, we think people should be able to communicate with one another.”

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Danes’ anti-immigrant backlash marks radical shift

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An anti-immigrant backlash, bordering on xenophobia, is sweeping across Europe. Sentiments once associated with ultra right-wing parties are becoming mainstream. Many taboos are being broken – nowhere more starkly than in Denmark – the erstwhile poster child of the welcoming and nurturing welfare state.

Currently, the nation’s best-selling book is called Islamists and Naivists. “We compare Islamism to Nazism and communism because they are all three of them a totalitarian ideology,” says Karen Jespersen, who co-wrote the book with her husband, Ralf Pittlekow.

Their politically incorrect analysis would suggest they’re right-wingers. But they’re diehard Social Democrats – proud veterans of the student protests of the 1960s. Jespersen, a feminist and a former interior minister in charge of immigration issues, says the radicals’ goal is the Islamization of Europe.

NPR, 20 November 2006

Study rejects claim that Muslim areas harbour terrorists

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims living in ghettos are no more likely to become involved in terrorism than those living in mixed areas, according to research to be published today. The study by Manchester University says that “terrorist hotbeds” are a fantasy and concludes that Islamist terrorists are as likely to come from towns and cities with small Muslim populations as from so-called “self-segregating” Muslim areas.

Guardian, 20 November 2006