Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Community pledge on mosque attack

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Community leaders in Preston are vowing to work together to avoid a repeat of disturbances in which an Asian teenager was stabbed outside a mosque. The pledge came after a three-hour meeting in Avenham involving police, politicians and community leaders.

About 200 people were involved in trouble on Sunday night after what police said were racially motivated attacks on cars parked at a mosque. Lancashire Police said bricks and concrete blocks were thrown at cars of people attending the Jamia Masjid mosque on Clarendon Street Sunday night.

Extra patrols have been mounted in the area. There were no problems overnight.

Ch Supt Mike Barton, of Lancashire Constabulary, met with local residents on Monday along with community leaders and councillors from Preston Council.

After the meeting, council chief executive Jim Carr read out a short statement which blamed the trouble on a “minority of criminals”.

He said: “Following the recent incidents in the Avenham area of the city, instigated by a small minority of individuals linked to criminal activity, we the wider community of Preston resolve to work closely together to tackle those individuals and make Avenham safe.”

Lancashire Police said bricks and concrete blocks were thrown at cars of people attending the Jamia Masjid mosque on Clarendon Street Sunday night.

About 100 officers were called to the scene after disorder broke out, though there were no arrests. A 16-year-old boy was stabbed in the arm but was not seriously injured.

BBC News, 3 October 2006

Pope’s attack on Islam vindicates BNP, fascists claim

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pope's QuoteUnder the headline “Pope’s quote echoes Nick Griffin’s concern”, the British National Party claims, not entirely unreasonably, that Pope Benedict’s attack on Islam bears a certain similarity to that made by BNP leader Nick Griffin:

“The Department of Public Prosecutions must be cursing the Pope after his remarks on Islam appeared to echo those of the British National Party chairman.

“In a speech to BNP members, Nick Griffin warned those present that Islam was a ‘wicked and vicious’ faith. These words and his chillingly correct prediction that 2nd generations Muslims living in Britain would become Britain’s first suicide bombers, led to him being arrested and charged with inciting racial hatred.

But now Pope Benedict XVI, in a lecture at a German University, has quoted a Byzantine emperor who characterized the Prophet Mohammed as introducing ‘things only evil and inhuman’ to the world and spreading Islam by the sword. As if to prove him correct, Muslims responded by burning down churches and killing a nun.”

Freedom, October 2006

Why I’m banned in the USA – Tariq Ramadan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

tariq-ramdan3Tariq Ramadan answers the US government’s claim that he has been banned from the US because he gave money to two Palestinian charities:

“In its letter, the U.S. Embassy claims that I ‘reasonably should have known’ that the charities in question provided money to Hamas. But my donations were made between December 1998 and July 2002, and the United States did not blacklist the charities until 2003. How should I reasonably have known of their activities before the U.S. government itself knew? I donated to these organizations for the same reason that countless Europeans – and Americans, for that matter – donate to Palestinian causes: not to help fund terrorism, but because I wanted to provide humanitarian aid to people who desperately need it. Yet after two years of investigation, this was the only explanation offered for the denial of my visa. I still find it hard to believe.”

The American Muslim, 2 October 2006

‘Let’s have an open and honest discussion about white people’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Gary Younge“Any candid discussion of race, immigration and asylum that was not racist would not just acknowledge fear and prejudice but challenge them both. Since ministers are not able to do that about ethnic minorities, maybe they should start off with a subject with which they are more familiar. Let’s have an open and honest discussion about white people.

“Let’s start by talking about how they don’t want to integrate. The stubborn rump of around 10% of whites who, according to a 2002 Mori poll, are hostile to racial equality and antagonistic to the very existence of non-white people in this country. Given a percentage point either way, that is the consistent figure who believe that to be truly British you must be white and who do not believe it is important to respect the rights of minority groups.

“Let’s discuss their inability to choose moderate leaders and the propensity of the leaders they do choose to murder innocent civilians abroad by their thousands. Let’s analyse their vulnerability to extremists such as the British National party, not to mention elsewhere in Europe, where fascism is once again a mainstream ideology.

“Let’s talk about the religious intolerance that rages in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and can be found in the highest levels of the state, where only Protestants can marry into royalty. And let’s not forget the terrorists white people have been rearing at home for years, whether they are bombing Brick Lane, parliament or shopping centres in Manchester, and the no-go areas in housing estates, football terraces and boardrooms.

“Only then perhaps will it become sufficiently apparent for those with insufficient imagination just how crude and crass the framing of the debate about Muslims has been. Any group of people will rightly bristle at the demand to answer collectively for the acts of individuals with whom they share an identity but over whom they have no control.

“The tolerant, secular, liberal society into which Muslims are being asked to integrate lies somewhere between mythology and a work in progress and, the responsibility for transforming it into a lived reality lies with all of us.”

Gary Younge in the Guardian, 2 October 2006

Teenager stabbed in mosque attack

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A 16-year-old Asian youth was stabbed in the arm as disturbances involving 200 people flared following attacks on cars parked at a mosque. Police said the attacks were racially motivated, and extra officers were patrolling the Avenham area of Preston.

Bricks and concrete blocks were thrown at cars of people attending the mosque. Chief Supt Mike Barton said: “These problems are being caused by a small group of criminals in the area intent on intimidating the local community.”

The stabbed youth was not seriously injured and there were no arrests, police said.

The disturbance follows the death of an Asian student in July after a fight between up to 40 Asian and white youths nearby, which police described as a “suspected race attack”.

About 100 officers were called to the Jamia Masjid mosque when disorder broke out on Sunday evening on Clarendon Street.

Ch Supt Barton said there was a growing element of criminal, anti-social behaviour in the area and those responsible needed ridding from the community.

He said: “This incident of stone throwing is an example of that, and as you can expect, people are unhappy with being victimised.”[On Sunday] a number of cars were damaged outside the mosque and people who were worshipping inside came out to see what was going on. Not surprisingly, they have been very angry.”

He said because of the large number of people on the streets, police decided to deploy more officers to offer reassurance and prevent disorder.

Patrols are being boosted and police are using video cameras to gather evidence. They are warning that people who launch reprisals will be arrested.

In July Shezan Umarji, 20, was killed on the Callon Estate, one and a half miles away from Avenham.

BBC News, 2 October 2006

53% of Danes: publication of cartoons was right

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A majority of Danes still support the decision to print the controversial Prophet Muhammad cartoons that enraged much of the Islamic world, according to a poll published Saturday on the one-year anniversary of the printing.

The survey by pollster Ramboell Management – published by the Jyllands-Posten daily, the newspaper that first printed the drawings – showed 53 percent of Danes still think it was correct to publish the cartoons as a demonstration of free speech.

According to the poll, 38 percent of Danes now think the drawings should never have been published, while 9 percent said they were not sure. Ramboell interviewed 1,041 people between September 4-7. No margin of error was given for the poll.

Associated Press, 30 September 2006

‘Crude stereotyping’ – Osama Saeed replies to Muriel Gray

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muriel Gray doesn’t let the facts get in the way of a good rant against Islam and Muslims (Comment, September 24). The 7/7 bombers were not all, in fact, from devout Muslim families. Jamal Lindsay, for one, was a convert, as indeed was Richard Reid, the previous shoebomber.

But the main point is yet again we see Gray adopt the most extreme formulation of Islam to advance her argument, and then paint the whole Muslim community with it. Bin Laden would be proud of her. I regard myself as a pretty devout Muslim, but don’t recognise the views she ascribes to me about women, homosexuals, freedom of speech, democracy and the West.

What she is guilty of is exactly what she accuses Muslims of when it comes to the West – caricaturing and stereotyping with the “kaleidoscopic richness and beauty of the country’s (in this case “religion’s”) culture erased”.

It would be easy to debunk her argument that practising Islam leads to bombing by making a similarly stupid argument that anyone that drinks alcohol, doesn’t pray, has sex outside marriage, and indeed writes foaming-at-the-mouth articles against Muslims in newspapers, is just a stone’s throw away from waging military war on the Muslim world.

Osama Saeed
Scottish spokesman
Muslim Association of Britain

Sunday Herald, 1 October 2006

More ‘Clash of Civilisations’ drivel

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Soon after 9/11, the Bush administration labeled the conflict into which it plunged this country the ‘war on terror’…. The more pressing question is: Are we, or are we not, engaged in a larger clash of civilizations? If the answer is ‘We are’, the clash long predates 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and George W. Bush. It predates America itself. It is a clash between Western civilization and the Islamic world.”

Philadelphia Inquirer, 1 October 2006

German politician blames Islam for religious violence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A top German politician and close ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel said today Islam was one of the main factors in religiously motivated violence, and urged Germany’s Muslims to reject all forms of brutality. Ronald Pofalla, general-secretary of Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), also said many Muslims would find it painful that their religion was being abused for violent ends.

“Certainly it is painful for many Muslims that their religion is misused for violence,” Pofalla wrote in a guest column for tomorrow’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper. “But… the problem of religiously motivated violence is today almost exclusively a problem of Islam. In addition, many of the victims are Muslims themselves,” he said, according to extracts released today.

The Central Council of Muslims in Germany criticised Pofalla’s comments, saying such generalisations reinforced stereotypes and prejudices. “I get the impression that some CDU people want to take one step forward and two back,” its general-secretary said.

Reuters, 1 October 2006

Nasrallah misrepresented

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The most famous opinions about Jews ascribed to Hizbullah’s leader are: ‘If they [the Jews] all gather in Israel it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide’ and ‘They [Jews] are a cancer which is liable to spread at any moment’. Charles Glass, the journalist who specialises on Lebanon and was once held hostage by Hizbullah, says both are likely fabrications.”

Rolled Up Trousers, 30 September 2006

See also Jews Sans Frontieres, 29 September 2006