Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Redrawing the battle lines

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Soumayya Ghannoushi“To the eyes of many across the Muslim world, the anti-war movement has unveiled another west, different from Bush’s and Blair’s west of carpet bombs, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. To these, New York, London, Madrid, and Rome are no longer the command centres of armies and war fleets only, but great capitals of protest and popular mobilisation against aggression and expansionism.

“The battle lines have been redrawn within, not between, cultures and civilisations. This is not a civilisational clash. Above all, it is a conflict over the shape of the world order, the structures of international relations and the right of nations to sovereignty and self-determination.”

Another excellent piece by Soumaya Ghannoushi.

Comment is Free, 26 September 2006

Muslims are ‘intimidating the West’ – Daniel Pipes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Writing in the New York Sun, Daniel Pipes examines six cases of Muslims attempting to “intimidate” the West, from the Rushdie affair to the Pope. He concludes:

“No conspiracy lies behind these six rounds of inflammation and aggression, but examined in retrospect, they coalesce and form a single, prolonged campaign of intimidation, with surely more to come. The basic message – ‘You Westerners no longer have the privilege to say what you will about Islam, the Prophet, and the Qur’an, Islamic law rules you too’ – will return again and again until Westerners either do submit or Muslims realize their effort has failed.”

Salman Rushdie ‘feels sorry’ for Pope

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Salman RushdieControversial novelist Salman Rushdie has said he feels “sorry” for Pope Benedict XVI, whose comments about Islam recently angered the Muslim community across the world.

“I’m in the unusual position of feeling sorry for the Pope. It’s a first for me. I just think people should calm down a bit. This immediate, manufactured outrage that takes place is getting to be excessive,” he said in an interview to The Times newspaper on Tuesday.

“Look at the things that are not being protested about. In Darfur you’ve got a Muslim massacre of other Muslims. Why aren’t there demonstrations about that in the Muslim world? That seems to me to be a much bigger thing than the Pope using a 15th-century quote,” Rushdie, against whom a ‘fatwa’ was issued by the then Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, said.

Asked to comment on the term Islamo-fascist, Rushdie said, “I think there are fascists who use Islamic ideas, so I’ve no problem with the term.”

“Islamophobia is a word that I do disapprove of quite a lot because it seems to me there is no reason why you should not dislike an idea. But if you have ideas that I don’t like, it’s perfectly okay for me to be phobic about them.”

“To use that as a term of criticism is very anti-intellectual. There are people who dislike my ideas who have not been afraid of being phobic about them,” he added.

Press Trust Of India, 26 September 2006

See also the Times, 26 September 2006

Who’s to blame for terrorism? The Islamofascists, and the Left, apparently

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Who is really responsible for the suicide bombers that target us? Is it the fault of George Bush or Tony Blair? Are we all somehow to blame? David Aaronovitch, journalist and commentator, has had enough of this argument. He asks how we’ve got to the point where British Socialists support Islamofascist Terrorism. Aaronovitch explains where the left have gone wrong on Israel, Palestine, the War in Iraq and the War on Terror.”

“David Aaronovitch: No Excuses for Terror” – documentary in the Don’t Get Me Started slot this evening, 7.15pm, on Channel 5.

Or, as today’s Morning Star prefers to summarise the contents of the programme: “The notorious reactionary launches into an extended right-wing rant.”

Postscript:  Yes, I’ve just watched it, and the Morning Star is right on the button.

Update:  With the enthusiastic approval of Atlas Shrugs, Harry’s Place has posted the documentary on YouTube.

Islamists are fascists

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Make no apologies for the use of ‘Islamic fascism’. It is the perfect nomenclature for the agenda of radical Islam, for a variety of historical and scholarly reasons. That such usage also causes extreme embarrassment to both the Islamists themselves and their leftist ‘anti-fascist’ appeasers in the West is just too bad.”

Victor Davis Hanson in National Review, 25 September 2006

Mosques attacked in France, Russia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Vandals scrawled swastikas and racist slogans on the walls of two mosques in France and threw Molotov cocktails at a mosque in central Russia on Sunday, September 24, the day French and Russian Muslims started celebrating Ramadan.

The mosque which was torched, in the northwest town of Quimper, suffered damage from the flames. Six swastikas were painted on the outside of its walls, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported Monday, September 25. In the southwestern town of Carcassonne, the other mosque was daubed with swastikas and slogans reading “France for the French”, “Arabs get out” and “Death to Islam”, officials said.

In central Russia, unidentified attackers threw Molotov cocktails at a mosque in Yaroslavl in the early hours of Sunday, but the building did not catch fire, the head of a local Muslim organization said.

A religious service was taking place at the time and there were worshippers in the room, but the bottles hit the window frame and fell back without exploding, he explained. The attackers also threw stones, breaking a number of mosque windows as well as the windows of cars parked in the courtyard.

Islam Online, 25 September 2006

Uri Avnery on Pope’s speech

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Uri Avnery (2)Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery replies to Pope Benedict:

“The story about ‘spreading the faith by the sword’ is an evil legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars against the Muslims – the reconquista of Spain by the Christians, the Crusades and the repulsion of the Turks, who almost conquered Vienna. I suspect that the German Pope, too, honestly believes in these fables. That means that the leader of the Catholic world, who is a Christian theologian in his own right, did not make the effort to study the history of other religions.

“Why did he utter these words in public? And why now? There is no escape from viewing them against the background of the new Crusade of Bush and his evangelist supporters, with his slogans of ‘Islamofascism’ and the ‘Global War on Terrorism’ – when ‘terrorism’ has become a synonym for Muslims. For Bush’s handlers, this is a cynical attempt to justify the domination of the world’s oil resources. Not for the first time in history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of economic interests; not for the first time, a robbers’ expedition becomes a Crusade. The speech of the Pope blends into this effort. Who can foretell the dire consequences?”

Gush Shalom, 23 September 2006  Also on IkhwanWeb.com, 25 September 2006

‘The shadow cast by a mega-mosque’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“It will be called the London Markaz and it is intended to be a significant Islamic landmark whose prominence and stature will be enhanced by its proximity to the Olympic site.

“When television viewers around the world see aerial views of the stadium during the opening ceremony in six years’ time, the most prominent religious building in the camera shot will not be one of the city’s iconic churches that have shaped the nation’s history, such as St Paul’s Cathedral or Westminster Abbey, but the mega-mosque.

“Its arrival in London will be a significant coup for Islam and a major event for the country as a whole. It will also make Abu Izzadeen’s depiction of that part of east London as ‘a Muslim area’ seem remarkably prescient.”

Philip Johnston in the Daily Telegraph, 25 September 2006

Mad Mel applauds Johnston’s article: “As Johnston observes, when people look at the Olympic village, itself a showcase for Britain, the dominant image will be not a church but a mosque towering over it. It will be a symbol of Islamic domination of Britain and Britain’s cultural surrender to the jihad, and as such will inspire many more jihadists on the basis that Britain has given up the cultural ghost.”

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 25 September 2006

The real Oriana Fallaci

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Fallaci seemed most concerned in her last days not to have her view of Florence marred by a minaret, as if that were as good a reason as any to unleash the dogs of war. In sum, it was otherness that revolted her. She admitted to hating Mexican immigrants in America as much as Muslims in Europe. Homosexuals were another bugbear. So were Jews. More grotesque supporters joined her new crusade. On her death September 15, unconditional praise for Fallaci came from La Padania, the organ of the hate-mongers of the xenophobic Northern League. Their language – just as hers in the end – resembled nothing so much as that of the Fascist rabble-rousers the girl Oriana went to war against in the 1940s.”

Peter Byrne at Swans.com, 25 September 2006