Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Oriana Fallaci dead, Robert Spencer inconsolable

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Oriana FallaciThe woman who wrote that “Muslims have been told to come here and breed like rats” has died. Robert Spencer is heartbroken:

“Many times in her last months, after she did me the honor of calling me her friend, I thought to myself, What can I do for Oriana? Of course, the only answer was to do exactly what I am doing here at this site, and in my books, and in traveling around the country speaking, trying to alert people to the reality and magnitude of the global jihad.

“I invite you, then, on this day of sadness and loss, to pay tribute to Oriana. There is no way we can make up for what we have lost in her. But the best way we can pay tribute to Oriana is by becoming Oriana. Let there be a hundred new Orianas today, a thousand new passionate and articulate and absolutely unbowed defenders of Western culture and civilization, with a fine contempt for all the many weapons of physical and psychological intimidation that the jihadists and their non-Muslim allies and tools in the Western media and government establishments use to try to silence and discredit us.

“Buy her books. Give them to your friends and coworkers. Explain to them why she said … that ‘Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam’. Explain to them why that matters for so much that they hold dear. Enlist them also in the anti-jihad resistance.

“And when we prevail, we will be able to memorialize her fittingly, as a light that shone in our darkest days. May her memory be eternal.”

Jihad Watch, 15 September 2005

Chin up, Robert. As readers of our site can confirm, there is is no shortage of racist bigots ready and willing to replace dear departed Oriana.

Islamophobia colours Austrian elections

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamophobia is coloring the election campaigns of right-leaning parties, vying to court the votes of anti-immigrant voters in the October parliamentary polls. “Far-right candidates play Islamophobia and xenophobia because they do not have real political programs,” Tarafa Baghajati, Deputy Chairman of the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), told IslamOnline.net.

Amid the aggressive campaigns, an explosive charge was planted outside the Austrian Muslim Youth (MJO) building in Vienna on Monday, but it was destroyed in a controlled explosion. A neo-Nazi slogan found on the package read “July 4 1926, Weimar” – an apparent reference to a key meeting that allowed Hitler to increase his control over the Nazi party.

In pamphlets widely circulated in the streets and election booths, the Freedom Party (FPÖ) dismisses Islam as a threat to the Christian identity of Austria. It claims that several parties, which it did not name, were trying to Islamize Europe and render its natives a minority in their own countries.

One of the FPÖ ads replaces the cross atop the famous Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, the oldest church in the country, with an Islamic crescent with the comment: “This is the true hidden desire of Muslims.” Another one shows a group of hijab-clad woman with a comment that Austria must be a social state not a country of immigrants.

Islam Online, 14 September 2006

Don’t pick on the poor pontiff

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Poor old Pope Benedict XVI (not a description I thought I’d ever use) seems to have inflamed some excitable sections of Muslim opinion around the world with his ruminations to scientists at Regensburg University during his trip to Germany this week.

“He’s not the first elderly academic inadvertently to stir up outrage with what he thought were innocent remarks and, in the modern digital age, he certainly won’t be the last, but on this occasion at least I think he’s innocent of the charges of stirring up hatred against Islam being made against him.

“It is difficult to believe that those making the claims, who include the Muslim Brotherhood, the Pakistan parliament, Sheikh Youssef al-Qardawi (a fine one to feel insulted, given what he says about Jews), the Organisation of Islamic Conferences and a senior religious official in Turkey, can possibly have read the remarks in full or in their proper context.”

The Guardian religious affairs correspondent, Stephen Bates, rallies to the defence of il papa.

Comment is Free, 15 September 2006

So does Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who blames the fuss on whingeing Muslims and implies that they would be better occupied putting their own house in order.

Carey said: “The Pope is a distinguished scholar and one unlikely to say offensive things. If he quoted something said 600 years ago we should not assume that this represents the Pope’s beliefs about Islam today. But Muslims as well as Christians must learn to enter into dialogue without crying foul. We live in perilous times and we must not only separate religion from violence but also not give religious legitimacy to violence in any shape or form.”

Scotsman, 15 September 2006

Muslims seek apology over Pope remarks

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pope Benedict’s comments about Islam could hurt religious harmony, government and religious leaders in the world’s most populous Muslim countries, Indonesia and Pakistan, said on Friday. A growing chorus of Muslim leaders have called on the Pope to apologise for the remarks he made in a speech in Germany on Tuesday when he used the terms “jihad” and “holy war”.

Pakistan’s National Assembly, parliament’s lower house, unanimously passed a resolution on Friday condemning the Pope’s comments. “This statement has hurt sentiments of the Muslims,” the resolution said. “This is also against the charter of the United Nations. This house demands the Pope retract his remarks in the interest of harmony among different religions of the world.”

Islamic scholars say the Pontiff’s comments show how little he understands Islam and some have said Islamic countries should threaten to break off relations with the Vatican.

Reuters, 15 September 2006

See also Islam Online, 15 September 2006

Canadian journalism continues to stereotype Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“A quick glance at mainstream Canadian papers these days reveals an incorrigible penchant for cultural racism. Through the use of terms that are not conventionally associated with discrimination, the media is separating Muslims from the rest of society…. In an article titled, ‘How racism has invaded Canada‘, published in the U.K. paper The Independent, celebrated correspondent Robert Fisk precisely elucidates that ‘there are now two types of Canadian citizens: The Canadian-born variety (Muslims) and Canadians (the rest)’.”

Saad Sayeed in Excalibur, 13 September 2006

Muslims must do more to integrate, says Archbishop

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Archbishop of York yesterday urged Muslims to do more to integrate into British society. Dr John Sentamu said Muslims should follow Christian teaching to ‘love thy neighbour’.

The advice came in a lecture in which Dr Sentamu condemned Islamic terrorists as murderers who pervert their faith. But he said that like others who speak out on the subject, he risked being accused of Islamophobia.

Daily Mail, 14 September 2006 

More lies about Qaradawi

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Qaradawi and MayorJonathan Freedland spares a moment from attacking the Mayor of London over his relations with Hugo Chávez to take a swipe at Yusuf al-Qaradawi:

“It’s only on foreign policy that the Mayor gets the chance to strike some of the old, Leftist poses. I am sure that the folk at City Hall are sincere in their admiration for Chavez’s social reforms – but they also love that el presidente styles himself as George W Bush’s great Latin nemesis. Standing next to him gives the Livingstone circle a rush of ideological blood.

“The less forgivable example is the relationship with Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Egyptian cleric still hailed by Livingstone as the voice of moderate Islam – yet who recently added to his earlier positions condoning wife-beating and the stoning of homosexuals with a declaration that today’s Jews bear responsibility for the death of Jesus.

“The Mayor likes al-Qaradawi’s tough line on Israel – the sheikh supports suicide bombings against Israeli civilians – so he ends up hugging a man who bends Islamic theology to take on the vilest tropes of Christian anti-Semitism.”

Evening Standard, 14 September 2006

Except that Qaradawi supports neither wife-beating, nor the stoning of homosexuals nor suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. And the story about Jews bearing responsibility for the death of Jesus originates with the Middle East Media Research Institute – an organisation headed by a former colonel in Israeli military intelligence which has a long history of misrepresenting Qaradawi’s views by publishing carefully selected extracts from his speeches and interviews. By these means MEMRI has been able to “prove”, for example, that Qaradawi believed the victims of the tsunami deserved to die and that he argued it was a duty for Muslims to become suicide bombers in Iraq.

You can see why a right-wing rag like the Evening Standard hires a supposedly liberal journalist like Freedland to write for them. His standards of journalistic integrity fit right in with theirs.

US senator rejects Bush’s ‘Islamic fascists’ slur

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold called on President Bush to refrain from using the phrase “Islamic fascists,” saying it was offensive to Muslims and has nothing to do with terrorists fighting the United States.”We must avoid using misleading and offensive terms that link Islam with those who subvert this great religion or who distort its teachings to justify terrorist activities,” Feingold said Tuesday in a speech to the Arab American Institute on Capitol Hill.

The Wisconsin senator, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, said the label “Islamic fascists” makes no sense and doesn’t help the U.S. effort to combat terrorism. “Fascist ideology doesn’t have anything to do with the way global terrorist networks think or operate, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the overwhelming majority of Muslims around the world who practice the peaceful teachings of Islam,” Feingold said.

Associated Press, 12 September 2006

Stand by for a denunciation at Dhimmi Watch.

Attacks on multicultural Britain pave the way for enforced assimilation

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Now, after 7/7, despite the discovery that the suicide bombers were homegrown and wholly British, the thinking in the UK is to embrace the backward and undoubtedly Islamophobic discourse issuing from mainland Europe. Cultural pluralism has gone too far; it threatens our values and our national safety. A line has to be drawn on difference. Ethnic minorities have now, in the domestic context of the war on terror, effectively to subsume their cultural heritage within Britishness.

“Going against the grain of its history, the UK has taken a leaf out of Europe’s monoculturalist book and descended into nativism – conflating multiculturalism with culturalism and ethnicism, assimilation with integration, and extolling British values to the exclusion of all others – foreshadowing a monolithic society and a centralised state.”

A. Sivanandan in the Guardian, 13 September 2006

An interesting article, though some might question his negative view of ’80s multiculturalism. But the last bit hits the nail on the head.

Church sign stirs anger in Florida

Posted on by Bob Pitt

muslims can convert“Muslims can convert to Christianity here!” read the sign Monday in front of the Congregational Church on Laurel Road. It was an invitation that the church’s pastor, K.C. McCay, admitted he didn’t expect anyone to accept. But coming on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it was bound to stir a response. And it did.

“If church leaders are really interested in saving people, they would find much less offensive ways to do it,” said Ahmed Bedier, director of the Tampa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “Religious leaders are adding fuel to the fire. It’s a shame.”

The church, which was founded by McCay’s father in 1977, has between 50 and 100 members, depending on the time of year. It is a conservative church that views Christianity as the only path to God. “We will not vary from that,” McCay said. “If Muslims want us to water it down, that might be all right for you, but we’re not biting.”

HeraldTribune.com, 12 September 2006