As a contribution to promoting harmonious interfaith relations, an evangelical Christian magazine has reprinted Patrick Sookhdeo’s anti-Muslim rant from Monday’s Evening Standard.
Author Archives: Bob Pitt
The problem with ‘critics of Islam’
“I can accept criticism of my faith and religious beliefs. Muslims do have the moral and intellectual resources, across the religious, political and social spectrum to be able to meet any such challenges that might be posed. Tough questions have been asked in the past and it is no different today…. However, what some critics of Islam engage in is something else altogether. It is not criticism, to which at least Muslims might be able to respond, but an attempt to portray Muslims as Untermenschen. This is especially true of those who set their sights on Europe’s Muslim minorities. Everything, from a lack of housing to rising rape statistics are attributed to the Muslim presence in Europe. If someone commits a crime or struggles at school then the broader questions are asked. If a Muslim does the same, the problems are reduced to the person’s faith (which may only be nominal). If Muslims aren’t terrorists then they’re practising dissimulation.
“The biggest myth pushed by some of these critics is attributing vast political power to Muslim minorities. Laws and policies, foreign and domestic, are said to have been created just to placate the ‘angry hordes’ of Muslims from London to Rome. I notice this delusion is pushed most heavily by the array of pseudo-conservative commentators across the pond, backed up by bigots on this side of the geographic divide. Even the most harshest critic of Islam should stop and think at this point: Can it really be that marginalised, underachieving, politically weak, socially divided sets of communities, who routinely receive negative media coverage (whether this is their fault or not is besides the point), are in a position to influence the agendas of governments that rule some of the most powerful, stable and prosperous nations in the world today? Well, can it be true?
“It is said that violence is a problem Muslims are faced with. Similarly, it could be said that racism is still a problem for Europe, which it has failed to fully address.”
Young Muslim women face ‘brick wall of discrimination’
Muslim girls are forging ahead at school but hit a brick wall of discrimination when they enter the workplace, the Equal Opportunities Commission says today in a report on its two-year investigation of the experiences of women from ethnic minority communities across Britain.
See also Laura Smith’s article in the same issue:
Mandy, 29 and from a Bangladeshi Muslim background, spent five years at a media company but left when it became obvious there was no career progression for her there. “Because I am a short, brown woman, my supervisor told me the clients wouldn’t take me seriously,” she says. “I would prepare the presentations but I would never give them. I was the back-office person unless it was convenient for them to use me.” After trying for several years to get a job in the cultural sector, she won a position at an arts organisation. But there the situation was even worse. “In the first week I was wearing my shalwar kameez with a shawl,” she says. “The manager said, ‘You look like a Taliban terrorist.’ I asked him why he said that and he told me we Muslims were too sensitive and needed to lighten up. I was the only Muslim woman. There was a culture of ignoring it so everyone became complicit in the treatment.”
Muslims are trying to integrate, despite New Labour’s best efforts
“The latest Government proposals to resolve the problems of extremism by encouraging integration into British society are flawed and disingenuous. Not only are they predicated on a wrong understanding on the sources of extremism, repeating Blair’s view that Muslims have no legitimate grievances against the West, they also are not ultimately geared towards the promotion and enhancement of civic-mindedness amongst Muslims….
“In spite of the actions of New Labour, whose participation in foreign crusades and targeting of the domestic Muslim community has led to the dissatisfaction that we have heard and seen so much of, Muslims have taken a lead role in civil society groups and institutions. Muslims have helped establish and participated in voluntary organisations, anti imperialist associations such as the Stop the War coalition, media monitoring and pressure groups like the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, and charitable bodies which help the needy at home and abroad.”
An interesting and wide-ranging article by Nasser Amin, on the BLINK website, 5 September 2006
The hysteria about ‘Islamic fascism’
“The rhetoric about ‘Islamic fascism’ is a pack of lies – another attempt to repackage the increasingly unpopular ‘war on terror’ by identifying a current enemy of the US government with something that everyone can be counted on to oppose.”
Alan Maass writes in Socialist Worker (US), 8 September 2006
Minaret ban in Switzerland?
Projects to build minarets in several communities in German-speaking Switzerland have come up against strong opposition from local residents.
On Monday the Zurich cantonal parliament said it would look into banning the construction of minarets across the canton. The decision came after parliament accepted an initiative from the rightwing Swiss People’s Party calling for the canton’s planning laws to be altered to forbid minarets.
The move has been condemned by centre-left and centre-right parties as well as by a leading Muslim organisation in the canton.
The Swiss Federal Commission against Racism last week called for more tolerance towards Muslims. It called on local authorities to show greater flexibility over building and zoning restrictions to allow the construction of religious buildings and to “reduce populist pressures”.
How to fight ‘Islamo-fascism’ – according to Mad Mel
“The West needs strategies conveying to the vast majority of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims that acquiescence to jihadists and their ideologies means a rupture with Western civilization. The consequences for this should be spelled out by withholding Western commerce, the Internet, arms, machinery, and know-how – all of which still represent the bulk of progress as we define it in today’s world…. In the West itself, the last vestiges of tolerance toward Islamic fundamentalism must be removed. Laws targeting extremist speech, Islamic dress, storefront unregulated mosques, and the traffic of immigrant Muslims who do not speak the language nor share the values of freedom must surface in the legal codes of America, Europe, and Australia. The West must clearly process the fact that it is facing an existential threat to its core values, and it cannot be shy about installing tools of war in its democratic practices.”
Mad Mel enthusiasticallly welcomes these proposals: “Exactly. Anything less misses the main point – that it’s ideas that kill, and that it’s these murderous ideas, not just the bomb cells, that must be destroyed.”
Molly case reveals hidden prejudice
“Against the background of shame and anger at what’s being done in our name in Iraq, and the consequent reprisals, many of those who hoped against hope that the degree of difference in the Scots’ attitude to Islam, and Muslims who’ve chosen to live in Scotland, would withstand the pressures dividing communities in England. But the reaction to the story of Misbah Iram Ahmed Rana, or Molly Campbell to us, sweeps away much of our proud claim to be more tolerant and understanding than is often the case in many English cities. Probably quite unwittingly, a 12-year-old Asian Scot has shown many of us to be suspicious and mistrustful of Muslims.”
Margo MacDonald in the Scotsman, 6 September 2006
‘A post-9/11 vocabulary test’ from Michelle Malkin
“What have you learned since the Sept. 11 attacks five years ago? The mass murder of 2,996 innocent people on American soil forced open my eyes to the Islamic holy war against the West, freedom and modernity. The battle has raged not for years or decades, but for centuries – well before the Crusades began.
“The indelible sight of workers plunging from the Twin Towers – head first, feet first, solo, hand-in-hand – roused me from slumber. The photos of children who were incinerated on United Airlines Flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 77 compelled me to start paying attention to the beliefs, goals, language and lies of those who would gladly kill my children the same way. The United Airlines Flight 93 hijackers’ final exclamation as they drove the plane into the ground is a Muslim warrior leitmotif I will never again ignore: ‘Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!'”
Michelle Malkin at Townhall.com, 6 September 2006
Virulent Islamophobia experienced among UK Muslim communities
The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) has completed a tour of the UK, during which it found a further rise in Islamophobia among the country’s Muslim communities. “One concern that was voiced repeatedly throughout the cities visited was the specter of a still virulent Islamophobia which was raising its head still higher in the wake of the alleged plane plot of recent weeks,” the MCB reported Wednesday.
The five-week tour covered 22 cities, traveling from Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland to Batley, Bradford, Burnley, Dewsbury, Leeds, Blackburn, Wakefield, Manchester and Newcastle in northern England. It also visited Muslim communities in Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester, Walsall and Wolverhampton in the Midlands, Bristol, Gloucester in the southwest, Cardiff in Wales and Brighton, Luton and London in the southeast.
“The Muslim community fully shares the need to deal firmly with any plot against national security but as partner-citizens and not as a ‘generic suspect’ to be administered mass medication or collective punishment,” said MCB Secretary General Abdul Bari.
Bari said the tour was a welcome opportunity to listen to British Muslims from many different backgrounds all across the country speaking about their aspirations and concerns. He said that he was also delighted that following discussions many additional organizations have now agreed to affiliate to the MCB, which already embraces over 400 national and local Muslim organizations, charities, mosques and schools.
The MCB, which has been under criticizing from both politicians and the media to help the government counter-terrorism concerns, said that it would be producing a report about the tour to its Central Working Committee this month to consider recommendations.