Author Archives: Bob Pitt

‘Top 10 reasons Islam might not be a religion of peace’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“A passenger revolt occurred on a Malaga-Manchester flight. Vacationing Brits refused to fly with two Arabic-speaking men. This came in the wake of arrests of 21 British-born Muslims who were plotting to blow up as many as 11 trans-Atlantic flights. A spokesman for Britain’s opposition Tory party said the passengers panicked into ‘behaving irrationally’. Fancy that, not wanting to fly with members of a faith whose adherents keep trying to blow things up. Oh, how irrational!”

Don Feder at ChronWatch, 31 August 2006

Though, to be fair, Feder isn’t hostile to all Muslims: “Occasionally, we’ll hear from a Muslim not mired in the Dark Ages. Usually, they’re wondering where all of the other moderate Muslims are. One is Irshad Manji, a fellow at Yale University and the author of ‘The Trouble With Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith’. Ms Manji can author such a book while safely ensconced in New Haven. If she wrote a book suggesting – or even hinting – that Islam is less than perfection, while residing anywhere in the Muslim world, she’d be dead.”

‘Do we really need further convincing of the threat we face?’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Hezbollah’s black-clad legions goose-step and stiff-arm salute in parade, apparently eager to convey both the zeal and militarism of their religious fascism…. Meanwhile, we in the West who worry about all this are told to fret instead about being ‘Islamophobes’. Indeed, a debate rages over the very use of ‘Islamic fascism’ to describe the creed of terrorist killers – as if those authoritarians who call for a return of the ancient caliphate, who wish to impose 7th-century sharia law, promise death to the Western ‘crusader’ and ‘Jew’, and long to retreat into a mythical alternate universe of religious purity and harsh discipline, untainted by a ‘decadent’ liberal West, are not fascists.”

No, it’s not David T at Harry’s Place. It’s Victor Davis Hanson in the US neocon journal National Review.

NRO, 1 September 2006

‘Piggybacking on terror in Britain’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pipes 9-11“Two days after British authorities broke up an alleged plot to blow up multiple aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean, the ‘moderate’ Muslim establishment in Britain published an aggressive open letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair.

“It suggested that Mr. Blair could better fight terrorism if he recognized that the current British government policy, especially on ‘the debacle of Iraq’, provides ‘ammunition to extremists’. The letter writers demanded that the prime minister change his foreign policy to ‘make us all safer’. One prominent signatory, the Labour member of Parliament Sadiq Khan, added that Mr. Blair’s reluctance to criticize Israel increased the pool of people whom terrorists can recruit.

“In other words, Islamists working within the system exploited the thwarted Islamist terror plot to pressure the British government to implement their joint wishes and reverse British policy in the Middle East. Lawful Islamists shamelessly leveraged the near death of thousands to forward their agenda.”

Daniel Pipes in the New York Sun, 29 August 2006

It’s only a few weeks since Pipes wrote, in response to the adoption of the term “Islamic fascists” by George W. Bush: “The use of Islamic fascists should be seen as part of a decades-long search for the right term to name a form of Islam that is recognizably political, extreme, and often violent…. While Islamic fascists beats terrorists, let’s hope that a better consensus term soon emerges. My vote is for Islamists.”

Front Page Magazine, 14 August 2006

So, according to Pipes’ warped reasoning, Sadiq Khan MP and the alleged plotters of terrorist atrocities are all proponents of “a form of Islam that is recognizably political, extreme, and often violent” – it’s just that Sadiq Khan pursues his objectives “within the system”.

The Muslim threat to Western universities

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), scene to a growing number of anti-Semitic incidents from an increasingly pro-Islamic campus, issued a threat to one of its Jewish students to cease his protests against anti-Semitism at the University. Gavin Gross, an American, had been leading a campaign against the deterioration of conditions for Jewish students at SOAS, which is part of the University of London. SOAS had witnessed an escalation of anti-Jewish activity, in both severity and frequency. At the beginning of the year, the Islamic Society screened a video which compared Judaism with Satanism.”

Front Page Magazine, 1 September 2006

A reason to hate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“One of the most bewildering sights since last month’s dramatic Heathrow alert has been the succession of government ministers insisting that the terrorist threat has nothing to do with Iraq and British support for American foreign policy. Such political certainties fly in the face of all the empirical evidence I have found in a year of investigating how young Muslims are radicalised and recruited to fight in Iraq, not just in Britain but across Europe and the Middle East. Whenever and wherever I asked the families and friends of suicide bombers why their loved ones had been prepared to blow themselves up, top of their list was Iraq. Some were radicalised by the alleged illegality of the US invasion, others by torture at Abu Ghraib and abuses by the American military, and all by the continuing occupation of a Muslim land by foreign forces – including the British army.”

Peter Taylor in the Guardian, 1 September 2006 

Posted in UK

Australian banned from contacting Bin Laden

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An Australian magistrate has ridiculed as “farcical” a government order banning a terrorism suspect from contacting the world’s most wanted man, Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.

Magistrate Graham Mowbray made the comment while hearing an application to extend an interim “control order” placed on Joseph “Jihad Jack” Thomas after his conviction on terrorism charges was overturned on appeal. The control order restricts Thomas’s movements, imposes a curfew and prohibits him from contacting a list of people – including Bin Laden.

Political commentators have also scorned the inclusion of Bin Laden on the list, suggesting the government should instead be delighted if Thomas could lead them to the man the US has been hunting for five years. Thomas’ lawyer Lex Lasry, said the list included 13 people who were either dead or in custody at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He described the situation as “ridiculous”.

The government used controversial new anti-terror laws for the first time on Monday to place the control order on Thomas after an appeal court overturned his conviction and five-year jail sentence for receiving money and an air ticket from Al-Qaeda.

A control order can be granted if it is thought it might prevent a terrorist attack, or if it is suspected a person has received training from a terrorist organisation.

AFP, 31 August 2006

‘Islam-phobia’ abounds in post 9/11 America

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Nearly a third of Muslims in the United States are Black. However, ‘Islam-phobia’ – negative images and buzz words that produce stereotyping, physical and verbal attacks, and racial profiling of Muslims of color, including Muslims of African descent – has exploded in this country since the events of September 11, 2001.”

Charles Hallman reports on a panel discussion on media perceptions and misperceptions on Islam during the National Association of Black Journalists annual convention in Indianapolis earlier this month.

Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, 30 August 2006

MCB ‘not doing enough to stamp out extremism’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Britain’s leading Muslim organisation is not doing enough to root out anti-Western extremism, eight out of ten people believe. A new opinion poll day suggests an overwhelming majority think the Muslim Council of Britain should do more to tackle dangerous radicalism in young Muslims. The survey, carried out for PR Week magazine, found 78 per cent of people overall, rising to nearly 90 per cent of over-55s, strongly agreed the organisation was not doing enough.

Daily Mail, 31 August 2006

Considering that most respondents have probably never even heard of the MCB, still less have any knowledge of its activities, it would be difficult to come up with a more stupid opinion poll. All the poll succeeds in registering is a high degree of ignorant anti-Muslim prejudice among the general population.

This hasn’t prevented mindless right-wing Islamophobes from seizing on the poll’s “findings” to attack the MCB. See, for example, Western Resistance, 31 August 2006

Muslim Miss England accuses Blair

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The country’s first Muslim Miss England has accused Tony Blair of fuelling hostility towards Islam in the wake of the London bombings. Hammasa Kohistani, 19, said the attacks of July 7 last year had in some ways brought communities together, as people from many different backgrounds were killed. But statements from the Government in the year since the bombings had created “negative stereotypes” of Muslims, she said.

Press Association, 31 August 2006