“Islam needs a reformation, but many of its opinion leaders recognise that they will not benefit from a more tolerant, less ideological religion. They see Islam and their role in Islam as immutable, and denounce as apostates men, and women such as the Canadian Irshad Manji especially, who call for a renaissance of critical thinking. But unless there is more respect for such calls, more tolerance of women’s rights and views and less fear in denouncing extremism, the government dialogue with Muslim leaders will yield little. Only when moderation commands the respect, credibility and allegiance of more Muslims will the nexus with terrorism be challenged.”
Author Archives: Bob Pitt
No to talks with Muslim fanatics, says Polly Toynbee
“Yesterday Ruth Kelly set out to talk to the Muslim community – again. It’s hard to know what that means. There are no ‘talks’ available with religious fanatics seeking paradise in an impossible cause.”
Polly Toynbee in the Guardian, 15 August 2006
‘It is Islamic fascism’
“By now it should be patently clear that we in the West are at war with a hydra-headed and barbaric enemy that has not a shred of humanity and relishes the bloodletting of tens of thousands of innocents, including other Muslims. It is at least as brutal as the Nazis and communist enemies we have faced in the past. Although radical Islam is not militarily as powerful as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, it has the huge strategic advantage of suicide bombing, which is immune to deterrence. Should any of its constituent elements – the Iranian Government or al-Qa’ida – acquire nuclear weapons, it will likely attempt genocide against Israel and create devastation in the West of an unprecedented kind.”
Stephen Morris in The Australian, 14 August 2005
Fox News priest tricked us, says mosque’s imam
Representatives of an east London mosque used by several of the terror suspects reacted angrily yesterday to what they called a “sick stunt” by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News channel.
Mohammed Shoyaib, the imam of the Musjid-e-Umer mosque in Walthamstow, complained that he and other elders were tricked by a representative from the cable channel, a priest who said he was working for the Vatican and wanted to talk peace.
“He introduced himself as priest working in Rome,” said Mr Shoyaib. “Then he said he was working for peace in the world, that all faiths should work together for peace, that he needs a united message of peace for the American people. Only later he said he was from ‘a sister network of Sky News’, but never mentioned Fox.”
The man spent several minutes conversing on camera with the imam and elders, but they reacted furiously when they learned he was Father Jonathan Morris, a religious pundit for Fox News.
On Thursday, in the aftermath of the arrests by anti-terrorist police, Mr Morris wrote on his Fox News blog:
“Today, officials have uncovered a major terrorist plot to blow up a group of planes on that same route. This is America and the world in 2006, and we are getting used to it. This time they got the bad guys, thank God. As we move forward as a country in these troubling times, our war must be first and foremost against the ideas that shape the hearts of the Muslim masses.”
Bush’s belief in a worldwide Islamist conspiracy is foolish and dangerous
Max Hastings takes issue with George Bush:
“In his regular radio address to the American people on Saturday he linked the British alleged aircraft plotters with Hizbullah in Lebanon, and these in turn with the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. All, said the president of the world’s most powerful nation, share a ‘totalitarian ideology’, and a desire to ‘establish a safe haven from which to attack free nations’…. In the United States a disturbingly large minority of people – polls suggest around 40% – remain willing to accept Bush’s assertions that Americans and their allies, which chiefly means the British, are faced with a single global conspiracy by Islamic fundamentalists to destroy our societies….
“Bush has chosen to lump together all violent Muslim opposition to what he perceives as western interests everywhere in the world, as part of a single conspiracy. He is indifferent to the huge variance of interests that drives the Taliban in Afghanistan, insurgents in Iraq, Hamas and Hizbullah fighting the Israelis. He simply identifies them as common enemies of the United States….
“Far from acknowledging that any successful strategy for addressing Muslim radicalism must include a just outcome for the Palestinians, he endorses Israel’s attempt to crush them and their supporters by force of arms alone, together with Israeli expansion on the West Bank….
“There is no chance that the west will get anywhere with the Muslim world until the US government is willing to disassemble a spread of grievances in widely diverse societies, examine them as separate components, and treat each on its merits…. The madness of Bush’s policy is that he has made a wilful choice to amalgamate the grossly irrational, totalitarian and homicidal objectives of al-Qaida with the just claims of Palestinians and grievances of Iraqis.
“Tony Blair … clings to a messianic conviction that he must continue to endorse American statements and policies to maintain his restraining influence on George Bush. This invites speculation about what the president might do if Tony was not at his elbow. Seize Mecca?”
ADC urges President to reject Pipes recess appointment
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) today joined with other civil rights, peace and justice, Arab-American, Muslim, Christian, Jewish and inter-faith groups to urge President George W. Bush not to make a recess appointment of Daniel Pipes to the Board of Directors of the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) and withdraw his nomination. Press reports indicate a recess appointment of Pipes may be imminent.
‘At war with Islamic fascists’ – Daniel Pipes isn’t convinced
Daniel Pipes questions Bush’s reference to “Islamic fascism” but asserts that a more relevant comparison is to Marxism-Leninism!
Pipes writes: “I applaud the increasing willingness to focus on some form of Islam as the enemy but find the word fascist misleading in this context. Few historic or philosophic connections exist between fascism and radical Islam. Fascism glorifies the state, emphasizes racial ‘purity’, promotes social Darwinism, denigrates reason, exalts the will, and rejects organized religion – all outlooks anathema to Islamists. In contrast, Radical Islam has many more ties, both historic and philosophic, to Marxism-Leninism.”
What term does Pipes prefer? He explains: “While Islamic fascists beats terrorists, let’s hope that a better consensus term soon emerges. My vote is for Islamists.” This of course collapses terrorist micro-groups like Al-Qaida and mass reformist currents like the Muslim Brotherhood into a single category, rather as Cold War ideologues denounced disparate political tendencies – from Stalinists to Trotskyists to left social democrats – as Communists.
Man denounces Islam outside US candidate’s home
A demonstrator sat down Saturday near the home of a Muslim candidate for the Maryland House of Delegates with a hand-lettered sign bearing a crude denunciation of Islam. The sign was apparently aimed at Saqib Ali, a Gaithersburg resident who is running in the Sept. 12 Democratic primary for a seat in House District 39.
The demonstrator, who wore a T-shirt reading “This mind is an Allah-free zone,” planted himself near the house in the Quince Orchard Estates development that Ali also uses as a campaign office. Ali, a software engineer who is challenging three incumbents, said he went out into his small cul-de-sac to look at the man but said nothing to him.
“I knew he was there to bait me,” Ali said. According to Ali, the man began saying, “You are a terrorist…. You guys are violent extremists.” Ali said that he remained silent and that the man, appearing upset, stood and left. Police were later called, and Ali said he agreed with their assessment that nothing illegal took place.
Scepticism is needed
“The great war reporter Claud Cockburn, who advised journalists to never believe anything until it has been officially denied, must be turning in his grave at the performance of some in reporting the alleged planned terror attack on a number of planes travelling between Britain and America.
“The supine parroting of official truths provided by the police, the intelligence services and government has once again been to the fore among print and broadcast media. It was as though weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the attempted cover up of the Jean Charles De Menezes shooting in Stockwell and the raid by 250 police on a house in Forest Gate never happened. The historic memory of many reporters’ minds seems once again to have been wiped clean in the face of officialdom.
“As with past events the Islamophobic attitudes of many reporters were immediately on display showing a breathtaking ignorance of the Muslim community. Again, as at Forest Gate, reporters following up the story were seen suggesting that a person who had grown a beard or suddenly took a deeper interest in the Muslim religion was immediately suspect on that basis. The same reporters will no doubt be surprised when they then go to Muslim areas in the future and find they get a less than friendly welcome.”
Paul Donovan at Comment is Free, 14 August 2006
Harry’s Place – Front Page Magazine UK?
A few days ago we posted a link to an article by Julie Burchill from Ha’aretz, in which she described Muslims as “big swarthy men with tea-towels on their heads”. This was taken up at Pickled Politics, where it was suggested that Burchill should join the BNP, who share her predilection for racist slurs of that sort. We have our differences with PP, but at least they can recognise a piece of offensive bigotry when they see it.
Not so the neo-con bloggers at Harry’s Place, which of course claims to be a leading component of the “decent Left”. Burchill’s disgraceful statement has been cited in a comment criticising a post by “Marcus” that depicts Burchill as part of the feminist vanguard in the struggle against Islamo-fascism.
To which “Brownie” replies: “The paragraph in which Burchill writes about ‘big swarthy men with tea-towels on their heads’ doesn’t mention Muslims, only Islamists. Her phraseology is, at worst, a little ignorant, but racist or bigotted it ain’t.”
Yeah, right. I can imagine what the response at Harry’s Place would be if someone posted a comment condemning “hook-nosed Zionists with their ridiculous skull-caps” and then rejected charges of anti-semitism on the grounds that they had referred to Zionists not Jews.
In the interests of transparency, I think it would helpful if Harry’s Place abandoned the pretence that they have anything to do with the Left, or indeed “decency” of any sort, and fessed up to what they really are – a bunch of right-wing racist scum. Perhaps they should consider changing their url to “http://frontpagemag.co.uk”?
Postscript: I see that David Hirsh, not to be outdone by his Euston Manifesto pals at Harry’s Place, has actually reproduced Burchill’s Ha’aretz piece on the Engage website, with evident approval. (Hat tip: JustPeaceUK.) Yes, that’s the same David Hirsh who has indignantly accused the Mayor of London of “low-level racist abuse against a Jewish journalist”.