Author Archives: Bob Pitt

‘Muslim Brotherly Hate’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Today, the radical Islamist community stands strong in Texas and Connecticut as one unified force, under the aegis and aura of the Muslim Brotherhood, ready to assist the coming generation in its future quest to become even stronger. Unfortunately, the unity that brings these groups together is also the same unity that will attempt to destroy us from within – all along, while America provides them with a platform to express their anger and assist in our demise.”

Joe Kaufman at Front Page Magazine, 30 June 2006

Substitute “London” for “Texas and Connecticut” and “Britain” for “America” and it could be David T of Harry’s Place writing, couldn’t it?

‘Islamophobia’ fears cited in Canada

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Smashed mosque windows and workers losing their jobs because of their ethnic background, are among signs that anti-Arab sentiment is on the rise in Ontario, the Ontario Human Rights Commission said yesterday.

Chief commissioner Barbara Hall expressed dismay at an increase in “Islamophobia” in Ontario, as she released the commission’s annual report at a news conference at the Ontario legislature. “We continue to hear … from Arab and Muslim communities on increasing incidents of discrimination,” Hall said. Chief among her concerns was an attack on a Toronto mosque just two days after police arrested 17 people earlier this month, who were allegedly planning to stage terrorist attacks in southern Ontario.

Hall also cited a group of cases in which complainants with dual citizenship from countries other than the United States, claimed they were discriminated against by employees at a company that makes defence equipment for several countries, including the U.S. The employees were reassigned and even fired in some cases, possibly because they were seen as a potential threat to the company’s security, Hall suggested.

“The allegations remind us that society must balance security measures in a manner that does not compromise human rights protections.”

The agency did not provide precise statistics, but Hall said there was “an enormous increase” in Ontario – even if people who are affected are at times hesitant to speak out publicly. Incidents of “Islamophobia” were among the 2,399 new complaints filed with the Ontario Human Rights Commission during the past year, the report found.

London Free Press, 30 June 2006

See also the Muslim News, 30 June 2006

Murdoch warns on Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has sounded a warning by saying Muslims would always identify themselves by religion before nationality. Australian Federation of Islamic Councils president Rahim Ghauri questioned the media mogul’s knowledge of Islam. “I don’t know how much experience Mr Murdoch has in dealing with Muslims, apart from the things that his reporters write about Muslims,” he said.

The Age, 27 June 2006

‘Inconveniencing Muslims’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Police have no right to rush into action on dubious intelligence, say most Muslims in poll”, a headline reads in today’s Guardian. Sounds reasonable to me. Not to Robert Spencer, though. He comments: “So it’s better to be blown up than risk inconveniencing innocent Muslims. I see.” We suspect that if Spencer himself were shot by police while walking down the stairs of his own home in his pyjamas, he might view this as rather more than a mere inconvenience.

Nazis condemn ‘effete liberals’ of ACPO

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The war on terror, a euphuism [sic] for dealing with those militant Islamics hell bent on bringing death and destruction to the West, has received a killer blow from Britain’s own top cops. The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has announced plans to assign family liaison officers to assist relatives of terrorist suspects arrested by anti-terrorist units….

“The effete liberal response to dealing with those intent on murdering western infidels is a far cry from the actions of others in a similar position. US Colonel Alexander Rodgers was fighting Muslim extremists in the Phillippines in 1911. He introduced a system of burying all dead Muslim juramentados in a common grave with the carcasses of slaughtered pigs. This relatively simple device resulted in the withdrawal of juramentados to sections not held by Rodgers.

“This latest bid to appease the fifth column of home grown militants reveals how those charged with safe-guarding our streets and the majority community from death, injury and damage, are thoroughly unfit for their role.”

BNP news article, 27 June 2006

More nonsense from David T

Posted on by Bob Pitt

It’s not just the BNP who are pissed off about IslamExpo. They are joined by David T of Harry’s Place, who claims that “it is impossible to miss the dominant presence of the falangist Muslim Brotherhood and of other allied Islamist groupings. That much is apparent from the event’s home page, where the speakers who are pictured and presented prominently include a range of high profile Muslim Brotherhood activists, including … Tariq Ramadan”. So, according to this nonsensical argument, the Muslim Brotherhood are fascists and Professor Ramadan is one of their activists.

This would be the same Tariq Ramadan who has stated: “je n’ai pas de lien organique et organisationnel avec les Frères musulmans. Ma pensée est indépendante et ne s’élabore pas dans le cadre de leurs structures, dont je ne suis pas et que je ne représente pas, contrairement à ce que continuent à diffuser divers services de police en Europe…. j’ai des divergences de vue réelles et profondes avec la pensée des Frères, avec la façon dont sont gérées leurs structures et dont ils conçoivent leur engagement sur le terrain.” (Alain Gresh and Tariq Ramadan, L’Islam en questions, pp.35-6.)

But what can you expect from David T? Elsewhere he has denounced Yusuf al-Qaradawi as a “Qutbist“, when Qaradawi’s differences with Sayyid Qutb are publicly stated and indeed obvious to anyone with an elementary knowledge of the subject. And this from a man who announces in his Guardian Comment is Free profile that his field of expertise is “the state of the British Left generally, and in particular … its strange romance with political Islam”. Unfortunately, David T’s attitudes towards the Left and Islamism are determined by the same underlying principle – ignorant bigotry.

German mistrust of Muslims and Islam grows

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Experts fear new conflicts after a study published this week showed most Germans doubt the Western and Islamic worlds can peacefully coexist. Mistrust of the 3 million Muslims living in Germany appears to be growing.

In spite of official attempts to promote dialog among religions, distrust of Islam continues to grow, with 60 percent of Germans expecting tension between traditional German society and immigrants from Muslim countries, according to an Allensbach study commissioned by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.

“Germans are increasingly of the opinion that a lasting, peaceful coexistence with the Islamic world will not be possible,” the researchers said in the survey. Some 56 percent of Germans said they believed a “clash of cultures” already exists, partly a result of recent incidents that received a large amount of media attention, according to the survey’s authors Elisabeth Noelle and Thomas Petersen.

Deutsche Welle, 20 May

The Allensbach survey of 1,076 German adults in early May found that 83% of the respondents associated Islam with “fanaticism,” an increase of 8% from a similar poll in 2004. Over 71% believed Islam to be “intolerant,” a rise from 66% in 2004; 62% saw it as “backward,” up from 49%; while 60% saw it as “undemocratic,” an increase of 8% since 2004. Only 8% of the survey participants characterized Islam as peaceful. When asked what keyword or phrase they associated with Islam, 91% of respondents stated that Islam implied discrimination against women.

40% of the participants said they would favor curtailing Germany’s constitutionally guaranteed right of freedom of religion in order to safeguard national security. Asked if there should be a ban on the building of mosques in Germany as long as Saudi Arabia and other Islamic states banned church construction, 56% agreed, the survey found.

Jerusalem Post, 24 May 2006

Michael Gove on the dangers of Tariq Ramadan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pillock“The British State does not have the courage to face down the advocates of political Islam”, Tory MP Michael Gove tells us in an extract from his forthcoming book Celcius 7/7.

Gove is appalled by the fact that the Home Office is prepared to consult the MCB, the most representative Muslim organisation in the UK, along with people like “Professor Tariq Ramadan, grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Professor Ramadan is not, of course, obliged to follow in the footsteps of his forebears. But he gives it a good try. Professor Ramadan has been characterised as a moderate because he has said that he ‘agrees with integration’ of Muslims in the West. But he has also insisted that ‘we [Muslims] are the ones who are going to decide the content’. Bernard Kouchner, the French Socialist and former health minister, has described Ramadan as ‘absolutely a kook with no historical memory’ and ‘a dangerous man’.”

Gove complains: “A rising generation has been encouraged by those Muslims most prominent in public life to put their Islamic identity ahead of their British citizenship. That generation will have heard the Muslims most fêted by government pay tribute to terrorist leaders and fundamentalist ideologues as figures worthy of respect. That generation will also have had its sense of grievance nurtured even as its sense of separateness has been reinforced. For Islamists and their allies, it has been a golden prospect.”

Times, 24 June 2006

For Osama Saeed’s comments see Rolled Up Trousers, 26 June 2006

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Westerners, Muslims share negative views: poll

Posted on by Bob Pitt

While many in the West see Muslims as fanatical, violent, and intolerant and Muslims generally view Westerners as selfish, immoral and greedy, European Muslims seem to represent the middle ground between the two extremes, according to a new global poll.

“After a year marked by riots over cartoon portrayals of [Prophet] Muhammad, a major terrorist attack in London, and continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, most Muslims and Westerners are convinced that relations between them are generally bad these days,” said a survey by the American Pew Global Attitudes Project involving 14,000 people in 13 countries and posted on its website.

About 83 percent of Spaniards and 78 percent of Germans seem Muslims as fanatics, showed the results. Nearly half of the French and Britons interviewed, 50 and 48 respectively, share the same view. In the United States, the percentage went slightly down with 43 percent of those surveyed associating Muslims with fanaticism. Similarly, sixty percent of Spaniards and 52 percent of Germans believe that Muslims are violent people, according to the poll. The numbers went down in the US, France and Britain to 45, 41 and 32 percent respectively.

Despite the negative trait attributions, solid majorities in France, Britain and the US still retain overall favorable opinions of Muslims. The Germans and Spanish express much more negative views of both Muslims and Arabs than do the French, British or Americans.

Islam Online, 23 June 2006

The Pew Centre report can be downloaded (pdf) here.

Arab News on Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The announcement that the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations is to launch a media campaign to create a better understanding of Islam and Muslims in the US is welcome, though not before time. The cancer of anti-Muslim feeling in the US had begun to spread well before 9/11. Since then, it has been on the rampage. If anything, the assessment in a recent Cornell University survey that around half of Americans have a negative view of Islam and want the US government to curb the political activities of Muslims in the country is almost certainly a considerable underestimation of the problem.

“Islamophobia is a double poison. If not stopped it will so destructively impact relations between the US and Muslim countries that the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Not that Islamophobia is purely an American problem; it is active in Europe, India, parts of Africa, and in too many parts of the non-Muslim world. There, in its second venomous outpouring, it is at its most cruel. It is Muslims in non-Muslim societies who feel the effect; traditionally dressed Muslim women screamed at in supermarkets in middle America, spat at in parks in middle England, their veils torn from their faces in France or Australia or Netherlands; it is Muslim homes daubed with offensive slogans, mosques vandalized, a community fed a constant diet on TV and in the press on how backward Muslim society is. This is Islamophobia is action.”

Editorial in Arab News, 23 June 2006