Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Blogs, threats force Muslim meeting to relocate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Chantal CarnesChantal Carnes didn’t recognize herself. A friend had e-mailed her a blogger’s article. It described Carnes as a supporter of terrorists, a fan of suicide bombing. Her friend thought the article was a joke. “No, dude,” Carnes said. “This is really serious.”

Carnes, a Chicago resident who converted to Islam 11 years ago, was scheduled to speak at a spiritual retreat for Tampa Muslims this weekend. But after bloggers alleged that the event was a thinly veiled terrorist indoctrination, anonymous callers bombarded the Muslim American Society of Tampa with death threats and curses. The director of the Lithia church camp that was to host the event decided to close the camp for the weekend after she, too, received threats.

On Dec. 27, blogger Joe Kaufman began writing about an event he called “a jihad retreat for children.” Over the course of the week, he wrote that Carnes was “well known in the radical Islamist American community.” He wrote that the retreat’s other speaker, Mazen Mokhtar of New Jersey, was linked to al-Qaida. Other bloggers quickly picked up the theme. “You gotta start your kids on the road to martyrdom early, or there’ll be no one left to murder,” a blogger known as “Ace of Trump” wrote about the retreat.

St Petersburg Times, 1 January 2006

Turning the War on Terror into a War on Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Louay Safi“The Extreme Right has finally found a clever way to arrest America’s march towards asserting its foundational principles of equality, religious freedom, and the rule of law. Their strategy is to transform the war on terror into a war against Islam and use security needs to subvert constitutional protection.”

Louay Safi on the threat posed by the Islamophobic Right in the US. He continues:

“Robert Spencer, a prolific anti-Islam writer and a leading Islamophobe who is bent on distorting Islam and demonizing Muslims, has persistently argued that violence and terrorism employed by Muslim extremists is rooted in the Quran and its message. Spencer calls the Quran, a book sacred to Muslim, ‘the jihadists’ Mein Kampf’, in reference to Hitler’s memoir. He openly blames the Quran for giving impetus to the terrorist open war against the West.”

Media Monitors Network, 29 December 2005

A good article, but I rather doubt that the Bush administration pays much attention to the ravings of Jihad Watch. If they found Daniel Pipes a political embarrassment, what must they make of Robert Spencer? Spencer’s role is rather to whip up anti-Muslim bigotry among the general populace in order to prime public opinion to accept Bush’s imperialist warmongering abroad and suppression of civil liberties at home as a necessary defence against the Islamic hordes.

Spies, lies and censorship

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Spies lies and censorshipHuman rights campaigners demanded a full inquiry yesterday into mounting evidence that MI6 agents were involved in the abduction and torture of terror suspects in Greece.

The Ministry of Justice in Athens has launched its own inquiry into allegations that 28 Pakistanis were held and mistreated in the wake of the July 7 London bombings.

Greek lawyer Frangiskos Ragoussis has filed a criminal complaint against eight Greek agents and one British agent – Athens MI6 station chief Nicholas Langman – for the alleged abuses. If formal charges are filed, Mr Ragoussis said that he will seek Mr Langman’s extradition.

The controversy deepened after British newspapers colluded with a voluntary government “D-notice” to prevent them from naming Mr Langman, although Greek Sunday newspaper Proto Thema – with the biggest circulation in the country – had already revealed his identity, adding that he had plotted the operation on Greek soil.

Morning Star, 30 December 2005

Brass Crescent Awards 2005

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Brass CrescentYusuf Smith draws our attention to the fact that nominations have been opened for the second annual Brass Crescent awards, for the best blogs either by, or of interest to, Muslims.

Categories are: Best Mid-Eastern or Asian blogger, Best Group Blog, Most Deserving of Wider Recognition, Best Thinker, Best Female Blog, Best Post or Series, Best Non-Muslim Blog and overall Best Blog.

I note that Islamophobia Watch has received a couple of nominations in the Best Non-Muslim Blog category, including one from Yusuf himself, for which many thanks, though I rather suspect we’ll lose out to Juan Cole.

See Indigo Jo Blogs, 29 December 2005

For details of the awards, see City of Brass, 23 December 2005

‘The Islamic grim reaper’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islam Evil“As legend has it, the Grim Reaper moves among us, unseen and unstoppable. His ugly, skeletal face is obscured by a black hood and no one knows he is near until his touch claims your life. Only in death is his face revealed.

“It is troubling that after America was attacked on her own soil not so long ago, that so many Americans still do not realize the danger of the insidious and relentless enemy that we face. Just as no living thing can escape death, Americans cannot escape the final showdown with Islam. It is unfortunate that so many will die because they are afraid to lift the black hood off and see the face of the enemy.

“Islam has declared war on America and our culture. Islam brought the battle right to our shores and still, many do not believe.”

Barbara J. Stock at ChronWatch, 26 December 2005

Vatican warns Italian women against Muslim marriages

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Vatican cardinals have warned Italian women against tying the knot with the rising numbers of Muslims in Italy, citing what they say cultural and religious diversities.

Church officials say that Italy has seen 20,000 marriages in 2005 between Catholic women and Muslims, whose population touches the one million mark, the BBC News Online reported Monday, December 26.

Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the Vicar General of Rome, had said that cultural differences over issues such as the role of women and education of children make it difficult for Catholic women to marry Muslims. “The experience of recent years leads us as a general rule to advise against or in any case to discourage these marriages,” he wrote in a document released last month.

“Mixed Catholic and Muslim couples who intend to have a family have other difficulties above and beyond those experienced by other couples, when one considers cultural and religious diversity,” wrote cardinal Ruini, a conservative thinker close to late Pope John Paul II.

Continue reading →

More nonsense from Robert Spencer

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Robert Spencer takes issue with the Mayor of London’s attitude to Islam: “Red Ken’s friendship with Sheikh Qaradawi suggests that the peaceful subjugation and Islamization of the West, which Qaradawi has predicted, is perfectly fine with him. He just wishes these good people wouldn’t use bombs.”

Jihad Watch, 6 December 2005

Applying this logic to his own preferred religion, there is presumably no principled difference in Spencer’s eyes between a minister engaged in peaceful missionary work (in order to “subjugate” society to Christianity) and a “pro-life” militant who bombs an abortion clinic.

(Oh and by the way Robert, the “Lord Mayor” is not “Red Ken” but the head of the Corporation of London.)

US tapped main communications, mosques

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The US National Spy Agency (NSA) has “directly” tapped the country’s main communications systems without court-approved warrants, while the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has monitored mosques and private homes of Muslims to monitor “radiation levels”, news reports have revealed.

Citing current and former government officials, the New York Times said the volume of information gathered from telephone and Internet communications by the NSA was much larger than President George W. Bush has acknowledged.

They said the NSA sought to analyze communications patterns to gather clues from details like who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, as well as the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages. Some officials described the program as a large data mining operation, the Times said.

Bush has defended an executive order he signed in 2002 allowing eavesdropping without warrants, saying it was limited only to monitoring international phone and e-mail communications linked to people with connections to Al-Qaeda. The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requires court approval of wiretaps and electronic surveillance.

Bush administration officials declined to comment on Friday, December 23, on the Times report.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) revealed on Tuesday, December 20, that the FBI was using counterterrorism resources to monitor and infiltrate American political organizations that criticize business interests and government policies.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) advocacy group said the report, coupled with news of the domestic eavesdropping, “could lead to the perception that we are no longer a nation ruled by law, but instead one in which fear trumps constitutional rights.”

“The message they are sending through these kinds of actions is that being Muslim is sufficient evidence to warrant scrutiny,” CAIR’s spokesman Ibrahim Hooper told the Washington Post.

Islam Online 24 December 2005