Author Archives: Bob Pitt

UK Muslims held at US customs, forced to miss conference

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim leaders who gathered Saturday to discuss their role in combating extremism within the Islamic community complained that two scheduled speakers missed the event after being detained at Los Angeles International Airport.

“People are upset,” said Salam Al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, which organized the conference. “On one hand the U.S. government is asking us to do more, but on the other they are preventing us from doing our work.”

British citizens Mockbul Ali and Waqqas Khan had arrived on a flight from London at 4 p.m. but only cleared customs after 8 p.m., said Erin Robertson, a spokeswoman for the British Consulate-General in Los Angeles. Robertson said the reason for the delay was not clear.

Associated Press, 18 December 2005

That would be Mockbul Ali, the foreign office’s adviser on Muslim affairs, and Wakkas Khan of FOSIS. Unbelievable. (Mind you, after the experiences of Tariq Ramadan, Yusuf Islam and Zaki Badawi, perhaps they should be thankful they were allowed in at all.)

Australians march against racism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Aussies Against RacismThousands of Australians in Sydney and Newcastle rallied on Sunday, December 18, against racism after a week of violence against Arabs and Muslims.

About 2,000 people have marched through the streets of Sydney’s central business district calling for racial harmony and understanding, Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported.

Unite Against Racism Rally organiser and National Union of Students (NUS) anti-racism officer, Osmond Chiu, said today was about uniting in opposition to a racist Australia. “The riots have drawn attention to the racism in this country,” Chiu told the paper. “I am shocked and appalled by what’s been happening, I never fathomed anything of this scale, that such violent racist clashes, could happen here.”

Chiu condemned some media and political leaders who he said may have fuelled the riots. He was particularly critical of Macquarie Radio for “spreading word about the wave of text messages this week that urged further race-based attacks.”

The rampage began when more than 5,000 people gathered at Sydney’s Cronulla beach last Sunday, December 11, after e-mail and mobile phone messages called on local residents to beat-up “Lebs and wogs” – racial slurs for people of Lebanese and Middle Eastern origin. They moved after Lebanese youths had beaten a beach guard for reportedly snatching the hijab of a beachgoer.

Chiu also called on Prime Minister John Howard to admit the existence of racism in Australia. “John Howard, the leader of our country, has denied that racism played a part in the week’s violence,” he said. “He needs to admit that racism played a big part in what happened.”

Islam Online, 18 December 2005 

See also “Rally cry: ‘We are all Australians'”, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 December 2005

FBI grills California Muslim high schooler about ‘PLO’ doodle

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area (LCCR) and the Sacramento Valley office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-SV) today questioned why Elk Grove School District officials allegedly allowed FBI agents to interrogate a 16-year-old student without first notifying his parents.

The FBI interview concerned a doodle of the word “PLO” (referring to the Palestine Liberation Organization) that the student had scribbled on a binder two years earlier.

Administrators at Calvine High School apparently violated a school board policy that requires a student’s parents be informed whenever a law enforcement officer requests an interview on school premises. The boy’s family suspects that the teacher who had initially confronted the student about the drawing reported him to the FBI, chilling his right to freedom of speech at school.

On September 27, 2005, the student was pulled out of class and taken to a room in which two men identifying themselves as FBI agents were waiting to speak with him. The agents asked the student to recount an incident that had occurred two years earlier in a math class. He told the agents that his teacher had reprimanded him for having scrawled the letters “PLO” on his binder. The teacher said that anyone who supported the PLO was a terrorist.

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Thug jailed for anti-Muslim racism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A racist who branded a Muslim shopkeeper a terrorist on the day of the London bombings has been jailed.

James McKeown, 37, of no fixed address, launched a tirade of abuse after spotting Mohammed Mahmood, who was wearing traditional Muslim dress, as he walked along Victoria Road, Cambridge, on July 7. McKeown shouted: “Look what you’ve done to London you terrorist, go back to your own country”, before following him along the road hurling further abuse and threatening him with violence.

Police said the incident was an unprovoked attack on a “very calm, quiet man”, and welcomed McKeown’s prison sentence. The 37-year-old was convicted of racially aggravated harassment at Cambridge Crown Court and jailed for 130 days.

However Mr Mahmood, who has lived in Cambridge for 39 years and run the Nasreen Dar store in Histon Road since 1979, said racist abuse was not uncommon in the city. He said: “In Cambridge if every incident was reported you would see it has happened hundreds of times since 9/11 and the July 7 attacks.”

He said he feared for his safety, and the safety of his wife and sister-in-law who were waiting for him when McKeown climbed out of a window of the hostel at 222 Victoria Road and began to insult him.

He said: “It was very aggressive, so I began to walk away, but this is my home so I can’t run – where would I run to? Even so I would have excused him if he said sorry and promised not to behave like that again, but the courts felt he deserved a prison sentence and I do believe those who commit crimes should be punished.”

Cambridge Evening News, 16 December 2005

Posted in UK

Nazis back Pentagon over Muslim threat

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP paperThe fascists have picked up on the leaked Pentagon briefing paper warning of the Islamic threat to western civilisation:

“As the Pentagon finally sees the light, and has now begun to view the religion of Islam for what it is, when defining strategic plans in the War on Terror, will the New Labour government follow suit? Of course not. The pandering to the Muslim minority in Britain will continue. The British people, in four years time will have to face the indomitable truth. That truth is a simple choice – do we, as a once proud people lie down and accept foreign rule from a medieval and barbaric religion or should we make a stand? Should we fight to win against the forces of Jihad? Should we try and win back our country from those that would steal it from us?”

BNP news article, 16 December 2005

Mosque plan dropped

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ministers yesterday dropped plans proposed by Tony Blair as part of his 12-point anti-terror plan in the wake of the July bombings to close mosques that are used to foment extremism after criticism from the police and religious leaders. The home secretary, Charles Clarke, proposed the police should have the power to secure a court order requiring trustees of a mosque or other place of worship to stop the activities of extremists or face a temporary closure.

Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that mosques were being “misidentified and stereotyped as incubators of violent extremism, while the social reality is that they serve as centres of moderation”. He said the bombers had been indoctrinated in a sub-culture outside the mosque and the notion of “influential back-door mosques” was a figment of the imagination. He noted that the Finsbury Park case was resolved by existing laws.

His concerns were shared by the government’s Muslim working parties which told ministers that the proposal was arbitrary and open to misuse with whole congregations being penalised by the actions of a few fanatics.

In the face of such a critical reaction, Mr Clarke said: “I will not seek to legislate on this issue at the present time, although we will keep the matter under review.”

Guardian, 16 December 2005

‘Lessons from America’s first war against Islamic terror’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Although there is much in the history of America’s wars with the Barbary pirates that is of direct relevance to the current ‘war on terror’, one aspect seems particularly instructive to informing our understanding of contemporary Islamic terrorists. Very simply put, the Barbary pirates were committed, militant Muslims who meant to do exactly what they said…. America became entangled in the Islamic world and was dragged into a war with the Barbary states simply because of the religious obligation within Islam to bring belief to those who do not share it. This is not something limited to ‘radical’ or ‘fundamentalist’ Muslims…. The Islamic basis for piracy in the Mediterranean was an old doctrine relating to the physical or armed jihad, or struggle.”

Joshua E. London joins Melanie Phillips and the fascists of the British National Party in identifying eighteenth century piracy with Islamist terrorism today.

National Review Online, 16 December 2005

Germaine Greer on Cronulla

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“… it does seem that Australian-born Muslim teenagers have finally had enough. Antagonism towards them has been mounting for years, so that even the most presentable middle-class young men of Middle-Eastern appearance find themselves routinely turned away from clubs and effectively ostracised from mainstream youth culture.” Germaine Greer on the background to the clashes in Cronulla.

Guardian, 15 December 2005