Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Mad Mel discovers the barbarism of the slave trade

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“From the early seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, thousands of British men women and children were kidnapped by Arab corsairs and sold into slavery in Morocco where they were kept in conditions of unspeakable barbarism.” Melanie Phillips discovers “a seaborne Islamic jihad against Britain which lasted for no less than two centuries”.

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 27 September 2005

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that around that time Christian Britain was itself not immune to the barbaric practice of trading slaves. But then, I was forgetting, that was entirely different – the victims were not white people.

No to ‘Islamofascist’ Turkey

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“On Oct. 3, representatives of the European Union and the Turkish government of Islamist Recep Erdogan will meet to determine if Muslim Turkey will be allowed to seek full membership in the EU. It will be best for Turkey, to say nothing of Europe and the West more generally, if the EU answer under present circumstances is: ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ The reason Europe should politely, but firmly, reject Turkey’s bid should be clear: Prime Minister Erdogan is systematically turning his country from a Muslim secular democracy into an Islamofascist state governed by an ideology anathema to European values and freedoms.”

Frank J. Gaffney in the Washington Times, 27 September 2005

Bush’s ‘Muslim outreach’ fails to reach Egyptian students

Posted on by Bob Pitt

US Under Secretary of State Karen P. Hughes, tasked with improving a badly bruised US image abroad, was faced with a flurry of angry reasons why Washington was disliked in the Arab and Muslim worlds during her meeting with Egyptian students.

The meeting took place Sunday, September 25, at the American University in Cairo (AUC), where Hughes got a taste of the difficult job ahead when she found herself faced with angry queries over the US war on terror, Iraq, aggressive stance on Syria and Iran, in addition to meddling in the affairs of developing countries.

Islam Online, 26 September 2005 

Posted in USA

‘Have we the stomach to defeat radical Islam?’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Thousands of anti-war protesters (and pro-war counter protesters) marched in Washington, D.C., this past weekend, and emotions ran high. They filled the air with angry questions about everything from how soon we’ll withdraw from Iraq to how many more ‘children’ we’re ‘willing to sacrifice’, as Cindy Sheehan asked the crowd. Good luck finding anyone ready to face the real choice before America and Europe: Namely, will the West decisively confront the threat posed by radical Islam? Or will it ride its fabled ‘tolerance’ into oblivion?”

Rebecca Hagelin at World Net Daily, 27 September 2005

Fears over Christians attending Muslim schools

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Two senior Church leaders have risked reigniting the controversy over faith schools by voicing their reservations about Christian children going to Muslim faith schools.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, welcomed that fact that Jewish and Muslim parents sent their children to Catholic schools because they like the “ethos”. But he said that he would not want large numbers of Catholic children attending Muslim schools because he would not want them to be brought up “in that atmosphere”.

The Cardinal added that, while he welcomed dialogue between the faiths, “fundamentally the creed of Islam is totally diverse from the creed of Christianity.”

His remarks were echoed by the Rt Rev Tom Butler, the Church of England Bishop of Southwark, who said he would not have sent his children to a Muslim school. “Although religion is taken seriously in a Muslim school, I think the particular insight of Islam is… is not mine,” he said.

Both clerics were speaking on the BBC2 programme God and the Politicians, due to be broadcast tomorrow night.

The comments of the Churchmen was greeted with disappointment by Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, who said that he had received his secondary education in a Catholic school.

Reacting to remarks by his fellow faith leaders, he told the programme: “I think this is the difficulty which we have – that what is good for myself and my children should also be seen to be good for others as well. And as much as we are all professing that we have to have that understanding of each other, it is important this should be also put into practice.”

Daily Telegraph, 27 September 2005

Muslims = Nazis, Front Page Magazine claims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Muslims can’t stand the thought of Holocaust commemorations, because, with certain honorable exceptions, Islam’s attitudes toward the Jews frequently mirror those of the Nazi killers.” Don Feder offers his insights into the MCB’s proposal that Holocaust Memorial Day should be broadened out into a Genocide Day.

Front Page Magazine, 27 September 2005

In fact, Holocaust Memorial Day is often observed as a more general commemoration of the victims of genocide. The event I attended this year included a gay men’s choir and a speaker on the mass killings in Rwanda as well as a Jewish survivor of the Nazi extermination camps.

It’s also worth remembering that when the idea of a Holocaust Memorial Day was flagged up in the late 1990s, it proved controversial not only among Muslims but also within the Jewish community in Britain. Left-wing Jews criticised it on the basis that it ignored or at least downplayed the existence of non-Jewish victims of genocide. Right-wingers opposed it because they claimed that the history of Jewish suffering under the Nazis was being harnessed to Labour’s “equalities agenda”. And ultra-orthodox Jews rejected it because they argued that the Holocaust was divine retribution on the Jewish people for their sins and that condemning it was to question God’s judgement.

Students meet to defend banned union leader

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Students are today holding a meeting at Middlesex University in support of its student union president who was suspended for refusing to cancel a debate with the controversial Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Keith Shilson was escorted from the campus last week by university security after he refused to cancel the question and answer session with the group, which the prime minister is considering proscribing as part of the government’s crackdown on extremism. The move by the university’s vice-chancellor Michael Driscoll to ban the debate came days after the education secretary, Ruth Kelly, told vice-chancellors they would have to play a part to tackle extremism on campus.

Guardian, 27 September 2005