Author Archives: Bob Pitt

‘Don’t sacrifice free speech to appease the Muslim fanatics’ says McKinstry

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Leo McKinstry in the Express usefully summarises all the lies and distortions promoted by opponents of the religious hatred bill. “It is a scandal that centuries of the right to free expression can be overthrown because of the craven wish to appease Islamic extremism.” You know the sort of thing.

McKinstry claims: “Our laws already provide ample protection against genuine hate crimes. In 2003, for instance, Mark Norwood, a British National party activist in Shropshire, was prosecuted under the Public Order Act for displaying a poster which read: ‘Islam out of Britain’.”

In fact, the successful prosecution of Norwood was not for inciting hatred – he was convicted (in 2002) on the relatively minor charge of causing religiously aggravated “harassment, alarm or distress”. An attempt to convict another BNP member, Dick Warrington, under racial hatred legislation for displaying a poster with the same “Islam Out of Britain” slogan failed because Islam is not a mono-ethnic religion and therefore it is held that Muslims cannot be victims of racial hatred.

It is nonsense to claim, as McKinstry does, that only Muslim organisations back the proposed new law. The Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Church of England, the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales, the Hindu Council and the Network of Sikh Organisations are among those who support the Bill.

And so on, and so forth.

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Hizb ban debated

Posted on by Bob Pitt

HizbIn the first significant public debate as to whether the radical Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir should be proscribed, some of the organisation’s most severe critics opposed the move.

The debate, entitled Should Hizb ut-Tahrir be Proscribed?, was chaired by David Goodhart, editor of Prospect magazine, who opened the proceedings by requesting there be no “rants” from the 150-strong audience. He said the ban had been floated by Tony Blair in the wake of July 7 because, it was argued, HT “creates an ideological context in which extremism can flourish”.

For a debate about an organisation described by its critics as hostile to everything the UK stands for, the setting could not have been more British. It was held in what was once William Gladstone’s music room in a building close to the Mall, and tea and biscuits were served.

Imran Waheed, a psychiatrist, opened the batting for HT by saying: “There are many myths I would like to dispel … We are not looking for a Taliban state or one that oppresses women.”

He also denied the organisation was anti-semitic. He said HT had been formed as a non-violent Islamic party in 1953 to replace the “unelected dictators and despots” ruling in much of the Muslim world. The aim was for a caliphate, an Islamic authority, to govern in Muslim countries but the group was not seeking to introduce one into Britain.

“Our members have never resorted to armed struggle,” he said. “They are as likely to use violence as Tony Blair is to pay for his own holidays.”

Guardian, 23 September 2005

Milan Muslim school row escalates

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Members of the Northern League – a key party in Italy’s ruling coalition – are threatening to protest outside a controversial Muslim school in Milan.

The row over the school – closed down by the authorities – is testing Italian attitudes to Muslim immigrants. Parents of the 500 children who attended the school are continuing to demonstrate outside.

Tensions were heightened by the death of a boy, killed by a car as he crossed the road outside the school this week. The Northern League – a regionally-based party that is vitriolic in its criticism of immigrants, especially Muslims – has scuppered a planned prayer meeting for the boy.

It plans to demonstrate against any compromise which gives ground to the parents, who want help to set up a school where their children can learn Arabic and the Koran alongside the normal state curriculum.

The school’s supporters are unfazed – although they say they will keep a low profile if the League protest does materialise.

BBC News, 23 September 2005

‘A brave voice’ – Daily Mail applauds Trevor Phillips

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The language is stark, the message almost apocalyptic. Is Britain really ‘sleepwalking to segregation’, with ‘the walls going up round many of our communities’ and growing barriers to integration in cities where most of the population is non-white?

Not for the first time, the black chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips, is venturing into territory where few white politicians would dare to tread.

Didn’t the London bombings in July expose the dangers of a ghetto mentality encouraged by multiculturalism? Isn’t something very wrong when young British-born men are so alienated from the mainstream that they can plan mass murder against their fellow citizens?

If segregation is turning Britain into a ‘breeding ground’ for terrorists, as Mr Phillips argues, it is time to think again.

Should we encourage more Muslim faith schools, if they don’t cater for other religions too, as CofE and Catholic schools do? Can’t we at last find the courage to challenge the woefully misbegotten liberal obsession with multiculturalism?

Trevor Phillips has raised some serious issues. Don’t they demand honest debate?

Leader in the Daily Mail, 23 September 2005

President suspended in Muslim group row

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The president of Middlesex University’s student union was suspended indefinitely as a student on Tuesday after refusing to cancel a debate with a Muslim organisation the Government wants to ban. Michael Driscoll, the university’s vice-chancellor told Keith Shilson on Monday to withdraw the union’s invitation to Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) to take part in a ‘Question Time’ at its campus in The Burroughs, Hendon, otherwise the meeting would be banned. But Mr Shilson, a final-year politics and history student refused, saying there was no evidence to suggest the group whose name translates as ‘party of liberation’ is linked to terrorism. He was escorted off the premises by security staff. The university said it was taking this step in light of concerns over the organisation’s reputation for extremist views.

This is Hertfordshire, 22 September 2005

See also Guardian, 21 September 2005 and MPACUK, 21 September 2005

Sheikh Al-Qaradawi welcomes Anglican Church’s initiative

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Qaradawi2Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the leading and world renowned Sunni scholar, has welcomed the initiative of the Bishops of the Church of England calling on Britain’s Christian leaders to apologise to the Muslims because of what the war on Iraq has caused. In a meeting with a delegation of British Muslims visiting him at his residence in Doha, Qatar, the Sheikh said the Bishops clearly denounce the war and seem to tell us that they regret it. It is as if they wish to apologise on behalf of the British government. This, the Sheikh added, is a very positive step although we do not hold the Anglican Church responsible for the policy of the British government which insisted in taking part in the war against the wish of the majority of the British people who have since the very beginning been opposed to it.

MAB press release, 22 September 2005

Melanie Phillips is less impressed: “Is there no limit to the abjectness of the Church of England’s response to Islamic terror?”

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 20 September 2005 

Swedish party urges monitoring Muslim students

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Swedish right-wing Liberal People’s Party has called on school teachers to spy on their Muslim students under the pretext of combating extremism, drawing immediate rebuke from the teachers union.

“We want Swedish teachers to spy on their Muslim students who have extremist tendencies,” the party’s education spokesman, Jan Björklund, said Wednesday, September 21.

Liberal People’s Party MP Lotta Edholm has also proposed cooperation between the teachers and Säpo (intelligence service) to hunt down “Muslim extremists”. “We see for us a form of information exchange: Säpo should inform teachers about these groups but the schools should also give important information to Säpo about how young people think,” she added.

Since 2002 the Liberal People’s Party has been seeking to attract voters by adopting right-wing populist policies. Party leader Lars Leijonborg has proposed tougher rules for immigrants applying for the Swedish citizenship. The party recently hosted controversial Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a vocal critic of Islam.

The proposal of the Liberal People’s Party drew immediate fire from the teachers’ union Lärarförbundet. “If one is going to observe students on a very vague basis and do what Säpo has asked it could have long-term and destructive consequences for the individual student,” Eva-Lis Preisz, the union’s chairwoman, told Aftonbladet newspaper.

In an opinion poll by the Dagens Nyheter newspaper, some 64% of the respondents opposed spying on Muslim school children, while 34% supported the proposal.

Islam Online, 22 September 2005

‘CAIR’s airbrushed Islam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Last Friday night I went on Alan Colmes’ radio show to discuss Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s suggestion that American mosques be wiretapped. Romney was right, I said, because American Muslims had not taken any concrete steps to separate jihadists and those with jihadist sympathies from their ranks. Colmes invoked in reply the condemnations of terror by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). He chided me for not taking CAIR’s condemnation of terrorism at face value.”

Robert Spencer explains that Muslims who condemn terrorism can’t be taken seriously.

Human Events, 22 September 2005