Yusuf al-Qaradawi says that “it is OK to kill Jewish foetuses”, that homosexuals should be put to death and that suicide bombing in Palestine and Iraq is a duty for Muslims, and he is directly comparable to British Nazi leader Nick Griffin.
Yes, it’s another informed article by Andrew Anthony, the main who enthusiastically applauded John Ware’s bigoted Panorama attack on the MCB.
A “rising tide of Islamophobia” in the media must be challenged by Muslim students, the Mayor of London has said.
Some newspapers depicted refugees as bringing crime and disease into the UK, Ken Livingstone told a Federation of Student Islamic Societies conference.
Fosis said about 90% of the 250 UK Muslim students it asked thought the media image of Muslims needs to change. Its survey also found 95% were unhappy with British foreign policy, with Iraq being the main reason mentioned.
Mr Livingstone compared the reporting of Muslims in contemporary Britain to the way the flight of Jews from Russia had been covered 100 years ago. He said both had been attacked, despite coming from “areas of conflict or places of oppression”.
Some newspapers, he said, have decided that in order to sell copies “it doesn’t matter what the origin of your victim is, so long as you can stir up fear in the host country”.
“Modern Islamism is a complex political movement with a history that goes back more than 50 years…. It is only a tiny minority in the Islamist movement who have developed … a politics that advocates terrorism against the west…. We must be aware of this distinction so as to avoid a witch-hunt against the whole Islamist movement.”
Adam Curtis (who wrote and produced BBC2 documentary The Power of Nightmares) writing in the Guardian, 30 August 2005
A bit confused, to be frank. Contrary to Curtis’s claim, not all Islamists are Qutbists, or indeed revolutionaries. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, for example, has condemned Sayyid Qutb’s later writings for promoting an extremist ideology “which justified the takfir (excommunication) of (whole) societies … and the announcement of a destructive jihad against the whole of mankind”. The “New Islamist” current in Egypt of which Qaradawi is part are democratic reformists. Rachid Al-Ghannouchi of the Tunisian Renaissance party is another prominent representative of democratic Islamism.
However, Curtis does at least recognise that there are different tendencies within the social and political movements that fall into the broad category of “Islamism”. (Which is more than can be said for most liberal commentators – or for that matter certain self-styled Marxists such as the Worker Communist Parties of Iran and Iraq.)
Liberal backbencher Bronwyn Bishop has defended her push to ban Muslim girls from wearing headscarves at public schools, despite widespread condemnation from school groups, Muslim leaders and fellow politicians.
“I think it is because a lot of people are thinking about it and I think it’s time people stood up to be counted,” Ms Bishop told ABC radio. “It has become the icon, the symbol of the clash of cultures, and it runs much deeper than a piece of cloth. The fact of the matter is we’ve got people in our country who are advocating – and I’m talking about extremist Islamist leaders – the overturning of our laws which guarantee freedom.”
Ms Bishop said she had no problem with members of other faiths adorning themselves with religious symbols, such as Christians wearing a cross or Orthodox Jews a yarmulke. “I have no concerns about people who wear a cross or people who wear a skull-cap because I haven’t heard any leaders of those communities stand up and say the very fabric of our society should be overturned,” she said.
Australian Secondary Principals Association president Ted Brierley said it was a non-issue among schools. “I’m not aware of any schools that are making this an issue,” he said.
“As the full implications of the London terrorist attacks by domestic jihadis sink in, Westerners are speaking out about the problem of radical Islam with new clarity and boldness. The most profound development is the sudden need of the British and others to define the meaning of their nationality. In the face of the Islamist challenge, historic identities once taken for granted must now be codified. This can be seen on a diurnal level, where Islamist assertion has provoked a new European willingness in recent months to stand up for tradition….”
Daniel Pipes welcomes the start of “a broader campaign to restrict and remove Islamists – a move that comes none too soon”.
A Moroccan woman living in a small town in Belgium has single-handedly triggered a national debate on multiculturalism after refusing to obey a municipal injunction to stop wearing a burqa.
The woman has now prompted politicians in the Dutch-speaking north of Belgium to talk about changing federal law, after she became the first person in Belgium to be fined for wearing the all-enveloping veil and robe. She has so far refused to pay the £80 fine, or even to co-operate with police and municipal authorities in the Flemish town of Maaseik.
The burqa, together with a smaller type of face mask, the niqab, has been banned by bylaw in the cities and towns of Ghent, Antwerp, Sint-Truden, Lebbeke and Maaseik. The mayor of Maaseik, Jan Cleemers, said he acted after six women started wearing burqas, alarming locals. Five of the women stopped wearing the garments.
A police inspector in Maaseik said the head-to-toe covering of Bouloudo’s wife, who has refused to speak to police or give her name, offended and alarmed locals. “You cannot identify or recognise someone when they’re wearing a burqa, especially at night. It’s not normal, we don’t have that in our culture,” he said.
“You probably remember the arch-radical Tariq Ramadan. Ramadan is a Swiss Arab anti-Semite who hates the Christian West, and has close ties to al-Qaeda and Hamas. He was the darling of the pro-terror Marxist ‘Kroc Institute’, which tried to finance Ramadan for a three year ‘visiting scholarship’ at Notre Dame ‘University’ in Indiana. The United States Immigration and Naturalization Service said No Way Abu Jose. Ramadan was denied papers and Kroc had to go shopping for some other terrorists and hate-America-leftists.”
Steven Plaut in full gibbering mode at Moonbat Central, 28 August 2005
An all-purpose witch-hunting article which takes in such varied organisations and individuals as Hizb ut-Tahrir, Islamic Awakening, Mohammad al-Masari and Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
Daily Telegraph, 29 August 2005
Well, they’re all Islamists aren’t they? What’s the difference?
Tony Blair’s reliance on faith-based groups in fighting extremism is a “very bad mistake”, Salman Rushdie has said.
The prime minister’s belief that “more religion is going to solve the problem” was “seriously out of step with the country”, the novelist told BBC News. He criticised support for faith-based schools and said UK Islamic groups were failing to represent most Muslims.
The Muslim Council of Britain said Mr Rushdie had “lost his faith” and was “enraged” that most UK Muslims had not. MCB spokesman Inayat Bunglawala told BBC News: “Salman Rushdie’s call amounts to an appeal to Muslims to apostasise from their faith. He has been doing so at regular intervals since The Satanic Verses was published and has miserably failed every time.”
Under the headline “suicide bombs are a duty, says Islamic scholar”, Anthony Barnett claims that Yusuf al-Qaradawi “has said it is a duty of Muslims in Iraq to become suicide bombers”.
The report is taken from the Middle East Media Research Institute, which is of course notorious for producing selective translations designed to discredit supporters of the Palestinian cause. If you watch the video on MEMRI TV #822 you’ll see that it’s been carefully edited to bring out the points that serve MEMRI’s political agenda.
However, even judging by MEMRI’s selected extracts, it is clear that Qaradawi was responding to an earlier speaker who had, he noted, “stressed the legitimacy of defense, saying it is a legitimate right in Palestine and Iraq. I think that saying it is a legitimate right is not enough, because a right is something that can be relinquished. This is a duty. All scholars say that defending an occupied homeland is an individual duty applying to every Muslim”. So Qaradawi was clearly referring to the general duty to resist an occupying power, not to suicide bombings as such.
Qaradawi also reiterated his frequently stated view that these bombings are not in fact suicide, because the bomber “does not want to commit suicide, but rather to cause great damage to the enemy, and this is the only method he can use to cause such damage. Since this method did not exist in the past, we cannot find rulings about it in the ancient jurisprudence”. But that is rather different from arguing that everyone resisting Israeli and US occupation forces has a duty to become a suicide bomber.
Anthony Barnett’s confusion is due to the fact that MEMRI’s version of Qaradawi’s speech consists of three separate sections spliced together. There is an obvious splice after the section that ends “I am amazed by what Dr. Muhammad Rafat ‘Othman said” and before the next one, beginning “This has nothing to do with suicide”. There is no indication of this in MEMRI’s transcript of Qaradawi’s speech, which does not use ellipses, thus obscuring the editing that has taken place.
The (presumably intentional) result of this is to suggest that when Q was referring to resistance he was equating this with suicide bombing. Hence the Observer‘s headline stating that Q claimed suicide bombing was a duty.
However, MEMRI is at least prepared to admit that Qaradawi’s speech was delivered at a conference of religious scholars called to oppose terrorism – which is more than the Observer is prepared to do. (For a report of the conference, see Islam Online, 23 August 2005.)
Brett Lock is dead chuffed that the liberal press has uncritically reproduced MEMRI’s propaganda: “Well, this is progress! Finally The Guardian [sic – wrong paper, Brett] is reporting that Dr Qaradawi is indeed a supporter of suicide bombers.” (See Lock & Load blog, 28 August 2005.) But this is par for the course for Brett and his chums in Outrage!, who adopt material provided by right-wing Isamophobic bigots without a moment’s hesitation. And why not? They have so much in common.