The Mayor of London and a coalition of politicians, trade unions, faith groups and lawyers have signed a statement expressing grave concern over parts of the Government’s anti-terror proposals.
GLA press release, 26 August 2005
See also Guardian, 26 August 2005
In the seven weeks after the London bombings the racist backlash against has continued, the Institute of Race Relations reports.
“Mr Livingstone’s comments will be gratefully seized on by the international Islamist brotherhood – not merely as useful corroboration of their own view, but as further evidence of the disunity and spinelessness of the West.”
The Torygraph takes issue with the Mayor’s supposed view that “homicidal attacks on Israelis are acceptable” (where did they get that from?).
“The July attacks on the capital’s transport systems were the opening salvos from the forces of the 5th columnists who have nothing less than the total Islamification of these islands as their ultimate goal. Western ideas … have been undermined by Britain’s Open Door immigration policy which has allowed nearly 2 million adherents of an alien faith walk in and settle here.”
No doubt you were hoping that Melanie Phillips, like Omar Bakri, would make her holiday a long one. But she’s back, with a series of rants that indicate she’s had difficulty bottling up her rage over the past three weeks or so. Here’s the short version: the government’s crackdown on civil liberties doesn’t go nearly far enough, Inayat Bunglawala’s statement that the Panorama attack on the MCB was motivated by a pro-Israel agenda betrays “the signature obsession of the Muslim fanatic”, Patrick Sookhdeo’s Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity is an admirable source of information and analysis and so is Daniel Pipes, the Mayor London is a “groupie for Sheikh Yusuf Quaradawi”, there’s the usual swipe at “the anti-Israel bigotry of the British left”, and so on and so on.
Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 26 August 2005
I particularly liked the letter Mel reproduces from one of her admirers denouncing the decision to issue Nottinghamshire police with green ribbons: “Incensed upon reading how the Chief Constable has issued his 4,000 officers with badges pledging support to the Muslim community in the wake of the London bombings I phoned and was put through to his PA…. I was given the usual gumph about how we shouldn’t tar one entire community with the same brush etc etc etc – usual liberal/public sector clap-trap. I suggested that they should in fact wear badges showing solidarity with the community under attack by the fanatical Muslims and the poor devils killed and maimed in these latest attacks. Whereupon I was accused of being a racist.”
It’s political correctness gone mad, I tell you.
“That the Stop the War Coalition should have allowed the Muslim Association of Britain to be a partner organisation is disgraceful, given the MAB’s support for sharia law (with its disregard for women’s and gay rights), its belief that Muslims who renounce their faith should be put to death, and its calls for the state of Israel to be abolished.
“While we do not expect much better from the Stop the War Coalition, given its domination by the Socialist Workers party, others should know better. Ken Livingstone’s credibility as a spokesman for the rights of minorities and women, and his condemnation of terrorism in London, are severely undermined for so long as he continues to defend his decision last year to invite the radical Islamic cleric, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to speak at a Greater London Authority event. On his website, al-Qaradawi advocates the killing of ‘perverted’ homosexuals, defends husbands who beats their wives and questions the innocence of rape victims. Al-Qaradawi is, furthermore, an out-and-out antisemite: defending not only the murder of Israeli civilians in suicide bombings but also looking forward to the day of judgement when ‘Muslims will fight the Jews and kill them’. Would the mayor be happy to host an American white supremacist who advocated the murder of African Americans?”
Editorial in Progress, September 2005
It’s rather ironic that this Islamophobic rant appears in the same issue of Progress that announces Sadiq Khan MP has just become one of its patrons (see here).
Here is the text of the Muslim Council of Britain’s letter of complaint to Ofcom in response to the Panorama programme “A Question of Leadership”:
1. The programme portrayed the MCB as being ‘in denial’ about extremism. The MCB makes no claims about perfection and we do have many shortcomings. However, it was deeply unfair of the Panorama team not to make mention of the MCB’s efforts to help promote the common good by sending a written emergency appeal – following the Madrid bombings – to every Islamic organisation and mosque in the country urging vigilance against the terror threat and cooperation with the police. In addition, in September 2004, the MCB printed 500,000 copies of a Pocket Guide on Rights and Responsibilities. This contained a section on ‘Vigilance and the Terror Threat’ in which we prominently printed the Anti-Terror Hotline Number.
The inclusion of the above information would have refuted the “denial” portrayed by John Ware. Accordingly, the omission of such information in our view breaches paragraphs 5.7, 5.11, 7.1 and 7.9 of the Broadcasting Code.
2. Sir Iqbal Sacranie was questioned in the programme in detail about statements attributed to some of our affiliates. By contrast, Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui (of the Muslim Parliament) was approvingly quoted in the programme several times and was not questioned in the programme at all about the far more controversial statement about bombing No 10 Downing Street made by his deputy Dr Yaqub Zaki which appeared in the national newspapers on the very morning of the Panorama programme.
The omission of such information in our view further breaches paragraphs 5.7, 7.1 and 7.9 of the Broadcasting Code.
Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law should get out of Australia, a senior government minister has said, hinting that some radical clerics might be asked to leave.
Australia was a secular state and its laws were made by parliament, Treasurer Peter Costello told national television late Tuesday.
“If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you,” said Costello, who is seen as heir-apparent to Prime Minister John Howard.
“I’d be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another the Islamic law, that that is false.
“There’s only one law in Australia — it’s the law that’s made by the parliament of Australia and enforced by our courts. There is no second law.
“If you can’t agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country which practices it, perhaps, then, that’s a better option,” Costello said.
Asked whether he meant radical clerics would be forced to leave, he replied: “Where a person has dual citizenship, it might be possible to ask them to exercise that other citizenship. That might be a live possibility.”
“Slowly but surely naivete is being stripped away for reality to emerge concerning Islam. Freedom-based nations can no longer sit idly by welcoming Muslim immigrants for every Muslim is a potential Muslim slayer. Every mosque with its cleric is a potential sleeper cell for killing off the neighborhood.”
J. Grant Swank Jnr at the Conservative Voice, 24 August 2005
The sizable Muslim minority in Britain decried the government’s new guidelines on deporting and barring Islamists suspected of inciting terrorism as too vague, warning they could further fan Islamophobia in Britain. “The list of ‘unacceptable behaviors’ announced by the Home Secretary as grounds for exclusion of foreign nationals from the UK is considered to be too wide and unclear,” the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) said in a statement posted on its web site.
“We are especially concerned that senior Islamic scholars will be barred from the UK purely on the basis of media witch-hunts orchestrated by pro-Israeli elements,” Inayat Bunglawala, MCB media officer, told Agence France Presse (AFP).