Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Muslim leaders ‘in denial’ claim

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Britain’s most powerful Islamic body is “in denial” about the prevalence of extreme views among its members, one of its founders has told the BBC. The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) pledged to tackle extremism “head on” after the 7 July attacks in London. But in a BBC Panorama special, Mehbood [sic] Kantharia and other prominent British Muslims question the MCB’s commitment to meeting this challenge.

The MCB has branded the programme “deeply unfair” and a “witch-hunt”. Secretary general Sir Iqbal Sacranie said Panorama had used “deliberately garbled quotes in an attempt to malign the Muslim Council of Britain”. He said it had “the barely concealed goal of drawing British Muslims away from being inspired in their political beliefs and actions by the faith of Islam”.

“It is unfortunate that just when Britain’s 1.6 million Muslims are beginning to make progress in terms of their political participation in the mainstream, there are those who are purposefully trying to sabotage that process,” he added.

BBC News, 21 August 2005

Scotland on Sunday and Jihad Watch applaud Moderator’s stand

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Moderator“At last, a Christian leader breaks the deafening silence that, for too long, has muzzled those whose duty it was to speak out on behalf of the values of western society. The courageous comments of the Rev David Lacy, Moderator of the Church of Scotland, condemning the Islamist ‘hypocrites’ who treat their hosts as ‘enemies’ while leeching off the National Health Service, will find an echo among many of those people who fill his church’s pews – just as they will no doubt be deplored by voices within the liberal Kirk establishment. We say ‘courageous’ because, in recent decades, a climate has been generated, across all the Christian denominations, enforcing a liberal orthodoxy on church leaders from which they deviate at their peril.”

Editorial in Scotland on Sunday, 21 August 2005

Over at Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer applauds this as a welcome example of “anti-dhimmitude”.

Dhimmi Watch, 21 August 2005

MP calls for ban on Inayat Bunglawala

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A member of the Muslim Council of Britain has insisted he would sit on a government task force aimed at tackling Islamic extremism and denied suggestions he was anti-Semitic. But Liverpool Riverside MP Louise Ellman said the invitation should be withdrawn until Mr Bunglawala explained comments he made about Jewish influence in the British media.

She said: “I am calling on the Home Office to withdraw its invitation and I’m asking Mr Bunglawala to clarify his statements about Jewish people in the media. I heard him on the Radio 4 Today programme recently and he said that there are ‘highly-placed friends of Israel’ in the media.”

This is London, 21 August 2005

Muslims rebuff Tebbit’s rant on culture

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Muslims rebuff Tebbit’s rant on culture

Morning Star, 20 August 2005

Muslims condemned a primitive attack on their culture from crackpot Tory bigot Lord Tebbit yesterday.

The Tory former chairman denounced multiculturalism and claimed that there had been “no real advances” in art, literature or science in the Muslim world in the last 500 years. The venomous peer proclaimed that the London bombings may never have happened if the nation had listened to his demand 15 years ago that British Asians must pass the “cricket test” and support the England team. In an interview with ePolitix.com, he claimed that multiculturalism was now in danger of undermining British society.

The Muslim Council of Britain accused him of a “blinkered and dangerous” attempt to reduce the terrorism problem to simply blaming multiculturalism. The spokesman conceded that science had not progressed in the Muslim world as it had in the West. However, this was caused not by Islam itself, but “a restrictive interpretation of the faith by too many Muslims”.

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Mindless diatribe

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“Tory relic Lord Tebbit claims, in his mindless diatribe against Islam, that communities have to look forward alongside other communities rather than backwards to where they came from. In saying this, he exemplifies his own backwardness by harking back to a society that he imagines existed in Britain before multicultural society. In fact, such a society hadn’t existed for at least 2,000 years. People from different cultures, with different religions and mother tongues, had arrived and settled throughout that time. They became part of society while retaining respect for their roots and keeping alive aspects of their own cultural heritage.”

Morning Star, 20 August 2005

The rise of the democratic police state

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Iqra Learning Centre“On 15 July, Blair’s Britain of the future was glimpsed when the police raided the Iqra Learning Centre and bookshop near Leeds. The Iqra Trust is a well-known charity that promotes Islam worldwide as ‘a peaceful religion which covers every walk of life’. The police smashed down the door, wrecked the shop and took away anti-war literature which they described as ‘anti-western’.

“Among this was, reportedly, a DVD of George Galloway addressing the US Senate and a New Statesman article of mine illustrated by a much-published photograph of a Palestinian man in Gaza attempting to shield his son from Israeli bullets before the boy was shot to death. The photograph was said to be ‘working people up’, meaning Muslim people.”

John Pilger in the New Statesman, 22 August 2005

Harry’s Place defends Enlightenment values

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Over at Harry’s Place, they’re discussing Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s non-existent call for the Crown Prince of Qatar to be stoned to death for attending a gay nightclub. Given that Harry’s Place was one of the first to take up this story, you might have thought they’d feel obliged to ask whether it was accurate. But apparently not. Of course, we live in hope, but so far not a single one of the numerous contributors to the discussion has addressed this question.

Harry’s Place, 19 August 2005

Ah, the wonders of “Enlightenment values”! It’s reassuring to know that the triumph of reason over irrational prejudice, a commitment to the serious study of empirical evidence, and other such gains of Western modernity are in safe hands among Harry and his friends.

‘A witch-hunt against British Muslims’: MCB replies to

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John Ware’s Panorama programme – A witch-hunt against British Muslims

John Ware’s Panorama programme ‘A Question Of Leadership’ is due to be aired on BBC1 on Sunday 21st August 2005.

The Panorama programme takes a look at several British Muslim organisations, in particular the Muslim Council of Britain and several of its affiliates, including the Islamic Foundation, the Muslim Association of Britain, the Markazi Jamiat Ahl-i-Hadith and the Leeds Grand Mosque.

The MCB has issued a full and detailed response to the Panorama programme which can be read at this link:

http://www.mcb.org.uk/Panorama_response.doc

In summary, we believe John Ware’s team have made a deeply unfair programme using deliberately garbled quotes in an attempt to malign the Muslim Council of Britain and with the barely concealed goal of drawing British Muslims away from being inspired in their political beliefs and actions by the faith of Islam. It is unfortunate that just when Britain’s 1.6 million Muslims are beginning to make progress in terms of their political participation in the mainstream, there are those who are purposefully trying to sabotage that process,’said Sir Iqbal Sacranie, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain.

It seems that to qualify as so-called ‘moderates’ Muslims are required to remain silent about Israeli crimes in Palestine, otherwise they are automatically labelled as ‘extremists’.

The MCB urges British Muslims to remain calm and vigilant in the face of recent concerted attempts being made by known hostile elements to divide them.

MCB press release, 20 August 2005

Browne was paid for V-Dare article

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Remember Anthony Browne? You know, the man who has written Islamophobic articles for the Spectator and the Times, is a great admirer of Panorama reporter John Ware and was recently exposed by the Newshog blog as having contributed to a right-wing anti-migrant US website, V-Dare. Well, it now turns out that at least one of Browne’s pieces was actually commissioned and paid for by V-Dare. Not so much “show me who you friends are”, more “let’s have a look at who your paymasters are”.

Maududi: ‘the man behind the bombings’

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Mawlana Mawdudi“His followers were exhorted to extreme behaviour. ‘Your puritanic behaviour should become repugnant to your wives. You should become a stranger in your own country.’ Maududi is indeed winning his ideological war when Londoners read in their Evening Standard that it was the very families of the bombers who rang the bomb helpline to find out where their own sons were. Maududi’s thinking lives on in Britain in the minds of the young, through small study groups up and down the country. The Islamic Foundation was led, after its founding, by a man who had been the Vice President of the organization Maududi founded in Pakistan.”

Jenny Taylor in the Church of England Newspaper, 19 August 2005

Another attempt to implicate Britain’s mainstream Muslim organisations in the London bombings, this one on the basis of a supposed link through the ideas of Maulana Maududi.