Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Outrage! make prats of themselves over Qaradawi again

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hijab Conference“The Crown Prince of Qatar should be stoned to death for being gay, according to Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim fundamentalist scholar who is based in Qatar. These allegations appear in the Middle East news magazine Aljazeera….

“Aljazeera quotes Dr Qaradawi as saying: ‘The scholars of Islam, such as Malik, Ash-Shafi’i, Ahmad and Ishaaq said that (the person guilty of this crime) should be stoned, whether he is married or unmarried’.”

Outrage! press release, 5 August 2005

As Islamophobia Watch has pointed out, the quotation is not from Dr al-Qaradawi at all, but from a Saudi Wahhabist named Mohammed Salih Al-Munajjid.

See here and here.

As for Qaradawi’s supposed fatwa “Homosexuality and Lesbianism: Sexual Perversions”, the link provided by Outrage! shows that this was not a fatwa issued by Qaradawi but by a “Group of Muftis”. Their fatwa did include a quotation from Qaradawi in which he summarised the opinions of various scholars on the punishment for homosexuality, but did not state his own view. Moreover, the quote was taken from his book The Lawful and Prohibited in Islam, which was published … in 1960!

If Dr al-Qaradawi does indeed called for the execution of gay men, then you would have thought that Outrage! would have been able to find some statement to that effect from his numerous writings and broadcasts over the subsequent forty-five years. They have been unable to find a single one.

Hizb ut-Tahrir slams Blair’s ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hizb ut-Tahrir in Britain has slammed Prime Minister Tony Blair’s pledge to ban the Islamic group in the country as a part of anti-terror measures that also drew immediate criticism from rights groups and individual lawyers.

“Hizb ut-Tahrir is a non-violent political party,” spokesman Imran Waheed told Agence France-Presse (AFP) Friday, August 5.

“Our members are all for political expression, not for violence,” he said, calling Blair’s remarks “most unjust” and pledged the group would battle any ban via the courts.

Islam Online, 6 August 2005

One year on, still no justice for Babar Ahmad

Posted on by Bob Pitt

IHRC notes with great concern the first anniversary of the imprisonment without charge of British political prisoner Babar Ahmad. Babar has spent 365 days in prison now while he awaits the British government to decide whether to extradite him to the US where he is likely to face torture or even death. To date, not a single shred of evidence has been produced in court to indicate his guilt. Furthermore to date, not a single police officer has been held responsible for the brutal life-threatening assault on Babar during his initial arrest in December 2003.

IHRC press release, 5 August 2005

Hizb ut-Tahrir to be proscribed – Blair

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Hizb ut Tahrir organisation and Al-Muhajiroun – or its successor group – are to be banned, Tony Blair has announced. “We will also examine the grounds for proscription to widen them and put forward proposals in the new legislation,” he said.

Imran Waheed of Hizb ut Tahrir said his group would fight any ban and insisted they were “non-violent”. The Muslim Council of Britain said the ban would be “counter productive”.

BBC News, 5 August 2005

The price of multiculturalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“If young Muslim women have embraced the hijab as a badge of identity in a way their mothers never did, as a public political symbol, this is more a result of the demands of British multiculturalism than a spontaneous assertion of allegiance. Furthermore, the distinctive character of the identity promoted by multiculturalism is the identity of victim. In the world of multiculturalism, claims of victimhood provide the basis for recognition and status. Thus British Muslims proclaim a litany of persecutions and humiliations of Muslims around the world – in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Israel, in Bosnia – as the justification for their sense of grievance and their claim to a privileged position in the hierarchy of victimhood…. But the cult of victimhood in Britain has merely a vicarious relationship with the sufferings of people in Iraq or Palestine – its real origins are to be found in Britain. In the competitive struggle for prestige (and state resources) unleashed by multiculturalism, every minority must justify its claim by elevating its sufferings…. Muslims inflate every personal slight into a manifestation of Islamophobia.”

Another rant by Mark Steyn in the Telegraph, perhaps? No, it’s ex-RCPer Michael Fitzpatrick.

Spiked Online, 5 August 2005

Banning non-violent groups is not the solution

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Muslim Council of Britain regards the Prime Minister’s statement today in which he announced a number of measures, including seeking to proscribe the Hizb ut-Tahrir organization, with concern and alarm.

“The MCB holds no brief for Hizb ut-Tahrir –– they are a group with whom the mainstream Muslim community has strong and well known disagreements concerning participation in our political process. However, banning Hizb ut-Tahrir is certainly not the solution and may well prove to be counterproductive. We understand that Hizb ut-Tahrir in the United Kingdom are an avowedly non-violent group. If there are groups that are thought to be contravening our laws, then they ought to be prosecuted in courts of law, not driven underground. Our democratic values need to be upheld, not undermined,” said Sir Iqbal Sacranie, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain.

“In addition, we are seeking clarification from the government to ensure that expressions of support for people who are living under brutal military occupation is not to be outlawed. That would be completely unacceptable. Our faith of Islam commands us to speak out against injustice wherever it occurs. To prohibit support for oppressed peoples would make us complicit in the injustice and would have dire consequences for the upholding of international legality,” said Sir Iqbal.

The MCB recalls the admonition given by the Chief Justice Lord Woolf who stated that: “In defending democracy, we must not forget the need to observe the values which make democracy worth defending.”

MCB press release, 5 August 2005

Respect opposes Blair’s onslaught on civil liberties

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Terrorist organisations can kill and maim but they cannot alter our laws or deny us our civil liberties, only our own government can do that. Tony Blair says that he is concerned to ‘defend our way of life’ but his new raft of police powers takes away more practical freedom than any terrorist organisation has yet managed.”

Respect news article, 5 August 2005

Hizb ut-Tahrir should be marginalised but not banned, says Sunny

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“This is so annoying – last week I was condemning Hizb ut-Tahrir, now I’m forced to defend them with the government ban. Today’s announcement has exposed serious flaws in the way Labour deals with Muslim and non-Muslim groups. I am no fan of HT as it has always been clear on these pages, but there needs to be a sense of perspective and equal rights for everyone.”

Sunny Hundal at Asians in Media, 5 August 2005

‘Cleric who incites murder of gays must be banned from Britain’ – GALHA

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Qaradawi2Reacting to an Al Jazeera report that the Islamist cleric Yusuf Al-Qaradawi has called for the execution of the Crown Prince of Qatar because he is gay, the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA) has called on Home Secretary Charles Clarke to permanently ban Al-Qaradawi from Britain.

A spokesperson for GALHA said: “If there was any doubt about Qaradawi’s fundamentalist credentials, this latest outburst will put it to rest. To call for the execution of Prince Tameem Bin Hamad Al-Thani simply because he is gay flies in the face of all international human rights conventions. It is not acceptable in a developed nation such as Britain to allow people who encourage the murder of innocents to be permitted free reign to do it. Gay people must be protected from this kind of lethal hate-speech. We have written to the Home Secretary asking him to impose a permanent banning order on Qaradawi. Britain could surely do without such people at a time when religious tensions are so high.”

GALHA news release, 2 August 2005

Unfortunately for GALHA, as Islamophobia Watch has already pointed out the quote isn’t from Qaradawi at all, but from another person entirely. See here.

Robert Spencer and Michael Graham – heroes of free speech

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Diana West recommends Robert Spencer’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) as “a book that explains, as the president and all his men (and Condi) cannot, why it is that the sharia-spreaders and the murder-bombers and, as Oriana Fallaci vividly labels them, ‘the head-choppers’ do it all for ‘the religion of peace’.” And she notes approvingly that book already features among Amazon’s best-sellers. West complains bitterly that “WMAL’s Michael Graham got his microphone yanked for daring to notice, mention and ponder the links between Islam and terrorism on the air”, and applauds the thousands of emails that poured into the radio station in support of Graham. Her conclusion: “people want facts – hard, non-PC, and vital to their understanding of what we’re really up against”.

Washington Times, 4 August 2005