Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Donald Trump’s Park51 offer rejected as ‘cheap attempt to get publicity’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Donald Trump offered Thursday to buy out a major investor in the real estate partnership that controls the site near ground zero where a Muslim group wants to build a 13-story Islamic center and mosque.

The offer, though, fell flat nearly instantly.

“This is just a cheap attempt to get publicity and get in the limelight,” said Wolodymyr Starosolsky, a lawyer for the investor, Hisham Elzanaty.

In a letter released Thursday by Trump’s publicist, the real estate investor told Elzanaty that he would buy his stake in the lower Manhattan building for 25 percent more than whatever he paid.

“I am making this offer as a resident of New York and citizen of the United States, not because I think the location is a spectacular one (because it is not), but because it will end a very serious, inflammatory, and highly divisive situation that is destined, in my opinion, to only get worse,” the letter said.

Trump also attached a condition to his offer: He said that as part of the deal, the backers of the project would need to promise that any new mosque they constructed would be at least five blocks farther away from the World Trade Center site.

Huffington Post, 9 September 2010

US Catholic bishops denounce ‘outright bigotry’ against Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Several U.S. bishops attended an interfaith dialogue earlier this week in Washington D.C. and voiced their opposition to recent events in the country that have displayed anti-Muslim sentiments.

Numerous religious leaders from Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths attended a Sept. 7 meeting in D.C., titled “Beyond Park 51,” which was hosted by the Islamic Society of North America.

In a statement on Thursday, Archbishop Wilton Gregory, Bishop William Murphy and Bishop Howard Hubbard said they voiced their “solidarity” with the leaders who gathered to “denounce categorically derision, misinformation and outright bigotry being directed against America’s Muslim community.”

The three prelates are chairmen of USCCB’s Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development and Committee on International Justice and Peace, respectively.

CNA, 9 September 2010

NSW Opposition won’t support veil ban Bill

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The NSW Opposition says it will not support a Bill seeking to ban the wearing of burqas and other face veils in public, delivering a final blow to the hopes of its author, the conservative MP Fred Nile.

The Christian Democratic Party MP introduced the Bill in June, even though the same Bill was voted down by the NSW Upper House in May.

Two weeks ago NSW Premier Kristina Keneally announced that Labor MPs would not support the proposed legislation, giving it little chance of success. “Such a ban has no place in multicultural NSW,” she said.

Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell said today that the Coalition had also decided it would not back the burqa ban Bill. “We decided last week, the Liberal-National parties, that there shouldn’t be discrimination,” Mr O’Farrell told Macquarie Radio.

Herald Sun, 10 September 2010

Netherlands: Labour party to launch offensive against ‘Wilders cabinet’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Labour party (PvdA) has accepted it will be in opposition and is planning a major offensive against the expected right-wing government, the Telegraaf reports on Friday, quoting an internal party document.

According to the secret plan, entitled “opposition strategy”, Labour is to go all out on countering what it calls the “Wilders cabinet”.

The right-wing Liberals, Christian Democrats and anti-Islam PVV expect to resume their coalition negotiations next week.

“It will be up to us to expose the tensions within this coalition and cause the cabinet problems,” the Telegraaf quotes the document as saying.

The right-wing cabinet will have just 76 of the 150 seats in parliament and a number of CDA MPs are opposed to any alliance with Geert Wilders’ PVV.

The document, which was discussed by MPs at a secret meeting last week, also outlines how the PvdA will mobilise voters against the right-wing cabinet.

“The right-wing policy of destruction will lead to a lot of opposition in society at large,” the document says. “We will not be in opposition in The Hague alone, but in a close alliance with social movements, environmentalists, the elderly and youth organisations. We will actively look for those alliances.”

Dutch News, 10 September 2010

See also “Wilders ‘can say what he likes’ at Ground Zero”, Dutch News, 10 September 2010

Far-right party could hold balance of power in Swedish parliament

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sweden DemocratsLANDSKRONA, Sweden — In Sweden’s last general election, a surge in voter support for an anti-immigrant party in this small, southern coastal town shocked a nation long regarded as one of the world’s most liberal.

That party, the Sweden Democrats, now hopes to win its first parliamentary seats in elections on September 19, a radical departure for the country could make forming a new government more difficult for the established parties.

Islam is a particular focus of criticism for the Sweden Democrats, who contend it is not compatible with Swedish values. “We have religious freedom in Sweden and we shall have that in the future. What I am against is the adaptation of society to the Muslim minority,” said party leader Jimmie Akesson.

Center-right Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt this week called the Sweden Democrats “a right-wing, xenophobic populist party” akin to those found in other European countries.

The center-right Danish minority government usually relies on People’s Party support in parliament in return for tougher immigration laws.

The Sweden Democrats polled 2.93 percent nationwide in the 2006 election. Sweden has a threshold of 4 percent of votes to win seats in the 349-member parliament and opinion polls suggest the party has a good shot at clearing the hurdle this time.

That in turn could deprive Reinfeldt, whose center-right coalition has a narrow lead over the opposition, of a majority and leave the far right party holding the balance of power.

Reuters, 10 September 2010

See also “‘Dragon Tattoo’ author anti-immigrant prophecy may emerge in Swedish vote”, Bloomberg, 10 September 2010

Update:  See “Local Sweden Democrat: ‘ban’ practicing Muslims”,The Local, 11 September 2010

Obama calls for religious tolerance

Posted on by Bob Pitt

President Obama gave an impassioned call on Friday for tolerance and better relations between Muslims and non-Muslims at home and abroad, defending the “inalienable rights” of those who worship Islam to practice their religion freely.

He made his statements as protests and violence continued in Afghanistan, set off by the plans of a Florida preacher, now suspended, to burn Korans on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and against the backdrop of the controversy in New York over a proposed mosque near ground zero.

While Mr. Obama cast the issue in terms of American national security and the impact of assaults on Islam in this country on American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, he also said that national security was not the only prism through which the issue should be viewed.

“We’ve got millions of Muslim Americans, our fellow citizens, in this country,” Mr. Obama said. “They’re going to school with our kids. They’re our neighbors. They’re our friends. They’re our co-workers. And when we start acting as if their religion is somehow offensive, what are we saying to them?”

New York Times, 10 September 2010

Pastor Terry Jones: even his daughter thinks he’s mad

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islam is of the Devil bookThe Florida Christian preacher who has received world fame and condemnation by threatening to burn a pile of Korans demands strict obedience and unpaid labor from his tiny flock and sells used furniture out of his sanctuary, those who know him say.

He was ejected from a church he headed in Germany by his own followers. Even his daughter says she believes he has lost his mind in his fanatical crusade against Islam.

Terry Jones, a previously obscure 58-year-old fundamentalist pastor with slicked-back gray hair and a shaggy mustache, has gained a global pulpit with his proposed burning of Korans, the Islamic holy book.

His estranged daughter, Emma Jones, called the church a cult that forced obedience through “mental violence” and threats of God’s punishment. She said he ignored her emails urging him not to burn Korans.

“I think he has gone mad,” she told Germany’s Spiegel Online.

Reuters, 10 September 2010

English Defence League leader refused entry into US?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Bradford4Nick Lowles reports: “I’ve picked up a rumour this morning that EDL leader ‘Tommy Robinson’ has been refused entry into the United States where he was due to attend an anti-Islam rally at Ground Zero in New York. Robinson was travelling with a number of other EDL leaders when he was turned away at the Immigration desk for apparent entry form irregularities. He was taken into custody and almost immediately put on a plane back to London. His fellow EDL members were allowed to go through.”

Hope Not Hate, 10 September 2010

Continue reading →

More BS from Bindel

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Julie-BindelYou might have thought that a feminist journalist would welcome the elevation of Caroline Lucas to the leadership of the Green Party and her election as the party’s first MP. But not Julie Bindel. In a piece of monumental ignorance published in Standpoint Magazine, Bindel writes:

“Lucas says she is a feminist. Yet she has shared a platform with those who believe that adulterous females should be stoned to death. In 2004, Lucas supported the International Network Assembly for the Protection of Hijab (Pro-Hijab), which was formed in response to proposed headscarf bans in France and parts of Germany. Its aim was to ‘dispel myths about the hijab’ to lobby to reverse bans already brought in and to prevent more ‘abuses of democracy’ being imposed. Lucas joined the former Respect MP George Galloway and London’s ex-mayor Ken Livingstone on the platform at the assembly’s publicly-funded City Hall launch.

“The guest of honour was Livingstone’s old friend Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, who has spoken in favour of female genital mutilation, wife-beating, the execution of homosexuals in Islamic states, the destruction of the Jewish people, the use of suicide bombs against innocent civilians and the blaming of rape victims who do not dress modestly.”

There is barely a word of this that is accurate. Neither Caroline Lucas nor George Galloway was on the platform at the Pro-Hijab launch in City Hall in July 2004, and there certainly were no speakers who believed that “adulterous females should be stoned to death”. As for Qaradawi he is opposed to genital mutilation and wife-beating, doesn’t believe that homosexuals should be executed, that the Jewish people should be detroyed or that suicide bombing against innocent civilians is justified, and he has never blamed rape victims for not dressing modestly.

But what can you expect from a writer who finds it reprehensible that “Lucas supports a boycott of Israeli goods”, and who has been applauded by fascists for promoting their racist myth about “Asian grooming”? Looks to me like Bindel is bidding to become the UK equivalent of Phyllis Chesler.

Merkel honours anti-Muslim cartoonist

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Merkel and WestergaardGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, whose cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad caused anger in 2006. A depiction of Muhammad’s turban as a fused bomb sparked global outrage when it was published in Denmark.

Presenting him with a press freedom award, Mrs Merkel said Mr Westergaard was entitled to draw his caricatures. “Europe is a place where a cartoonist is allowed to draw something like this,” she said.

Germany’s Central Muslim Council (ZMD) criticised Ms Merkel for attending the award ceremony. A ZMD spokesman, Aiman Mazyek, told public broadcaster Deutschlandradio that the Chancellor was honouring someone “who in our eyes kicked our prophet, and therefore kicked all Muslims”. He said giving Mr Westergaard the prize in a “highly charged and heated time” was “highly problematic”.

BBC News, 8 September 2010

Perhaps Merkel might like to follow this up by promoting an exhibition of caricatures from Der Stürmer – all in the interests of celebrating Europe’s commitment to freedom of expression, you understand.