Author Archives: Bob Pitt

How to improve the Prevent strategy – stop giving taxpayers’ money to Ed Husain

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Quilliam FoundationWriting at Comment is Free, Ed Husain of the Quilliam Foundation takes up the report by the Taxpayers’ Alliance attacking the government’s Prevent strategy.

The report, Ed writes, reveals that “many groups that have received handsome grants of taxpayers’ funds are groups whose leading members include supporters of hardcore Islamist ideologies. Such organisations include the Islamic Society of Britain (with some exceptions), the UK Islamic Mission, the Islamic Foundation, the London Muslim Centre and Da’watul Islam”.

Happily, a solution is to hand: “The government needs to begin working with Muslim partners who will actively contribute towards making British society more cohesive and harmonious – rather than groups that can only promise not to actively sabotage such aims. Quilliam, with the help of Prevent funding, aims to do just this.”

But, according to Ed, the government needs to look beyond Quilliam to find partners with similar politics, “who are unafraid to say that terrorism is driven by an ideology of victimhood and notions of reward in the afterlife”. Ed makes no proposals as to who these partners might be. And that is hardly surprising. There are, after all, few Muslim-led organisations who are prepared to promote the Daily Mail‘s agenda with quite the same fervour as Ed Husain does.

If John Denham and DCLG are really concerned to re-establish the Prevent strategy on a more effective basis – and it appears that they are – then the first step should be to withdraw all state funding from the loathed and despised Quilliam Foundation and redirect it towards organisations that actually have roots in the Muslim communities.

Update:  See also ENGAGE, 10 September 2009

Further update:  Interestingly, in the USA the right-wing magazine Human Events takes a very similar line to Ed Husain, condemning the FBI for allying with Islamist organisations in order to fight terrorism. For US conservatives, as for Ed Husain, their obsessive campaign against Islamism takes precedence over the obligation to defend the nation’s citizens from terrorist attacks.

Zurich gives go-ahead to poster with racist image of Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

SVP anti-minaret posterZurich city council said yesterday that a poster showing missile-like minarets on a Swiss flag can be displayed ahead of a national referendum on whether to ban the building of minarets at mosques in Switzerland.

Zurich followed Lucerne and Geneva in arguing that the posters, which also feature a veiled woman with “menacing eyes”, were protected by free speech. Basel and Lausanne have banned them saying they paint a “racist, disrespectful and dangerous image” of Islam.

The posters, which urge a ban on the building of minarets, are part of a campaign by the nationalist Swiss People’s Party.

Zurich city council said it disapproved of the posters – which also feature a veiled woman with what could be seen as menacing eyes – because they portrayed Islam as “threatening, negative and dangerous”. But officials said the posters had to be accepted as part of political free speech in the run-up to the November 29 vote.

The Swiss Federal Commission Against Racism said yesterday it viewed the billboards as an attack on all Muslims in Switzerland. “This is a further step toward a dangerous polarization of the political debate,” the commission said.

The posters argue that the construction of new minarets should be banned because they are a symbol of Islamic political conquest rather than religious freedom. So far, there are four minarets in Switzerland.

Daily Mail, 9 October 2009

Robert Spencer: teaming up with Euro-supremacists again

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Spencer in BerlinRobert Spencer of Jihad Watch was dead chuffed that he was recently invited to speak at a rally in Berlin organised by an outfit called Bürgerbewegung Pax Europa, which Spencer described as “the most important German human rights organization, seeking to preserve European values, freedom and democracy”.

LoonWatch examines the actual ideology of the BPE. They note “an emerging trend amongst some right-wing and fascist groups proclaiming their unconditional support for the state of Israel. What is likely is that many of these organizations, whose roots are steeped deep in a history of anti-Semitism are recreating themselves; dropping a now unpopular prejudice (anti-Semitism) for one more in vogue – anti-Muslim Islamophobia. Gone are the days when what they claimed to champion were the ‘Christian values and traditions of Europe’; now they have added ‘Christian-Jewish’ values to their slogans.”

Grayling accused of double standards on ‘extremism’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Race Hate Row EruptsThe Tories were blasted yesterday for “perpetuating dangerous myths about the law” and “scapegoating the Muslim community” in a shallow attempt to grab votes.

Addressing the Conservative conference in Manchester, shadow home secretary Chris Grayling outlined his proposals for law and order.

In particular he dredged up the perennial spectre of Islamic extremism, pledging to outlaw groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, which he accused of “actively inciting hate and violence.”

“Under this government the extremists have been free to protest on our streets and incite violence and hatred in the most blatant ways,” he said. He also pledged a crackdown on immigration, saying there would be “no open door to Britain.”

At no point, however, did he refer to far-right extremist groups such as the BNP and the English Defence League, which has staged anti-Muslim marches in cities across the country in recent months.

This omission was condemned by anti-racist campaign group Unite Against Fascism, which accused Mr Grayling of further demonising the Muslim community while ignoring the fascist threat.

A spokesman for UAF said: “There has been a rise in racist attacks, particularly on the Asian and Muslim population. There is a direct link between this increase and the atmosphere of fear and hatred whipped up against the Muslim community in the popular press.

“When Christopher Grayling goes on about extremist beliefs, the only time he mentions Muslims seems to be to further demonise them.

“Why not mention the extreme right-wing groups, who we have seen recently involved in bomb plots amongst other things? Why not address the issue of the EDL which has held marches and incited hate and violence?

“The issue of racism doesn’t seem to have been addressed. I hope this isn’t a signal that the Tories are not going to take this issue seriously.”

Morning Star, 8 October 2009

See also “Tory lies about Hizb ut-Tahrir are populist attempts to boost poll ratings”, Hizb ut-Tahrir press release, 7 October 2009

Man sentenced over Swedish mosque arson

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Östersunds-Posten reports that a 21-year-old man who caused a fire in a Muslim prayer room in Strömsund in August last year has been sentenced to eight months in prison for arson.

The Court of Appeal increased the punishment imposed earlier by Östersund’s District Court, where the sentence was probation for theft and vandalism.

The man was out with some friends in Strömsund, and when they passed a block of flats in the residential Tingvalla area he took them into a room in the basement that was used as a prayer room by Muslims.

The man stole some books and later that night returned to the prayer room. This time, he set fire to a curtain and the fire quickly spread through the premises.

The Appeal Court found the man guilty of arson. The prayer room would have been completely burnt out if outsiders had not intervened, and residents in the building could have been at risk if the fire had continued unchecked.

Under normal circumstances, the man would have been given a two-years prison sentence for arson, but the court reduced the sentence to eight months, and taking into account that the man was 19 when the crime was committed and that he had also completed community service in accordance with the District Court ruling.

Who incites hatred against Muslims in Manchester?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP Islam Out of BritainThe impact of Saturday’s planned English Defence League demonstration in Manchester has rightly been highlighted in coverage of the desecration of Muslim graves in the city’s Southern Cemetery. But the role of the British National Party in inciting hatred against Manchester’s Muslim community should not be ignored.

In recent weeks the BNP have conducted a hysterical campaign (“Genocide: how Islamic colonisation destroys your heritage“) against the conversion of a derelict church in Longsight into an Islamic Centre. The BNP made a particular issue of what they falsely claimed was the demolition of the (long disused) cemetery:

“The bloodless genocide and ethnic cleansing of the British people and culture continues apace with the latest example being the ripping up of a century old Christian cemetery to make way for a mosque in Manchester. The grave desecrations, being carried out with a large Komatsu earthmover in the graveyard of the St John the Apostle and Evangelist church at the corner of Holmfirth Street and St John’s Road, is part of the re-opening of this nineteenth century church as the Dar-ul-Ulum Qadria Jilania ‘Islamic Centre’….

“These Christian British graves – the only remnant of the now ethnically cleansed British people in the area – are obviously offensive to the Muslim colonisers, who have brought in the earthmoving machine to smash up the gravestones which are being literally crushed to rubble. St John the Apostle and Evangelist church is a real time history lesson of what will happen to Britain unless the insane multicultural Lib/Lab/Con genocidal policies of mass Third World immigration are not only brought to an end, but reversed.”

Of course, in line with their new respectable image, the lesson drawn by the BNP is that the “indigenous population” should cast a vote for their party in elections: “The British voters will soon be faced with a choice between their continued extermination at the hands of the Lib/Lab/Con ethnic cleansing party, or their survival as a free and independent indigenous people with the BNP.”

But it is hardly surprising that this sort of inflammatory language should have motivated some of the BNP’s supporters to take more direct action against the “Muslim colonisers”.

Home Office in state of denial over EDL

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Some idiots in the Home Office might be fooled by the English Defence League but the racist agenda of the hooligan gang is becoming more obvious by the day.

“At the end of last week the EDL got hold of an email that had been widely circulated by the North West TUC advertising a meeting of trade unions to discuss the planned EDL protest for Manchester City Centre next Saturday. The EDL response was illuminating. The EDL administrator – who publicly claims not to be racist – riled against ‘building mosques’, ‘uncontrolled immigration’ and the ‘multicultural hell hole of a country’ Britain had become.

“The racist sentiments were also evident in the latest EDL posting to their members, where the woman who has been liaising with police, said that many of their followers were planning to wear masks during the protest in opposition to the burka.

“Despite the glaring racist agenda of the EDL the Home Office continue to bury its head in the sand. It refuses to even classify the group as right wing and says that they are not linked to hooligans.”

Nick Lowles at the Hope Not Hate blog, 4 October 2009