Richard Bartholomew draws attention to a recent speech by Baroness Cox, one of the two peers who earlier invited Geert Wilders to the House of Lords to show his film Fitna.
Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, 8 June 2009
For further background on Cox, see the comment by Ben White.
“The reality is that, despite the paranoia of the Quilliam Foundation, ‘Muslim world’ is not a phrase conceived exclusively by radical Islamists for nefarious propaganda purposes, which we have then been duped and deceived into using. Nor is it a phrase without real meaning, purpose or import. On the contrary, in a world of multiple identities, both individual and collective, to refer to the Muslim world is to simplify, clarify and identify.
“As someone who has often used the phrase ‘Muslim world’ myself, I take great personal offence in now being told by Ed Husain and his patronising thinktank chums that I for one am bolstering the repulsive and divisive ‘al-Qaeda narrative’ by doing so. ‘Muslim world’ is a perfectly valid, alternative description of the ‘Muslim majority countries’ and ‘Muslim communities’ so beloved by the Quilliam Foundation, and not an Islamist conspiracy theory in any shape or form.
“There is also an element of hypocrisy in this latest Quilliam position, as there are numerous references to the ‘Muslim world’ on its own website from, among others, its director Maajid Nawaz. Did he not get the memo?”
Mehdi Hasan at Comment is Free, 7 June 2009
MCB Alarmed Over Neo-Nazi victory
The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) today joined other British people in voicing their alarm and concern as the British National Party (BNP) gained its first two seats in the European parliament. This is a party that has a history of whipping up hatred against black people, Asians, Jews, Muslims and immigrants and has described Islam as “a vicious, wicked faith”.
Unlike other European countries, the UK has, in the past, prided itself in refusing to send MEPs who belonged to the far-right. Today we have reached a sad and historic milestone where we can no longer claim that racism has no place on our political landscape.
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain said: “This is a sad day for British politics. The news of the election of far-right MEPs comes at a time when we mark the 65th anniversary of D-Day, celebrating the heroism of those who fought the same hatred and fascism and racism we are witnessing today”.
“They now have a platform and taxpayer resources to perpetuate hate. They now have the ability to join racists and fascists in continental Europe to create a coalition of racists and Islamophobes. I call on all mainstream parties, and all British people, Muslims included, to come together to ensure we challenge the far right. We must ensure that this is a mere blip, and not a milestone, in British politics”.
“Anyone who objects to multi-culturalism is called a bigot; anyone who wants to curb immigration is called a racist; anyone who objects to the Islamisation of Britain is called an Islamophobe; anyone who wants to leave the EU and regain the power of national self-government is called a xenophobe; anyone, in short, who wants to retain Britain’s national identity rooted in the shared particulars of religion, law, history, traditions and culture and its powers as a self-governing nation finds themselves ostracised as a pariah….
“Working-class areas are particularly vulnerable to the BNP because they bear the full brunt of these policies. They are areas of very high immigration where the transformation of the ethnic, religious and cultural landscape has made indigenous inhabitants feel strangers in their own country…. The willed loss of control of this country’s borders, the blind eye to Islamisation, the refusal to allow the people to vote against the Lisbon treaty and the surrender of self-government to the EU – these are the things that have brought the BNP electoral success.”
Melanie Phillips’s blog, 8 June 2009
Not that Mel is exactly an expert on the BNP, of course. According to her, “they will not allow black people or Jews to be members”, which rather overlooks the fact that the BNP actually have a councillor of Jewish origin – one Patricia Richardson, who has sat on Epping Forest District Council for the last five years.
And as we’ve pointed out in the past, Phillips omits to mention one important factor in the rise of the BNP – the legitimisation of their racist politics by bigoted right-wing commentators like herself whose anti-Muslim tirades are often barely distinguishable from the sort of thing you might read in a BNP propaganda leaflet.
The British National Party on Monday won its first seats in the European Parliament, in a major breakthrough for a party reviled by mainstream politicians for its anti-immigration stance.
Party chairman Nick Griffin was elected an MEP in the northwest of England region with eight percent of the vote, hours after Andrew Brons won the BNP’s first ever European seat in the nearby Yorkshire and the Humber region.
Griffin had earlier hailed Brons’ win – with almost 10 percent of the vote – as “a huge breakthrough” for his party, and used the victory to reiterate his party’s anti-immigration and anti-Islam stance.
Griffin told Sky News television: “This is a Christian country and Islam is not welcome, because Islam and Christianity, Islam and democracy, Islam and women’s rights do not mix. That’s a simple fact that the elites of Europe are going to have to get their heads round and deal with over the next few years.”
See also ENGAGE, 8 June 2009
Update: See Inayat Bunglawala’s piece at Comment is Free, 11 June 2009
Kenan Malik’s latest book From Fatwa To Jihad: the Rushdie affair and its legacy distorts anti-racist history and plays into the hands of today’s anti-Muslim politics, argues Arun Kundnani.
A Southern California mosque was vandalized with graffiti including expletives and threats early Thursday, shortly after President Barack Obama’s address in Egypt to the Muslim world.
A police officer on patrol at 4 a.m. spotted the hate messages painted on the front wall of the Islamic Center of Cypress, said Sgt. Tom Bruce. The paint was still wet, he said.
Rusty Kennedy, executive director of the Orange County Human Relations Commission, said the graffiti was about 4 feet or 5 feet tall and spread over up to 30 feet of the wall.
In an e-mail to Muslim-American community leaders, Kennedy reported that the graffiti read in part: “We will kill you all” and “U.S. military is going to kill you all.”
Kennedy said it was likely the graffiti was prompted by Obama’s outreach to the Middle East. The vandalism occurred about an hour after Obama’s speech at Cairo University in Egypt aired live on the West Coast.
“I think that in the realm of hate crime you see there is often a reactionary element to it, so the Obama initiative … may very well have been what triggered this hate crime,” he said.
Veteran Tory Lord Tebbit provoked anger among Muslims yesterday by comparing Islamic sharia courts to gangsters. He likened the tribunals to the “system of arbitration of disputes that was run by the Kray brothers”.
The intervention from Lord Tebbit, the former Tory chairman and cabinet minister whose leading role in the Thatcher years has made him a revered figure for many in the party, reignited the row over Islamic courts and their role in the British justice system.
His comparison with the intimidation and violence used by the Krays to run their gangland empire brought an angry response.
Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “We can only wonder whether Lord Tebbit has ever set foot in a sharia council to see what they actually do before making such a baseless and ignorant comparison with the workings of the Kray brothers.
“Both Muslim sharia councils and Orthodox Jewish Beth Din courts exist to try and help resolve civil disputes amongst individuals through a voluntary process of arbitration. They are entirely legal and have to operate firmly within the law.”
You’ll note that the Mail is incapable of reporting such issues without including some baseless reference to Muslim “anger”. So Inayat Bunglawala’s reasoned remarks have to be described as “an angry response”.
Although, to be fair, the Mail did at least make the effort to contact a representative figure from the Muslim community and ask for a comment, which is more than you can say for the Daily Express, the Daily Telegraph and the Sun.
Update: See ENGAGE, 5 June 2009
Vlaams Belang held a protest yesterday against the mosque at the Sint-Bernardsesteenweg in Antwerp.
According to the party, with an area of 4,000 sqm, this would be the biggest in Flanders and would also have a koran school and imam training.
In recent days the VB gave out 50,000 flyers against the mosque which according to them would be a symbol of the Islamization of Antwerp and Flanders.
According to VB leader Filip Dewinter, the Jisr Al Amana mosque is everything but a good idea. “Islam is like a cuckoo which lays its eggs in our European next. We hatch them and will in the end be cast off,” he said.
The party walked through the local market with three women dresses in a burka with the slogan “Islam can harm your freedom”.
A man has told of a “horrifying” attack during which a group of friends were racially abused by a gang wielding baseball bats and golf clubs. One man was physically attacked by the group, leaving him with back injuries.
One of his friends told BBC Scotland that they had been approached by a man while they were in an Edinburgh garden. The man made racially abusive comments towards the four men, who were of Asian origin, before returning with a group of friends to carry out the attack.
The 21-year-old man who was injured in the attack Monday night was taken to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary for treatment and released the following day.
One of the Asian men, who wants to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, told BBC Scotland about the incident. He said the group of friends had been in the garden in East Pilton Farm Avenue when a man passed and asked them their religion.
“One of my friends said we were Pakistanis and he suddenly started being abusive about Pakistanis and Asians,” he said. “My friend said: ‘Please leave this place, we are having a good time, I want you to have a good time, take care of yourself’, but he couldn’t stop. He went away for about 15 minutes and came back with four of his friends and they were shouting leave our country, which is quite horrifying.”
He said the men then started hitting his friend with a golf club and baseball bats. The man said he was able to pull his friend into his flat. The gang smashed a glass door, but fled when police were called. The man said his 21-year-old friend was still in “a lot of pain”.