Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Dutch far-Right comes second in European Parliament election

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Geert Wilders’ far-Right anti-immigration party made significant gains in the European Parliament elections in the Netherlands on Thursday, according to exit polls.

The European Parliament elections had been widely expected to punish governments struggling to cope with the global economic crisis, and polls released by the ANP news agency and broadcaster NOS put the Right-wing Freedom Party on course to win four of the 25 Dutch seats in the parliament, after having none in the previous assembly. This put Mr Wilders’ party second only to the ruling Christian Democrats, which got nearly 20 per cent of votes, according to the poll.

Mr Wilders, who was banned from Britain by the Home Office because of his controversial views on Islam, won support from Protestant and Catholic voters disenchanted with what has been perceived as the growing influence of the nation’s 800,000 Muslims, many of them immigrants from Morocco and Turkey.

Mr Wilders, whose party was contesting European elections for the first time, campaigned on an anti-EU platform and criticised Turkey’s bid to join the EU. “Should Turkey as an Islamic country be able to join the European Union? We are the only party in Holland that says, it is an Islamic country, so no, not in 10 years, not in a million years,” he said.

Daily Telegraph, 4 June 2009

American right scorns Barack Obama’s speech to Muslim world

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The American right scorned Barack Obama’s speech today, saying he had apologised for past American actions while failing to hold Arab and Islamic countries accountable for the words and actions of ­violent extremists.

US conservatives lashed out at the president for opening with a Muslim greeting in ­Arabic, for omitting to mention what they described as American successes in Iraq, and for exaggerating the number of Muslims living in the US.

While Republican party leaders were largely silent Thursday morning, conservative commentators and former Republican aides caricatured Obama as weak and insufficiently strident in his support for Israel.

“President Bush would never have criticised our military or our intelligence community on foreign soil,” a former Bush speechwriter, Marc Thiessen, said on Fox News. “He basically threw our military under the bus in front of a Muslim audience.”

Guardian, 4 June 2009

See also Media Matters for America, 4 June 2009

Resisting extremism in Luton

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anti-Al-Muhajiroun-protest2Farasat Latif was taking his daughter to school when he found out that the mosque he ran in Luton had been firebombed by right-wing extremists.

In the middle of the night two men in a stolen silver BMW had driven up to the Masjid Al Ghurabaa in the Bury Park area and poured petrol through a side window before making their getaway.

The anger that Mr Latif felt following that fire on 4 May could have been directed solely at the bigots who set his mosque alight. But the people he was most furious with were a motley collection of 15 to 20 young men who regularly preached a radical and intolerant brand of Islam from a street stall down the road and had helped foster the image that Luton was an Islamist stronghold.

Two weeks earlier those same men – most of whom are former members of the banned Islamist group Al Muhajiroun – had greeted soldiers of the Royal Anglian regiment who were returning from Iraq with screams of abuse and placards declaring them “Butchers of Basra”, “murderers” and “baby-killers”.

The protest outraged whole swaths of Britain, not least Luton’s 25,000 Muslims who knew all too well that their town would once again be associated with extremism.

Once the Masjid Al Ghurabaa was firebombed, in what police suspect was a retaliatory hate attack, Mr Latif sadly concluded that Luton’s ordinary Muslims were paying the price for the actions of the “Al Muhajiroun boys”. Which is why he decided to act against them. Shortly after Friday prayers last week he and 300 supporters marched down to Dunstable Road where the sect often set up their stall and told them in no uncertain terms that they were no longer welcome in Luton.

Mr Latif hopes that their decision to turn on the extremists within their own community will now prompt Luton’s white community to do the same. “I believe people on all sides are sick of the extremists,” he said. “I now hope the white working class will weed out the fascists and hate mongers just like we now have. Otherwise things will only get worse.”

Independent, 3 June 2009

Read Islamic Centre statement (pdf) here.

Global Day of Prayer London convenor claims Muslims ‘want to take over’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

GDOP London

The convener of the Global Day of Prayer London has delivered a tough call to Christians in the UK to wake up and take an uncompromising stand for their faith.

Speaking at the Newham prayer meeting in East London, Pastor Jonathan Oloyede said that it was time for Christians to pray and act. He warned in particular of the threat posed by ungodly legislation being passed by Parliament and plans to build a so-called mega mosque at the site of the London Olympics.

“I used to be a Muslim. The Muslims don’t just want to build a mosque. They want to take over. If you want to roll over and play dead while the legacy of your forefathers is thrown in the dust and you can’t stand up and say enough is enough then you are not fit to be a Christian,” he said.

Pastor Oloyede said Christians in the UK needed to “stop trying to be nice and cute” in the face of threats to their faith and the wellbeing of the nation. “All that stuff about not offending anyone is nonsense. I used to try to be nice to everyone but God said to me: You cannot be my messenger by being nice to everybody. So are you going to just play nice or are you going to be a follower of Christ?” he said.

“Many Muslim leaders have told me that if the Christians in this country stood up for their faith they would back off. London, England, wake up! You choose which way this nation will go. Pray that this nation will wake up to its true calling and intercede until we see his glory.”

In a video message broadcast to the GDOP London prayer meetings, London Mayor Boris Johnson paid tribute to the many Christian-run projects he said were helping to build community cohesion across the capital.

Christian Today, 1 June 2009

There certainly are Christians who are helping to build community cohesion across the capital. But the convenor of Global Day of Prayer London is clearly not one of them.

‘Fears of Muslim anger over religious book’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Does God Hate WomenAn academic book about religious attitudes to women is to be published this week despite concerns it could cause a backlash among Muslims because it criticises the prophet Muhammad for taking a nine-year-old girl as his third wife.

The book, entitled Does God Hate Women?, suggests that Muhammad’s marriage to a child called Aisha is “not entirely compatible with the idea that he had the best interests of women at heart”.

It also says that Cherie Blair, wife of the former prime minister, was “incorrect” when she defended Islam in a lecture by claiming “it is not laid down in the Koran that women can be beaten by their husbands and their evidence should be devalued as it is in some Islamic courts”.

This weekend, the publisher, Continuum, said it had received “outside opinion” on the book’s cultural and religious content following suggestions that it might cause offence. “We sought some advice and paused for thought before deciding to go ahead with publication,” said Oliver Gadsby, the firm’s chief executive. The book will be released on Thursday.

Sunday Times, 31 May 2009

Sounds to me like a cynical attempt by the authors, Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom – who are associated with the notoriously Islamophobic website Butterflies and Wheels – to boost sales of their book, which has already been turned down by Verso.

The report concludes with a quote from a Muslim critic: “No one will swallow talk about child brides. It would lead to a huge backlash, as we saw with The Jewel of Medina.” And who is the individual the Sunday Times has chosen to approach as a representative voice of British Muslims? Wouldn’t you know it, it’s Anjem Choudary, leader of the minuscule gang of provocateurs who previously traded under the name of Al-Muhajiroun.

Which only goes to show that, when it comes to depicting the UK Muslim community, the “serious” press often shows the same irresponsibility and contempt for accuracy as the worst of the tabloids.

Update:  See also Benson’s opinion piece in the Observer and Yusuf Smith’s response (“The article left me wondering how a respectable liberal Sunday broadsheet can print such a shoddy article containing such obvious generalisations and faulty logic”) at Indigo Jo Blogs.

Al-Muhajiroun sent packing

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anti-Al-Muhajiroun-protest2

The Muslim community turned on extremists in their midst yesterday, telling them they were “sick and tired” of their behaviour.

The angry confrontation came in Luton, where anti-Islamist protesters brandished England flags last Sunday, before clashing with police.

Passing traffic ground to a halt as the large group of moderates confronted about a dozen extremists. As the radical Muslims began to set up their stall, they were surrounded by a crowd shouting “we don’t want you here” and “move on, move on”.

Farasat Latif, of the Islamic Centre in Luton, which was firebombed after the protest against the soldiers, said moderate members of his community took action because police had failed to move the group on.

During the protest against the homecoming parade of the Royal Anglian regiment in March, the extremists had shouted “baby killers” and “butchers of Basra” as well as brandishing placards against the Iraq war.

He said the extremists, who follow the militant group led by Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammed, had fuelled feelings against the Muslim community which led to a march last Sunday in Luton which was disrupted by white, right-wing extremists. Mr Latif said:

“They represent nobody but themselves. The community decided to move them on because the police won’t. We have asked them, but they did nothing. We have been the victims twice over – from the stupidity of Muslim extremists who metaphorically pour petrol and fan the flames of the right-wing extremists. This was a peaceful demonstration and we hope they get the message that the law-abiding community is sick and tired of them.”

Daily Mail, 30 May 2009

See also “Unmasked: The football hooligans behind last weekend’s bloody protest against a Muslim war demo”, Daily Mail, 31 May 2009.

You’ll note, by the way, that the Mail can’t manage to report the demonstration against the Al-Muhajiroun extremists without reference to “scenes of violence”.

Update:  Read the Islamic Center statement “Our action against the neo-Khawaarij: al-Muhaajiroon” here.

Posted in UK

BBC apologises to MCB over Charles Moore’s slurs

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Daud Abdullah, Muhammad Abdul Bari, Inayat BunglawalaThe BBC has offered £30,000 and an apology to the Muslim Council of Britain after airing accusations that it encouraged the killing of British troops.

The corporation offered the settlement after a Question Time panellist accused the council of failing to condemn attacks on British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Charles Moore, a former editor of The Daily Telegraph, made the comments on the programme in March during a debate about Islamic protests at a soldiers’ homecoming parade in Luton. He claimed that the council thought it was a “good thing, even an Islamic thing” to kill troops.

The council, an umbrella organisation representing about 500 Islamic bodies in Britain, said that his claims were a “total lie” and threatened the BBC with legal action. It pointed to a 2007 interview with its secretary-general, Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, published in a national newspaper, in which he categorically condemned attacks on British soldiers.

Last night Dr Bari said: “These kinds of statements are very damaging, and we received many complaints from our Muslim supporters who said they were extremely offended by the comments. In fact when a British man called Ken Bigley was kidnapped in Iraq, we sent envoys there to plead for his release. This is accusing us of encouraging terrorism abroad.”

The council’s lawyers are now considering the BBC’s offer.

Times, 30 May 2009

See also ENGAGE and Pickled Politics.