Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Quilliam, New Labour and the witch-hunt of Osama Saeed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Osama and AlexCraig Murray responds to the disgraceful attempt by Ed Husain and his mates to smear Osama Saeed:

“The party political nature of the Quilliam Foundation is shown in their astonishing and completely unbalanced attack on Osama Saeed, a prominent SNP candidate and a friend of mine. They try to portray him as an Islamic extremist. If Osama is an Islamic extremist, then I am a Blairite.

“For New Labour to have even the faintest hope of a respectable performance at the general election, they must protect their Scottish base against the SNP. This pathetic attempt to smear the SNP as connected to Islamic extremism is a blatant abuse of taxpayers’ money….

“The real scandal here is not Osama Saeed, who is a good man dedicated to freedom and to bringing Scotland’s Muslim community into its mainstream politics. The real story is the blatant misuse of taxpayer funds by New Labour.”

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Danish cartoons editor: There’s a problem with Muslims in Europe

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jyllands-Posten editor Flemming Rose has been interviewed by an Israeli newspaper about the Danish cartoons controversy:

“There are even experts on Islam who didn’t see this coming,” he said. “I talked about it with the orientalist Bernard Lewis, who told me there was a long culture of insulting the prophet in Europe. He referred me to Dante, and the cathedral in Bologna where Muhammad is depicted in hell. Muslims didn’t respond to that, because they said it these were heretics that they shouldn’t be concerned with.”

When asked why he thought Muslims reacted so harshly this time, Rose said, “According to Lewis, this is the first time Muslims try to impose Islamic law on non-Muslim countries.”

According to Rose, the riots that broke out following the publications stemmed from “Muslim immigration to Europe and the fact that there are Muslims who don’t want to be integrated… There’s a problem with Muslims in Europe and it must be dealt with.”

YNet News, 22 April 2009

Lichfield Cathedral rejects BNP’s latest attempt to hijack Christianity

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP What Would Jesus Do election posterA row has broken out after the British National Party tried to use Lichfield Cathedral as the backdrop for an advertising campaign.

The Archdeacon of Lichfield, the Ven Chris Liley, has hit out at the BNP after an activist turned up in Cathedral Close on Tuesday afternoon with a large advertising van displaying a pro-BNP poster.

The move comes as the debate over plans by the Muslim community to build a mosque in the city rages on with more than 5,000 people voicing objections to the plan on a Facebook site. The BNP activist was challenged by the Archdeacon who “required him” to stop taking photographs and to remove the van from cathedral precincts.

The cathedral authorities have revealed they will now be writing to the BNP to “demand” it does not publish any promotional or marketing material which uses the cathedral as a backdrop or implies any endorsement of the BNP’s views or policies by the cathedral.

The BNP defended its actions claiming it is “voicing the opinion of the people of Lichfield”. BNP spokesman Simon Darby told local website The Lichfield Blog:

“We sent our truth truck along because a lot of people in Lichfield are very upset by the planned mosque. If this was a Labour or Islamic poster would the cathedral have taken the same action? The Archdeacon should spend more time defending the Christian faith because it needs it.”

In recent weeks the BNP has been targeting Christian voters and last month unveiled an advertising poster headed: What would Jesus Do – Vote BNP. Chris Liley added: “The BNP are wrong to suggest Jesus would vote for the BNP. His parable of the Good Samaritan was a clear example about the value we should place on people from other communities.”

Birmingham Mail, 23 April 2009

See also Chris Liley’s post at Comment is Free, 23 April 2009

Terry Eagleton on the liberal supremacists

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Terry Eagleton“If the test of liberalism is how it confronts its illiberal adversaries, some of the liberal intelligentsia seem to have fallen at the first hurdle. Writers such as Martin Amis and Hitchens do not just want to lock terrorists away. They also tout a brand of western cultural supremacism. Dawkins strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq, but preaches a self-satisfied, old-fashioned Whiggish rationalism that can be wielded against a benighted Islam. The philosopher AC Grayling has an equally starry-eyed view of the stately march of Western Progress. The novelist Ian McEwan is a freshly recruited champion of this militant rationalism. Both Hitchens and Salman Rushdie have defended Amis’s slurs on Muslims. Whether they like it or not, Dawkins and his ilk have become weapons in the war on terror. Western supremacism has gravitated from the Bible to atheism.

“The irony is clear. Some of our free literary spirits are defending liberal values in ways that threaten to undermine them. In this, they reflect the behaviour of western states. Liberals are supposed to value nuanced analysis and moral complexity, neither of which are apparent in the slanderous reduction of Islam to a barbarous blood cult. They are noted for their judicious discriminations, rather than the airy dismissal of all religion as so much garbage. There is also an honorable legacy of qualifying too-absolute judgments with an awareness of context: the genuine liberal is appalled by Islamist terrorism, but conscious of the national injury and humiliation that underlie it. None of the writers I have mentioned is remarkable for such balance. On the whole, they are more preoccupied with freedom of expression than freedom from imperial rule.”

Terry Eagleton in the Guardian, 25 April 2009

Teachers report ‘racist bullying’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nearly half of teachers say racist bullying is a problem in their schools, a survey has found. A Teachers TV survey of 802 teachers found two thirds said their schools had no policy on such bullying, and many worried about religious intolerance.

A third of teachers said more training would help them tackle the problem. The government said all schools should have a strong anti-bullying policy, which should also include measures to tackle racist bullying.

Teachers TV questioned 802 teachers to coincide with its anti-racism week. One in five said they were aware of Islamophobia in their schools.

BBC News, 24 April 2009

Muslims in fear of police terror

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims-in-fear-of-police-terrorMuslim leaders in Lancashire said on Thursday that the arrest, detention and subsequent release without charge of 12 people in police raids has created huge anxiety among the local community.

Hundreds of armed police raided addresses in Manchester, Liverpool and Lancashire during the operation, dragging the suspects from their homes and classrooms at gunpoint.

Images of the suspects being pinned to the ground with machine guns pointed to their head were beamed around the world.

In the immediate aftermath, the government commended the police on their prompt action in foiling a potentially imminent terrorist attack on British soil. Two weeks later, all 11 suspects plus a twelfth man – a British national – were released without charge. The 11 Pakistanis now face deportation.

Mr Abdul Hamed Kureshi of Lancashire Council of Mosques said: “Historically, arrests of Muslims are very high profile, it creates a lot of anxiety and there is a negative impact on community relations.

“If these people are arrested, as in this case, on what appears to be very poor intelligence, what effect will it have on their lives? If they are innocent they should be released. We have called on the authorities to be balanced and offered our support but whenever we tried to raise these issues we hardly get any response at all.

“We have been told nothing about why these arrests took place. We have excellent relations with Lancashire Constabulary but these arrests were carried out by different forces with little knowledge of the community in a negative and ruthless manner.”

Morning Star, 24 April 2009

Ramadan fallout leads to political crisis in Rotterdam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The right-wing liberal party VVD has quit the Rotterdam local authority over its refusal to sack theologist Tariq Ramadan as adviser.

Swiss-born Tariq Ramadan (46) was hired by Rotterdam in 2007 to help bridge the divide between the city’s Muslim and non-Muslim communities. He is also a guest lecturer at Rotterdam’s Erasmus university.

Last month, the Gay Krant, a newspaper for the homosexual community, accused Ramadan of making homophobic and mysogynistic statements in taped speeches. The VVD promptly demanded that Ramadan be dismissed as city adviser, but it backed down after consultations with coalition party GroenLinks (the Green party). The local authority meanwhile carried out its own investigation of Ramadan’s past statements and concluded that the Gay Krant’s accusations were baseless.

Now, the VVD has decided to quit the Rotterdam city authority over the Ramadan affair. Its two aldermen, Mark Harbers (economy) and Jeannette Baljeu (transportation) gave their resignations on Wednesday evening. Harbers said Ramandan’s views are at odds with “the freedom of its individual to choose his or her own lifestyle”.

NRC International, 23 April 2009

FBI provocateur behind terror plot

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A slick FBI informant roped four Muslim converts into a horrific terror plot to blow up synagogues and military jets by handing them piles of cash and gifts and even bags of weed, relatives of the suspects said today.

“Brother whatever you need, I will get it for you,” said the man who the four petty thieves knew as Maqsood, according to Kathleen Baynes, whose long-time boyfriend, James Cromitie is alleged to be the ringleader of the plot.

“He was very persistent and every time he came for James he took him away. They said they were going out to eat dinner,” she said. “Whenever we needed anything Maqsood would help – like financially – he gave us money to pay rent. He was just constantly around. It was like he was stalking him.”

Co-conspirator David Williams’s girlfriend Cassandra McKoy insists the men were duped into the plot with the lure of a cash payday and that religious hatred had nothing to do with it.

“They aren’t radicals they were just financially motivated. They aren’t terrorists. If Maqsood wasn’t in the picture they would’ve never come up with this idea,” she said. “This was not their idea. They make it sound like they sought him out and said we want to do this when he’s the one who approached them. He enticed them with money. Maqsood wasn’t even allowed inside the mosque, he waited in the parking lot for them and offered them $25,000 to join.”

New York Post, 23 May 2009

Terror raids ‘lessons’ warning

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cheetham Hill raidThe Muslim community’s confidence in the police is heading for crisis point following the release without charge of 12 men arrested in anti-terror raids, says one of Manchester’s leading politicians.

Coun Afzal Khan, a former Lord Mayor, said confidence could be lost because “too many times the police are getting it wrong.”

Eleven of the 12 men, who are Pakistani nationals in Britain on visas, face deportation after being handed over to the UK Borders Agency. The twelfth is a British citizen from Cheetham Hill.

Coun Khan – a councillor for Cheetham where four of the raids took place – said: “The Muslim community has always been supportive but we need to make sure that support is not lost. We are reaching a point where there is a danger of that.

“I am not saying the police should not act. I fully support the police and want them to protect us. My concern is that too many times they are getting it wrong. That is affecting the confidence in the relationship between the police and the public – particularly the Muslim community.

“It is having an adverse effect on internal community relations. An independent inquiry must look at the way the police are working and dealing with terrorism. If there are lessons to be learned, they need to be learned quickly.”

Manchester Evening News, 23 April 2009