Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Århus: Muslim woman refused travel on bus due to veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bus company Arriva said that it was a case of confusion and not racism that led a bus driver to refuse travel to a woman wearing a headscarf.

A Muslim family was shocked when a local bus driver refused to continue driving unless the mother, who was wearing a traditional headscarf, got off the bus.

Århus Stiftstidende newspaper reported that Houria Nouioua, together with her husband and three young children, was told by the young male bus driver that she couldn’t travel on the bus because she was wearing a niqab – a traditional Muslim veil that covers the face.

“The driver said that the rules in Denmark meant he couldn’t carry passengers that were masked,” said the woman’s husband, Mohamed Belgacem. “I was so shocked that she couldn’t travel on the bus. I’ve lived in Denmark for 12 years and have never experienced anything like this.”

The Arriva bus remained at the bus stop for 15 minutes while other passengers became involved in the incident, outraged at the behaviour of the bus driver. “It’s pure racism and discrimination,” said a female passenger who rang the Arriva head office and spoke to an official who instructed the driver to accept the Muslim passenger.

Martin Wex, press manager with Arriva said the driver will not be fired as it was not a case of racism but one of confusion. “The driver said he had heard that masks were forbidden during demonstrations in Denmark and thought that it also applied to buses,” said Wex, who confirmed that in the next issue of the employee magazine rules will be made clear to all personnel.

Copenhagen Post, 31 March 2009

Policy Exchange forced to apologise, takes report off website

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Policy Exchange (1)The right-wing thinktank Policy Exchange has been forced into a humiliating climbdown over its report, “The Hijacking of British Islam”, for making allegations in the report that it now admits were unsubstantiated.

In late 2007 Policy Exchange published the report, reported in the right-wing press without any further fact-checking, that around a quarter of Mosques and Muslim centres of the 100 they visited, were carrying “hate literature”.

Only BBC Newsnight bothered looking further and found that some of the allegations made in the report were refuted by the very organisations accused of selling hate literature.

Policy Exchange has withdrawn the entire report from its website. It has also published this humiliating apology:

The Hijacking of British Islam:
Al-Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre

In this report we state that Al-Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre is one of the Centres where extremist literature was found. Policy Exchange accepts the Centre’s assurances that none of the literature cited in the Report has ever been sold or distributed at the Centre with the knowledge or consent of the Centre’s trustees or staff, who condemn the extremist and intolerant views set out in such literature. We are happy to set the record straight.

Sunny Hundal reports, at Pickled Politics, 30 March 2009

Can we expect that Hazel Blears who addressed a Policy Exchange seminar last July, or Ruth Kelly who provided a foreword to the latest anti-Muslim “report” by Policy Exchange, will now break all links with this discredited right-wing organisation that does so much damage to community cohesion? On balance, probably not.

Europe’s far Right turns towards the Jewish community

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Thurrock Patriots

A wave of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric in Europe is being met by a surprising countertrend: right-wing political factions, including those rooted in Nazism, who have embraced Jews and Israel as “the quintessential guardians of European culture.”

So argues Matti Bunzl, director of the program in Jewish culture and society at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who contends that the European far Right is becoming “genuinely philo-Semitic.”

Such parties have thrown their support behind Jewish candidates, have had their leaders appear at pro-Israel rallies, and have written extensively about the virtues of Jews. “It is not an aberration,” said Bunzl, an anthropologist who specializes in the history and culture of European Jewry.

Bunzl cited numerous instances of this newfound fondness for Jews. Austria’s Freedom Party, founded by former Nazis after the war, has run Jewish candidates, and its website “celebrates Jewish contributions to civilization.” Filip DeWinter, a Flemish nationalist in Belgium, whose party grew out of Flemish Nazism, has praised Jews as law-abiding citizens.

One explanation he offers is Islamophobia – antagonism toward Muslim immigrants or Muslims whose families have migrated to European countries in recent generations.

“Even strong support of Israel among the Right is driven by Islamophobia and perception of Israel as a bastion of European civilization,” said Bunzl, author of Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Hatreds Old and New in Europe. For European nationalists, “the Jewish state is trying to preserve its European values against the onslaught of Muslims.”

New Jersey Jewish News, 30 March 2009

Apology call in M65 ‘terror’ arrest

Posted on by Bob Pitt

M65 'terror' arrest

Police chiefs have been urged to give a public apology to the Muslim community in Lancashire over their handling of recent terror arrests. Nine men, from Burnley and Blackburn, were arrested on the M65 near Preston but later released without charge.

At a meeting attended by 200 people on Sunday in Blackburn, Lancashire Police were asked to apologise. Cmdr Andy Rhodes refused to give a full apology but said the incident was “regrettable”.

Ibrahim Master, a former chairman of the Lancashire Council of Mosques, said there has been disappointment about the way the men were treated.

Two vans and an ambulance were travelling in convoy to London last month when they were stopped by counter-terrorism officers. Although six men were later released, three faced extended questioning and several homes in Burnley were also searched.

BBC News, 30 March 2009

Nazir-Ali resigns – Mad Mel inconsolable

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Melanie Phillips Jihad in Britain“The resignation of Michael Nazir-Ali as Bishop of Rochester is a terrible blow, not just for the Church of England but for Britain.

“…. when Dr Nazir-Ali warned last year that Islamic extremists had created ‘no-go areas’ across Britain where non-Muslims faced intimidation, he was disowned by his fellow churchmen who all but declared that he was a liar – even though he was telling the truth….

“Dr Nazir-Ali is one of the very few inside the church to make explicit the link between Christian and British values, and to warn publicly that they are being destroyed through the prevailing doctrine of multiculturalism….

“With the church refusing to assert itself, this vacuum has allowed radical Islam to promote itself as an influential force in public life. Indeed it is rubbing its hands at the opportunity. And in the longer term that risks destroying our basic values of individual freedom and equality – and with them the identity of Britain itself.

“Dr Nazir-Ali understands this very clearly…. Back in the Eighties, he warned of the rise of radical Islamism. No-one listened. Now he urges an ‘ideological battle’ against fundamentalist Islam, which he likens to the Western struggle against Marxism. But the church still isn’t listening, and is falling over itself to accommodate it instead. Thus Dr Williams’s lamentable statement that there was no reason why sharia law should not be accepted in Britain over certain areas of Muslim life….

“Dr Nazir-Ali’s outspoken opposition to such developments has made him powerful enemies within the church. Last summer, a group of influential churchmen met to work out how to sideline those ‘aggressive’ Christians who were ‘increasing the level of fear’ by talking about the threat from radical Islam. Among those in their sights was the Bishop of Rochester.

“In any sane world, Michael Nazir-Ali – a church leader whose intellect is matched by his courage and insight – should be appointed Archbishop of Canterbury to defend our society at this most dangerous time. Instead, he is out.”

Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail, 30 March 2009

See also “The resignation of Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali is a victory for Islamism” by Damian Thompson.

For a rather different take on the issue, see Sunny Hundal’s comments at Pickled Politics.

Government moves to isolate MCB

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mosques and local Muslim community groups are to be given money and direct access to government ministers under a radical plan to isolate Britain’s largest Islamic organisation, which the Government accuses of endorsing violent extremism.

The Government is planning to deny the organisation’s representatives ministerial briefings across all departments in a move designed to undermine its standing among British Muslims.

A Government source told The Times: “The Government is already talking about different ways to engage with the Muslim community instead of just through large organisations. It will deal with regions or trusted individuals. Why do you need to deal with national umbrella bodies?”

The government source said that Dr Abdullah’s endorsement of the pro-Hamas declaration at a conference on Gaza in Istanbul last month threatened to radicalise Muslims and could be used as a justification for attacking Jews and British troops. The declaration celebrates Hamas’s “victory” against “Zionist Jewish occupiers”.

It also states that the “Islamic nation” should regard the foreign warships in Muslim waters “as a declaration of war, a new occupation, sinful aggression, and a clear violation of the sovereignty of the nation. This must be rejected and fought by all means and ways.”

The source said: “That’s the kind of rhetoric that the London bombers used to justify their attacks. And the message in this case is not coming from the internet or Bin Laden, but from the second most senior guy in Britain.”

Times, 30 March 2009

Posted in UK

Who’s endangering who?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yusuf Smith replies to the ludicrous charge by the Barnabas Fund that he has placed Patrick Sookhdeo and his family in danger.

Indigo Jo Blogs, 28 February 2009

The controversy arose from the exchange between Ben White and the Barnabas Fund over White’s critical review of Sookhdeo’s book Global Jihad. In response, the Barnabus Fund accused White of “glorifying” Osama bin Laden and presenting him in a “heroic light”, of accepting “the racist Islamist view that anything said or written by Jews or Israelis, no matter how scholarly, cannot be credible simply because of who they inherently are”, and compared him to “those in Britain in the 1930s that were sympathetic to Hitler and the Nazi party” who “totally ignored Mein Kampf and all other clear Nazi racist and anti-Semitic statements and actions, or else applauded them”.

Interestingly, though not entirely unexpectedly, Harry’s Place sided with Sookhdeo in the dispute.

The real story of government funding

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Given that much of the controversy surrounding the government’s falling out with the MCB has focused on the mistaken presumption that the MCB receives government funding (it has not for several years), we thought wed inject some accuracy and argument into the debate. Daud Abdullah of the MCB, in his Newsnight interview, clarified what public funding the MCB has actually received – none – except project funding….

“More interesting is the comparison to be made in government interaction with those Muslim organisations who have received substantial public funding….

“The British Muslim Forum – whose funds allocation totals £194,200 – supported the government’s planned extension of the detention period without charge to 42 days last year despite widespread opposition amongst British Muslims.

“As for the Quilliam Foundation which received around £1 million according to this investigation in The Times, its legitimacy as an organization has always been non-existent. The organization is widely recognised to be nothing more than a government funded social engineering project designed to depoliticize Muslims.

“Not only does money talk, it would seem that it many cases it only speaks the language of the government.”

ENGAGE, 27 March 2009

Ban on Muslim scholar angers rights activists

Posted on by Bob Pitt

tariq-ramadan2The lines between the Obama and Bush administrations appeared blurred this week after a lawyer for the government argued a ban should be upheld against the entry of Tariq Ramadan, a leading Muslim scholar.

A group of US civil rights organisations is suing on behalf of Mr Ramadan, the Swiss-born grandson of Hasan al Banna, the man who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928. He has been refused a visa several times since 2004 when he was offered a job at the University of Notre Dame, the renowned Roman Catholic institution in Indiana.

David Jones, assistant US attorney, told a federal appeals court it should uphold the ban or else the government would face a “quagmire” with others seeking reversals. “Consular decisions are not subject to litigation,” he said. When Mr Jones was asked what level of the government had considered Mr Ramadan’s case, he said “upwards in the state department”.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which argued against a judge’s ruling in 2007 that upheld the ban, said foreign scholars should not be excluded because of their political beliefs. “It’s disappointing to come here today and hear Obama administration lawyers argue the same sweeping executive power arguments,” Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU lawyer, said after Tuesday’s hearing. “There should be a clean break of the Bush administration national security policies.”

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