Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Mattel doll continues to propagate Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islam is the light dollRemember this story? Well, apparently there’s now an entire website devoted to the campaign to save innocent Christian children in the US from falling into the clutches of Islam.

It’s run by Moms Ask Mattel for Accountability (MAMA) which describes itself as “a public education effort by concerned families to protect children from being invited to join Islam, without their parents’ knowledge or permission. Mattel, the largest toy maker in the world, is still selling a toy that says ‘Islam is the Light’ – the Little Mommy Real Loving Baby Cuddle & Coo Doll, in spite of protests by parents, media and store owners.”

Scotland’s first Muslim police association launched

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Strathclyde PoliceScotland’s first Muslim Police Association has been launched in Glasgow. Strathclyde Police Muslim Association will look at boosting the recruitment and retention of Muslim officers. It will also aim to improve understanding of the faith with the public and tackle “Islamophobia”.

Scotland’s first Muslim police officer, Pc Amar Shakoor, will act as chair of the newly-established group, which aims to recruit up to 50 members. Pc Shakoor said the Strathclyde force employed about 55 Muslim police officers and civilians, who he hoped would become involved.

“We hope that the association will help to recruit more officers and civilian staff for Strathclyde Police from a Muslim background,” he said. “The aim is to build bridges with the Muslim community and work better with all people for the future.”

First Minister Alex Salmond, who attended the launch, described it as a “significant step forward in strengthening relations between Strathclyde Police and Muslim communities”.

“Scotland’s diversity is one of its greatest strengths and it’s important we encourage dialogue and partnership across all faiths if we are to make Scotland a safer and stronger society,” he said. “The association is a positive step towards making Strathclyde Police more effective in understanding and responding to community concerns.”

BBC News, 3 December 2008

See also Scottish Government news release, 3 December 2008

There’s one person who won’t be happy at this news: “According to Munira Mirza, the Mayor of London’s adviser on cultural affairs, by creating a separate tier of police to liase with Muslims, it encourages many of them to believe that they cannot approach non-Muslim officers with their culturally-specific problems: ‘this reinforces tribalism and division, rather than helping us to overcome it’.”

Given Boris Johnson’s newly discovered commitment to diversity, you do wonder why he saw fit to appoint as his director of culture someone who publicly condemns the self-organisation of minority communities as “tribalism”. Does this reflect his administration’s view of the role played by the Association of Muslim Police in the MPS?

Young Muslims not a threat – study

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Fears that British universities are hotbeds of Islamic radicalism have been exaggerated, academics have said. A Cambridge University report found most young British Muslims were not a threat.

The study, based on interviews with students in London, Cambridge and Bradford, concluded they were better integrated into society than their parents.

June Edmunds, of the university’s Centre for Development Studies, said: “The findings show that the young Muslims best equipped to lead radical opposition to western society are also among the least inclined to do so.

“Although a minority have extreme political views, most are concerned about human rights and social democracy.

“The UK, in particular, now hosts a new generation of Muslims who are more confident of their national identity and more politically engaged than their parents.”

She added: “The overall picture is of a new, settled generation of young Muslims whose interests and needs differ from those of the previous, immigrant generation.”

Press Association, 3 December 2008

Well, that’s not going to please Anthony Glees, is it?

See also June Edmunds’ piece at Comment is Free, 2 December 2008

Update:  Glees is indeed unhappy. See his comments in “Study challenges claims of Islamic extremism among students” on theGuardian website. Glees accuses the report’s authors of “flimsy and uncompelling” research and expresses his amazement that the Economic and Social Research Council should fund it. Presumably the ESRC’s money would be better spent supporting Glees’s own irresponsible, fear-mongering attacks on Muslim students.

Further update:  Glees now has an entire blog post replying to June Edmunds. His basic argument is that a handful of individuals found guilty of terrorist offences had previously attended colleges in the UK – though of course he fails to establish any causal link between the two. And this is the man who accuses others of “flimsy and uncompelling” research.

Yet another update:  See June Edmunds’ response to Glees, “Study was informed by wide research“.

One more update: The Centre for Social Cohesion denounces the Cambridge study as “inaccurate and unrepresentative”.

‘Sharia law threatens America’ claims right-wing group

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sharia Law Threatens America

Shariah, or Islamic law, may be spreading around the world, but it isn’t going to be established in the United States without opposition, vow members of the United American Committee. Officials with the non-profit have erected a 48-foot-long billboard just outside of Detroit, home to one of the largest groups of Muslims in the U.S. “SHARIA LAW THREATENS AMERICA,” warns the sign

WorldNetDaily, 28 November 2008

Ed Husain – how long before he joins the Tory party?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ed_Husain“Britain’s Muslims are at a critical juncture. A fortnight ago, a terrorism-supporting group gathered with 300 supporters in council property in Britain’s most densely Muslim-populated area, Tower Hamlets, and called for rejection of British law and support for convicted terrorists in prison. They beamed in from Lebanon the banned cleric Omar Bakri, who called on young Muslims to disobey the law….

“In Britain’s most prominent mosque, in Regent’s Park, there are meetings every weekend of a group dedicated to creating an Islamist dictatorship, destroying Israel and which advocates Muslim supremacist views. These lines will be read: nothing will be done. Muslim leaders will remain as ostriches, and wider society will not ‘interfere’, lest we cause ‘offence’….

“Matters are made worse by unsustainable levels of immigration flooding our mosques; men with no experience of British society and a poor grasp of English becoming imams and spreading their ideas throughout Muslim communities. Just as we adjust to our surroundings in Britain, a new wave of immigrants are reintroducing village dialects, customs and attire, and adding to the confusion of young British Pakistanis or Bengalis. The British people deserve a serious debate on immigration, free from yells of racism….

“I am a member of Labour and I am ashamed that the party, after 11 years in power, shies away from addressing the failures of multiculturalism. Pandering to so-called cultural differences has led to more than 70 per cent of Pakistani and Bangladeshi women in Britain today being unemployed.”

Ed Husain in the Sunday Telegraph, 30 November 2008

It would be tempting to observe that the Whittaker Chambers of Islamism has found his rightful home – in a right-wing Tory newspaper. Unfortunately, it is not only the Tories who are eager to give Ed Husain a platform. There are idiots in the Labour government – notably Hazel Blears at DCLG – who take this charlatan seriously.

Mind you, if Cameron wins the next general election, or is clearly on course to win it, I think we can anticipate Husain swiftly ditching Labour in favour of the Tories, who will find the support of an embittered ex-Islamist particularly useful in their assault on multiculturalism, not to mention their plans to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir. His Sunday Telegraph piece certainly looks like a pitch for an invitation from the Tory party.

Respect calls for PCC inquiry into reckless reporting of Mumbai atrocity

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Salma and GeorgeRespect MP George Galloway and the party’s leader, Cllr Salma Yaqoob, have today called for an urgent investigation by the Press Complaints Commission into “reckless, inaccurate and inflammatory” claims by several newspapers about the provenance of the gunmen who were responsible for the atrocities in Mumbai, India, last week.

Respect news report, 30 November 2008

And good for Respect. The problem, however, is that the Press Complaints Commission has in the past ruled that, unless a specific individual or group of individuals can demonstrate that they have been the victim of “inaccurate, misleading or distorted” reporting, the PCC can do nothing about it. According to this reasoning, the press is free to publish misinformation about an entire community without that community having any redress through the PCC. This ruling is perhaps not unconnected with the fact that, far from being an independent body, the PCC consists of representatives of the major newspaper publishers.

Michael Gove explains terrorism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The terrorists behind the atrocities in Mumbai, or Madrid, or London on 7/7, are not protesting against a particular turn of American foreign policy or a specific set of decisions taken by the Israeli state or some alleged folly of Tony Blair’s…. They are driven by a hatred of the West for what it is, not what it does. They hate the freedom and licence of the West, the ideological challenge democracy poses to their violent, oppressive fundamentalism. That is why they target places where cultures meet and mingle, where the young laugh and let their hair down. That is why Mumbai now joins Bali as a place of loss and mourning.”

Michael Gove in Scotland on Sunday, 30 November 2008