Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Muslim cemetery plans anger Aussies

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Plans for building a Muslim cemetery in the ground of a historic Anglican graveyard in south-west Sydney are drawing a fierce opposition from locals, reported The Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday, September 25.

“My history is buried there,” Len English, from the Friends of St Thomas Church, said. “My grandparents, my parents, my aunts, uncles, my brother, cousins. Our family goes back 200 years in the district. They came to Camden Park and stayed there.”

The Lebanese Muslim Association (LMA) has paid $1.5 million for the St Thomas Anglican Cemetery at Narellan for the graveyard near Camden. The cemetery, which has capacity for 1900 single plots, has space for almost 4000 bodies.

“We all know they’ve got to bury their dead somewhere but I think they could have looked around and probably found some ground like every other religion has done in this area,” said English. “We’ve got a Catholic cemetery, we’ve got a Church of England cemetery, we’ve got a general cemetery just out of Camden. I’ve got nothing against migrants but when they want to take over your cemetery …”

Camden was the scene of a fierce opposition from locals to plans to build a Muslim school in the town. The locals, however, gave blessings for the construction of a Catholic school in the area.

In post 9/11 Australia, Muslims, who make up 1.5 percent of Australia’s 20-million population and who have been in the country for more than 200 years, have been haunted with suspicion and have had their patriotism questioned.

A 2007 poll taken by the Issues Deliberation Australia (IDA) think-tank found that Australians basically see Islam as a threat to the Australian way of life.

A recent governmental report revealed that Muslims are facing deep-seated Islamophobia and race-based treatment like never before.

Islam Online, 25 September 2008

Danish People’s Party MEP: Expel Islam from Europe

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Skik flge eller land flyThe controversial Danish People’s Party member of the European Parliament Mogens Camre spoke at the DPP’s annual meeting Sunday, calling to expel Islam from Europe.

“Islam cannot be integrated. Islam will dominate Europe. And Islam is incompatible with our values. Therefore Islam will be thrown out of Europe. This little land is ours, we forged it ourselves. And we will govern it ourselves and decide ourselves who will live in it and how they will behave. And we will fight until Denmark is again free,” said Camre, to loud applause.

Last year a similar statement by DPP member Merethe Egeberg Holm caused a commotion, when she said “Out with all Muslims in Europe and in with Jews instead!” That was her last speech as after last year’s meeting, she was expelled from the party.

Camre met with harsh criticism for his statement. Kamal Qureshi (Socialist People’s Party) compared the DPP politicians to Danish Nazi head Jonni Hansen. He also hit out at his colleagues in parliament, whom he thinks are keeping too quiet. Both the reigning party and the opposition should distance themselves from the statements.

Islam in Europe, 25 September 2008

Neocon CIP launches campaign against domestic violence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pipes and CIP

“Muslim spiritual leaders could be denounced publicly by their own community as part of a campaign to expose imams whose silence on domestic abuse is leading to women being burnt, lashed and raped in the name of Islam.

“Muslim scholars are to present the Government with the names of imams who are alleged by members of their own communities to have refused to help abused women. Imams are also accused of refusing to speak out against domestic abuse in their sermons because they fear losing their clerical salaries and being sacked for broaching a ‘taboo’ subject.

“Some of Britain’s most prominent moderate imams and female Muslim leaders have backed the campaign, urging the Home Office to vet more carefully Islamic spiritual leaders coming to Britain to weed out hardliners.”

Times, 26 September 2008

Read on, and you find that the organisation behind this campaign is the so-called Center for Islamic Pluralism, which was founded by ex-Trotskyist-turned-neocon Stephen Schwartz with financial assistance from Daniel Pipes.

In the UK the CIP has precisely one identifiable member – Irfan al-Alawi. In other words, it represents nothing at all in the Muslim community. So it would certainly be interesting to hear which of “Britain’s most prominent moderate imams and female Muslim leaders” are backing Alawi’s campaign, which is cynically using the serious issue of domestic violence to promote the CIP’s cranky obsession with “Wahhabism” and discredit genuinely representative Muslim organisations that reject Schwartz’s pro-imperialist politics.

Policy Exchange and Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Policy Exchange (1)Starting in July 2006, the first anniversary of the 7/7 bombings, Policy Exchange has published a series of pamphlets on the “extremist” strands of Islam and the threats it says they pose. In tone, these reports have been more aggressive than the thinktank’s usual output. They have warned about Islamic “reactionaries”, about “the hijacking of British Islam”, about the “subverting [of] mosques”.

Since 7/7 and 9/11, such talk has become common in western countries, among some liberals as well as those on the right.

Nevertheless, Policy Exchange’s contributions to the debate have alarmed the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and almost all Muslim groups and commentators. “Policy Exchange is more than just a thinktank,” says the MCB’s spokesman Inayat Bunglawala. “It is a clearly agenda-driven, anti-Muslim organization. It has consistently tried to promote an apolitical version of Islam. And it clearly does have influence. Anthony Browne being appointed as Boris Johnson’s policy adviser was a tremendously alarming move.”

Another aspect of Policy Exchange’s interest in Islam that concerns the MCB and others is that it has been overseen by Dean Godson, the thinktank’s research director for “terrorism and security” and “international” subjects. His politics are considerably more hard-edged and dogmatic than those usually associated with Cameron’s Conservatism.

He is the son of Joseph Godson, a hawkish US diplomat and behind-the-scenes cold war player, and the brother of Roy Godson, the head of a rightwing Washington thinktank, prominent American conservative, and authority on political “dirty tricks” and “black propaganda”. During the 1980s, both Roy and Dean Godson worked for Republican administrations in Washington. Afterwards, Dean became chief leader writer for the Daily Telegraph during its most pungently rightwing phase under the ownership of Conrad Black. Since joining Policy Exchange, Godson has continued to write polemics for British newspapers, often about Islam and often echoing the arguments of American neoconservatives.

Guardian, 26 September 2008

Boris reassures Muslims of his support

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Spectator Muslims are ComingIn an exclusive interview, Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, reassured the Muslim community that he would continue in the step of his predecessor Ken Livingstone on supporting diversity and equality projects.

“One thing I decided very early on was that the only way to run London is to support diversity and to recognise that you have got to be proactive and give encouragement and support to all communities,” Johnson said.

Muslims were also concerned about the Mayor’s and his new Director of Policy, Anthony Browne‘s negative remarks on Islam in the Spectator magazine. For example, Browne argued in July 24, 2004 that Islam wants to conquer the world etc. “I understand completely people’s concerns,” he said and argued that one has to “distinguish between the kind of slightly careless polemical things people may say in their journalistic capacity which can be drawn out and used against them. You have to distinguish between that and what they really want to do in London.”

Johnson gave assurance that Browne was “utterly committed to a glorious multi racial multi ethnic, multi faith London in which we emphasise the achievements of all communities and he will be going out of his way to prove that point.”

Muslim News, 26 September 2008

To be fair to Browne, the “Islam really does want to conquer the world” standfirst to his 2004 Spectator article and “The Muslims are coming” front cover were the responsibility of the editor rather than Browne himself. And who was the editor of the Spectator at that time? None other than Boris Johnson, of course.

Update:  For more on Browne see Boris Watch, 28 September 2008

Family barred from burying their dead stepfather on a Saturday … because he isn’t a Muslim

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Thus the headline to an piece in today’s Daily Mail. Yes, it’s yet another “Muslims are being given preferential treatment” story. And, unsurprisingly, it has been taken up in a news article posted on the BNP’s website.

The Daily Mail article in fact reveals the spurious basis of its own scaremongering headline:

“Sheffield City Council offers the ‘extended service’ to Jews and Muslims because their faith and traditions require the dead to be buried as soon as possible. But as Jews cannot bury their dead on the Sabbath – from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday – it means that effectively only Muslims can use the service. Other local authorities are also understood to offer weekend burials only to Jews and Muslims.”

The story is adapted from an original article in the Sheffield Star, which contains the following passage:

“Abdool Gooljar, president of the Sheffield branch of the Society of Islam, said the council should try to meet the needs of every resident of the city. ‘The last thing we want to do is cause more upset at the time of bereavement, and I would urge a re-think so everybody has the right to bury their dead when they want,’ he said. ‘I, firstly as a Muslim and secondly as a citizen, do not want preferential treatment. We are living in a multi-faith, multi-cultural society and we should endeavour to meet the needs of every citizen in this city’.”

The Daily Mail version leaves out the final sentence with its reference to a multi-faith, multicultural society, while the BNP article removes the quotation from Abdool Gooljar in its entirety.

Fascists routed in Cologne

Posted on by Bob Pitt

 

By Walter Held

IT HAD been planned as a central meeting of leading proto-fascists, rightwing populists and neo-nazis. A grand “European Anti-Islamic Congress” was scheduled to be held today Saturday 20th September in the huge German city of Koeln – Cologne – on the banks of the river Rhine.

Invitations had gone out to the Italian Liga Nord, the French Front National, the Austrian FPOe and the BZOe, the British National Party the Belgian Vlams Belang and others. Theme of the weekend “congress” at which the organisers confidently expected 1500 participants was a campaign against the “advance of Islam in Europe”.

The organisers belong to a political grouping called Pro Koeln. This rag tag and bobtail splinter group with a couple of dozen members picked up just under 5 pc of the votes for Koeln’s city election and have a fraction of five councillors in the city parliament. These have a small basis amongst backward elements in the pubs and on the housing estates and have set up a campaign to fight against the building of a central mosque for the city’s Moslem population.

In fact most of the organisers are ex-members or secret members of extreme rightwing groupings like the Republikaner, the German League for Folk and Homeland and the NPD but they hide behind the new respectable organisation “Pro Koeln”. As a front orginsation the right are keen to set up similar groups in other German cities. The Congress this weekend was to be a signal of their presence and their growth.

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Czech far right party stages protest against Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Narodni StranaSupporters of the Czech far right National Party will stage a protest against Islamism outside the Brno mosque on Wednesday, the party has informed on its website.

The Libertas Independent Agency associating Brno Muslims and friends of Muslim nations has expressed its protest against the planned event in a statement CTK has obtained.

“We are naturally monitoring the situation and collecting all important information concerning it,” south Moravian police spokeswoman Jan Sipkova told CTK Monday.

The demonstration is to be a reaction to the death of Czech ambassador to Pakistan Ivo Zdarek who died on Saturday in the ruins of the Marriott Hotel in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad that became the target of a terrorist attack, along with another 52 people.

Shortly after Zdarek’s death, the Brno Muslims expressed condolence to his family. In the past, they always distanced themselves from Islamist terrorist attacks.

The Brno mosque which is the oldest Muslim house of worship in the Czech Republic marked ten years of its existence this summer. At the ceremony Muslims distributed one thousand roses among Brno residents as an expression of friendship and thanks for good co-existence.

The Brno Muslims condemned the attacks on New York on September 11, 2001. In the past, they considerably helped Czech diplomats in the salvation of public Czech Television (CT) reporter Michal Kubal and his colleagues after they were kidnapped in war-torn Iraq.

Prague Daily Monitor, 22 September 2008