Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Ed Husain accuses Muslim critics of ‘intimidation’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Quilliam FoundationThe Quilliam Foundation, the think tank devoted to promoting harmony in West/Islam relations, is facing the withdrawal of its financial backers.

The foundation was set up by former Hizb ut-Tahrir members Maajid Nawaz and Ed Husain in April with the explicit aim of freeing Western Muslims from “the cultural baggage of the Indian subcontinent and the political burdens of the Arab world”. Its work has already been feted by such figures as Michael Gove, the Conservative Shadow Secretary for Children, Schools and Families, and socialite Muslim Jemima Khan. But now its financial backers, based in the Gulf, have cut off funding because they are incensed at its criticism of Ken Livingstone’s favourite Islamist, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

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Town moves against Islamic school

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Camden protest hatWith its lace curtain bungalows and steepled Anglican church, the once tranquil town of Camden in New South Wales seems the most improbable of settings for a row that combines race and religion.

Proud of its rich history, the town promotes itself as “the birthplace of the nation’s wealth”, for it was here, in the early 19th Century, that the sheep and dairy industries first began to flourish. Now the town, which lies on south-west fringes of Sydney, is confronting a very 21st Century issue: the proposal to construct an Islamic school for some 1,200 Muslim pupils.

Back in November, more than 1,000 local people took part in a public meeting. Many participants expressed themselves with little regard for political correctness.

“This has to be one of the nicest places in New South Wales,” said one woman, who has lived in Camden for the past nine years. “Everywhere is being destroyed.”

“Why don’t we tell the truth. They’re wrecking Australia. They’re taking us over,” she said. “Why hasn’t anyone got any guts? They’ve got terrorists amongst ’em… They want to be here so they can go and hide in all the farm houses… This town has every nationality… but Muslims do not fit in this town. We are Aussies, OK.”

Some of the loudest cheers of the night greeted a speech from a local man in his late 70s. “Can I just say this without being racist or political?” he said. “In 1983, in the streets of London a parade by Muslims chanted incessantly ‘If we can take London, we can take the world’. Don’t let them take Camden.”

BBC News, 26 May 2008

Update:  See “Australia Muslim school rejected”, BBC News, 27 May 2008

See also the Daily Telegraph, which tells us that “residents demanded an apology for being labelled racists”, while the Sydney Morning Herald reports that “a resident, Kate McCulloch, emerged from the meeting declaring a victory for ‘decency’ – and insisted Muslims were incompatible with the local community. ‘The ones that come here oppress our society, they take our welfare and they don’t want to accept our way of life’, she said.”

Update 2:  See “A win for racists in Camden”, Green Left Weekly, 31 May 2008

Couldn’t Sky Arts find a Muslim?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Three films on the three great Abrahamic faiths; three speeches by experts on those faiths. It sounds like the making of an admirably inclusive season of programming on Sky Arts, arranged by the channel’s chairman, Lord St John of Fawsley. A problem, however, looms. For while the lecture on Judaism is to be delivered by the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, and the talk on Christianity is to be given by the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the contribution on Islam is to be provided by Hans Küng, who isn’t a Muslim, but another Catholic. Questions are being asked why nobody who actually practises Islam is deemed suitable….

“The Muslim Council of Britain, while saying it wants to see the lecture before criticising it, comments: ‘Hans Küng is a respected advocate of interfaith dialogue and it may well be that he will do a splendid job of explaining about Islam and Islamic architecture. It is somewhat regrettable that, unlike for the other faiths … the programme makers seem to have been unable to procure the services of someone who was actually a believer in the religion to present the programme’.”

Oliver Marre in the Observer, 25 May 2008

Posted in UK

‘Britain’s phoney war on terror’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“After spending time recently with senior Pentagon officials and other Americans involved in counter-terrorism, I was struck by the global scope of their concerns. Above all I was reminded how different their attitudes are from those of their British counterparts, still obsessed with ‘community cohesion’ and the ‘radicalisation’ of young Muslims. In Britain the views of the non-Muslim majority are largely ignored – or lead to them being branded as potential ‘Islamophobes’. In the United States the unthinkable and unsayable are debated openly….

“Europe can be weak in combating terrorism at a political level, largely because of the effects of officially decreed multiculturalism and a failure to do much about the impact of population movements on the host culture and economy. Not surprisingly, the failure of European governments to get a grip on what are still relatively small Muslim minorities provokes exasperation in America.

“Many of the 1.6m Muslims living in Britain, for example, still do not seem fully to appreciate the outrage that a finger-jabbing minority causes at home and abroad with each escalating demand for Islamist enclaves. Like a perennial student, new Labour favours debate and dialogue. But in dealing with the Muslim Council of Britain, the government has unwittingly accepted as ‘community’ interlocutors men who have blamed Islamist terrorism primarily on British foreign policy, while failing to condemn suicide bombing outside the UK….

“The one British politician who grasps the need to be as frank as our American cousins about the threat from terrorists who are actively plotting indiscriminate slaughter is not the prime minister, who appears to be locked into the globalising vapidities that thrill Davos seminars, but David Cameron. The leader of the opposition understands the existential threat from jihadism and has comprehensive ideas about how to combat it…. He is fully conscious of the need to balance ancient liberties with the right to stay alive.”

Michael Burleigh in the Sunday Times, 25 May 2008

Update:  See Yusuf Smith’s comments at Indigo Jo Blogs, 27 May 2008

Nazir-Ali backs initiative to convert Muslims to Christianity

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nazir AliThe Church of England was accused by one of its most senior bishops yesterday of failing in its duty to convert British Muslims to Christianity.

The Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, said Church leaders had rightly shown sensitivity towards Muslims as part of efforts to welcome minority faiths. But he said: “I think it may have gone too far and what we need now is to recover our nerve.” “Our nation is rooted in the Christian faith, and that is the basis for welcoming people of other faiths,” he said.

The Pakistani-born bishop, who in 2002 was tipped to become Archbishop of Canterbury before Dr Rowan Williams took over from Dr George Carey, was echoing concerns that many Church leaders are abandoning attempts to spread Christianity among Muslims out of fear of a backlash.

Members of the Church’s “parliament” have now forced the highly sensitive issue on to the agenda of this summer’s General Synod – despite the efforts of liberal bishops to warn them off. A private members’ motion calling on the bishops to clarify their strategy has gathered so many signatures of support from Synod members that it has leapt over others in the queue for the July meeting in York.

Synod member Paul Eddy, who tabled the motion, said that the active recruitment of non-believers and adherents of other faiths had always been a Biblical injunction on Christians, commanded by Christ himself. But he claimed that many bishops were downplaying the missionary role of the Church and official documents often glossed over the requirement to convert Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs or followers of other religions. He warned that the central role of Christianity in Britain was being eroded, and by “allowing the rise of another religion in our country, all that Britain stands for is up for grabs”.

Mail on Sunday, 25 May 2008

Update:  See “Church of England row over Muslim conversion”, Daily Telegraph, 26 May 2008

Further update:  See also Sunny Hundal’s comments at Pickled Politics, 28 May 2008

Japan says Muslim offense at cartoon ‘regrettable’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

TOKYO —  The government said in a statement Friday that it is “regrettable” that a section of a Japanese cartoon has sparked an outcry in the Muslim world and stressed the need to foster understanding to prevent similar incidents in the future.

“While it resulted from carelessness, the Japanese government considers it regrettable that Muslims’ feelings were hurt by the content of some of the cartoon,” Foreign Ministry Press Secretary Kazuo Kodama said. “In any case, we think it is important to prevent a recurrence by fostering understanding and respect for other religions and cultures.”

The statement came a day after Japanese publisher Shueisha Inc and Another Push Pin Planning Co, which created the animated images, apologized for offending Muslims but insisted the detail had simply been overlooked and there was no intention of showing any disrespect for the Quran.

At issue is a 90-second segment from “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure”, which depicts Dio Brando, a villain, picking up a Quran from a bookshelf and apparently examining it as he orders the execution of the hero and his friends.

Japan Today, 24 May 2008

Italy rightists raze Verona mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Italy’s far-right, anti-immigrant Northern League party has started its mission in the new government with bringing down a mosque in the northern city of Verona.

“[The mosque destruction] reinforces Muslim fears of seeing the League in the ruling coalition,” Ali Abu Shwaima, the head of Milan-based Islamic Centre, told IslamOnline.net on Saturday, May 24.

Bulldozers brought down last week a building housing a Muslim prayer room in the city. “I never felt at ease with this mosque,” Elisonder Antonneli, the head of Verona city council, said. “This place will be turned into a park and a car parking space and will be named after (Italian writer) Oriana Fallaci.”

Fallaci, who died in 2006, was notorious for anti-Islam stances. Following the 9/11 attacks, the far-right writer published a book entitled “Rage and Pride” in which she ridiculed the Noble Qur’an. She has also authored another book “The Force of Reason” in which she warned that Europe was turning into “an Islamic province, an Islamic colony” and that “to believe that a good Islam and a bad Islam exist goes against all reason.”

The Northern League has four ministers in Silovio Berlusconi’s government, including the portfolio of the Interior. The League grabbed 8 percent of the vote in last month’s general elections, securing Berlusconi’s right-wing coalition a comfortable majority in the parliament. The party has nearly doubled its parliamentary strength from 4.5 percent two years ago.

The Northern League is widely accused of racism with many critics calling it the BNP of Italy, a reference to the British right-wing party. Its election campaign played on issues such as immigration crime and economic and cultural fears from immigration.

Abu Shwaima, the Muslim leader, said Italian Muslims will face hard times under the far-right league. He said Muslims in the city of Verona used to find spiritual comfort at the razed mosque. “The mosque destruction is sign of spiraling Islamophobia in many European countries,” he said.

Islam Online, 24 May 2008

Muslim cleared of murdering BNP man

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP Islam Out of BritainA Muslim elder who stabbed his neighbour in the back was dramatically cleared of murder yesterday after a court was told that he had endured a living hell of racism, threats and violence.

Habib Khan, 50, of Stoke-on-Trent, was found guilty of the manslaughter of Keith Brown, 52, a BNP activist and an alleged friend of the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, who attended his funeral. Khan killed Mr Brown last July after finding him in a struggle with his 24-year-old son, Azir. He said he thought that Mr Brown was going to kill Azir and claimed that Mr Brown fell on to a knife he was holding at his back.

Stafford Crown Court was told that Mr Brown, an unemployed father of seven with a long criminal record, began a frightening campaign of intimidation, violence and racial abuse against the Khan family after objecting to his neighbour building a grand house next to his own modest home. A few months before the stabbing, Mr Brown’s son, Ashley Barker, 20, was convicted of assaulting Khan. He hit him repeatedly on the head with a metal object on his wrist.

The court was told that Mr Brown had been jailed in his youth for wounding with intent and that his most recent conviction was in 2000 for assault. Khan, on the other hand, was a pillar of his local mosque.

Prosecuting authorities were accused in court of repeatedly failing to sustain convictions against Mr Brown and Mr Barker, both BNP activists, described by the defence as “the neighbours from hell”.

During the construction of Khan’s house, Mr Brown and Mr Barker took sledgehammers to the walls. Mr Brown was convicted of criminal damage but appealed. When the prosecution failed to warn any witnesses about the appeal hearing, a judge overturned the conviction.

After the Khan house was built, Mr Brown and Mr Barker kept up with their persecution of the family, once shouting “Paki b******s” at Khan and his wife in their garden and threatening to kill them. The police were called but Khan withdrew his complaint in the hope of seeking mediation.

Next Mr Brown smashed the windows of the Khans’ conservatory. Khan complained to the police. Mr Brown and Mr Barker were charged with racially aggravated harassment but the prosecution dropped the case.

After Mr Barker was arrested and bailed for his attack on Khan last year, he returned immediately to Khan’s home and threw a stone at the bedroom window. He then shouted: “You are dead.” Mr Barker was charged with witness intimidation but that accusation was dropped after he pleaded guilty to assault.

Times, 24 May 2008