Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Judge in veil case to issue written ruling

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim woman who lost a small-claims suit in Hamtramck district court in 2006 after she refused to remove her religious veil during testimony took her case before a federal judge today, hoping to overturn the district judge’s decision and establish precedent in eastern Michigan courtrooms.

But after 30 minutes of legal arguments, U.S. District Judge John Feikens said that he would issue a written decision in the case. He gave no indication of when he might rule, but hinted through questions to lawyers that he may take no action at all, which lawyers conceded he could do under Supreme Court decisions.

To get into the courthouse today, Ginnah Muhammad had to remove her veil and show a photo ID. She had to remove her veil in a private area in the presence of a female court security officer and show her Michigan license, which contains her photo. After court, Muhammad and her attorney, Nahib Ayad, said she routinely is required to remove her veil in the presence of female security officers when she goes to airports, and is accommodated by female officers.

“If the judge rules in our favor, it would preclude other judges from doing the same thing to others,” Ayad, of Plymouth, said Monday. “It is one of those cases that probably will go to the U.S. Supreme Court.” Ayad said he would appeal if the decision goes against his client.

Detroit Free press, 29 April 2008

Europe’s debt to Islam given a skeptical look

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Aristote au Mont Saint-MichelWhen Sylvain Gouguenheim looks at today’s historical vision of the history of the West and Islam, he sees a notion, accepted as fact, that the Muslim world was at the source of the Christian Europe’s reawakening from the Middle Ages.

He sees a portrayal of an enlightened Islam, transmitting westward the knowledge of the ancient Greeks through Arab translators and opening the path in Europe to mathematics, medicine, astronomy and philosophy – a gift the West regards with insufficient esteem.

In a new book, he is basically canceling, or largely writing off, a debt to “the Arabo-Muslim world” dating from the year 750 – a concept built up by other historians over the past 50 years – that has Europe owing Islam for an essential part of its identity.

“Aristote au Mont Saint-Michel” (Editions du Seuil), while not contending there is an ongoing clash of civilizations, makes the case that Islam was impermeable to much of Greek thought, that the Arab world’s initial translations of it to Latin were not so much the work of “Islam” but of Aramaeans and Christian Arabs, and that a wave of translations of Aristotle began at the Mont Saint-Michel monastery in France 50 years before Arab versions of the same texts appeared in Moorish Spain.

Le Figaro and Le Monde, in considering the book in prominent reviews, drank its content in a single gulp. No suspended endorsements or anything that read like a caution.

“Congratulations,” Le Figaro wrote. “Mr. Gouguenheim wasn’t afraid to remind us that there was a medieval Christian crucible, a fruit of the heritage of Athens and Jerusalem,” while “Islam hardly proposed its knowledge to Westerners.”

Le Monde was even more receptive: “All in all, and contrary to what’s been repeated in a crescendo since the 1960s, European culture in its history and development shouldn’t be owing a whole lot to Islam. In any case, nothing essential. Precise and well-argued, this book, which sets history straight, is also a strongly courageous one.”

Published less than a month ago, the book is just beginning to encounter learned criticism. Sarcastically, Gabriel Martinez-Gros, a professor of medieval history, and Julien Loiseau, a lecturer, described Gouguenheim as “re-establishing the real hierarchy of civilizations.”

They said that he disregarded the mathematics and astronomy produced by the Islamic world between the 9th and 13th centuries and painted the period’s Islamic civilization exactly what it was not: obscurantist, legalistic, fatalistic and fanatic.

New York Times, 28 April 3008

Daily Star exposes ‘Muslim sickos’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim sickos“Is this the vilest front page headline we’ve ever seen?

“For those wondering – the article isn’t actually about Muslims kidnapping anyone, although you won’t find it on the Star’s website.

“It’s about some Muslims suggesting on the internet that the McCanns were responsible for their daughter’s kidnapping.

“You know, similar to what The Star and Express had to print front page apologies about and pay half a mil in fines for a couple of weeks ago.”

Five Chinese Crackers, 28 April 2008

See also Lee Burrows at How Liberty Dies.

Back Boris, bury Ken says Littlejohn

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Richard_Littlejohn“In London, Livingstone is relying on a huge turnout among innercity Muslims. If previous experience is anything to go by, ‘community leaders’ will simply collect the ballot papers from bewildered Muslims, especially women, and ‘help’ them cast their votes.

“Don’t be surprised to discover subsequently that a bloke in a burqa has voted a few dozen times using someone else’s polling cards. Officials would be too petrified to challenge him.

“There’s nothing new in vote-rigging. In 1960, the Mayor of Chicago turned out the dead to push John F. Kennedy over the line in the U.S. Presidential election. The Mayor of London wouldn’t complain if something similar happened in the Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets provided it kept him in office.”

Richard Littlejohn offers his thoughts on the London mayoral election.

Daily Mail, 29 April 2008

The BNP, anti-semitism and Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Do not be fooled, the BNP is a fascist organization and racist to the core

By David Landau

“Of course we must teach the truth to the hardcore…. when it comes to influencing the public, forget about racial differences, genetics, Zionism, historical revisionism and so on…. we must at all times present them with an image of moderate reasonableness.”  Nick Griffin, Chairman of the BNP, writing in the Patriot, Spring 1999.

LAST WEEK the Argent newspaper group, who produce local newspapers across London and the South East, took an advertisement from the BNP with a picture of a white nuclear family saying “People Like You Vote BNP – British National Party Putting Londoners First”. We know that they are very selective about which Londoners they want to “put first”.  But the it seems that the Argent Group were not simply seduced by the money, but fooled into thinking that the BNP is just another party participating in the political process.

The fact that the BNP is just a newish manifestation of an old party going back to the British Brothers League through the British Union of Fascists through the National Front was completely lost on them. They now seem to have seen the error of their ways and have agreed to put the money made on this advertisement to charity. Part of this rumour of respectability is the suggestion that the BNP isn’t anti-Semitic any more. The fact that their leader Nick Griffin used to be an outspoken Holocaust denier, who compared believing that 6 million were murdered with believing that the earth is flat can be put aside as a youthful indiscretion. They have apparently changed their ways.

They even have a Jewish councillor in the person of Pat Richardson (nee Feldman) in Epping Forest. To understand this we need to recognize that anti-Semitism plays a different role in fascist thinking than other forms of racism. Anti-Semitism has been an organizing principle of most fascists. Jews are the Bankers and the Bolsheviks who conspire together to control the world in which the rest of us are pawns and victims of their evil plans. These ideas borrow heavily from medieval Christian ideas about Jews as Christ Killers and Usurers.

This conspiracy theory has been upset by the rise of Islamaphobia. For many fascists, and Nick Griffin and other leaders of the BNP are part of this wing, the central organizing principle is now Islamaphobia. It is the Oil Sheikhs and the Terrorists who are calling the shots, dividing the world against itself and threatening ‘our’ Christian way of life. Leaflets and papers by the BNP portray Muslims praying outside a church on the village green and bombed buses.

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What turns some Islamists to terror

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“We represent a cross section of the Muslim community, and reject the simplistic narrative about the dangers of Islamism espoused by the Quilliam Foundation. We believe this is just another establishment-backed attempt to divert attention from the main cause of radicalisation and extremism in Britain: the UK’s disastrous foreign policy in the Muslim world, including its occupation of Muslim lands and its support for pro-western Muslim dictators. The foundation has no proven grassroots support within the Muslim community, although it does seem to have the ear of the powers that be, probably because it is telling them what they want to hear.”

Letter from Anas al-Tikriti, Yvonne Ridley, Ihtisham Hibatullah, Ismail Patel and Roshan Muhammed Salih.

Guardian, 26 April 2008

Alan Craig takes BBC and ITV to court over election broadcast

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Alan Craig in churchA London mayoral candidate is taking the BBC and ITV to the High Court for “censoring” his party Election Broadcasts in the run up to the May 1 elections. The Christian Choice candidate, Alan Craig, has instructed the Christian Legal Centre to file papers this morning at the Royal Courts of Justice after BBC and ITV officials instructed him to remove parts of his Party Election Broadcast which was aired on Wednesday evening.

Cllr Craig, a long-standing campaigner against the “mega-mosque”, due to be built in Newham close to the site of the Olympic Games, originally described the organisation behind it, Tablighi Jamaat, as “separatist”. However, BBC and ITV officials responsible for supervising the Broadcasts instructed him to moderate his views and change this description of the Islamic organisation if he wanted it aired.

Cllr Craig claims not only “political interference” by the broadcasters, but says such action breeches his rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects freedom of speech.

According to the Christian Legal Centre, Cllr Craig changed the word to “controversial” under duress. Late in the day ITV insisted that the agreed word “controversial” should be applied to the mosque plans not to the Islamic group. Cllr Craig’s objections to the mega-mosque, however, have consistently been related to the nature of the Islamic group behind the project – the plans have not yet been published.

Christian Today, 25 April 2008

And good for BBC and ITV, we say. Mind you, “separatist” and “controversial” represent quite restrained language as far as Alan Craig is concerned. This is the man whose press releases feature headlines such as “Olympics mega-mosque linked to London and Glasgow car bomb plots“.

Muslim BBC journalist held down by six officers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim journalist was held to the ground by police officers after his radio equipment was mistaken for an explosive device. Max Khan, 39, was covering a story for BBC Radio Stoke when six officers held him down and searched his backpack. Staffordshire Police said it had received reports that a man with a large backpack with wires or aerials coming from it was acting suspiciously outside the Potteries Shopping Centre in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent on April 7.

In a statement to The Muslim News Chief Superintendent Jane Sawyers, of Staffordshire Police, said, “Our first duty in cases like this is the safety of the public. The person and our officers, and presented with this limited information, local officers immediately responded and positively acted to ensure everyone’s safety. I want to apologise for any distress caused but the action taken was necessary. I am pleased with the positive and professional way the officers dealt with the incident. Bearing in mind the current national terrorism alert level we were able to resolve this incident quickly and safely.”

A spokesperson for the BBC told The Muslim News, “Police have apologised for this incident and as far as the BBC is concerned the matter is now closed.”

However, speaking on behalf of her husband who has been gagged by the BBC, Saadia Khan told The Muslim News, “I want to see how the BBC reacts if the same happens to one of its white reporters in China during the Olympics this summer. Will it accept an apology from the police there and call it an end to the matter?” She also challenged the rationale of the police, asking, “What’s so special about Stoke that Al Qa’ida would make it a target? Why should terrorists stick to rucksacks to carry their bombs and after months of planning why leave wires hanging out of it?”

Muslim News, 25 April 2008