Author Archives: Bob Pitt

‘Could a robust Christian response be the answer to Muslim extremism?’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dominic Lawson interviews the Bishop of Rochester:

“Dr Nazir-Ali does not simply blame the Saudis, or other foreign governments who might have been funding militant Islam in the mosques of Great Britain, for the rise in Muslim chauvinism in this country. He blames the British people themselves, arguing that there has been a catastrophic collapse in Christian-based morality and spirituality in this country over the past 40 or so years and that this has created a ‘moral vacuum’ in society as a whole, which has been increasingly filled – at least in the minds of impressionable youth – by fundamentalist Islam…. Dr Nazir-Ali is deeply critical of the way in which New Labour, supposedly packed with devout Christians, has indulged men such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi.”

Independent, 7 December 2007

Hijab ban sidelines Edmonton soccer team

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim female soccer team in Edmonton has had to postpone all their games until the Alberta Soccer Association makes a final decision on players wearing headscarves on the field.

Half the girls on the Al-Ikhwat team wear a hijab, a headscarf worn by some Muslim females in keeping with their belief of dressing modestly.

The provincial association has temporarily banned players from wearing hijabs on the pitch after a referee asked a 14-year-old girl to leave a game in Calgary last month. He said her headscarf posed a safety risk.

The Alberta Soccer Association follows international rules that forbid all headgear, including sweatbands, but said it will review safety issues before making a final ruling on hijabs.

Amereen Chowdhry, a Grade 12 student who’s played with the team for a year and a half wearing her hijab, says it’s not dangerous. “Talk to us directly. Ask us what it’s like so we can show then that it’s not a dangerous issue. Our hijabs don’t have pins in it and they are tucked into our jersey,” she told CBC News.

The team plays in the Edmonton and District Soccer Association’s indoor league. Mike Thorne, the group’s executive director, said women wearing hijabs have been playing in Edmonton for more than seven years without any problems.

CBC News, 6 December 2007

‘Muslim prayer beds’ – more lies from the Daily Star

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dewsbury Hospital“Hospital chiefs who told nurses to point Muslim patients’ beds towards Mecca five-times-a-day last night climbed down. They said they would now only do it for the ‘terminally ill’. Nurses had been breaking off from health care duties to perform the ritual at Dewsbury and District Hospital in West Yorks….

“There were claims last night that the bed shifting policy almost cost one 80-year-old her life. Staff at Dewsbury Hospital were so busy gran Mavis Fox was able to slip out unnoticed and walk over three miles home. She was rushed back after falling and gashing her head. Overworked nurses had failed to spot that she was missing. Mavis’s family are now fuming that she was able to walk out.

“One angry relative said: ‘They said the nurse was busy and they didn’t have enough staff. My gran could have died that day. It was really cold and no one even knew that she’d gone. If they can make moving beds for Muslims a priority why can’t they make it a priority to look after other patients?'”

Daily Star, 6 December 2007

There has been no “climb down” by the Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust. There never was a policy of moving Muslim patients’ beds five times a day, nor were there any plans to implement such a policy. Read the original press release by the Trust and their correction of the Daily Star‘s lies here.

Muslims ‘criminalised for silly thoughts’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Abdul Bari at TUCYoung Muslims are being convicted of thought crimes and branded as terrorists for life, the country’s most prominent Islamic leader has told The Times.

Muhammad Abdul Bari said police and prosecutors were criminalising youths for harbouring “silly thoughts” and were undermining Gordon Brown’s £400 million drive to win Muslim hearts and minds. Dr Bari, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain, was commenting ahead of the sentencing today of Samina Malik, a shop assistant who styled herself as “the lyrical terrorist”, wrote poetry in praise of beheadings and joined extremist internet forums.

Dr Bari told The Times: “Many young people download objectionable material from the internet, but it seems that if you are a Muslim then this could lead to terrorist charges, even if you have absolutely no intention to do harm to anyone else. Samina’s so-called poetry was certainly very offensive but I don’t believe that this case should really have been a criminal matter. Young people may well have some silly thoughts. That should not be criminalised. It is their actions that we should be concerned about.” He said that if police were concerned about Malik they should have placed her under surveillance and detained her if she was involved in “actual terror-related activity”.

Dr Bari added: “Instead, she was prosecuted for what can only be termed really as a thought crime. This should not be of concern just to Muslims, but to all in our society who care about natural justice. Her conviction raises a lot of deeply worrying questions about Section 58 of the Terrorism Act and just how incredibly broad its scope is.”

He contrasted the stance taken by the police in cases like Malik’s with Gordon Brown’s antiradicalisation initiatives in schools, mosques and youth groups. The Prime Minister spoke in his security statement last month about mentoring programmes, roadshows and other methods to “isolate extremists”.

Dr Bari said that Malik’s conviction and other cases could prove counter-productive. He added: “It is certainly sensible for the Government to work with Muslim groups to counter extremist propaganda. This is, we have been told often, part of a ‘hearts and minds’ campaign directed at young British Muslims, but it is difficult to see how Samina’s conviction can do anything other than impair this effort.”

Times, 6 December 2007

Muslim woman sues for being forced to remove headscarf in US jail

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jameelah MedinaA Muslim woman arrested for riding a commuter train without a valid ticket has filed a federal lawsuit in the United States, claiming her religious freedom was violated when she was forced to remove her headscarf when she was taken to jail.

Jameelah Medina also said she was intimidated by a deputy who accused her of being a terrorist and called Islam an “evil” religion, according to the suit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

The suit names the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and Deputy Craig Roberts of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

After determining her ticket was invalid, the officers told her to get off at the next station, where a deputy would be waiting for her. Roberts handcuffed Medina, put her in the back of a police car and began driving her to a jail.

During the ride, Roberts berated Medina and Islam, according to the suit. Roberts “accused Medina of being a terrorist and supporting terrorism. He stated that Muslims are evil … and that the United States was in Iraq at God’s direction to squash evil,” read the suit.

At the West Valley Detention Center in San Bernardino, Medina was forced to remove her headscarf despite several attempts to explain to a female deputy why she wore it, the suit said.

After several hours, Medina was released without being charged or fined, her lawyer said.

Associated Press, 6 December 2007

See also ACLU press release, 6 December 2007

Amis on offensive again over Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Amis in ManchesterThe novelist Martin Amis has fired another shot at Islam by condemning the “abject failure” of Muslims to denounce suicide bombings.

He said it was normal and natural to feel “retaliatory urges” after allegations in August last year of a plot to bomb transatlantic passenger jets which could have killed 3,000 people.

Amis, who has just become professor of creative writing at Manchester University, has been embroiled in a row with one of his new colleagues, the Marxist academic Terry Eagleton, and made his fresh remarks at a packed debate at the university this week which both men had been due to address. However, Prof Eagleton, who teaches cultural theory at Manchester, cancelled his appearance, reportedly because of a clash in his diary.

In reference to suicide bombings, Amis told the audience: “There should be from every corner of the West a permanent factory siren of disgust for these actions.” He also criticised “distorted sympathy” shown to Palestine.

Earlier in the year, Prof Eagleton said that Amis had abandoned sensible Western liberal values and taken up views akin to those of “a British National Party thug”.

Daily Telegraph, 5 December 2007

‘Pat Condell at his brilliant, hilarious and topical best’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

At least, that’s how the fascists of the BNP describe the latest anti-Muslim video from the National Secular Society’s favourite comedian. This one is on the Gillian Gibbons case: “Well, it’s another public relations triumph for Islam…. I bet they’re even laughing at this over in Pakistan.” Pakistan and its inhabitants, of course, being a byword for ignorance and backwardness.

But could Condell not at least give credit to the Muslim Council of Britain, I hear you ask, for their unequivocal condemnation of Gillian Gibbons’ arrest and conviction? But you’re forgetting, according to Condell the MCB are nothing more than “duplicitous, mealy-mouthed, unprincipled, terrorist-sympathising scum“.

Peter Risdon on ‘Izlam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Peter Risdon, organiser of last year’s misnamed March for Free Expression, offers his take on the Gillian Gibbons case:

“A Muslim regime imprisoned a non-Muslim and it took two Muslim peers, Baroness Warsi and Lord Ahmed, to negotiate her release. Why did the negotiators have to be Muslims? The answer is simple: Islam is a fundamentally supremacist system of thought and the pattern we saw in Sudan, of a submissive and powerless non-Muslim having her fate decided by Muslims, is deeply entrenched in Islamic tradition.”

Risdon also gives us his thoughts on the so-called “mega mosque” in Newham. He describes the proposed building as “a visible symbol of supremacism that is intended to dominate the site of the forthcoming Olympics and to send out a message of Izlamist triumphalism to the entire world” and “the moral equivalent of erecting a giant burning cross on the site”.

Freeborn John, 3 November 2007

Another day, another concocted anti-Muslim scare-story

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nurses told to turn Muslims bedsA hospital in northern England is playing down media reports saying that nurses have been ordered to stop normal duties five times a day to turn Muslim patients’ beds so that they face Mecca.

British tabloid newspapers reported Tuesday that at a hospital in West Yorkshire “overworked” nurses in the taxpayer-funded National Health Service were struggling to cope with the additional duties required for Muslim patients. Apart from moving the beds, the nurses also have to provide bathing water for pre-prayer ablutions, the reports said. The new duties were causing “havoc“, said the Daily Express, while the Daily Star said they were “creating turmoil” and quoted a doctor at the hospital as saying it was a case of “political correctness gone mad“.

In reaction to the media reports, the hospital issued a new statement on Tuesday, calling the coverage “entirely inaccurate”. “Nurses are not being removed from their duties to move patients’ beds towards Mecca,” chief nurse Tracey McErlain-Burns said. “Moving patients’ beds for prayer five times a day has not been suggested as part of this workshop and staff have not been ordered to do this.”

CNS News, 5 December 2007

It’s not just the right-wing media who swallow this nonsense. That standard bearer for scientific rationalism Richard Dawkins happily repeats it too: RichardDawkins.net, 4 December 2007

You can read the original Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust press release on which the whole fraudulent story was based, and the Trust’s reply to the distorted media coverage, here.

Vote Boris rather than Ken says Nick Cohen

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Bizarrely, since the world has talked of little else since 9/11, most people here don’t understand Islamic politics, so the sight of Livingstone embracing supporters of Jamaat-e-Islami and the Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t shock them as it should. Let me put it bluntly: it is no different from the Mayor embracing the BNP as the authentic voice of white Londoners. Go Lib Dem, Green or Tory if you must. But don’t vote for this wretched man. He has betrayed the honour of the British left.”

Nick Cohen contributes to the “Can Ken still cut it?” debate in Time Out, 5-11 December 2007