Author Archives: Bob Pitt

More hysterical nonsense from comrade Namazie

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Maryam Namazie’s so-called Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain offers its take on the Gillian Gibbons case. The MCB, which forthrightly condemned Ms Gibbons’ arrest and stated that it was “appalled at the decision of the Sudanese authorities” to charge her, is falsely quoted as saying it found the situation merely “embarrassing”, and is further accused of favouring the lashing of people who insult Islam, while the adoption of an utterly toothless law against incitement to religious hatred is equated with death threats against apostates:

“The CEMB notes that Islamic organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain find the events in Sudan ’embarrassing’ – as indeed all supporters of the Shariah should. But they do so on the grounds that no insult to Islam was intended by Ms Gibbons. This implies that had an insult been perpetrated, it would have been deemed a crime and punishable according to the Shariah, which could have resulted in 40 lashes or worse. Recent death threats against apostates or the case of the Danish cartoons of Muhammad two years ago are some examples of how any criticism is deemed offensive or insulting. Islamists will not hesitate to use Islamic law where possible or other violent means to stifle such criticism. In line with this, they have been aggressively campaigning for a law on incitement to religious hatred in the UK, which will severely curtail freedom of expression.”

Maryam Namazie’s blog, 2 December 2007

Islam’s image

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Letters in the Daily Telegraph, 1 December 2007:

Sir – Muslim leaders in Britain keep trying to tell us that they are a loving, kind faith. Really? Hindus, Jews, Sikhs, Christians, and atheists, none of them like being offended. Who does? But the only faith that talks of lashings for naming a teddy bear and death for apostates is Islam.

Alastair Muir, Glasgow

Sir – How right Boris Johnson is (Comment, November 29) in appealing for all fair-minded Muslims to speak out against the extremists of their faith: but don’t hold your breath. Didn’t Edmund Burke say: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”?

Brian Foster, Shrivenham, Oxfordshire

‘No, I am not a racist’ claims Amis

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Martin Amis (2)Martin Amis responds indignantly to Ronan Bennett: “I DO NOT ‘ADVOCATE’ ANY DISCRIMINATORY TREATMENT OF MUSLIMS. AND I NEVER HAVE. And no one with the slightest respect for truth can claim otherwise.”

Sure, Martin, sure. When you said that stuff in the interview with Ginny Dougary (“The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan. Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community”) you were merely “adumbrating”, engaging in a “thought experiment”.

Mart goes on to claim that his hostility is solely towards Islamism as an ideology (needless to say, he equates Islamism with terrorism) and that his words in the Dougary interview were “not racist but simply retaliatory”. Which makes it difficult to explain his proposal for “strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan”.

And how would Amis characterise this statement from the interview? “They’re also gaining on us demographically at a huge rate. A quarter of humanity now and by 2025 they’ll be a third. Italy’s down to 1.1 child per woman. We’re just going to be outnumbered.” As Terry Eagleton pointed out, this is almost indistinguishable from the sort of paranoid fantasies you expect from the BNP.

Guardian, 1 December 2007

Calgary girl gets to play in soccer game after minor modification to hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

CALGARY – A 14-year-old girl who made national headlines over her determination to wear a Muslim headscarf while playing sports was allowed yesterday to compete in a soccer tournament. Safaa Menhem learned just moments before the game that she had been given the go-ahead to wear her hijab with just a few slight modifications. The pint-sized forward received a rousing ovation when she stepped onto the Calgary Soccer Centre pitch for her first shift. “I’m happy I got to play,” a beaming Safaa said after the game, which her team won 4-1.

Canadian Press, 30 November 2007

Alan Craig launches anti-‘mega mosque’ website

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Alan Craig in church“A website has been launched by those campaigning against proposals for an enormous mosque close to the 2012 Olympic site. Newham councillor Alan Craig, of the Christian Peoples Alliance, says the site will counter ‘misinformation and spin’ put out by Tablighi Jamaat, the conservative Islamic organisation behind the plans.”

Waltham Forest Guardian, 30 November 2007

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Jews and Muslims forge a bond in the Oxford mêlée

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Oxford protestJewish and Muslim student leaders at Oxford University have expressed hopes that their co-operation in trying to stop the David Irving-Nick Griffin debate on free speech on Monday night will herald a new relationship between the two groups.

Their members were among up to 2,000 banner-waving, chanting demonstrators who besieged the Oxford Union buildings for four hours in the centre of the university city. A sit-down protest blocked the narrow entry gate to the Union and stopped many of the sell-out audience from getting in.

The Union of Jewish Students and Oxford University’s Islamic Society carried a huge banner marked with the symbols of both organisations. Some Muslim demonstrators carried posters proclaiming “Hands off our Jews”, while the Jewish Society carried others saying “Hands off our Muslims”.

Jewish Society president Steven Altmann-Richer said: “Ironically, the first event we held with the Islamic Society was last term when someone from the Muslim Council of Britain talked to us about the dangers of the BNP.”

Jewish Chronicle, 30 November 2007

Ehsan Jami works on film on Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

AMSTERDAM –  Ehsan Jami, founder of the Committee for Former Muslims, has followed Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s example and made a short film about radical Islam, the Telegraaf reports.

The film entitled The life of Mohammed should be ready in February or March of next year and will cause more of a commotion than the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, the former Labour PvdA member says.

“I show how violent and tyrannical Mohammed was. This man murdered three Jewish tribes, killed people who left the faith, and married a 6-year-old girl, with whom he had sex when she was 9,” Jami says in comment on the contents of the 10-minute film.

Jami says it is a coincidence that Freedom Party PVV leader Geert Wilders is also working on a film on Islam at the moment.

Expatica, 30 November 2007

British Muslims should protest teddy lunacy, says Boris

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Boris JohnsonReflecting on the Gillian Gibbons case in today’s Daily Telegraph, Boris Johnson expresses his regret at the passing of British imperial power and looks back with nostalgia to the days of Palmerston:

“There was a time when Britain would have sent a gunboat to rescue her. There was a time when MPs would have been holding furious debates on the matter, and bandying phrases such as ‘civis Britannicus sum’. In the old days there would have been démarche from Britain to Sudan, warning that His Majesty’s government would not suffer a hair on her head to be disturbed.”

Alas, “that time is past”, and we must look for other solutions. So Boris pompously lectures British Muslim leaders on their obligation to challenge the Sudanese government. True, Boris does admit that Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, has issued a statement calling for Ms Gibbons’ release.

Indeed he has. Dr Bari stated that he was “appalled” at the prosecution of Ms Gibbons. He went on to say: “This is a disgraceful decision and defies common sense. There was clearly no intention on the part of the teacher to deliberately insult the Islamic faith. The children in Ms Gibbons’s class and their parents have all testified as to her innocence in this matter. We call upon the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to intervene in this case without delay to ensure that Ms Gibbons is freed from this quite shameful ordeal.”

Boris doesn’t in fact bother to quote this statement but comments: “Let’s hear more of the same. Let’s see Muslim MPs on the news, appealing to Sudan to show reason.”

Doesn’t Boris read the papers? Even though the media has not exactly fallen over itself in a rush to publish statements about the case by British Muslims, it’s not been impossible to find them. Shahid Malik, minister for overseas development, responded to the news of Ms Gibbons’ arrest by saying that she should be praised for the work she has done teaching Sudan’s children, not locked up: “I’m gobsmacked. This is a terrible mistake. As far as I am concerned this is not Islam. There was no malice intended whatsoever. It seems 100 per cent purely innocent.”

Boris also writes: “If you want grounds for despair, read the entries on the BBC website, in which some British Muslims say that she should be punished; or read the entries from people in Sudan saying that the children should be punished.” Actually, if you want grounds for real despair, you’d do better to read some of the vile racist comments posted on the Sun and Daily Express websites. But that sort of thing is apparently of little concern to right-wing politicians like Johnson.

‘We are at war with all Islam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ayaan Hirsi AliThe Spectator interviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has told a meeting organised by the Centre for Social Cohesion: “We are actually at war, not just with Islamism, but with Islam itself.”

Sample quotes from the interview:

“The Prophet would have not have disapproved of 9/11, because it was carried out in his example.” “I don’t believe there is such a thing as ‘moderate Islam’.” “Islam is hostile to reason.” “I was a Muslim once, and it was when I was most devout that I was most full of hate.”

“You, here in the UK, are in danger. Of course you can’t ban Islam outright, but you need to stop the spread of ideology, stop native Westerners converting to Islam. You definitely need to ban the veil in schools, and to close down Muslim schools because that’s where kids are indoctrinated…. You wouldn’t allow the BNP to run a school, would you?”

Her parting remark is: “Yes, I am at war with Islam, but I am not at war with Muslims.” The Spectator agrees that this is “a crucial difference”. Muslim communities, for whose demonisation Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s abusive and provocative comments provide ammunition, would find her assurance rather less convincing.

A few sandwiches short at this teddy bear’s picnic

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Muslims in this country don’t have a problem standing with Gillian Gibbons on these ridiculous charges. Predictably though, sections of the media have been quick to exploit their own agendas. Right-thinking people can easily see though that this is the usual case of Liberalism vs Authoritarianism, and clearly everyone in this country is on the side of the former in this case. It’s not another chance to pit Muslim vs non-Muslim.”

Osama Saeed at Rolled Up Trousers, 29 November 2007