Category Archives: Analysis & comment

‘Battle to block massive mosque’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“A plan to build a ‘mega mosque’ in east London has become mired in controversy with allegations that it is being bankrolled by Islamist groups in Saudi Arabia. Opponents say it would promote a radical form of Islam. They accuse its backers of not consulting local people.”

Jamie Doward writes in the Observer, 24 September 2006

This piece is little more than a rewrite of Andrew Gilligan’s scare story that appeared in the Evening Standard back in July, complete with a quote from the discredited “expert” on Islam, Patrick Sookhdeo. You’d have thought that the Observer‘s home affairs editor might have done a bit of original research into the subject and maybe even challenged racist stereotypes about the threat from Muslim radicals, rather than just recycle second-hand Islamophobic fantasies. Or then again, perhaps not, given that one of Doward’s predecessors in that post was Martin Bright.

‘1 in 10 British Muslims won’t shop a terrorist’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Tens of thousands of British Muslims would NOT shop someone they believed took part in a terror attack. A shock News of the World poll today reveals almost ONE IN TEN would not tell the police if they suspected a fellow Muslim was involved in an atrocity. With a million Muslims over 16 in Britain, it suggests a staggering 90,000 would turn a blind eye. And the figure is even worse among Muslims aged between 16 and 24, with 15 per cent saying they would not tell. Our poll also shows six per cent – or 60,000 Muslims – think attacks like the July 7 bombings are justified.”

News of the World, 24 September 2006

See also Press Association, 24 September 2006

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‘We’ve stopped standing up for Britain’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Minette Marin (2)Minette Marin is upset by a report that Gloucestershire police have turned down some white would-be recruits, on the (according to her, self-evidently absurd) basis that they want to raise ethnic minority recruitment to 7% of the total by 2009 (last year the figure was 1.6%). She writes:

“What, in this lamentable story, is this guilty obsession with race, this daft and patronising determination to exclude and demoralise the indigenous people? It is actually imposed in Gloucestershire by people who are mostly white males themselves. What is wrong with them? Why are they unwilling to hold the line against thoughtless, intrusive, guilt-ridden, destructive stupidity? One word for it is self-hatred. Another is decadence.

“It is for the same reasons, whatever they may be, that we are so obviously failing to hold the line against the extremes of Islam. We no longer carry high the standard of free speech for fear of offending people, usually Muslims. Stalwart citizens have recently felt it their duty to reprimand the Pope and a former Archbishop of Canterbury for discussing Islam and violence – for even raising such offensive questions.

“The results, for which we have only ourselves to blame, are alarming. Anyone who heard it must have been horrified by a British Muslim haranguing John Humphrys on Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday. Abu Izzadeen, the Jamaican convert who had heckled the home secretary at a meeting with Muslims, sounded even more terrifying on the air. Aggressive, illogical and blustering, he expressed his hatred of our government and its ‘crusade’ against Muslims. He thinks free speech and democracy are incompatible with Islam.

“When Humphrys asked him what was wrong with democracy, with trying to change things through Britain’s democratic process, he replied that ‘democracy means sovereignty for man, Islam means sovereignty for sharia … The UK doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to Allah’, and Allah has put Muslims on earth to implement sharia (Islamic law). So, Humphrys insisted, ‘the Islamic process but not the democratic process?’ ‘Yes’, said Izzadeen confidently, ‘that’s right’.

“It would be comforting to assume that Izzadeen is solitary and ignorant. Unfortunately he isn’t. An NOP poll for Channel 4 found that almost one in four British Muslims believed that the slaughter in London on July 7 was justified. Muslim community leaders can say what they like about Islam being all about peace; it’s perfectly clear that not all Muslims see it that way. For a long time now they have spread rage and resentment among their people and we have lacked the will and the instinct for self-preservation to resist it.”

Sunday Times, 24 September 2006

These days, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish the outpourings of “mainstream” right-wing commentators like Marin, with her indignant concern for the oppression of “the indigenous people”, from the sort of filth you read on the BNP website.

‘Fury as BBC gives preacher of hate a platform’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Abu IzzadeenThe Daily Mail reports: “The BBC sparked fury today for giving prime-time exposure to a known Islamic extremist. Abu Izzadeen appeared on Radio 4’s Today programme on the 8.10 slot normally reserved for ministers…. Listener Alan Newlands wrote saying: ‘I’m outraged by the amount of time you have given to this madman. I’m outraged by the insult to the Muslim community you perpetrated by allowing this man to appear to represent even a tiny minority.’ …  Dominic Grieve, shadow attorney general, said: ‘Abu Izzadeen is clearly a malevolent religious fanatic but he is certainly not representative of the Muslim community in Britain’.”

It’s not often I say this, but I agree with the Mail and Dominic Grieve. Muslims have repeatedly complained about the media coverage given to isolated lunatics like Abu Izzadeen and Anjem Choudary. Yusuf Smith recently commented:

“Until he sloped off to Lebanon, one of Omar Bakri’s ludicrous utterances after another were given front-page treatment by various newspapers and by the BBC, and other fringe figures were invited onto such shows as BBC Radio 4’s Today (particularly when Rod Liddle was in charge). These people are as significant as they are only because they are indulged by the media; their media profile is not matched by a similar standing in the community. The problem is that their demands are often seen by the public as ‘these Muslims’ demands’ when they are in fact the demands of a very small group.”

Families of bombers to blame for 7/7 – Paul Routledge

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Paul Routledge“John Reid, the Iraq war boaster, may not have been the right man to say it and an East London Islamic centre may not have been the right place to say it. But it still had to be said – even at the risk of upsetting Muslims. There is a threat to the public from home-grown Islamic fundamentalists and British Muslims have a duty to monitor their own community for signs of incipient terrorists.

“They know better than anyone if young Ali is going off the rails, or has come under the ideological spell of a fundamentalist cleric. They see the signs better than a whole station full of coppers. They have a responsibility to take whatever action seems right, including informing the authorities, if someone they know seems to be on the brink of violent jihadism against fellow Britons. That includes parents, siblings, friends, clerics, youth workers and elders of the Muslim community.

“I’m sorry, but as Dr Reid admitted, there is no easy way of saying this. Silence, however, would be more culpable than speaking out. Just imagine if this habit of mind had been the norm before July 7 last year: the young Muslim bombers might have been apprehended before they set out on their deadly mission to London.”

Paul Routledge in the Daily Mirror, 22 September 2006

So, according to Routledge, it would appear that the families of the 7/7 bombers knew, or at least suspected, that the young men were “on the brink of violent jihadism against fellow Britons” but they kept quiet about it.

There is no easy way of saying this, but it still has to be said, even at the risk of upsetting Paul Routledge – he’s an ignorant, bigoted idiot.

TV roles urged for women wearing hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim women wearing hijab, or headscarves, should be employed in front-line roles in the media, said a report published yesterday by Ruth Kelly, the minister for women. More women wearing hijab needed to be seen in the public eye, particularly on television, to encourage more Muslim women to put themselves forward, it said. Miss Kelly said the Government was giving priority to helping ethnic minority women to overcome discrimination at work and play a more prominent role in public life.

Daily Telegraph, 21 September 2006

Well, at least Ruth Kelly can get something right. Stand by for a spate of denunciations in the Torygraph’s letters column.

Our friend Giraldus Cambrensis provides an example of what to expect: “Ruth Kelly wants more hijabs on TV? Is she is an executive of a TV company? When Muslims comprise only 3% of the population, what do the other 97% of the population want on their telly? Hopefully her words will be treated as the vacuous inanities that they really are. What about the stamp-collectors in Britain? Why are they not represented on the television?”

Western Resistance, 21 September 2006

‘Muslims must shop their extremist kids’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

John ReidIn today’s Sun John Reid suggests that Muslims in Britain are not doing enough to combat terrorism. Following some initial conciliatory remarks, he writes that “the Muslim community must choose between accepting the propaganda of the terrorists and taking on would-be terrorists at every opportunity”.

It boils down to a lecture to parents on controlling their children, though it is clear that the families of the 7/7 bombers didn’t have the slightest idea what they were up to. However, Reid offers some handy hints on how to spot the danger signs: “look for changes in your teenage sons – odd hours, dropping out of school or college, strange new friends.” By those criteria, there must be an awful lot of terrorist suspects out there.

And I thought this bit was priceless: “Some may think it is better to accommodate extremists in the hopes of influencing them for the better, but as I know from the bitter experience of dealing with militants in the Labour Party, you cannot compromise with fanatical beliefs.”

The Militant Tendency as al-Qaida, Ted Grant as Osama bin Laden! And a lecture on the impossibility of influencing extremists to take a more moderate course sounds all the more bizarre coming from Labour right-winger who is a former member of the Communist Party.

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Qaradawi urges ‘peaceful’ anger day

Posted on by Bob Pitt

YusufalQaradawiProminent Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi has called on Muslims worldwide to hold a day of “peaceful” anger next Friday to protest the offensive remarks made by Pope Benedict VXI, saying that the pontiff’s expression of sorrow for the crisis still fell far short of an apology.

Qaradawi said the pope’s remarks came to entrench offensive statements made by US President George W. Bush last month that America was at war with “Islamist fascists.” The pope’s remarks “gave an international cover for what Bush is doing,” Qaradawi insisted.

Islam Online, 18 September 2006

Over at Harry’s Place, the eponymous Harry offers his take on Qaradawi’s call for the Pope to withdraw the offensive quotation: “This attempt to silence reflects the totalitarian nature of Islamism”!

Qaradawi is in fact particularly well known for his pluralistic interpretation of Islam. To quote Karen Armstrong:

“He believes in moderation, and is convinced that the bigotry that has recently appeared in the Muslim world will impoverish people by depriving them of the insights and visions of other human beings. The Prophet Muhammad said that he had come to bring a ‘Middle Way’ of religious life that shunned extremes, and Qaradawi thinks the current extremism in some quarters of the Islamic world is alien to the Muslim spirit and will not last…. The West, he insists, must learn to recognize the Muslims’ right to live their religion and, if they choose, to incorporate the Islamic ideal in their polity. They have to appreciate that there is more than one way of life. Variety benefits the whole world. God gave human beings the right and ability to choose, and some may opt for a religious way of life – including an Islamic state – while others prefer the secular ideal.” (Islam: A Short History, pp.157-8)

Some totalitarian!

Of course, Harry in fact knows sweet f.a. about Qaradawi – he just spins fantasies out of his own head based on general presuppositions about Islamism. Odd, you might think, that a self-styled defender of Enlightenment values so readily substitutes ignorant dogmatism for empirical analysis.

‘The Pope must die, says Muslim’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Typically, the Mail prefaces its coverage of the controversy over the Pope’s remarks with a quote from the ludicrous Anjem Choudary, leading its readership to believe that this fruitcake with a few dozen deluded followers represents some significant current of opinion within Britain’s Muslim communities.

Daily Mail, 18 September 2006

You do sometimes wonder whether the right-wing press has Choudary on a retainer.