Category Archives: Analysis & comment

Once again, Melanie Phillips rallies to the defence of western civilisation

Posted on by Bob Pitt

madmelSurprise, surprise – Mad Mel sides with Pope Benedict: “the Pope’s real crime surely lay in speaking a truth that is denied by the many who claim that Islam is a religion of peace. On the contrary, Islam does indeed have a long history of imposing its faith on the world by the sword.”

Unlike European Christians, of course, who have spread their faith across the world by purely pacifistic means.

Mel concludes with a dire warning: “Our greatest danger comes from those in the West who … have mentally surrendered to the irrationality and false logic of those who accuse the West of aggression simply because it defends itself against Islamic holy war. This surrender has already resulted in a degree of self-censorship and back-to-front thinking, with accusations of ‘Islamophobia’ hurled at those telling the truth about the violence practised by some Muslims in the name of Islam.

“If we are ever to defeat the global jihad against free societies, it is vital to tell that truth – that it is the West that is under attack. It is in that context that the Pope’s remarks must be seen – defending Christianity and western civilisation from an onslaught that has not just snuffed out many innocent lives, but seeks to snuff out freedom and truth itself.”

Daily Mail, 18 September 2006

Chief rabbi blasts multiculturalism, calls on Muslims to integrate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A crisis of national and social identity is undermining Britain’s efforts to integrate its immigrant population, according to the Chief Rabbi. Sir Jonathan Sacks told The Sunday Telegraph that multiculturalism had led to segregation and a country that was no longer confident of what it stood for.

The Chief Rabbi echoed the call last week by the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, for Muslims to do more to integrate. Sir Jonathan said that the Islamic community, particularly second-generation Muslims, were struggling with “a conflicted identity”.

Continue reading →

‘Pope sorry for offending Muslims’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pope 2Pope Benedict XVI has apologised in person for causing offence to Muslims in a speech in Bavaria last week. He said the medieval text which he quoted did not express in any way his personal opinion, adding the speech was an invitation to respectful dialogue.

BBC News, 17 September 2006

And if you believe that – from the man who, not so long ago, held a private meeting with the late unlamented Oriana “Muslims breed like rats” Fallaci – you’ll believe anything.

Furthermore, the pope’s words – “I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims” – fall some way short of a full apology.

Still, you’d have thought his statement that the offensive words he quoted – “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached” – did not in any way express his personal opinion about Islam would be enough to win il papa a citation at Dhimmi Watch.

For comments by Osama Saeed at Rolled Up Trousers, see here and here.

More lies about Qaradawi

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Qaradawi and MayorJonathan Freedland spares a moment from attacking the Mayor of London over his relations with Hugo Chávez to take a swipe at Yusuf al-Qaradawi:

“It’s only on foreign policy that the Mayor gets the chance to strike some of the old, Leftist poses. I am sure that the folk at City Hall are sincere in their admiration for Chavez’s social reforms – but they also love that el presidente styles himself as George W Bush’s great Latin nemesis. Standing next to him gives the Livingstone circle a rush of ideological blood.

“The less forgivable example is the relationship with Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Egyptian cleric still hailed by Livingstone as the voice of moderate Islam – yet who recently added to his earlier positions condoning wife-beating and the stoning of homosexuals with a declaration that today’s Jews bear responsibility for the death of Jesus.

“The Mayor likes al-Qaradawi’s tough line on Israel – the sheikh supports suicide bombings against Israeli civilians – so he ends up hugging a man who bends Islamic theology to take on the vilest tropes of Christian anti-Semitism.”

Evening Standard, 14 September 2006

Except that Qaradawi supports neither wife-beating, nor the stoning of homosexuals nor suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. And the story about Jews bearing responsibility for the death of Jesus originates with the Middle East Media Research Institute – an organisation headed by a former colonel in Israeli military intelligence which has a long history of misrepresenting Qaradawi’s views by publishing carefully selected extracts from his speeches and interviews. By these means MEMRI has been able to “prove”, for example, that Qaradawi believed the victims of the tsunami deserved to die and that he argued it was a duty for Muslims to become suicide bombers in Iraq.

You can see why a right-wing rag like the Evening Standard hires a supposedly liberal journalist like Freedland to write for them. His standards of journalistic integrity fit right in with theirs.

Workers’ Liberty rejects MCB-TUC alliance

Posted on by Bob Pitt

You might have thought that the TUC/MCB joint statement opposing Islamophobia and encouraging Muslim workers to join trade unions would be welcomed by all anti-racists as a progressive alliance between the labour movement and an oppressed minority community. But apparently not. Over at the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Janine Booth complains: “the statement was a liberal mush through which the MCB gets itself a new ally and the TUC promotes a religious organisation with an anti-gay stance.”

AWL website, 12 September 2006

‘Me? An Islamophobic bigot?’ Richard Littlejohn is offended

Posted on by Bob Pitt

richard liittlejohnA characteristically thoughtful and informed comment from Richard Littlejohn in today’s Daily Mail:

“With exemplary tact and exquisite timing, the ‘leader’ of Britain’s Muslims chose the eve of the fifth anniversary of 9/11 to warn that we are facing the threat of two million home-grown Islamic terrorists. The preposterous, self-aggrandising ‘secretary-general’ of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), Muhammad Abdul Bari, predicted an angry backlash against what he perceives as widespread ‘Islamophobia’ in this country.

“To be honest, I did wonder whether it was worth even dignifying this garbage with a reaction, especially when it comes from a man who appears to wear a ginger wig with a grey beard. But someone’s got to do it.

“Bari and his sidekicks are regularly wheeled out as the authentic voice of ‘moderate’ Islam. Their victimhood shtick is treated as gospel by broadcasters and they are taken seriously by government ministers and senior police officers. They never miss an opportunity to advance their own agenda. It always the same old song. They utterly condemn terrorism, you understand, but unless we give them exactly what they want, they can’t be held responsible for the actions of the more excitable members of their community.

“Criticise them and you are damned as an ‘Islamophobe’. When I described the MCB as a ‘self-appointed bunch of chancers’ a few weeks ago, Bari’s ridiculous Mr Bean-lookalike press officer Inayat Bunglawala wrote accusing me of being a bigot.”

Now, where could Inayat possibly have got that idea from? As for the “self-appointed” accusation, the MCB has over 400 affiliates and the leadership is of course elected every two years. And the “threat of two million home-grown Islamic terrorists” bit is just based on a misunderstanding of what Dr Bari said. As I understood his remarks, he was saying that there was a risk of treating Britain’s entire Muslim community as though they were terrorists (see here). Not that two million Muslims were about to turn themselves into suicide bombers.

Martin Amis on Islamism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

martin amis“Until recently it was being said that what we are confronted with, here, is ‘a civil war’ within Islam. That’s what all this was supposed to be: not a clash of civilisations or anything like that, but a civil war within Islam. Well, the civil war appears to be over. And Islamism won it. The loser, moderate Islam, is always deceptively well-represented on the level of the op-ed page and the public debate; elsewhere, it is supine and inaudible. We are not hearing from moderate Islam. Whereas Islamism, as a mover and shaper of world events, is pretty well all there is…. we respect Islam – the donor of countless benefits to mankind, and the possessor of a thrilling history. But Islamism? No, we can hardly be asked to respect a creedal wave that calls for our own elimination…. Islam, in the end, proved responsive to European influence: the influence of Hitler and Stalin. And one hardly needs to labour the similarities between Islamism and the totalitarian cults of the last century. Anti-semitic, anti-liberal, anti-individualist, anti-democratic, and, most crucially, anti-rational, they too were cults of death, death-driven and death-fuelled.”

Martin Amis in the Observer, 10 September 2006

Here, “Islamism” is ignorantly conflated with terrorism. Judging by the article, Amis’s sources of information on this question are Paul Berman’s book Terrorism and Liberalism and Sam Harris’s The End of Faith. Perhaps he should read a little more widely on the subject. He would discover that, to quote Soumaya Ghannoushi, “Islamism, like socialism, is not a uniform entity. It is a colourful sociopolitical phenomenon with many strategies and discourses. This enormously diverse movement ranges from liberal to conservative, from modern to traditional, from moderate to radical, from democratic to theocratic, and from peaceful to violent. What these trends have in common is that they derive their source of legitimacy from Islam….”

Richard Seymour describes Amis’s piece as “an utterly clueless essay that casually asserts this and that idiocy about the West and Islam with evidently no more thought than the average Sun leader writer”.

Update:  See Pankaj Mishra, “The politics of paranoia”, Observer, 17 September 2006

All-party parliamentary inquiry distorts Qaradawi’s views

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Qaradawi and MayorSummarising the contents of a report published today by the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism, the Telegraph says the report claims “that anti-Semitism is no longer the sole preserve of the political far-Right, but occurs across the political spectrum, including the Left.

The MPs cite concerns about the decision of Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, to host an event attended by the Muslim cleric Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, who has reportedly banned Muslims from any dialogue with Jews”.

Daily Telegraph, 7 September 2006

For the report itself, see (pdf) here.

The attack on Dr al-Qaradawi by the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry is just ignorant. He is described as “a controversial Muslim cleric” (there are no clerics in Sunni Islam) who “has reportedly forbidden Muslims from engaging in dialogue of any kind with Jews”.

And where was this accusation “reported”? By the Middle East Media Research Institute, of course. (See here.)

Ironically, MEMRI itself was responsible for publishing a much longer transcript of an interview from Qaradawi’s Al-Jazeera programme (see here) in which he outlined his views on relations between Islam and Judaism in detail. (This was in February 2005, shortly after the Mayor of London had launched a public attack on MEMRI for their distortions of Qaradawi’s views, and presumably they were trying to cover themselves.)

In this interview Qaradawi expressed the same views that he did during his visit to London in July 2004 on the duty of Muslims to respect Jews. “Jews lived among Muslims for centuries, even when Europe persecuted them and expelled them…. They found a safe haven in Muslim territory…. Islam welcomes those who believe in the [Jewish] religion. Moreover, the Jews are probably the closest to Muslims in terms of faith and law, even more than Christians.” Qaradawi added: “There is a difference between Judaism as a religion and Zionism as a political movement….”

On the subject of interfaith dialogue, Qaradawi stated that he objected to dialogue with people like Israel’s chief rabbi because “he supports the murder of Palestinians on a daily basis, supports the destruction of homes and the eviction of people, and supports the crimes and the barbaric slaughter that are taking place every day. How can I shake his hand and sit down with him?”

But Qaradawi added that he had no problem engaging in dialogue with representatives of the Jewish community who oppose the repression of the Palestinians: “I welcome Jews who dissociate themselves from what Israel is doing, and I welcome being with them.”

He summarised his views as follows: “I oppose dialogue with Jewish rabbis living in Israel, who support the crimes committed by Israel. With them there is no possibility [of dialogue]…. We will hold a dialogue with those who are reasonable among them, as well as with the Christians, as indeed I have been present at a number of conferences for Islamic-Christian dialogue. But with those ‘who do evil’, as Allah said, we shall neither argue nor shall we have any dialogue.”

Obviously the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism didn’t even bother to check their facts before repeating Qaradawi’s “reported” views on relations with the Jewish community.

More ignorance from Sookhdeo

Posted on by Bob Pitt

You might have thought that, after he made a fool of himself by calling for a major translation of the Qur’an to be banned, there would be few people who could take Patrick Sookdeo’s self-appointed role as an “expert” on Islam seriously. Unfortunately, the press has an insatiable appetite for attacks on Muslims and multiculturalism, no matter how discredited the author may be.

Thus the London Evening Standard had no hesitation in publishing a piece by Sookhdeo which tells us that: “The Islamic creed is non-negotiable. Those who do not share this creed are despised as kafir (infidels). Hatred of non-Muslims is preached in many British mosques.”

Sookhdeo continues: “the UK’s well-meaning policy of validating every faith and ethnic community culturally, in a depoliticised way, is naive when it comes to Islam. For Islam does not separate the sacred from the secular: it seeks earthly power over earthly territory. The result is that already the UK has reached the stage of parallel societies, where purely Muslim areas function in isolation. Worse, this is about to be made semi-official. In West Ham a gigantic mosque is planned by the radical Tablighi Jamaat group. The London Thames Gateway Development Corporation says that the new mosque will make West Ham a ‘cultural and religious destination’. This will be nothing less than an Islamic quarter of our capital city. But has anyone asked the people of West Ham?”

Summarising his argument, Sookhdeo writes: “I believe Islam needs different treatment from other faiths because Islam is different from other faiths. It is the only one which teaches its followers to gain political power and then impose a law which governs every aspect of life, discriminating against women and non-believers alike. And this is ultimately why a naive multiculturalism leads not to a mosaic of cultures living in harmony, but to one threatened by Islamic extremism.”

Continue reading →

‘My vote’s for Trevor, not Ken’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Joan SmithJoan Smith takes sides in the dispute between the Mayor of London and Trevor Phillips, the newly appointed head of the CEHR who is of course a great favourite of Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch. In particular, and predictably, she endorses Phillips’s views on multiculturalism:

“Phillips’s pronouncements on the subject are robust – earlier this year he suggested that Muslims who want to live under Islamic law (sharia) should leave the country – but more coherent than anything the Mayor of London has come up with. Livingstone’s take on multiculturalism certainly isn’t mine. It’s a form of relativism that allows him to park his values when they’re inconvenient and embrace religious extremists with repellent views on women and homosexuals. Living in a society that has abolished the death penalty, Livingstone welcomes to London a Muslim cleric whose website discusses whether death is the appropriate penalty for gay men, and appears at public events with an academic who refuses to call for a ban on the hideous practice of lapidation….

“In fact, the biggest threat to multiculturalism comes not from organisations such as the BNP but politicians such as Livingstone who refuse to have this debate, seeking to close it down with accusations of racism and Islamophobia. The UK is a diverse society, but it won’t remain so if millions of ordinary people feel they’re not allowed to criticise the minority who hate gay people, treat women as second-class citizens and support political or religious violence.”

Independent on Sunday, 3 September 2006

The “academic who refuses to call for a ban on the hideous practice of lapidation” is of course Tariq Ramadan. As I think we’ve observed before, rejecting engagement with an influential Muslim liberal like Professor Ramadan is a sign that Islamophobia has reached the point of dementia. It can only be a matter of time before Joan Smith joins the likes of Melanie Phillips in ranting on about “Eurabia” and the Muslim plot to destroy western civilisation.