‘Inconveniencing Muslims’

“Police have no right to rush into action on dubious intelligence, say most Muslims in poll”, a headline reads in today’s Guardian. Sounds reasonable to me. Not to Robert Spencer, though. He comments: “So it’s better to be blown up than risk inconveniencing innocent Muslims. I see.” We suspect that if Spencer himself were shot by police while walking down the stairs of his own home in his pyjamas, he might view this as rather more than a mere inconvenience.

More nonsense from David T

It’s not just the BNP who are pissed off about IslamExpo. They are joined by David T of Harry’s Place, who claims that “it is impossible to miss the dominant presence of the falangist Muslim Brotherhood and of other allied Islamist groupings. That much is apparent from the event’s home page, where the speakers who are pictured and presented prominently include a range of high profile Muslim Brotherhood activists, including … Tariq Ramadan”. So, according to this nonsensical argument, the Muslim Brotherhood are fascists and Professor Ramadan is one of their activists.

This would be the same Tariq Ramadan who has stated: “je n’ai pas de lien organique et organisationnel avec les Frères musulmans. Ma pensée est indépendante et ne s’élabore pas dans le cadre de leurs structures, dont je ne suis pas et que je ne représente pas, contrairement à ce que continuent à diffuser divers services de police en Europe…. j’ai des divergences de vue réelles et profondes avec la pensée des Frères, avec la façon dont sont gérées leurs structures et dont ils conçoivent leur engagement sur le terrain.” (Alain Gresh and Tariq Ramadan, L’Islam en questions, pp.35-6.)

But what can you expect from David T? Elsewhere he has denounced Yusuf al-Qaradawi as a “Qutbist“, when Qaradawi’s differences with Sayyid Qutb are publicly stated and indeed obvious to anyone with an elementary knowledge of the subject. And this from a man who announces in his Guardian Comment is Free profile that his field of expertise is “the state of the British Left generally, and in particular … its strange romance with political Islam”. Unfortunately, David T’s attitudes towards the Left and Islamism are determined by the same underlying principle – ignorant bigotry.

Losing the plot

“Poor Melanie Phillips. Her new book, Londonistan, which argues that the London attacks of 7 July 2005 were the culmination of a sinister Islamist conspiracy to infiltrate Britain and bring our civilisation to its knees, has hit the shelves just a few weeks after the government’s report into the bombings revealed that, in fact, they were the work of four ordinary blokes with no clear links to al-Qaeda….

“In another piece of bad timing, one of the main endorsers of the book – the Iranian author Amir Taheri, who shares the view that radical Islam poses a potent threat to the world – was exposed, at the end of May, as the source of a mistaken story about extremist antics in Iran. Taheri claimed in a column that, in an eerie echo of Nazi Germany, a new Iranian law will force religious minorities to wear coloured badges ‘to indicate their non-Islamic faith’. Canada’s National Post reported on it, as did Phillips in her blog, where she described the law as ‘horrific’, a ‘global obscenity’. But the story, in the words of Maurice Motammed, Iran’s only Jewish MP, was ‘totally false’. The National Post has now published a grovelling retraction.

“Most journalists would be mortified if their book was published just as an official account ripped strips off many of their central claims and as one of their supporters was shown to be unreliable. But Phillips is not most journalists. Something has happened to her in recent years. This once fine writer has become obsessed with radical Islam, to the extent that she will not let the facts dent her deeply held conviction that an evil army of crazed Muslims has launched ‘an attack on the historic core of western liberty’, and that the need to confront this army is ‘no less critical than when [Britain and the US] stood shoulder to shoulder against Nazi Germany’.”

Brendan O’Neill in the New Statesman, 12 June 2006


It’s always good to read a demolition of Mad Mel. But O’Neill – editor of Spiked, the online successor to the Revolutionary Communist Party’s Living Marxism – undermines his own case. His take on 7/7– “What Phillips presents as the handiwork of ‘clerical fascism’ looks increasingly like Britain’s Columbine, a murderous stunt executed by four bored and overgrown adolescents who had nothing better to do” – dismisses concerns about “jihadist” terrorism as just another moral panic. This might serve the ex-RCPers’ speciality of winding people up by provocatively adopting controversial positions, but the reality is that the 7/7 bombers were clearly motivated by the desire to punish ordinary Londoners for the crimes of western imperialism, and they found ideological inspiration in a perverted interpretation of Islam. It is necessary to point out that this is an interpretation rejected by the overwhelming majority of Muslims. Describing the bombers as “bored and overgrown adolescents who had nothing better to do”, however, is just silly.

Another anti-Muslim slander from OutRage!

Dr BariThere is a particularly stupid post by Brett Lock of the Islamophobic gay rights group OutRage! today on the neocon blog, Harry’s Place. In all seriousness, Lock suggests that Mohammed Abdul Bari, the newly elected general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, has threatened a violent response to the police raid on the house in Forest Gate, East London, where chemical weapons were supposedly being manufactured for use in a terrorist attack.

Regarding Dr Bari’s role, Lock writes that “nothing in his statements to the press so far appear to concede that the police have a legitimate cause to act on tip-offs. Nothing he’s said (correct me if I’m wrong) has given the impression that he’s taken a leadership role in reassuring the Muslim community of the police’s bona fides and difficult task. Rather he has been a foghorn for grievances an increasingly skittish public is tired of hearing.”

In fact, as anyone not entirely blinded by ignorance and prejudice would know, the MCB has consistently supported police action against terrorism and has repeatedly urged Muslim communities to co-operate with and provide information to the police. Interviewed on the Radio 4 “Today” programme yesterday (listen here), Dr Bari stated:

“Since 7/7 the police have done a wonderful job. After 7/7 we had police officers making very positive comments and they were criticised by the right-wing media. So nobody is talking against the police. It is about the quality of intelligence … the community has to be taken on board to counter this scourge in society … The police have to do their job … if the community is worried … they will not get that mass co-operation. It is important to all of us to get the community on board. So information should come as quick as possible and that has to be disseminated within the community so that the community is assured.”

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Islam is a warlike religion Australian cardinal claims

Remember Cardinal George Pell, Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, who was recently condemned for arguing that Islam is an inherently violent religion that poses a threat to Western democracies? Well, he’s at it again, telling an interviewer that “Islam is a much more war-like culture than Christianity”. Well, who could disagree? We can only be thankful that the West is governed by peace-loving Christians like George Bush and Tony Blair.

The Hounding of Inayat Bunglawala

Inayat_BunglawalaOne of the recurring themes of Islamophobia is the idea that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim or that there are as many and varied strands of thinking amongst Muslims as there is with the rest of humanity. The mere fact of being a Muslim is enough to make you a supporter of suicide bombings, an anti-semite, a threat to “Western Civilisation” and of course a potential terrorist.

When the racists and Islamophobes come across Muslims who are not sword wielding Mad Mullahs out to establish a world caliphate their reaction is not to temper and refine their own views but instead to attack, smear, denigrate and falsify in order to portray their target as being a reflection of their own caricature of Muslims.

We have seen this repeatedly in the past 2 years in relation to Yusuf al-Qaradawi and even Tariq Ramadan.

Inayat Bunglawala is Media Secretary for the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and is an extremely eloquent and intelligent spokesman for that organisation.

An intelligent and articulate Muslim? Now there’s a thing to get the Islamophobes ranting and foaming at the mouth.

Inayat is now 36 years old and the best that the right wing press can offer as proof of his extremism is an article he wrote for a Muslim youth magazine 14 years ago in 1992 when he was 22 years old. I don’t know about anybody else but I held some views when I was 22 that I’d wish to refine somewhat in the cold light of 14 years more experience of the world.

The fact that Inayat contributes to the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ website clearly infuriates the racists and Islamophobes and an absurd attempt to smear Inayat developed in the comments section of hislatest posting.

Regular readers of Islamophobia Watch will be aware of the vile “little green footballs” blog and it was through this site that an absurd allegation regarding a death threat Inayat is supposed to have made to that site was published.

Apparently the threat came from someone with a Reuters account and because Inayat works in the media, ipso facto it was him. Absolute hysterical nonsense of course but ludicrous claims and smear attempts are par for the course for the Islamophobes, as they have once again proved.

The inconsistencies of Nick Cohen

“The Satanic Verses, Behzti, Theo van Gogh’s Submission, Jerry Springer: The Opera, the Danish cartoons of Muhammad … now we can add the London exhibition of the work of Maqbool Fida Husain to the rapidly expanding list of works of art and satire targeted by militant religion…. Asia House closed the show on Monday after threats of violence from anonymous Hindu fundamentalists.”

Nick Cohen in the Observer, 28 May 2006

Not only does Cohen lump together a number of different cases, all of which have to be assessed on their own merits and in their social context, but he also omits to mention another recent example of a minority ethno-religious community calling for the suppression of offensive material, as described by Gary Younge:

“In January 2002 the New Statesman published a front page displaying a shimmering golden Star of David impaling a union flag, with the words ‘A kosher conspiracy?’ The cover was widely and rightly condemned as anti-semitic. It’s not difficult to see why. It played into vile stereotypes of money-grabbing Jewish cabals out to undermine the country they live in…. A group calling itself Action Against Anti-Semitism marched into the Statesman‘s offices, demanding a printed apology. One eventually followed. The then editor, Peter Wilby, later confessed that he had not appreciated ‘the historic sensitivities’ of Britain’s Jews.”

I don’t recall Cohen defending the right of the New Statesman to publish anti-semitic illustrations, or condemning members of the Jewish community for invading the magazine’s office to protest. Presumably, in this case, he was capable of distinguishing between freedom of expression and racism. Perhaps he should consider making the same distinction in cases involving other ethno-religious communities.

Islam ‘fused with an agenda of murder’ – Mad Mel

Melanie Phillips claims that after the Satanic Verses controversy “the promotion of Islam in Britain became fused with an agenda of murder”.

Observer, 28 May 2006

You might wonder why a liberal newspaper gives space to a hard-right journalist like Phillips to promote her vile opinions about Muslims. But Phillips’ views are not that far removed from those expressed on a weekly basis by Observer columnist Nick Cohen, and the paper has given prominence to Martin Bright’s campaign to depict maintream Muslim organisations in Britain as supporters of violent extremism. As we never cease to point out on this site, when it comes to Islamophobia the differences between liberals and the racist right have become increasingly blurred.

Muslim homophobia the main threat in Moscow, Tatchell claims

“Russian ‘nationalists’ managed to draw first blood at Moscow Gay Pride last night when they disrupted a lecture on Oscar Wilde given by the author and playwright’s grandson Merlin Holland. The lecture was at the State Library of Foreign Literature where the nationalists managed to breach security to gain access to the lecture theatre. Merlin Holland was minutes into his talk when he was heckled in Russian. Others in the audience then joined in as police and stewards rushed to restore calm. ‘No faggots in Russia’, was the cry of the nationalists, who also called for gays to be removed from the country. As they were being removed, the nationalists threw vials of an irritant gas in the auditorium, which then had to be evacuated.”

UK Gay News, 26 May 2006


It’s probably the same rightwingers who attacked a gay and lesbian party at a Moscow nightclub earlier this month, shouting “Down with pederasts” and “No perverts here”. See Gay.com, 1 May 2006

Note that the religious component to this upsurge of violent right-wing homophobia derives, as you would expect, from Orthodox Christianity. This hasn’t prevented Peter Tatchell from attributing to Islam the primary place in the anti-Pride campaign in Moscow and suggesting that Russian Orthodox Church is merely following the lead of the chief mufti! He writes:

“Much of the anti-gay sentiment that is sweeping Russia has been whipped up by religious leaders. Threatening violence against Moscow Gay Pride, the chief mufti of Russia’s Central Spiritual Governance for Muslims, Talgat Tajuddin, said: ‘Muslim protests can be even worse than these notorious rallies abroad over the scandalous cartoons. The parade should not be allowed, and if they still come out into the streets, then they should be bashed. Sexual minorities have no rights, because they have crossed the line. Alternative sexuality is a crime against God,’ he said, calling on members of the Russian Orthodox Church to join Muslims in mounting a violent response to Moscow Gay Pride. Russian Orthodox leaders responded by lobbying Mayor Luzhkov to ban the parade….”

Guardian Comment is Free, 24 May 2006

‘Islamofascist’ backs Brett

I see that Osama Saeed of the Muslim Association of Britain has welcomed a post at Harry’s Place by Brett Lock of OutRage!, attacking the hysteria over “foreign criminals”. No doubt Lock will soon reciprocate with a favourable comment about Osama’s blog. Or perhaps not. Last year Osama posted a piece applauding a New Statesman article by Peter Tatchell on asylum rights, and as yet there hasn’t been any noticeable warming of Tatchell’s attitude towards the “Islamic fundamentalists” of MAB.