Category Archives: Analysis & comment

Police chief thinks EDL’s Facebook messages are merely ‘inappropriate, brash or insensitive’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Norman BettisonThe Yorkshire Post has an interesting interview with Sir Norman Bettison, Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police, in connection with the specialist unit he has set up to monitor violent extremism on the internet.

Bettison is one of the few leading police officers to have taken the threat from the English Defence League seriously, and he has readily used his powers under the Public Order Act to restrict the EDL’s attempts to mount intimidatory protests against the Muslim community. When the EDL demonstrated in Dewsbury last June, for example, West Yorkshire Police refused to let them enter the town centre to hold their intended rally outside the town hall and confined them to the station car park where they couldn’t do any harm.

Continue reading →

Al-Qaeda bid for Brit girl bombers: Extremist websites lure angels of death, MPs warn

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Al-Qaeda is trying to recruit WOMEN to carry out suicide bombings in the UK, MPs warn today. It is using extremist websites to radicalise the angels of death, says their chilling report.

The Commons home affairs committee says it has heard evidence the terror group is “specifically launching and targeting women for violent acts”.

It is already a deadly tactic in the Middle East, where growing numbers of Palestinian women are volunteering for suicide missions against Israel. The MPs’ report comes days after four Islamic extremists admitted plotting to bomb the London Stock Exchange.

Continue reading →

Daily Mail inspires far right – again

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP 'strict Muslim' report

This report on the BNP website probably looks familiar. That’s because it’s lifted directly from an earlier report in the Daily Mail. Yet again we find the Mail providing the far right with material to stoke anti-Muslim hatred. The English Defence League’s protest in Leicester on Saturday has similarly been inspired by the paper’s irresponsible and inaccurate reporting (see here and here). Perhaps the Mail‘s editor Paul Dacre might be asked to explain himself when he appears at the Leveson Inquiry next week.

Unite Against Fascism bids to counter proposed EDL march in Leicester

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Leicester October 2010
‘Not extreme right wing’ – EDL demonstration in Leicester, October 2010

Leicester Unite Against Fascism has applied to stage a counter protest to a proposed march by the English Defence League. The group wants to stage a march and rally at the same time as the EDL on Saturday, February 4.

City mayor Sir Peter Soulsby and senior police officers are now considering their response to the two applications, both of which could draw hundreds, possibly thousands, of people to the city centre.

The last time the EDL held a national protest in Leicester, on October 9, 2010, it turned violent. Protesters in a cordoned area reserved for the EDL pelted police with bottles, bricks, coins and smoke bombs. Several hundred also broke through police lines and were involved in scuffles with local youths.

A spokesman for Leicester UAF said the group was recruiting local musicians to perform on stage at the conclusion of the march, adding: “We want people to be able to show they are not scared to come to their city centre on that day. We are looking to create a peaceful and safe way for people to demonstrate their opposition to the EDL.”

Continue reading →

Sharia law compatible with human rights, argues leading barrister

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sharia divorce hearing in Birminghamjpg
Sharia council in Birmingham holds divorce hearing

A leading barrister has called for the UK to become more sharia-literate, while arguing that Islamic law can be compatible with the toughest human rights legislation.

Sadakat Kadri told the Guardian that so-called “sharia courts”, such as the Muslim arbitration tribunal, could serve “the community as a whole” by putting Sharia on a transparent, public footing and should be more widely accessible to those who want to use them.

Kadri said they played a role in safeguarding human rights: “It’s very important that they be acknowledged and allowed to exist. So long as they’re voluntary, which is crucial, it’s in everyone’s interests these things be transparent and publicly accessible. If you don’t have open tribunals, they’re going to happen anyway, but behind closed doors.”

Continue reading →

Australian newspaper blamed disappearance of murdered woman on ‘Muslim hardliners’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Barney ZwartzLast week the Melbourne newspaper The Age ran a piece about a Christian convert of Iranian origin named Mandy Ahmadi (formerly Zahara Ramizadegan) who had been reported missing by her husband.

Readers were told of fears that Mrs Ahmadi had been “abducted by Muslim hardliners because of her attempts to convert Muslims to Christianity”. The notorious anti-Muslim bigot Danny Nalliah, head of the right-wing Christian fundamentalist Catch The Fire Ministries, was quoted as suggesting that “her zeal had come to the attention of militants, possibly in Iran itself”.

The author of The Age‘s report, the paper’s religious affairs correspondent Barney Zwartz [pictured], helpfully explained: “Islam, strictly interpreted, mandates death for adults who leave the religion, and there are many cases of Iranian converts being killed, both in Iran and in Europe. The same penalty may be applied to those who seek to persuade Muslims to leave their religion.”

Continue reading →

Dawkins resists ‘Muslim-led censorship’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Richard DawkinsI’ve been asked why Islamophobia Watch hasn’t covered the “Jesus and Mo” row at University College London. The reason, frankly, is that I had better things to do with my time than address this concocted controversy. However, on reflection, it’s worth a short post because of the role played by celebrity atheist and anti-Islam bigot Richard Dawkins, which is what attracted coverage of the issue in the national press last week.

Continue reading →

Nick Cohen smears Stieg Larsson

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nick Cohen4Nick Cohen devoted his column in yesterday’s Observer to attacking Stieg Larsson, using the Swedish novelist and anti-fascist campaigner’s views on honour based violence to reinforce the thesis that “The far left’s record on women’s rights would make the Vatican blush with shame. Its alliances with radical Islam make it, at best, a misogynist force and, at worst, an active agent of oppression.”

Cohen asserts: “Larsson wasn’t a feminist – or not a consistent one. He wrote with real anger about the oppression of women with white skins. When others tried to do the same about the oppression of women with brown skins, he denounced them as racists.” As evidence of this, Cohen offers Larsson’s intervention in “the debate about the ‘honour killings’ of two Kurdish women in Sweden”.

Continue reading →

Stopping the spread of sharia should be central to British foreign policy (it says here)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Last week ConservativeHome posted a lengthy piece by Martin Parsons urging that “combatting [sic] the spread of sharia enforcement across the world” should become “a central feature of British foreign policy”.

With articles like this it’s difficult to identify where ignorance ends and conscious misrepresentation begins. For example, Parsons tells us that in Egypt “the Muslim Brotherhood (al Ikhwan al Muslimun) and the radical Salafist Jama’a al-Islamiyya [Islamic Group] formed a political alliance to fight October’s parliamentary elections”.

Continue reading →