Category Archives: Analysis & comment

If it’s not sharia hysteria it’s halal hysteria: Mail on Sunday denounces ritual slaughter

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Britain Goes Halal“A Mail on Sunday investigation – which will alarm anyone concerned about animal cruelty – has revealed that schools, hospitals, pubs and famous sporting venues such as Ascot and Twickenham are controversially serving up meat slaughtered in accordance with strict Islamic law to unwitting members of the public….

“Animal welfare campaigners have long called for a ban on the traditional Islamic way of preparing meat – which involves killing animals by drawing a knife across their throats, without stunning them first – saying it is cruel and causes unnecessary pain….

“The extent of halal meat consumption, even in areas of Britain with a very small Muslim population, was revealed as the Pope, on his first visit to Britain, expressed fears that the country was not doing enough to preserve traditional Christian values and customs.”

Yes it’s another piece of “Islamification of Britain” scaremongering in the Mail on Sunday, who adopt the pretence that they’re motivated not by hostility towards Muslims but by concern for animal rights, just as they frame their campaign against “sharia courts” in terms of a defence of women’s rights.

The fact that non-Muslims have for decades eaten halal meat in “Indian” restaurants (many of which are of course run by Muslims of Bangladeshi origin) without it ever becoming an issue for them is completely ignored.

And anyone who believes that opposition to ritual slaughter in the name of animal rights is necessarily progressive should check out the biography of Arnold Leese, to whom the present-day BNP can trace its organisational and ideological roots.

As for the Mail‘s sensitivity towards unnecessary suffering on the part of poor dumb animals, if the paper ever registered support for a ban on foxes being torn apart by packs of hounds it certainly passed us by.

Update:  See also ENGAGE, 20 September 2010

And MCB press release, 20 September 2010

‘Muslim plot to kill Pope’ turns out to be nothing of the sort

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim plot to kill popeIt has now been widely reported that the six Westminster street cleaners arrested in connection with an alleged plot to attack Pope Benedict have all been released without charge. The arrests apparently resulted from someone overhearing them make a joke in their works canteen about assassinating the pontiff.

You’d be inclined to suspect that the men being of North African origin might have had something to do with them being reported to the authorities in the first place. And while the police have a duty to investigate such reports, you can’t help feeling that there would have been rather less of an over-reaction if the joke had been made by participants in yesterday’s overwhelmingly white protest march against the pope’s visit.

Moreover, as Tabloid Watch observes: “Hearing the six men have been released without charge may come as something of a shock to readers of the Express who had been told on Saturday that the men were almost certainly guilty, having hatched a ‘Muslim Plot to Kill Pope‘.”

Tabloid Watch quotes some of the disgraceful statements in the Express article. The arrested men were described as “Islamic terrorists disguised as street cleaners” and readers were told that “the threatened attack was foiled at the 11th hour after police raided a cleaning depot in London”, although there was no evidence that the men were terrorists, Islamic or otherwise, or that there was any real threat of an attack.

Eager to hype up this supposed threat, the Express claimed that it was “feared plotters with links to Al Qaeda planned ‘a double blow to the infidel’ by assassinating the head of the Roman Catholic church and slaughtering hundreds of pilgrims and well-wishers” – though who exactly feared this apart from the Express itself, and who the “double blow to the infidel” quote was from, was left unclear.

And, in order to tie the terrorist threat into its obsession with irregular migrants, the Express added: “An investigation is also under way to determine if the foreign nationals had entered Britain legally and were entitled to work here.” This despite the fact that there was no evidence at all to indicate that the men were in the UK on anything other than a legal basis.

As the Tabloid Watch piece concludes: “The question is what will the Press Complaints Commission do? As there are six men directly involved they will only consider a complaint from one of them. Although it would be understandable if they didn’t want to remain in the public spotlight, let’s hope they do complain. But if they don’t, the PCC should consider acting anyway.

“The Express used its front page to smear six men as Islamic terrorists with links to Al-Qaeda. A front page correction, retraction and apology must follow.”

See also Inayat’s Corner, 18 September 2010

Update:  And see Tabloid Watch for details of the Express‘s coverage in Monday’s edition of the news that the “Islamic terrorists disguised as street cleaners” had all been released without charge: it amounts to a single sentence buried at the bottom of an article on page 9.

Express 'corrects' Muslim Plot to Kill Pope story

Pink News misrepresents Qaradawi’s views on homosexuality

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Qaradawi and Mayor 2There’s a report published today at Pink News entitled “Ken Livingstone promises new gay rights measures if elected London mayor”. Having given a sympathetic account of Ken’s newly announced policies in support of the LGBT community, the article ends:

“He has a good gay rights record, implementing the first civil partnerships register for gay couples in London in 2001. However, he was criticised in 2005 for inviting to London and embracing the homophobic Islamist cleric Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who has called for gays and lesbians to be killed.”

Leaving aside the fact that Ken didn’t invite Qaradawi to London, and that the visit took place in 2004, let us state one more time: Qaradawi does not call for “gays and lesbians to be killed”.

The source for this accusation is a passage in his book The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam, which was written in the late 1950s when Qaradawi was a young, orthodox, Al-Azhar trained scholar who had not yet developed his own distinctive interpretations of Islam, and in that book he restricted himself to providing a summary of traditional rulings by Islamic jurists on a range of issues.

The offending passage on homosexuality reads as follows: “The jurists of Islam have held differing opinions concerning the punishment for this abominable practice. Should it be the same as the punishment for fornication, or should both the active and passive participants be put to death? While such punishments may seem cruel, they have been suggested to maintain the purity of the Islamic society and to keep it clean of perverted elements.”

On the face of it, this does sound horrendous. If Qaradawi was not himself calling for homosexuals to be executed, he was apparently unwilling to criticise Islamic scholars who did. But this is to misunderstand the nature of the punishments that Qaradawi was referring to.

Under the various schools of sharia law homosexuality is treated as a sub-section of adultery. The Islamic jurists who formulated the legal position on this issue in the years following the Prophet’s death were trying to put a stop to the barbaric practices associated with a backward tribal society which did lead to individuals (mainly women) being killed in order to defend the “honour” of the family or community.

These early jurists ruled that it wasn’t adultery, and by extension homosexuality, that was a crime but rather the sexual act itself, and further that four independent witnesses to the sexual act were required for a conviction. The result was to preserve the draconian punishments – stoning etc – as a symbol of extreme social disapproval while raising the evidential requirements so high that in practice it was impossible to sentence anyone to those punishments.

So when Qaradawi was discussing the penalties for gay sex in The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam it was these symbolic punishments he was referring to.

In a 2006 interview on Al Jazeera, when asked about the Islamic position on homosexuality, Qaradawi again summarised the views of the early Islamic jurists:

“The schools of thought differed over the punishment. Some of them would punish as they would the fornicator/adulterer, so distinguishing between married and unmarried men, and between married and unmarried women. And some of them said the punishment of the two is equal. And some of them said we throw them from a high place, like our Lord did to the People of Lot. And some of them said we burn them.”

But Qaradawi continued: “There is disagreement, so it is possible for us to choose from them in our era what is most appropriate, and what is lightest, recognising how widespread the tribulation is: because tribulations and sins being widespread is something in Islamic legal theory that causes things to be lightened.”

So it would appear that Qaradawi’s view now is that in the modern world the draconian punishments are no longer applicable, even symbolically, to the “crime” of gay sex.

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BNP endorses Quilliam Foundation report

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Under the headline “Muslim organisations squeal after government-funded report reveals true extent of Islamic colonisation: a caliphate in Britain”, the BNP has latched onto the leaked Quilliam Foundation report.

The mainstream media covered this issue in early August, so the BNP has been a bit slow on the uptake here. But then, when you’re grappling with a situation where your organisation is imploding, heading for bankruptcy and generally in total chaos, which is the state to which Nick Griffin’s leadership has brought the BNP, I suppose it’s difficult to keep on top of developments in the outside world.

However, you can understand why the BNP is so enthusiastic about the Quilliam report – because it takes an almost identical line to that long promoted by the BNP itself, namely that peaceful mass organisations like the MCB are motivated by the same ideology as al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist groupuscules. How pleased the fascists are that the Quilliam Foundation has given credibility to their hysterical, lying attacks on mainstream Muslim organisations. Ed Husain and Maajid Nawaz must be really proud of themselves.

Media coverage of SIOA anti-Park51 rally ‘worse than Pravda’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Well, so mad Pamela Geller believes. Geller’s basic gripe is that the media failed to buy her ludicrous claim that 40,000 people attended the hate-fest she and Robert Spencer organised in New York last Saturday – a claim that most of us would take as evidence that the most paranoid 9/11 truther has a better grip on reality than Geller does.

As proof of the “tens of thousands” who supported the Stop Islamization of America protest Geller posts the following photo, which to any neutral observer would appear to confirm media reports that the event drew a couple of thousand participants.

SIOA 9-11 demonstration

Geller is particularly indignant that the media gave coverage to what she calls “the anti-America, commie, leftist counter protest”, which she insists was a fraction of the size of her own mass rally. Evidently Pravda-style misreporting is fine when it’s Geller who’s doing it. In the interests of accuracy, therefore, here is a photo of the pro-Park51 demonstration.

New York pro-Park51 demonstrators

So farewell then, Stephen Gash

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Stephen GashAnders Gravers of Stop Islamisation of Europe brings us the news that Stephen Gash, SIOE’s organiser in England, will be retiring from that post.

I think it’s unlikely that anyone will notice. While Gash would no doubt like to look back on the successes registered by SIOE England during his period of leadership, his actual record in the struggle against the Muslim hordes has amounted to a series of embarrassing flops.

Gash first came to prominence in what is now called the counter-jihad movement in October 2007 when he organised an SIOE “Stop Kuffarphobia” protest in central London. Gash told the police he was expecting a thousand demonstrators, but in the event only thirty turned up. Unwilling to stop the traffic for such small numbers the police wouldn’t let them march along the road and insisted that they use the pavement instead.

Gash then announced an SIOE protest against Harrow Central Mosque in August 2009. On the day, faced with hundreds of anti-racist counter-protestors, the police refused to allow SIOE to hold its demonstration outside the mosque and Gash himself was arrested when he resisted instructions to turn back. A couple of dozen football hooligans from the English Defence League who came to support Gash were chased away by local youth and reduced to cowering behind police lines. All in all, a complete disaster for SIOE.

Not a man to be deterred by failure, Gash announced a further SIOE protest in Harrow in December 2009, which he confidently predicted would draw a crowd of 2,000. In the outcome, only about fifteen people responded to Gash’s call.

Perhaps disappointment and humiliation have finally proved too much for Gash. While SIOE England has got nowhere, the EDL have at least been able to mobilise hundreds of brain-dead Islamophobes behind their own anti-Muslim provocations. A would-be general of the counter-jihad movement, Gash’s ambition was fatally undermined by an unfortunate lack of troops. You’d need a heart of stone not to laugh.

‘Ground Zero mosque’ protest: Geller and Spencer will be ‘confiscating’ placards and banners

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ground Zero mosque protestors

Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer have both announced that they “respectfully request that those of you who will be attending our protest against the Ground Zero mega mosque bring American flags, not signs…. Please get the word out now. We will be confiscating signs.”

“Confiscating signs”? Geller and Spencer have always portrayed themselves as uncompromising defenders of freedom of expression, notably in relation to Geert Wilders’s right to incite hatred against Muslims, yet here they are suppressing the freedom of their own supporters to express opposition to the Park51 development as they see fit.

Now, why do you suppose that might be? Well, it’s just a thought, but take a look at the signs above, which were brandished by participants at Stop Islamization of America’s last demonstration against Park51 in June – they rather expose Geller and Spencer’s pretence that SIOA’s events are anything other than an excuse to whip up fear and hatred against Muslims among ignorant racists, don’t they? To organise another such anti-Muslim hate-fest on the 11 September anniversary would be widely regarded as a sickening exploitation of a national tragedy, SIOA would be denounced by 9/11 families along with the mainstream media, and even Fox News might be less inclined to offer Geller a platform in future.

Of course, on the next SIOA demonstration it will no doubt be business as usual, and placards and banners bearing poisonous expressions of Islamophobic sentiment will once again be welcomed by Geller and Spencer.

It remains to be seen, however, how the mob of mindless bigots that Geller and Spencer have unleashed through their “Ground Zero mosque” campaign will react to the threat to confiscate placards and banners. I imagine that many of them won’t be too keen to go along with what they will see as a capitulation to political correctness.

Already some readers of Jihad Watch are expressing their incredulity at Geller and Spencer’s demand:

“WHY WILL YOU BE CONFISCATING SIGNS? Isn’t that another suppression of speech? … ISLAM MUST BE MET HEAD ON – lots of flags and ‘my feelings are hurt’ just won’t do the trick.”

“We will be confiscating signs? From my cold dead hands you will. This is America, Robert. We are not under sharia law nor are we under a police state. SHAME ON YOU for even proposing this!”

“Robert, I will bring the Dutch flag, Israeli flag or any other flag or sign I wish to bring to the 9/11 protest. This is not about you. I’m a avid reader and obviously support your and Pamela’s cause, but don’t ever tell us how to protest again.”

“Frankly, I’m not sure I care to defend a society where a mass demonstration by the people, which is their Constitutional and moral right, must walk on eggshells.”

“There is no legal authority to confiscate people’s property. End of story. It is America not Arabia…. The whole point of this demo surely is that it is about opposing Shariah ‘law’…. I think Robert and Pamela have maybe been spooked by CAIR. The most important thing is not to have an ‘offence-free’ demo but to have a demo with as many people present as possible.”

'Ground Zero mosque' opponents3
Park51 opponents at a protest on 26 August, not organised by SIOA but attracting the same mob of Islamophobes
– will Geller and Spencer be able to persuade them to leave their placards at home?

More BS from Bindel

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Julie-BindelYou might have thought that a feminist journalist would welcome the elevation of Caroline Lucas to the leadership of the Green Party and her election as the party’s first MP. But not Julie Bindel. In a piece of monumental ignorance published in Standpoint Magazine, Bindel writes:

“Lucas says she is a feminist. Yet she has shared a platform with those who believe that adulterous females should be stoned to death. In 2004, Lucas supported the International Network Assembly for the Protection of Hijab (Pro-Hijab), which was formed in response to proposed headscarf bans in France and parts of Germany. Its aim was to ‘dispel myths about the hijab’ to lobby to reverse bans already brought in and to prevent more ‘abuses of democracy’ being imposed. Lucas joined the former Respect MP George Galloway and London’s ex-mayor Ken Livingstone on the platform at the assembly’s publicly-funded City Hall launch.

“The guest of honour was Livingstone’s old friend Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, who has spoken in favour of female genital mutilation, wife-beating, the execution of homosexuals in Islamic states, the destruction of the Jewish people, the use of suicide bombs against innocent civilians and the blaming of rape victims who do not dress modestly.”

There is barely a word of this that is accurate. Neither Caroline Lucas nor George Galloway was on the platform at the Pro-Hijab launch in City Hall in July 2004, and there certainly were no speakers who believed that “adulterous females should be stoned to death”. As for Qaradawi he is opposed to genital mutilation and wife-beating, doesn’t believe that homosexuals should be executed, that the Jewish people should be detroyed or that suicide bombing against innocent civilians is justified, and he has never blamed rape victims for not dressing modestly.

But what can you expect from a writer who finds it reprehensible that “Lucas supports a boycott of Israeli goods”, and who has been applauded by fascists for promoting their racist myth about “Asian grooming”? Looks to me like Bindel is bidding to become the UK equivalent of Phyllis Chesler.

Qaradawi calls for peaceful protests against Burn a Koran Day

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Qaradawi2The International Union of Islamic Scholars has urged Muslims to react peacefully to the planned burning of copies of the Holy Quran by a small church in the US on the ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on Saturday.

The head of the Union, Dr Yusuf Al Qaradawi, in a statement yesterday called on fellow Muslims to protest in a peaceful manner and seek legal recourse against the group. “The man who has given the deplorable call and his group must be prosecuted,” said Dr Qaradawi. “The call is against the teachings of Christianity.”

The Doha Centre for Interfaith Dialogue has also condemned the call and said it reflected extremism and ignorance and ran contrary to the basic tenets of Christianity. “Christianity preaches peace and peaceful coexistence,” said Dr Ibrahim Al Nuaimi, the centre’s chairman.

The Peninsula, 9 September 2010

The problem with Qaradawi’s proposal that pastor Terry Jones should be prosecuted is that the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees the right to free speech, has been used to prevent the introduction of laws against incitement to hatred. Indeed, in the US it is possible to incite not only hatred but even violence against Muslims, as long as the call to violence remains generalised. So opponents of Jones’s vile behaviour do not in fact have any legal recourse.

It’s also worth considering what would happen in the UK if someone were to repeat Jones’s actions here. The reality is that a successful prosecution would be impossible under the existing religious hatred law, as it would be necessary to prove that the individual intended to incite hatred against Muslims, which they would certainly deny, and that the words and actions should be threatening, which they would not be.

On the other hand, if someone were to incite hatred against the Jewish community in the UK by erecting signs reading “Judaism is of the Devil”, burning copies of the Torah and claiming that Jews are the agents of Satan, then that individual could be successfully prosecuted – because Jews are defined as a mono-ethnic faith group and are therefore covered by the law against incitement to racial hatred, which requires neither proof of intent nor that incitement should take the form of threats.

Abe Foxman condemns Geller and Spencer’s 9/11 protest as ‘un-American’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Abe Foxman ADL“… this rally, on this very tragic day for Americans, but most tragic for those who lost their families, to use it and abuse it as a platform for bigotry, is not only tragic, it’s un-American”.

In an interview with Adam Serwer at The Plum Line blog, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League condemns the SIOA’s “Ground Zero mosque” demonstration on 11 September. Foxman is particularly angry that Geert Wilders will be speaking at the rally and says of Pamela Geller that “part of her agenda is to help garner support for Wilders, who is a bigot, who has a long record of anti-Muslim bigotry”.

Foxman notes that the SIOA protest is part of “a campaign which is in many places directed against building mosques” and which he says exemplifies “the anti-Muslim bigotry that exists in this country”. Foxman observes that this is nothing new:

“Part of the landscape, unfortunately, of America is that we’re not immune to bigotry, to racism, to anti-Semitism. And part of what’s out there is a bigotry to immigrants. Jews experienced it, Irish experienced it. Part of our history is there was opposition to building Catholic churches and Jewish synagogues. Now there’s opposition to build mosques.”

In response, Geller denounces Foxman – director of one of the leading Jewish organisations in the US – as a “groveling, simpering lapdog panting to jihadists”.

But this is par for the course with Geller. In an interview with Jamie Glazov of FrontPage Magazine last December, after the Community Security Trust warned the Jewish community against supporting a Stop Islamisation of Europe protest against a new mosque in Harrow, she accused the CST of “aiding and abetting Islamic jihad and Islamic anti-Semitism”.