Although the task of monitoring Islamophobia can sometimes be a depressing experience, because of the sheer volume of anti-Muslim bigotry, it does afford the occasional moment of light relief. I couldn’t help laughing aloud at the NRO interview with Andrew C. MCarthy. The first question is: “What do health-care reform and ‘the Grand Jihad’ have in common?” To which McCarthy replies: “They both enjoy the support of Islam and the Left.”
Category Archives: Analysis & comment
‘Honour killing over hijab gets life term in Canada’
Thus the headline to a report that the father and brother of a young Canadian woman named Aqsa Parvez have been sentenced to life imprisonment for her murder in 2007.
The report begins: “Just days after a Punjab man was jailed for life in honour killing of his daughter-in-law, a Pakistani father, along with his son, here too faces life behind bars for honour killing of his young girl for her refusal to wear the hijab.”
But it seems clear that Aqsa Parvez’s tragic death did not in fact result from “her refusal to wear the hijab”. Though this has been the media spin put on her murder, it is a distortion.
The friend at whose house Aqsa was staying after leaving her own home stated that, at the time of Aqsa’s murder, her rejection of her father’s demand that she wear a headscarf was not a major cause of conflict between Aqsa and her family.
According to one report, the issue of the hijab had arisen in 2006 but had been resolved after Aqsa left home on an earlier occasion: “Upon her return, her mother took her shopping for Western clothes and she was allowed to attend school in non-traditional clothes.” Another report confirms that, following this dispute, Aqsa’s father “relented, and allowed her to wear urban-style jeans and T-shirts to school”.
The conflict would appear to have been a much broader one between a young woman who wanted to live a westernised lifestyle and culturally conservative male relatives who regarded her behaviour as an attack on the family’s honour. Such notions of honour are a feature of many backward rural societies across the world and are not associated with any particular faith.
So why was media so intent on depicting the hijab as the main motive for Aqsa’s killing? The reason is is not hard to identify. It was an attempt to pin the blame on Islam as part of an ongoing campaign against Muslims and multiculturalism.
Islam’s plot to conquer the West (part 687)
Andrew C. McCarthy outlines the thesis of his new book The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America in an interview with Jamie Glazov of FrontPageMag:
“Islamists consider themselves to be in a ‘civilizational jihad’ – their words, not mine – against the West. They use terrorism to great effect, but the battle proceeds on every conceivable front in our society: the media, the academy, and our politics, law and culture. And their aim is nothing less than the ‘destruction of the West’ – as Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual guide (and probably the most influential Sunni cleric in the world), puts it, ‘to conquer America’ and ‘conquer Europe’….
“The very title of the book, ‘The Grand Jihad’ and the invocation of ‘sabotage’ in the subtitle, is taken from a 1991 internal Muslim Brotherhood memorandum in which the group’s leadership in the U.S. explains to its global leadership in Egypt that the Brothers (or the Ikhwan) consider their work in North America as a ‘grand jihad’ aimed at ‘eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within’ by ‘sabotage’.”
Glazov chips in: “Sounds like something the Left would embrace. That’s why you argue that Islamists work together with the Left to sabotage America, right?” McCarthy replies: “Exactly.”
McCarthy does, however, exempt some liberals and leftists from his attack – “not all of what might generally be called ‘the Left’ is part of what I am homing in on” – which is fair enough, given the prevalence of liberal Islamophobia and the role played by the likes of Christopher Hitchens. McCarthy’s target is “the hard Left – in America, the Obama Left or the Alinskyite Left – pushing to change our society radically”.
‘Is Labour handing Tower Hamlets back to the Islamists?’
Andrew Gilligan poses the question. He’s outraged at the report that “Labour’s candidate for the directly-elected mayoralty of Tower Hamlets will be selected by the entire local membership”. Doesn’t the Labour hierarchy realise that supporters of the Islamic Forum of Europe are members of the party in Tower Hamlets? Are they really going to be allowed to vote on who their mayoral candidate will be? It is clearly intolerable that IFE supporters should be allowed to exercise their democratic rights in this way.
BNP ‘given a licence to promote religious and racial hatred in schools’
A teacher who posted comments on the internet describing some immigrants as “savage animals” and “filth” was cleared of racial and religious intolerance today. Adam Walker, a British National Party (BNP) activist, used a school laptop to claim in an online forum that Britain was a “dumping ground for the filth of the third world”.
Walker was a technology teacher at Houghton Kepier Sports College in Houghton-le-Spring, near Sunderland, at the time. He is the first teacher to be brought before the teaching profession’s watchdog – the General Teaching Council (GTC) – accused of racial intolerance.
The disciplinary panel, made up of three people, said it was “troubled” by Walker’s postings but was not satisfied that the “intemperate” views suggested intolerance.
Walker, a former soldier, had posted the comments on a forum of Teesside online about the popularity of the BNP in February and March 2007. Under the pseudonym Corporal Fox, Walker wrote that the BNP had risen in popularity because “they are the only party who are making a stand and are prepared to protect the rights of citizens against the savage animals New Labour and Bliar [sic] are filling our communities with”.
The same day he added: “By following recent media coverage of illegal animals and how they are allowed to stay here despite committing heinous crimes, I am, to say the very least, disgusted.”
Delivering the committee’s verdict, its chair, Angela Stones, said some of Walker’s postings contained offensive terms and demonstrated views or an attitude that might be considered racist.
But she said: “The committee does not accept that references to ‘immigrants’ are of themselves suggestive of any particular views on race. The committee accepts that immigrants to this country come from all over the world. A negative comment about immigration to the UK of itself need not be indicative of racist views or racial intolerance since the race of immigrants is extremely varied.”
Responding to the news that Walker had been cleared, Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, the largest teachers’ union, said:
“This is an absolutely staggering judgment from the GTC. The GTC’s code of conduct requires teachers to ‘demonstrate respect for diversity and promote equality’ but the decision today makes a mockery of the code. The GTC panel described Walker’s comments as ‘troubling’. This must go down as a gross understatement. With this decision, the GTC has effectively given a licence to promote religious and racial hatred in schools.”
Still, the panel’s decision will find favour in some quarters. Over at Spiked, for example, Nathalie Rothschild has indignantly opposed “the campaign, spearheaded by the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), to prevent BNP members from working in British schools. This is about banning certain individuals from taking up teaching, not because they lack relevant skills or training, but because their private views are deemed unacceptable and because they are seen as a potentially poisonous influence on children and on society at large”.
Rothschild demands: “What gives certain individuals the right to deem certain beliefs, opinions and outlooks as being beyond the pale, dangerous, illegal? And who is to say that your opinions or mine won’t be seen as unacceptable in the future? Accepting the GTC’s charge against Walker – no matter what you make of his views on Muslims and migrants – is to agree that the powers-that-be should have the authority to exclude people from public positions on the basis of their beliefs and thoughts.”
Martin Bright is not an Islamophobe
Well, so Bright claims on his Spectator blog. He objects to Ken Livingstone having described him in a recent interview as “a bit of an Islamophobe” (which some of us might argue was a bit of an understatement). Bright writes:
“The charge of Islamophobe is a serious one, that could have serious consequences for my future work. I will be writing to Ken Livingstone to ask him to withdraw this defamatory and groundless statement. I hope he does the decent thing and apologises.”
As we have repeatedly pointed out, when speaking at a FOSIS conference at City Hall in August 2005 Bright stated that he saw nothing wrong with Islamophobia because there is “a lot in Islam to be fearful of”. He got roundly booed and in the following discussion was sharply criticised for his comments.
It is true that, in reply to the discussion, Bright backed off and conceded that he shouldn’t have made that remark. But the fact is that he did make it. And there were a hundred or so participants at the conference who can confirm that.
Bear in mind that this is the same Martin Bright who made a witch-hunting documentary, broadcast early in 2008 during the run-up to the London mayoral election, in which he accused Ken Livingstone, among other things, of being an alcoholic.
Bright reserves the right to mount such disgraceful attacks on his political opponents but comes over all pompous and self-righteous when his opponents criticise him in return. As we’ve noted in the past, this is a common feature of Islamophobes – they can dish it out but they can’t take it.
So here at Islamophobia Watch we have every confidence that Ken will do the decent thing and tell Bright to get stuffed.
‘A mosque at Ground Zero? A sick joke’
Thus Douglas Murray’s take on the proposal to build a new mosque and community centre in New York, not far from the site of the former World Trade Center.
Meanwhile, over in the USA, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer have written a piece entitled “The 9/11 mosque’s peace charade“. They dismiss the anti-extremist credentials of the Cordoba Initiative and the American Society for Muslim Advancement, the organisations proposing to build the mosque:
“How will a mosque, the place where jihadis go for spiritual sustenance, at Ground Zero help stop jihad terrorism? … Whom does a mosque at 9/11 really honor: the Americans who lost their lives, or the jihadis who murdered them?”
Geller and Spencer are organising a protest rally on 6 June through their organisation Stop Islamization of America.
And one Mark Williams, a leading figure in the Tea Party movement, has written on his blog:
“The animals of allah for whom any day is a great day for a massacre are drooling over the positive response that they are getting from New York City officials over a proposal to build a 13 story monument to the 9/11 Muslims who hijacked those 4 airliners. The monument would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists’ monkey-god and a ‘cultural center’ to propagandize for the extermination of all things not approved by their cult.”
‘Britain must end the appeasement of Islamist terrorists: the Human Rights Act should be scrapped’
Nile Gardiner denounces the ruling by the Special Immigration and Appeals Commission that two terror suspects could not be deported to Pakistan on the grounds they might be tortured there.
His colleague Douglas Murray goes with “Why do al-Qaeda’s rights trump those of the British people?”
Neither Gardiner nor Murray bothers to mention that the two individuals have not been convicted of any offence – or indeed allowed to hear, still less to challenge, the evidence against them.
See also ENGAGE, 19 May 2010
Ann Widdecombe makes a contribution to interfaith harmony
Writing in the Daily Express, Anne Widdecome offers her views on the case of the Ellesmere Port pupil whose mother refused to allow her to participate in a school visit to a mosque (a story from last month belatedly latched onto by the Daily Mail, followed by the Express, the Telegraph, the Daily Star and the Mirror):
Learning about another religion should not mean having to practise it and insisting that a Catholic schoolgirl should dress as a Muslim and visit a mosque is a nonsense that her parents would not have expected to encounter when they chose a specifically Catholic school.
Indeed why does the head think they selected a Catholic school? Presumably it was to enable that child to learn that faith.
The bishop should have a quiet word with the headmaster of Ellesmere Port Catholic High School and suggest that he revert to the usual practice of teaching children to defend not surrender their faith and to know the difference between tolerating other faiths and adopting them.
If he cannot pass that test the diocese should find a head who can. Would that same head insist a Muslim child attend Mass wearing a crucifix?
No, of course he wouldn’t, but he would undoubtedly ask pupils to dress appropriately for a visit to any place of worship. And that is what the pupil at the centre of this controversy was asked to do – not “dress as a Muslim”. Is Widdecombe perhaps suggesting that the head would have no problem with a pupil attending Mass dressed in a bikini?
It’s worth noting that other parents at Ellesmere Port Catholic High School voiced their objections to the mosque visit, without bothering to hide behind the nonsense about “dressing as a Muslim”. As one of them explained: “I’m not racist or anything but I live in England, I send my daughter to an English speaking catholic school, so I don’t see why she should go to a mosque.”
BRANDED Schoolgirl who refused to dress as up as Muslim
Thus the front page headline in today’s Daily Star, which has belatedly latched on to the case of Amy Owen, whose mother refused to allow her to join a school trip to a mosque. Inside the paper an editorial offers the following observations:
“It’s political correctness gone mad. Schoolgirl Amy Owen was punished for refusing to dress as a Muslim on a trip. The school branded her a ‘truant’ and wrote a stern letter to her family. The headmaster insisted it was ‘compulsory’ for the 14-year-old to visit a local mosque. And he tried to force Amy to wear a Muslim-style headscarf.
“It’s disgusting. Everyone involved should hang their head in shame. Amy is a Catholic. Her beliefs should be respected. Demanding she ditch her faith for Islam is the ultimate religious insult.”
“Ditch her faith for Islam” – because she was asked to cover her head in a visit to a mosque? What are these people on?
See also the Daily Mail and the Sun.