Category Archives: Analysis & comment

Fareena Alam – agent of theocratic dictatorship

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yes, really. According to the increasingly crazed Spittoon blog, the former editor of Q-News should be removed from her position in the PVE-funded Radical Middle Way, because she works as a journalist and presenter for Press TV.

The Spittoon declares that “it is manifestly insane that an Iranian government employee, especially one who works for Tehran’s main English language propaganda outlet and who compares British soldiers to fascist storm-troopers, should be involved in running the UK’s most lavishly-funded counter-extremism programme”.

Boris Johnson promotes Islamist extremism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

If you thought the Sunday Times‘ recent attacks on Jack Straw for consorting with Islamist extremists were bizarre, the Sunday Express has gone one better by levelling the same accusation against Boris Johnson, under the jaw-dropping headine “Boris’s terror link”! In Johnson’s case, the charge is that Mohamed Ali Harrath, CEO of the Islam Channel, spoke at Eid in the Square last month, where the Islam Channel was one of the GLA’s media partners along with the BBC Radio Asian Network.

Step forward Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens of the Centre for Social Cohesion, who tells the Express: “The invitation shows a worrying inconsistency in what the Tories have said about Islamic extremism recently.” It was notable that Meleagrou-Hitchens was one of the few people to treat the Sunday Times attack on Jack Straw seriously (“the noose is tightening around both the MCB’s extremist connections and government ministers who have been championing them. It’s about time…”). Even Harry’s Place baulked at reproducing that particular rant, though their co-thinkers at the Spittoon evidently had no problems with it.

The parallels between the present wave of Islamophobia in the UK and the 1950s Red Scare in the US are increasingly striking. In both cases the campaign began as an attack on the Left but then broadened out into a general assault on anyone who failed to join in the hysterical witch-hunt against Communism/Islamism. This was what eventually discredited and destroyed McCarthy. Surely it can only be a matter of time before Meleagrou-Hitchens announces that the British Army has been infiltrated at the highest level by Islamist fellow travellers who pose a threat to national security.

Update:  See also Meleagrou-Hitchens’ piece, “Boris fails to tackle Islamic extremism”, ConservativeHome, 27 October 2009

Mad Mel on the rise of the BNP

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Melanie Phillips Jihad in BritainIn this week’s Spectator Mad Melanie Phillips has another go at explaining the factors behind the rise of the BNP.

And, wouldn’t you know it, these include “uncontrolled immigration, multiculturalism, the loss to the EU of Britain’s ability to govern itself. Most toxic of all, however, is the threat from Islamic supremacism and the concern of the disenfranchised white voters that the political establishment is supinely going along with the progressive Islamisation of Britain.”

As we’ve pointed out in the past, Phillips’ analysis of the BNP’s political appeal always omits one major contributory factor, namely the legitimisation of their hysterical anti-Muslim propaganda by “mainstream” right-wing journalists like Phillips herself.

See also “Mel P rationalises the BNP’s anti-Muslim prejudice”, ENGAGE, 23 October 2009

Hindu groups slam BNP claims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hindu groups across the country have united to slam claims made by BNP leader Nick Griffin that British Hindus support the policies of the BNP. In a joint statement the Hindu Council UK, National Council of Hindu Temples and City Hindus Network said they were against what the BNP stood for.

Mr Griffin made his claims during an interview on Sky News’ Sunday Live with Adam Boulton. The BNP leader was speaking after pledging to lift a bar on non-whites joining the party in response to court action by The Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Speaking to Adam Boulton he claimed: “A large number of the settled ethnic minority population, Sikhs, Hindus and so on, are actually very much in favour of the British National Party’s stance about stopping any further immigration.”

The claim, however, was denied. In a joint statement, Dr Rao, Chair of the Hindu Council UK, Sanjay Jagatia, General Secretary of the National Council of Hindu Temples, and Dhruv Patel, Chair of the City Hindus Network hit back at Mr Griffin.

“The claim made by Nick Griffin that Hindus back BNP is totally without foundation,” the statement said. “Hindu Council UK, the National Council of Hindu Temples and City Hindus Network have had no contact with the BNP and as a peaceful law abiding community we do not agree with Nick Griffin’s views or policies. We would also like to reiterate that we totally condemn all forms racism and religious intolerance.”

The Asian Today, 20 October 2009

Continue reading →

‘Islam is different’ – Christopher Caldwell on immigration

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Christopher Caldwell, author of Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, calls for a discussion on immigration. Or rather, Muslim immigration. He’s not necessarily against immigrants as such, you understand. Latin American migration into the US hasn’t been such a problem, according to Caldwell, but that’s because the migrants are at least Christians, and their presence requires “no fundamental reform of America’s culture or institutions”.

However: “Islam is different. Living with Muslim cultures requires larger adjustments, and they touch deeper, more essential parts of European culture. This kind of change needs to be considered when we talk about the costs and benefits of immigration.”

But don’t imagine that Caldwell’s article is feeding paranoid racist fantasies about the “Islamification” of Europe. Not at all. As he assures his readers: “Discussing immigration and its consequences openly is not rude. It is necessary to lower the temperature of the debate.”

Mail on Sunday, 11 October 2009

How to improve the Prevent strategy – stop giving taxpayers’ money to Ed Husain

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Quilliam FoundationWriting at Comment is Free, Ed Husain of the Quilliam Foundation takes up the report by the Taxpayers’ Alliance attacking the government’s Prevent strategy.

The report, Ed writes, reveals that “many groups that have received handsome grants of taxpayers’ funds are groups whose leading members include supporters of hardcore Islamist ideologies. Such organisations include the Islamic Society of Britain (with some exceptions), the UK Islamic Mission, the Islamic Foundation, the London Muslim Centre and Da’watul Islam”.

Happily, a solution is to hand: “The government needs to begin working with Muslim partners who will actively contribute towards making British society more cohesive and harmonious – rather than groups that can only promise not to actively sabotage such aims. Quilliam, with the help of Prevent funding, aims to do just this.”

But, according to Ed, the government needs to look beyond Quilliam to find partners with similar politics, “who are unafraid to say that terrorism is driven by an ideology of victimhood and notions of reward in the afterlife”. Ed makes no proposals as to who these partners might be. And that is hardly surprising. There are, after all, few Muslim-led organisations who are prepared to promote the Daily Mail‘s agenda with quite the same fervour as Ed Husain does.

If John Denham and DCLG are really concerned to re-establish the Prevent strategy on a more effective basis – and it appears that they are – then the first step should be to withdraw all state funding from the loathed and despised Quilliam Foundation and redirect it towards organisations that actually have roots in the Muslim communities.

Update:  See also ENGAGE, 10 September 2009

Further update:  Interestingly, in the USA the right-wing magazine Human Events takes a very similar line to Ed Husain, condemning the FBI for allying with Islamist organisations in order to fight terrorism. For US conservatives, as for Ed Husain, their obsessive campaign against Islamism takes precedence over the obligation to defend the nation’s citizens from terrorist attacks.

Who incites hatred against Muslims in Manchester?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP Islam Out of BritainThe impact of Saturday’s planned English Defence League demonstration in Manchester has rightly been highlighted in coverage of the desecration of Muslim graves in the city’s Southern Cemetery. But the role of the British National Party in inciting hatred against Manchester’s Muslim community should not be ignored.

In recent weeks the BNP have conducted a hysterical campaign (“Genocide: how Islamic colonisation destroys your heritage“) against the conversion of a derelict church in Longsight into an Islamic Centre. The BNP made a particular issue of what they falsely claimed was the demolition of the (long disused) cemetery:

“The bloodless genocide and ethnic cleansing of the British people and culture continues apace with the latest example being the ripping up of a century old Christian cemetery to make way for a mosque in Manchester. The grave desecrations, being carried out with a large Komatsu earthmover in the graveyard of the St John the Apostle and Evangelist church at the corner of Holmfirth Street and St John’s Road, is part of the re-opening of this nineteenth century church as the Dar-ul-Ulum Qadria Jilania ‘Islamic Centre’….

“These Christian British graves – the only remnant of the now ethnically cleansed British people in the area – are obviously offensive to the Muslim colonisers, who have brought in the earthmoving machine to smash up the gravestones which are being literally crushed to rubble. St John the Apostle and Evangelist church is a real time history lesson of what will happen to Britain unless the insane multicultural Lib/Lab/Con genocidal policies of mass Third World immigration are not only brought to an end, but reversed.”

Of course, in line with their new respectable image, the lesson drawn by the BNP is that the “indigenous population” should cast a vote for their party in elections: “The British voters will soon be faced with a choice between their continued extermination at the hands of the Lib/Lab/Con ethnic cleansing party, or their survival as a free and independent indigenous people with the BNP.”

But it is hardly surprising that this sort of inflammatory language should have motivated some of the BNP’s supporters to take more direct action against the “Muslim colonisers”.

Police again refuse to take action against SIOE in Harrow

Posted on by Bob Pitt

ENGAGE draws our attention to an article in the Harrow Observer which reports that the police are once again refusing to take action against Stop Islamisation of Europe over the provocative demonstration that SIOE is proposing to hold outside Harrow Central Mosque on 13 December.

One William Goddard, Media and Public Relations Manager for Harrow Borough, is quoted as saying: “We are not seeking to ban the proposed protest as there is no legislative basis to do so. Neither the police nor the Home Secretary have any power to ban static demonstrations aside from those on private property.”

This is of course technically true. While the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act gave the police the power to prohibit “trespassory assemblies”, stationary public assemblies cannot be banned under the Public Order Act, only “public processions”. However, Goddard fails to mention that Section 14 of the POA does in fact give the police significant powers in relation to the control of public assemblies. The relevant section reads:

If the senior police officer, having regard to the time or place at which and the circumstances in which any public assembly is being held or is intended to be held, reasonably believes that-

(a) it may result in serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community, or

(b) the purpose of the persons organising it is the intimidation of others with a view to compelling them not to do an act they have a right to do, or to do an act they have a right not to do, he may give directions imposing on the persons organising or taking part in the assembly such conditions as to the place at which the assembly may be (or continue to be) held, its maximum duration, or the maximum number of persons who may constitute it, as appear to him necessary to prevent such disorder, damage, disruption or intimidation.

These provisions in the POA are designed for precisely the sort of public assembly that SIOE is planning.

Bear in mind that Stephen Gash of SIOE has announced he is aiming to bring 2,000 protestors to the rally. And he makes no secret of the poisonous anti-Muslim ideology that they will be promoting. This is no demonstration hiding behind the pretence of opposing “Islamist extremists” – it is explicitly directed against the entire Muslim community, under the slogan “Stop mosque building”. As Gash recently stated: “We do not believe in moderate Muslims…. all Muslims want sharia law and Islam to rule the world. Moderate Muslims are those who watch non-Muslims being killed, but still say Allah u Akbar when the killing is happening…. We oppose immigration from Muslim countries.”

It is self-evident that the protest Gash is proposing to hold would certainly cause serious disruption to the life of the community in Harrow and is very likely to result in serious public disorder. Equally clearly, the demonstration is intended to intimidate the local Muslim population as a whole and visitors to Harrow Central Mosque in particular.

Continue reading →

Tories will stop funds to ‘radical Islamist groups’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

JC logoA conservative government would stop all funding to groups that promote radical Islamic ideology and target money at organisations with a record of bringing Britain’s diverse communities together.

In an interview with the JC, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said Labour’s policy risked creating ghettoes. He revealed that the Tories were planning an immediate review of the Prevent anti-extremism strategy, which he accused of channelling money to radical organisations.

The change would represent a shift away from the multiculturalism policy which critics charge with creating segregated religious and ethnic communities isolated from mainstream society.

Jewish Chronicle, 1 October 2009

Read Martin Bright’s interview with Grayling here. Bright reports: “Mr Grayling shares the concerns of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, and reported by the JC, that money is being used to fund dubious organisations. ‘I have some serious misgivings about the way in which Prevent money is being used. I think there are plenty of indicators that it is being channelled in a way that is actually in the end funding extremism rather than reducing extremism’.”

Bright comments approvingly that “Chris Grayling’s interview puts significant blue water between the Conservatives and Labour on extremism and anti-terror policy. The Shadow Home Secretary could not be clearer in his rejection of multiculturalism and the policy of ‘engagement for the sake of engagement’.”

Elsewhere in the JC, under the headline “Denham challenged on Prevent“, Bright reports that at the Quilliam Foundation’s Labour conference fringe meeting earlier this week Ed Husain attacked the government for funding “groups and institutions promoting radical Islamist ideology” and announced a Quilliam-sponsored campaign against Muslim organisations linked to Jamaat-e-Islami.

We have our own question for John Denham, one that we’ve raised before – how much longer will the government continue handing over taxpayers’ money to Husain and his obnoxious little gang of right-wing witch-hunters?

See also “Martin Bright praises Quilliam Foundation’s grand alliance with Zionists and neo-cons”, ENGAGE, 2 October 2009

Does the EDL hate Muslims?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDLSupporterOver at the right-wing US website Family Security Matters, Adrian Morgan has posted a four-part analysis of the anti-Muslim protests organised by the English Defence League.

Observing that “the identification of players on the far left is complex enough” (yes we’d noticed that Morgan has difficulties with that), in the third part of the series he tries to identify the individuals and ideologies behind the EDL protests. To that end, Morgan sent a questionnaire about the EDL to various people linked to the organisation and received replies from Paul Ray of the Lionheart blog, Stephen Gash of Stop Islamisation of Europe and Mickey Smith of Casuals United.

Given the EDL’s official claim that it is protesting against a minority of Islamist extremists like al-Muhajiroun rather than against the Muslim community as a whole, the answers to Morgan’s question “Is EDL against Muslims, Islamists, or immigrants?” are of interest.

Paul Ray replies that “anyone trying to convert great Britain into an Islamic State, whether peacefully or militantly, is an enemy of the British people, so those are who I am against. If a Moslem is not actively engaged in trying to convert their host Nation into an Islamic State then they are not Moslem. Islamists are just the military wing of the religion…. Take a read of Robert Spencer’s Stealth Jihad which talks about the silent subversive war to take our countries over…. Obviously there are many Islamic militants who are arriving and have arrived in Britain through the immigrant route and have claimed and are claiming asylum in the country which then brings the immigrant question into the equation.”

Stephen Gash’s answer is: “We do not believe in moderate Muslims…. Some Muslims are more active than others, but all Muslims want sharia law and Islam to rule the world. Moderate Muslims are those who watch non-Muslims being killed, but still say Allah u Akbar when the killing is happening. Therefore, we obviously oppose Islamists because Islamists are merely Muslims, and Muslims are Islamists. We oppose immigration from Muslim countries.”

The response by Casuals United spokesperson Mickey Smith is more in line with the EDL’s tactic of covering up their extremist views and masquerading as moderates. Smith replies blandly that the EDL “is against Islamic Extremist, not Muslim people per se, those whose declared aim is to make Britain an Islamic state, and who laugh at our soldiers dying on their websites”.

Unfortunately for Smith, this stance is rather undermined by the explicit anti-Muslim statements on Casuals United’s own website: “I once read a book ‘The prophesies of Nostradamus’ and it said ‘Islamic hordes will invade europe but a British counter attack will drive them back’…. Our advice is this, NEVER EVER vote for any Muslim MP or Councillor as its clear their main interest ‘inshalla’ is the advancement of Islam and not the interests of this country.”

See also “Fomenting hate between Muslims and Christians” at ENGAGE, 1 October 2009