Category Archives: Analysis & comment

Muslim leaders demand action over fascist mosque invasions

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Britain First Luton mosque invadedMuslim leaders urged the police to take action yesterday amid a rising tide of fascist “mosque invasions.”

Senior members of Luton’s Islamic congregation warned that far-right group Britain First’s inflammatory tactics were provoking younger Muslims and could end in deaths.

The fascist party posted a video of leader Paul Golding – a former British National Party councillor – and heavies forcing their way into mosques to hand out racist leaflets and Bibles to intimidate worshipers. The video ends with the message: “Are you sick of sitting on your hands and doing nothing?”

Luton Central Mosque president Mohammed Shafait told the Star: “People are fed up. He is going around all over the country abusing people.”

“I say he’s the one who is a terrorist”, argued Mr Shafait in response to the video’s description of the 40,000-strong Muslim community as “Luton extremists”.

“It’s pretty disgusting”, said anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate spokesman Simon Cressy, “They are intending to whip up racial and religious hatred.”

Britain First’s insignia describes the organisation as a “defence force” and includes the Latin motto nihil obstat – nothing stands in the way.

According to Mr Shafait, the police has been called several times but no action was taken. “I don’t want anyone to take the law into their own hands,” he added in despair. “It doesn’t matter who you are – Muslim, Christian, all faiths – stay within the law,” urged Mr Shafait. “This guy doesn’t — he makes a video then he shows to other party members that he is doing this. He is a terrorist. He’s a coward.”

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Douglas Murray links up with Christian fundamentalist homophobe to smear Newham ‘mega-mosque’ supporters

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Alan Craig and press release

Two weeks ago a public inquiry opened into Newham Council’s rejection of a plan by the Abbey Mills Riverine Centre to build a so-called “mega-mosque” on the site it occupies in West Ham.

Supporting the plan, and the right of the Riverine Centre to continue to run a smaller mosque on the site, is Newham People’s Alliance. Leading the charge against the proposal is the MegaMosqueNoThanks campaign headed by right-wing evangelical Christian and former Christian Peoples Alliance councillor Alan Craig.

One of Craig’s main witnesses at the inquiry was supposed to be Tehmina Kazi, director of British Muslims for Secular Democracy, who was expected to denounce Tablighi Jamaat, the conservative Islamic proselytising organisation who run the Riverine Centre, for its allegedly discriminatory attitude towards women. What better way to deflect charges of Islamophobia than to have a young Muslim woman making Craig’s case for him?

We have had some harsh words to say about Kazi’s role in the “mega-mosque” controversy in the past, pointing out that while she has been very ready to denounce “fundamentalism” within the Muslim community she saw nothing wrong in allying herself with a Christian fundamentalist like Craig. However, to her credit, Kazi has evidently had second thoughts about this dubious alliance. On the eve of the opening of the public inquiry, the anti-mosque campaigners found themselves wrong-footed when Kazi announced that she would not be appearing as a witness.

Craig immediately issued a press release (text below) claiming that Kazi had withdrawn because she had been “intimidated by misogynist mosque supporters” and “harried and pressured by members of Muslim-run Newham Peoples Alliance”. Craig demanded: “Why do Islamists always pick on women? Like misogynist bullies NPA intruded on Tehmina’s holiday abroad last weekend. By phone and email they harassed her, intimidated her and then on behalf of the Tablighi Jamaat mosque trustees gave her assurance that their future treatment of women at the site will improve.”

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Anti-Islamic group behind black balloons stunt in Bendigo

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bendigo black balloonsAn anti-Islamic group has sent an anonymous email to all Bendigo media outlets, local politicians and prominent media commentators claiming it was behind the black balloons that have mysteriously appeared across central Bendigo.

The email has ended weeks of speculation about what the balloons mean and who is behind them.

The first line of the email states that the “black balloon campaign was established by those who are against the legislated inequality and abuse in our Western society of women and children”. It says Islamic influence, especially in relation to abuse of women and children, is “creeping into our Western culture”.

It says Western communities are being “forced to accept cultures like Islam”. The final line of the email reads: “The view of the black balloon supporters is to accept Islam into our community is endorsing domestic and child abuse in our community.” The email also says it is a “misconception” that the views expressed are “racist”.

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Far right campaigns to ‘ban the burka’ … in Berwick-upon-Tweed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Scottish Defence League (2)Berwick will be the location of another pair of demonstrations this summer as far-right groups announced intentions to march through the town.

Far-right groups the Scottish Defence League and the North East Infidels plan to travel to Berwick in order to hold a protest on July 5.

At a meeting last Friday Berwick Trades Union Council along with local anti-fascist campaigners discussed the two groups’ planned protest.

A statement was released expressing the council’s “revulsion and deep concern at the prospect of these fascist thugs once again invading our community with their messages of hate and division. In February last year Berwick put up a tremendous display of solidarity in opposing the SDL and EDL. The fascists on the other hand chanted racist slogans and caused mayhem in the town centre.”

The statement went on to call for a local response, which will be in the form of a counter demonstration inn the same vein as last year.

“We call on all those who supported the anti-fascist demonstration last year to do the same this year but this time to make it even bigger and stronger. Let’s tell these racist thugs they are not welcome in our peaceful and inclusive community. We have an organising meeting on Friday June 20 open to all those groups and individuals in our community who want to show a collective opposition to the fascists.”

The visiting groups are describing their march as a Ban the Burka event, and are planning to wear balaclavas as a sign of protest.

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Spectator disgraces itself with Islamophobic cover

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Spectator taught to hate coverThis is the cover to this week’s Spectator. A cartoon of a frightened child clutching the Qur’an in one hand and a scimitar in the other. How could Spectator editor Fraser Nelson possibly have thought that was a good idea?

As you can see, the main article in the magazine is by the raving neocon, Douglas (“conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board”) Murray, who Nelson apparently thinks is an entirely appropriate person to lead the Spectator‘s commentary on the so-called “Trojan horse” controversy.

Not only that, but Murray’s piece is followed by an article from Innes Bowen claiming that almost half of British mosques are run by co-thinkers of the Taliban.

The issue also contains an entirely sensible article by Matthew Parris entitled “This ‘Islamist conspiracy’ is WMD all over again”, which argues that the “Trojan horse” affair looks very much like a repetition of the neocon propaganda that provided the justification for the invasion of Iraq. Good for Matthew Parris.

But Fraser Nelson saw fit to bury that article on page 27 and omit any reference at all to it on the cover. He evidently thought it more important to promote a piece calling for support for England football team manager Roy Hodgson.

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Allison Pearson thinks she’s culturally superior to Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Let me quote Myriam Francois-Cerrah, a writer and Muslim convert, who told Channel 4 News on Tuesday that she rejected calls by the Prime Minister and Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, for schools to promote British values. “In many ways, the problem is creating a hierarchy of cultures when you say you need to promote British values,” she objected. “What does that say to children in a classroom whose heritage harks from outside the British Isles? It says this country has superior moral values and you are coming from some backward culture whose values you … must not consider equal to our own.”

Funnily enough, that’s exactly what we are saying, Myriam. Spot on!

Allison Pearson offers her thoughts (using that word in its loosest possible sense) on the “Trojan horse” witch-hunt.

Daily Telegraph, 11 June 2014

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Jim Fitzpatrick exploits ‘Trojan Horse’ witch-hunt to claim ‘Islamist plot’ in Tower Hamlets

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jim FitzpatrickA London MP today warned of the risk of a ‘Trojan Horse’-style Islamist plot to infiltrate councils in the capital amid claims of schools being targeted in Birmingham.

As Ofsted criticised five schools at the heart of the row, Labour’s Jim Fitzpatrick said there is a risk of “race politics” taking hold after the re-election of controversial mayor Lutfur Rahman in Tower Hamlets.

He said Labour had rejected “several hundred” applications from people the party believed could be “extremists” trying to infiltrate the borough’s politics, as well as expelling party members during the past five years.

“We think our act is pretty clean now, but that doesn’t stop people trying because that’s what was influencing our politics in the past and that’s certainly a way of working,” he told the Standard. “Much as the entryism, the Trojan Horse allegations [were] in education in Birmingham, the Trojan Horse in east London was a political one rather than an educational one.”

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The Economist defends right to incite religious hatred

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Belfast rally against racism

The Economist has just posted a comment piece (“Ulster and Islam: Minarets and steeples”) on its Erasmus blog about the controversy unleashed by Pastor James McConnell’s diatribe against Islam and its subsequent defence by First Minister and Democratic Unionist Party leader Peter Robinson. It concludes:

Mr Robinson’s defence of the right of preachers to “denounce false doctrine” was politically inept, to put it mildly, and it showed a peculiar understanding of the role of a secular politician. But in a narrow way he is right. Under any legal regime which upholds free speech, so long as it does not advocate violence, preachers (including Islamic ones) do have the legal right to denounce beliefs that they regard as false. There were hard discussions about this when Britain introduced legislation on “religious hatred” in the wake of the 2005 London bombings; and to the relief of free-speech advocates, language which would virtually have prohibited robust religious debate was struck out.

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‘Jihad’ against Cadbury? The only threats of violence are against Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cadbury MalaysiaThe Daily Mail and Telegraph have both run stories, originating in the Malay Mail, about the indignation expressed at a press conference yesterday by some Muslim leaders in Malaysia over allegations that Cadbury’s chocolate has been found to contain traces of porcine DNA.

The Mail headed its report: “Jihad declared on Cadbury by Malaysian Muslims after pork DNA batches”. The Telegraph originally went with the more neutral “Islamic groups angry at Cadbury Malaysia after two batches found to contain pork DNA”, before deciding this wasn’t hard-hitting enough and amending it to “Malaysian Muslim groups call for jihad on Cadbury after pork traces found in chocolate”.

The shock-horror element in both of these reports is achieved by translating jihad as “holy war” rather than the more accurate term “struggle”, in order to suggest that Cadbury has been threatened with violence. There was in fact a single Muslim spokesperson at the press conference, one Ustaz Masridzi Sat, who spoke about declaring jihad, and I very much doubt that physical attacks on chocolate factories were what he had in mind.

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