Category Archives: Analysis & comment

Robert Spencer and Phyllis Chesler join forces

Posted on by Bob Pitt

De SteenRobert Spencer of Jihad Watch and US feminist Phyllis Chesler have co-authored a pamphlet, The Violent Oppression of Women in Islam, as their contribution to “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week“.

What with Julie Bindel’s Sunday Times article endorsing fascist myths about “Asian grooming”, an Islamophobic alliance between the racist Right and a warped version of feminism would appear to be a theme of anti-Muslim bigotry this week.

See Front Page Magazine, 5 October 2007

Download the pamphlet (pdf) here.

The cover of the pamphlet reproduces the notorious illustration which, as Spencer and Chesler are forced to admit in their article, also featured in the Front Page Magazine press release announcing Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week. It is in fact fictional, having been taken from a 1944 Dutch film called De Steen. Yet the press release assured readers: “The photo accompanying this article, which shows a teenage girl buried before being stoned to death for alleged sexual offenses, will serve as the poster for the protest Week. The stoning took place in Iran.”

Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain statement on Panorama

Posted on by Bob Pitt

HizbHizb ut-Tahrir replies to last night’s Panorama programme How I Became a Muslim Extremist.

Among the talking heads featured on the programme was Douglas Murray’s mate James Brandon from the misnamed Centre for Social Cohesion, which the programme omitted to mention is a hardline right-wing think tank. And Andrew Green – who assured viewers that HT represents a “gateway” to terrorism – was introduced as a former Foreign Office expert, with no reference to the fact that he is now chairman of the right-wing anti-immigration campaign Migration Watch.

For Yusuf Smith’s comments, see Indigo Jo Blogs, 2 October 2007

‘Cringing to Muslims is so pointless’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The right-wing media are predictably making an issue of Sainsbury’s reported decision to allow its Muslim checkout staff to opt out of& selling alcohol. Judging by the account in yesterday’s Sunday Times this would appear to affect a single employee in one Sainsbury’s store (plus two other workers who have apparently asked for dispensation from stacking the drinks shelves).

Ibrahim Mogra, chairman of the inter-faith committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, has said: “Muslim employees should look at the allowances within Muslim law to enable them to be better operating employees and not be seen as rather difficult to cater for.”

Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary-general of the MCB, has similarly been quoted as saying: “By selling alcohol you are not committing a sin. You are just doing the job you are paid for. Muslim employees have a duty to their employer and in supermarkets most people would accept that in selling alcohol you are merely passing it through a checkout. That is hardly going to count against you on the day of judgement.”

None of which prevents Peter McKay, in today’s Daily Mail, using the Sainsbury’s story as an example of the attempted Islamification of the West:

“There’s no doubt some Muslims living here want us to change so we are more in tune with their beliefs. Some of the wilder ones want to destroy our ‘infidel’ way of life altogether. The Nobel Prizewinning author Sir Vidia Naipaul complained about the latter group to Radio 4’s James Naughtie last week. This is what he said: ‘What I dislike about it is this element of parasitism. These people who want to come to other countries from their own benighted places. They twist the laws, they hire lawyers, they do bad things to get residence. And then, having got that, they wish to destroy (the society) which has welcomed them. I think that is simply awful. At the most basic level it’s a kind of ingratitude.’ Trinidad born, Sir Vidia can speak candidly without fear. No white politician from a major party would dare voice these sentiments. Everyone’s too terrified of sounding ‘racist’.”

Still, it’s good to see that Peter McKay includes the Muslim Council of Britain in the category of “sensible Muslims”, given that the paper regularly features rants by Melanie Phillips denouncing the MCB as an extremist organisation.

Another hysterical headline about Tablighi Jamaat

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Islamic group accused of al-Qaida link wants to open second school.” What is this – a typical piece of anti-Muslim scaremongering in the Daily Express? A press release by Newham councillor Alan Craig? No, it’s the headline to an article by Riazat Butt in today’s Guardian, reporting on plans by Tablighi Jamaat to open a madrasa for 500 boys as part of the so-called “mega-mosque” development in East London.

‘I’m from Afghanistan, I’m a Muslim. I’m going to stab every white person’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The fascists of the British National Party have discovered yet another example of the Islamic assault on Western Civilisation:

“A race-hate gang that screamed racist abuse as they went on a violent rampage through the streets of Southampton’s city centre last year have escaped jail terms! The seven arrested were part of a larger gang that assaulted British shoppers, leaving some unconscious and bleeding in the street. They are known to have attacked at least seven people during their drug and drink fuelled attacks – yet only one has been jailed and then only for a miserable drugs offence! Indeed the court was told that one of the racist thugs said, whilst waving a knife in the faces of two terrified female shoppers: ‘I’m from Afghanistan, I’m a Muslim. I’m going to stab every white person’.”

BNP Regional Voices, 27 September 2007

Except that, if you read the Daily Echo report, it’s clear from the names of the convicted youth that they were in fact Sikhs.

McNulty defends Kelly over MCB

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tony McNultySpeaking at a Labour Party conference fringe meeting, Home Office security minister Tony McNulty has stated that it was “a mistake to treat the Muslim Council of Britain as if it was the only voice of British Muslims and to ‘elevate it to an exclusivity that wasn’t warranted’,” according to a BBC news report.

He claimed that the MCB’s response to the failed terror attacks in London and Glasgow this summer had been “profoundly different” to 7/7 and praised former communities secretary Ruth Kelly for “recalibrating” the relationship between the government and the MCB.

Of course, the “recalibration” carried out by Kelly involved shunting a genuinely representative organisation like the MCB aside in favour of the ridiculous neocon-inspired Sufi Muslim Council that represents nobody at all – but had the advantage from Kelly’s standpoint that, unlike the MCB, it didn’t criticise UK foreign policy.

As for the MCB’s supposed “profoundly different” reaction to the London and Glasgow terrorist attacks compared with their response to 7/7, this is a myth that appears to be accepted wisdom in government circles – home secretary Jacqui Smith made the same claim in a recent interview with the New Statesman – but lacks any basis in fact.

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Left-Right anti-Muslim alliance in the Netherlands

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Council of ex-MuslimsCritic of Islam, Ehsan Jami, and Freedom Party leader, Geert Wilders, compared the Prophet Mohammed to Adolf Hitler in a co-written article published in the Dutch daily Volkskrant Thursday.

In their article, Wilders and Jami say strong criticism of Islam is absolutely necessary. “If we do not act now against the far-reaching Islamisation of the Netherlands, then the 1930s will be revived. The only difference is that back then the danger came from Adolf Hitler, while today it comes from Mohammed.”

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Cohen defends ‘Undercover Mosque’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nick Cohen 3Rather belatedly, Nick Cohen adds his ten cents to the controversy over the Channel 4 documentary “Undercover Mosque” (for previous coverage see here):

“… the rules governing television documentaries remain incredibly tight. Channel 4 stuck to them. It substantiated every allegation and then gave the people it criticised a right of reply. Even so, the West Midlands police referred it to the television watchdog and, in the process, sent a message to other journalists thinking of exposing religious extremism to back off if they didn’t want the cops on their case as well.

“I could, if I wanted, go into a despairing peroration about a country so blinded by greed and stupefied by relativism it allows its police officers and libel lawyers to turn on those who report on hate-spouting imams.

“Fortunately, there are a few grounds for optimism. Ofcom will rule on Undercover Mosque in a few weeks and it looks like it will dismiss as laughable the West Midlands police’s claims that Channel 4 framed innocent preachers. The 56 hours of film shot by the documentary makers show that the crew didn’t turn tolerant men into howling bigots by using trick camera work and crafty editing but merely reported what its journalists found.”

Observer, 23 September 2007

Has Nick Cohen in fact seen the 56 hours of film, so he can – like the West Midlands Police – make an informed judgement on the accuracy of the programme? Don’t be silly. For Cohen, like many other self-styled defenders of Enlightenment values, when it comes to Islam and Muslims prejudice trumps objective evidence and rational thought goes out the window.

Apologists for terrorists condemn ‘apologists for terrorists’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islam a threat to us all“The politically correct lobby has already started to swing into action feeding the public the same tired old lines about tolerant Islam, but it seems that some sections of the Muslim community are more interested in denying there is a problem and even worse blaming others for it. BNP Scotland say public safety should come first and neither terrorism nor apologists for terrorists should not [sic] be tolerated in civilised Western society.”

Thus the BNP’s “crime correspondent” (well, given the BNP leaders’ long list of criminal convictions, they’d know all about that wouldn’t they?) at BNP Regional voices, 18 September 2007

The “apologists for terrorists”, according to the BNP, include Mohammed Atif Siddique’s father and lawyer, and Osama Saeed of the Muslim Association of Britain (for Osama’s actual views, see here and here).

Of course, if the BNP want to find actual apologists for terrorists they can find them rather closer to home.

Damaging relations with the Muslim community

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Relations between Muslims and police in central Scotland have been battered by the country’s first al-Qaeda-linked terrorist case, with community leaders claiming the investigation has created mistrust and ‘left a bad taste in the mouth’. They are angry at the way Mohammed Atif Siddique’s family was treated. His parents, brothers – one of whom was 13 – and 15-year-old sister were shackled by police who raided the family home in Alva, Clackmannanshire.”

Scotsman, 19 September 2007

Note the casual reference to Mohammed Atif Siddique as an “al-Qaeda-linked terrorist”, which takes things to a new level of absurdity – and demonstrates that the police are not exactly alone in damaging relations with Scotland’s Muslim community.