Category Archives: Analysis & comment

Earth calling Henry Porter

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Henry PorterNot content with publishing Andrew Anthony’s paean to Ayaan Hirsi Ali (“Taking the fight to Islam”), today’s Observer gives over almost an entire page to a comment piece by Henry Porter, who complains – all evidence to the contrary – that Channel 4’s Dispatches documentary Undercover Mosque received little or no press coverage.

The reason for this, apparently, is that while the media are keen to criticise the Anglican Church, they are guilty of “tolerating intolerance” when it comes to the Muslim community. You really do wonder what planet Henry Porter lives on.

And yet again, we are offered a parallel between the BNP and sections of the Muslim community. It is the latter, and not the fascists, according to Porter, who pose “a very great threat to our whole community”. What a plonker.

For a reasoned – and admirably restrained – response to Porter by Osama Saeed of MAB, see Rolled Up Trousers, 4 February 2007

Muslims – ‘Disaffected, raging, and hungry for the harsh finality of Sharia law’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

V sign“Three Muslim women wearing the traditional burqa and niqab were walking along a Birmingham street this week when they were approached by a photographer. They had been confronted by the enemy – an outsider – and their response was instant and instinctive. One covered her eyes with her hand, while another fixed a defiant stare at the camera. The third’s response was the most striking of all. She lifted her hand and gave that most British of gestures – the V sign. This yobbish image – made even more shocking by the seeming reticence of the veils – captured absolutely the growing polarisation between some sections of Britain’s Muslim community and the mainstream.”

Natalie Clarke in the Daily Mail, 3 February 2007

What the gesture more likely captured was entirely understandable irritation at a press photographer taking a picture without even bothering to ask the permission of those being photographed, and with the predictable intention of using the photo to illustrate yet another scaremongering article depicting Muslims as an alien presence whose barbaric culture poses a threat to western civilisation.

Anger as papers reprint cartoons of Muhammad

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Newspapers in France, Germany, Spain and Italy yesterday reprinted caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, escalating a row over freedom of expression which has caused protest across the Middle East. France Soir and Germany’s Die Welt published cartoons which first appeared in a Danish newspaper, although the French paper later apologised and apparently sacked its managing editor. The cartoons include one showing a bearded Muhammad with a bomb fizzing out of his turban.

Guardian, 2 February 2006

The Guardian includes an excerpt from an article in France Soir defending the decision to publish the cartoons, on the basis of exercising “freedom of expression in a secular country”. In this connection, the IRR website has an interesting article from the forthcoming issue of Race & Class which demolishes the rosy view of French secularism held by some people on the Left:

“Some of the roots of the recent unrest in France unquestionably lie in the country’s hysterical obsession with secularism and an associated state-sanctioned Islamophobia. The separation of religion and state is one of those valeurs républicaines (Republican values) which everyone has been referring to since ‘les émeutes‘. But secularism in France seems to be going horribly wrong. Indeed, la laïcité (secularism) seems to have become a form of fundamentalism itself which discriminates against the country’s Muslims. Numerous politicians and intellectuals claim that Islam, France’s second religion, is incompatible with les valeurs républicaines.”

The BNP have also published some of the cartoons on their site, assuring their followers that “we certainly will not be grovelling to anyone who cannot tolerate important western democratic values such as freedom of speech, freedom of expression and those who fail to appreciate a sense of humour”. Ah, the famed BNP sense of humour, manifested in waggish remarks about blowing up Bradford’s mosques with a rocket launcher.

BNP website, 2 February 2006

Cameron’s speech misses the point, says British Muslim Initiative

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The BMI is deeply concerned with Conservative party’s and its leader David Cameron’s renewed attack on Muslim organisations and on Multiculturalism. It is their attack on Multiculturalism and freedom of religion that will divide Britain and weaken national cohesion. In stating that those who call for considering the religious duties of Muslims, as others, within the law are trying to divide the community, Mr Cameron is being both obtuse, ignorant and over simplifying the issue.

“Muslims, as is the case with their religious groups and minorities, have certain religious practices that should be upheld in the interests of respecting freedom of religion. These practises are not against the law. Mr Cameron failed, for example, to criticise the Jewish organisations over its imposition of Judaic laws and practices within their communities, while denying the exact same rights to Muslims by suggesting they divide Britain ,” stated Ihtisham Hibatullah of the BMI.

Mr Cameron has failed to correctly identify those individuals who preach hatred, violence and divisions within all communities while instead has chosen to attack mainstream Muslim organisations. His speech and announced polices have only one meaning: he is not keen to deal with the core issues or to build bridges with all communities, that is why he is not trustworthy not only by British Muslims but by all.

British Muslim Initiative press release, 30 January 2007

The point about Judaic laws and practices is well made. The Tory Party report Uniting the Country (pdf here), which Cameron launched, refers to the alleged danger posed by reformist Islamists who are “prepared to use democratic freedoms” in order to establish “a parallel system … of religiously derived law”. They are condemned for pursuing “goals which are destructive of a tolerant and liberal democracy”. Yet I don’t recall the Tory Party denouncing the Jewish community as a threat to western liberal values when the United Synagogue successfully lobbied for an Eruv in Golders Green. If they had, they would have been accused, quite rightly, of pandering to anti-semitism.

The MCB and HMD

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Guardian reports on the decision by the Muslim Council of Britain to maintain its existing policy of not participating in Holocaust Memorial Day. Leading figures in the MCB apparently advocated participation but were voted down 23-14 at a meeting of the MCB’s Central Working Committee.

It might be noted that the very people who condemn the MCB for its stand on this issue are often the same people who characterise the MCB leadership as “self-appointed” and subject to no democratic accountability.

See also “MCB letter to Nick Joseph, HMD’s Acting CEO”, MCB news report, 27 January 2007

Criminal attorney warns against building of Europe’s biggest mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Invisible Invasion“For former practicing criminal attorney turned author, W.G. Van Dorian, the news of plans to build Europe’s biggest mosque beside the London 2012 Olympic Park confirmed what he has feared all along – the intent of radical Islamists to gain a majority and ultimately control of the world’s powers.”

ClickPress, 24 January 2007

Why is a former Dutch lawyer currently resident in South Africa interfering over the issue of a proposed Islamic Centre in Newham? Drumming up publicity in preparation for the publication of his next novel perhaps? Van Dorian’s first book, The Invisible Invasion, would appear to be a paranoid fantasy about the Islamist takeover of Europe (see here). According to his publishers, as a defence lawyer for Muslims in the Netherlands, Van Dorian:

“… had access to shocking information, things not normally revealed to outsiders. He states, ‘I’ve heard a couple of times from them when I gained their trust that they were simply waiting for a majority through immigration and forced conversion in Europe to take over, violently if need be’. Van Dorian witnessed the power of this force in Europe as the extremists ultimately knocked down resistance from ‘ordinary citizens’ and obtained what they wanted…. one of the most terrifying comments that Van Dorian heard was: ‘Just wait until there are enough of us and we’ll be the boss around here’.”

Pickled Politics on Clash conference

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Qaradawi and MayorSunny Hundal offer his take on last Saturday’s Clash of Civilisations conference in London. It’s a reasonable and quite balanced account (certainly in comparison with right-wing pieces like this). But Sunny spoils it with an ignorant attack on Yusuf al-Qaradawi, writing: “Qaradawi certainly isn’t likely to lead a call for Muslim women to be given more rights in the Middle East.”

Pickled Politics, 23 January 2007

Which shows how much Sunny knows. As one writer has pointed out: “Barbara Stowasser, author of the book Women in the Qur’an and a leading academic expert on Islam, argues that Qaradawi’s [Al Jazeera] broadcasts have been crucial in overturning the conservative Islamic view that women should be restricted to domestic duties and play no part in politics and public life generally. She applauds his ‘vision of a new, more gender-equal Islamic society’ and stresses ‘his role as both exponent and catalyst of a new groundswell of Muslim public opinion in favour of women’s Islamic political rights’.”

Labour Left Briefing, November 2004

I looked up the source for this and it would appear to be Barbara Stowasser’s article “Old Shaykhs, Young Women, and the Internet: The Rewriting of Women’s Political Rights in Islam”, published in the journal The Muslim World in 2001. Perhaps Sunny could check it out.

Hitch confronts ‘the Islamist menace’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

HitchensIn the Winter 2007 issue of City Journal Christopher Hitchens reviews Mark Steyn’s book America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, not uncritically. He does take issue with Steyn’s sneers at Martin Amis, pointing out that liberals like Amis share much of Steyn’s hostility towards Islam and Islamism.

Hitchens writes: “Mark Steyn’s book is essentially a challenge to the bien-pensants among us: an insistence that we recognize an extraordinary threat and thus the possible need for extraordinary responses. He need not pose as if he were the only one with the courage to think in this way.” To prove his point Hitchens quotes Amis’s vile anti-Muslim diatribe from last September – which proposes subjecting the Muslim community as a whole to travel bans, racial profiling, strip searches and deportation – while at the same time describing his chum as “profoundly humanistic and open-minded”.

(To be fair, Hitchens does baulk at a statement from Sam Harris, who has written: “The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.” Hitch characterises this as an “irresponsible remark”. You could say.)

The basic problem with a lot of liberals, Hitchens says, is that “they cannot shake their subliminal identification of the Muslim religion with the wretched of the earth: the black- and brown-skinned denizens of what we once called the ‘Third World’.” Furthermore, this inexplicable sympathy with the oppressed has given rise to “the stupid neologism ‘Islamophobia’, which aims to promote criticism of Islam to the gallery of special offenses associated with racism”.

Like Steyn, Hitchens warns against “the Islamist project of a ‘soft’ conquest of host countries”. He tells us that “Europe’s multicultural authorities, many of its welfare agencies, and many of its churches treat the most militant Muslims as the minority’s ‘real’ spokesmen … encouraging the sensation that many in the non-Muslim Establishment have a kind of death wish”. With evident approval, Hitch cites Steyn’s complaint that “most of the Christian churches have collapsed into compromise: choosing to speak of Muslims as another ‘faith community’ … and reserving their real condemnation for American policies in the war against terrorism”.

Overall, despite minor criticisms, Hitchens endorses “Steyn’s salient point that demography and cultural masochism, especially in combination, are handing a bloodless victory to the forces of Islamization”.

31% back MCB over ‘Genocide Day’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Remember how Islamophobic commentators attacked the Muslim Council of Britain because it argued that Holocaust Memorial Day was too narrow and instead advocated commemorating a wider “Genocide Day”? Melanie Phillips claimed that this was proof of “the open anti-Jewish hatred of supposedly mainstream Muslims“, while Peter Tatchell declared that the MCB’s stance “reeks of prejudice and hypocrisy“.

Well, a YouGov poll (pdf) commissioned by the Jewish Chronicle has found that 35% of respondents agreed that “the main focus of Holocaust Memorial Day should be to commemorate the victims of Nazi persecution”, while 31% said that “the day should be renamed ‘Genocide Day’, and be used to commemorate the victims of all persecution throughout the world”.

So, there’s evidently an awful lot of anti-semites reeking of prejudice and hypocrisy out there.

Postcript:  I should perhaps add that personally I think the MCB (who reportedly are currently discussing their position on this issue) are mistaken in boycotting Holocaust Memorial Day. My point here is that their motivation is not anti-semitic.

MP presses for forced-marriage law change

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ann CryerA Bradford MP has vowed to ignore any allegations of racism and Islamophobia as she takes her campaign to put an end to “evil” forced marriages to Home Secretary John Reid. Keighley MP Ann Cryer tabled an early day motion demanding the Government take action to end the “rape and false imprisonment” of women and girls, and make forced marriage a criminal offence.

This is Bradford, 18 January 2007

Cryer, of course, has never been constrained by the thought that she might be inciting racism or Islamophobia (see, for example, here and here).

For the Muslim Council of Britain’s views on forced marriage, see (pdf) here.