Category Archives: Canada

Europe and the coming (Islamic) apocalypse

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The only question about Europe is whether it’s going to be (a) catastrophically bad or (b) apocalyptically bad, as in head for the hills, here come the Four Horsemen: Death (the self-extinction of European races too self-absorbed to breed), Famine (the withering of unaffordable social programs), War (civil strife as the disaffected decide to move beyond mere Citroën-torching), and Conquest (the inevitable victory of the Muslim successor population already in place). I’d say option (b) looks the better bet….”

Mark Steyn (again) on how Europe is about to succumb to the Muslim hordes.

Macleans, 5 April 2006

Who is really responsible for violence?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Haroon Siddiqui on the violence provoked by the Danish cartoons crisis: “As tragic as all this is, it pales in comparison to the million innocent Muslims killed, and millions more maimed, in the name of fighting terrorism or finding non-existent weapons of mass destruction or other excuses. Those who in recent days have been lecturing Muslims about violence seem strangely out of touch with reality, or to be riding the high horse of hypocrisy. They would have had greater credibility had they not been the cheerleaders of, or silent partners in, the creation of the killing fields whose dust now drifts our way every once in a while.”

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Cartoon furor exposes double standards

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cartoon furor exposes double standards

By Haroon Siddiqui

Toronto Star, 23 February 2006

Gary Younge, the New York-based black British columnist, has written this about the Danish cartoon controversy in The Nation magazine:

“Muslims have, in effect, been vilified twice: once through the original cartoons and then again for having the gall to protest them. Such logic recalls the words of the late South African black nationalist Steve Biko: `Not only are whites kicking us, they are telling us how to react to being kicked.'”

Confusion continues to mark the Western response to the issue. Some of this is because we are in uncharted waters. But something else is at work — double standards and insidious attempts at delegitimizing the Muslim protests.

Notorious British historian David Irving has just been sentenced in Vienna to three years for denying the Holocaust. Radical British Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al Masri has been jailed, among other things, for inciting hatred. About time.

Yet there’s silence from freedom of speech advocates who were on their pulpits just days ago.

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More misrepresentation of Manji

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Another puff piece for Irshad Manji, who is apparently a leader of “reform-minded Muslims”.

Sunday Times, 22 January 2006

This despite the fact that Manji is almost universally loathed by Muslims, including the most “reform-minded” of her co-religionists. On the other hand, Manji is greatly admired by the likes of Melanie Phillips and Daniel Pipes.

And while the Murdoch press is happy to promote Manji, it has no hesitation in also publishing articles entitled “How my neighbourhood was lost to the multiculture“.

Pro-Islamist words dubbed a ‘smear’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Omar AlghabraThe incendiary words came flying out of an exuberant, cheering crowd, words exalting the rise of Islamic power in Canadian politics. Now they’re being called an election smear that involves Islam and might have lasting repercussions for Muslims who have only recently become active in Canadian politics.

The fiery phrases, immediately attributed to Omar Alghabra – the rookie candidate who had just won the Liberal party nomination in Mississauga-Erindale – were soon making the rounds on the Internet, then became the subject of a news release from an outspoken group that seeks to expose radical Islam. “This is a victory for Islam … Islamic power is extending into Canadian politics,” Alghabra was reported to have said.

The problem is that Alghabra and others who were there – including outgoing Mississauga MP Carolyn Parrish – insist he didn’t say them. A Toronto Star reporter covering the event also heard no such thing.

Toronto Star, 23 December 2005

For earlier coverage, see for example here, here, here, and here.

French problem affects rest of Europe as well

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Haroon Siddiqui“France is proudly mono-cultural, insisting that its residents shed all their identities and ‘be French’…. Yet, when facing social problems, the French attribute them to their pluralism. To a lesser degree, Germany and others do the same. ‘Multiculturalism has failed, big time’, said Angela Merkel, on her way to becoming chancellor. But Germany never had a policy of recognizing all cultures. What it has is an immigrant population that long ago ceased to be only white and Christian. That’s what she was complaining about. So was former chancellor Helmut Schmidt, 85, saying of the 2.6 million Turkish Germans, that it had been a big mistake to have let them in.

“Immigration was fine until the wretched Muslims came!

“A second theme coursing through public debate concerns the adaptability or otherwise of immigrants/Muslims: ‘They do not integrate.’ ‘They do not fit in; they cannot fit in.’ ‘They live in France but are not of France’ (or Germany, Holland, Belgium, etc.). ‘They don’t consider themselves French’ (or German, Dutch, etc.).  But it is the French, the Germans and others who deny jobs to Arabs/Turks/Muslims because of who they are, while the latter cry out to be treated as the French/German/Dutch citizens and long-time residents that they are.

“This is a neat trick. You won’t let them forget their ethnic/religious identity but blame them for keeping it. You won’t give them jobs but blame them for not having any. You build barriers to integration but blame them for not integrating. You pursue policies of social and economic segregation that produce poor, crime-riddled ghettoes, but you accuse them of domestic Balkanization.”

Haroon Siddiqui in the Toronto Star, 13 November 2005

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‘Bob Pitt Watch’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Former Workers Revolutionary Party member and now editor of What Next, Bob Pitt, is a very industrious bloke. He single-handedly runs a website called ‘Islamophobia Watch’ in which he pours vituperative criticism, mainly on people of a Muslim background who dare to criticise their religion of birth or its cultural practises. The spectacle of a white, middle-aged, middle-class male denouncing Muslims and ex-Muslims (many of them women) who speak out against homophobia and misogyny inside the Muslim community as ‘racists’ is very bizarre.”

Yours truly is denounced in the Alliance for Workers Liberty’s paper Solidarity, 20 October 2005

I don’t in fact run this website single-handedly – it was set up by Eddie Truman, who does all the technical work on it as well as posting. The accusation that our criticisms are concentrated “mainly on people of a Muslim background” is plainly false, as a cursory examination of the site will reveal. The charge against members of the Worker Communist Party of Iran (some, though not all, of whom come from a Muslim background) and against individuals like Irshad Manji is not that they are racists but that their antics play into the hands of the Islamophobic Right, who clearly recognise them as fellow spirits. Hence the enthusiastic endorsement of Maryam Namazie by Jihad Watch, Homa Arjomand by Front Page Magazine and Irshad Manji by Daniel Pipes and Melanie Phillips.

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