Category Archives: Israel

81% of US mosques promote violent jihad

Posted on by Bob Pitt

That’s the headline figure from an article by Andrew Bostom which has been widely reproduced across the “counter-jihadist” blogosphere. It’s no doubt only a matter of time before this claim is taken up by the mainstream right-wing media in the US.

The statistic is taken from a study published in the latest issue of Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Quarterly. How reliable is this study?

Well, it’s not yet available online, so we can’t assess its conclusions at first hand. However, the study is part of the Mapping Shari’a project, and its stated aim is “to measure the correlation between Sharia adherence and dogma calling for violence against non-believers”. One of the authors is Mordechai Kedar, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University who served for 25 years in the IDF’s military intelligence directorate. The other is David Yerushalmi.

So, probably not entirely reliable.

Update:  See Richard Bartholomew’s comments at Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, 6 June 2011

Update 2:  Kedar and Yerushalmi’s article is now available online here.

Israeli deputy minister joins with Belgian far right to warn against ‘growing Islamisation of the West’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ayoob Kara and Filip DewinterBelgian Jews reacted with surprise at news that a member of the Israeli government met this week with a leader of the Flemish extreme-right party Vlaams Belang in Antwerp.

Ayoob Kara, a Druze who is Deputy Minister for the Development of Galilee and the Negev, met with Filip Dewinter who hosted him in the Flemish parliament followed by a meeting with other European extreme-rightist politicians and a visit to the heavily Muslim populated area of Antwerp North. According to the Flemish party, the visit came several months after a visit of Dewinter in Israel.

At a joint press conference Dewinter explained the need to warn against the growing Islamization of the West.

The Israeli embassy reacted with surprise and embarrassment. An embassy spokesperson told the Joods Actueel weekly magazine published in Antwerp: “We have learned about the visit through the press, we were not aware of this visit.”

He insisted that this was a private visit by Ayoob Kara, which was later confirmed by Mark Regev, spokesman of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Deputy Kara is in Belgium in his personal capacity and his visit does not reflect government policy,” said Regev.

But the local Jewish community says the visit risks to severely embarrass the community and Israel. “This visit is very damaging for us,” said Michael Freilich, editor in chief of Joods Actueel.

He said: “Israel and the Jewish community are not at war with Islam, we are at war with extremists, and that’s a quite a different thing. Singling out a religion, as the Vlaams Belang does, inevitably brings back dark memories of a not too distant past where it was Jews who were persecuted because of their religion. Is this the message we want to send to Europe? That Israel follows the racist ideology of Europe’s most notorious bigots?”

The Jewish community also stressed that it was precisely the Vlaams Belang party that proposed last month a bill in the Belgian Senate calling for amnesty for Belgian collaborators of the Nazis during WWII.

EJP, 4 June 2011

Another anti-Islam protest comes to Dearborn

Posted on by Bob Pitt

OOTDAnother protest over what organizers call “radical strains” of Islam is planned on Saturday in front of Dearborn City Hall.

The Order of the Dragon, a pro-Israeli group, is planning the 3 p.m. demonstration to call attention to the “implementation of Sharia” or Islamic law in some court rulings, said Frank Fiorello, the head of the group’s Michigan chapter.

“We have a lot of people worried about Sharia creeping into family court,” said Fiorello, a Marlette resident. “There are 23 different jurisdictions where Sharia is being implemented in family court.” Fiorello did not provide specifics, but said there are recent cases in Ann Arbor District Court.

Other groups participating in the rally include the American Defense League, ACT! For America and David Horowitz’s Freedom Center’s Palestinian Wall of Lies, Fiorello said.

Fiorello, a Detroit native, was scheduled to host controversial Florida Pastor Terry Jones’ protest in Dearborn on April 22 but Fiorello backed off his protest after meeting with Dearborn Mayor John O’Reilly and a member of an interfaith group.

Jones ended up protesting a week later after being ordered by a Dearborn district judge that he would have to post a peace bond if he wanted to protest outside the Islamic Center of America on Good Friday.

Fiorello also said he backed away from Jones after a difference of option about how the protest should be handled. “We’re not wanting to be involved in shock tactics,” said Fiorello. “That is not our route.”

Jones, meanwhile, has planned to protest against “radical Islam” at the Arab American International Festival in Dearborn next month.

Detroit News, 25 May 2011

‘Radical Islam’ and the ‘radical far far left’ have formed an alliance based on antisemitism, claims Netanyahu

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took aim Thursday at what he called Europe’s “strange fusion” of radical Islam and the far left.

“There is a new boiling anti-semitism of radical Islam that sweeps Europe as a whole, and there’s a strange fusion – it’s the only word I can use to describe it – a fusion with the anti-semitism of the radical far far left,” Mr. Netanyahu said in an interview on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight.

“This is the strangest union you could possibly contemplate,” he said, “because radical Muslims: they stone women, they execute gays, they are against any human rights, against feminism, against whathaveyou. And the far left is supposed to be for these things.”

Washington Times, 17 March 2011

Melbourne: civil libertarians slam anti-Islam group

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Q Society logoAn anti-Islamic group’s opposition to a weekly Muslim prayer session being held in Melbourne’s inner suburbs has been condemned by a civil liberties organisation, Liberty Victoria.

Q Society opposes what it calls the “Islamisation of Australia”, saying accommodating Islamic custom and law threatens Australia’s basic freedoms. It has started a petition against a planning amendment at Melbourne’s Port Phillip Council that would formalise an existing weekly hour-long prayer session at a St Kilda community house.

Muslims have been praying at the weekly Friday session for years.

Liberty Victoria president Spencer Zifcak said Q Society’s campaign “bears all the hallmarks of a deliberate attempt to deny to one religion the freedom of religious belief accorded to every other religion”.

With a large Jewish community living in the St Kilda area, Professor Zifcak said Jewish groups in the area had welcomed the planning application but Q Society was arguing that allowing more Muslims to pray in the community house “would be contrary to social cohesion in the area where people of the Christian and Jewish faiths are in a majority”.

Prof Zifcak said the Islamic prayer group had been meeting without incident or concern for years.

A spokesperson for the Q Society has described it as “a group of individuals from varying backgrounds, of different cultural and religious persuasions who are committed to safeguard and promote Australia’s free, open and democratic society”.

AAP, 2 March 2011

Indicative of the Q Society’s politics was their response to the proposal (later adopted) that Marrickville Council in New South Wales should join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel. The Q Society organised a petition claiming that the councillors responsible for this initiative had “formally aligned their municipality with terrorist organisations seeking to overthrow the State of Israel” and were “supporting the worldview of totalitarian Islam”.

‘Say no to burqas’ mural is replaced … with pro-Israel mural

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Fiona Byrne muralThe Greens candidate tipped to take the once-safe Labor seat of Marrickville from the Deputy Premier, Carmel Tebbutt, in the state election has been targeted in a mural over her council’s decision to boycott Israel.

Marrickville Council’s support for the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS) against Israel in December has already been the subject of hostile questions to the Greens candidate and mayor of Marrickville, Fiona Byrne, at a debate with Ms Tebbutt last week.

Yesterday a mural in Newtown stating “Say no to the burqa” was temporarily repainted by its artist, Sergio Redegalli, to read “Say no to Fiona Byrne”. The burqa-clad woman with a strike through her was replaced by a figure in green and a mayoral sceptre stabbing a Star of David.

Mr Redegalli, a Newtown resident, said he was only keeping the new mural up for 24 hours to document it.

The artist said he was not a member of any political party and “hates” Labor. “[I wanted to] get people to look up Fiona Byrne, see who she is, what she stands for,” he said.

Sydney Morning Herald, 23 February 2011

Jewish Chronicle returns to witch-hunting ENGAGE

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Martin Bright and Simon Rocker weigh in with a piece entitled “Islamists get a key role in parliament“, while an editorial headed “Beyond the pale” (evidently the JC‘s concern for the sensitivities of the Jewish community doesn’t extend to the Irish community) calls for a boycott of the All-Party Parliamentary Committee on Islamophobia and follows Paul Goodman in extending the witch-hunt by proposing that supporters of ENGAGE should be disciplined by their respective political parties.

Predictably, that other voice of Zionist hostility towards politically engaged Muslims, the appalling Harry’s Place blog, has joined in the campaign (see here and here).

For the background, see “Pro-Israel lobby continues smear campaign against ENGAGE”, Inayat’s Corner, 16 February 2011