Category Archives: Left Wing

Czech president refuses to apologise for anti-Islam comments

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Milos Zeman with NetanyahuCzech president Miloš Zeman will not apologize for his recent statement linking the Islamic ideology with violence, his spokesman Jiří Ovčáček told the Czech News Agency today, reacting to critics’ demand that Zeman apologize.

The apology is claimed by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), indignant at the statements Zeman made at the May 27 celebration of the Israeli Independence Day in Prague. Zeman, commenting on a previous attack in the Jewish Museum in Brussels, said the Islamic ideology is behind similarly motivated violent attacks.

“The president definitely does not intend to apologize, because he would consider the quotation of the holy Islamic text a blasphemy,” Ovčáček said.

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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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Islam is to blame for attack on Jewish Museum in Brussels, Czech president claims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Milos Zeman (2)Islamic ideology rather than individual groups of religious fundamentalists is behind violent actions similar to the gun attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels that killed four people, Czech President Miloš Zeman said Monday at the Israeli Embassy in Prague.

Two Israeli tourists and a member of the museum staff were killed by an unknown shooter Saturday, and another staff member died of his injuries Sunday.

“I will not be calmed down by statements that it is only small marginal groups. I believe, on the contrary, that this xenophobia and this racism or anti-Semitism stem from the very nature of the ideology on which these fanatical groups rely,” Zeman said.

He said one of the sacred texts of Islam calls for the killing of Jews.

Zeman said he would also sharply criticize fanatics who planned to kill the Arabs. “However, I have heard of no movement calling for the massive murder of Arabs, but I know about an anti-civilization movement that calls for the massive murdering of Jews,” he said.

Zeman is known for his criticism of international terrorism and its links to Islam. He repeatedly called for resolute opposition to violent terrorist actions during his official visits abroad.

Zeman said he attended the reception held on Israel’s Independence Day out of “solidarity with a friend.”

Czech News Agency, 27 May 2014

Tory MPs promote halal hysteria – Labour MP joins them

Posted on by Bob Pitt

UKIP for Davies posterShipley MP Philip Davies has blamed “the politically correct brigade” for halal meat being sold to unwitting customers across the country.

Two years ago the Conservative MP called for all halal and kosher meat to be labelled, but his motion in Parliament was defeated by three votes, “voted down largely by the politically correct brigade”.

Now it has been revealed that many supermarkets, restaurants and fast food chains were not labelling meat to signify it had been ritually slaughtered.

Mr Davies has now tabled an amendment to the Consumer Rights Bill to ensure the compulsory labelling of kosher and halal meat.

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New Statesman warns of threat from Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

New Statesman 2 May 2014Following the publication of his 2005 book The Losing Battle With Islam, David Selbourne wrote a briefing paper for John Kerry. In the current issue of the New Statesman he rehashes its arguments.

Summarising the advice he gave to Kerry, Selbourne sets out a list of the West’s failures in responding to Islamic aggression:

“Among them are the failure to recognise the ambition of radical Islam; the failure to condemn the silence of most Muslims at the crimes committed in their names; the failure to respond adequately to the persecution of Christians in many Muslim lands; the failure to grasp the nature of the non-military skills that are being deployed against the non-Muslim world – skills of manoeuvre, skills in deceiving the gullible, skills in making temporary truces in order to gain time (as in Iran); and, perhaps above all, the failure to realise the scale and speed of Islam’s advance.”

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Secularists assist right-wing anti-sharia hysteria

Posted on by Bob Pitt

OLFA Law Society protest

The hysteria whipped up by the Sunday Telegraph over the Law Society’s guidelines for solicitors drawing up wills for Muslim clients (see here and here) has predictably been endorsed by the One Law for All Campaign, who organised a protest outside the Law Society headquarters.

OLFA, needless to say, denied that the protest was anti-Muslim. They issued a statement saying: “The fight against Sharia is clearly a defence of individual rights and freedoms, not an attack on Muslims. After all, Sharia Law is fundamentally the demand of Islamic states and the political movement to limit citizens’ rights.”

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French minister backs football headscarf ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Thierry BraillardFrance’s new sports minister Thierry Braillard has backed the French Football Federation’s decision to uphold their ban on headscarves for players despite pressure from FIFA.

Last Sunday on beIN SPORTS, FIFA president Sepp Blatter declared the FFF had no choice other than to follow his organisation’s directive that women players should be allowed to wear head coverings during official games.

The FIFA ruling is contrary to French law, however, with all signs of religious affiliation, regardless of the denomination, banned in official state-connected institutions.

“The position taken by the FFF and its president Noel Le Graet has our wholehearted support, because it would be necessary to remind Mr Blatter that the French state has declared its attachment to the values of the Republic and that Republican principles, notably the principle of an entirely secular state, are in force in sporting arenas,” the freshly appointed Braillard told RTL.

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Tristram Hunt endorses ‘Trojan Horse’ hysteria

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Birmingham Mail jihadist plotTristram Hunt, the shadow education secretary, will warn on Saturday that “the pursuit of a divisive religious extremism” – as shown in an alleged conspiracy to take over schools in Birmingham – threatens to undermine Britain’s modern multicultural society.

Hunt’s remarks to the annual conference of the NASUWT teaching union in Birmingham follow the uncovering of a dossier named Operation Trojan Horse, claiming to reveal a plot to overthrow teachers and governors insecular state schools in the city and run them on strict Islamic principles.

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Bloodworth embraces the HJS

Posted on by Bob Pitt

James BloodworthLess than a year ago James Bloodworth, the editor of Left Foot Forward (“a political blog for progressives”), wrote a hard-hitting article for Comment is Free entitled “Labour should cut its ties with the illiberal Henry Jackson Society”.

Taking his cue from a Left Foot Forward article by Marko Attila Hoare, with the even more forthright title “Labour’s shameful links with the anti-immigration right”, Bloodworth wanted to know why 11 Labour MPs were prepared to sit on the advisory council of an organisation that had as an associate director an individual like Douglas Murray who is notorious for his “anti-Muslim and anti-immigration views”. Bloodworth complained that he had written to the MPs to raise his concerns about the HJS but had received no response.

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Labour councillor claims anti-EDL protest will ‘create a battleground on the streets of Grantham’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Grantham counter-protest

A district councillor has condemned the actions of those organising a counter-protest in Grantham later this month.

The Journal broke the news online yesterday (Monday) that John Morgan, husband of Labour district and county councillor Charmaine Morgan, is organising a demonstration on St Peter’s Hill against a protest by the English Defence League, which opposes the building of an Islamic Community Centre in Mowbeck Way, Grantham.

But Councillor Ian Selby has reacted in horror and believes any counter-protest, planned for Saturday, February 22, would be “playing into the hands of the EDL”, and could see women and children getting seriously hurt if protests turn violent.

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