Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Is Britain too complacent about the far right?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

This was one of the issues addressed on last Sunday’s edition of the BBC television discussion programme The Big Questions.

Writing on his Demos blog, one of the participants in the programme, Jamie Bartlett, says the answer to the question is “no”. In particular he is dismissive of the idea that the English Defence League represents any serious threat and asserts that the police and media are “probably giving them too much attention”.

I take the opposite view. Despite its relatively small numbers – a Demos study co-authored by Bartlett estimates that it has between 25,000 and 35,000 supporters – the EDL exercises a disproportionate influence in encouraging acts of aggression against the Muslim community. This worrying development is in fact almost entirely ignored by the national media.

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Geller’s anti-Muslim campaign is ‘abhorrent and morally repugnant’, says ADL national chair

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Geller should not be allowed to get away with playing the victim and hiding behind the mask of a “patriot and proud Zionist.”

Geller’s self-righteous campaign to show the world the “true face” of Islam is abhorrent and morally repugnant. Geller, in views she outlines in her blog, has linked Islam to bestiality and rape of minors, compared Muslims to Nazis and asserted that Islam inspired Hitler. The Anti-Defamation League has closely followed her anti-Muslim scapegoating and that of Stop Islamization of America, the organization she leads, and has posted additional examples of her comments on its website.

Terrorism inspired by fundamentalist Islam is indeed a true threat to America, Israel and democracies around the world. But in directing her rhetoric at the entire Islamic faith – indeed, in supporting campaigns to suggest that Muslims should abandon their faith entirely – Geller fuels and fosters anti-Muslim bigotry in society.

Robert G. Sugarman, national chair of the Anti-Defamation League, writes in the The Jewish Week, 3 April 2012

Sugarman was responding to a letter from Geller in which she claimed that the ADL’s national director Abe Foxman “demonizes proud Jews who love Israel and fight for freedom, while he kowtows to the Islamic jihad”. She really is completely off her head, isn’t she?

Why the US Right promotes Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims Are Coming cartoon

It seems that the Republican presidential aspirants’ fervor to confront Islam has receded a bit with the decline and fall of Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, but one can likely still count on Rick Santorum to come up with some bon mots on the threat posed by Shariah law. Those who fear that hands will soon be lopped off shoplifters caught in Cleveland appear to be making much ado about nothing, but there is a much broader and more insidious agenda that is really playing out behind the scenes. Perry, Gingrich, and Santorum are all smart enough to know that Islamic law is hardly poised to dominate the U.S. legal system, but they are using it as the wedge issue to deny the patriotism of Muslims in general and fuel the demands to exercise a military option against Iran.

Philip Giraldi on why the US Right promotes fear and hatred of Muslims.

AntiWar.com, 4 April 2012

Sydney Islamophobes confronted over ‘burqa’ stunt

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sydney burqa stunt

Ugly scenes erupted between a group of burqa-clad protesters and a Muslim man outside NSW State Parliament in Sydney today.

A group of men dressed in the veiled female garb as a publicity stunt to try and get the outfit banned. Members of the group Faceless ventured into a Sydney CBD courthouse, pub and bank without drawing much reaction, but faced a stronger backlash later outside parliament. “It’s got no place in Australia – it’s an affront to a civilised country like Australia,” Faceless member Nicholas Folkes said of the burqa.

Nine News filmed a man outraged by the protesters, shouting in their faces and pulling off their veils. “That’s what I think of you,” the man said after spitting on the ground. The argument became more heated when a man connected to Faceless referred to the prophet Mohammed as “a rat”.

9 News, 2 April 2012

Folkes (who lost his veil during the confrontation) is the Sydney organiser of the far-right Australian Protectionist Party. Another of the “burqa” demonstrators was APP supporter Sergio Redegalli, the man responsible for the notorious “Say No to Burqas“/”Say No to Fiona Byrne” mural.

See also 7 News, 2 April 2012

FBI Islamic training materials gave OK to infringe on targets’ civil rights

Posted on by Bob Pitt

FBITraining materials used by the FBI for dealing with American Muslims and other Islamic communities have advised agents they can break the law and impinge on some of their targets’ civil rights.

The instructions were contained in confidential materials reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of an internal FBI probe into what sort of training agents were exposed to when dealing with Islam.

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Mail changes inaccurate headline about Muslims and honour violence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tabloid Watch examines the Daily Mail‘s shock-horror headline “More than two thirds of young British Muslims believe ‘honour’ violence is acceptable, survey reveals”, which misreported the findings of a ComRes opinion poll.

This headline was subsequently replaced with “‘Honour’ violence is acceptable, say one in five young British Asians”. However, as Tabloid Watch points out and as we noted at the time, even that figure is based on a one-sided interpretation of the poll.

Tabloid Watch also observes that the Mail‘s change of headline “came too late, however, to stop their original headline being repeated on countless anti-Islam forums and blogs”.

Furthermore: “The day after MailOnline wrongly claimed ‘two thirds of young British Muslims believe ‘honour’ violence is acceptable’ it won Newspaper Website of the Year at the Press Awards.”

Answering halal hysteria in Quebec

Posted on by Bob Pitt

As the Parti Quebecois conflates imagined Islamist plots with feigned concerns for animal welfare, I wonder if Chicken Little is on the separatist payroll. The latest act in Quebec’s Chronicles of Xenophobia takes us to the slaughterhouse, where the PQ claims all chickens are slaughtered under Islamic halal practice. The risk is twofold: (i) non-Muslim Quebecers will unwittingly eat halal meat; and (ii) halal slaughter practices are inhumane….

Quebec politicians seem to be ripping pages from France’s playbook lately; first toying with hijab bans and now exposing the lurking threat of halal meat. They justify their actions by claiming that precious values are at stake…. While scapegoating Muslims is de rigueur among right-wingers, it seems that the left-leaning PQ is blazing a new trail by marching lockstep with the likes of Marine Le Pen, Nicolas Sarkozy, the Tea Party and Harper’s Conservatives.

Ziyaad Mia responds to the PQ’s attempt to whip up halal hysteria.

Vancouver Sun, 27 March 2012

Zuhdi Jasser appointed to US Commission on International Religious Freedom

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Zuhdi JasserOne of two new members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has Muslim civil rights groups crying foul.

Zuhdi Jasser, who lauded a controversial New York City police surveillance program that targeted Muslims and helped lead the opposition to an Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero, has been appointed to the commission, which advises the president, Congress and State Department on religious rights abuses internationally.

“It would have been better to appoint someone who has some measure of credibility with Muslim Americans,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “He has long been viewed by American Muslims and the colleagues in the civil liberties community as a mere sock puppet for Islam haters and an enabler of Islamophobia.”

Religion News Service, 27 March 2012

Update:  You can sign the petition “Zuhdi Jasser Does Not Belong on the USCIRF” here.