Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Billboard in Colorado features picture of Obama and asks ‘President or Jihad?’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

President or JihadToday, a new birther billboard went up above Wolf Automotive off I-70 in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. The sign has a picture of President Obama wearing a turban, asking, “President or Jihad?” and exhorting, “Wake up America! Remember Fort Hood”.

ThinkProgress spoke with Phil Wolf, the owner of the car dealership. He said that the billboard is his personal project because he believes the American people have a right to know the facts about the president:

“I’m probably like a lot of other people that have asked the question, I want to know who our president is. And to date, I don’t think I know, I don’t think a lot of people know, I don’t think it’s ever been asked – answered…. When this Fort Hood massacre occurred, and I saw the response of our Commander in Chief to this unbelievable, politically correct, nonsense – to me it was just enough.”

Think Progress, 20 November 2009

Witch-hunt against UK Muslim organisations over Fort Hood

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Writing at Islam Online, Inayat Bunglawala examines how Anwar Al-Awlaki’s support for the Fort Hood killings has been used to promote “a modern version of a McCarthyite witch-hunt against leading UK Islamic organizations and Muslim individuals”.

Update:  Predictably, Inayat has come in for some stick over the following statement:

It is very unfortunate that Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi has been barred from visiting the UK since early 2007 by the British government, following pressure from pro-Israeli lobbies. Sheikh Al-Qaradawi is an Islamic scholar who commands huge respect among millions of Muslims worldwide. As a regular past visitor to the UK, he would consistently urge British Muslims to shun all forms of extremism and to focus their energies on ensuring that their children excelled in education.

“His long experience of dealing with youths influenced by extremist and takfiri ideas (ideas involving accusations of backsliding from Islam) would surely have been a valuable asset in the struggle against Al-Qaeda-inspired propaganda.”

Equally predictably, Inayat’s critics include mad Melanie Phillips, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, the Spittoon and Edmund Standing.

You could, of course, base your opinion of Qaradawi on the word of ignorant bigots like that. Alternatively, you could consult the analysis of people who actually know something about the subject.

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Harrow UAF Unity Rally Saturday 21st November

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Unite Against Fascism – Festival of Unity
Saturday November 21, 7pm-9.45pm
Victoria Hall, Sheepcote Road, Harrow HA1 2JE

Brent & Harrow Unite Against Fascism invites you to a celebration of Harrow’s diversity with speakers, great entertainment and refreshments.

Speakers include Tony McNulty MP, Bob Crow General Secretary RMT, Weyman Bennett Unite Against Fascism, Jo Lang President Harrow NUT, Abdul-Omer Mohsin Unite Convenor, Harrow & Edgware Bus Garages.

With entertainment from Mecca2Medina, Lady S, Ian Saville Socialist Magician, Truthseeker, DPZ and Shanakee.

Come along bring friends and family and enjoy the warm atmosphere of unity that is our community, black and white. Union banners welcome.

Islamophobes rally for Rifqa outside courthouse

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Geller rallyFathima Rifqa Bary was present only in smiling photographs at a Downtown rally of her supporters yesterday.

The 17-year-old Columbus runaway is in foster care until a Franklin County Juvenile Court judge decides where she should live. The former New Albany High School student says her father threatened to kill her for leaving Islam for Christianity. She ran away from their Northeast Side home in July, fleeing to the Florida home of married pastors whom she met on Facebook.

Mohamed Bary denies his daughter’s accusations, and authorities in Ohio and Florida have found no credible threat to her safety.

But her supporters say the authorities are being ignorant at best and malicious at worst. They say the girl, who goes by Rifqa, will be killed if she is returned to her family because Islamic law mandates it and Muslim ideology is violent and dangerous.

About 120 people gathered in a small park across from the S. High Street courthouse for the rally. A hearing had been scheduled for yesterday but was postponed until Dec. 22.

Speakers included Simon Deng, a Sudanese man who spoke of his enslavement by Muslims as a child, and Nonie Darwish, director of Former Muslims United, based in Granada Hills, Calif. Behind the speaker’s lectern was a banner showing Muslim girls and women who have been maimed or killed for various offenses against faith or family, said conservative blogger Pamela Geller, a rally organizer. “We don’t need another martyr,” she said. “We have to win.”

A general theme at the rally was that Islam is threatening the U.S. Constitution and American freedoms. “My concern is for the way that Islam is creeping into our society and trying to change it,” said Don Berger of the East Side. “So I’m here in support of Rifqa and that she keeps her freedom.” Several at the rally wore T-shirts that read: “Islam is of the devil.”

Columbus Dispatch, 17 November 2009

See also LoonWatch, 16 November 2009

Scottish Defence League routed in Glasgow

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Glasgow demo

Standing precariously on a bin as thousands of people swarmed into George Square banging drums and chanting, anti-racist campaigner Aamer Anwar yesterday proclaimed a victory for the people of Glasgow over “racism, fascism and the Scottish Defence League (SDL)”.

His celebration followed a day in which the far-right group’s threat to march on Glasgow Central Mosque came to nothing, as police penned its members into a pub before bussing them to various spots on the periphery of the city, extinguishing the chances of a conflict before it had the chance to ignite. There were a few minor skirmishes in and around the city centre between the tiny SDL contingent and rival demonstrators, who were out in their thousands. Five people were arrested.

Although both sides claimed to have achieved their aims, the sheer numbers that mustered under the banner of Scotland United, a broad-spectrum alliance of political parties, trade unions and civil society groups, demonstrated that most of Glasgow has little truck with the ‘anti-Islamic’ policies of the SDL and its English counterpart.

Mr Anwar, speaking at the head of a thousand protesters as they marched into George Square, said: “Just over 100 members of the Scottish and English Defence Leagues came to Glasgow today, skulked in a pub and were then bussed off away from the city centre. We proved that the only group that the people of Glasgow would tolerate on their streets were Scotland United. I would call this a victory.”

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Why Islam was behind the Fort Hood massacre

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Kevin_Myers“Jihad can be formed as a result of the teachings of an imam, but it boils down to a personal contract between Allah and the believer, based on an extreme interpretation of Islam…. This notion of a personal contract with Allah, that authorises a believer to break even the most civilised and civilising laws of the Koran, is a sure-fire recipe for murderous irrationality and social anarchy. And these have become the defining feature of almost every Muslim society in the world….

“Hence Fort Hood Texas, September 11 New York, July 7 London, Holland, Denmark, Belgium, France, Norway, Bali, Kenya, Tanzania, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Iran, Anatolia, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bali, Bombay and Australia. Such universal belligerence has no universal cause, other than in the universality of Islam, which seems so often to respond lethally to local conditions, whatever they are.

“… somewhere inside the greater Islamic mind is an absurd sense of victimhood: and where there is no local grievance, why then there is always ‘Palestine’, as if those few disputed acres in the vast Islamic landmass of Afro-Asia merited the unanimous and indignant global furies of all Muslims, from Delhi to Dearborn. This same querulous organ of self-pity also resents Muslims becoming the subject of intelligence operations after an Islamic atrocity….

“This is a sealed moral system, an internal autonomy that is immune to penetration or logic. Fear of such accusations of Islamophobia – phobophobia – almost certainly prevented Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s superior officers from disciplining him for his public jihadist outpourings. Pre-emptive action would certainly have been portrayed by the liberal media as Islamophobic discrimination against a patriotic Muslim, and would have enraged that reliable stock-character of media portrayal, ‘moderate Muslims’. Thirteen genuine patriots are now dead as the price of such phobophobic appeasement.

“More importantly, the US must now wake up to the consequences of its open-door immigration policy, just as Britain did four years ago after July 7. The subsequent pattern will presumably be similar. Watch now, as ‘victimised’ American Muslims close ranks, the burka and the hijab become commonplace amongst their womenfolk and the rest of the US asks in tones of awestruck horror: My God, what have we done?”

Kevin Myers in the Irish Independent, 10 November 2009

For earlier examples of Myers’ thoughtful comments on the issues of Islam and migration, see “Forget lily-livered liberalism, time to take stand and say we don’t want Muslim immigrants“, and “Huge areas of Britain have become foreign colonies. That could be tomorrow’s Ireland, too“. The latter piece was enthusiastically endorsed by the BNP.

Update:  See Yusuf Smith’s comments at Indigo Jo Blogs, 15 November 2009

Attempt to smear Osama Saeed and Azad Ali

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A radical Muslim cleric alleged to have inspired the Fort Hood gunman has been praised in the past as “a preacher of peace” by a prominent SNP candidate with close links to Alex Salmond.

The FBI is investigating communications between Major Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people at the US Army base in Texas, and Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born Muslim cleric now based in Yemen. Mr Awlaki has a large following in Britain and counts prominent mainstream Muslims among his supporters.

In 2006 Osama Saeed, who has been selected as the SNP candidate for Glasgow Central for the next general election, wrote that Mr Awlaki “preached nothing but peace”.

Last night Mr Saeed, who was researcher to Mr Salmond before he became the Scottish First Minister, distanced himself from Mr Awlaki, saying that he now felt “cheated” by the cleric. Mr Saeed said: “I completely disagree with what he has said about Fort Hood, and a host of other matters which he has more recently written and spoken about.”

Mr Awlaki, 38, who on his blog described Major Hasan as “a hero”, has been a regular visitor to Britain and delivers frequent lectures to audiences here by video or via the internet.

Azad Ali, president of the Civil Service Islamic Society, wrote last November that Mr Awlaki was “one of my favourite speakers and scholars”. Mr Ali, whose society’s patron is Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, distanced himself from the cleric’s views last night. He said: “I reject them and disassociate myself from them completely.”

An SNP spokesman said last night: “Anwar al-Awlaki formerly expressed moderate views – his more recent comments are disgraceful and have been condemned by all right-thinking people, including Azad Ali and Osama Saeed. Any attempt to smear any individual in the UK over this would be appalling.”

Times, 12 November 2009

Needless to say, this witch-hunt originates with Harry’s Place, Standpoint and the Spittoon.

Update:  See Osama Saeed’s post, “Times run with Centre for Social Cohesion briefing”, Rolled-up Trousers, 12 November 2009

Further update:  And here is the Quilliam Foundation’s helpful contribution, headed “Quilliam calls on Muslim organizations to reject jihadism”.

BNP slammed over anti-Muslim Pac-Man spoof

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mark Collett PacmanA British National Party official has been accused of racism over an anti-Muslim message posted on the internet.

Mark Collett, the BNP’s publicity director, created a spoof of the Pac-Man computer game with the caption “Sortin’ out Muslims since 1980” and has uploaded it to a number of websites.

The image, which shows caricatures of Muslim women in veils being attacked by the computer character, is accompanied by a personal message from Collett on his Facebook page. He wrote: “Pac-Man knows how to deal with Muslims! I made this, I hope it makes you all smile! Feel free to send it out and spread the joy.”

Collett was cleared in 2006 of inciting racial hatred after a jury heard he had told a meeting in Keithley: “Let’s show these ethnics the door in 2004.”

But Muslim MP Shahid Malik, a minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government, has accused Collett of being “twisted” and said the game proves the BNP is racist.

He told Sky News: “If this is the work of Mark Collett, it only serves as further demonstration of what a sick, twisted and vile individual he is. It is useful to highlight this type of attitude in the leadership of the BNP. It helps expose the true face of this racist and fascist organisation.”

Collett’s comments about “how to deal with Muslims” are at odds with his party’s public statements on immigration and leader Nick Griffin’s claims the party is not racist.

The policy section of the BNP website claims the party is not opposed to non-whites, so long as whites stay the majority. It states: “We accept that Britain always will have ethnic minorities and have no problem with this as long as they remain minorities.”

Yet Dr Rob Berkeley from the Runnymede Trust, which campaigns to promote a multi-ethnic Britain, describes Collett’s game and comments as “clearly racist”. He said: “It is more evidence, if it was needed, that the BNP is a racist party, or at minimum a party of racists.”

Collett told Sky News his spoof Pac-Man picture was “simply a joke” and said he did not want to “sort out” Muslims. He said: “The Pac-Man character eats ghosts, but to suggest that anyone in the BNP wants anyone to eat women in burqas is laughable. It’s not suggesting that anyone needs sorting out, it was simply a joke.”

Sky News, 12 November 2009

Muslim lawyer ordered not to wear headscarf at Spanish court

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Spanish female lawyer has filed a complaint against a judge who ordered her to leave the courtroom because she was wearing the Muslim headscarf, press reports said Wednesday.

Moroccan-born Zoubida Barik Edidi, 39, was assisting a colleague at a trial related to Islamist terrorism at the National Court on October 29, when judge Javier Gomez Bermudez told her she could not stay in the room because of the headscarf she was wearing with her gown. Barik replied she had been to other trials with her scarf on. “I am the one who gives orders here,” Gomez Bermudez answered.

Barik has filed a complaint at the judges’ organ CGPJ, accusing Gomez Bermudez of discrimination and abuse of power, and arguing that Spanish law did not prohibit lawyers from covering their heads.

Earth Times, 11 November 2009

Fort Hood and the Clash of Civilizations

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Since the Ft Hood atrocity, I’ve seen a meme going around that it somehow  exposed a contradiction between ‘political correctness’ and ‘security’. The avoidance of Nidal Hassan’s religion out of fear of offending anyone, goes the argument, created the conditions which allowed him to go undetected and unsanctioned in the months and years leading up to his rampage. American security, therefore, demands dropping the ‘political correctness’ of avoiding a confrontation with Islamist ideas and asking the ‘tough questions’ about Islam as a religion and the loyalty of Muslim-Americans. This framing of the issue is almost 100% wrong.”

Marc Lynch’s Foreign Policy blog, 11 November 2009