“… the anti-Muslim Right’s parading around under the free speech banner (just like their pretense of safeguarding the rights of gay people from oppressive Muslim societies) is so blatantly insincere, nothing more than a means of opportunistically elevating and justifying their anti-Islamic animus. That fact is conclusively demonstrated by how selectively self-interested is the application of their free speech ‘principles’.”
Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com, 12 May 2009
The government must end its “shameful harassment and demonisation” of Muslims, campaigners will demand at a public meeting in Manchester today.
The call follows the continued detention and attempted deportation of 11 Pakistani students falsely arrested during terror raids in the area in April.
All 11 men, plus a British citizen also arrested in the Liverpool, Manchester and Lancashire raids, have been released without charge and no evidence has been produced to support the allegations made against the men.
However, in a development which provoked fury from campaigners, the 11 foreign nationals were then immediately detained once more, this time by the UK Borders Agency.
A spokesman for the Respect party in Greater Manchester, which helped organise the meeting, said: “In a blaze of hysterical publicity, armed police swooped on 12 Pakistani students in Manchester and Liverpool on April 8.
“The Prime Minister boasted of a major terror plot being foiled. In spite of no evidence of any terror plot being found, 11 of the 12 are still being held in custody, awaiting deportation.”
He added: “Instead of an apology, the police promised more such raids. We must unite to stop the deportation of the Pakistani students and break the wall of fear that is being built around Muslim communities.
“The government must stop this shameful harassment and criminalisation of Muslim communities and the media must stop the demonisation of Muslims.”
Mr Abdul Kureshi of the Lancashire Council of Mosques said that government policy towards the Muslim community was alienating many and that it needed to be addressed.
An internet group set up by the Island’s Muslim community has sparked fiercely anti-Islamic opposition. The group on social networking site Facebook, outlining their campaign for a new mosque to replace the converted garage used at present, has attracted almost 100 members.
But 360 people have joined an opposition group claiming to be non-racist but carrying comments such as: “Thay (sic) can **** right off!!!!!! thay come over and don’t respect are (sic) way of life. Thay belive (sic) if you are not a muslam (sic) you should die wots (sic) all that about!!! thay have one (a mosque) as it is so why do thay need a new one **** off i say !!!”
The creator of the group “New Mosque for Isle of Man” explains the Muslim community, thought to number around 70, has been using a small converted garage as a mosque for more than 20 years. He claims Islamic worshippers are “at a disadvantage” as the mosque is too small to hold them all for Jumuah salah, a Friday afternoon prayer considered the most important of the week.
Meanwhile, contributors to the opposition group “No to Mosque in the Isle of Man” urge members to “keep your Island free of the alien invaders”. One member accuses the Island’s Muslims of “taking education, jobs and a better way of life and throwing it back in our faces”. Another writes: “You can’t say you are Muslim and not expect suspicion from the world … you have earned it.”
Those who have left messages condemning such comments are described as “white traitors”. “Wake up and grow some loyalty to your own people, your own country, your own race, your own identity as White British,” one member writes. “Stop falling over yourself to condemn your own people all so a horde of foreign, anti-British Muslims can colonise the Isle of Man.”
One Island-based Muslim writes: “I don’t see why a very small group of people going to worship in their own time, not bothering anyone else, seems so bad to people? The last 20 years is proof that Islam on the Isle of Man is not a negative thing and that it has never affected anything on the Island in a bad way.
“The only difference now is that the mosque is no longer big enough and it is against health and safety regulations for 70 people to pray in a building that only holds 40. The Muslims on the Isle of Man have never bothered anyone before. What makes people think that a slightly bigger place to worship is going to damage the Isle of Man?”
“There’s a truly awful piece in Telegraph blogs by, no not Damian Thompson, but Ed West, entitled ‘Here’s an inconvenient truth: the Islamisation of Europe‘. West tries to rationalize what is nothing more than a racist diatribe against Muslim immigration and Muslim citizenship in Europe. While he tries to couch his article in language that conveys anxiety over mass immigration and the costs to social cohesion, he betrays his barely concealed Islamophobia by singling out Islam and Muslims as the scourge of Europe.”
Update: See also Indigo Jo Blogs, 9 May 2009
Having spent the last few weeks whipping up hostility against Osama Saeed and the Islam Channel, Ed Husain and Maajid Nawaz now try to restore some credibility to their rotten operation by posing as doughty defenders of the Muslim community. Give us a break.
For responses to the recent Quilliam witch-hunts see Mehdi Hasan, Muslim Matters and Indigo Jo Blogs.
The Muslim Council of Britain today welcomed the findings of an ongoing poll conducted by Gallup and the Coexist Foundation showing that Muslims in the United Kingdom feel more loyalty towards the country in which they live than the general public believes they do.
The poll reveals a triumph of fact over opinion – it challenges the idea that Muslims have divided loyalties, are separatist and, because of their faith and religiosity, have nothing in common with fellow Britons.
The Gallup poll can be consulted (pdf) here.
See also Shelina Zahra Janmohamed’s post at Comment is Free, 7 May 2009
Over at Pickled Politics Sunny Hundal reveals Geert Wilders’ 10-point programme to save Western Civilisation from the Muslim hordes.
At Comment is Free Sunny Hundal takes pleasure in the outbreak of in-fighting among the “anti-jihadist neocons”, exemplified by Little Green Footballs’ falling-out with Jihad Watch and Pamela Geller. He notes “the role mainstream media and thinktanks play in supporting this lunatic fringe and their paranoid fantasies”.
See also “Civil war raging in right-wing blogosphere”, Washington Independent, 23 April 2009
Martin Robbins analyses how opinion polls are manipulated to misrepresent the views of British Muslims, and directs us to an interesting, and less biased, poll on the British Born Muslims blog.
About 50 Muslim men took their prayer rugs to the Sliema front yesterday after the planning authority sealed off their place of worship. The Muslims said the Malta Environment and Planning Authority had locked them out of their flat in Sliema where they used to pray, so they decided to take their cause outside.
“We are not here to protest or threaten violence but to express our fundamental human right to gather in prayer,” Bader Zina, one of the leaders, said. According to Mepa, a number of complaints had been received by neighbours and the flat did not have a licence to be used as a place of worship.
The Muslims, many of whom are Maltese, were dressed in traditional clothing. They had a permit and police protection and said this might become a regular appointment until their flat was reopened.
This behaviour did not go down well with a group of Maltese onlookers who warned that if this happened again “there will be trouble”.
“Malta is a Catholic country. They have no right to come here and pray in front of us. I don’t care what they do in the privacy of their own home but not here,” one Maltese woman said.
“We’ve had enough. If you were to do the same in their country they would stone you. I can’t understand how they could have been given a permit for this, including police presence and all!” her husband added, visibly disturbed by what he saw.
“They should go to a mosque. That is where they belong. Or in some hole somewhere. But not here where I get my children to eat and have a good time. I would have had no problem if they were Catholics praying… in Malta we are all Catholics so it’s not a problem, but not them. Even the tourists were disgusted,” he claimed, as his teenage son nodded in agreement.
Mr Zina said they did not want to anger anyone: “All we want to do is praise God”. He said that besides the Sliema flat, another in Buġibba had also been locked up by Mepa simply because it was used by Muslims to gather in prayer. The residents of the flats had to seek alternative accommodation. “Since when do you need a licence to pray? I don’t see anyone closing down other prayer groups.”
Via Islam in Europe