Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

A new era of Islamophobia?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Fosters 1027 24“What an election! We have the first Conservative Mayor for London and we also have the first racist Islamophobe from the BNP in the London Assembly. So what do we make of this? Is this the end of an era or is it a beginning of a new one? …

“So what caused this shock result? Was it anti-Brown or anti-Labour sentiments? Was it the recognition that ‘the Conservatives have changed into a party that can again be trusted after 30 years’? Was it the overt support of Muslims 4 Ken, as some have commented? Or was it the politics of fear created by the government and media? Can it even be as simple as ‘he’s been there too long’? We may never know the real reasons, as most voters will have different reasons for voting the way they do – but here is my thought on why the BNP got its first Assembly Member.

“If you recall the last 2 to 3 years, you will no doubt notice that the most discussed subject has been Islam and Muslims. The rancorous manner in which the government – a Labour government – attacked Islam and Muslim has been unforgivable. Together with the relentless and vitriolic media, it created the perfect atmosphere for the racist BNP to peddle its malevolence with impunity. In the eyes of the BBC this racist party has now become ‘The anti-immigration British National Party’. Anti-immigration! When Jack Straw said that it’s not Ken’s fault alone and that everybody in government had some responsibility, I sincerely hope he together with the likes of Ruth Kelly and others recall their Islam bashing and how they allowed the BNP to espouse the myth of ‘Islamofascism’. And how the hatred they spew is becoming acceptable and mainstream. Maybe this is the ‘new era’ that has begun!”

Azad Ali assesses the results of the London elections.

Between the Lines, 3 May 2008

Claiming damages, the Muslim policeman removed from Blair guard duty

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim policeman removed from his job guarding the Prime Minister on “national security grounds” yesterday launched a claim for compensation.

Firearms officer Amjad Farooq, 40, was transferred from the elite Diplomatic Protection Group on the advice of MI5, after it had carried out vetting checks on him.

Now, in what is believed to be a first for employment tribunals, the hearing into his claim that he suffered racial and religious discrimination is being held behind closed doors on the grounds of national security.

The case centres on concerns over a mosque that PC Farooq and his family attended in Swindon.

Daily Mail, 2 May 2008

See also “Muslim PC barred from own tribunal” in the Swindon Advertiser, 2 May 2008

Muslim women redefine feminism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“They speak in a heavily accented version of English, suffocating beneath tent-like cloaks. Voiceless and enslaved, these Muslim women wrap themselves up in head scarves in public. While the rest of American women take the slightest sunray as a signal for baring flesh and flaunting assets, these fully covered women stand out as more than unfashionable but as victims of oppression.

“Such are the tragic misconceptions of American Muslim women-barbaric, veiled housewives victimized by an Islamic lifestyle. To about 10 million Muslim women, that lifestyle includes the female head covering, an Islamic dress code called Hijab and a symbol of modesty and freedom.”

Hanan Salem in The Connection, 1 May 2008

Europe’s debt to Islam given a skeptical look

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Aristote au Mont Saint-MichelWhen Sylvain Gouguenheim looks at today’s historical vision of the history of the West and Islam, he sees a notion, accepted as fact, that the Muslim world was at the source of the Christian Europe’s reawakening from the Middle Ages.

He sees a portrayal of an enlightened Islam, transmitting westward the knowledge of the ancient Greeks through Arab translators and opening the path in Europe to mathematics, medicine, astronomy and philosophy – a gift the West regards with insufficient esteem.

In a new book, he is basically canceling, or largely writing off, a debt to “the Arabo-Muslim world” dating from the year 750 – a concept built up by other historians over the past 50 years – that has Europe owing Islam for an essential part of its identity.

“Aristote au Mont Saint-Michel” (Editions du Seuil), while not contending there is an ongoing clash of civilizations, makes the case that Islam was impermeable to much of Greek thought, that the Arab world’s initial translations of it to Latin were not so much the work of “Islam” but of Aramaeans and Christian Arabs, and that a wave of translations of Aristotle began at the Mont Saint-Michel monastery in France 50 years before Arab versions of the same texts appeared in Moorish Spain.

Le Figaro and Le Monde, in considering the book in prominent reviews, drank its content in a single gulp. No suspended endorsements or anything that read like a caution.

“Congratulations,” Le Figaro wrote. “Mr. Gouguenheim wasn’t afraid to remind us that there was a medieval Christian crucible, a fruit of the heritage of Athens and Jerusalem,” while “Islam hardly proposed its knowledge to Westerners.”

Le Monde was even more receptive: “All in all, and contrary to what’s been repeated in a crescendo since the 1960s, European culture in its history and development shouldn’t be owing a whole lot to Islam. In any case, nothing essential. Precise and well-argued, this book, which sets history straight, is also a strongly courageous one.”

Published less than a month ago, the book is just beginning to encounter learned criticism. Sarcastically, Gabriel Martinez-Gros, a professor of medieval history, and Julien Loiseau, a lecturer, described Gouguenheim as “re-establishing the real hierarchy of civilizations.”

They said that he disregarded the mathematics and astronomy produced by the Islamic world between the 9th and 13th centuries and painted the period’s Islamic civilization exactly what it was not: obscurantist, legalistic, fatalistic and fanatic.

New York Times, 28 April 3008

Daily Star exposes ‘Muslim sickos’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim sickos“Is this the vilest front page headline we’ve ever seen?

“For those wondering – the article isn’t actually about Muslims kidnapping anyone, although you won’t find it on the Star’s website.

“It’s about some Muslims suggesting on the internet that the McCanns were responsible for their daughter’s kidnapping.

“You know, similar to what The Star and Express had to print front page apologies about and pay half a mil in fines for a couple of weeks ago.”

Five Chinese Crackers, 28 April 2008

See also Lee Burrows at How Liberty Dies.

The BNP, anti-semitism and Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Do not be fooled, the BNP is a fascist organization and racist to the core

By David Landau

“Of course we must teach the truth to the hardcore…. when it comes to influencing the public, forget about racial differences, genetics, Zionism, historical revisionism and so on…. we must at all times present them with an image of moderate reasonableness.”  Nick Griffin, Chairman of the BNP, writing in the Patriot, Spring 1999.

LAST WEEK the Argent newspaper group, who produce local newspapers across London and the South East, took an advertisement from the BNP with a picture of a white nuclear family saying “People Like You Vote BNP – British National Party Putting Londoners First”. We know that they are very selective about which Londoners they want to “put first”.  But the it seems that the Argent Group were not simply seduced by the money, but fooled into thinking that the BNP is just another party participating in the political process.

The fact that the BNP is just a newish manifestation of an old party going back to the British Brothers League through the British Union of Fascists through the National Front was completely lost on them. They now seem to have seen the error of their ways and have agreed to put the money made on this advertisement to charity. Part of this rumour of respectability is the suggestion that the BNP isn’t anti-Semitic any more. The fact that their leader Nick Griffin used to be an outspoken Holocaust denier, who compared believing that 6 million were murdered with believing that the earth is flat can be put aside as a youthful indiscretion. They have apparently changed their ways.

They even have a Jewish councillor in the person of Pat Richardson (nee Feldman) in Epping Forest. To understand this we need to recognize that anti-Semitism plays a different role in fascist thinking than other forms of racism. Anti-Semitism has been an organizing principle of most fascists. Jews are the Bankers and the Bolsheviks who conspire together to control the world in which the rest of us are pawns and victims of their evil plans. These ideas borrow heavily from medieval Christian ideas about Jews as Christ Killers and Usurers.

This conspiracy theory has been upset by the rise of Islamaphobia. For many fascists, and Nick Griffin and other leaders of the BNP are part of this wing, the central organizing principle is now Islamaphobia. It is the Oil Sheikhs and the Terrorists who are calling the shots, dividing the world against itself and threatening ‘our’ Christian way of life. Leaflets and papers by the BNP portray Muslims praying outside a church on the village green and bombed buses.

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What turns some Islamists to terror

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“We represent a cross section of the Muslim community, and reject the simplistic narrative about the dangers of Islamism espoused by the Quilliam Foundation. We believe this is just another establishment-backed attempt to divert attention from the main cause of radicalisation and extremism in Britain: the UK’s disastrous foreign policy in the Muslim world, including its occupation of Muslim lands and its support for pro-western Muslim dictators. The foundation has no proven grassroots support within the Muslim community, although it does seem to have the ear of the powers that be, probably because it is telling them what they want to hear.”

Letter from Anas al-Tikriti, Yvonne Ridley, Ihtisham Hibatullah, Ismail Patel and Roshan Muhammed Salih.

Guardian, 26 April 2008

Revered New Jersey imam, facing deportation, has interfaith support

Posted on by Bob Pitt

PATERSON, N.J. — For a dozen years, Mohammad Qatanani has supported the members of the Islamic Center of Passaic County by speaking at funerals, hashing out ethical dilemmas and sometimes opening his home to domestic-violence victims at a moment’s notice.

But now Dr. Qatanani, 44, the imam of the mosque here, requires the support of the members: he has been barred by federal immigration authorities from renewing his driver’s license, and must call on friends to ferry him to hospitals for visits with the sick among his flock. There are fund-raisers for him at the mosque. And after Friday prayers, the hugs the men give him seem to last extra long.

The imam, who is Palestinian, and most of his family face deportation because of his detention in Israel decades ago and questions about whether he lied about it on his application for permanent residency, which he made in 1999 and which was recently denied.

Immigrant advocate groups said that other imams, in Pittsburgh, Miami, Dallas, Los Angeles and Dearborn, Mich., are also facing possible deportation, which Kareem W. Shora, executive director of the Washington-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, called a major concern. “We don’t know if it’s policy-driven or not,” he said. “Is there a pattern? Is it very prevalent? Yes.”

Aref Assaf, president of the American Arab Forum, an advocacy group based in Denville, N.J., said of Imam Qatanani: “If you want to deport him, what sort of person do you want to keep in this country?”

Rabbi David Senter of Congregation Beth Shalom in Pompton Lakes called the imam “the most moderate individual you could imagine.” Rabbi Senter, who has publicly praised Imam Qatanani’s work on behalf of interfaith understanding, said he deserves due process. “My fear is, because of Sept. 11 and the wide brush we’ve been willing to paint Muslims with, he will not get that.”

New York Times, 24 April 2008

BNP replies to the BoD

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Loyal British Jews are our natural allies in the fight against the Islamic fundamentalists who want to destroy the Western civilisation so many of whose core values we hold in common. That is just one reason why many Jews will be voting for the BNP. Let’s remember also, however, that this is only one reason. Jews will be voting British National Party for other reasons too: because they are concerned about crime, because they are worried about the economic decline of our country, because they are concerned about the disintegration of community spirit and decent values. In other words for the same reasons as so many other British voters, including many Sikhs and Christian West Indians. As Martin Wingfield commented in our paper Freedom recently:  ‘today there are an increasing number of Jews campaigning for the BNP and feeling very comfortable with their political choice.’

“When the Chief Rabbi a few years ago wrote a book entitled ‘Will Our Grandchildren Be Jewish?’ he articulated precisely the same concern that we have for the future of our people in the same overcrowded multi-cult nightmare that threatens traditional Jewish and British identities alike.  Just because a Jew wants to preserve and celebrate his ancestral culture and identity doesn’t make him a ‘hater’ of Gentiles, and nor does our wanting to preserve and celebrate our ancestral culture and identity make us ‘haters’ of Jews, or any other ethnic group for that matter.”

The fascist British National Party continues its campaign to win support in the Jewish community on an anti-Muslim programme.

BNP website, 23 April 2008

See earlier comments by Henry Grunwald of the Board of Deputies here.

Of course, the idea that significant numbers of British Jews will be voting for a party whose leader Nick Griffin was convicted only a decade ago of inciting racial hatred, in an article that dismissed the Holocaust as the “Holohoax”, is laughable. What the BNP hopes to do is to attract a few disoriented right-wing individuals from the Jewish community, just as it has attracted the odd individual Sikh sympathiser, and publicise their support in an attempt to cover up its Nazi origins and continue the pretence that it is a mainstream political party.