Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Welsh anti-fascists challenge ‘extraordinary’ BNP claims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Welsh anti-fascist campaigners challenged a Carmarthenshire BNP candidate to justify the “extraordinary” claims in his election propaganda or resign on Wednesday.

Far-right fantasist Carmarthenshire County Council Penygroes ward British National Party candidate Kevin Edwards claimed in his election leaflets that soldiers at Birmingham hospitals had had to remove their uniforms to avoid offending Muslim staff and visitors. The leaflet also stated that homosexuality was being taught to schoolchildren as young as four.

Anti-fascist campaign Searchlight Cymru secretary Darron Dupre said: “We were a bit bemused by such claims, but were happy to give Mr Edwards the benefit of the doubt, so we checked. We can find no evidence of his claims anywhere. We know of an unsubstantiated newspaper report on Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham, but that was disproved some time ago. We also asked the NUT about the subjects taught to four-year-olds. They were most bemused about Mr Edwards’s claims.”

Mr Edwards’s leaflet argued that British people should get priority in housing over asylum-seekers, even though – as Mr Dupre pointed out – asylum-seekers are not entitled to council housing. “He further states that asylum-seekers get free cars and TVs,” said Mr Dupre.

“Everyone at Searchlight Cymru is intrigued to learn exactly where this is happening. As Mr Edwards obviously knows something that no-one else knows, then we ask that he backs up claims with some facts. If he cannot substantiate such inflammatory claims, then we would expect him to do the honourable thing and resign his candidacy.”

Morning Star, 24 April 2008

To lionise former extremists feeds anti-Muslim prejudice

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ziauddin Sardar“When one sinner repents, says the biblical adage, there is much joy in heaven. So the angels, along with the government, must be rejoicing at the launch of the Quilliam Foundation. The thinktank has been established by not one but two repentant sinners: Ed Husain and Maajid Nawaz, ex-members of the extremist Islamic cult Hizb ut-Tahrir.

“On earth, however, I would suggest a greater degree of caution. In the here and now, it’s not the repentant sinners we should celebrate but ‘the 99 righteous persons who need no repentance’, those unmentioned Muslims who refused to be seduced by the dark side….

“The embrace of former extremists is a slap in the face for Muslims who have worked tirelessly to build a British Muslim identity and foster inclusion by constructive community activity. It’s another attempt at the marginalisation of the overwhelming majority who never had a moment’s doubt that Islam gives no sanction for such murderous and misguided perversion of belief.

“… we don’t need neocon ex-extremists to tell us what extremism is about. They are part of the problem, not the solution. But we do need a viable politics that tackles the root cause of extremism.”

Ziauddin Sardar in the Guardian, 24 April 2008

See also Yusuf Smith’s post on Ed Husain at Indigo Jo Blogs, 23 April 2008

Boris thinks Muslim voters are fools

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Muslim Public Affairs Committee draws our attention to a leaflet supporting Boris Johnson’s mayoral candidacy that was distributed outside Palmers Green Mosque last Friday. In an attempt to counter the Muslims 4 Ken campaign, the leaflet assures the Muslim community: “You have been lied to. In recent weeks, Ken Livingstone’s cronies have been visiting mosques in London to circulate offensive material about Boris Johnson. They have been misleading you with leaflets suggesting that Boris Johnson is anti-Islam ….”

For Johnson’s real views on on Islam, see here, here and here.

Boris Islam leaflet

Arabist Hans Jansen causes irritation among his peers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islam_Voor_VarkensIn his recent book Islam for pigs, monkeys, donkeys and other animals, Dutch Arabist Hans Jansen has put a cat in among the scientific pigeons. However, it looks like the media are taking him more seriously than his fellow Islam experts are.

Fellow Arabist Professor Martin van Bruinessen from the Institute for Studies in Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) in Leiden expresses the growing irritation with Hans Jansen among his colleagues.

He remembers when in the 1990s, Dr Jansen wrote facetious pieces about Islam. But since the Netherlands became obsessed by fear of Islam after 9/11, the professor from Utrecht has grown into a real phenomenon in the media, in which he presents himself as the only Dutch expert who dares to talk about the inconvenient truth of Islam without political correctness getting in the way.

Dr Jansen’s work is an important source of inspiration for anti-Islamic MP Geert Wilders. In the days after his film Fitna was put on the web, Dr Jansen appeared in several television programmes to explain its content.

In Islam for pigs, he sets out his vision by answering 250 questions about Islam. In the book, Islam is portrayed as a dangerous and violent religion. The Qur’an preaches peace, Dr Jansen admits, but only once everyone has submitted to the religion. Up to that time, evil and unbelievers have to be conquered, using violence if necessary.

The number of Dutch Muslims that reject al-Qaeda’s brand of terrorism could be “lower than we think”, according to the professor. Most Muslims do not see Bin Laden as a madman, but rather as a “super-activist, who is taking the ultimate steps according to Islamic rules in the fight against infidels.”

The title of the book refers to the terms used by the Qur’an for unbelievers and Jews, explains the author in the introduction. Professor Van Bruinessen says: “If you take the time to look at the passages in question – for example on the bibleandkoran.net site, you will see that this is just not true. The Qur’an tells about a people in the past that disobeyed God and was turned into pigs and monkeys as a punishment.”

Professor van Bruinessen thinks this is typical of Mr Jansen’s style. “Since Mr Jansen received the title of professor, but in particular since the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, he has set all scientific scruples aside. He has become an anti-Islam polemist who has no reservations about completely misrepresenting the issues on purpose.”

Radio Netherlands, 24 April 2008

Frontpage magazine: scientific racism

Posted on by Eddie Truman

Regular readers of Islamophobia Watch will need no introduction to Frontpage Magazine. For years now we have covered the ravings of Robert Spencer and his cronies as they take the language of hate and give it an air of respectability so that loons like Melanie Phillips aren’t forced to rely on BNP propaganda for their diatribes.

Today, though, our attention has been drawn to an article that is little more than a 21st century version of the scientific racism used to justify some of history’s most appalling acts of genocide and colonialism. At first we thought it was a spoof designed to discredit Spencer and his website but, no, it does appear to be genuine.

What Islam isn’t by Dr Peter Hammond.

The new generation of renegades

Posted on by Bob Pitt

David Edgar“Commentators Nick Cohen, David Aaronovitch and Andrew Anthony all had left-wing parents, and were involved in political campaigning around race, gender and class in the 1970s…. Although none of them has abandoned the whole progressive package, their main target is a left-liberal intelligentsia, which, as they see it, opposed the overthrow of a fascist dictator, Saddam Hussein, and is now in an unholy Faustian alliance – justified by modish, postmodern cultural relativism – with the far right.

“The far right in question is not the BNP, but political Islamism, represented by those main Muslim umbrella organisations that are seen to have links with Islamists in Muslim countries, particularly those who joined the coalition that organised the demonstration on February 15 2003 against the invasion of Iraq….

“Certainly, the progressive left is in alliance with a group whose traditional views run counter to some central planks of its platform. Twenty-five years on from Maydays, I have written a new play (Testing the Echo), which is partly about the temptation – on these understandable grounds – to reject any kind of religious affiliation, to brand fundamentalist Islam as brown fascism, and (thereby) to abandon an impoverished, beleaguered and demonised community.

“For, let’s be clear, the alliance to which the new defectors object – the alliance enabled by a multiculturalism that sought to give visibility and confidence to entire communities – is not just between a few deluded revolutionaries and the odd crazed Muslim cleric. Martin Amis denies he’s declaring war on the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims, but his ‘thought experiment’ about meting out collective punishment on Muslims (travel restriction, deportation, strip searching) ‘until it hurts the whole community’ makes no distinction between followers of Hizb ut-Tahrir and the man in the Clapham mosque. Cohen is careful to point out that ‘Islamism has Islamic roots’, and, clearly, the group that he dubs the ‘far right’ goes beyond the adherents of Jamaat-e-Islami.”

David Edgar in the Guardian, 19 April 2008