Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Islam maligned in veiled moderation

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“A fortnight ago, John Howard commented on talkback radio that ‘a small section of the Islamic population’ was ‘very resistant to integration’. They failed to learn English quickly enough and didn’t accept Australian values such as gender equality. The comments were factual. But they were pointedly selective.

“If the test of integration is speaking English, Howard easily could have pointed to a ‘small section’ of almost any migrant community in Australia. If this is about gender inequality, he could have noted that Australia had worryingly high domestic-violence rates and that Australian Muslims didn’t contribute disproportionately to them. And if we’re talking about Australian values, one could easily point to a small section of white Australia with white supremacist views who clearly refuse to accept Australian values of tolerance.”

Waleed Aly in The Australian, 16 September 2006

Egypt’s Coptic Church rejects Pope’s Islam remarks

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Egypt’s Coptic Church has rejected Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks implicitly linking Islam and violence saying that Christianity taught love and respect for other faiths. “The Church categorically rejects the comments of the Vatican Pope,” said spokesman Bishop Murqos, whose church’s leader Shenuda III also bears the title pope.

“The Christian religion commands us to love other people whatever their faith,” the spokesman said in comments carried by the opposition daily Al-Wafd on Saturday. “We must respect the Muslim faithful and their prophet as we respect the followers of Jesus Christ and it is unacceptable to offend their religious beliefs. We utterly reject any offence to Islamic values or the Prophet.”

AFP, 16 September 2006

Over at Jihad Watch, Hugh Fitzgerald has a ready explanation for the Coptic pope’s principled and admirable stand on this issue – he’s being “held hostage” by those evil Muslims!

Dhimmi Watch, 17 September 2006

Martin Amis and the politics of paranoia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pankaj Mishra replies to Martin Amis’s article in last week’s Observer:

“Martin Amis’s essay on Islam and Islamism goes on for more than 10,000 words without describing an individual experience of Muslim societies deeper than Christopher Hitchens’s acquisition of an Osama T-shirt in Peshawar and the Amis family’s failure to enter, after closing time, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

“‘The impulse towards rational inquiry,’ Amis asserts, ‘is by now very weak in the rank and file of the Muslim male.’ There are countless other startling claims (according to Amis, the army was on the Islamist side in the Algerian civil war) in his essay, whose pseudo-scholarship and fanatical conviction of moral superiority make it resemble nothing more than one of bin Laden’s desperately literary screeds.

“Such a bold and hectic display of prejudice and ignorance invites the dinner-party frivolity of Amis’s genitals-centric analysis (constipation and sexual frustration) of radical Islam. But what forces us to take it seriously is not only that its author is one of our leading novelists, but also that his cliches about non-western peoples (they are all very irrational out there) and strident belief in ‘Western’ rationality are now commonplace in elite liberal-left as well as conservative circles in the government and media.”

Observer, 17 September 2006

Pope gets it wrong on Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Juan Cole writes: “what is most troubling of all is that the Pope gets several things about Islam wrong, just as a matter of fact. He notes that the text he discusses, a polemic against Islam by a Byzantine emperor, cites Qur’an 2:256: ‘There is no compulsion in religion.’ Benedict maintains that this is an early verse, when Muhammad was without power.

“His allegation is incorrect. Surah 2 is a Medinan surah revealed when Muhammad was already established as the leader of the city of Yathrib (later known as Medina or “the city” of the Prophet). The pope imagines that a young Muhammad in Mecca before 622 (lacking power) permitted freedom of conscience, but later in life ordered that his religion be spread by the sword. But since Surah 2 is in fact from the Medina period when Muhammad was in power, that theory does not hold water.

“In fact, the Qur’an at no point urges that religious faith be imposed on anyone by force.”

Informed Comment, 15 September 2006

NYT comes down against pope

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pope (3)“There is more than enough religious anger in the world. So it is particularly disturbing that Pope Benedict XVI has insulted Muslims, quoting a 14th-century description of Islam as ‘evil and inhuman’….The Vatican issued a statement saying that Benedict meant no offense and in fact desired dialogue. But this is not the first time the pope has fomented discord between Christians and Muslims.

“In 2004 when he was still the Vatican’s top theologian, he spoke out against Turkey’s joining the European Union, because Turkey, as a Muslim country was ‘in permanent contrast to Europe’. A doctrinal conservative, his greatest fear appears to be the loss of a uniform Catholic identity, not exactly the best jumping-off point for tolerance or interfaith dialogue.

“The world listens carefully to the words of any pope. And it is tragic and dangerous when one sows pain, either deliberately or carelessly. He needs to offer a deep and persuasive apology, demonstrating that words can also heal.”

Editorial in New York Times, 16 September 2006

Needless to say, Robert Spencer denounces this reasoned criticism as a characteristic example of the “dhimmi” NYT appeasing the Muslim hordes.

Dhimmi Watch, 15 September 2006

‘Our failure to confront radical Islam is there for all to see’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“At long last, the debate on Islamism as politics, not Islam as religion, is out in the open. Two weeks ago, Jack Straw might have felt he was taking a risk when publishing his now notorious article on the Muslim veil. However, he was pushing at an open door. From across the political spectrum there is now common consent that the old multicultural emperor, before whom generation of politicians have made obeisance, is now a pitiful, naked sight.”

Daily Telegraph, 17 October 2006

Melanie Phillips, perhaps? No, the appalling Denis MacShane – the man who chaired the All-Party Parliamentary Committee on Anti-Semitism that issued the ludicrous report claiming that Islamists in Britain are in an alliance with the BNP.

In 2003 MacShane delivered a speech in which he said: “It is time for the elected and community leaders of the British Muslims to make a choice – the British way, based on political dialogue and non-violent protests, or the way of the terrorists, against which the whole democratic world is uniting.” In response, his constituency party passed a resolution stating: “Denis MacShane is inciting racial and religious hatred, by publicly implying in the press that the Muslim community elected members and leaders are in favour of terrorism and being anti-British.”

Guardian, 28 November 2003

Islamophobia colours Austrian elections

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamophobia is coloring the election campaigns of right-leaning parties, vying to court the votes of anti-immigrant voters in the October parliamentary polls. “Far-right candidates play Islamophobia and xenophobia because they do not have real political programs,” Tarafa Baghajati, Deputy Chairman of the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), told IslamOnline.net.

Amid the aggressive campaigns, an explosive charge was planted outside the Austrian Muslim Youth (MJO) building in Vienna on Monday, but it was destroyed in a controlled explosion. A neo-Nazi slogan found on the package read “July 4 1926, Weimar” – an apparent reference to a key meeting that allowed Hitler to increase his control over the Nazi party.

In pamphlets widely circulated in the streets and election booths, the Freedom Party (FPÖ) dismisses Islam as a threat to the Christian identity of Austria. It claims that several parties, which it did not name, were trying to Islamize Europe and render its natives a minority in their own countries.

One of the FPÖ ads replaces the cross atop the famous Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, the oldest church in the country, with an Islamic crescent with the comment: “This is the true hidden desire of Muslims.” Another one shows a group of hijab-clad woman with a comment that Austria must be a social state not a country of immigrants.

Islam Online, 14 September 2006

Muslims seek apology over Pope remarks

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pope Benedict’s comments about Islam could hurt religious harmony, government and religious leaders in the world’s most populous Muslim countries, Indonesia and Pakistan, said on Friday. A growing chorus of Muslim leaders have called on the Pope to apologise for the remarks he made in a speech in Germany on Tuesday when he used the terms “jihad” and “holy war”.

Pakistan’s National Assembly, parliament’s lower house, unanimously passed a resolution on Friday condemning the Pope’s comments. “This statement has hurt sentiments of the Muslims,” the resolution said. “This is also against the charter of the United Nations. This house demands the Pope retract his remarks in the interest of harmony among different religions of the world.”

Islamic scholars say the Pontiff’s comments show how little he understands Islam and some have said Islamic countries should threaten to break off relations with the Vatican.

Reuters, 15 September 2006

See also Islam Online, 15 September 2006

Canadian journalism continues to stereotype Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“A quick glance at mainstream Canadian papers these days reveals an incorrigible penchant for cultural racism. Through the use of terms that are not conventionally associated with discrimination, the media is separating Muslims from the rest of society…. In an article titled, ‘How racism has invaded Canada‘, published in the U.K. paper The Independent, celebrated correspondent Robert Fisk precisely elucidates that ‘there are now two types of Canadian citizens: The Canadian-born variety (Muslims) and Canadians (the rest)’.”

Saad Sayeed in Excalibur, 13 September 2006