“President Bush recently changed his definition of who ‘the enemy’ is from bin Laden and the al Queda terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 to ‘Islamic fascists’ in general, sending the right after Islam in general and Middle Easterners in particular.”
Dave Johnson in the Huffington Post, 20 August 2006
An article by Gabriel Milland in the 17 August issue of the Daily Express, reporting on a YouGov poll which found that three-quarters of respondents believed that Britain was engaged in a battle against “Islamic terrorists”, carried the misleading headline “Britain says: we’re at war with Islam“.
Asians in Media reproduces a letter of complaint sent to the editor of the Express: “I was disgusted to read your article headlined ‘Britain says: We’re at war with Islam’. This article is a disgrace because the headline does not in anyway correctly portray the contents of the article and has obviously been chosen purely to sell more newspapers.”
Asians in Media, 20 August 2006
Complaints can be sent to the editor at peter.hill@express.co.uk and to Mr Milland at gabriel.milland@express.co.uk.
“The increasingly common juxtaposition of the words ‘Islam’ and ‘fascism’ in America is a result of the efforts to poison public opinion by the Neo-cons. They cut the White House to fit their own lines. President Bush first used terms with a Neo-con stamp like ‘Islamo-fascist’, ‘Islamic radicalism’ and ‘Islamo-fascism’ in a speech he made on October 6, 2005 at the National Endowment for Democracy. He later used such terms between the lines on different occasions. This subject caught Turkey’s attention the most last week by way of a statement Bush made after the London terror operation. It was reported by many Turkish press organizations that Bush used the term ‘Islamist fascist’. Actually, the U.S. president mentioned a war against ‘Islamic fascists’. The adjective ‘Islamic’ is used in two ways in English. The first means Muslim. The other means something conforming and belonging to the Islamic religion. If the first meaning was intended, it points to certain Muslims encouraging fascism. In the second meaning, fascism is directly linked to Islam. While Neo-cons, most of whom are enemies of both Muslims and Islam, say ‘Islamo-fascism’, let there be no doubt that they intend the latter meaning.”
Ali H. Aslan in Zaman, 21 August 2006
The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) issued a fresh warning about Islamophobic hysteria today after two men “of Middle-Eastern appearance” were forced off a British-bound flight.
Fearful passengers on board flight ZB 613 from Malaga to Manchester demanded that staff remove them from the plane early on Wednesday. The pair were said to be guilty of “suspicious behaviour” – which amounted to being overheard speaking Arabic, wearing leather jackets on a hot day and checking their watches. Six other passengers refused to board the plane and others flounced off when they heard about it.
The two men were eventually kicked off the flight and questioned by police, before being released without charge.
IHRC chairman Massoud Shadjareh said that the incident was “exactly the type of thing we’ve been so concerned about.” He said:
“There is ever-increasing Islamophobia being implemented in the war on terror. It is counterproductive, not just because it’s going to alienate people who are perceived to be Muslim, but also because terrorists have shown that they will make themselves look completely different to how people perceive them to look. By profiling people on the basis of ethnicity or religion we are actually endangering our lives.”
A spokesman for Monarch Airlines said: “There were two passengers on the flight who came to the attention of the other people because they were apparently acting suspiciously.”
Morning Star, 21 August 2006
“‘A notorious pro-Israeli Islamophobe’, ‘desperate to discredit Muslims’, ‘a track record for displaying unfairness and twisting the truth’. Panorama’s leading reporter, John Ware, is not quite public enemy number one for many British Muslims – that is an accolade no doubt held by Bush or Blair – but postings such as these on the Muslim Public Affairs Committee website show he comes a close second…. He says he is one of five journalists – the others are Martin Bright, the political editor of the New Statesman, Melanie Phillips of the Daily Mail, the Observer’s Nick Cohen and the Times writer-turned-Tory MP, Michael Gove – who have been labelled by the MCB as ‘being in the vanguard of Islamophobia in this country’. ‘We don’t meet up like witches to discuss it’, jokes Ware. ‘We’ve all come to this view independently that – potentially – politics and Islam is an incendiary mix’.”
Needless to say, Ware indignantly denies that he’s an Islamophobe: “Islamophobic meaning an irrational fear of Muslims? Absolutely not.”
For our earlier coverage of Mr Ware and Panorama see for example here and here,
For Yusuf Smith’s comments, see Indigo Jo Blogs, 22 August 2006
British holidaymakers staged an unprecedented mutiny – refusing to allow their flight to take off until two men they feared were terrorists were forcibly removed.
The extraordinary scenes happened after some of the 150 passengers on a Malaga-Manchester flight overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic.
Passengers told cabin crew they feared for their safety and demanded police action. Some stormed off the Monarch Airlines Airbus A320 minutes before it was due to leave the Costa del Sol at 3am. Others waiting for Flight ZB 613 in the departure lounge refused to board it.
The Monarch pilot accompanied by armed Civil Guard police and airport security staff, approached the two men and took their passports. Half an hour later, police returned and escorted the two Asian passengers off the jet.
Websites used by pilots and cabin crew were yesterday reporting further incidents. In one, two British women with young children on another flight from Spain complained about flying with a bearded Muslim even though he had been security-checked twice before boarding.
Mail on Sunday, 20 August 2006
Robert Spencer comments: “no doubt all sorts of opprobrium is now going to rain down on the passengers’ heads: cries of ingrained ‘Islamophobia’, and calls by Muslim leaders and their willing Leftist stooges for some kind of institutionalized and nationwide ‘education’ (i.e. propaganda) campaign to prevent this sort of thing.”
For Osama Saeed’s comments, see Rolled Up Trousers, 20 August 2006
See also Pickled Politics, 20 August 2006
Update: See “Anger as ‘mob’ forces Muslim men off aircraft”, Independent, 21 August 2006
Franco Frattini, the Vice President of the European Commission, has been castigated for making racist and Islamophobic remarks about Muslims, while creating alarm by suggesting that the EU wants to impose its own interpretation of Islam.
“Talks about creating a ‘European Islam’ not only indicates that the EU is planning to impose their own version of Islam on Muslims but will create more anti-Western and anti-Christian feeling in the Muslim community,” said Ahmed Versi, Editor of The Muslim News.
Yusuf Smith draws our attention to an exposé of the recently-launched Sufi Muslim Council, which has been boosted by the likes of Martin Bright.
Indigo Jo Blogs, 18 August 2006
See also Rolled Up Trousers, 18 August 2006
“I reject the references over the past week to ‘Walthamstan’ in the media, which seem to be painting east London as an isolationist Pakistani Muslim community and a haven for terrorists.”
Vanessa Walters in the Guardian, 18 August 2006
“I was absolutely horrified by the poll results cited in a recent article. USA TODAY reported that ‘39% of respondents to the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll said they felt at least some prejudice against Muslims’. It said that 39% also ‘favored requiring Muslims, including U.S. citizens, to carry a special ID’ as a means of preventing terrorist attacks in the United States. Further, the poll found that about one-third of respondents ‘said U.S. Muslims were sympathetic to al-Qaeda, and that 22% said they wouldn’t want Muslims as neighbors’ (‘USA’s Muslims under a cloud’, Cover story, Life, Aug. 10).
“How can these respondents live with themselves?
“Do these 39% fear and hate the Muslim ‘boogeyman’ so strongly they would demonize Muslims by invoking the use of special IDs similar to practices during the Holocaust? If 39% of our country don’t mind throwing out the constitutional rights of our fellow citizens, what’s next? Internment? Indeed, why stop at Muslims? In this climate of fear, every outsider is seen as a potential threat…. Like the remaining 61%, I will not sit quietly and let this infectious disease of fear and mistrust contaminate my soul or destroy my country.”
Letter in USA TODAY, 16 August 2006