Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Enemies of the state?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Four men deprived of their liberty for four years on suspicion of being international terrorists disclose today that they have not once been questioned by police or security services since being arrested.

The four, who were among 16 suspects detained without trial under post-11 September terror legislation, later overturned by the law lords, give harrowing accounts of the treatment they have suffered. All are now under virtual house arrest. Although three face deportation, The Independent has learnt that there is no prospect of the men ever being questioned over the offences they are alleged to have committed.

In interviews with Amnesty International, the four – three Algerians and a Palestinian – say their detentions have harmed their physical and mental health. They also complain that their treatment has had a devastating impact on their wives and families.

The men were interned in Belmarsh jail in south-east London – which has been called Britain’s Guantanamo Bay – and other high security prisons in conditions consistently condemned by human rights organisations. Their detentions were ruled illegal by the law lords a year ago and they have since been released on control orders with tough restrictions on leaving home.

Three were re-arrested in August under immigration powers pending deportation and released by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission Act (Siac) in October on very strict bail conditions amounting to house arrest. One of them told Amnesty: “We’ve been moving from one nightmare to another.”

Independent, 15 December 2005

US paranoia over the Caliphate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The word getting the workout from the nation’s top guns these days is ‘caliphate’ – the term for the seventh-century Islamic empire that spanned the Middle East, spread to Southwest Asia, North Africa and Spain, then ended with the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258. Specialists on Islam say the word is a mysterious and ominous one for many Americans, and that the administration knows it….

“So now, Mr. Cheney and others warn, Al Qaeda’s ultimate goal is the re-establishment of the caliphate, with calamitous consequences for the United States. As Mr. Cheney put it in Lake Elmo, referring to Osama bin Laden and his followers: ‘They talk about wanting to re-establish what you could refer to as the seventh-century caliphate’ to be ‘governed by Sharia law, the most rigid interpretation of the Koran’. Or as Mr. Rumsfeld put it on Monday: ‘Iraq would serve as the base of a new Islamic caliphate to extend throughout the Middle East, and which would threaten legitimate governments in Europe, Africa and Asia.’ General Abizaid was dire, too. ‘They will try to re-establish a caliphate throughout the entire Muslim world,’ he told the House Armed Services Committee in September, adding that the caliphate’s goals would include the destruction of Israel….

“A number of scholars and former government officials take strong issue with the administration’s warning about a new caliphate, and compare it to the fear of communism spread during the Cold War. They say that although Al Qaeda’s statements do indeed describe a caliphate as a goal, the administration is exaggerating the magnitude of the threat as it seeks to gain support for its policies in Iraq. In the view of John L. Esposito, an Islamic studies professor at Georgetown University, there is a difference between the ability of small bands of terrorists to commit attacks across the world and achieving global conquest.”

Elizabeth Bumiller in the New York Times, 12 December 2005

Race violence erupts in Sydney

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cronulla riot

Australian Prime Minister John Howard called for ethnic and religious tolerance on Monday after racial violence, spurred on police say by white supremacists, erupted in parts of Sydney.

Racial tension sparked violence on Cronulla Beach on Sunday when around 5,000 people, some yelling racist chants, attacked youths of Middle Eastern background, saying they were defending their beach after lifesavers were attacked there last week.

Violence then spread to a second beach, Maroubra, where scores of men armed with baseball bats smashed about 100 cars.

“Attacking people on the basis of race and ethnicity is totally unacceptable and should be repudiated by all Australians, irrespective of background and politics,” Howard told a news conference on Monday, by which time the violence had subsided.

At Botany Bay, riot police confronted hundreds of youths and police said a man was stabbed in the back in a southern Sydney suburb in what media reports said appeared to be racial violence. New South Wales (NSW) police said a group of Neo-Nazis and white supremacists stirred on the drunken crowd at Cronulla.

“There appears to be an element of white supremacists and they really have no place in mainstream Australian society. Those sort of characters are best placed in Berlin 1930s, not in Cronulla 2005,” NSW Police Minister Carl Scully told reporters.

On Sunday, mobs of drunken and angry youths, some draped in Australian flags, shouted “No more Lebs (Lebanese)”. The mobs chased and attacked Australians of Middle East appearance, rushing onto a train at one stage to fight. More than 20 people were injured and 12 arrested.

Arabic and Muslim leaders said the violence had been expected as Muslims had been subjected to racist taunts, especially since the Iraq war and bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali where many Australians were among the dead.

“Arab Australians have had to cope with vilification, racism, abuse and fear of a racial backlash for a number of years, but these riots will take that fear to a new level,” said Australian Arabic Council chairman Roland Jabbour.

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More on the Muslim ‘Project’ for world domination

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“… anyone who believes in the establishment of the Global Caliphate must by that token believe that the Caliphate will in the fullness of time encompass Aberystwyth. However, I do not think that anyone at all has any practical plan based on the demand that the town of Aberystwyth must submit to sharia law.”

Daniel Davies on the Muslim plan to conquer the world (see here and here) uncovered by Scott Burgess and Melanie Phillips.

Crooked Timber, 8 December 2005

See also Lenin’s Tomb, 10 December 2005

Muslim group urges Kember release

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The head of the world’s oldest Islamic movement has called for the release of Briton Norman Kember, abducted in Iraq. Mohammed Mahdi Akef, president of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, said Mr Kember and three other hostages were being held against Islam’s principles. “In the name of the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide I call for the western peace activists in Iraq to be released immediately,” he said on al-Jazeera TV. “Islam rejects the kidnapping of innocent people regardless of their aim, beliefs and opinion”, Mr Akef said.

BBC News, 9 December 2005

Lords reject torture evidence use

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Secret evidence which might have been obtained by torture cannot be used against terror suspects in UK courts, the law lords have ruled. The ruling means the home secretary will have to review all cases where evidence from other countries might have been obtained in this way.

The Court of Appeal ruled last year that such evidence could be used if UK authorities had no involvement. But eight of the 10 foreign terror suspects who were being held without charge, backed by human rights groups, challenged that ruling. They argued evidence obtained in US detention camps should be excluded.

BBC News, 8 December 2005

Mad Mel denounces ‘racist hate-mongers’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

madmelRemember this conference, reported in the Times under the headline “Muslim peace rally attracts thousands”? Well, Melanie Phillips has got round to offering us her take on the proceedings: “The people participating in this hate-fest need to be exposed for the racist hate-mongers that they are.” And of course we’re all familiar with Mel’s firm stand against racist hate-mongering, aren’t we?

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 7 December 2005

Was Phillips actually at the conference, then? No, of course not. She relies for her information on Carol Gould, a US rightwinger temporarily resident in London who recently wrote warmly about meeting a BNP-sympathising taxi-driver and expressed anxiety that the Mayor wants better representation for minority ethnic communities in the capital’s taxi fleet (see here).

For Yusuf Smith’s comments, see Indigo Jo Blogs, 7 December 2005

Guardian letters on Hirsi Ali and religious hatred

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A couple of interesting letters in the Guardian, from Lord Avebury and Liz Fekete of the IRR, replying to Timothy Garton’s Ash’s article on Dutch right-wing politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the proposed new law against incitement to religious hatred.

Avebury points out that the article “wrongly implies that Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others like her who robustly criticise religious beliefs, customs or sacred objects would be silenced by the racial and religious hatred bill”. Fekete argues that “for ordinary Muslim women, who face daily abuse for wearing the hijab, the ‘thoughtful, calm’ Ayaan Hirsi Ali is more provocateur than liberator”.

Guardian, 7 December 2005