Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Why are we not banning the Qur’an?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Following its third summit in Warsaw on 16-17 May the Council of Europe issued a declaration containing the following statement: “We strongly condemn all forms of intolerance and discrimination, in particular those based on sex, race and religion, including antisemitism and islamophobia.” See here.

Ali Sina is appalled that Islamophobia should be bracketed with antisemitism: “Islam advocates the hatred of the Jews in particular but also of Christians who according to the Quran have corrupted their Scripture and call Jesus the son of God. The Quran’s biggest condemnation is reserved for the people of other religions and of no religion. All these people, including Jews and Christians are considered to be najis and fuels of hellfire. This is hate. This is hate-mongering. There is no other way to put it. Why are we not banning the Quran? Why are we not condemning Islam for blatantly advocating hate?”

FaithFreedom.org, 25 May 2005

Well, you can quite see why he might not be too keen on the suppression of Islamophobia, can’t you?

Robert Spencer, for his part, applauds “the courageous and insightful Ali Sina”.

Dhimmi Watch, 25 May 2005

The Evening Standard, Mad Mel and the Muslim Council of Britain

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Flames of HateOn 20 May, during a protest outside the US embassy in London against the desecration of the Qu’ran at Guantánamo, a minority of demonstrators chanted extremist slogans. The Evening Standard reported:

“Led by a man on a megaphone, they chanted, ‘USA watch your back, Osama is coming back’ and ‘Kill, kill USA, kill, kill George Bush’. A small detail of police watched as they shouted: ‘Bomb, bomb New York’ and ‘George Bush, you will pay, with your blood, with your head’.”

Though the Standard mentioned that only “some among the crowd” were responsible for chanting these slogans, the overall impression given was that the demonstration was dominated by such elements. If more moderate voices were present, you’d never have known it from the Standard report.

Evening Standard, 20 May 2005

Predictably Melanie Phillips leaped on this. Basing herself on the Evening Standard report, she claimed that “among the organisers of this revealing hate-fest” was the Muslim Council of Britain.

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 24 May 2005

Yeah right, Melanie. The MCB is well known for its support of Osama bin Laden and its enthusiastic endorsement of 9/11. But why let facts get in the way of an outburst of anti-Muslim prejudice, eh?

For the MCB’s letter to the Evening Standard, see here.

See also Yusuf Smith’s comments, though he mistakenly accepts as good coin the Standard‘s false report that the MCB helped organise the demo.

Indigo Jo Blogs, 25 May 2005

Hijab activists see European campaign a ‘success’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rajnaara AkhtarMarking the end of three months of intense lobbying and painstaking efforts to make their voice heard and gain the support of Members of the European Parliament, Protect Hijab activists see the campaign a “success” and “positive step”.

“If we look at the number of Written Declarations (WDs) that have been put before the European Parliament this year, from eight WDs only two got more signatories than ours,” Vice-Coordinator of the London-based Assembly for the Protection of Hijab (Protect Hijab), Rajnaara Akhtar, told IslamOnline.net Tuesday, May 24.

She was referring to a Written Declaration on Religious Rights and Freedoms, which was tabled by Protect Hijab and MEPs to the parliament February 21 as a preliminary step towards a binding resolution obliging European countries, particularly France, to lift ban on hijab in state-run institutions like schools.

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An essay in imperial villain-making

Posted on by Bob Pitt

William_Dalrymple“By the end of the 90s, the hardliners calling for regime change in the east found that they had a powerful ally in government. This new president was not prepared to wait to be attacked: he was a new sort of conservative, aggressive in foreign policy, bitterly anti-French, and intent on turning his country into the unrivalled global power. It was best, he believed, simply to remove any hostile Muslim regime that presumed to resist the west.”

William Dalrymple reports.

Guardian, 24 May 2005

Islam not the only religion marred by violence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Christians, Jews, and Buddhists don’t ‘lash out in homocidal rage when their religion is insulted’? Would that it were so. Unfortunately, even a cursory scan of the headlines from the past few years, or even this past week, shows how wrong it is.”

Tom Regan replies to Jeff Jacoby’s article in the Boston Globe portraying Islam as a uniquely violent religion.

Christian Science Monitor, 23 May 2005

Update:  Robert Spencer denounces this egregious example of “Dhimmitude at the Christian Science Monitor”.

Dhimmi Watch, 26 May 2005

Release Jose Padilla

Posted on by Bob Pitt

May 8 marked the third anniversary of the illegal imprisonment of Jose Padilla. Padilla was apprehended at O’ Hare Airport in 2002 by Federal officers under the shaky “material witness” provision and trundled off to prison. In a conspicuous effort to poison public opinion, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced on national TV that Padilla was conspiring to set off a “dirty bomb” (radioactive device) within the United Sates. To date, the government has never produced a scintilla of evidence to corroborate their spurious claims. Simply put, Padilla is innocent of all charges.

Information Clearing House, 22 May 2005

Muslim world turned into a tinderbox

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim world turned into a tinderbox

Haroon Siddiqui says US is fooling no one over use of Qur’an as instrument of torture

Toronto Star, 22 May 2005

Iraq. Uzbekistan. The Qur’an. These issues in the news expose American double standards, hypocrisy and outright lies. They also help explain how George W. Bush has turned the Muslim world into a tinderbox.

It is his policies, not a Newsweek item on the desecration of the holy book at Guantánamo Bay, that sparked the anti-U.S. protests that killed 17 people. What the magazine reported, albeit sloppily, is not new.

Four Britons, one Moroccan, one Kuwaiti and at least one Afghan released from the American base last year have said, separately, that the Qur’an was routinely stomped upon, ripped apart and strewn about toilets. They spoke of three hunger strikes in protest.

The International Red Cross has confirmed it repeatedly told the Pentagon, starting in 2002, that detainees were complaining of Americans using the Qur’an as a tool of torture.

Whom are Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and others fooling, other than their pliant half of the American electorate, with phony pronouncements about how America would never tolerate such criminality?

The Qur’an episodes are but one part of a broad offensive of violating the religious sensibilities of Muslims in Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Some had pork or alcohol forced down their throats; they had tape placed over their mouths for reciting the Qur’an; many Muslims were forced to be naked in front of each other, members of the opposite sex and sometimes their own families,” said The Times of London.

Physicians for Human Rights also cited forced nudity, masturbation and other transgressions of religious and cultural norms.

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Gay Palestinians tortured and murdered by PLO and Hamas says Outrage

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Outrage engages in its now annual disruptive stunt at the “Free Palestine” demonstration in London. “The Palestinian administration tolerates the so-called ‘honour’ killing of women who refuse to submit to the strict rules of orthodox Islam”, Tatchell claims.

Outrage press release, 23 May 2005

For a comment on Outrage’s antics last year, see Yoshie Furuhashi’s useful article, “Queering Palestinian solidarity activism”, at Critical Montages.

Or if you have problems with that link try here.

Tatchell crosses the line

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Outrage“A friend of mine told me that Peter Tatchell was again at the Free Palestine demo yesterday. Apparently he was with a group of about thirty people (with a police escort) bearing placards saying ‘Stop the Honour Killings’. The expression ‘honour killings’ is usually used to refer to domestic murders of women deemed unworthy. It’s used by western Orientalists to suggest that there is something worse about this than the two women killed by men every week in the UK. So why is Tatchell using the expression to condemn the killing of gays in Palestine? And why does he see fit to demonstrate against Palestinians at a Free Palestine rally? When he first invade the demo last year he bore a placard with the inane slogan ‘Israel stop persecuting Palestine – Palestine stop persecuting queers’. Now by conflating homophobia in the third world with extreme domestic violence, and putting as orientalist a spin on it as he could think of, he’s crossed the line from seeking to embarrass Palestinian officialdom to full-blown anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia.”

Mark Elf at Jews sans Frontieres, 22 May 2005

Why don’t we Muslims grow up?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Irshad Manji poses the question. Of course, when she says “we Muslims” she’s not talking about herself, just her co-religionists. She blames them for the outbreak of the sometimes violent protests provoked by the Newsweek report about desecration of the Qur’an at Guantánamo.

Times, 20 May 2005

Ramzy Baroud points out that the Times “made a clever choice when it selected a Muslim, Irshad Manji, to address the fierce response to the scandal”. By pinning blame on her fellow Muslims rather than on those responsible for the oppression that gave rise to the protests, Manji provided a useful alibi for imperialism.

Islam Online 22 May 2005

For the Muslim Council of Britain’s response – “It is hard not to conclude that Manji’s main interest is actually in provoking Muslims in order to promote herself and fatten her bank account” – see here.