Category Archives: Right wing

Tancredo accuses Perry of being soft on migrants and Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Since Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s debate debacle last week, commentators and conservatives alike have been questioning his readiness and looking for another presidential alternative to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Now, Colorado’s Tom Tancredo is piling on.

In a column for the Daily Caller, Tancredo, who ran twice for his party’s presidential nomination in an effort to inject the illegal immigration issue into the larger debate, is slamming Perry for his soft policies on illegal immigration in Texas – and what Tancredo calls his “Muslim blind spot.”

“What is not yet as widely known about Perry is that he extends his taxpayer-funded compassion not only to illegal aliens but also to Muslim groups seeking to whitewash the violent history of that religion,” Tancredo writes. “Perry endorsed and facilitated the adoption in Texas public schools of a pro-Muslim curriculum unit developed by Muslim clerics in Pakistan.”

Tancredo cites a study by The Center for Immigration Studies, which shows that 81% of the 279,000 jobs created in Texas in the past four years went to non-citizens, a high number of them illegal aliens, to discredit Perry’s central presidential argument – that he’s overseen a “Texas miracle” of job growth while the national economy continues to decline.

And in 2008, as Tancredo points out, Perry helped expand the Muslim Histories and Culture Project, a teacher-training program spearheaded by Texas Ismailis that introduces Islamic history and culture curricula into Texas schools.

While many of the GOP’s 2012 contenders have sought to distance themselves with Islam, Perry, Tancredo points out, refused to endorse a proposal in the Texas legislature to outlaw Sharia law in the state.

“What is it with Republican elites like Perry?” Tancredo writes. “Do they think Republican primary voters are stupid? Does Perry think he can talk tough in defending the Texas death penalty and then waffle on border security and taxpayer support for illegal alien children? Why does he think he can claim to be the ‘tea party candidate’ while endorsing a whitewash of Islamic extremism in Texas schools?”

KWGN, 28 September 2011

You’ll note that the main authority Tancredo cites in his attack on Perry is “Islam scholar [sic] Robert Spencer, head of Jihad Watch”.

Brendan O’Neill defends EDL’s right to intimidate Muslim community in Tower Hamlets

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Brendan O'NeillOver at his Telegraph blog, Brendan O’Neill of spiked, online journal of the tendency formerly known as the Revolutionary Communist Party, attacks Unite Against Fascism for issuing what he describes as “one of the silliest political statements of the year so far”.

The UAF statement opposes the home secretary’s decision to grant the Metropolitan Police’s application not just for a ban on the proposed march by the English Defence League in Tower Hamlets on 3 September but also for a blanket ban on all marches in five London boroughs over a 30-day period. This has resulted in the United East End march opposing the EDL being prohibited, along with an East End Pride demonstration next month and a march to commemorate the battle of Cable Street in October.

O’Neill sneers: “‘This is a huge attack on everyone’s civil liberties’, bleats UAF, which is weird, considering that they’re the ones who invited the Government to undermine people’s civil liberties in the first place.” He asserts that “UAF has no one but itself to blame for this extraordinary clampdown on the right to protest”.

Although O’Neill invites his readers to conclude that UAF campaigned for the EDL to be banned from marching through Tower Hamlets, he must be well aware that this was not in fact the case. The Socialist Workers Party, which is a major component of UAF, opposes calls for state bans on far-right demonstrations, so a common line on that issue within UAF was impossible. One of the arguments the SWP advances in support of its position is as follows: “When the state gives itself extra repressive powers it will use them against the left. The government brought in the Public Order Act in 1937 supposedly to counteract the rise of Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts. It didn’t stop fascism – and was used against left wing and workers’ protests for decades afterwards.”

This is a reasonable point. But it isn’t what O’Neill is arguing at all. Quoting UAF’s complaint that “it is our human right to peacefully march in Tower Hamlets”, he demands: “how come UAF has a ‘human right’ to march, but the EDL does not? Are EDL members not human? … What UAF is effectively saying is: ‘We should have the freedom to march, but they shouldn’t’.”

Well, yes, that is indeed what UAF is arguing. O’Neill just can’t see the difference between a march by far-right racists intended to intimidate the Muslim comunity of Tower Hamlets, and the UAF-backed United East End march in which a broad coalition of forces planned to express their opposition to the EDL’s violent anti-Muslim bigotry. From O’Neill’s standpoint, if United East End, East End Pride or the Cable Street commemoration are allowed to march, then the EDL should have that right too.

It’s not very often this website finds occasion to quote Martin Bright favourably, but as he wrote on his Spectator blog in opposition to the blanket ban: “The whole point for those of us advocating a ban on the EDL was that there was a specific threat of violence associated with this extremist view. This new draconian measure suggests the police and government are suspicious of all protest…. While I accept that these are particularly difficult times for the Met in the aftermath of the riots, I can’t accept that all street protest should be off limits. Would I support a march in protest at the ban? Yes, I probably would.”

Predictably, the EDL have posted an approving link to O’Neill’s article on their Facebook page, while Casuals United have reproduced it in full. But it is unlikely that O’Neill will have any qualms about that. Earlier this year spiked published an even more egregious defence of the EDL by Patrick Hayes, who strenuously objected to the imposition of Criminal ASBOs on two EDL members – one of whom had attacked a left-wing photographer at a far-right demonstration against Harrow Central Mosque, while the other had subjected an Asian family to racist abuse as they waited for a train at a railway station he was passing though on his way back from an EDL protest. For spiked, these individuals are not racist thugs whose victims have the right to be protected by the law but rather, as O’Neill puts it, “cranky EDL types” who are fully entitled to express their opinions.

Some of us are old enough to remember the days when the RCP regarded the struggle against racism as one of the central issues facing the Left and set up its own sectarian front organisation, Workers Against Racism, to address it. Along with the RCP’s transformation into spiked, their ultra-leftism has now evolved into right-wing libertarian individualism and today their sole input into the struggle against racism is to defend the “human rights” of racists.

As for the police, the Met’s motives can only be guessed at, but it was clear from the start that they were opposed to applying for a ban on the EDL, and only did so after the mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman, threatened legal action. So you might be inclined to see their insistence on a blanket ban as an attempt to deter further calls for action against the EDL. It will also be revealing to see how the Met polices the EDL’s static protest. They have the power under Section 14 of the Public Order Act to insist that the protest is held on the outskirts of Tower Hamlets, well away from the East London Mosque and the neighbouring Muslim community against whom the EDL’s protest is aimed. On present performance, however, it seems highly unlikely that the Met will use that power. More likely they will escort the EDL to a protest area near the centre of the borough, so that the EDL effectively get to stage their march through Tower Hamlets anyway.

The West Yorkshire Police have set an example of how the EDL should be dealt with. Not only has the Chief Constable, Sir Norman Bettison, lobbied the government for increased powers to use against the EDL, but when the EDL demonstrated in Dewsbury in June he refused to let them hold their protest outside the town hall and used his authority under Section 14 to keep them penned in the station car park, away from the town centre and the Muslim community they hoped to intimidate.

It is disgraceful that the police force in the UK’s capital have proved so reluctant to take similar effective action against a gang of violent racists who are invading London in an attempt to threaten Muslims and poison community relations. It is also shameful that neither the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, nor his deputy mayor for policing and chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, Kit Malthouse, have provided any lead at all here. If Ken Livingstone was still mayor you can guarantee he wouldn’t have sat back and allowed the Met a free pass over this issue.

Jewish Defence League and Canadian Hindu Advocacy object to employee guide to Ramadan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ontario government officials say the success of an employee guide to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan has prompted other publications for workers who celebrate Diwali, Christmas and Easter.

A “Ramadan: the Muslim Month of Fasting” guide was issued to 67,000 Ontario government workers last July telling them to be “sensitive” to Muslim co-workers because they are fasting and praying from dusk to dawn. The document advises managers to provide a safe room for Muslims to pray and that they may require to make more trips to the bathroom to wash before they pray. They are required to pray five times a day.

Jason Wesley, of the Ministry of Government Services, said similar publications have been sent to workers “explaining the significance of the Jewish observances of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur”. Wesley said guides to mark the Hindu festival of Diwali and Christian celebrations of Christmas and Easter are planned for release.

The guide has sparked concerns from non-Muslim government workers who claim they’re being discriminated against.

“There should be no religion whatsoever in public offices,” Meyer Weinstein of the Jewish Defence League said. “They (Ontario government) are turning the workplace into a three-ring circus.”

The JDL, Canadian Hindu Advocacy and several Christian groups are calling for an end to Muslim students praying in the cafeteria with an imam on some Fridays at Valley Park Middle School on Overlea Blvd.

“The Muslims are being given preferential treatment in schools and offices,” said Advocacy director Ron Banerjee. “The other religions were thrown in as window dressing for the Muslim prayers.”

Toronto Sun, 27 September 2011

Quite who these non-Muslim workers who feel they’ve been discriminated against might be is unclear. The source of this claim would appear to be Ron Bannerjee, who was quoted in an earlier report as saying that Hindu employees are “outraged” by the Ramadan guide. He added: “Other workers in the office will have to work twice as hard to pick up their slack. Muslim workers will require more time for their religion and other people will have to do their work.” The idea that Bannerjee is a reliable source on this issue is of course laughable.

Nazir-Ali on meeting the English Defence League

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The report about Blackburn EDL acclaiming a talk they attended by Michael Nazir-Ali, and posting a photo of themselves with him on their Facebook page, has been taken up by Riazat Butt at the Guardian. She contacted Nazir-Ali’s office and asked them:

“Was the bishop aware that EDL members were in the audience? Did he know he was posing with EDL members in the photograph? What does he have to say about posing with EDL members and the positive comments he got from EDL members?”

Also: “Does he regret being photographed with them? Would he have had his photograph taken with them if he had known they were members of the EDL? Is he concerned that his views have led EDL members to think he is ‘on their wavelength’?”

Nazir-Ali replied that he had no idea that the people he was photographed with were EDL: “These pictures were requested at a public meeting by individuals who were not known to me and have been published without my consent.” He also refers to a couple of articles he wrote attacking the BNP. But the question “Is he concerned that his views have led EDL members to think he is ‘on their wavelength’?” didn’t receive an answer.

‘Islamists without brakes’: Pipes on the Islamification of Turkey

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“When four out of five of the Turkish chiefs of staff abruptly resigned on July 29, 2011, they signaled the effective end of the republic founded in 1923 by Kemal Atatürk. A second republic headed by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Islamist colleagues of the AK Party (AKP) began that day. The military safely under their control, AKP ideologues now enjoy can pursue their ambitions to create an Islamic order.”

Daniel Pipes at National Review Online, 27 September 2011

Muslim denied place on Florida county’s Republican Party executive committee

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MIAMI — Islam and tea party activism clashed at a raucous meeting Monday night when a group of Broward County Republicans blocked a Muslim activist as a member of the party’s executive committee.

Republicans, who changed their rules to publicly vet Nezar Hamze and then vote on his application by secret ballot, said they didn’t oppose him because he was a Muslim – but because he is associated with the Center for American-Islamic Relations – but because he is associated with the Center for American-Islamic Relations, whose Washington-area affiliate was an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal terrorism indictment.

Hamze, CAIR’s South Florida director, said his local group had nothing to do with the suspect activities in Washington. He said CAIR advocates for civil rights for Muslims, who have been unfairly targeted ever since 9/11. “I’m aligned with Republican values. And I want to serve the party,” Hamze said, who earlier told a reporter that any effort to block him was the result of anti-Islamic “bigotry”.

At times, when he addressed the packed room at the Sheraton Suites in Fort Lauderdale, a few members shouted out among the crowd of about 300. “Terrorist!” said one man. “Let him speak!” said another.

Members of Broward’s Republican Party said Hamze was making a mockery of their rules and was trying to become a member as a publicity stunt. “I don’t have a positive impression of Mr. Hamze. I don’t think he will be an asset to our party,” said Scott Spages, who is involved in programs concerning radical Islam at his church, Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale.

In the end, the Broward Republican Executive Committee voted 11-158 to block him from committee membership. He can still attend meetings, but as a general member of the public. “Wow,” he said afterward. “If I had realized it would be like that, I wish they had just sent me a letter saying I was denied.”

Continue reading →

BBC ‘jettisons 2,000 years of Christianity’ … at the behest of Marxists and Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mail on Sunday BBC abolishes Christian era1This is the front page headline in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday. The accompanying article begins:

“The BBC has been accused of ‘absurd political correctness’ after dropping the terms BC and AD in case they offend non-Christians. The Corporation has replaced the familiar Anno Domini (the year of Our Lord) and Before Christ with the obscure terms Common Era and Before Common Era.”

And the Mail‘s James Delingpole chips in with a comment piece claiming that “all reference to Christ has been expunged” by the BBC, as part of a “Marxist plot”. The BBC’s outrageous policy, Delingpole tells us, is “an act of cultural suicide. Most of us may not realise this but the ideological Left certainly does, for it has long been part of its grand plan to destroy Western civilisation from within.”

But it’s not just the Marxists who are behind the BBC’s decision to abolish the Christian era. As the Mail‘s report emphasises: “The website for BBC Religion and Ethics, headed by commissioning editor Aaqil Ahmed, who is a Muslim, is littered with references to Common Era and Before Common Era.” And this is repeated beneath a photo of Ahmed, just in case readers have missed its sinister significance. Indeed, over at his Guardian blog, Martin Robbins points that the original caption to the picture (see below) read: “End of an era: BBC head of religion Aaqil Ahmed, the Corporation say, bizarrely, the change has nothing to with Mr Ahmed.”

This nonsense has been demolished by Tabloid Watch, who point out that the Mail‘s own report provides the refutation of its scaremongering introduction. Buried at the bottom of the article we find: “The BBC said last night: ‘The BBC has not issued editorial guidance on the date systems. Both AD and BC, and CE and BCE are widely accepted date systems and the decision on which term to use lies with individual production and editorial teams’.”

Mail on Sunday BBC abolishes Christian era2

Texas: Baptist church hosts Brigitte Gabriel

Posted on by Bob Pitt

First Baptist Church in KatyLast night, September 22, the town of Katy, typically known for high school football and achievement in public education, played host to an event featuring the nationally divisive discussion about the perceived peril that Islam poses against traditional Judeo-Christian values in America.

The gathering, sponsored by First Baptist Church of Katy, featured president of ACT! for America Education Brigitte Gabriel speaking on the proposed threats that Islam poses to the United States.

Dr. Randy White, Senior Pastor of First Baptist, said the event was an “educational venture to help First Baptist members and people in Katy understand the radical Muslim agenda out there threatening Judeo-Christian values.”

Attendees shared that Ms. Gabriel spoke in characteristically blunt tones and unsurprisingly held nothing back in presenting her perspective on Islam in America. Painting broad strokes across history and the globe, the ACT! for America Education president argued that radicalism is at the core of Islam and that the radical Muslim agenda has survived for 1400 years and is now persistent here in the United States. Speaking from her perspective as a Lebanese born Christian now living in America, Ms. Gabriel called for political measures to halt the suggested agenda of radical Muslims to enforce sharia law in the United States and repeatedly stated, “I’ve already lost one country, I do not want to lose another.”

Her speech was welcomed with strong applause, and at one point a standing ovation, by a crowd of some 500 attendees from the Katy community.

However, Ms. Gabriel’s visit did not garner positive reception alone. The Houston Press’s Richard Connely decried the event with a tongue-in-cheek article in which he stated: “If you’re wanting to hear a bigoted, pathetically overbroad stereotyping of a religion and a culture, what better place to go to than a church?”

Houston Chronicle, 23 September 2011