Right Wing Watch reports that US Christian bigot Pat Robertson has once again attacked Muslims, by comparing them to Nazis. “Why is it bigoted to resist Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and to say we don’t want to live under Nazi Germany?” Robertson asked. “But oh it’s bigoted if we speak out against a force that is slowly but surely trying to exercise domination over the world.”
Category Archives: Right wing
‘Muslim girl stoned to death under Sharia law’ claims Daily Mail
A teenage Muslim girl was stoned to death under “Sharia law” after taking part in a beauty contest in Ukraine. Katya Koren, 19, was found dead in a village in the Crimea region near her home. Friends said she liked wearing fashionable clothes and had come seventh in a beauty contest.
Her battered body was buried in a forest and was found a week after she disappeared. Police have opened a murder investigation and are looking into claims that three Muslim youths killed her, claiming her death was justified under Islam.
One of the three – named as 16-year-old Bihal Gaziev – is under arrest and told police that Katya had “violated the laws of Sharia”. Gaziev has said he has no regrets about her death.
Of course the article was immediately seized on by the English Defence League:
If you can stomach it, you can read the comments by EDL supporters here.
And the article provoked the usual succession of bigots into posting anti-Muslim comments on the Mail‘s own website:
“Would be nice to see some supporters of this faith speaking out against this all too common occurance.”
“In a recent demonstration by Muslims against the English, did I not see banners proclaiming ‘Sharia for Britain’.”
“How long before some idiot starts bleating about ‘Islamaphobia’ with reference to this news story? Im suffering from Islamaphobia myself I have a distinct aversion to young girls being brutaly murdered in the name of religion by cowards!”
“I wish apologists for the misogyny of ‘Islam’ would see how despicable their Sharia law is.”
“Another victim of the mysoginistic murder cult that is sharia law.”
“Where are the voices of ‘moderate’ Islam now? I can’t hear them, can you? Can anyone?”
“what a lovely religion NOT”
“Absolutely hideous! I am appalled that such behaviour is deemed justifiable under a law written over a 1000 years ago by uneducated warring idiots!”
“I hope the Archbishop of Canterbury is reading this he is rather a fan of sharia law as I recall, just shows how out of touch he is.”
However, there are several rather more informed comments that suggest the Mail‘s story of Sharia-inspired stoning is completely fabricated. For example:
“Daily Mail, stop lying and instigating hatred for Muslims! The original Russian article from Komsomolskaya Pravda of 28/05 does not mention any religious motives in this murder (I can provide the link to the original story). Katya wasn’t a Muslim. Katya Koren is not a Muslim name. There was no ‘three Muslim teenagers’ who ‘stones Katya’. there was just one mentally distrurbed boy of Muslim origin who hit her on the head once. He doesn’t know himself why he did it. People suspect because Katya rejected him. This has absolutely nothing to do with sharia, Muslims, religion etc. Who is making up such stories? You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
And: “The story is completely inacurrate. Katya Koren was a Ukrainian girl and she was an Orthdox Christian. That was not a stoning, but a cold-blooded murder by a psycho who happened to be from a mixed Ukranian-Tatar family. I am amazed, how things can be distorted.”
And: “This news, made by Russian propaganda apparatus, is provocation. Because the killer even has no any attitude to Islam. Katya is Russian, not Muslim. Boy is Slavic, but is adopted by Muslims. Ukrainian Internal Affairs Ministry Crimean Branch Press Chairperson Olga Bogoslavskaya said that murder is not motivated by religious belief. All world copied your news! Who will excuse?”
Also: “THE KEY FACTS: 1. Katya is an Orthodox Christian. 2. Bilyal is formally Muslim, just adopted by Muslim man 3. Bilyal is not religious, like his father, even didn’t go to mosque. 4. Murder is not done by stoning. 5. Internal Affairs Dep. announced that murder has no religious roots. 6. Such a news first appeared in pro-Russian media.”
See also “Katya Koren: Ukrainian beauty queen killed by disturbed classmate not Sharia law”, LoonWatch, 31 May 2011
Update: The Mail has an new article on the case headlined “Was Muslim girl ‘stoned to death for taking part in beauty pageant’ actually murdered by a stalker?” Perhaps that’s a question the Mailshould have asked before it published the original inflammatory article. And the paper is still banging on about how “Sharia law prohibits women from taking part in beauty contests” – which, even if it were true, would hardly apply to Katya Koren, who wasn’t a Muslim.
Torygraph apologises to East London Mosque
In January this year an article was published on the Telegraph website headlined “Extremist leader jailed for child abuse”. Readers were informed:
“A man has been jailed for a series of sex attacks on children committed while he was the leader of a Muslim extremist group and a teacher at a hardline London mosque. Ashraf Miah, 38, from Mile End, a former teacher at the East London Mosque, repeatedly molested the girls whilst they recited religious texts. The youngest victim was five and the oldest only seven.
“Miah was at the time the East End leader of the notorious extremist group Hizb ut Tahrir, which believes that voting and democracy is forbidden in Islam and wants to turn Britain into a sharia state….
“The court heard that Miah also taught at the hardline East London Mosque, controlled by the Islamic Forum of Europe, which also believes in turning the UK into a sharia state, though by different methods. The mosque has hosted many hate, extremist and terrorist preachers, including Anwar al-Awlaki, the al-Qaeda spiritual leader. Some of the victims were introduced to Miah via the mosque.”
The article has since been removed from the website and today theTelegraph published the following retraction:
“Our report ‘Extremist leader jailed for child abuse’ (Jan 20) wrongly said that some of the victims of Ashraf Miah, described in a court report as a former teacher at the East London Mosque, were introduced via the Mosque. We are happy to confirm that the Mosque has no record of him ever having taught there and that there was no suggestion at trial of his victims having been introduced to him there.”
Now, which Telegraph journalist do you suppose could have adopted such a slipshod attitude towards the basic facts of the case, with the evident aim of stitching up the East London Mosque? No prizes for guessing that it was of course Andrew Gilligan.
Update: Gilligan complains that Islamophobia Watch has attacked him over “an incorrect news-in-brief item about the mosque in the Telegraph which I did not write”.
As it happens, I couldn’t find the news-in-brief report that appeared in the print edition of the paper so I quoted from the unedited version of the article as it appeared, under the title “Extremist leader jailed for child abuse”, on Gilligan’s Telegraphblog. This was the link to the article:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/andrewgilligan/100072691/extremist-leader-jailed-for-child-abuse/
As you can see if you click on it, the link is dead and the article has been deleted.
It was, however, reproduced at the time on a number of right-wing Islamophobic websites, where it can still be found (for example here, here and here). Is Gilligan now saying that he didn’t have a hand in writing an article that he posted on his own blog?
Phyllis Chesler opposes Jewish-Muslim stand against European far right
Under the headline “Jewish and Muslim leaders urge European Union heads not to pander to extreme-right”, the World Jewish Congress reports on a meeting in Brussels of Jewish and Muslim representatives.
The joint declaration they adopted included the following passage:
“We are troubled by the growth of racist and xenophobic movements. We believe that individuals and organizations espousing such malign and hateful ideologies represent a grave threat to the fundamental European values of pluralism, democracy, mutual respect and cooperation….
“We wish to work together with all Europeans of conscience to put a stop to any group that espouses racist or xenophobic ideologies long before they are in a position to gain legislative or other power. We must never allow anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia or racism to become respectable in today’s Europe. In that regard, we call upon all political leaders not to pander to these groups by echoing their rhetoric.”
Nobody outside of the far-right organisations being condemned here could object to that, you might think. You’d be wrong. Over at FrontPage Magazine Phyllis Chesler, the self-proclaimed “founding voice of the modern feminist movement”, writes:
“Why is a group of Jews trying to help Muslims … by appealing to European governments not to ‘pander to right wing forces’ which are, belatedly, beginning to gather in response to a Muslim population which is hostile to Western and European values, does not wish to assimilate, and is both separatist and violent?
“Had Muslims come in total peace these ‘right wing forces’ may have, indeed, been a reflection of European racism towards Arabs and dark-skinned ‘Easterners’. But the alleged ‘Islamophobia’ is not based on bigoted considerations of color, faith, or ethnicity; it is, rather, based on the increasing danger that Muslims pose to the stability and character of Europe.”
Update: Still, Chesler does have her fans (even if they can’t spell her name):
University campuses are not ‘hotbeds of radicalisation’
ENGAGE draws our attention to an interview in the Daily Telegraph with Nicola Dandridge of Universities UK, who rejects the view, promoted by the likes of Anthony Glees and the Quilliam Foundation and widely publicised by the right-wing press, that universities are training grounds for violent extremism among Muslim students.
Needless to say, James Brandon of Quilliam is on hand to rubbish Dandridge’s analysis: “Every week, radical Islamists on campuses around the UK preach a steady mixture of anti-western conspiracy theories and hard-line Islamist ideologies. At the same time, a steady stream of British Muslim university students are being convicted of a wide range of terrorist offences.”
But then, Brandon and his colleagues at Quilliam have made a comfortable living out of hyping up such threats, haven’t they?
Geneticist warns of dangers of Muslim ‘inbreeding’
One of Britain’s most eminent scientists has warned that the level of inbreeding among the nation’s Muslims is endangering the health of future generations. Prof Steve Jones, the geneticist, said that it was common in the Islamic world for men to marry their nieces and cousins. He said that Bradford has a particular problem and warned that it could affect the health of children born into these marriages.
Update: Typically, the Daily Mail reports this under the headline “Muslim outrage as professor warns first-cousin marriages increase risk of birth defects”. In fact the two Muslim spokespersons who are quoted in the article – Mohammed Saleem Khan of the Bradford Council for Mosques and Mohammed Shafiq of the Ramadhan Foundation – offer calm and reasoned criticisms of Jones’ comments. It seems that the right-wing press is incapable of reporting any comment by Muslims without referring to “outrage” and “anger”.
Update: See Samira Shackle, “Professor sparks ‘Muslim outrage’. Or does he?”, The Staggers, 31 May 2011
Sofia: mayor backs Ataka’s demand for reduction in volume of mosque speakers
The Sofia Municipality will request a decreasing of the volume of the Sofia central mosque speakers, stated mayor Yordanka Fandakova Sunday.
Speaking in an interview for TV7, the Sofia mayor, who is a representative of Bulgaria’s center-right GERB ruling party, said the measure will be taken to tone down tensions following the May 20 incident, in which representatives of extreme nationalist Ataka party, including MPs, attacked Muslims during Friday prayer.
The Ataka supporters had gathered that Friday on a protest motivated precisely by a request to lower the allegedly excessive volume of the minaret speakers of the Banya Bashi mosque in downtown Sofia. Several persons of both sides were injured in the disgraceful incident, which provoked the outrage of Muslims and large parts of Bulgarian society.
Key GERB representatives, including PM Boyko Borisov, Minister of Interior Tsvetan Tsvetanov and Sofia mayor Yordanka Fandakova failed to firmly condemn the events, simply characterizing them as a “lamentable” incident marking the inception of campaigning for municipal and presidential elections in the fall.
Sunday Fandakova said that the Ataka supporters had obviously breached public order and full investigations are underway. Nevertheless, she said she will press for lower levels of sound from the mosque during prayers.
“We will do everything possible to lower the volume, in order to decrease tensions. I believe that in this way we will go back to a normal tone of discussion, for safeguarding religious freedoms precludes interfering with public order by means of excessive noise from loudspeakers,” stated the mayor of the Bulgarian capital.
Award-winning blogger discovers ‘untackled radical Islam’ in London’s East End
Tory blogger Graeme Archer, who was recently awarded the Orwell Blog Prize, has written an unpleasant article for the Daily Telegraph (“The East End villains who thrive behind a veil of multiculturalism”) in which he asserts that the “increasing Islamisation” of London’s East End has led to threats and violence against gay men, women and non-Muslims.
You might have thought the potential for right-wing scaremongering over this particular urban myth had been pretty well exhausted by now, but Archer manages to extract some further poison from the issue, even though we’ve heard most of this before from the likes of Andrew Gilligan or the Daily Mail.
Dearborn anti-Islam protest today
A man whose rock band sings songs describing violence against Muslims is leading a rally against Islamic law at 3 p.m. today on the steps of Dearborn City Hall. Frank Fiorello, 35, of Marlette is with a band called Crude Legacy and a group called Order of the Dragon. “We’re a peaceful group,” Fiorello said.
Originally, he planned to rally with Quran-burning Pastor Terry Jones in front of a mosque in April, but backed off after meeting with Dearborn officials. Fiorello said today’s rally is “an assembly against radical Islam and shari’a,” which is Islamic law. In the past two years, Dearborn has dealt with accusations that the city is under shari’a, a claim city officials say is ludicrous.
Detroit Free Press, 28 May 2011
Update: The Detroit News reports that only three members of the Order of the Dragon showed up.
French hold anti-racism rallies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw5OeoHWEr8
Rallies were held across France to protest what many say is the continued scapegoating of Muslims and immigrants for political gain. In Paris, thousands marched under many different banners, but they all spoke of feeling excluded from French society.
A large contingent of the demonstration consisted of immigrants who have worked in France for years, even decades, without acquiring resident status. This makes it difficult for them to rent lodgings or get medical care and it leaves them vulnerable to exploitation from their employers.
Since his appointment in February, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé has been the point man in the Sarkozy administration’s desire to keep their “national identity” campaign in the media. Recent decisions such as the burqa law, debates on the role of Islam in France and the deportation of Tunisian immigrants have been condemned by many as purposely divisive.
With unemployment and social insecurity still high as France tries to exit the Great Recession, the message here is that foreigners will not tolerate being used as a distraction.
Many protesters here say that the conservative wing of the nation’s establishment simply refuses to accept that Africans and Arabs are already a part of 21st century France. To quote a popular slogan here at the demonstration: “Besides, we’re already here!”