Category Archives: Right wing

Hans-Peter Friedrich now says Muslims do belong in German society

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In an interview with German public radio, Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich distanced himself from previous remarks that had upset some Muslims in Germany and said Muslims do indeed belong in German society.

Friedrich took over the interior minister portfolio earlier this month in a cabinet shuffle and promptly stirred up resentment with comment on the integration of Germany’s Muslims, which make up 5 percent of the population.

At the time, he said there was no historical evidence to support the idea that Islam belonged in Germany. However, during Sunday’s interview he seemed to soften this tone. “The decisive thing for me is that these people belong to this society here,” Friedrich said.

The comments come ahead of the annual conference of Islam leaders on Tuesday, which Friedrich will chair. The conference was created in 2006 by Friedrich’s predecessor, Wolfgang Schäuble, to foster the integration of Germany’s Muslims.

“I am here to unite. I would like to make that plain at the Islam Conference,” Friedrich added. He also accused his political opponents of using his previous statements to drive a wedge between him and the country’s Muslims.

Deutsche Welle, 27 March 2011

Ketron amends anti-sharia bill

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bill_KetronTennessee lawmakers are rewriting a bill that described Islamic law as a threat to U.S. security and seemed to equate peaceful Muslim practices with terrorism.

State Sen. Bill Ketron and House Speaker Pro Tempore Judd Matheny, both Republicans, offered the revision after questions arose about the proposed bill’s constitutionality. “The revision reflects our original intention to prevent or deter violent or terrorist acts, but does so without any room for misinterpretation regarding the language’s affect on peaceful religious practices,” said Ketron.

Muslim and civil liberty organizations strongly criticized the original bill, saying its focus on Shariah law unfairly targeted Muslims and equated religious rituals such as dietary restrictions with terrorism. The bill now contains no references to Islam, but will allow Tennessee to prosecute those who offer financial or material support to known terrorist entities.

“I think it’s a victory for common sense and legislative restraint,” Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told The Tennessean. “This is a win for Tennessee’s Muslim community.”

Religion News Service, 25 March 2011

See also John Esposito and Sheila Lalwani, “Fear of sharia in Tennessee”, Comment is Free, 25 March 2011

Update:  See “Ketron Shariah bill not fixable”, Daily News Journal, 27 March 2011

Sarkozy’s UMP competes with Front National to win anti-Muslim vote, Socialists reject Tariq Ramadan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islam has emerged as a central issue in the campaign for French local elections Sunday that President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party hopes to win by taking a tough line on the integration of France’s large Muslim minority.

Sarkozy, who faces an uphill battle for reelection next year, has set the tone by blurring the border between his UMP party and the National Front, the once-shunned anti-immigrant party that recently overtook him in opinion polls.

Interior Minister Claude Gueant, until recently Sarkozy’s chief of staff in the Elysee Palace, has fleshed this out with a series of statements flirting with the anti-Muslim rhetoric that has made National Front leader Marine Le Pen so popular.

“The French don’t feel like they’re at home here anymore,” Gueant said this month in a verbal wink and nod at voters upset by the large numbers of Muslims in the country. “They want France to remain France.” The minister has called the Western-led air strikes against Libya a “crusade,” evoking Christian-Muslim conflict, and suggested that patients in public hospitals must avoid wearing religious symbols – another issue concerning mainly Muslims.

This rhetorical escalation came as France neared a runoff vote Sunday in local council elections. Le Pen’s National Front surged to win 15 percent of votes in the first round on March 20, just two points behind Sarkozy’s UMP party.

Both the centre-right government and Le Pen declare their aim is to defend “laicite” – the aggressive French secularism that strives to keep religion out of the public sector.

But amid debate about offering halal food in school canteens and Muslims praying in the street because their mosques are too small, the term “laicite” is clearly code for the problems France has adjusting to its 5-million strong Muslim minority.

The debate has alienated many Muslims, even such moderate figures as Grand Mosque of Paris Rector Dalil Boubakeur, who announced Wednesday he would not take part in a public debate on secularism that the UMP plans to hold on April 5. He said the debate about Islam “has greatly upset and worried Muslims who feel stigmatised because of their faith.”

The debate has carved deep rifts in the UMP leadership, even pitting Prime Minister Francois Fillon against Sarkozy and the UMP secretary general Jean-Francois Cope.

The debate has also sown confusion on the left because of a petition against the Islam debate launched by Respect Mag, a magazine that aims to promote intercultural understanding. The UMP rounded on opposition Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry and former Socialist Prime Minister Laurent Fabius for supporting the text when it emerged that Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss-born Muslim activist, had also signed it.

Both quickly withdrew their support because of Ramadan, who is vilified here as a covert Islamist out to subvert France. “If these two (parties) had wanted to agree to open the door wide to Marine Le Pen, they would not have done anything differently,” said Ramadan, a professor of Islamic studies at Britain’s Oxford University.

Reuters, 25 March 2011

Another anti-Muslim publicity stunt from Terry Jones

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Terry Jones, the Christian pastor from Florida who drew international attention last year for threatening to burn the Quran on Sept. 11, says he’s coming to Dearborn on April 22 to protest against Islamic law outside the Islamic Center of America, a mosque in Dearborn.

Jones backed down from burning the Quran on Sept. 11 after many urged him not to, including President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who spoke with him over the phone. But on Sunday, Jones led a Quran burning after he set up a mock trial of the Quran, Islam’s holy book.

Jones said Wednesday that he’s not against Muslims, but wants them to “honor, obey, and submit to the Constitution of the United States.” He said he’s worried about sharia, or Islamic law, coming to the U.S.

Dearborn has the highest concentration of Arab-Americans in the U.S. and is known for its established Muslim community. Muslims and other critics have said Jones is promoting hatred and that his fears about Muslims are unwarranted.

Detroit Free Press, 24 March 2011

NAMP among police groups to lose funding

Posted on by Bob Pitt

NAMP_logoHundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ cash doled out to fringe police groups representing homosexuals, women and Muslims is to be axed.

Home Office chiefs said they could no longer afford to fund the minority police groups. These also include in-force associations that support transsexuals, Sikhs, Christians, disabled and black police officers. Last night beat bobbies were “over the moon” at the decision.

But bosses at the staff associations slammed the decision, warning it could lead to their collapse. Zaheer Ahmed, president of the National Association of ­Muslim Police, said cutting funds would deprive the police of “important religious and cultural voices” and could see policing thrown back to the 1970s.

Funding will stop from April 1.

Daily Express, 23 March 2011

Update:  The National Secular Society has predictably come out in support of the withdrawal of funding from NAMP. NSS president Terry Sanderson is quoted as saying: “The rise of these minority groups within the force has been a dangerous development, and we are very pleased that the funding has come to an end, albeit on grounds of cost rather than desirability.” Another of these “minority groups” is the Gay Police Association, and we look forward to Sanderson explaining to the LGBT community why he applauds the ending of funding for that group.

Islam is a ‘treasonous ideology’ and Muslims enjoy no First Amendment rights, says American Family Association spokesman

Posted on by Bob Pitt

While the American Family Association claims that one of its founding objectives is to “defends the rights of conscience and religious liberty from infringement by government,” its chief spokesman Bryan Fischer continues to show his contempt for religious freedom.

Fischer, the AFA’s Director of Issues Analysis, repeatedly demanded that the US deport all Muslims and prohibit and purge Muslims from the military, and also called for the banning and destruction of mosques. Fischer today attempted to reconcile his ardent opposition to Muslim religious liberty with the Constitution’s First Amendment by claiming that the Constitution actually doesn’t apply to or protect Muslims at all:

Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam. Islam is entitled only to the religious liberty we extend to it out of courtesy. While there certainly ought to be a presumption of religious liberty for non-Christian religious traditions in America, the Founders were not writing a suicide pact when they wrote the First Amendment.

Our government has no obligation to allow a treasonous ideology to receive special protections in America, but this is exactly what the Democrats are trying to do right now with Islam.

From a constitutional point of view, Muslims have no First Amendment right to build mosques in America. They have that privilege at the moment, but it is a privilege that can be revoked if, as is in fact the case, Islam is a totalitarian ideology dedicated to the destruction of the United States. The Constitution, it bears repeating, is not a suicide pact. For Muslims, patriotism is not the last refuge of a scoundrel, but the First Amendment is.

Right Wing Watch, 23 March 2011

Senate Judiciary panel to hold hearing on protecting Muslims’ civil rights

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dick DurbinDemocratic Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.) announced Tuesday that he will hold Congress’ first-ever hearing on the civil rights of American Muslims next week. The hearing comes a little more than two weeks after a Republican in Congress made headlines by holding a controversial hearing on the radicalization of Muslim Americans.

The release announcing the hearing said it is in response to the “spike in anti-Muslim bigotry in the last year including Quran burnings, restrictions on mosque construction, hate crimes, hate speech, and other forms of discrimination.”

“Our Constitution protects the free exercise of religion for all Americans,” Durbin said. “During the course of our history, many religions have faced intolerance. It is important for our generation to renew our founding charter’s commitment to religious diversity and to protect the liberties guaranteed by our Bill of Rights.”

The panel of witnesses scheduled to testify at the hearing include Muslim civil rights leader Farhana Khera; Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick; Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez, the Obama Administration’s top civil rights official; and former Assistant Attorney General Alex Acosta, the Bush Administration’s top civil rights official.

Durbin will lead the hearing next Tuesday in the subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, which is part of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

CBS News, 23 March 2011

See also “Muslims welcome Senate hearings on civil liberties”, USA Today, 23 March 2011

Durbin does have his critics. Robert Spencer weighs in at FrontPage Magazine (“Durbin is preparing to hold hearings about an ‘anti-Muslim bigotry’ that is almost completely nonexistent”) and at Jihad Watch (“Watch for this to be an orgy of Muslim claims of victimhood and demonization of freedom fighters trying to defend Constitutional freedoms against Islamic supremacism”), while Pamela Geller has a piece at the The Daily Caller (“I might agree with a hearing on ‘Muslim rights’ if it addressed the increasing surrender of secular law to Islamic law, and the assertion of Islamic supremacy over the rights of all others”).

Finance minister says Islam is part of Germany

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble on Tuesday warned Germany must not discriminate against its Muslim population, saying that Islam was a part of its society. His comments contrast starkly with those of the country’s new conservative interior minister.

“We have every interest in saying that Islam is a part of our country and in inviting Muslims to value what we have achieved in the Western World,” the Christian Democrat told the latest edition of political magazine Cicero. Religion, faith, democracy and universal human rights are all compatible, he added.

Still, immigrants must strive to integrate in Germany, said Schäuble, who initiated the government’s Islam conference in 2006 while he was interior minister in attempt to promote a healthier dialogue with the approximately four million Muslims living in the country.

In early March Germany’s new interior minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, made the controversial statement that Islam did not “belong” in Germany because it lacked a historical foundation. The conservative Bavarian plans to meet with the Islam conference plenum next Tuesday.

Friedrich’s comments mirrored similar statements he made last autumn amid a rancorous debate over whether Muslim immigrants are capable of integrating into German society.

The Local, 22 March 2011

See also Islam in Europe which takes a more sceptical view of Schäuble’s statement.

Protest against Deborah Pauly faces small counter-demonstration

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Deborah Pauly protestAbout 500 demonstrators from various groups marched and chanted slogans against or in support of Councilwoman Deborah Pauly in front of Villa Park City Hall on Tuesday evening.

The large majority of demonstrators were Muslim supporters who organized in response to a speech by Pauly last month at a Yorba Linda rally. About 50 people showed up Tuesday night to support Pauly.

The two groups faced off on the walkway in front of City Hall before the council meeting shouting at one another through bullhorns and displaying signs with phrases such as, “I’m a Muslim not a terrorist,” and “Deborah Pauly is a patriot.” The protesters also chanted at and over each other: “Deborah Pauly, I’m your neighbor. Why are you such a hater,” “No Sharia law,” and “Hey, hey, ho, ho, the racism’s got to go.”

The protest was largely peaceful, but the exchanges among the demonstrators were heated. A pro-Muslim supporter shouted at someone “You don’t even know what you’re fighting for, you racist pig.” The Pauly supporter retorted: “You’re a disgrace.”

The demonstrations are a response to a speech Pauly gave at a rally during an Islamic Circle of North America fund-raiser Feb. 13, which many have interpreted as anti-Muslim. Her remarks are prominent in a YouTube video created by the Council on American-Islam Relations.

In the packed council chambers after the protest, the public comment section of the council meeting became a heated argument over topics ranging from Pauly’s speech to the merits of Shariah law. Sheriff’s officers stood at the doors and prevented anyone who wasn’t on the speaker’s list from entering.

Pauly listened as Muslim constituents and Pauly supporters repeatedly asked her to apologize or affirm her words with audible cheers and boos punctuating each comment from the hundreds of protesters outside.

Orange County Register, 22 March 2011