“Although he has not named names, it seems clear that some of the most effective opponents of al-Qaida influence in Muslim communities in the UK are set to be reclassified as extremist and subversive.”
Bob Lambert replies to David Cameron.
Category Archives: Right wing
David Cameron’s message is that Muslims are not wanted
Muslims and migrants are being used to distract people from the planned chaos implemented by this unpopular coalition. It is politicking of the worst kind.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown replies to David Cameron’s speech.
Debunking the ‘Eurabia’ myth
The Pew Center on Religion & Public Life recently released a comprehensive study of Muslim populations around the world that should allay fears among many of an impending global Muslim takeover and debunk widely held beliefs about Muslims. The findings of “The Future of the Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010-2030” should also challenge the public to reconsider its perception of Islam and Muslims.
Skeptics, particularly those in Europe and North America, have long sounded alarm bells regarding the growth of the Muslim population.
Such scaremongers claim that Islam is a demographic threat, warning of an impending “Eurabia” within a few decades. This picture, of a triumphant Islam over a Europe that has lost its Christian roots, has contributed to the growth of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim political parties and to their notable successes in European elections last year. In America, this fear began in the late 1990s with articles that warned “The Muslims are coming, the Muslims are coming!” and continued with the recent Park51 debate over a plan to build an Islamic center near ground zero.
This paranoia – based more on fear and misperception – fuels anti-Islam and anti-Muslim hysteria across Europe and North America and undermines our multicultural society.
While Pew finds that the world’s Muslim population is expected to increase from 1.6 billion in 2010 to 2.2 billion by 2030, what of an “Islamic wave” across Europe?
Muslims will remain a relatively small minority, but they will make up a growing share of the total population. According to the study, Europe’s Muslim population is projected to grow from 44.1 million in 2010 to 58.2 million in 2030. The greatest rise is expected to be seen in Western and Northern Europe, where Muslims are expected to approach double-digit percentages. For example, in France, the population is expected to rise from 7.5 percent currently to 10.3 percent.
The Muslim share of the U.S. population is projected to grow from 0.8 percent in 2010 to 1.7 percent in 2030, meaning that Muslims will share the same population figures as Jews and Episcopalians. Interestingly, the United States is projected to have a larger number of Muslims by 2030 than any European country, except Russia and France.
Pew’s findings demonstrate that fear of a European Muslim takeover is largely the product of hysteria – France is not destined to become an “Islamic republic” by 2048.
John Esposito and Sheila Lalwani in the San Francisco Chronicle, 7 February 2011
New German anti-Muslim party calls Islam ‘totalitarian’
The leader of a newly created anti-Islamic party in Germany said he wants to stop the immigration of Muslims and described Islam as a “totalitarian system” bent on supplanting western liberal values.
In an interview with The National, Rene Stadtkewitz, 46, said Muslims were not integrating into German society as well as other immigrants and that authorities should become stricter, by banning headscarves in school, stopping public funding for teaching young children the Quran and curbing the influence of Islamic organisations.
“Islam is far more than a religion. It’s an entire model of society that is incredibly binding for many people,” he said. “It’s basically a political system with its own legal system that seeks to regulate all aspects of life. We criticise the socio-political component of Islam, which I see as an ideological one similar to other totalitarian systems, and which I think is dangerous.”
He called Islam “the opposite of a free society” and said the faith posed a threat because it sought to instil different values in Germany, and because it encouraged immigrants to segregate themselves.
Mr Stadtkewitz, a former member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), set up his party, Freedom, last October. He had been expelled from the CDU’s parliamentary group in the Berlin city assembly for inviting Geert Wilders, the controversial Dutch Islam critic and head of the Party for Freedom, to Berlin for a conference.
Mr Stadtkewitz said his party now had 1,400 members and was setting up regional branches across Germany. It plans to contest its first election in September when Berlin votes for a new mayor and city parliament. Mr Stadtkewitz said the aim was to cross the 5 per cent threshold needed to obtain seats in the assembly. “If that goes well, we’ll prepare for the general election in 2013,” he said.
He wants a temporary halt to immigration and favours introducing Swiss-style referendums in Germany. He said he would not stand in the way of a public vote on banning the construction of minarets, as Switzerland did in 2009, although he saw such a move as just “scratching at the surface” of the problem.
Mr Stadtkewitz denied accusations that he was a far-right populist. He said his party was espousing mainstream views about Islam and was part of an “uprising” by people across Europe against growing Islamic influence. “Anyone who criticises Islam stands in the centre of society,” he said. “Islam is becoming more visible in western countries and people are starting to rise up against that.”
Outside of Germany, it may be recalled, one of the Freedom Party’s most prominent supporters is Daniel Pipes.
Sadiq Khan accuses David Cameron of ‘writing propaganda’ for the EDL
Tooting’s MP has reacted furiously to David Cameron’s claim yesterday that multiculturalism in Britain has “failed”. In a speech in Germany, the Prime Minister said the Government should no longer tolerate and engage with extremist groups whose members did not believe in crucial western and British values.
But Sadiq Khan, Britain’s most prominent muslim MP who represents thousands who follow Islam in Tooting, claimed Mr Cameron was “writing propaganda for the English Defence League”.
Yesterday, Mr Cameron told the Munich Security Conference: “Let’s properly judge these organisations… do they believe in universal human rights – including for women and people of other faiths? Do they believe in equality of all before the law?”
In reponse to Mr Khan’s comments, Tory co-chairman Baroness Warsi called for an apology. She said: “For Sadiq Khan to smear the prime minister as a rightwing extremist is outrageous and irresponsible.”
Suzanne Moore, Newsnight and the EDL
The EDL are entirely a product of exaggerated media reporting of a small demonstration by a group of Muslim men who are widely despised by the Muslims themselves and have been for years, at least since they began their “Magnificent 19” campaign celebrating the 9/11 attackers. To talk of “having a debate” about race or Englishness or the supposed decline of English culture is to talk of giving in to baseless grievances fostered by the distortions published in the mass media, and allowing them to dictate policy on these matters. It must not be allowed to happen.
Yusuf Smith at Indigo Jo Blogs, 6 February 2011
David Cameron attacks multiculturalism, lectures British Muslims on extremism
David Cameron will today signal a sea-change in the government fight against home-grown terrorism, saying the state must confront, and not consort with, the non-violent Muslim groups that are ambiguous about British values such as equality between sexes, democracy and integration.
To belong in Britain is to believe in these values, he will say. Claiming the previous government had been the victim of fear and muddled thinking by backing a state-sponsored form of multiculturalism, the prime minister will state that his government “will no longer fund or share platforms with organisations that, while non-violent, are certainly in some cases part of the problem”.
In a major speech to a security conference in Munich, he will demand: “We need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism.”
He will say that “some organisations that seek to present themselves as a gateway to the Muslim community are showered with public money while doing little to combat extremism. This is like turning to a rightwing fascist party to fight a violent white supremacist movement.”
Cameron’s aides, aware the speech may prove highly controversial, refused to identify the organisations in his sights, but it is clear one target is the Muslim Council of Britain.
Republican Party official refuses to quit racist group and resigns from GOP instead
A former official who resigned from a Republican post in Arkansas said Thursday he’s not a racist and that he will not quit a group that bills itself as “pro-white.”
John Casteel, 71, who stepped down as Jackson County’s Republican chairman this week, said he has belonged to the Council of Conservative Citizens since its inception more than two decades ago. “To me, the council is more important,” Casteel said. “I’m not going to turn my back on an organization … just because some socialistic blogger says I’m a racist.”
The liberal-leaning blog Blue Arkansas noted Monday that Casteel’s e-mail address was listed as the contact for the council’s Arkansas chapter and also for the Jackson County GOP. The council took Casteel’s name off its website after The Associated Press contacted the group about the connection.
The Council of Conservative Citizens rose from the ashes of organizations that battled school integration in the 1950s and 1960s. State Republican Party Chairman Doyle Webb called on Casteel to quit the council, saying its principles don’t align with the GOP’s. Casteel quit his GOP leadership post instead.
In an interview with The Associated Press, the former railroad man who later ventured into insurance said he sits on the Council of Conservative Citizens’ national board of directors.
“It’s the only organization in the United States that’s actually actively – internationally and in this country – trying to save this country from communism, socialism and the Islamic takeover of this world,” he said.
Associated Press, 3 February 2011
If you consult the Council of Conservative Citizens website you’ll see that its list of of links to “European allies” consists exclusively of far-right racist parties, headed by the BNP.
Tabloids round on two ‘traitorous Muslim councillors’
ENGAGE has the details.
Update: A contemptible Lib Dem councillor named Martin Mullaney posted the following disgraceful comment at a online discussion forum:
“I can only assume that if one of the failed 21/7 London suicide bombers had been in the Council Chamber last Tuesday, Cllr Yaqoob would have been demanding the Council applaud the failed suicide bomber for their past ‘heroic actions’.”
In an interview with the BBC, Mullaney said he stood by his comments.
‘Racist reaction to mosque plan a too-familiar public response’
The proposal for a new mosque in Bridgewater, New Jersey, has prompted the usual upsurge of opposition among the non-Muslim majority population. In response the local paper, the Courier News, has published this admirable editorial: