Category Archives: Right wing

Islamophobia: does Labour measure up?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Labour Briefing masthead

Does Labour measure up?

By Bob Pitt

Labour Briefing, February 2011

“The Islamophobia Myth” – that was the title of an influential article by Kenan Malik published in the February 2005 issue of Prospect magazine. It argued that violence, hatred and discrimination against Muslims were at a very low level and that the threat of Islamophobia had been invented or at least greatly exaggerated, mainly by religious leaders hoping to suppress legitimate criticisms of their beliefs and to enhance their own status as community representatives. Malik’s thesis was welcomed in some quarters at the time, including among sections of the left.

Six years on, far fewer people would buy that argument. Hostility towards Muslims and their faith has reached such a pitch that to deny this represents a major threat is simply untenable. When the racist hooligans of the English Defence League take to the streets in towns and cities across the UK brandishing placards with slogans such as “We will never submit to Islam”, chanting “Burn a mosque down” and on occasion breaking through police lines to rampage through Muslim areas smashing shop windows and assaulting passers-by, who could seriously claim that Islamophobia is a myth?

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Douglas Murray welcomes the EDL as ‘a grassroots response from non-Muslims to Islamism’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

On 26 January the Worker-Communist Party of Iran’s front organisation, One Law for All, held a seminar at Conway Hall in London under the title “Enemies not Allies”, the purported aim of which was to repudiate both far-right organisations who use opposition to Islam to promote hatred of Muslims and also left-wingers who have worked with Islamists to resist racism and imperialist war. As the publicity for the seminar put it: “Bigots and neo-Nazis feigning to campaign for rights… ‘anti-racist’ groups promoting fascism… ‘anti-war’ rallies run by supporters of terrorism and dictatorship… Enough!”

The rejection of “bigots and neo-Nazis feigning to campaign for rights” didn’t go down too well with one of the platform speakers, however. Douglas Murray, Director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, couldn’t see why it was wrong for more mainstream right-wing Islamophobes such as himself to express solidarity with the likes of the EDL. As Murray put it:

“The English Defence League when they started protesting had banners saying things like ‘Sharia law discriminates against women’, ‘Sharia law is anti-gay’. Well I’m good with both of those sentiments, I’m sure most people in this room are. If you’re ever going to have a grassroots response from non-Muslims to Islamism that would be how you’d want it, surely.”

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Muslim birth rate expected to fall over next two decades, study shows

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Fox News logoThis was the original title to a Fox News piece on the new Pew Research Center report, The Future of the Global Muslim Population.

As Pew’s own summary of the report states: “While the global Muslim population is expected to grow at a faster rate than the non-Muslim population, the Muslim population nevertheless is expected to grow at a slower pace in the next two decades than it did in the previous two decades. From 1990 to 2010, the global Muslim population increased at an average annual rate of 2.2%, compared with the projected rate of 1.5% for the period from 2010 to 2030.”

But that’s not the message Fox wants to convey to its readers is it? The amended headline now reads: “Muslim population expected to increase by 1 billion people by 2030, study shows.”

New Jersey town requires bigger venue to fit crowd to hear mosque application

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BRIDGEWATER — Township officials are looking for a bigger venue to accommodate the anticipated crowd that will attend the next meeting on a proposal to convert the Redwood Inn into a mosque.

Monday’s Planning Board meeting on the Chughtai Foundation’s application to create a mosque had to be postponed when a crowd of more than 400 people filled the two available meeting rooms and spilled out the door of the Municipal Complex, 100 Commons Way.

Newmans Lane resident Susan Haggerty said the proposal for a mosque is “unnerving. This mosque represents more. It represents a coming in and taking over an entire community by the Islamic World.”

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Southern Baptist leader resigns from ADL’s interfaith coalition, says co-religionists have condemned his backing for Murfreesboro Islamic Center

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A top leader of the Southern Baptist Convention has resigned from a new interfaith coalition, saying some fellow Southern Baptists felt it was inappropriate for him to support the building of mosques.

Richard Land, who heads the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told organizers at the Anti-Defamation League that “many Southern Baptists share my deep commitment to religious freedom and the right of Muslims to have places of worship.” At the same time, “they also feel that a Southern Baptist denominational leader filing suit to allow individual mosques to be built is ‘a bridge too far.”‘

Land told the ADL in a Jan. 14 letter that he had received a “spirited response” to his support of a disputed mosque project in Murfreesboro, Tenn., and some fellow Baptists viewed it as promotion of Islam.

Huffington Post, 26 January 2011

See also Think Progress, 25 January 2011

For the background to the ADL’s campaign, see “ADL changes its tune on mosques”, Salon, 25 January 2011

For Pamela Geller’s rant against the ADL’s Abe Foxman and his “latest dhimmi-jew stunt”, see Atlas Shrugs, 25 January 2011

Now Wyoming may try to outlaw Sharia too

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Last year, Oklahoma voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment that would prohibit judges from consulting sharia law in their decisions. A federal judge promptly blocked the ban, saying the case goes “to the very foundation of our country.”

But that’s not going to stop one Wyoming lawmaker from trying for a repeat.

State Rep. Gerald Gay (R) is proposing a similar ballot measure that would prevent judges from using sharia, or Islamic, law in their decisions. Like the Oklahoma measure, it would also block “international” law – which could cause unseen effects for Wyoming’s American Indian population.

And, again like in Oklahoma, Gay admits that sharia has not been a problem in his state. Echoing the works of Okla. State Rep. Rex Duncan (R), he calls it a “pre-emptive strike.” He told the Billings Gazette that he doesn’t want judges using Islamic tenets in cases involving honor killings or arranged marriages.

According to one 2000 estimate by Penn State’s Association of Religion Data Archives, there are fewer than 300 Muslims in Wyoming.

TPM, 26 January 2011

For the background on Gerald Gay, see Mother Jones, 26 January 2011

Portsmouth councillor walks out in Muslim prayer protest

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cllr Malcolm HeyA Portsmouth councillor walked out of a council meeting because an imam was asked to deliver an opening prayer.

Conservative councillor Malcolm Hey left Tuesday night’s Portsmouth City Council chamber while Sheikh Fazle Abbas Datoo was speaking. The imam, from the Al Mahdi mosque in Wickham, had been invited by the city’s lord mayor Paula Riches. Mr Hey said it was not appropriate for a Muslim to deliver prayers at the start of a full council meeting.

Mr Hey, who sits on the Portsmouth Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education, rejoined the meeting straight after the prayer.

“In a letter, and without any consultation, the lord mayor invited, and will invite, other religions to take part and I was not happy with that,” he said. “I’m a Christian, not a Muslim, and I do not believe we are praying to the same god. I think we have a tradition of Christianity in this country, our legal system is based on that, and most of our official meetings have some Christian prayers or worship as part of that event. I do not think at this point in time it’s reasonable to change our history and have, say, some Muslim tradition brought into that environment.”

Yasin Rahim, of Muslim community group Wessex Jamaat, said: “It was our imam who Malcolm snubbed by walking out. I think this is a serious issue here. The imam was invited by the mayoress – it was an invitation to the table of brotherhood and here he walks out. It smacks of inauthenticity. He says he’s not Islamophobic but that is like saying I’m turning right and then he turns left.”

It is customary for the Liberal Democrat-controlled authority to start its full council meetings with a prayer from a local Christian leader, but the lord mayor was keen to involve other religious groups as well in an effort towards greater inclusion.

Councillor Riches said she was “deeply disappointed” by Mr Hey’s actions and they had not yet spoken. “We are a multi-cultural, multi-faith city and in my particular ward I have the mosque and a Sikh temple. I thought it was appropriate that we had prayers for the whole of Portsmouth City Council represented from our community. I’m deeply disappointed that he felt he should leave the chamber.”

BBC News, 26 January 2011

See also “Councillor defends prayer walkout”, Press Association, 26 January 2011

Temecula City Council unanimously approves plan for new mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

At the end of what city officials referred to as the longest meeting in city history, the City Council early Wednesday morning voted 4-0 to deny an appeal of the Planning Commission’s Dec. 1 approval of the Temecula mosque plans. The 3:34 a.m. vote means the Islamic Center of Temecula Valley can move forward with the first phase of its mosque project absent any legal challenge.

Before casting his vote, Councilman Jeff Comerchero said he received an e-mail recently from someone who asked him what he would tell his children and grandchildren if he voted to deny the appeal. “I’ll tell them I was proud to sit up here and uphold the Constitution,” he said, garnering applause from the folks who made it to the end of the eight-plus-hour hearing.

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Cameron puts HT ban on back burner

Posted on by Bob Pitt

HizbAt Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Labour MP Clive Efford asked David Cameron, in connection with the government’s announcement that the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan would be added to the list of proscribed terrorist groups, why he has “not fulfilled his manifesto commitment” to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Cameron refused to answer the question, demanding instead: “why did the last Government have 13 years, yet the Pakistani Taliban were never banned? It has taken us eight months to do what they failed to do in 12 years.” (To which supporters of the last government might reply that Labour’s failure to proscribe the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan immediately after taking office in May 1997 could possibly be explained by the fact that the TTP wasn’t founded until December 2007.)

But the Tory Party’s 2010 election manifesto did indeed contain an explicit commitment to “ban any organisations which advocate hate or the violent overthrow of our society, such as Hizb-ut-Tahrir”. And when he was leader of the opposition Cameron repeatedly called for the proscription of HT (see for example here, here, here,here), as did other prominent figures in the Tory Party such as Pauline Neville-Jones, Chris Grayling and Patrick Mercer.

It was explained to Cameron by spokespersons for the Labour government that, while they were keeping HT under review, an organisation cannot be proscribed under the 2000 Terrorism Act unless there is actual evidence that it is “concerned in terrorism”. And in the case of HT, which is a peaceful if highly sectarian organisation that rejects any involvement with or support for terrorist activities, no such evidence exists.

Challenged in the Commons on Wednesday evening over the government’s plans to ban HT, Damian Green stated only that “Hizb ut-Tahrir is an organisation about which we have real concerns, and I can confirm that its activities are kept under review”. And ENGAGE draws our attention to an article in Thursday’s Daily Express which reports that “Downing Street insiders” have “admitted that there was a lack of evidence of law-breaking for such a banning”.

In short, it would appear that Cameron has now adopted exactly the same position on the illegalisation of HT for which he vehemently denounced Labour when they were in office. In a letter to the prime minister, Ed Balls has written: “Isn’t it the case that the issue has turned out to be more complicated in government than the grandstanding and simple soundbites you made in opposition?”

Precisely so. Without any concern for the civil rights of an organisation that operates entirely within the law, Cameron used the demand for the proscription of HT in order to score party political points against the Labour government, he appealed to voters in the 2010 general election on the basis of a manifesto promise he couldn’t keep, and then quietly abandoned it once he was in power.

Temecula: Islamophobes leaflet high school

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Chaparral High School leafletingWith a vote on a mosque plan days away, an opposition group handed out fliers at a school today. About five people attended the event that began at 2:30 p.m. outside the gates of Chaparral High School on Winchester and Nicolas roads.

The group handed out fliers by an anonymous author who opposed the proposed mosque. “I am opposed to the mosque project at Nicolas road near this school; and to the Moslem Student Assn.,” read the flier.

The flier was addressed to students, and it stated their school brainwashed them, and the district leaders and teachers may also be brainwashed. It also implied Muslims were trying to enslave the readers. “Is someone working to remove your First Amendment rights and freedoms, even to make you into a slave?” the letter read.

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