Category Archives: Right wing

Mail recycles old story about ‘killing for Islam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The latest WikiLeaks revelation: 1 in 3 British Muslim students back killing for Islam and 40% want Sharia law”, reads a typical shock-horror headline in today’s Daily Mail. The reference is to the findings in a July 2008 report by the right-wing anti-Muslim think-tank, the Centre for Social Cohesion, whose figures were quoted in a leaked diplomatic cable from the US embassy in London.

Regular readers of the Mail may have been struck by a feeling of déjà vu. And understandably so. The paper ran an article on the CSC report at the time, under the headline “One third of British Muslim students say it’s acceptable to kill for Islam”. The Mail has just seized the opportunity to recycle an old story. But then, you can never have too many scaremongering articles about Muslims, can you?

And this is hardly “the latest WikiLeaks revelation” anyway. TheMail‘s article quotes from two diplomatic cables, one dated 6 January 2009 and the other 5 February 2010. As you can see, they were released by Wikileaks back on 14 December.

Nor can the unnamed Daily Mail reporter claim that their belated exposé is based on any original research. In fact the article is clearly derived from a piece that appeared on the right-wing US website WorldNetDaily on 16 December.

See also “Daily Mail scaremongers about ‘Killing for Islam'”, ENGAGE, 22 December 2010

Update:  See Martin Robbins, “Mail’s Wikileaks ‘revelation’ about Muslim students is their own 2008 story”, The Lay Scientist, 22 December 2010

Keith Ellison condemns planned investigation of Muslim ‘radicalization’ as McCarthyistic

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Keith Ellison 3Republican Rep. Peter King of New York says he wants to hold investigations into the “radicalization” of American Muslims in his new position as chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, but Rep. Keith Ellison said on Monday that targeting one community would hamper homeland security efforts.

“I believe it’s important to have this investigation into the radicalization of the Muslim community,” King said in an interview with Fox News this week. “We have to break through this politically correct nonsense which keeps us from debating and discussing what I think is one of the most vitally important issues in this country. We are under siege by Muslim terrorists and yet there are Muslim leaders in this country who do not cooperate with law enforcement.”

Ellison, who became America’s first Muslim member of Congress in 2006, said that investigations like the one proposed by King will not cause members of the community to cooperate with law enforcement. He said it might have the opposite effect. Ellison said he confronted King on the House floor on the issue.

“I got so concerned that when I heard about it I actually approached Congressman King on the House floor and told him that, you know, look, we all need to be concerned about violent radicalization, but not just against Muslims, against anybody,” he said on the Ed Show on MSNBC on Monday. “What about the guy who flew a plane into the IRS or what about the guy who killed a guard at the holocaust museum?”

He said the proposed investigations should include all Americans. “You know it is worthwhile to find out what turns somebody from a normal citizen into a violent radical, but to say that we’re only going to do it against this community and we’re about to change the debate to vilify this community is very scary and clearly has McCarthyistic implications.”

Minnesota Independent, 21 December 2010

See also “Peter King’s terror hearing test: If he’s his old demagogic self, radicalism inquiry will backfire”, New York Daily News, 21 December 2010

Islam-bashing bigots train US counterterrorism agents

Posted on by Bob Pitt

PRA report

“Kill them…including the children.”

That’s how to solve the threat of militant Muslims?

This quote is from what one official involved in homeland security said was the theme of a speech by Walid Shoebat at an anti-terrorism training in Las Vegas in October 2010.

Our source had turned around after Shoebat’s speech and asked the woman in the chair behind them at the conference what she thought was the solution offered by Shoebat. “Kill them…including the children…you heard him,” was the full response.

Shoebat’s Las Vegas speech was described by our source as “frightening.”

Chip Berlet reveals some of the findings in a forthcoming report from Political Research Associates, Right-Wing Firms Train Public Servants on Terror Threats.

Huffington Post, 20 December 2010

See also “CAIR asks DOJ to review use of Muslim-bashers as terror trainers”, CAIR press release, 20 December 2010

Update:  See “WaPo Notes ‘self-described experts’ advising law enforcement on Islam”, Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, 21 December 2010

Further update:  See Chip Berlet, “Three anti-Islamic security and training companies”, Huffington Post, 22 December 2010

The great Islamophobic crusade

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nine years after 9/11, hysteria about Muslims in American life has gripped the country. With it has gone an outburst of arson attacks on mosques, campaigns to stop their construction, and the branding of the Muslim-American community, overwhelmingly moderate, as a hotbed of potential terrorist recruits. The frenzy has raged from rural Tennessee to New York City, while in Oklahoma, voters even overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure banning the implementation of Sharia law in American courts (not that such a prospect existed). This campaign of Islamophobia wounded President Obama politically, as one out of five Americans have bought into a sustained chorus of false rumors about his secret Muslim faith. And it may have tainted views of Muslims in general; an August 2010 Pew Research Center poll revealed that, among Americans, the favorability rating of Muslims had dropped by 11 points since 2005.

Erupting so many years after the September 11th trauma, this spasm of anti-Muslim bigotry might seem oddly timed and unexpectedly spontaneous. But think again: it’s the fruit of an organized, long-term campaign by a tight confederation of right-wing activists and operatives who first focused on Islamophobia soon after the September 11th attacks, but only attained critical mass during the Obama era. It was then that embittered conservative forces, voted out of power in 2008, sought with remarkable success to leverage cultural resentment into political and partisan gain.

This network is obsessively fixated on the supposed spread of Muslim influence in America. Its apparatus spans continents, extending from Tea Party activists here to the European far right. It brings together in common cause right-wing ultra-Zionists, Christian evangelicals, and racist British soccer hooligans. It reflects an aggressively pro-Israel sensibility, with its key figures venerating the Jewish state as a Middle Eastern Fort Apache on the front lines of the Global War on Terror and urging the U.S. and various European powers to emulate its heavy-handed methods.

Max Blumenthal at TomDispatch, 19 December 2010

Is Terry Jones still coming to the UK?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Terry Jones cartoonWe know that Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center was originally invited to speak at the English Defence League’s Luton demonstration on 5 February, then disinvited when the EDL leadership belatedly woke up to his record of racism and homophobia, and that the National Front promptly stepped into the breach, denouncing the “utter cave in” by the “pro multi-cult EDL” and inviting Jones to speak at one of their own events. Meanwhile, home secretary Theresa May was reported to be “actively looking at” imposing a ban on Jones entering the UK.

Since then the NF have suggested that Jones may have pulled out of their event. But the “Stand Up America with Dr Terry Jones”Facebook page and the Dove World Outreach Center website state that Jones will address a National Front rally on 5 February, where he will “speak against the evils and destructiveness of Islam in support of the continued fight against the Islamification of England and Europe”. This would presumably be the NF’s Forty-fourth Anniversary Rally, which is to be held on 5 February somewhere in West Yorksire and is advertised as featuring “a surprise speaker from overseas”. And still no word from Theresa May on whether Jones will be allowed into the country.

Sarkozy panders to racism again, backs Marine Le Pen over Muslim prayers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nicolas Sarkozy will take another lurch to the Right with a speech on New Year’s Eve calling Muslim prayers in the street “unacceptable”.

After his expulsions of gypsies and a crackdown on immigrant crime, the French President will warn that the overflow of Muslim faithful on to the streets at prayer time when mosques are packed to capacity risks undermining the French secular tradition separating state and religion.

He will doubtless be accused of pandering to the far Right: the issue of Muslim prayers in the street has been brought to the fore by Marine Le Pen, the charismatic new figurehead of the National Front, who compared it to the wartime occupation of France.

Her words provoked uproar on the Left, whose commentators took them as evidence that far from being the gentler face of the far Right, Ms Le Pen, 42, is no different from Jean-Marie, 82, her father, who has been accused of racism and Holocaust denial.

According to his aide, Mr Sarkozy agrees with the junior Le Pen that the street cannot be allowed to become “an extension of the mosque” as it does in some parts of Paris, which are closed to traffic because of the overflow of the faithful.

“People overreacted to Marine Le Pen’s comments,” said the aide, referring to the furore in which she was accused of rabble-rousing racism. “She is right: this phenomenon is unacceptable.”

The Australian, 20 December 2010

‘Unsubstantiated’ – it should be Andrew Gilligan’s middle name

Posted on by Bob Pitt

ENGAGE reports that the Charity Commission has published the results of its investigation into Muslim Aid, and that it “found no evidence of irregular or improper use of the Charity’s funds or any evidence that the Charity had illegally funded any proscribed or designated entities”.

The investigation was prompted by Andrew Gilligan’s Dispatches programme broadcast in March this year. Needless to say, Gilligan is deeply unhappy that the Commission rejected his accusations against Muslim Aid as “unsubstantiated”. But you’d have thought Gilligan would be used to this sort of thing by now. Back in 2004 he was forced to resign from the BBC after the Hutton Inquiry found his accusations against Alastair Campell to be “unfounded”. And then there was Gilligan’s Evening Standard witch-hunt of Lee Jasper in the run-up to the May 2008 London Mayoral election. In July that year Boris Johnson’s Tory-dominated Forensic Audit Panel published its report which found that Jasper’s actions “did not breach any rules or protocols”. Are you beginning to see a pattern emerging here?

The only thing Gilligan seems to have learned from his sacking by the BBC was to frame his accusations in weasel words that would block a successful libel action by his victims. Hopefully that won’t be sufficient to prevent Muslim Aid suing him.

Update:  See also “Charity Commission rejects criticism over Muslim Aid investigation”, Third Sector, 20 December 2010

Dutch may introduce veil ban as early as 2011, says Wilders

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Netherlands could ban the burqa, the full-body covering worn by some Muslim women, as soon as next year, Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders told Reuters in an interview Thursday.

Wilders’ populist Freedom Party is the third largest in parliament and provides crucial support to the minority ruling coalition in exchange for the government taking a tougher line on Islam and immigration from non-Western countries.

His party has grown in popularity largely because of his outspoken criticism of Islam, which he describes as “a violent ideology.”

“There are not too many people who are willing to fight for this cause. It’s a big responsibility. It’s not only a Dutch problem, it’s a problem of the West,” said Wilders.

He has been charged with inciting hatred against Muslims for comparing Islam to Nazism. The case is due to start over again following a request for new judges.

“We are not a single issue party but the fight against a fascist ideology Islam is for us of the utmost importance,” said Wilders, who argues his comments about Islam are protected by freedom of speech.

Wilders said immigration from Muslim countries “is very dangerous to the Netherlands. We believe our country is based on Christianity, on Judaism, on humanism, and we believe the more Islam we get, the more it will not only threaten our culture and our own identity but also our values and our freedom.”

The burqa ban, which his party agreed as part of a pact with the minority coalition, is due to come into force within four years and possibly as soon as next year or 2012, he said.

With no clear winner in the elections in June, Wilders emerged as a kingmaker and won considerable influence for his Freedom Party over government policy. He promised support for the minority Liberal-Christian Democrat coalition in return for a tougher line on Islam and immigration, especially from non-Western, or predominantly Muslim countries.

Reuters, 16 December 2010

Incoming chair of Homeland Security Committee proposes Congressional inquiry into Muslim ‘radicalization’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Republican who will head the House committee that oversees domestic security is planning to open a Congressional inquiry into what he calls “the radicalization” of the Muslim community when his party takes over the House next year.

Representative Peter T. King of New York, who will become the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he was responding to what he has described as frequent concerns raised by law enforcement officials that Muslim leaders have been uncooperative in terror investigations.

Mr. King’s proposal comes amid signs that deep anxieties about Muslims persist in the United States nine years after the 9/11 terror attacks and an outcry this year over a proposed Islamic center near ground zero in New York City.

Told of Mr. King’s plan, Muslim leaders expressed strong opposition, describing the move as a prejudiced act that was akin to racial profiling and that would unfairly cast suspicion on an entire group.

New York Times, 16 December 2010