Writing at ConservativeHome, Paul Goodman claims that the Quilliam Foundation has had its Home Office funding withdrawn and consequently is “laying off some 80 per cent of its staff”. Shame it’s not 100 per cent is all I can say. Unfortunately, Quilliam are “still receiving some Foreign Office funding”, according to Goodman. Still, looking on the bright side, Goodman does state that the organisation is “effectively closing”.
Category Archives: Right wing
Who told lies about the ‘March for Free Expression’?
In connection with the so-called March for Free Expression back in 2006 (it was in fact a poorly attended static demonstration in Trafalgar Square, the purpose of which was to defend the “freedom” of the right-wing Danish paper Jyllands-Posten to publish racist anti-Muslim cartoons) Harry’s Place informs us that “huge effort was put by the organisers into ensuring that Nazis did not attend”. Consequently, “when it was attacked by Bob Pitt, it was able to squash his lies”.
It would be interesting to know what this “huge effort” the MFE organisers made to deter the far right consisted of. The BNP made it clear in advance that they supported the MFE and intended to send a contingent from their front organisation, Civil Liberty, to the Trafalgar Square event – but, apart from indicating that they didn’t want the BNP joining them, the MFE organisers appear to have made no serious attempts to counter this. The BNP later reported that 40 of its members had participated in the MFE (out of a total attendance of about 300), and having witnessed the protest I can confirm that the fascists were allowed to distribute their literature unhindered in any way by the MFE organisers.
Some MFE supporters saw the presence of the BNP as a welcome sign of the political breadth of the protest. Johann Hari noted approvingly that “communists mingled awkwardly with fascists” in Trafalgar Square. Another MFE supporter wrote to Tribune rejecting the National Assembly Against Racism’s criticism of fascist involvement in the demonstration: “Everyone was welcome to the rally regardless of their political or other allegiance. That is exactly how it should be…. Free speech cannot be abandoned on the basis of demagogic ‘anti-racist’ demands from self-appointed groups.”
However, other MFE supporters adopted the position of denying that the BNP were there at all. Peter Tatchell, who is of course regarded as a bit of a hero over at Harry’s Place, assured Comment is Free readers: “Contrary to the lies and scaremongering of the far left, there was no BNP presence at Saturday’s rally.” Tatchell’s sidekick, Harry’s Place blogger Brett Lock, took the same line. “Fascists don’t believe in freedom of expression,” he wrote, “and thus were explicitly banned from the march.”
If Harry’s Place want to denounce people for telling lies about the March for Free Expression, they would be advised to look a little closer to home.
Foreign policy, not Luton, is the problem
“Al-Abdaly grew up in Sweden. The Daily Express reports that there was ‘a shift in his personality after he left Sweden in 2001 at the age of 19 to study sports therapy in Luton’. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that the date – 2001 when the US invaded Afghanistan – might be more important than moving to Luton.”
Ken Olende in Socialist Worker, 14 December 2010
Asked what he intends to do about ‘extreme Islamism’, Cameron says it’s necessary to ‘deradicalise our universities’
Prime Minister David Cameron admitted on Wednesday that Britain had not done enough to counter domestic Islamic extremism and vowed to do more, after it emerged that a Swedish suicide bomber studied here.
“I think if we’re frank on both sides of the House (of Commons), we have not done enough to deal with the promotion of extremist Islamism in our own country,” he told MPs.
News that a suicide bomber who attacked a busy shopping street in Stockholm on Saturday had studied and lived in Luton has raised fresh soul-searching about how to combat radicalism, five years after four home-grown bombers attacked the London transport system in 2005, killing 52 people.
“Whether it’s making sure that imams coming over to this country can speak English properly, whether it’s making sure we deradicalise our universities, I think we do have to take a range of further steps and I’m going to be working hard to make sure that we do this,” Cameron said.
After being dumped by the EDL, Terry Jones gets an invite from the National Front
Richard Bartholomew has the details.
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria blasts Glenn Beck’s claim that 10 per cent of Muslims are terrorists
Glenn Beck and Fareed Zakaria are best known as political pundits, but this week the two are locked head-to-head in a battle over math.
Beck launched the feud by claiming on his radio show last week that 10% of Muslims are terrorists. “What is the number of Islamic terrorists? 1 percent? I think it’s closer to 10%, but the rest of the P.C. world will tell you, ‘Oh no, it’s minuscule,'” the Fox host said.
Beck first made the claim in his 2003 book The Real America, in which he said “Ninety percent of Islam is peaceful. Ten percent of Islam wants us dead.”
Fareed Zakaria, an Indian-born journalist and the former editor ofNewsweek International, fired back at Beck’s claims on his CNN show “GPS” on Sunday night.
“Let’s do a bit of math here,” said Zakaria, demonstrating his calculations on a chalkboard. “There are 1,570,000,000 Muslims worldwide. Take ten percent of those Muslims and you get 157,000,000. That’s how many Muslim terrorists Glenn Beck is suggesting there are in the world.”
He went on to attack Beck’s math, and his methods. “Beck wondered why ‘Oh why this wasn’t receiving any media coverage?'” Zakaria continued. “Well let me suggest one reason. It is total nonsense. A figure made up by Glenn Beck with absolutely no basis in fact.”
EDL tells Terry Jones he’s not welcome
The EDL have issued a press release announcing that they have withdrawn their invitation to Pastor Terry Jones to speak at their rally in Luton in February. The EDL state:
“we strongly disapprove of burning the Koran, precisely because we believe in those principles of free speech and free expression. We do not believe the Koran should be burned, but rather read, so that people come to understand its inherent violence, supremacism, and hatred and contempt for non-Muslims. It is essential that people know what the Koran teaches, so they can see how far its teachings are from the free traditions of England that we have pledged our lives to uphold and defend.”
Perhaps they should tell that to their own members, who evidently are far from clear that this is the EDL’s policy. And shouldn’t Nick Griffin be given credit by the EDL, since this argument is lifted directly from the BNP’s website?
The EDL offer the following additional explanation:
“The EDL is extremely proud of its diverse support base including it’s primary base of geographical divisions from all across England encompassing much ethnic diversity. In addition we have specific divisions drawn from groups particularly threatened by encroaching Sharia: a Lesbian Gay Bisexual & Transgender (LGBT) Division; a Jewish Division and recently a Pakistani Christian Division. The EDL also enjoys the active participation and support of many former members of the Armed Forces. In light of our strong commitment to these groups and some of the Pastor’s statements and associations, we feel it inappropriate to offer Pastor Terry Jones an invitation to attend an EDL demonstration.”
Oddly, the press release concludes with a link to a CBS report about the Westboro Baptist Church picketing the funeral of a US serviceman killed in Afghanistan, which would suggest that the EDL have confused Terry Jones with Fred Phelps. Could they really be that stupid? On past experience, yes they certainly could.
If the EDL are worried that association with Jones might tarnish their hard-earned reputation for moderation, they might be advised to deal with some of the hate-filled racists in their own ranks. The first comment that follows the press release on the EDL’s Facebook page reads: “I hate stinkin muslims… Fuck off home.!!!!”
Postscript: Or perhaps, to be charitable, the EDL meant to link to a report about the support given by Jones’s Dove World Outreach Center to a Westboro Baptist Church protest outside a liberal church in Gainesville last April.
Heinz-Christian Strache wants to build links with Tea Party
The head of Austria’s far right Freedom Party says he wants to meet with representatives of the ultraconservative U.S. tea party movement.
Heinz-Christian Strache described the movement as “highly interesting” and claims his party has received and will accept invitations from the United States.
Strache made the comments in an interview with Austria’s Die Presse newspaper published Sunday. Spokesman Karl Heinz Gruensteidl confirmed the remarks but declined to provide more details.
The anti-immigration Freedom Party is the third largest political force in Austria’s parliament and recently saw a surge in support in local elections in Vienna, the country’s capital, following a campaign laced with anti-Islamic rhetoric.
‘Muslims for Bush’ founder defects to Democrats because of anti-Muslim bigotry in Republican party
Muhammad Ali Hasan, a member of the wealthy and influential Colorado Republican Hasan family and a past state House and treasurer candidate, said he is switching parties.
Speaking at the University of Colorado-Boulder on his experience growing up Muslim in the American West and later in conversation with the Colorado Independent, Hasan said he is ending his affiliation with the party for the bigotry he believes has shaped Republican politics over the last year. The FOX News regular and founder of Muslims for Bush said he met recently with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the controversial Democratic leader won him over.
Hasan said he felt alienated between national Republican leaders on one side railing against the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” and gays and illegal immigrants and, on the other, state Republican delegates convinced that as a candidate for treasurer he was angling to install sharia finance laws. He said the GOP convention in May was a low point. “You experience bigotry sometimes but I often just think it’s probably my personality that the person doesn’t like. At the convention, though, that was the first time I felt the real thing. It was the worst experience of my life.”
Hasan suspects a whisper campaign swept the convention, sounding a warning against placing a Muslim in charge of investing the state’s revenues. “Some goons were telling people that there’s a passage in the Koran that encourages Muslims to lie, that lying is considered a good thing in the service of advancing a Muslim or sharia agenda. I don’t know who was behind the rumor, but I’ve read the Koran, and I don’t know what they were talking about.”
He said the weekend of the convention he watched hundreds of supporters fall away. Delegate after delegate approached him and mentioned the Koran and said in so many words that they weren’t sure they could trust him. “It hurt. People who had said they were voting for me were now coming up to me and saying ‘You know, I hear you could be lying to us.’ I was shocked. I got the courage to approach some of them, people I had talked to and who said they were voting for me. Here they were wearing J.J. Ament stickers. I was like, you know, wow, and they said ‘But how do I know you’re not going to assert some form of sharia law against Colorado?'”
Hasan said he was deflated after talking to one woman at length. “I told her I started Muslims for Bush. I’m proud of that. I told her I have been a vocal fiscal conservative for years. I said I’ve given to Republican candidates on the federal and state level. I helped get Republican candidates elected to House seats in 2008 when Democrats were winning everything… Finally I asked her ‘There’s nothing I can say to win your vote because my name is Muhammad, am I right?’ and she said ‘Yeah, that’s probably right.'”
EDL invites Pastor Terry Jones to speak at Luton demonstration
Home secretary Theresa May is under intense pressure to ban controversial anti-Muslim preacher Terry Jones from Britain after far-right activists said he had agreed to address them at a demonstration about “the evils of Islam”.
The English Defence League (EDL) said it was “proud to announce” that the US pastor, who caused outrage with plans to burn the Qur’an on this year’s anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, would be attending the event in Luton in early February. Jones confirmed that he would be arriving in the UK. The pastor’s website said he intended to visit the EDL’s “biggest demonstration to date” in February. The website stated: “During the protest, Dr Terry Jones will speak against the evils and destructiveness of Islam in support of the continued fight against the Islamification of England and Europe.”
President Barack Obama warned in September that Jones’s planned Qur’an burnings would be a “recruitment bonanza” for al-Qaida and the US state department said it would put the country’s citizens at risk across the world.
The EDL announced Jones’s planned visit on its Facebook site yesterday, saying he would attend “our biggest demo to date” and describing it as “the big one”. There are fears that copies of the Qur’an could be burned by extremists.
The last time the EDL marched in Luton, 250 of their supporters went on the rampage through an Asian area of the town. Shop windows were smashed, cars overturned and a number of people were attacked. Thirty-five people were arrested as a result of the violence. Eleven people were arrested yesterday as 500 EDL supporters marched in Peterborough.
News of Jones’s planned visit comes as the head of the police intelligence unit on domestic extremism reveals that the EDL and related splinter groups have become his biggest concern.
Adrian Tudway, the national co-ordinator for domestic extremism, told the Observer: “We look at the extreme right and left, but currently our biggest single area of business are the various groups which call themselves defence leagues. These defence leagues can be found across England.”
The unit is monitoring a “number of individuals” connected to extreme rightwing groups, details of which are disseminated to local police forces.
See also “Koran-protest pastor Terry Jones may be banned from UK”, BBC News, 12 December 2010
Further details at Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion
Update: See Jon Cruddas, “Ban the hateful Pastor Jones”, Comment is Free, 12 December 2010