Category Archives: Right wing

Judge issues permanent injunction on Oklahoma Sharia law ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A federal judge in Oklahoma has issued an order putting on hold the certification of a ballot measure that forbids state courts from considering or using international laws, as well as Sharia, or Islamic law. That permanent injunction will allow the judge more time to consider the constitutional issues raised by State Question 755, which was approved by voters earlier this month.

Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange had earlier issued a temporary restraining order in favor of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which had sued to nullify the law completely.

“While the public has an interest in the will of the voters being carried out,” wrote the judge in Monday’s order, “the court finds that the public has a more profound and long-term interest in upholding an individual’s constitutional rights.”

The language of her 15-page order indicated Miles-LaGrange has initial doubts about the constitutionality of the ballot measure. She said the case goes “to the very foundation of our country, our Constitution, and particularly the Bill of Rights. Throughout the course of our country’s history, the will of the ‘majority’ has on occasion conflicted with the constitutional rights of individuals.”

CNN, 29 November 2010

Daniel Pipes on ‘Islamist Turkey vs. secular Iran’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

'Gaza: The Case for Middle East Peace': Erdogan, Peres, Ki-moon, Moussa
Turkish prime minister Recep Erdoğan walks out of the room at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos after clashing with Shimon Peres over Israel’s attack on Gaza

Over at the Washington Times, Daniel Pipes offers a bizarre assessment of Turkey and Iran and their future political evolution.

According to Pipes, experience of an Islamic state has caused Iranians to become disillusioned with Islamism, opening up the prospect of the country eventually adopting a secular pro-western form of government. However, “while the Turkish government presents few immediate dangers, its more subtle application of Islamism’s hideous principles makes it loom large as a future threat”.

If the AKP wins the next parliamentary elections, Pipes asserts, “that will likely establish the premise for them to remain enduringly in power, during which they will bend the country to fit their will, instituting Islamic law (the Sharia), and building an Islamic order resembling Khomeini’s idealized polity”.

Pipes concludes: “Long after Khomeini and Osama bin Laden are forgotten, I venture, Mr. Erdogan and his colleagues will be remembered as the inventors of a more lasting and insidious form of Islamism.”

You can’t help suspecting that Pipes’ attempt to transform the Justice and Development Party into an Islamist bogeyman is not unconnected with the fact that under the AKP the Turkish government has emerged as a severe critic of Israel, first over the Gaza war and then over the Gaza flotilla raid.

Eric Pickles recycles ‘war on Christmas’ myth

Posted on by Bob Pitt

bnp demonstrationTabloid Watch takes up the press release “Councils should take pride in Christmas celebrations“, issued by Communities and Local Government secretary Eric Pickles, which repeats the familiar right-wing nonsense about the abolition of Christmas. The press release states:

“Mr Pickles urged councils to take pride in Britain’s Christian heritage; celebrating the nativity and all the traditions that have sprung up around it from tinsel and tree lights to turkey.

“We should actively celebrate the Christian basis of Christmas, and not allow politically correct Grinches to marginalise Christianity and the importance of the birth of Christ. The War on Christmas is over, and likes of Winterval, Winter Lights and Luminous deserve to be in the dustbin of history.”

Mr Pickles explained that the Christian festival has previously been ambushed by those intent on re-branding Christmas as a bland “Winter festival”, insisting that multi-cultural Britain can enjoy Christmas without abandoning its underlying Christian heritage in a misguided attempt to appease these politically correct “Grinches”.

See also Enemies of Reason, 27 November 2010

Massive vote fraud in Egyptian elections – still no word of criticism from Harry’s Place

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Members of Egypt’s largest opposition party braced for a bruising defeat in parliamentary elections Sunday amid reports that proxies of the ruling party [National Democratic Party – NDP] committed widespread fraud and prevented election monitors working for rival candidates from monitoring the polls.

Muslim Brotherhood leaders said government security forces and election officials kept their delegates from entering dozens of polling stations and prevented many of their supporters from casting ballots.

“The government has used all the means to prevent people from going to polling stations,” Muslim Brotherhood campaign coordinator Mohammed Mursi said Sunday night as the polls were closing. “It seems the regime does not want to have real opposition in parliament.”

In the weeks leading up to the election, Egyptian security forces detained hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters and disqualified many of its candidates.

Opposition politicians and human rights activists said they recorded dozens of cases of ballot stuffing, vote buying and voter intimidation. Outside several key polling stations, bands of men in civilian clothes beat back voters and supporters of opposition candidates, in some instances working in coordination with police forces, human rights activists and witnesses said.

“It’s a situation in which the ruling party has a relatively free hand to manipulate the results,” said Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch, who was among the group’s representatives monitoring the situation outside polling stations Sunday. “The government’s objective seems to be to make voting simultaneously dangerous and futile to discourage everyone other than those mobilized by the ruling party from going to the polls.”

In Alexandria, Egypt’s second-largest city and a Brotherhood stronghold, opposition candidates described overt violations. “The ballot boxes arrived full,” Brotherhood candidate Sobhy Saleh said in an interview Sunday morning. “The will of the people is being stolen.” On Sunday night, an aide said Saleh had been wounded in clashes and was recovering at a hospital.

At the polling station at the Hoda Shaarawy School in Cairo’s upscale Dokki neighborhood, women dressed in head scarves banged on the green gate, pleading to be allowed to cast votes. Election officials held them at bay for most of the day and opened the doors only to allow in voters bused in by NDP activists.

Washington Post, 29 November 2010

We’ve already pointed to the failure of websites like Harry’s Place, who erupted in fury at the attack on democracy in Iran, to express even the slightest criticism of the attack on democracy in Egypt. Apparently it’s cause for outrage if an anti-western Islamist regime suppresses its opponents, but a matter of insignificance if a pro-western regime suppresses an Islamist opposition.

See also Newsweek, 29 November 2010

Islam Channel vindicated by Ofcom after complaints

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In a complaint brought about by the Quillam Foundation, Ofcom examined the evidence of infringements by Islam Channel and found that of the 100 case studies presented to Ofcom for investigation by the Quillam Foundation’s 106 page report, only three religious and six current affairs programmes were deemed to have “raised some potential issues under the code”.  Whilst concluding that, of these, three religious and two current affairs programmes had in fact breached the codes, these breaches were determined “not so serious or repeated to merit being considered for imposition of a statutory sanction”.

Islam Channel presented its case to support the position that these programmes were not in fact in breach of Ofcom codes and in four out of six cases Islam Channel’s arguments have been fully accepted by Ofcom. Whilst forming the opinion that two of these programmes were in breach of Ofcom codes, these breaches were determined “not so serious or repeated to merit being considered for imposition of a statutory sanction.”

These findings in Islam Channel’s favour recognized and accepted a number of fundamental points. The findings by Ofcom are in many respects of huge historic importance, particularly in respect to their recognition of the importance of the consensus viewpoint of the vast majority of the channel’s viewers and the right to freedom of expression “which is fundamental to allow the channel to broadcast an alternative perspective on current affairs”.

Quillam’s press release stated that “there are encouraging signs that the channel is now making efforts to improve its output and to give greater airtime to a wider range of more mainstream Muslim voices”. The Ofcom findings have however vindicated the fact that Islam Channel’s programming does not promote intolerance and sectarianism and does not provide a platform to individuals with a track record of promoting hatred and violence.

Muslim Post, 26 November 2010

Turin: official calls for veil-wearing mothers to be banned from picking up their children from school

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A government official in industrial northern Italian city of Turin has asked the local school board to stop fully-veiled women from picking up their children at school because it makes it difficult to identify them as the students’ true parents.

The request by Maurizio Marrone – a member of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative People of Liberty party – was prompted after Marrone and other mothers had seen some women dressed in full burqas picking up their children from an elementary school in Turin’s Barriera di Milano working class neighbourhood.

“Some mothers with children enrolled in the Albert Sabin elementary school in Turin have seen Islamic women wearing the full burqa picking up their children, and I have seen this as well,” Marrone said, adding that the burqa made it impossible for teachers to “verify the identity” of those picking up minors.

Marrone went on to call the wearing of the burqa, the traditional dress of fundamentalist Islamic women, “damaging to the dignity of women.” Marrone also claims the burqa “slows down the process of integration” for immigrants.

AKI, 24 November 2010

BBC feeds Islamophobic propaganda in the right-wing press

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sharia lessons for pupilsFive Chinese Crackers takes up John Ware’s Panorama documentary “British Schools, Islamic Rules”, pointing out that the programme relied on insinuation and general accusations that were not backed up by any precise facts or figures.

It fed into an anti-Muslim climate promoted by the right-wing press, who seized on the programme in order to claim that children “as young as six” are taught material that appears in textbooks used by fifteen-year-olds and invent scenarios of “ranting fanatics preaching at them”.

5cc concludes that Ware’s progamme “leaves far too much to the imagination, which is easily influenced by creepy music and shaky hidden camera footage, and far too much goes unexplained. When we’re being warned that right wing extremism is feeding Islamic extremism (which – along with exaggerated and alarmist coverage of ordinary Muslims – is feeding right wing extremism and on and on and on) we need an investigation like this to be thorough and authoritative.

“Instead we have vague claims and infuriating ‘aha! Found you out!’ style finger pointing followed by scary music and hidden cameras recording someone picking up a book that might have said something nasty and antisemitic and might have been taught alongside some other books that might have said something else and might have been used to poison children’s minds.”

We’re doomed – evil Islamists have ‘established a bridgehead in Parliament’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Andrew-Gilligan“After a series of reverses in the political arena, Islamist sympathisers yesterday established a key bridgehead in Parliament.” Yes, it’s Andrew Gilligan – who else? – responding to the launch this week of an All Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia.

Gilligan claims that members of the APPG are being “used” by ENGAGE, who he describes as “an organisation of Islamist sympathisers which has consistently defended fundamentalist organisations such as the East London Mosque and the Islamic Forum of Europe”. By that reasoning, of course, London Assembly member Andrew Boff qualifies as a fundamentalist sympathiser. And, in view of his friendly relations with the East London Mosque, Boris Johnson probably does too.

Gilligan complains that ENGAGE not only defended the East London Mosque against his hysterical witch-hunting, but it also opposed the Home Office’s ban on Zakir Naik entering the UK, failed to endorse Gilligan’s criticisms of an iERA report on Islamophobia and defended Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, against Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s attack on her support for the right to wear the face-veil.

If Gilligan wants to convince anyone that ENGAGE are a gang of dangerous Islamist extremists intent on subverting the mother of parliaments he’ll have to come up with something more damning than that. Unfortunately, given Gilligan’s long record of inventing fraudulent accusations against those he wants to discredit, he probably will.

Update:  See “A response to Andrew Gilligan’s smears about ENGAGE”, ENGAGE, 26 November 2010