Category Archives: Right wing

Mad Mel on multiculturalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Angela Merkel has got the point. Multiculturalism has failed, she states flatly, as she surveys western Europe going down under the tide of radical Islam. Rather than liberal society creating the utopia of harmonious cultural pluralism, it is being swallowed whole by the giant predator whose voracious mouth it encourages, in the spirit of tolerance, to open ever wider in the unshakeable belief of western liberals that the jaws about to snap shut around their necks are actually stretched wide in a smile.”

Melanie Phillips at her Spectator blog, 18 October 2010

Geller has nothing against halal food (it says here)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Campbell Soup Co., the Camden, N.J., food giant, has been fighting a grass-roots boycott of its products after its Canadian subsidiary rolled out a line of soups certified as halal, meaning they’re prepared according to Islamic dietary laws.

Campbell Co. of Canada introduced the soups in a few Canadian markets in January, although American bloggers didn’t catch up to the news until earlier this month. That’s when the tempest in a tomato-soup can started.

Blogger Pamela Geller began calling for a boycott earlier this month via her widely read site, Atlas Shrugs. Other bloggers soon joined in.

The halal soups, designated with a special label, are available only in Canada. The company has no plans to offer a similar line in the United States, said John Faulkner, a company spokesman.

In an interview, Geller, who was instrumental in whipping up opposition to an Islamic community center and mosque in Lower Manhattan, said she has no objection to the halal certification itself. Rather, she said, she opposes Campbell’s decision to have its Canadian products certified by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an organization that government prosecutors alleged had ties to the terrorist group Hamas in a 2007 conspiracy case.

“No one is suggesting they refrain from this line,” Geller said. “No one is suggesting they not have halal food. I’m not against halal food any more than I’m against kosher food. My issue is who’s doing the certifying.”

Washington Post, 18 October 2010

Yup, that’s the same Pamela Geller whose response to the Mail‘s recent scaremongering about halal meat in the UK was to complain about non-Muslims having to consume “meat slaughtered in a barbaric, torturous and inhuman method, Islamic slaughter. Ugh.”

Fox News host who claimed all terrorists are Muslim says he ‘misspoke’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Brian KilmeadeA Fox News Channel host apologized on Monday for saying last week that “not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim”.

Brian Kilmeade, a co-host of “Fox & Friends”, said he “misspoke”. “I don’t believe all terrorists are Muslims. I’m sorry about that if I offended or hurt anybody’s feelings,” he said on the program Monday morning.

A liberal group that monitors Fox News, Media Matters, was skeptical that it was just a slip of the tongue, however, because Mr. Kilmeade made the same statement twice on Friday, hours apart from each other. Media Matters said Mr. Kilmeade “has a history of offensive and inflammatory comments regarding Islam and Muslims”.

On Friday Mr. Kilmeade was reacting to the fellow Fox host Bill O’Reilly’s spat on “The View” the prior day, when Mr. O’Reilly said “Muslims killed us on 9/11”, prompting two co-hosts to walk off the set.

Mr. Kilmeade said, “They were outraged that someone was saying that there was a reason, there was a certain group of people that attacked us on 9/11. It wasn’t just one person, it was one religion. Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim.”

Hours later on his radio show Mr. Kilmeade said “Not every Muslim is an extremist, a terrorist, but every terrorist is a Muslim. You can’t avoid that fact,” according to Media Matters.

New York Times, 18 October 2010

Update:  See also Huffington Post, 19 October 2010

‘Qaradawi won’t talk to Jews’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Well, so Harry’s Place claims. They quote that reliable source, the Elder of Ziyon blog, as follows: “The 8th Annual Doha Conference on Interfaith Dialogue is to start tomorrow, but prominent Islamic Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi is boycotting the conference, according to Palestine Today. The reason? Because there will be Jews there!”

In fact Qaradawi’s position on interfaith dialogue is quite clear. Back in 2005 he stated that he objected to dialogue with Israel’s chief rabbi because “he supports the murder of Palestinians on a daily basis, supports the destruction of homes and the eviction of people, and supports the crimes and the barbaric slaughter that are taking place every day. How can I shake his hand and sit down with him?

But Qaradawi said he had no problem engaging in dialogue with representatives of the Jewish community who oppose the repression of the Palestinians: “I welcome Jews who dissociate themselves from what Israel is doing, and I welcome being with them.”

He concluded: “I oppose dialogue with Jewish rabbis living in Israel, who support the crimes committed by Israel. With them there is no possibility [of dialogue]…. We will hold a dialogue with those who are reasonable among them, as well as with the Christians, as indeed I have been present at a number of conferences for Islamic-Christian dialogue. But with those ‘who do evil’, as Allah said, we shall neither argue nor shall we have any dialogue.”

The source of these quotes? None other than the Middle East Media Research Institute, an institution that is of course highly regarded by the contributors to Harry’s Place.

Express backs Merkel on multicuturalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mired in guilt over the crimes of the nazis, most Germans have gone along with edicts of multiculturalism. They have not dared even to question whether Flooding their country with immigrants from very different cultures, often with contradictory values, and making little attempt to integrate them into mainstream society was a good idea. now continued migration on a huge scale and a high birth rate among Muslim incomers, mainly from Turkey, have led to a crisis in German society.

The country’s leader, Angela Merkel, has had to break a longstanding taboo by admitting multiculturalism has “utterly failed”. Mrs Merkel has spoken out in defence of a Germany defined by “the Christian image of humanity”.

Almost everything Merkel says about Germany could equally be applied to Britain. in our case it was guilt over empire that was used as the pretext to justify the multicultural experiment.

But all over europe ruling political elites have failed to achieve a happy accommodation between the expectations of indigenous populations and those of Muslim immigrant communities. now race relations are suffering terribly and both groups feel victimised – immigrants largely because they have never been challenged to adapt to new surroundings and native populations because they have been treated as second-class citizens in their own countries.

Radical steps to promote integration of immigrants into a more enlightened way of living are the only way forward and Mrs Merkel is to be congratulated for recognising so. it is time for British political leaders to do the same.

Editorial in Daily Express, 18 October 2010

‘Taliban-style culture of intimidation’ at City University London, according to Quilliam report

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamist extremists at a British university tried to impose a Taliban-style culture of intimidation, creating a “chilling effect” on the lives of staff and students.

A confidential report on the radicalisation of British universities found that Islamists at City University London engaged in “sub-criminal extremism”, abusing staff and students and leaving them feeling threatened.

Continue reading →

Racists are ‘trying to form a transnational challenge to Islam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tentative links are developing between supporters of the reactionary Tea Party movement in the US and right-wing fringe groups in Britain opposed to what they call the “Islamification” of Europe.

The movements are not yet formally aligned, but the racist English Defence League (EDL), which insists that Islamic fundamentalism will soon engulf Britain, is busy building bridges with US figures who take a similar anti-Islamic position.

One such is candidate for the California state legislature Rabbi Nachum Shifren, who plans to visit England next week in a trip partly sponsored by the EDL. The trip was organised by EDL activist Roberta Moore, who has formed a “Jewish division” of the group. She said that the rabbi would speak at an October 24 rally in London.

“He plans to speak about the dangers of Islamification both in this country and in America,” she said. “We have the same objectives as the groups in the US, and we want to exchange information and work with them.”

Nottingham University Professor Matthew Goodwin, an expert on extremist groups in Britain, warned:

“We’re seeing groups across Europe trying to form a transnational challenge to Islam. Going to the US is particularly interesting because the far-right in Britain has never gone that way before. It has always gone toward Europe. If it does forge strong links to the Tea Party, it would be important because the Tea Party has significant resources.”

Rabbi Shifren, who has given anti-Islamic talks at Tea Party events, boasted in an interview that he planned to warn Britons their country is being lost as “fundamentalist Islam” gains strength. “I see England going down and I want to cry out and do everything I can to prevent that, to work with the EDL,” he said.

Morning Star, 16 October 2010

French MP says failure to ban veil in UK has ‘opened the door to terrorism’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jacques MyardThe architect of France’s burka ban has accused Britain of “losing the battle against Islamic extremism” by failing to introduce one of its own.

Jacques Myard, a senior member of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling UMP party, said relaxed UK policies had “opened the door to terrorism”. He added: “Allowing women to exclude themselves from society by wearing the full Islamic veil makes radicals extremely comfortable, and Britain should realise this.”

Mr Myard made his outspoken comments to British journalists in Qatar, where he was defending his country’s recent banning of the veil at the Qatar Foundation Doha Debates, which are broadcast by the BBC this weekend.

His words will inflame tensions between London and Paris on the fifth anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings, which the French have regularly blamed on lax policing. Referring to the 2005 atrocity in which 52 died and 107 were injured Mr Myard added: “Britain has suffered a number of high-profile failures in its fight against extremism in recent years. These could have been prevented if all signs of extremism were curbed, as they are in France.”

Asked if Britain should introduce its own burka ban, Mr Myard replied: “Of course – it is fundamental to ensuring that extremism is kept in check.”

Despite his strong defence of the burka ban in Qatar, Mr Myard lost the Doha Debate entitled ‘This House believes France is right to ban the face veil’. He was defeated by a team of London journalists, made up of Mehdi Hassan and Nabila Ramdani, as 78 per cent of voters rejected the motion.

Some 350 million people across 200 countries are expected to watch the debate when it is broadcast by channels including BBC World on Saturday and Sunday.

Daily Telegraph, 16 October 2010

Civitas (!) defends right to wear veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Well, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph and a Civitas press release, it does. Alveena Malik, one of the contributors to a new report from the right-wing think-tank entitled Women, Islam and Western Liberalism, is quoted as writing that “the wearing of religious symbols, including the full veil, should be a fundamental human right of an individual in both the public and private sphere”.

Which is not at all the sort of thing we’ve come to expect from Civitas, who have been the source of a series of scaremongering publications directed against the Muslim community.

Indeed it’s not so long since the Civitas blog carried a piece that quoted al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri as saying that every veil-wearing Muslim woman in the west was “a soldier in the battle of Islam against Zionist-Crusader”, went on to assert that the niqab represented a serious security threat and concluded that “there are enough genuine concerns as to who and what may really lie behind the veil to justify its proscription in public places”.