Category Archives: Right wing

Islamophobia and the Muslim center at Ground Zero

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamophobia must be recognized for what it is, a social cancer as unacceptable as anti-Semitism, a threat to the very fabric of our democratic, pluralistic way of life.

The line that distinguishes Islam from those who commit violence and terror in the name of Islam – between the majority of mainstream Muslims and the acts of a minority of Muslim terrorists – must be maintained.

Blurring these distinctions risks the adoption of foreign and domestic policies that promote a clash rather than co-existence of cultures and threaten the rights and civil liberties of Muslims.

John Esposito writes in response to the “Ground Zero mosque” controversy.

CNN, 20 July 2010

Civitas claims that CPS discriminates in favour of Muslims against ‘White Christian Britons’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

New InquisitionWhite Christian Britons are being unfairly targeted compared with minority groups for committing hate crimes, a new report says.

The study from think-tank Civitas argues that new hate crime legislation is restricting freedom of speech, and has effectively introduced a new blasphemy law into Britain by the back door.

A foreword attached to the main report, “A New Inquisition: religious persecution in Britain today”, argues that prosecutors and police are unfairly singling out alleged crimes by white Christians, while ignoring other similar offences by minority groups.

It claims “there is evidence of biased application of the law”, citing the case of a Muslim man who sprayed the words “Islam will dominate the world – Osama is on his way” and “Kill Gordon Brown” on a war memorial in Burton-Upon-Trent. He was prosecuted for criminal damage – “that is neither a racially nor a religiously aggravated offence”.

The CPS had argued that “the defacing the memorial did not attach to any particular racial or religious group” despite the fact that the monument was “a Christian and British memorial, carrying Christian and British symbols. People who read the story found themselves thinking that, if a non-Muslim had defaced a Muslim building the system would have thrown the book at him”.

This compared with a Christian couple in Liverpool, Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang, who were prosecuted and then cleared last December of a religiously aggravated hate crime after a strongly worded discussion with a Muslim guest at their hotel about the relative merits of their respective religions.

Daily Telegraph, 19 July 2010

See also Civitas press release, 19 July 2010

Immigration minister opposes ban on veil – Toby Young not happy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Toby_YoungIn an interview with the Sunday Telegraph immigration minister Damian Green is quoted as saying:

“I stand personally on the feeling that telling people what they can and can’t wear, if they’re just walking down the street, is a rather un-British thing to do. We’re a tolerant and mutually respectful society.

“There are times, clearly, when you’ve got to be able to identify yourself, and people have got to be able to see your face, but I think it’s very unlikely and it would be undesirable for the British Parliament to try and pass a law dictating what people wore.

“I think very few women in France actually wear the burka. They [the French parliament] are doing it for demonstration effects.”

Elsewhere in the Telegraph, under the headline “By refusing to ban the burka, Damian Green is supporting the humiliation of millions of British women”, Toby Young informs his readers that “the burka is both a symbol and a source of the oppression of Muslim women”.

According to Young: “Few people can be in any doubt that Islam is a deeply misogynistic religion.” As for wearing the veil, according to Young “for most Muslim women it is not a free choice but something they’re forced to do by their fathers or brothers or husbands – and the consequences of disobeying can be a beating or worse”.

To which we can only respond: Few people can be in any doubt that Toby Young is a deeply ignorant bigot.

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Spanish parliament to debate veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Spanish lawmakers will debate barring burqas in public, joining other European countries considering similar moves on the grounds that the body-covering garments are degrading to women, the leading opposition party said Sunday.

Top officials of the ruling Socialist Party have indicated they will support the proposal by the opposition Popular Party, making a ban likely unless the country’s highest court rules it unconstitutional.

A debate in Spain’s lower house has been set by the Popular Party for Tuesday or Wednesday, the party said. No vote will be scheduled until after the debate, and Spain’s Parliament usually goes on vacation for a month starting in late July or early August.

Head-covering veils would not be included in a ban as they form a part of traditional Spanish dress, with women often covering their heads with a garment called a mantilla, especially during church services in the south of the country.

Spain has about 1 million Muslims in the nation of 47 million, with most living in the northeastern region of Catalonia and the southern region Andalucia. However, burqas are rarely seen.

Associated Press, 18 July 2010

See also Press Association, 18 July 2010

Hollobone says he will ban veil-wearing constituents from surgeries

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Philip HolloboneA Conservative MP says he will refuse to hold meetings with Muslim women wearing full Islamic dress at his constituency surgery unless they lift their face veil. Last night Muslim groups condemned Philip Hollobone and accused him of failing in his duty as an MP.

In an interview with The Independent, the Kettering MP said: “I would ask her to remove her veil. If she said: ‘No’, I would take the view that she could see my face, I could not see hers, I am not able to satisfy myself she is who she says she is. I would invite her to communicate with me in a different way, probably in the form of a letter.”

Independent, 17 July 2010

Mayor Bloomberg continues to defend ‘Ground Zero mosque’ plan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

There’s no doubt that the site of a planned Islamic community center and prayer space is close to the World Trade Center site, as it is two short blocks from the site of the terror attacks. While some see the proximity as offensive, others like Mayor Michael Bloomberg see it as a virtue, symbolic of America’s commitment to religious freedom.

“I happen to think this is a very appropriate place for somebody who wants to build a mosque, because it tells the world that America, and New York City, which is what I’m responsible for, really believes in what we preach,” said Bloomberg on Friday.

The mayor’s comments were perhaps his most forceful on the controversy, which in this election year has quickly become a political football.

Opinions seem to split along political party lines. Republican candidate for governor Rick Lazio and Republican Congressman Peter King have demanded an investigation into the project’s funding, while Democrats like Andrew Cuomo have been supportive of the project.

Bloomberg, a political independent, brought up the topic unsolicited at a forum with Dartmouth College students.

During his weekly radio show, the mayor also sparred with a caller who asked, “How do you consider it un-American to question the appropriateness of a mosque at Ground Zero?” The mayor responded, “I don’t think it’s un-American. I just don’t think that the government should keep some people from praying the way they want to and let others pray.”

NY1, 16 July 2010

More raving from McKinstry on the ‘the creeping Islamification of our society’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

On the one hand, our civic leaders constantly trumpet their absolute commitment to the goals of equality and tolerance, especially for previously disadvantaged groups like women and gays.

On the other hand, they become utterly supine in the face of a hardline Muslim ideology that promotes bigotry, segregation and misogyny. The disastrous consequences of such institutionalised cowardice can be seen all around us. As the creeping Islamification of our society accelerates, our national identity is disappearing. Honour killings, and forced marriages, which would have been unthinkable 30 years ago, have now become features of modern Britain….

There is no more powerful symbol of the warped, contradictory values of our times than the rise of the burkha…. The burkha is rightly synonymous with medieval barbarity and theocratic totalitarianism. The urge to cover up women is the same impulse that stones them to death for adultery….

“In Europe … there is increasing pressure to outlaw this wretched instrument of subjugation. Belgium has already banned the burkha in public places, while Spain and the Netherlands are considering doing so. And this week the French Assembly in Paris voted overwhelming for a ban on wearing the full-face veil in public. Even the French Communists, normally in the vanguard of anti-western political correctness, supported the move.

Yet the political establishment here in Britain shares none of this indignation, despite all opinion polls showing that the vast majority of the public are in favour of such a ban. Like capital punishment or a freeze on immigration, this is not even seen as a polite subject for debate amongst the metropolitan elite.

There is no chance of any of the major parties taking up the cause. Just one backbench MP, the admirable Tory Philip Hollobone, has proposed legislation to outlaw the full veil but, without any real support in Parliament, his effort is doomed. That shows how deeply our politicians are in thrall to militant Islam.

Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express, 15 July 2010

Jerusalem Post interviews sinister right-wing bigot

Posted on by Bob Pitt

douglas_murrayToday’s Jerusalem Post carries a long, rambling interview with Douglas Murray of the Centre for Social Cohesion.

Among the aperçus Murray offers is the bizarre claim that multiculturalism led the British police to refuse to investigate murders if they were classed as honour killings (“This is a community matter, they’d say”), the assertion that “you are more likely to become a major terrorist if you’ve gone to university” (as demonstrated by the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who got “in touch with the top jihadis via his Islamic studies society”), and the revelation that Inayat Bunglawala, of all people, is a “very unpleasant sinister figure”!

Whereas there is of course nothing unpleasant or sinister about a right-wing bigot like Murray, who holds that “there’s a very rational fear in being scared of Islam today and wanting to act against it” and who advocates that “conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board“.