Category Archives: Right wing

‘Pandering to Islam’ – Express and Alan Craig attack NAMP

Posted on by Bob Pitt

NAMP_logoHome Office chiefs were last night accused of pandering to Islam after it was revealed that they handed out a staggering 15 times more funding to a Muslim police support group than to its Christian equivalent.

A furious backlash followed revelations that the Christian Police Assoc­iation received just £15,000 over the past five years while the National Association of Muslim Police was paid £90,000 in the past two years alone.

The newly released figures revealed that the CPA received an average of £3,000 a year, while the NAMP received £45,000 a year, despite both organisations having around 2,000 members.

The information was released by Home Secretary Alan Johnson after a written parliamentary question from his shadow Chris Grayling.

Last night Christian groups reacted with anger after learning of the difference in Home Office funding. Alan Craig, leader of the Christian Peoples Alliance, said the move was “yet another sign of discrimination” against Christian groups in the UK. Mr Craig, a councillor in the London borough of Newham, added: “Christians are constantly marginalised and discriminated against by the Government, who are ignoring one of this country’s principal faiths.”

Daily Express, 13 March 2010

EEOC finds bias in forced resignation of Debbie Almontaser

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A federal commission has determined that New York City’s Department of Education discriminated against the founding principal of an Arabic-language public school by forcing her to resign in 2007 following a storm of controversy driven by opponents of the school.

Acting on a complaint filed last year by the principal, Debbie Almontaser, the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found that the department “succumbed to the very bias that creation of the school was intended to dispel and a small segment of the public succeeded in imposing its prejudices on D.O.E. as an employer,” according to a letter issued by the commission on Tuesday.

The commission said that the department had discriminated against Ms. Almontaser, a Muslim of Yemeni descent, “on account of her race, religion and national origin.”

The findings, which are nonbinding, could mark a turning point in Ms. Almontaser’s battle to reclaim her job as principal of the school, the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn.

New York Times, 12 March 2010

France plans bill banning veil for spring

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A bill banning the full Muslim veil will be introduced this spring, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Thursday. “A full veil that hides the whole face runs contrary to our idea of free and open social interaction. In a democracy, we don’t live behind a mask. That is why we have decided, with the president to legislate in the spring, ” Fillon said.

While a law against the full veil was already in discussion, no precise calendar had been put forward until now.

“All religions deserve respect, but what should not be respected is aggressive proselytizing, and withdrawing into one’s community”, Fillon told an audience of UMP party activists and supporters, at an electoral meeting in the west of France.

His announcement comes three days ahead of the first round of regional elections which is expected to end in an embarrasing defeat for the ruling party. With the far-right Front National in a position to overtake the UMP, the Prime Minister linked the “burqa legislation” to immigration. “There’s nothing shocking in saying that those who settle here should adopt the heritage of the home of Human Rights”.

According to the media, police research has shown that the full veil is a very limited phenomenon in France, with at most several thousand women, many of them French converts, opting for the attire.

France 24, 12 March 2010

See also Islam Online, 12 March 2010

Being anti-Islam is not racist claims Ian McEwan (as do the EDL, of course)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ian McEwan has insisted that criticising Islam is not racist and blamed left-leaning thinkers for “closing down the debate”. The Booker Prize winner said those who claimed judging Muslims was “de facto” racism were playing a “poisonous argument”. McEwan, 61, the best-selling author of novels including Amsterdam, Atonement and Saturday, thought many in the left wrongly took this position because they had an anti-Americanism shared with Islamists. In an interview with today’s Telegraph Magazine, McEwan said:

“Chunks of left-of-centre opinion have tried to close down the debate by saying that if you were to criticise Islam as a thought system you are a de facto racist. That is a poisonous argument. They do it on the basis that they see an ally in their particular forms of anti-Americanism. So these radical Muslims are the shock-troops for the armchair Left who don’t want to examine too closely the rest of the package – the homophobia, the misogyny and so on.”

Daily Telegraph, 13 March 2010

Tory MP calls for veil to be banned in UK

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Philip Hollobone (2)The Daily Telegraph reports that Philip Hollobone, Conservative MP for Kettering, has called for a ban on Muslim women wearing the veil, on the grounds that it is “offensive” and “against the British way of life”.

Hollobone told the Commons: “This is Britain. We are not a Muslim country. Covering your face in public is strange, and to many people both intimidating and offensive. I seriously think that a ban on wearing the burka in public should be considered.”

Hollobone was speaking in a debate on International Women’s Day. His intervention follows previous comments that wearing the veil was like “going round with a paper bag over your head”.

Continue reading →

Virginia Islamophobes call for boycott of imam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hundreds of people are urging legislators to boycott the House of Delegates’ floor session on Thursday, when a Falls Church imam whom they accuse of condoning violence and defending terrorism is set to deliver the opening prayer.

The imam, Johari Abdul-Malik, and many other leaders in the Muslim and interfaith communities say the accusations are false. “To try to cast me as someone who’s a terrorist and closed-minded – they picked the wrong guy,” he said.

Soon after Sept. 11, Abdul-Malik was featured in paid ads produced by a group of national Muslim organizations, which denounced terrorism and the attacks. He has condemned terrorism and Osama bin Laden on “The O’Reilly Factor” and other television programs.

Still, letters and calls have poured into legislative offices since Friday, when a handful of concerned delegates let community activists know that Abdul-Malik was coming to Richmond.

“He’s an apologist for people who commit criminal acts,” said James Lafferty, chairman of the Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force. The group, along with the Traditional Values Coalition and Act for America, will hold a rally outside the state Capitol on Thursday morning.

Washington Post, 11 March 2010

See also “Islam-Bashers Try to Block Muslim Prayer in Va. Legislature”, CAIR action alert, 11 March 2010

Update:  See “Demonstration against Islamic cleric draws few”, Richmond Times-Dispatch, 12 March 2010

Further update:  See also “And who said that Islamophobia isn’t real?”, The American Muslim,11 March 2010

Islam has failed Douglas Murray

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“It is grotesque to argue that Europe has failed its Muslims. It has been made repeatedly obvious that it is Islam that has failed Europe.”

Writing on his Telegraph blog, Douglas (“conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board“, “there’s a very rational fear in being scared of Islam today and wanting to act against it“) Murray provides an entirely objective assessment of his recent debate with Tariq Ramadan.

‘Charity is linked to Islamic terrorists’ claims Torygraph

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A charity praised by Gordon Brown has paid hundreds of thousands of pounds supposedly raised for “disaster relief” to two organisations allegedly linked to terrorist groups.

Muslim Aid, which has been given at least £830,000 of public money, diverted substantial sums to Islamist organisations, possibly in contravention of its charitable status. It has received grants from the Department for International Development, the EU and London councils.

The charity, based at the hardline East London mosque, has close links to the Islamic Forum of Europe, a fundamentalist group accused by a Labour minister of infiltrating his party.

Muslim Aid raised more than £24 million last year. It says its charitable objectives, which it is legally required to follow, are “to relieve … all those who are in need … as a result of natural disasters” and “to relieve those who are refugees fleeing from war.”

Andrew Gilligan (who else?) in the Daily Telegraph, 2 March 2010

See also ENGAGE, who point out that Muslim Aid would appear to have good grounds for taking legal action against the Telegraph over this piece of libellous nonsense.

More anti-IFE witch-hunting from Gilligan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

This latest piece, in the Sunday Telegraph, is a particularly garbled contribution to Gilligan’s ongoing campaign against the Islamic Forum Europe, ranging from an “exposé” of Muslims 4 Ken’s support for Ken Livingstone in the 2008 London mayoral election – this is supposed to be news? – to a repetition of insinuations that the IFE was responsible for dodgy signatures in the referendum over an elected mayor for Tower Hamlets.

Ken’s succinct response to Gilligan gets it exactly right: “You are a liar who is stirring up racism.”

Update:  For responses to Gilligan on the IFE blog Between the Lines, see here, here and here.