Category Archives: Right wing

Harry’s Place and the smearing of Mehdi Hasan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Harry’s Place continues its witch-hunt of Mehdi Hasan, senior editor (politics) at the New Statesman, in what is clearly a campaign aimed at getting him dismissed from his job. In the comments section fellow NS journalist James Macintyre has posted a defence of his colleague which we reproduce here:

Harry’s Place – I have just seen this unspeakable smear campaign – “part 1” – against my colleague Mehdi Hasan at the New Statesman. You have just lowered yourself to the rankest form of fact-free, context-free, bent hatchet-job “blogging”. I am one of many outsiders who is repulsed. You pose as a quasi-intellectual blog-site, and yet you operate with no rules of journalism. Let me, therefore, offer you some facts.I have known Mehdi Hasan for seven years. In that time I have been honoured to know an actively moderate Muslim; easily the most moderate Muslim I have met and among the most religious people I know, and that catagory includes senior members of the Anglican communion to which I belong.

Mehdi Hasan does indeed have a double life: and it is the exact opposite to what your libelous bile presents. At the same time as being dismissed on neo-con sites like this as an “extremist” or fan of bin Laden, he in fact lectures his own community of London Shias of the need to integrate and be fully British. He does this on a weekly or monthly basis.

Only a few months ago Tony McNulty MP – not known for his pro-extremist stances – praised Mehdi Hasan at a public meeting in the House of Commons. He said he was previously unaware that this kind of speaking – in which Muslims were told by a Muslim to inegrate and be British – took place within the community.

This clip which you have seedily honed in on merely shows him sticking up for religion in the way that your heroes Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins denounce it and passionately defend atheism. As a Christian believer myself, I agree with Mehdi Hasan in his comments you seek to sensationalize – tell me then Harry’s Place, does that make me one of your targets, or are your dangerous smears purely based on race?

You have disgraced yourself, and it would be amusing were it not a calculated attempt to damage a man’s reputation. I have never known a more open-minded person who speaks publicly on religion. Many a time have I heard Mehdi Hasan angrily denounce anti-semitism, racism, prejudice of any kind.

If you seriously intend to run this series, by a doubtless fake “Channel 4 insider” – what have you got to hide, C4 Insider? Surely this is a great story if you are on safe ground? – then you had better be prepared for the consequences. Legalities aside, you threaten to shame your web site once and for all.

I feel like I am posting on the BNP site, and it is on that level that you will place yourselves with this pathetic smear, based purely on the fact that Mehdi got the better of your contributors last week. If you are going to go after him, go after me too – as I agree with almost everything he says about the world’s religions.

Mehdi Hasan is a friend, a colleague, and someone who deserves the utmost praise for his amazing role as an educator and moderator of those in his own faith.

It’s time for you to decide: are you going to be a serious blogsite, or are you going to place yourselves in the same catagory as bnp.org.uk?

Think about it.

Martin Bright threatens legal action against ENGAGE

Posted on by Bob Pitt

martin_brightWriting on his Spectator blog, Martin Bright has threatened to sue ENGAGE over a piece they posted about his response to the MCB’s successful libel case against the BBC. (ENGAGE have understandably backed off in the face of Bright’s threats, and the piece now reads “Martin ‘The Great Koran Con Trick’ Bright criticises MCB libel win“.)

Bright objects to ENGAGE’s description of him as an “Islamophobe”. He writes:

“Under the disreputable headline ‘Veteran Islamophobe Martin Bright criticises MCB libel win’ an anonymous writer makes a seriesof unsubstantiated claims. I have already taken legal advice about this, although I wouldn’t have needed to do so to realise it is seriously defamatory. I object in the strongest terms to the way the insult ‘Islamophobe’ is thrown around so casually. It is essentially a charge of racism: the cheapest of shots and utterly without foundation….

“Should I take action against the Engage libel? As an anti-libel law campaigner it would provide an interesting moral conundrum. But it’s a serious defamation and my chances of success would be high.”

Oh yeah? Well, I can remember Bright telling a FOSIS conference at City Hall back in August 2005 that he had no problem being described as an Islamophobe – because, he said, there is a lot in Islam to be afraid of. He got himself booed, as you might expect. Around a hundred people were at the conference, so there is no lack of witnesses who can attest to this.

Here at Islamophobia Watch we have referred to Bright’s 2005 statement on numerous occasions, and on that basis we have described him as a “self-confessed Islamophobe“.

So if Bright would like to sue me – bring it on, I say. We might well consider a counter-claim against Bright himself over the piece in which he compared us to the notorious antisemite and Holocaust denier Michele Renouf.

Update:  For further comment on Bright’s double standards on defamation, see Sunny Hundal’s post “Is Martin Bright libelling Mehdi Hasan?” over at Pickled Politics.

The niqab, fact v fiction

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Fatima Barkatulla clears up misconceptions about the niqab.

Times, 22 July 2009

Not all of the paper’s readers are convinced. Some online comments:

“How can anyone but an absolute ignoramus justify wearing a mask bearing in mind the current dangers of terrorism from Muslims.”

“The niqab is a male-made obligation destined to show other men that ‘this female belongs to me’. Nothing else.”

“The reality is that in Britain, and Europe more generally, covering up women in this way is not accepted, it goes against both our traditions and standards…. In this country we pride ourselves on tolerence and fairness, and the problem is that there seems to be a clash between accomodating a religious practice and women’s rights.”

“The writer of this article should wake up – you can be subjugated and believe that you are exercising choice – this is the result of brainwashing.”

“You may wonder if Mrs Bartakulla is a brainwashed naive or an islamist propagandist. I think I know the answer.”

“You don’t want to comply with our culture in any way, whilst we are forced by the blind and stupid to pander to yours. You use it to control your women and push your intransigent religion on non-muslims.”

“If someone wants to wear the burqa, they have the right. I on the other hand also have to right to have nothing to do with them.”

“This is a western country with western culture and tradition and it’s about time people who choose to live her from other cultures showed some respect. The British people are far too tolerant and we get taken advantage of.”

“British and Western women must cherish their freedoms and not let foreign hostile beliefs do away with the freedoms that the Christian religion has given them.”

“As an atheist and an Englishman … I am saddened by the influence on my own culture of what I perceive as a socially backward faith…. Covering oneself is not ‘normal’ in my books and reveals an unhealthy mind. However many excuses are presented, it smacks of subjugation. To see the promotion and normalisation of such behaviour in The Times is both surreal and absurd…. tolerant though I consider myself to be, those who want a return to the Dark Ages can count me out.”

“… it is the basest form of ignorance which inflicts those rules on women and that is THE VERY REASON they should be OUTLAWED!!!”

“As a white man, how could [I] even become friends with a Muslim woman, who by wearing a burqa, straight away sends out a message of I do not want anything to do with you.”

Anti-Muslim bias in the media? Not according to Harry’s Place

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Harry's Place banner

“There’s a funny little spat going on. So last week Mehdi Hasan from the New Statesman wrote an article highlighting the different way the media treats a Muslim terrorist and a non-Muslim (far-right in this case) terrorist. Pretty obvious I thought. But Brett at Harry’s Place took umbrage on behalf of all people who feel white people are being victimised equally and there’s no bias obviously.

“I mean it’s not like there’s a media panic about Muslims is there? It’s not like there’s been stories of Muslim bus drivers chucking people off the bus so he could pray. Obviously there’s not been any on Muslims drawing up a hit-list of prominent Jews to get them back over Gaza. No one could ever imagine a story of Muslim youths attacking a soldier’s house after Afghanistan.

“You certainly would not believe that these stories would make the front page AND they turned out to be lies. That would never happen because our media is so balanced. Neither would you see prominent right-wing columnists writing about Eurabia and the ‘coming Muslim threat and all that’. Our press is the paragon of equal treatment to all nasty people. In group bias? That would never happen!”

Sunny Hundal at Pickled Politics, 22 July 2009

Sikh victims of crime can ask for own-faith officers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The BBC reports:

Sikh victims of crime in London are to be given the option of asking for a police officer of their own faith to work on their case. This new service from the Metropolitan Police (Met) aims to make use of the officers’ specialist knowledge of Punjabi culture to help with cases like forced marriage and so-called honour crime.

Officers within the Met have told the BBC Asian Network that crimes in the community have gone unsolved and unreported because of a lack of understanding of the culture by officers from a “white” background.

And how does the Daily Express report this story? Under the headline “Muslims could get own police“.

MCB libel win threatens ‘free speech’ claims Martin Bright

Posted on by Bob Pitt

ENGAGE replies to Bright, who writes: “There is a growing recognition that the libel laws are becoming an embarrassment to Britain. With large organisations consistently folding to the merest whiff of a threat from Carter Ruck, free speech (and the scientific principle) is seriously under threat. The latest to pay up is the BBC, which has just settled with the MCB’s ‘Secretary General’ Muhammad Abdul Bari.”

BBC pays damages to MCB secretary-general

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Abdul Bari at TUCThe BBC has agreed to pay £45,000 in damages to the head of the Muslim Council of Britain over a libellous claim in the Question Time programme. The claim was made by a panellist on the programme, who accused Muhammad Abdul Bari of implicitly condoning the kidnap and killing of British soldiers.

Mr Bari argued this was untrue, citing his public condemnation of the killing of British troops in Iraq in 2007. The BBC accepted the argument and apologised unreservedly.

The libellous claim – made on the 12 March 2009 edition of Question Time – came in response to a question from an audience member concerning controversial protests in March by a group of Muslim men against a regiment of British troops on parade in Luton on their return from duty in Iraq. The audience member asked: “Should these protests we saw last week when the Royal Anglia Regiment came to Luton be banned?”

In response to the question, one of the Question Time panellists suggested that despite having been asked many times to condemn the kidnapping and killing of British soldiers, Mr Bari had failed to do so and thereby implicitly condoned such acts. The panellist also suggested that Mr Bari believed the kidnapping and killing of British soldiers was a good and Islamic thing. Mr Bari was not mentioned by name, but was implied in the panellist’s reference to the “leadership” of the Muslim Council of Britain.

The BBC is paying £45,000 in damages to Mr Bari – which he will donate to charity – as well as his legal costs.

BBC News, 16 July 2009

See also Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari – an apology.

And MCB press release, 16 July 2009