Sun invents ‘hate hit list’

Extremist threat to UK JewsFears grew last night that hate-filled Islamic extremists are drawing up a “hit list” of Britain’s leading Jews – bringing the Middle East conflict terrifyingly close to home.

TV’s The Apprentice boss Sir Alan Sugar and Amy Winehouse record producer Mark Ronson are among prominent names discussed on a fanatics’ website. Labour Peer and pal of Tony Blair Lord Levy, Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Princess Diana’s divorce lawyer Anthony Julius are also understood to be potential targets.

British anti-terror expert Glen Jenvey is convinced online forum Ummah is being used to prepare a deadly backlash against UK Jews.

On the Ummah site, “Saladin1970” asks for help compiling “a list of those who support Israel”. “Abuislam” asks: “Have we got a list of top Jews we can target? Can someone post names and addresses?” Saladin1970 gives a link to the Power 100 list of top British Jews.

Mr Jenvey, 43, said: “The Ummah website has been used by extremists. Those listed should treat it very seriously. Expect a hate campaign and intimidation by 20 or 30 thugs.”

Sun, 7 January 2009

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Rod Liddle: ‘I’ve never had a go at Muslims, only Islam’

Rod LiddleAfter preparing chocolate and cinnamon French toast for his children’s breakfast and before popping out to a delightful Wiltshire village pub for some lunch, Rod Liddle is explaining why he enjoys racist jokes so much more these days.

“I find racist jokes funnier now than I did 30 years ago because it’s so socially unacceptable,” he says.

Liddle, 48, has enraged sections of the liberal intelligentsia with his repeated and outspoken attacks on Islam, both in the Sunday Times and his weekly columns for The Spectator.

“It’s funny, y’know, quite a few of my friends would be inclined to vote BNP, and I don’t think they’re racist. Their objection is far less to the immigration than to what they see as the white liberals who have genuflected before this immigration, their annoyance is at things like positive discrimination,” he says.

The criticisms from the “golden milieu of columnists” had begun a couple of years earlier after Liddle had attacked Islam in print. He also produced a speech under the heading “Islamophobia: count me in.” His beef is with the ideology itself, which he sees as oppressive, rather than those who practise it and he was livid at suggestions that he had been controversial just for the sake of it. “I’ve never had a go at Muslims, I’ve always had a go at Islam,” he says.

Independent, 5 January 2008

That would be this Rod Liddle.

Lega Nord MEP condemns Muslim prayer outside Milan Cathedral

Prayer in MilanA member of Italy’s anti-immigration opposition party condemned yesterday the weekend prayer by thousands of Muslims outside Milan’s Cathedral in protest against Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

“The fact that Muslim extremists transformed the Cathedral square into an outdoor Mosque (constitutes) an incredible provocation,” ANSA news agency quoted Mario Borghezio, European deputy with the Northern League, as saying.

“The prayer to Allah recited by thousands of fanatical Muslims is an act of intimidation, a slap in the face for the city of Milan which must remain Christian,” he added.

But Father Tonio dell’Olio, former Secretary General of Pax Christi Italy, told Corriere della Sera newspaper it was “legitimate that Muslim solidarity is conveyed through prayer.”

The Peninsula, 6 January 2008

Horowitz’s man of the year: Geert Wilders

“Wilders is a liberal in a uniquely European sense. What he champions are quintessentially Western values: separation of church and state; equality of the sexes; free expression; the right to provoke and even, yes, to offend. His proposal to ban the all-covering burqa owes more to the ideals of gender equality than to religious discrimination. Even his more controversial measure to stop the Islamisation of Europe – an end to all Muslim immigration – is more about safeguarding Western traditions than locking out foreigners.”

David Horowitz’s Front Page Magazine names the Dutch far-right racist politician Geert Wilders as its man of the year.

Islam made me an atheist, says Douglas Murray

douglas_murrayOver at the Spectator Douglas Murray explains his loss of religious faith:

“Some years ago I started studying Islam. It didn’t take long to recognise the problems of that religion’s texts – the repetitions, contradictions and absurdities…. Gradually, scepticism of the claims made by one religion was joined by scepticism of all such claims. Incredulity that anybody thought an archangel dictated a book to Mohammed produced a strange contradiction. I found myself still clinging to belief in Christianity. I was trying to believe – though rarely arguing – ‘Well, your guy didn’t hear voices: but I know a man who did.’ This last, shortest and sharpest, phase pulled down the whole thing. In the end Mohammed made me an atheist.”

Still, Murray’s rejection of religious belief was not without difficulty:

“My final fear was one which I think a lot of Christians in this country feel, particularly as they see Islam re-emerging and gaining adherents in spite (or perhaps because) of its intransigence and intractability. It is, I suppose, a sense of cultural abandonment. We know how much of what we enjoy and relish comes through Christianity. Can we really go on without it?”

The answer, according to Murray, is for non-Muslim non-believers to counter the threat posed by Islam by becoming “cultural Christians”.

This peculiar Islamophobic version of atheism, which rejects God but upholds the need to defend Christian civilisation against the Muslim hordes, appears to derive from Richard Dawkins, who thinks that the increase of Islamic influence at the expense of Christianity would be “a poor exchange” and has stated: “This is historically a Christian country. I’m a cultural Christian…. I’m not one of those who wants to purge our society of our Christian history. If there’s any threat to these sorts of things, I think you will find it comes from rival religions and not from atheists.”

Update:  Over at Shiraz Socialist Jim Denham of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty recommends “this extraordinary account by Douglas Murray” to his readers. Of course, it’s hardly unexpected that an AWLer should ally himself with a vicious anti-Muslim bigot like Murray (“It is late in the day, but Europe still has time to turn around the demographic time-bomb which will soon see a number of our largest cities fall to Muslim majorities. It has to. All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop…. Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board”). After all, we recently witnessed Denham’s former comrade Alan Johnson enthusiastically promoting another hardline right-wing Islamophobe, Andrew Bostom. Surely it can only be a matter of time before Denham and Johnson find merit in the views of Nick Griffin.

Ed Husain is ‘driving Muslims to mass murder’ – Mad Mel falls out with the Quilliam Foundation

Quilliam FoundationEd Husain’s Quilliam Foundation has issued a statement criticising the government’s failure to take a stand against Israel’s bloody onslaught on the population of Gaza. Ed himself is quoted as saying:

“Perceived double standards from our Government and the current green light (from Washington and London) to Israel’s killing machine will strengthen Al Qaeda’s metanarrative and radicalize yet another generation of young Muslims.”

This from an organisation that has spent its entire existence ingratiating itself with the government by claiming that Islamist ideology not foreign policy is the root cause of “radicalisation” (a term which of course obliterates the distinction between the general politicisation of Muslim youth in response to imperialism and the influence of terrorist groupuscules).

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Dutch Labour Party joins attack on Muslims, migrants and multiculturalism

PvdA logoUnder the headline “From the left, a call to end the current Dutch notion of tolerance”, John Vinocur reports from the Netherlands (“a country whose history of tolerance was the first in 21st-century Europe to clash with the on-street realities of its growing Muslim population”) on the latest attack on migrants and multiculturalism, this one by the chair of the PvdA:

“Two weeks ago, the country’s biggest left-wing political grouping, the Labor Party, which has responsibility for integration as a member of the coalition government led by the Christian Democrats, issued a position paper calling for the end of the failed model of Dutch ‘tolerance’…. If judged on the standard scale of caution in dealing with cultural clashes and Muslims’ obligations to their new homes in Europe, the language of the Dutch position paper and Lilianne Ploumen, Labor’s chairperson, was exceptional.

“The paper said: ‘The mistake we can never repeat is stifling criticism of cultures and religions for reasons of tolerance.’ Government and politicians had too long failed to acknowledge the feelings of ‘loss and estrangement’ felt by Dutch society facing parallel communities that disregard its language, laws and customs. Newcomers, according to Ploumen, must avoid ‘self-designated victimization’. She asserted, ‘the grip of the homeland has to disappear’ for these immigrants who, news reports indicate, also retain their original nationality at a rate of about 80 percent once becoming Dutch citizens.

“Instead of reflexively offering tolerance with the expectation that things would work out in the long run, she said, the government strategy should be ‘bringing our values into confrontation with people who thinkotherwise’…. And that comes from the heart of the traditional, democratic European left, where placing the onus of compatibility on immigrants never found such comfort before…. Labor’s line seems to stand on its head the old equation of jobs-plus-education equals integration. Conforming to Dutch society’s social standards now comes first. Strikingly, it turns its back on cultural relativism….

“Ploumen says, ‘Integration calls on the greatest effort from the new Dutch. Let go of where you come from; choose the Netherlands unconditionally’. Immigrants must ‘take responsibility for this country’ and cherish and protect its Dutch essence.

“Not clear enough? Ploumen insists, ‘The success of the integration process is hindered by the disproportionate number of non-natives involved in criminality and trouble-making, by men who refuse to shake hands with women, by burqas and separate courses for women oncitizenship. We have to stop the existence of parallel societies within our society’.”

Vinocur’s article concludes with a quote from Frits Bolkestein, former leader of the right-wing VVD (“who began writing in 1991 about the enormous challenge posed to Europe by Muslim immigration”): “The multi-cultis just aren’t making the running anymore. It’s a brave step towards a new normalcy in this country.”

New York Times, 29 December 2008


Daniel Pipes hails what he terms “A Dutch fissure in the Leftist-Islamist alliance“.

Update:  Under the heading “Dutch Left calls for an end to suicidal notion of tolerance” Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch also applauds the PvdA’s stance:

“For years I have insisted that the resistance to the jihad and Islamic supremacism is not a Left/Right, liberal/conservative issue, but one of the defense of our common civilization – however, hardly anyone on the Left has ever demonstrated any awareness of this, perhaps because they have increasingly discarded the values of that common civilization altogether. However, harsh reality is causing some people to wake up in the Netherlands.”

Damian Thompson continues witch-hunt of MPACUK

Damian Thompson 2We realise this site is in danger of turning into Damian Thompson Watch, but we have to register the fact that the Catholic Herald editor has made a further contribution to the mounting witch-hunt aimed at framing MPACUK as a violent organisation. This time Thompson takes issue with MPAC’s call to expose the Muslim “researchers” who forged receipts in order to assist the right-wing think-tank Policy Exchange in compiling its Hijacking of British Islam report which claimed to reveal the sale of hate literature in British mosques.

Thompson, of course, thinks it’s perfectly OK for Policy Exchange to publish false accusations against the Muslim community, but MPAC’s call for the exposure of those responsible for fabricating the evidence is “a threatening post on the MPAC official website which is apparently encouraging someone to dispense Islamic justice to Muslim traitors. ‘Protecting our community’, MPAC calls it. That’s a handy little euphemism, isn’t it?”

Update:  The raving Islamophobes at Jihad Watch have thrown their weight behind Thompson: “Sounds like MPACUK is publicly denouncing these Muslims for apostasy – and we all know what happens to apostates in Islam.”

‘Do Cameron’s Tories secretly admire Islam?’

The question is posed by Damian Thompson, who claims that, when it comes to countering “the spread of Islamic ghettos” in the UK, “there’s so little to choose between the two main parties that I can’t see a case for voting Tory”. He continues:

“Conservative political correctness is normally more funny than alarming, especially when practised by deeply snobbish Old Etonians. But when it extends to taking advice from Muslim radicals about the correct posture to take towards the ‘religion of peace’, then it is positively dangerous. Leading Tories think that they can demonstrate their intolerance of Islamic extremism by fulminating against one or two loopy Jihadist pressure groups. It’s as if Margaret Thatcher, confronted by the threat of socialism in 1979, had simply called for the banning of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party. Expel Vanessa Redgrave from the country and the unions will come to their senses.”

Daily Telegraph, 27 December 2008


That would be the same Tory Party whose leader pledges to break up “Muslim ghettos” and regards “rising Muslim consciousness” as a threat to social stability, whose security spokesperson Pauline Neville-Jones produces reports labelling the Muslim Council of Britain as extremist and accuses the entirely peaceful and apolitical Tablighi Jamaat of association with terrorism, a party whose MPs include the likes of Philip Davies, Michael Gove and Patrick Mercer, and whose supposedly “pro-Muslim” wing enthusiastically adds its voice to the assault on multiculturalism.

If this is amounts to politically correct admiration of Islam, as Damian Thompson believes, then you wonder which political party is conducting an anti-Muslim campaign aggressive enough to meet with his approval. The obvious answer is the BNP, who only the other day approvingly reproduced another anti-Muslim piece by Thompson on their website. Perhaps they should consider sending him a membership form?

Update: Well, no actual invitation to join the party as yet, but the BNP have again reproduced Thompson’s piece on their website. See “Tories accused of ‘secretly admiring Islam’ by leading Daily Telegraph writer“.

Indulgence of Islam is harming society, says Damian Thompson

Damian_Thompson“Islam is the fastest-growing religion in Britain: the number of Muslims has grown from 1.6 million to two million since 2000. Moreover, every major public institution has changed its policies to accommodate the demands of Islamic ‘community leaders’. The Government, the Opposition, the police, schools, the Church of England, the BBC and now Channel 4 are all helping Muslims construct a parallel Islamic state…. For the first time in decades, religion is moulding public life in this country; but that religion is not Christianity.”

Catholic Herald editor Damian Thompson continues what appears to be a campaign aimed at making Melanie Phillips look relatively sane.

Daily Telegraph, 26 December 2008


The fascists of the BNP find that Thompson’s piece so perfectly reflects their own views that they reproduce it in its entirety, adding the following conclusion:

“When will the people of Britain wake up to the threat that lies within our country? When you will have to step on to the road for Muslims to walk safely by? When someone you know is stoned to death for being raped? When family pets are slaughtered for being ‘unclean’? When animals are halal butchered in the street? When homosexuals are murdered? Or when the sword is at your throat and you have to decide – be a Muslim or die?”