Yusuf Smith replies to an article posted at Harry’s Place.
Category Archives: Right wing
Neocon CIP launches campaign against domestic violence
“Muslim spiritual leaders could be denounced publicly by their own community as part of a campaign to expose imams whose silence on domestic abuse is leading to women being burnt, lashed and raped in the name of Islam.
“Muslim scholars are to present the Government with the names of imams who are alleged by members of their own communities to have refused to help abused women. Imams are also accused of refusing to speak out against domestic abuse in their sermons because they fear losing their clerical salaries and being sacked for broaching a ‘taboo’ subject.
“Some of Britain’s most prominent moderate imams and female Muslim leaders have backed the campaign, urging the Home Office to vet more carefully Islamic spiritual leaders coming to Britain to weed out hardliners.”
Read on, and you find that the organisation behind this campaign is the so-called Center for Islamic Pluralism, which was founded by ex-Trotskyist-turned-neocon Stephen Schwartz with financial assistance from Daniel Pipes.
In the UK the CIP has precisely one identifiable member – Irfan al-Alawi. In other words, it represents nothing at all in the Muslim community. So it would certainly be interesting to hear which of “Britain’s most prominent moderate imams and female Muslim leaders” are backing Alawi’s campaign, which is cynically using the serious issue of domestic violence to promote the CIP’s cranky obsession with “Wahhabism” and discredit genuinely representative Muslim organisations that reject Schwartz’s pro-imperialist politics.
Policy Exchange and Islam
Starting in July 2006, the first anniversary of the 7/7 bombings, Policy Exchange has published a series of pamphlets on the “extremist” strands of Islam and the threats it says they pose. In tone, these reports have been more aggressive than the thinktank’s usual output. They have warned about Islamic “reactionaries”, about “the hijacking of British Islam”, about the “subverting [of] mosques”.
Since 7/7 and 9/11, such talk has become common in western countries, among some liberals as well as those on the right.
Nevertheless, Policy Exchange’s contributions to the debate have alarmed the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and almost all Muslim groups and commentators. “Policy Exchange is more than just a thinktank,” says the MCB’s spokesman Inayat Bunglawala. “It is a clearly agenda-driven, anti-Muslim organization. It has consistently tried to promote an apolitical version of Islam. And it clearly does have influence. Anthony Browne being appointed as Boris Johnson’s policy adviser was a tremendously alarming move.”
Another aspect of Policy Exchange’s interest in Islam that concerns the MCB and others is that it has been overseen by Dean Godson, the thinktank’s research director for “terrorism and security” and “international” subjects. His politics are considerably more hard-edged and dogmatic than those usually associated with Cameron’s Conservatism.
He is the son of Joseph Godson, a hawkish US diplomat and behind-the-scenes cold war player, and the brother of Roy Godson, the head of a rightwing Washington thinktank, prominent American conservative, and authority on political “dirty tricks” and “black propaganda”. During the 1980s, both Roy and Dean Godson worked for Republican administrations in Washington. Afterwards, Dean became chief leader writer for the Daily Telegraph during its most pungently rightwing phase under the ownership of Conrad Black. Since joining Policy Exchange, Godson has continued to write polemics for British newspapers, often about Islam and often echoing the arguments of American neoconservatives.
Boris reassures Muslims of his support
In an exclusive interview, Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, reassured the Muslim community that he would continue in the step of his predecessor Ken Livingstone on supporting diversity and equality projects.
“One thing I decided very early on was that the only way to run London is to support diversity and to recognise that you have got to be proactive and give encouragement and support to all communities,” Johnson said.
Muslims were also concerned about the Mayor’s and his new Director of Policy, Anthony Browne‘s negative remarks on Islam in the Spectator magazine. For example, Browne argued in July 24, 2004 that Islam wants to conquer the world etc. “I understand completely people’s concerns,” he said and argued that one has to “distinguish between the kind of slightly careless polemical things people may say in their journalistic capacity which can be drawn out and used against them. You have to distinguish between that and what they really want to do in London.”
Johnson gave assurance that Browne was “utterly committed to a glorious multi racial multi ethnic, multi faith London in which we emphasise the achievements of all communities and he will be going out of his way to prove that point.”
Muslim News, 26 September 2008
To be fair to Browne, the “Islam really does want to conquer the world” standfirst to his 2004 Spectator article and “The Muslims are coming” front cover were the responsibility of the editor rather than Browne himself. And who was the editor of the Spectator at that time? None other than Boris Johnson, of course.
Update: For more on Browne see Boris Watch, 28 September 2008
Neo-cons, ex-Israeli diplomats push Islamophobic video
Ali Gharib and Eli Clifton expose the forces behind the mass circulation of the notorious Obsession DVD.
Family barred from burying their dead stepfather on a Saturday … because he isn’t a Muslim
Thus the headline to an piece in today’s Daily Mail. Yes, it’s yet another “Muslims are being given preferential treatment” story. And, unsurprisingly, it has been taken up in a news article posted on the BNP’s website.
The Daily Mail article in fact reveals the spurious basis of its own scaremongering headline:
“Sheffield City Council offers the ‘extended service’ to Jews and Muslims because their faith and traditions require the dead to be buried as soon as possible. But as Jews cannot bury their dead on the Sabbath – from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday – it means that effectively only Muslims can use the service. Other local authorities are also understood to offer weekend burials only to Jews and Muslims.”
The story is adapted from an original article in the Sheffield Star, which contains the following passage:
“Abdool Gooljar, president of the Sheffield branch of the Society of Islam, said the council should try to meet the needs of every resident of the city. ‘The last thing we want to do is cause more upset at the time of bereavement, and I would urge a re-think so everybody has the right to bury their dead when they want,’ he said. ‘I, firstly as a Muslim and secondly as a citizen, do not want preferential treatment. We are living in a multi-faith, multi-cultural society and we should endeavour to meet the needs of every citizen in this city’.”
The Daily Mail version leaves out the final sentence with its reference to a multi-faith, multicultural society, while the BNP article removes the quotation from Abdool Gooljar in its entirety.
Salma Yaqoob – totalitarian
The Sunday Telegraph presents the first part of a “Top 100 left wingers” list compiled by Iain Dale and Brian Brivati. Salma Yaqoob is at no.97. “Though many would say she does not deserve to be on a list of lefties at all,” Dale and Brivati comment, “being more at home with totalitarianism than democracy.” But what would they know? They can’t even get Salma’s name right.
Who is behind Relentless, Obsession and The Third Jihad?
“The venom created by the films ‘Relentless’, and ‘Obsession: Radical Islam’s War With the West’ has been slowly working its way into the hearts and minds of people across the country for a couple of years. Now the same group that brought us these atrocities is coming out with another film ‘The Third Jihad’. These films are only part of what Bob Crane has called a Tsunami of Islamophobia that seems to be rushing in ever higher waves towards the Muslim community in America….
“I know from personal experience over many years of being involved with interfaith dialogue that the views that this film promotes are not the views of all Jewish people, but I also know that those who have been responsible for making this film and for promoting it widely have been primarily Jewish. It truly saddens me that members of a community who should know better and who have experienced a holocaust that resulted at least partially from widespread stereotyping and demonization of Jewish people. I believe that this marginal group within the Jewish community is so blinded by their need to defend the State of Israel at any cost that they do not see the cost of their propaganda to another community.
“They are a marginal group, but they are making a lot of noise. In fact, they are making so much noise that they are drowning out the voices of those in the mainstream Jewish community who have worked so hard with mainstream Muslims and Christians to build bridges of dialogue and work towards peace and justice in this world.”
Sheila Musaji in The American Muslim, 20 September 2008
US congressman proposes anti-Sharia law
Amid disturbing revelations that the verdicts of Islamic Sharia courts are now legally binding in civil cases in the United Kingdom, U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo (R-Littleton) moved quickly today to introduce legislation designed to protect the United States from a similar fate.
According to recent news reports, a new network of Sharia courts in a half-dozen major cities in the U.K. have been empowered under British law to adjudicate a wide variety of legal cases ranging from divorces and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.
“This is a case where truth is truly stranger than fiction,” said Tancredo. “Today the British people are learning a hard lesson about the consequences of massive, unrestricted immigration.”
“When you have an immigration policy that allows for the importation of millions of radical Muslims, you are also importing their radical ideology – an ideology that is fundamentally hostile to the foundations of western democracy – such as gender equality, pluralism, and individual liberty,” said Tancredo. “The best way to safeguard America against the importation of the destructive effects of this poisonous ideology is to prevent its purveyors from coming here in the first place.”
Tancredo’s bill, dubbed the “Jihad Prevention Act,” would bar the entry of foreign nationals who advocate Sharia law. In addition, the legislation would make the advocacy of Sharia law by radical Muslims already in the United States a deportable offense.
More hysteria about Sharia law
Islamic law has been ushered into Britain by the back door. Ministers have quietly given Sharia courts power to rule on Muslim civil cases. These range from divorce and financial disputes to domestic violence. But furious Tories said the step “pandered to Islamic extremists”. MP Philip Davies said: “There can be only one legal system – British law. This will lead to a segregated society.”
Powers of Sharia judges have been sanctioned at five courts in London, Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester and Nuneaton, Warwicks. Two more are planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh. If both parties in a dispute agree to abide by their rulings, they are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system.
Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, whose Muslim Arbitration Tribunal runs the courts, used a clause in the Arbitration Act 1996. It allows Sharia hearings to be classed as “arbitration tribunals”. But Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: “If these tribunals are passing binding decisions I would consider such action unlawful.”