Category Archives: Right wing

Canada: Tory bill would ban voting while wearing veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A bill requiring visual identification when voting in federal elections has come to Parliament, largely due to controversy in Quebec over veiled women voting. The controversy over veiled voters arose when a ruling from Elections Canada allowed veiled women to cast ballots in three recent Quebec by-elections.

The Conservatives decided legislation was necessary after Marc Mayrand, Canada’s chief electoral officer, rebuffed efforts by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to get him to adjust voting rules to force women to bare their faces at polls. “I think it is necessary to maintaining public confidence in … the electoral process,” Conservative House Leader Peter Van Loan told the Toronto Star yesterday.

Mayrand noted the revised federal electoral law that Parliament passed in June did not compel women with veils to remove them as part of voter identification, explaining that if MPs want that to be a rule, they should pass a new law.

The Conservative government’s obsession with women having to lift their veils is seen by some as much ado about nothing. “This so-called veil problem is not even a problem that’s been raised with the Muslim community,” NDP Leader Jack Layton said.

Toronto Star, 27 October 2007

Religious gesture of understanding turns into usual debate on hate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An ethnic advisory commission set up by the Governor of Oklahoma printed copies of the Quran, the Islamic “bible”, had them embossed with the State Seal and offered to distribute them to the 149 members of that state’s legislature. What was to be a gesture of understanding has turned into a battle of hateful words.

Oklahoma legislator Rex Duncan, a Republican from Sand Springs, rejected the offering and returned his copy of the Quran. Had it just been that, maybe we would not have noticed. But then like many other confused and uneducated Americans, Duncan added a little hate-politicking to the mix.

Duncan sent a nasty letter to his legislative colleagues and about two dozen said they would return the Islamic holy books, too, asserting that Islam is an evil religion that encourages its followers to kill innocent people.

“Most Oklahomans do not endorse the idea of killing innocent women and children in the name of ideology,” Duncan asserted, adding in an interview with the Associated Press that he has “researched the Quran”, on the Internet, of course, and believes it supports killing. “That’s exactly what it says,” Duncan insisted.

Notorious for spewing anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hatred, Duncan probably is mindful of the fact that Americans are not knowledgeable about Islam, and that makes for a great opportunity to exploit them for political purposes.

Muslims and Arabs in America are under siege by a wave of ignorance-driven hatred. They should know that even the simplest, kindest gesture will be exploited by some to create angry debate rather than understanding.

The American Muslim, 27 October 2007

See  also “Lawmaker objects to getting copy of Quran”, Associated Press, 23 October 2007

And “Okla. lawmakers return Qurans”, Associated Press, 24 October 2007

Are US Muslims not real Americans?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sheila Musaji replies to an article in the St Louis Dispatch by one Z. Dwight Billingsly: “Mr. Billingsly is upset that a Chicago school district has allowed Muslim students to have crescent moons and stars to mark Ramadan included in school decorations along with decorations for other holidays like Christmas that already are included in the schools.”

She quotes Billingsly as writing: “In other words, mainstream Americans had agreed to subordinate their cultural traditions and accept another culture’s traditions as equivalent to their own. This is a prescription for our society’s destruction, a dangerous appeasement in the cultural wars. The school board should have told the Muslim parent that America’s cultural norm is to celebrate and value Christmas, not Ramadan. The board should have told her that if she wanted to celebrate Ramadan in her home or at her mosque, she was welcome to do so, but that at public schools, only Christmas and other traditional American cultural celebrations would take place.”

As Sheila Musaji points out, what Billingsly is asserting is that “American Muslims must accept that they are not equivalent to real Americans“.

Austria: provincial parliament demands ban on mosque construction

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The provincial parliament in the southern Austrian province Carinthia called on its provincial government to prepare legislation banning the construction of mosques or minarets. The province’s governor, the populist former leader of the rightist Freedom Party, Joerg Haider, had repeatedly called for anti-Muslim measures along those lines.

The proposal was adopted with the votes of the conservative People’s Party, Freedom Party, and the support of the Alliance for Austria’s Future, an equally rightist breakaway party from the Freedom Party, founded by Haider. Alliance floor leader Kurt Scheuch said his party wanted to prevent the creeping Islamization by radical forces. “We prefer churchbells to the muezzin’s chants,” he said.

Carinthia’s Social Democrats and Greens, who had voted against the measure, slammed the proposal as a move to “prevent integration (and) hinder religious freedom” and called it an “open attack on democracy and the rule of law.” The Social Democrats pointed out that currently there were no plans for for building mosques in the province, unmasking the proposal as an attempt to “attract the right-wing vote,” Social Democrat floor leader Peter Kaiser said.

Earth Times, 25 October 2007

First Lady submits to the Islamic hordes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“We are the king of the world. We are the best and the brightest. We are America goddammit. WTF are we bowing to Islam for? This ain’t PR no matter what Karen Hughes and Condirasha say. This is not not going to make the Islamic world hold hands and sing campfire tunes. Uh uh. This is submission and the worst message to send to Muslims.”

Pamela Geller offers a reasoned response to a photo of Laura Bush wearing a headscarf during her visit to Saudi Arabia.

Atlas Shrugs, 25 October 2007

See also the Weekly Standard, 25 October 2007

The Crusader: Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“It makes me cringe when I hear references to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. An ex-Muslim, a former Dutch parliamentarian, and a feminist, Hirsi Ali is often trotted out as some sort of spokeswoman for moderate Islam. A few years back, she wrote a book (‘Infidel’) and produced a movie ‘Submission’) that condemn harsh treatment associated with Islam; since then, she’s been a celebrity. As blogger Shadi Hamid notes, ‘people seem intent on treating her as some kind of anointed spokeswoman for oppressed Muslim women, a reformer from within the faith or, worse, a kind of pseudo-Muslim Martin Luther’.

“But Hirsi Ali is no Martin Luther. She’s condescending, elitist, and inspires no respect amongst Muslims. Hamid points out that he has ‘yet to meet even one Muslim on the planet, secular or conservative, liberal or illiberal, who actually thinks that Hirsi Ali is helping the cause of internal Muslim reform’.”

Jeb Koogler at The Moderate Voice, 24 October 2007

‘Every street in Britain could look like this in 50 years time’, warns Mail

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Every street could look like thisIn an article headed “Britain will be scarcely recognisable in 50 years if the immigration deluge continues”, Stephen Glover writes:

“The only question that interests me is whether a country that is recognisably British will survive in 50 or 100 years. British culture, whatever it represents, is evidently not worth preserving in the view of some on the Left.

“It is a curious paradox that some of its adherents believe that foreign cultures are worth safeguarding, but … when our own indigenous culture is threatened, we are told that it is parochial and small-minded to think about trying to defend it….

“Preserving one’s own culture is at least as important as preserving one’s infrastructure. Actually, it is even more important, because new hospitals, houses and roads can, with a struggle, be built – but culture, once it has been undermined, cannot be recovered.”

Daily Mail, 25 October 2007

And note the photograph chosen to illustrate Glover’s piece (reproduced above). It prominently features a Muslim woman wearing the niqab and is captioned: “Every street in Britain could look like this in 50 years time.”

Daniel Pipes backs Islamo-Fascist terror group

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Danny Postel analyses the politics of the Iranian organisation the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) – “an Islamist-Stalinist cult that was on Saddam’s payroll and the State Department considers a terrorist organization” – and points out that it has some unlikely allies:

“Here you have virtually everything the Right claims to oppose all rolled into one: Islamism, Marxism, terrorism, and Saddam. Naturally, then, neoconservatives would utterly deplore the MEK and everything it stands for, right? The MEK would in fact make an ideal target for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week and Terrorism Awareness efforts, no?

“Well, no. At least one of the carnival’s acts, it turns out, is rather fond of the Islamo-Stalinist-terrorist cult group, and has repeatedly argued for the removal of the MEK from the State Department’s list of terrorist groups and indeed urged the U.S. government to embrace it. Daniel Pipes, who will be speaking at Tufts on October 24th as part of the Horowitz high jinks, has made the MEK a recurring theme in his writings going back several years.”

AlterNet, 23 October 2007

Clearly, “Islamo-Fascist terror groups” are OK with Pipes so long as their Islamo-Fascist terrorist activities are aimed at the government of Iran.

‘Too many mosques’ in UK, says self-styled ‘communist’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Azar Majedi of the Worker Communist Party of Iran is interviewed by the French secularist magaizine Riposte Laïque (translation in Scoop). In response to the question “Que penses-tu du projet de Grande Mosquée du maire de Londres, Ken Livingstone?” Majedi replies: “Je m’y oppose complètement. On n’a pas besoin d’autres mosquées. Il y en a déjà trop.”

Too many mosques? Now where have we heard that before? Ah yes, it was here.