“If you wanted to know what Sen. Joe McCarthy would sound like if he came back from the dead, read David Horowitz’s explanation for ‘Islamofascism Awareness Week’, an event he is sponsoring on college campuses across the country from October 22-26.”
Aaron Hess reveals the veteran witch-hunter behind a new round of Islamophobia coming to US campuses.
Hizb ut-Tahrir replies to last night’s Panorama programme How I Became a Muslim Extremist.
Among the talking heads featured on the programme was Douglas Murray’s mate James Brandon from the misnamed Centre for Social Cohesion, which the programme omitted to mention is a hardline right-wing think tank. And Andrew Green – who assured viewers that HT represents a “gateway” to terrorism – was introduced as a former Foreign Office expert, with no reference to the fact that he is now chairman of the right-wing anti-immigration campaign Migration Watch.
For Yusuf Smith’s comments, see Indigo Jo Blogs, 2 October 2007
CINCINNATI – The Cincinnati office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Ohio chapter (CAIR-Ohio) today called on a local radio station to reprimand a talk show host who claimed that the goal of Islam is “sex with children for eternity.”
Yesterday, WLW-AM host Bill “Willie” Cunningham said on air: “The great war of this generation’s time is the war against Islamic fascists…. They do not live for life, they live for death. Only through death can they believe they can be with those 72 virgins in heaven and have sex with children for eternity, which is the goal of that religion.”
“These outrageous and inflammatory remarks can only serve to promote the kind of anti-Muslim hatred and bigotry that have such a negative impact on our society and on our nation’s international image,” said CAIR-Cincinnati Executive Director Karen Dabdoub. “Unfortunately, this troubling incident is further evidence of the growing level of rhetorical attacks on Muslims and Islam in the public arena.”
Dabdoub added that hate-filled words can and do lead to violent actions against Muslims. She said there have been several recent apparently bias-related incidents targeting Muslims in Ohio, including Nazi swastikas and the phrase “white power” spray-painted on a Toledo Islamic school and rocks thrown at worshipers outside a Columbus mosque.
Other recent incidents nationwide include a shot fired into a Texas mosque, a Muslim woman in New York being badly beaten in a bias attack, arsonists torching a mosque in Northern California, and vandals slashing the tires of vehicles owned by a Maryland Muslim activist.
The fascists applaud an article by Julie Bindel in the Sunday Times (or the “Times on Sunday” as they prefer to describe it):
“The story concerns the sex grooming of young British girls largely by Muslim men – something that up until relatively recently has been decried as a figment of the BNP imagination by the political establishment. Now, of course, following a number of convictions of such people in our courts that particular cat is well and truly out of the bag – much to the embarrassment of the political class that has continuously turned a blind eye to it in the name of ‘good community relations’!”
BNP Regional Voices, 1 October 2007
See also Home of the Green Arrow, 1 October 2007
Cf. the Guardian, 23 March 2006
The right-wing media are predictably making an issue of Sainsbury’s reported decision to allow its Muslim checkout staff to opt out of& selling alcohol. Judging by the account in yesterday’s Sunday Times this would appear to affect a single employee in one Sainsbury’s store (plus two other workers who have apparently asked for dispensation from stacking the drinks shelves).
Ibrahim Mogra, chairman of the inter-faith committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, has said: “Muslim employees should look at the allowances within Muslim law to enable them to be better operating employees and not be seen as rather difficult to cater for.”
Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary-general of the MCB, has similarly been quoted as saying: “By selling alcohol you are not committing a sin. You are just doing the job you are paid for. Muslim employees have a duty to their employer and in supermarkets most people would accept that in selling alcohol you are merely passing it through a checkout. That is hardly going to count against you on the day of judgement.”
None of which prevents Peter McKay, in today’s Daily Mail, using the Sainsbury’s story as an example of the attempted Islamification of the West:
“There’s no doubt some Muslims living here want us to change so we are more in tune with their beliefs. Some of the wilder ones want to destroy our ‘infidel’ way of life altogether. The Nobel Prizewinning author Sir Vidia Naipaul complained about the latter group to Radio 4’s James Naughtie last week. This is what he said: ‘What I dislike about it is this element of parasitism. These people who want to come to other countries from their own benighted places. They twist the laws, they hire lawyers, they do bad things to get residence. And then, having got that, they wish to destroy (the society) which has welcomed them. I think that is simply awful. At the most basic level it’s a kind of ingratitude.’ Trinidad born, Sir Vidia can speak candidly without fear. No white politician from a major party would dare voice these sentiments. Everyone’s too terrified of sounding ‘racist’.”
Still, it’s good to see that Peter McKay includes the Muslim Council of Britain in the category of “sensible Muslims”, given that the paper regularly features rants by Melanie Phillips denouncing the MCB as an extremist organisation.
“An extremist Islamist group, which remains legal despite Government promises to ban it, has urged Muslim students at British universities to fight Allied troops in Iraq.” Yes, it’s yet another attempt to frame Hizb ut-Tahrir as a violent organisation that should be banned. This one in the Sunday Telegraph, based on an exposé of HT on Panorama tomorrow. See also the BBC website.
Senator John McCain said in an interview posted on the Internet on Saturday that the Constitution established the United States as a Christian nation and that his faith is probably of better spiritual guidance than that of a Muslim candidate for president.
“I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles, that’s a decision the American people would have to make, but personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith,” Mr. McCain said in response to a question about the possibility of a Muslim running for president.
New York Times, 30 September 2007
See also Sepia Mutiny, 30 September 2007
“While Kaufman makes his living out of calling for the expunging of Muslim nations and the shutting down of all American Muslim organizations, the American Muslim leaders he maligns are too busy to heed his desperate antics for attention; they are out there building bridges between communities and leading much-needed conversations that chisel away at misunderstanding and stereotypes.”
M.T. Akbar takes on US right-wing anti-Muslim blogger Joe Kaufman.
British Muslim Initiative views the Conservative choice of Boris Johnson as the mayoral candidate as an affront to the sensitivities and beliefs of London Muslims. In a city in which one in eight of its population is Muslim, Johnson has demonstrated an antipathy to the Quran that borders on the realm of the bigotry.
During the debate on the religious hatred bill Johnson is recorded as saying “if this bill makes any sense at all it must mean banning the reading in public or in private of a great many passages of the Quran itself”. He also wrote in one of his articles “the Koran is full of stuff that plainly falls into that category (religious hatred)”.
Mohammad Sawalha Chair of BMI said: “In the light of such invective BMI affirms any individual aspiring to represent the people of London must demonstrate respect for all its communities. Mr Johnson is on the hostile path with the religious and ethnic minorities and he would destroy the great harmony enjoyed in London.”
Mr Sawalha further added: “What is required at this juncture is a Mayor who has the understanding of the needs of the great many communities in London and unite them, unfortunately Mr Johnson does not fit that bill. Boris Johnson’s record of hostilities and disdain for the sacred book of Muslims must automatically disqualify him from their support, to the same degree that his public offence and disrespect for black and ethnic minority communities should equally render him unworthy of their support.”
At least, that’s how the Daily Mail spins it.