Over at Dean’s World Aziz P summarises the case against “Muslims Against Sharia”, one of whom is the emphatically non-Muslim, ultra-right-wing, anti-Islamic bigot Pamela Geller, author of the Atlas Shrugs blog. MASh have now responded to the exposure of their fraudulent operation by claiming that their critics are motivated by … Islamophobia!
Category Archives: Right wing
‘Islamophobia is not the problem’
So Zia Haider Rahman claims. Apparently the problem is Muslims themselves, a large number of whom support terrorism, so is it any wonder that the non-Muslim majority is afraid of them?
Comment is Free, 25 September 2007
Yes that’s the same Zia Haider Rahman who recently wrote in the Torygraph: “Multiculturalism has not worked…. For too long, local authorities have had a free hand to promote a multiculturalist agenda, wreaking untold harm on race relations…. The Government must now catch up with what many of us have been arguing for years; that many of Britain’s ethnic minorities are adrift in ghettoes and that some are proving to be incubators of radicalist tendencies and havens for criminals.”
Yes, it’s another article defending ‘Undercover Mosque’
“… after deciding against prosecuting the imams, an extraordinary thing happened. The police and the Crown Prosecution Service reported the programme makers to Ofcom, the TV regulator, alleging ‘complete distortion’ in the way the programme had been edited. The police even asked the CPS to consider prosecuting Channel Four, under the Public Order Act, for broadcasting a programme including material likely to stir up racial hatred, something the prosecutors rightly balked at.
“There was no suggestion that the Dispatches team had done anything other than what all media organisations do, which is to edit hours and hours of footage into a 60-minute programme. [Except that the CPS lawyer’s charge that the documentary had ‘completely distorted’ what the speakers had said suggests precisely that the documentary makers had done something very different from just editing down hours of footage.] But the police said that the documentary ‘had an impact in the community and the cohesion within it’.
“Since when has that been a matter for police investigation or referral to Ofcom? The greatest damage to community cohesion in this country is being caused by the separatist political ideology preached by extremists, not by those seeking to expose it. This is something the Government must confront if it is to support the Muslims who are taking on the fanatics….”
Philip Johnson in the Daily Telegraph, 24 September 2007
From Johnston’s warped perspective, of course, the “damage to community cohesion” produced by dishonest and inaccurate media propaganda directed against the Muslim communities is of no concern at all.
(Non-)Muslims Against Sharia
“Muslims Against Sharia burst onto the scene last week with its announcement of a counter-bounty on the head of the probably-imaginary Abu Omar al-Baghdadi…. Bearing the slogan ‘Acknowledging Mistakes, Accepting Responsibities, Moving Forward’ they seemed almost too good to be true. Unfortunately, they almost certainly are – as it is not clear that any of their members are actually Muslims!”
Dave McKeegan at The Freethinker, 24 September 2007
Thank God for ‘Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week’
“Liberals are taking over the country. Their attacks range from brainwashing students by pinko-commie professors to extreme media bias. The academic left’s support of Islamic terrorist groups is placing American citizens in perilous danger.
“This is no joke. Ask the Young Conservatives of Texas. Every year YCT releases a campus watch list of the most dangerous professors at UT. Often times these dangerous professors unpatriotically criticize President Bush, while making critical examinations of counter-terrorist policy. Without the YCT list, we all might fall into the grasp of one of those sneaky leftists….
“Thank God that the true Americans, who believe in freedom, democracy and the pursuit of the good life, are fighting back. In no way are these brave patriots blurring the line between the entirety of Islam and the extreme minority of ‘Islamo-Fascists’, which poses a serious threat. Conservative writer and activist David Horowitz is one of those people, and he is spreading the truth next month during his ‘Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week‘.
“From Oct. 22 through Oct. 27, YCT and Horowitz’s organization, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, will organize on campus. Although YCT hasn’t announced their plans for the week, they’ll hopefully find a way to pit Christianity against Islam. While this might incite more racial hostility on campus, spreading the truth about the dangers of Islamo-Fascism is worth the risk.
“Horowitz and YCT want to give a heads up to everyone that Islamo-Fascists are out to get us. Their message isn’t meant to distract from the ongoing humanitarian disasters in the Middle East or to sensationalize the issue, but instead to point out that every single U.S. citizen is in extreme and immediate danger, especially at UT.”
Colin Pace in the Daily Texan, 24 September 2007
‘A British company welcomes its future overlords’
Bakery giants Greggs have installed a Muslims-only toilet at their new Scottish headquarters – despite the fact that no Muslims work there. Workers at the state-of-the-art factory were shocked when they were given a tour of the building and told a cubicle had been fitted for the use of Muslim employees.
But staff at the new £15million plant labelled the decision “political correctness gone mad”. One said: “We were being given a guided tour of the new factory before moving there when they told us that they had a toilet for use only by Muslims. I couldn’t believe, everybody was stunned because we don’t know of any Muslims who are working here. I don’t think anybody is really angry about it, but there just doesn’t seem to be any need for it. This sort of things is just political correctness gone mad.”
Another worker said: “The toilet just looks like a ceramic hole in the ground. I don’t think it will be getting much use and I don’t see why we couldn’t all just use the same toilet anyway. This sort of thing creates divisions between the workers.”
Daily Express, 21 September 2007
Of course, this sort of report is seized on by the far Right to back up their paranoid racist fantasies about the “Islamisation” of the UK.
See BNP Regional Voices, 21 September 2007 and Stormfront, 20 September 2007
And right-wing Australian blogger Tim Blair reports the story under the headline “A British company welcomes its future overlords“.
US Pastor opposing airport’s sinks for Muslims
A Baptist pastor who lost a son in Iraq objects to the placement of special sinks that would aid Muslims at the Indianapolis airport in preparing for prayer because he opposes “the fraternization with our open enemies during a time of war,” according to a statement from his church.
The Rev. Jerry Hillenburg, pastor at Hope Baptist Church on the city’s Far Westside, is calling on Mayor Bart Peterson to halt the installation of the floor-level sinks at the Indianapolis International Airport.
The sinks, which would be installed near the parking lot where taxi drivers wait between runs, would aid Muslims in washing their feet in preparation for their ritual prayers. Many cab drivers serving the airport are Muslims. They currently wash their feet in regular sinks or by using bottles of water.
Hillenburg, who plans to preach a sermon Sunday titled “Stop Caving in to Islam,” sent a letter to the mayor seeking a face-to-face meeting to discuss his concerns.
French Muslims’ mosque rights denied by rightists
France is not providing its Muslim citizens enough Mosques to pray in. This becomes evident especially during the holy fasting month of Ramadan when worshippers are forced to pray in the streets. “We don’t have enough room for worshipers in ordinary days let alone Ramadan, which see more and more Muslims flocking to mosques for Tarawih prayers,” Al-Hajj Amadou, an official with the Fatah Mosque in Paris’ 18th district, told IOL.
Calls to facilitate the construction of stately mosques in France, home to a sizable minority of nearly six million Muslim, have largely fallen on deaf ears. Rightists stand as the main roadblock and derail strenuous efforts made by Muslims to have a proper place of worship just like other communities in France. In Montreuil, plans for building a modern-style mosque was halted after a lawsuit won by far-right politicians. The building of a stately mosque in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille – home to 250,000 Muslims – was frozen in April following a similar lawsuit.
World Evangelical Alliance criticises UN report on Islamophobia
The religious liberty arm of the World Evangelical Alliance has rebuffed last week’s report from the UN claiming that the source of Muslim extremism is the “defamation” of Islam.
“I would propose that the very heart of the issue is not ‘defamation’ of Islam or ‘baseless’ Islamophobia,” expressed Elizabeth Kendal of the WEA’s Religious Liberty Commission, “but the fact that the dictators of Islam are now as ever consumed and driven by ‘apostaphobia’!”
“Indeed the new openness brought to the world through globalisation and developments in information and communication technologies is causing the power stakeholders and religious dictators of the non-free world to be seriously gripped by apostaphobia – a well-founded fear of loss of adherents, which is manifested primarily as uncompromising repression and denial of fundamental liberties, by violent and subversive means,” she said Monday.
Kendal, who serves as the principal researcher for the WEA RLC, was writing in response to a report to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) written by Doudou Diene, the UN’s special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.
Islamophobophobia
Rejecting the concept of Islamophobia (“fear of Islam is perfectly rational”), National Review Online columnist John Derbyshire explains the source of the Islamic threat to Western civilisation: “our troubles with immigrant Muslims are a mere aspect of our larger troubles with the great floods of Third World immigrants we have allowed to come into our countries this past forty years. This was a horrible and insane blunder….”
Derbyshire suggests a solution: “Would it be wise of Western countries, in the present state of affairs, to ‘fence off’ Islam – that is, to deny entry to foreign Muslims, to expel – regretfully, politely, and humanely, but firmly – resident foreign Muslims, and to restrict the activities of Muslim citizens (preventing them, for example, from proselytizing in our jails, or working in defense establishments)?”
National Review Online, 20 September 2007
See also “NRO’s Derbyshire wants to deny Muslims entry to the U.S. and ‘expel foreign Muslim residents'”, Media Matters, 21 September 2007