Category Archives: Right wing

New York’s Arabic-themed school divides community

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Khalil Gibran demonstrationConcerns have been raised over whether a groundbreaking Arabic-themed school in New York, due to open next week, will be a model of coexistence or a conduit for extremism. Education Department officials have said that religion will not be taught at the Khalil Gibran International Academy, which is set to open on September 4 and will focus on Arab language and Arabic culture.

Such specialised schools are common in New York, and the city’s Department of Education has continued to insist that the school will be no different from Chinese- or Hispanic-oriented public schools. But others fear that the academy may teach students extremist Islamic beliefs.

One local politician, State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, alleged that the school had been endorsed by “radical” groups. “Establishment of an Arab school is a misguided and dangerous idea,” the Democratic politician – who represents a large Jewish constituency – told the JC. “It will not, as suggested, be a hope for peace; it is a blueprint for anti-Israel and anti-US extremism.”

Conservative commentator Daniel Pipes has slammed the project as “a Public Jihad School” where “imbuing pan-Arabism and anti-Zionism, proselytising for Islam, and promoting Islamist sympathies will predictably make up the school’s true curriculum”.

Supporters of the school – named after a Lebanese Christian poet – have vigorously denied such allegations. In a recent demonstration supporting the school, a mix of Jews and Muslims carried signs that read “NYC needs multi-cultural education” and “The Torah and the Koran both teach peace”. Speaking at the rally, Rabbi Michael Feinberg of the Greater NY Labour-Religion Coalition said elected officials should come forward to defend the school.

Jewish Chronicle, 31 August 2007

The media and Islam – another ‘balanced’ discussion

Posted on by Bob Pitt

On Radio 4’s “The Message” last Friday there was yet another example of the media’s incapacity to provide a balanced discussion of their own unbalanced depiction of Islam.

More4  News editor David Mapstone and media commentator Stephen Glover were brought in as media experts. And who did the BBC settle on to represent a Muslim viewpoint? Yes, you guessed it, they chose Islamism’s answer to Whittaker Chambers, Ed Hussain, who asserted that the “bandying around of this terminology of Islamophobia” is used to “shut down debate”. Husain assured listeners that the British media “bended over backwards to ensure that it doesn’t really offend most Muslims”.

Stephen Glover, for his part, took up the case of the discredited Channel 4 documentary “Undercover Mosque”. Did he raise this issue in order to express concern about media distortion of Islam? Don’t be silly, of course he didn’t. According to Glover, “what is worrying about this story is that having looked into it the police and the Crown Prosecution Service have referred the programme to OfCom on the basis that it manipulated the facts … so we have the media going out to find what is happening in some mosques, it does so, and it is criticised – unjustly I believe – for what it does”.

Let us recall that CPS lawyer Bethan David, who examined 56 hours of footage of which only short extracts were used in the programme, stated unequivocally that: “The splicing together of extracts from longer speeches appears to have completely distorted what the speakers were saying.”

Media “expert” Stephen Glover thus joins the likes of the Sun, Leo McKinstry, Dean Godson, Carol Gould, Adrian Morgan and the British National Party in rejecting the findings of the CPS. None of them, of course, has actually seen the footage on which the CPS based its criticism of “Undercover Mosque”. But never let facts get in the way of anti-Muslim prejudice, eh?

Even David Mapstone – who was prepared to concede that the media give disproportionate coverage to isolated extremists like Omar Brooks, and that organisations like the Muslim Council of Britain do have “representational legitimacy” – asserted that “good, high quality” television documentaries about Islam have been broadcast … featuring notorious Islamophobes like John Ware, Martin Bright and Richard Littlejohn.

Can Islam support a secular, democratic government?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The question is posed by the Christian Science Monitor. There’s an informed article by Jocelyne Cesari, professor of Islamic studies at Harvard, who points out that “recent polls show that Muslims praise democracy as the best political system. At the same time, they acknowledge the importance that sharia, or Islamic law, plays in their lives. This is where misunderstanding often occurs. Sharia does not refer to actual laws but to a set of moral principles and norms that guide Muslims in their personal and social choices.” However, in the interests of “balance” we also treated to the thoughts of one Bill Warner, director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam, who tells us that “Islam has two sets of ethics. One set is for Muslims and the other set is for kafirs; this is dualistic ethics. A Muslim should not harm another Muslim, but the kafir can be robbed, killed, or cheated to advance Islam.”

‘Meet the shadow minister for militant Islam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sayeeda Warsi and Cameron“The biggest risk to David Cameron’s leadership to date has been his appointment of Sayeeda Warsi as the shadow minister for community cohesion.

“Warsi’s rise makes Cameron’s ascent from freshman MP to leader in four years look almost sedate. In just two years she has gone from failed parliamentary candidate to being responsible for, perhaps, the most sensitive portfolio in opposition politics. Add in her history of making injudicious statements about anti-terror laws, talking to extremists, and Iraq – combined with some distinctly unCameroon views on homosexuality – and you have a pretty volatile cocktail. Especially as having staked his reputation on her judgment, Cameron cannot sack her.

“Even among those who are normally sympathetic to the Cameron project, Warsi’s appointment was viewed as a stunt too far. After all, she has observed that the government’s anti-terror proposals were ‘enough to tip any normal young man into the realms of a radicalised fanatic’ and said that if ‘terrorism is the use of violence against civilians, then where does that leave us in Iraq?’ These concerns were assuaged, to an extent, by the naming of Paul Goodman as the Commons spokesman for her brief. Goodman, a former comment editor of the Daily Telegraph, has developed robust views on the need for the political class to wake up to the threat posed by extremist Islamist ideology.”

Spectator, 29 August 2007

Actually “the shadow minister for militant Islam” refers to Goodman rather than Sayeeda Warsi … I think.

US Islamophobes fall out

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Daniel Pipes is wrong, much as it pains me to say it. I wish, in fact, he wasn’t. But in his article in the NY Sun, Ban Islam? he closes with: ‘Islam is not the enemy, but Islamism is. Tolerate moderate Islam, but eradicate its radical variants.’

“What variant? The Koran is a violent document. The call to jihad, to kill non believers and Islamic Jew hatred in the Koran is well documented. This is not a variant, this is a tenet of Islam and Islamic jihad. To imply or state differently is simply inaccurate.

“I would like to feel all warm and fuzzy and embrace the moderate Muslim/ meme but they show no evidence of their existence – not in any real number anyway. The only voices of reason in the Muslim world are lapsed Muslims or apostates.”

Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs, 29 August 2007

The case against banning the Koran – according to D. Pipes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Daniel Pipes rejects calls by Geert Wilders, Roberto Calderoli et al for a ban on the Qur’an and/or Islam. Can’t see that going down too well with some of his admirers. But fear not, Daniel hasn’t succumbed to the disease of liberal appeasement. He writes: “More practical and focused would be to reduce the threats of jihad and Shari’a by banning Islamist interpretations of the Koran, as well as Islamism and Islamists.”

Jerusalem Post, 28 August 2007

Update:  See “US Islamophobes fall out”, Islamophobia Watch, 29 August 2007

Muslim Nations want ‘Islamophobia’ on anti-racism meeting’s agenda

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Islamophobia” and the defamation of Islam are the most conspicuous forms of racism and intolerance today, and a global U.N. conference on racism planned for 2009 should come up with practical solutions to deal with them, an Islamic bloc representative told a preparatory meeting in Geneva Monday. The 2009 meeting is intended to review a U.N. conference on racism, held in Durban, South Africa, just days before 9/11, but the 56-nation Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC) wants Islam to be high on the agenda.

“The world since 2001 has not remained static and witnessed new forms of racism and racial discrimination,” Pakistan’s representative to the U.N., Masood Khan, said at a meeting of the planning body, or “prepcom bureau,” according to prepared remarks. Speaking on behalf of the OIC, Khan told the meeting that “there has been a stark rise in hate crimes, discrimination, racial profiling and intolerance against Muslims in many countries.”

The Hudson Institute’s “Eye on the U.N.” project, which is observing the process in Geneva, described it Monday as the U.N.’s “latest anti-Jewish and anti-American extravaganza.”

CNS News, 28 August 2007

‘Racist ape’ defends Undercover Mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Carol Gould“It is utterly absurd that the British authorities have decided to censure a major broadcaster for inciting racial discord rather than investigating the violent and hate-filled rhetoric of the religious leaders depicted in a film. This is, however, the position in which Channel Four Television finds itself in the dark days of August.

“I attended a seminar in London earlier this year in which Dr Mohamed Abdul Bari, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that he thought the Channel Four ‘Dispatches’ programme, ‘Undercover Mosque,’ generated Islamophobia and stirred racial hatred. Putting two and two together in the past fortnight since attending the Policy Exchange event on ‘Undercover Mosque’ and the implications for free speeech and free expression by broadcasters, it is clear that the MCB had something to do with the police turning their attentions to the programme-makers rather than to the radicals in the film….

“At the risk of being dubbed a ‘racist ape,’ as I was two weeks ago by an enraged Muslim gentleman in my sweet little local Costa Coffee shop in London, dare I say that the concept of an Englishman has been so distorted as to be unrecognisable? In the same country in which men used to tip their hats to me and cabbies called my father ‘Guv’nor,’ we now have British citizens and naturalised immigrants who rant and rave and want women subjugated, gay men thrown off mountains and the ‘Infidel’ beheaded, and whose entire demeanour is so alien to anything in my entire life experience that I wonder if I have left planet Earth.”

Carol Gould at Jewish Comment, 27 August 2007

The new racist dogma in the US

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“There is a new racist dogma that is taking hold in this country that if allowed to fester any further will result in the greater marginalization of minority groups and increase the prevalent atmosphere of fear and mistrust. The most glaring manifestation of this phenomenon is the unbalanced and intellectually impoverished discourse about Islam and American Muslims.

“America’s last accepted form of racism tolerates statements about Muslims that would be unacceptable if referring to other groups. In this paradigm multiculturalism is a threat to the foundations of democracy and those voices who espouse a contrary view are opposed to freedom of speech. The great American melting pot is conspicuously thrown to the wayside.”

M.T. Akbar at Media Monitors, 27 August 2007