Fear of antagonising the Muslim community has put the country’s security at risk from Islamic terrorists, says former Tory minister George Walden.
Category Archives: Right wing
Is Britain policing or appeasing Islamic extremism?
The latter, according to Tory MP and shadow communities minister Paul Goodman, who has written to the home secretary complaining about the actions of West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service in relation to Channel 4’s “Undercover Mosque” documentary. Goodman protests against the decision by the police to refer Channel 4 to Ofcom, describing this as “a politically motivated referral, driven by the mistaken belief that the best means of dealing with separatist extremists is to appease them”.
Conservative Home, 16 August 2007
Read Goodman’s letter (pdf) here.
Muslim threats forced MP to stand down, claims right-wing US website
“… the story of Mohammad Sarwar stands as a dire warning of the dangers posed to the West by its rapidly growing Muslim population”. FrontPage Magazine explains the Glasgow MP’s decision to stand down at the next general election.
PCSO wears headscarf – shock revelation in Daily Mail
“A Muslim teenager has been named as one of the ‘babies on the beat’ as police community support officers. The Daily Mail revealed on Monday how Thames Valley police were employing two 16-year-old school-leavers as PCSOs. Yesterday it emerged that the force also recruited three 17-year-olds, including Nadia Naeem, now 18, who wears the hijab. All now have the power to detain and question suspects.”
Quite how wearing a headscarf is relevant to a PCSO’s ability to detain and question suspects is not explained.
Tories protest HT’s use of Alexandra Palace
A controversial Islamic group accused of being anti-Semitic hate mongers and condoning the murder of gay people recently held a conference at Alexandra Palace in north London, to the disgust of local Conservatives. Thousands of Hizb ut-Tahrir supporters gathered for the conference on how to realise the Khilafah – a global Islamic state.
Last month, Conservative leader David Cameron asked Prime Minister Gordon Brown why the group was not proscribed in the UK. Mr Cameron said: “People simply won’t understand why an organisation urging people to kill all Jews hasn’t been banned.”
Justin Hinchcliffe, of Haringey Conservatives, told the Muswell Hill Times: “Hizb ut-Tahrir is a fascist-Islamic organisation. Jihad (holy war), anti-Semitism, homophobia and misogyny are what it stands for. If Labour wants to be tough on terrorism it should ban such hateful groups instead of eroding the civil liberties of the law-abiding majority. Meanwhile, the bosses at Alexandra Palace should be ashamed of themselves. Clearly, they have placed profit above ethics, community relations, security and common sense. We don’t want these hate-mongers in Haringey.”
Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary general of The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), told the Muswell Hill Times he did not believe banning the group was the answer but that the MCB strongly disagree with the group’s position of non-participation in the UK electoral process. “The best way is surely to challenge some of their ideas and show clearly why integration and greater participation in the mainstream political process is a more fruitful path for all concerned.”
Australian racist politician targets Muslim immigration
Pauline Hanson, a former right-wing lawmaker who shot to popularity in the 1990s on a policy of curbing Asian migration to Australia, announced Wednesday she is registering a new political party that adds Muslims and refugees to her list of unwanted residents.
The 53-year-old firebrand plans to run for the Senate as a candidate of the new party, Pauline’s United Australia Party, in elections due around October. “I think we need to have a look at our immigration levels and I’d like to put a moratorium on any more Muslims coming into Australia,” Hanson told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio Wednesday.
She said Australia also needs to change its international humanitarian commitments so it can reject “refugees in this country that bring in diseases, who are incompatible with our lifestyle”. Hanson said she still stood by her first speech to Parliament in 1996 when she famously warned that Australia was “in danger of being swamped by Asians”.
‘Minarets are a sign of sharia law’ – backlash against Cologne mosque project
COLOGNE, Germany – Never mind that a local brothel claiming to be Europe’s largest calls itself the Pasha and sports an ersatz arabesque theme. Some residents of this ancient city on the banks of the Rhine see the brothel as a shining example of their tolerance. But what irks them is that some Muslims want to build a mosque, complete with a dome and minarets.
The residents complain that the minarets would clash with the towering spires of the city’s celebrated 13th-Century cathedral. But as the debate heats up, it has revealed a cultural schism that goes much deeper than any disagreement over architectural aesthetics.
Cardinal Joachim Meisner, spiritual leader of the city’s Catholics and a close friend of Pope Benedict XVI, has said that the proposed mosque leaves him with an “uneasy feeling.” Monsignor Rainer Fischer, another Catholic clergyman in the city, said: “The idea of building the mosque has brought up a number of issues that have always been there but were submerged. Now they are out in the open.”
These issues include Germany’s fears about the rising tide of Muslim immigration across Europe, frustrations over the failure to integrate Germany’s 2.7 million Turkish immigrants and gnawing doubts about whether the Turks and other Muslim immigrants truly want to integrate into a Western society.
“The mosque is not a symbol of integration, it’s a symbol of isolation, the symbol of an isolated enclave of Oriental culture,” said Joerg Uckermann, deputy mayor of the Ehrenfeld district and a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. “I think the minarets are a sign of sharia” – Islamic law – “and I do not want that here. This is a Christian city,” Uckermann said, openly expressing what many residents would say only in private.
The ferocity of the opposition has come as a shock to members of the Turkish community. It also angers them. “They are saying that this is a Christian nation, and there is no space for any other religion? This is against all the principles of freedom and democracy,” said Yildirim.
‘Doctors give in to Muslims’
Thus the headline to an article in yesterday’s Daily Express.
Andrew Anthony rallies to defence of ‘Undercover Mosque’
Channel 4’s documentary “Undercover Mosque” was great investigative journalism, claims Andrew Anthony.
For earlier coverage of Andrew Anthony see here and here.
And over at the Daily Telegraph, “Undercover Mosque” also receives the backing of Charles Moore, who complains that “the West Midlands police and the Crown Prosecution Service decide that the target of their wrath should be not people who want to undermine this country, but some journalists who want to expose them”.
Footbaths at US university provoke charges of ‘Islamification’
DEARBORN, Mich. — When pools of water began accumulating on the floor in some restrooms at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, and the sinks pulling away from the walls, the problem was easy to pinpoint. On this campus, more than 10 percent of the students are Muslims, and as part of ritual ablutions required before their five-times-a-day prayers, some were washing their feet in the sinks. The solution seemed straightforward. After discussions with the Muslim Students’ Association, the university announced that it would install $25,000 foot-washing stations in several restrooms.
But as a legal and political matter, that solution has not been quite so simple. When word of the plan got out this spring, it created instant controversy, with bloggers going on about the Islamification of the university. On her Web site, Debbie Schlussel, a conservative lawyer and blogger in Southfield, Mich., posted, “Forget about the Constitutionally mandated separation of church and state … at least when it comes to mosque and state.”