Category Archives: Right wing

Sun defends ‘Undercover Mosque’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Channel 4 logo“TV documentary makers have had a rough ride lately, with claims of doctored footage. No allegations of this sort can be substantiated against Channel 4’s excellent Undercover Mosque.

“A highly professional team filmed preachers praising the Taliban for killing British soldiers and showed chilling propaganda against infidels and homosexuals…. The programme was in tune with authoritative surveys showing how young Muslims are being persuaded by imams and preachers to sympathise with terrorists.

“West Midlands police could have used some of the clips as evidence of glorifying terrorism. Instead, they urged the Crown Prosecution Service to put C4 in the dock for stirring up racial hatred … now Plod wants TV watchdogs Ofcom to step in.

“Why don’t they just get on with their job? And crack down on the fanatics who really are trying to stir up murderous feelings by turning gullible young Muslims into killing machines.”

Sun editorial, 9 August 2007

See also coverage in the Guardian, the Times, and the Telegraph.

And a statement by the Muslim Council of Britain.

See also the MCB statement from last January, when “Undercover Mosque” was broadcast. This accuses the programme makers of “resorting to the dishonest tactic of selectively quoting from some recorded speeches for the purpose of misrepresentation” – an accusation now endorsed by West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service.

The radical Islamic group that acts as ‘conveyor belt’ for terror – Independent

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Shiv Malik continues the witch-hunt against Hizb ut-Tahrir. Although he comes down against a ban, the main thrust of his article is to provide a justification for it.

Independent on Sunday, 7 August 2005

Predictably, the authority quoted for the “conveyor belt” claim is US right-winger Zeyno Baran. As we have pointed out before with regard Ms Baran, she is associated with such reliable institutions as
National Review Online and The Counterterrorism Blog

See Yusuf Smith’s comments at Indigo Jo Blogs, 7 August 2005

Martin Bright repeats call for left-right alliance against ‘radical Islam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

James Silver interviews Martin Bright, political editor of the New Statesman and obsessive enemy of the Muslim Council of Britain. It contains the welcome news that Bright’s contact in the FCO, from whom he acquired the internal documents used in his witch-hunt of “Islamists”, has been identified and arrested. Bright also explains why he chose the right-wing think-tank Policy Exchange to publish his pamphlet When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries: “I believe a coalition of left and right need to be built around this issue.”

Guardian, 6 August 2007

Kids told to write ‘Allah is God’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Angry parents have blasted a teacher for telling ten-year-olds to copy a Muslim prayer saying ‘There is no God but Allah’. Helen Green is said to have picked the Muslim call to prayer as HAND-WRITING practice. It includes the lines ‘Allah is the greatest’ and ‘I bear witness that there is no God but Allah’.

“Pupil Billy Darbyshire’s stepmum Hayley Clayton said: ‘The explanation was that the children were learning about Islam in RE. But this was like he was taking an oath. A Muslim child would never be asked to write a Bible passage. Why didn’t she choose a passage from a normal story book to teach handwriting?’ Hayley, 23, said Mrs Green – deputy head of Newlands Primary School in Wakefield, West Yorks – had acknowledged it was a ‘sensitive issue’ because three of the 7/7 suicide bombers came from Leeds, 15 miles away.”

Sun, 6 August 2007

European mosque plans face protests

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Petitions in London, protests in Cologne, a court case in Marseille and a violent clash in Berlin – Muslims in Europe are meeting resistance to plans for mosques that befit Islam’s status as the continent’s second religion.

Across Europe, Muslims who have long prayed in garages and old factories now face skepticism and concern for wanting to build stately mosques to give proud testimony to the faith and solidity of their Islamic communities.

Some critics reject them as signs of “Islamisation”. Others say minarets would scar their city’s skyline. Given the role some mosques have played as centers for terrorists, others see Muslim houses of worship as potential security threats.

“The increasingly visible presence of Muslims has prompted questions in all European societies,” Tariq Ramadan, one of Europe’s leading Muslim spokesmen, argued when far-right groups proposed this year to ban minarets in his native Switzerland.

The issue hit the headlines in Britain in late July when a petition against a “mega-mosque” next to the 2012 London Olympics site was posted on Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Web site. It attracted more than 275,000 signatures before it was taken down.

In Germany last month, there were anti-mosque protests in Cologne and Berlin and a local council voted against one in Munich. A French far-right group vowed to sue the city of Marseille for a second time for helping build a “grand mosque”.

Bekir Alboga of the Turkish Islamic Union (DITIB) in Cologne said critics who see these new mosques as signs of separatism or of an Islamic colonization of Europe miss the point.

“The desire of Muslims to build a house of worship means they want to feel at home and live in harmony with their religion in a society they have accepted as theirs,” he said.

Continue reading →

Schools are run by Islamic group Blair pledged to ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Shiv Malik continues the witch-hunt of Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Sunday Times, 5 August 2007

See also the article in the Sunday Times Review by Tory shadow home secretary David Davis, which falsely accuses Hizb ut-Tahrir of sympathising with the recent terrorist attacks in Glasgow and London (read HT statement here) and concludes by asking us to “expect further calls to ban it”. No prizes for guessing where those calls will come from.

Flushing the Quran not a hate crime

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“One really has to wonder about the amount of time that the New York City police department has to deal with petty crime, but considering the amount of time it is spending to prosecute a book flushing it is no wonder al Qaeda is still looking at their city. Charges against Stanislav Shmulevich, a former Pace University student, for throwing a couple of Qurans in toilets are absurd on their face, but show that too many people are afraid to upset some in the Muslim faith just to keep their towns from burning….

“Muslim students are not only being coddled by the university, but also the state of New York. Charging a young man with vandalism is fine – he threw a book owned by Pace University into a toilet, but putting him on trial in a city where the reality of Islam showed itself on September 11, 2001 seems hardly to be a rational spending of taxpayer money…. So long as crimes are done in the name of Allah it seems only logical to follow that committing an act of civil disobedience against the book where radical Muslims find their courage to kill Americans is justified….

“The Quran gives comfort, indeed permission, to radical Muslims to blow us up. Would we disallow people to have thrown away Hitler’s books or Japan’s rantings during WWII? Of course not, but our war today is being fought ineffectively because America is too sensitive about how and who we fight. Those who kill us grasp the Quran before they go to bed at night and they praise Allah at their success….

“We’ve been asking ourselves for too long how we can live life free of the burden of worrying about offending Muslims. We’ve gone so far over the top to keep the so-called Muslim street happy that we cannot just call an act of vandalism an act of vandalism. No, sir – we have to appease Muslim students by calling water logging a book that some use to justify our death and destruction a hate crime.”

Steve Yuhas at The Conservative Voice, 4 August 2007

Osama strikes back

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Osama Saeed (4)“At the Scotland United Against Terror rally I was heckled by someone in the crowd.

“Nothing new in that, happens quite a bit, par for the course. Caught a glimpse of the bloke near the front, just looked like the normal vagrant, possibly drunk, but definitely looking a complete state. He disappeared shortly after – possibly he’d been taken away by the police. He’d actually been pulled up by one of the other attendees to whom he retorted he was an academic and therefore was under the impression that he was above everyone else and allowed to act like a berk. Then he was pulled up by another academic who was on hand.

“I’ve just been told that the vagrant in question, was actually Tom Gallagher.”

Osama Saeed replies to articles by Gallagher in the Spectator and the Herald and to Brian Monteith’s piece in the Edinburgh Evening News.

See here, here and here.

More bigotry from Rod Liddle

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rod Liddle“Apparently, one in 11 British Muslims actively supports terrorist attacks over here and a further 20% or so ’empathise’ with those who carry out such attacks. This warning comes not from the BNP, but from a bloke called Haras Rafiq, who is an adviser to the government. I’d put the figures slightly higher – based on previous opinion poll findings – but Rafiq seems to be in the right sort of area. That’s something like 400,000-plus British citizens ready to either strap on the Semtex or smile indulgently while someone else does so.

“Who knows if this will come as a shock to the government, the leaders of Muslim organisations and the BBC which insist that terrorism has ‘nothing to do with Islam’ and that each act of carnage is simply the work of rogue nutters and wholly unconnected to the religion to which, seemingly by coincidence, they adhere.”

Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times, 5 August 2007

Islamophobia is a myth, says neocon

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Douglas MurrayAuthor and commentator Douglas Murray, a strong public advocate of Israel, addressed a packed audience at Hendon United Synagogue on Monday. The 27-year-old was invited to speak by a congregant who had seen him on the BBC’s Question Time in July where he denounced Hamas and defended Israel amid loud boos from the audience. He was joined on Monday by Jeremy Newmark, chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council.

In response to Mr Newmark’s comments on the Jewish community being aware that Islamophobia also exists, Mr Murray called Islamophobia “a myth”. “A phobia is something irrational, but there’s a very rational fear in being scared of Islam today and wanting to act against it. Islam is not a race, it’s an ideology. Its not bad to dislike someone for their ideology. That is not racism,” he maintained.

Jewish Chronicle, 3 August 2007