Category Archives: Right wing

Don’t vote for Boris

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Boris Johnson“While I know some Muslims will disagree with me about this, I don’t mind whether the mayor of London is pro-Israel or supported the Iraq war. The mayoralty isn’t about that, it’s about things like transport (with Ken Livingstone having been mayor for as long as the position has existed, it’s hard to think of what else it’s about).

“It’s important, however, that the mayor is not a bigot, which on the strength of his coverage of Muslim affairs while editor of the Spectator, Boris Johnson is. In that position, Johnson reacted to the July 2005 London bombings and the Paris slum riots of that year with horrendously unbalanced coverage, commissioning articles from the likes of Patrick Sookhdeo, full of sweeping generalisations, plain falsehoods and outright absurdities. The tone was that Islam itself, not an extremist movement, or the western policies off which it thrives, was to blame.”

Yusuf Smith responds to reports that Boris Johnson MP is considering standing for selection as the Tory candidate in the 2008 London mayoral election.

Indigo Jo Blogs, 5 July 2007

See also Yusuf’s comments on articles in the current issue of the (post-Johnson) Spectator.

Why the secular left sides with Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The other day when he was asked to react to the attempted car-bomb attacks on London, the city’s mayor, Ken Livingstone, called for tolerance. Fair enough, you might say. But at whom was his call for tolerance directed? You are probably thinking, if you are a logical sort, that the call must have been directed at the fanatics who had come within an ace of killing and maiming possibly hundreds of people. But you would be mistaken. Instead Ken directed his call at his fellow, non-Muslim, Englishmen. He said that in the past Jews, the Irish and gays had been persecuted in England and now it was the turn of Muslims….

“The War on Terror, if that term can still be used, is revealing strange ideological fissures in Western societies. I came across these fissures in person last September when I took part in about eight radio discussions in the days after Pope Benedict had quoted the Byzantine emperor who had less-than-flattering things to say about Islam. The line-up on those shows was me playing my usual role as the Catholic commentator, a Muslim representative, and frequently a representative of what I suppose we’ll have to call the secular left.

“On almost every one of these shows the secular left representative did his or her best to impersonate Ken Livingstone. First there was the usual ritualistic condemnation of the extremists, but this was then followed by a much more detailed discussion of why we are to blame for whatever Muslims extremists do to us. To all intents and purposes this placed the secular leftist firmly on the side of the Muslim representative….

“Essentially you had the guardians of tolerance siding with people who would crush homosexuals under walls if they could, and who would turn women into property given half a chance. And why this horrid sympathy? It is because the secular left’s hatred of Western civilisation, and certainly Christianity, America and Israel, is such that they will side with anyone, no matter how unsavoury, who shares that hatred.”

David Quinn in the Irish Independent, 6 July 2007

Islam, multiculturalism and immigrants – the main causes of terrorism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rod Liddle“We began with the usual and – this time – quite surreal assurances from politicians, Muslim leaders and, in particular the BBC, that the latest attacks were ‘nothing to do with Islam’. This is what we always hear when a bomb has gone off, or failed to go off – and it is always a silly statement, based upon nothing more real than wishful thinking….

“Then, as always happens, we had the next stage of wishful thinking … we were assured by assorted correspondents and politicians that Britain’s Muslim community were, in their entirety, appalled and outraged by the attacks. Well, maybe they were – but how do you know? … Don’t forget that more than half of our Muslims feel sympathy for suicide bombers in Israel and a fairly hefty minority (one in eight, at the last count) for similar action against the cockroach imperialist infidel scum (i.e. you and me) over here. Not to mention almost half of Britain’s Muslims who want Sharia law in this country and do not remotely, therefore, share our norms and values.

“We are told these sorts of things in order to stop us coming to unpalatable conclusions, because the government still clings, ever more precariously, to the vestigial tail of that discredited ideology, multiculturalism. Take, for example, the issue of immigration. The aspirant, useless bombers who missed their targets at Glasgow and London came here from Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan. A recent Mori opinion poll commissioned by the government’s Commission on Integration and Cohesion showed that almost 70 per cent of British people thought that we had let far too many immigrants into the country….

“Every month or so we read that the immigration appeals court has allowed some murderous lunatic from the Maghreb or beyond to stay in the country, despite his clearly stated homicidal impulses, because it would be an infringement of his human rights were he to be returned to the Islamic hellhole from which he arrived…. It is surely only a matter of time before someone who comes before the immigration appeals court is allowed to stay and later blows himself up in a public place. Perhaps it has happened already.”

Spectator, 7 July 2007

Although, to be fair, unlike Nick Cohen et al, at the end of the piece Liddle does at least get around to mentioning the attack on Iraq as a contributory (albeit secondary) factor in encouraging terrorism: “Whatever your feelings about the war, it must, surely, provide a moral justification for those Islamists intent upon unleashing murder upon our soil….”

Bring in racial profiling, urges Express

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Terror Search FiascoPolice chiefs were last night under intense pressure to use racial profiling in the battle to prevent ­further terror strikes.

All the suspects in the latest failed attacks are young adults of Asian or Middle Eastern descent. But officers carrying out spot checks at key sites have been told not to target people based on their ethnicity or age.

The policy has led to accusations that police bosses are more worried about upsetting minority groups than protecting the country. One frustrated officer last night said: “In these extreme circumstances the rules need to be changed because otherwise we are wasting our resources.”

Tory MP Philip Davies said: “I agree with him completely. It makes my blood boil. In a nutshell, what police officers are being told is put political correctness above the security of people in this country.”

Daily Express, 5 July 2007

Clashes over ban for Hizb ut-Tahrir

Posted on by Bob Pitt

HizbThere have been Commons clashes over whether or not Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir should be banned. Conservative leader David Cameron told MPs that ministers should act against “groups which are seeking to radicalise young people”. The government had pledged to ban the group two years ago, he said. “We think it should be banned. Why hasn’t it happened?” Gordon Brown said that “you have to have evidence” to ban any group. But Cameron said that Hizb ut-Tahrir is “poisoning the minds of young people”.

ePolitix, 4 July 2007

See also Conservative Party press release, 4 July 2007

Read Hizb ut-Tahrir’s reply to Cameron here

US radio host says women in burqas are hateful Nazis who’ll kill your children

Posted on by Bob Pitt

On the July 2 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, discussing the recent terror-related arrests in Britain, radio host Michael Savage said, “When I see a woman walking around with a burqa, I see a Nazi,” adding, “That’s what I see – how do you like that? – a hateful Nazi who would like to cut your throat and kill your children.” Savage also said that when a Muslim woman wears a burqa, “She’s doing it to spit in your face. She’s saying, ‘You white moron, you, I’m going to kill you if I can.'” The Savage Nation reaches more than 8 million listeners each week, according to Talkers Magazine, making it the third most-listened-to talk radio show in the nation.

Media Matters, 3 July 2007 

Express writer urges support for far-right ‘mega mosque’ petition

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Patrick O'Flynn“This planned Mosque would be large enough for tens of thousands of Muslims at a time. But what’s the betting against it becoming another hotbed of so-called ‘radical’ preachers? Such large scale facilities suggest an ambition among some of East London’s Muslims to become ever more dominant over other faiths and communities in the area. Before long I can see the old East End becoming an almost exclusively Muslim district in which others fear to tread….

“The people of this country have to let Muslims know we are not happy with the way community relations are going. Unless mainstream Muslims come to realise that the disastrous course their community is currently set on – segregation, anti-free speech, anti-women’s rights, pro-sharia courts – is fiercely resented by the majority of British people then the pressure cooker of ill-feeling will keep building.”

Patrick O’Flynn urges support for the “mega mosque” petition initiated by BNP supporter Jill Barham.

Daily Express, 3 July 2007

Muslims should show support for attacks on civil liberties, advises Torygraph

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“A number of Muslim leaders have made clear how shocked and offended their community has been by these incidents. But given the state of public anger and alarm over the series of failed attacks, and the sense that it was only the most extraordinary good fortune that prevented them from ending in carnage, it may no longer be enough for British Muslims to offer verbal condemnations after the fact….

“Obviously, all Muslims should not be branded as potential terrorists, but, for present purposes, all terrorists are likely to be Muslims…. it is they who will have to accept the infringements of liberty that follow from racial profiling and the targeting of likely terrorists, which are now necessary for public safety. Perhaps the many British Muslims who detest terrorist activity might consider raising their voices against it in public protests, to demonstrate their understanding of the need for the hard measures to come.”

Editorial in Daily Telegraph, 3 July 2007

The media and the bombings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Car bomber is British doctorThe media coverage of the botched terrorist attacks in London and Scotland has been much as you might expect.

Yesterday we had BBC News 24 reporting that the police had stated that none of the suspects was of British origin – and then broadcasting a piece suggesting that the attacks had been carried out by young British Muslims who had been radicalised by the internet and then travelled to Pakistan to be trained as terrorists.

And nobody seems to have picked up on the contradiction of claiming that the attacks were carried out or inspired by Al Qaida, while at the same time reporting that the individual arrested in connection with the attack is a doctor of Iranian origin, and therefore presumably a Shia. [Update: Dr Mohammed Asha is in fact Jordanian. But how could we expect the Sun to tell the difference?]

Needless to say, right-wing (and liberal) commentators have been eager to pin responsibility on the Muslim community for failing to stop the bombers – who for all we know may in fact have had no connection with any section of the UK Muslim community. An article by Philip Johnston in the Telegraph carries the headline “We need Muslims to do more”, while the London Evening Standard goes with “Muslims must reject extremism”, asserting that “many Muslim leaders drag their feet”.

Over at the Independent, in an piece entitled “Sane, ordinary Muslims must stand up and be counted” (hailed as “a quite brilliant article” by Tory blogger Iain Dale) Yasmin Alibhai-Brown gives a boost to the tiny and irrelevant British Muslims for Secular Democracy and welcomes the government’s sidelining of the Muslim Council of Britain, which she describes as having acted as an “apologist” for the “killing brigades”.

Leo McKinstry in the Express rants that “British Muslims must show which side they are on”, complaining bitterly that “Alex Salmond claimed that ‘individuals, not communities‘ were responsible for terrorism, a piece of nonsense given that it is the Muslim community that has bred the terrorists. In London, Mayor Ken Livingstone was even more reprehensible. He dismissed the idea of any connection between Islam and terrorism, claiming that: ‘Muslims are less likely to support the use of violence for political ends than non-Muslims‘. Yeah, right, tell that to the relatives of those killed in the July bombings, or the Twin Towers, or the Bali attacks or the Madrid massacre.”

Mad Mel in the Mail calls for a ban on Hizb ut-Tahrir (who have in fact publicly opposed the attacks) and goes on to assert that “while most British Muslims say they would have no truck with terrorism or violence, an insupportable number of them do endorse appalling ideas”. Mel has an explanation for this state of affairs: “Our [sic] Muslim community is particularly vulnerable to Islamist extremism because of the collapse of Britain’s belief in itself and the corresponding rise of multiculturalism and minority rights.”

An editorial in the Express headed “We should abandon failed policy of multiculturalism” chimes in with the recommendation that the government should adopt a programme of “no state funding for Muslim faith schools and … an end to so-called ‘chain migration’ under which young British Muslims are pressured into marrying foreigners to afford their extended families a route into the UK…. It is surely also time for the Government to consider a legal ban on the burkha in public places. This is a nation where law-abiding citizens are not ashamed to show their faces. The era of politically correct cultural surrender must be brought to an end.”

And, in the right-wing blogosphere, David T of Harry’s Place takes the opportunity to have another go at Osama Saeed of MAB, accusing him of advocating “the deliberate slaughter of civilians” and helpfully providing a link to an earlier post describing Osama as a proponent of “clerical fascism“.