Category Archives: Right wing

BNP backs Butt

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Muslim extremists are targeting Scottish people because they what [sic] to destroy our British Christian way of life and replace it with an Islamic state. It is not about Iraq, it’s not about Afghanistan, it is about the Islamic Jihad for this country. We exist in their minds in Dar al-Harb or the House of War, which is the term used to refer to those areas outside Muslim rule i.e. Scotland.”

BNP regional voices, 2 July 2007

Sounds like the fascists have taken their inspiration from Hassan Butt. And why not? His line of argument feeds their Islamophobic ravings.

Robert Spencer is a fan, too: “Butt here says what I have said for years: that the jihad arises from Islamic imperatives, not from the actions of the West.”

Jihad Watch, 2 July 2007

More nonsense about ‘Islamism’ from Ed Husain

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ed Husain, Melanie Phillips’s favourite Muslim, furthers his media career with another disgraceful attack on mainstream Muslim organisations, and in particular the East London Mosque, in the Evening Standard.

Appeasement is not an answer to the bombers

The threat of radical Islam is as great as ever – and those, like the Mayor, who seek to gloss over the danger, should heed this warning

By Ed Husain

Evening Standard, 2 July 2007

Once again, London is plunged into fear and confusion. Perhaps we had been lulled by a series of successful convictions of bomb plotters. But all along, the jihadists were at work, building their cells, arming themselves, recruiting, making plans. And it is only by a miracle that London escaped carnage far, far worse than that wreaked on 7 July 2005. Police seem to have a good chance of rounding up this particular cell. But either way, radical Islam is back with a vengeance. In fact, it never left.

So I listen to the Mayor of our great city and I wonder, what will it take for him to wake up? More bombs in central London? Another attack on the Tube? As someone who was seduced by Islamists such as Omar Bakri, I know how charismatic these firebrands can be. But at the time, I was an impressionable teenager. What’s Ken’s excuse?

Don’t get me wrong. Being a big-tent liberal is laudable; but to fail to discern the difference between Islam, the religious tradition, and Islamism, the extremist political ideology hell-bent on destroying the West, is a disaster for us all. By confusing regular religious Muslims with fanatical ideologues, Ken blurs the lines between right and wrong, and allows radicalism to flourish within sections of London’s Muslim communities.

On Radio 4 this weekend, Ken and I took part in a debate about terrorism. Despite my repeatedly asking Ken to condemn Islamism, he refused to do so. He correctly lambasted Saudi Wahhabis for their role in promoting an intolerant and violent creed. Yet what we call al-Qaeda is an illegitimate child of Islamism and Wahhabism combined.

While living in Saudi Arabia two years ago, I remember watching in horror television images of Ken walking around with Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric based in Qatar, whose publicly stated attitude is that suicide bombers are martyrs. Yet it was Ken who said that ‘of all the Muslim thinkers in the world today, al-Qaradawi is the most positive force for change’. By promoting these extremists, and their supporters, Ken gives them legitimacy. He helps set in motion the conveyor belt to terrorism.

Continue reading →

SANE Works for US: coming to a Masjid near you!

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“So you’re at prayers at your local mosque, and a pasty white guy in a pantomime Arab costume and fake beard comes up to you. He says, ‘Asalaamun alaykum, dear brother! You can speak freely in front of me. Would you like to discuss violent jihad against the kaafirs?’ You look around. Is your cousin Mustafa setting you up? Is there a hidden camera in the mihrab? Because when anything this patently ridiculous happens, there’s got to be an angle. And there is. Congrats! You’ve just been selected by the Mapping Shari’a Project for inclusion in their latest study.”

Abdalhayy takes on Dave Glaubatz and SANE.

MCB speaks out on ‘honour’ killings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MCB logoThe Muslim Council of Britain insisted yesterday that “honour” violence was a cultural practice and nothing to do with faith. The council spoke out after a BBC investigation claimed that there were links between some cases of honour violence in Britain and islamist extremist groups abroad. Victims of such attacks are alleged by their families to have disgraced them.

The Crown Prosecution Service pointed to the death five years ago of Heshu Yones, 16, who was stabbed to death by her father, and claimed that Islamist terror groups were behind it. Crown Prosecution Service national lead on honour crime Nazir Afzal told Radio 4 that the threats to kill another woman, who is known as Miss B, came from her family but originated from an Egyptian terrorist group. He said: “They told her husband that, if he didn’t put his wife in her place, then they would do it themselves.”

However, Muslim Council of Britain spokeswoman Reefat Drabu disagreed with Mr Afzal’s comments. “First and foremost, there has to be clarity that this is nothing to do with any faith, in particular Islam,” she said. “It is a cultural practice and there is nothing in any faith that would condone it or say that it is the right thing do it. This is to do with misguided notions of family honour. It has nothing to do with radicalism or terrorism.”

Morning Star, 27 June 2007

Over at Butterflies and Wheels Ophelia Benson expresses indignation that the MCB should even be asked their opinion on the issue. After all, they’re only the most representative Muslim organisation in the UK, with some 500 affiliates. Who cares what they think? Ms Benson would no doubt regard it as much more appropriate for the BBC to ask Maryam Namazie and the “Council of Ex-Muslims” for a quote instead.

And David T of Harry’s Place comments: “The Muslim Council of Britain’s eccentric stance on this issue illustrates why it is no longer invited to the Home Office to participate in the process of public policy formation.” Whereas some of us might have thought that the government’s cold-shouldering of the MCB was perhaps rather more closely connected with their refusal to keep quiet about the role of UK foreign policy in fuelling terrorism.

The Muslims are coming!

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Johann Hari has always been one of our favourite Islamophobes. Unlike many self-styled defenders of Enlightenment values he is in fact capable of rational thought, plus he has an understanding that there is such a thing as imperialism, which always helps. And, to be fair, he does take a stand against the more egregious examples of anti-Muslim bigotry.

His piece in the next issue of The New Republic about a cruise sponsored by the right-wing magazine National Review gives an entertaining – if rather scary – insight into the Islamophobic hysteria that has gripped US conservatives:

“I am standing waist-deep in the Pacific Ocean, indulging in the polite chit-chat beloved by vacationing Americans. A sweet elderly lady from Los Angeles is sitting on the rocks nearby, telling me dreamily about her son. ‘Is he your only child?’ I ask. ‘Yes’, she answers. ‘Do you have a child back in England?’ she asks me. No, I say. Her face darkens. ‘You’d better start’, she says. ‘The Muslims are breeding. Soon, they’ll have the whole of Europe.’

“… So, you’re a European, one of the Park Avenue ladies says, before offering witty commentaries on the cities she’s visited. Her companion adds, ‘I went to Paris, and it was so lovely.’ Her face darkens: ‘But then you think – it’s surrounded by Muslims.’ The first lady nods: ‘They’re out there, and they’re coming.’ Emboldened, the bearded Floridian wags a finger and says, ‘Down the line, we’re not going to bail out the French again.’ He mimes picking up a phone and shouts into it, ‘I can’t hear you, Jacques! What’s that? The Muslims are doing what to you? I can’t hear you!’

“… The idea that Europe is being ‘taken over’ is the unifying theme of this cruise. Some people go on singles’ cruises, some on ballroom-dancing cruises. This is the Muslims Are Coming cruise. Everyone thinks it. Everyone knows it. And the man most responsible for this insight is sitting only a few tables down: Mark Steyn. He is wearing sunglasses on top of his head and a bright shirt. Steyn’s thesis in his new book, America Alone, is simple: The ‘European races’ – i.e., white people – ‘are too self-absorbed to breed’, but the Muslims are multiplying quickly. The inevitable result will be ‘large-scale evacuation operations circa 2015’ as Europe is ceded to Al Qaeda and ‘Greater France remorselessly evolve[s] into Greater Bosnia’. He offers a light smearing of dubious demographic figures – he needs to turn 20 million European Muslims into more than 150 million in nine years, which is a lot of humping – to ‘prove’ his case.

“But facts, figures, and doubt are not on the itinerary of this cruise. With one or two exceptions, the passengers discuss ‘the Muslims’ as a homogenous, sharia-seeking block – already with near-total control of Europe. Over the week, I am asked nine times – I counted – when I am fleeing Europe’s encroaching Muslim population for the safety of the United States.”

Evening Standard feeds fascist propaganda

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Muslims called for the Queen to ‘Go to Hell’ as they burnt the flag of St George on the streets of London on Friday”, the British National Party reports. They refer their supporters to this article from Friday’s This Is London (the Evening Standard ‘s website) which, typically, gave completely disproportionate coverage to the provocative activities of a tiny and completely unrepresentative group of nutters around Omar Bakri’s former lieutenant Anjem Choudary.

In a caption accompanying a picture of Choudary’s supporters demonstrating against the decision to give a knighthood to Salman Rushdie, This Is London informed its readers that “the protest has drawn hundreds of angry British muslims to Regents Park Mosque in North London”. The Guardian, by contrast, put the figure at “about 20” while the Telegraph estimated “two dozen“.

Needless to say, This Is London didn’t see fit to quote this letter from Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain. They prefer to falsely associate British Muslims with a self-publicising idiot like Anjem Choudary and feed the racist propaganda of the BNP.

Last days of Europe?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Walter Laqueur’s ‘The Last Days of Europe’ writes the ‘Epitaph for an Old Continent’. European churches are empty, mosques are jammed, and the blind liberal belief in multiculturalism is a leaky lifeboat in the realpolitik ocean. Islamist extremists, spurning multicultural stratagems for integration, were allowed to proselytize their violent creed with impunity under freedom of speech laws…. Coupled with an aging native European population and an exploding Muslim influx (Mohammed is the second most popular name for newborn baby boys in Dutch cities), the continent’s 20 million Muslims will become majorities in several European cities by mid-century.”

Another outing for the paranoid “Eurabia” fantasy, this one courtesy of UPI.

‘Huge mosque stirs protests in Cologne’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pro KolnThe construction of one of Europe’s biggest mosques near to a globally famous Christian landmark has sparked a furious row in Germany.

Immigration and integration are hugely sensitive questions in Germany, which is home to a Turkish community of several million. But almost within the shadow of Cologne Cathedral, political correctness has now been replaced by bitter confrontation as the city’s Muslims begin to build a 2,000-capacity mosque with twin minarets that will reach 170ft.

“Muslims have been here for 40 years, yet people are praying in back rooms,” said Seyda Can, an Islamic theologian at the Turkish Islamic Union in Cologne. “There are 120,000 Muslims in Cologne, that’s 12 per cent of the population. We should not hide.” Work will begin in the autumn on the £15 million mosque, which will include huge glass and stone cupolas and two six-storey minarets.

“It’s not a popular plan,” said Joerg Uckermann, the district’s deputy mayor. “We don’t want to build a Turkish ghetto in Ehrenfeld. I know about Londonistan and I don’t want that here.” Mr Uckermann is part of a curious coalition of protest that has united Jewish intellectuals and neo-Nazis. Leading the charge is Ralph Giordano, a prominent Jewish author, who wrote recently that Germany was witnessing a “clash of two completely different cultures” and questioned whether they could ever be reconciled.

For Mr Uckermann, who belongs to the Right-wing CDU party of Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr Giordano’s comments smashed a long-held taboo in Germany. “Giordano broke down the wall,” he said. “Before if you criticised this monstrous mosque you were a Nazi. But we have a problem with the integration of Muslims. It’s a question of language and culture.”

Daily Telegraph, 25 June 2007