Category Archives: Right wing

What are the Quasi Muslims really selling?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Every day newspapers, TV shows, radio programs, new books and lectures revolve around the topic of the ‘threat’ of Islam and its relation to the West. Islam has become a commodity, a business to be exploited. The list of super stars and ‘experts’ that are part of this Hollywood-esque movement of cashing in on Islam has become quite long; at the head of the list are Quasi Muslims such as Brigiette Gabriel, Walid Shoebat, Nonie Darwish, and Ibn Warraq….

“Quasi Muslims are not only united in a deep distrust of Islam and Muslims but also in a program of vile hatemongering thinly disguised as intellectual criticism and absolute truth. In a lecture at the University of Memphis, Brigiette Gabriel called Arabs ‘Barbaric’. Walid Shoebat and Ibn Warraq have consistently claimed that Islam is the new totalitarian threat to the world, the new ‘fascism’, the new ‘Nazism’ even though these concepts are uniquely Western products. In any other circumstance or in reference to any other religion this rhetoric would be dismissed for what it is: hate speech….

“A grave consequence of legitimizing these polarizing and obscurantist personalities is that it takes away from the scholars, academics, and lay people that are engaged in real reform and criticism. Voices such as those of Tariq Ramadan, Khaled Abu Fadl, Heba Ezzat, Suhaib Webb and others are voices that have a pulse on the Muslim community and are much more deserving of a hearing from the wider public.”

M.T. Akbar at Media Monitors Network, 23 June 2007

German cardinal against ‘equal’ Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cardinal Karl LehmannBERLIN — In statements endorsed by the ruling Christian Democratic Union party and harshly criticized by MPs, Germany’s top cardinal has warned against “uncritical tolerance” which could lead to Islam enjoying equal standing with Christianity in the country, Deutsche Welle reported Friday, June 22.

“The neutrality of the state regarding individual religions must not be confused with indifference and uncritical tolerance toward the impact of religions on society,” the German news network quoted Cardinal Karl Lehmann as saying. Lehmann, the head of the German conference of bishops, expressed concern about religious freedom leading to all faiths being treated equally regardless of the size of their flock and their history. He pointed to Christianity’s role in shaping European history and even its legal culture.

Ronald Pofalla, the general secretary of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union party, said Lehmann was right to say Islam could not be afforded the same legal standing in Germany as Christianity. “Unlike Christianity, Islam is not in Europe’s cultural centre and is not reflected in everyday life in the same way,” Pofalla said in a statement.

The leader of the Green party’s parliamentary group, Volker Beck, said Germany’s constitution required Islam be treated the same as Christianity. “The Cardinal is wrong if he concludes that Europe’s or Germany’s undoubtedly Christian character infers a legal discrimination of other religious communities,” Deutsche Welle quoted him as saying.

Lale Akgün, a Social Democratic parliamentarian in charge of Islam issues, said Lehmann’s statements were unrealistic and explosive. “Whoever says that Islam cannot be put on an equal legal footing (as other religions) is stoking social unrest,” she said.

Islam Online, 22 June 2007

Jewish activist attacks Muslims at Mighty Heart screening

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Michael Winterbottom’s true-life drama A Mighty Heart, about the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, was at the centre of a fresh controversy last night following a preview screening in Los Angeles.

At a post-film panel discussion featuring representatives from Muslim, Jewish and Christian groups, a Jewish activist denounced the event saying, “The only reason [Muslims] like this film is because it’s about a dead Jew.”

The activist said the participation of members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was like “David Duke co-sponsoring Schindler’s List”, referring to the former Klu Klux Klan Grand Master and Louisiana politician.

Other invited panelists included Progressive Christians Uniting, Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak, and the film’s producer Dede Gardner.

A spokesperson from the film’s US distributor Paramount Vantage said the event was designed to promote harmony. “Vantage went into the screening tonight with the best intentions,” the spokesperson said. “Like the film, this was designed to celebrate dialogue of people of diverse backgrounds and faith.”

Guardian, 22 June 2007

See also Variety, 21 June 2007

The Jewish activist was one Allyson Rowen Taylor. Last year when the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission voted to give an award to a local Muslim leader, Dr Maher Hathout, Taylor accused them of bowing to Muslim intimidation: “They’re afraid of the Muslim community burning cars, burning effigies and burning synagogues.”

Ignore Islam, ‘ex-Muslims’ urge

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BBC News gives favourable publicity to the launch of the Worker Communist Party of Iran’s fraudulent front organisation, the so-called Council of Ex-Muslims (which claims that it “represents the views of a majority of secular-minded Muslims in Europe”), as does the Washington Post and the Daily Telegraph. See also A.C. Grayling’s ridiculous remarks (“a torch of hope in a dark quadrant of the world’s affairs”) at Comment is Free. Meanwhile, frothing-at-the-mouth right-wing US Islamophobe Michelle Malkin has hailed Maryam Namazie and her comrades as “the bravest of the brave“, who are “putting their necks on the line for Western civilization”. Malkin urges her readers: “Find a way to show your support.”

‘Infidel’ author: Islam, West incompatible

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ayaan Hirsi AliWASHINGTON – A former member of the Dutch parliament whose life has been threatened by Muslim radicals warns that Islam is incompatible with Western civilization.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was raised as a Muslim in Somalia, but renounced Islam and moved to Europe, a story she recounts in her autobiography, titled “Infidel.” She moved to the United States last year.

In a speech Monday at the National Press Club in Washington, Ali urged journalists to recognize that all religions are not equal, and that Islam is violent, intolerant and oppresses women.

Ali said she was brought up believing in “a ferocious aggressive god,” but is now an atheist. She said Islam is growing because Saudi Arabia and Iran finance Muslim schools and mosques, while Christian churches have lost their missionary zeal.

CBN News, 19 June 2007

Read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s speech here

For the impact of Hirsi Ali’s visit to Australia, see Herald Sun, 20 June 2007

Gay rights, Islamophobia and double standards

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pride flagOver at the neocon blog Harry’s Place, Brett Lock of gay rights group OutRage! finally gets round to addressing the disgraceful campaign in Israel to ban the Jerusalem Pride march, which takes place tomorrow.

Brett omits any condemnation of, or indeed reference to, the threats of violence from Orthodox Jews or the appeal by the Mayor of Jerusalem to Israel’s High Court to stop the march, and it is now fully two weeks since the anti-Pride bills successfully passed their first reading in the Knesset.

This tardy and rather half-hearted response by Brett – and the failure of OutRage! or the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association to make any statement at all on the issue – stands in sharp contrast to the energy with which they all laid into Russia’s grand mufti last year over Moscow Pride. Somehow, OutRage! and GALHA seem to find homophobia so much more worthy of denunciation when it’s Muslims who are responsible for it.

In fact one might suspect that Brett’s belated post at Harry’s Place is little more than an attempt to cover OutRage! against criticisms by the Lesbian and Gay Coalition Against Racism, who issued a statement last weekend accusing Brett and his chums of hypocrisy. We can only endorse those criticisms.

Continue reading →

Schools where children don’t speak English

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The interesting thing about this story is the use of a picture of some Muslims to illustrate a negative immigration story. Again. Sod Godwin’s Law – this sort of thing works on the same level as ‘Der Ewige Jude’, the Nazi propaganda film that intercut a documentary about the migration of Jews with shots of teaming rats to create a connection between the two. Here we have negative stories about immigration and ethnicity mostly illustrated with pictures of Muslims to create hamfisted links between the two. How many of the girls in the picture are actually British? How many speak English? Doesn’t matter for the Express.”

Five Chinese Crackers on another scaremongering piece in the Daily Express.

‘We cannot compromise with the cultures that are creating terrorism’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Basing himself on Shiv Malik’s “exceptionally penetrating article” in Prospect magazine – based on “research” that the BBC had the nerve to reject as “anti-Muslim” – Alasdair Palmer asserts that the problem of home-grown terrorism arises from allowing people from backward barbaric cultures into “our” liberal secular society:

“The central fantasy has been that immigrants from very different cultures to our own share our commitment to tolerance, personal freedom and the separation of politics from religion that has evolved in this country over the past 300 years…. One of the remarkable things about Mr Malik’s piece is that it is based around a recognition that it is impossible to explain how Khan, Tanweer and Hussain became suicide bombers without examining the culture from which they came…. Mr Malik’s article shows in arresting detail how a conflict within the culture of an immigrant group can lead to the radicalisation of the next generation. British foreign policy, which has been blamed for the creation of home-grown Islamic terrorists, has had very little to do with it…

“The reality is not all doom and gloom. The right to pursue happiness will surely eventually take root in a less violent and more liberal form among people from cultures that are inimical to it…. There are things that can be done to speed up the rate at which that happens, such as … ensuring that new arrivals learn English. Education is not an immediate panacea, however: the fundamentalist, tribal mentality has a remarkable ability to persist even after a successful education….

“The conflict between our culture and one that insists a father is obliged to kill his daughter if she marries outside her tribe, or which says that democracy should be forcibly replaced by theocracy, is a conflict for which there cannot be a compromise solution…. Government policy still seems based on the myth of multiculturalism: denying that the conflict is real. The Government has not even found the heart to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir, the group that openly recruits Muslims to violent jihad. It may even be on the receiving end of a government grant.”

Sunday Telegraph, 17 June 2007

For an alternative view of the causes of terrorism, see the Scotsman, 17 June 2007