Category Archives: Right wing

Victory for reactionary racism: Quebec election

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The Quebec election was characterized by a great deal of discontent with the traditional establishment parties, the PQ and the Liberals. The remarkable thing about this election was that this discontent was successfully shifted from the policies that ostensibly pissed people off in the first place, onto to Muslims living in Quebec. Turning anger at unrelated issues into anger at immigrants is hardly a new political technique, but watching it happen here in Montreal is pretty astounding.”

The Dominion weblog, 28 March 2007

See also “Quebec state yields to right-wing provocation on eve of provincial election”, World Socialist Web Site, 26 March 2007

Film on ‘radical Islam’ tied to pro-Israel groups

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A controversial documentary on the threat of radical Islam, promoted by the two most-watched U.S. cable news networks, was marketed and supported in part by self-described “pro-Israel” groups, according to an IPS investigation. Abbreviated versions and segments of “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” ran on FOX News and CNN, but neither station disclosed the film’s connection to HonestReporting, a watchdog group that monitors the media for allegedly negative portrayals of Israel.

While watching the film, it becomes clear that the controversy surrounding “Obsession” has less to with what it says about the threat of radical Islam, than how it presents the information. While the film contains disclaimers stating that “it’s important to remember most Muslims are peaceful and do not support terror,” critics argue that it makes little distinction between the religion of Islam and the political realities that inform terrorism. “It’s all part of that industry of Muslim bashers,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“The sentiment is there, you can see in the [1995] Oklahoma City bombing that it was originally seen as an act of Islamic terrorism,” said Peter Hart of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. “It’s almost a default position for the media, so you’re going to have work like this received uncritically.” The Oklahoma City bombing, initially attributed by the mainstream media to Islamic terrorists, was actually perpetrated by right-wing extremists from the U.S. midwest.

IPS, 26 March 2007

German judge and legal Orientalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The Friday New York Times reported that a German judge denied a Moroccan woman’s request for an expedited divorce from her Moroccan husband – despite the apparently undisputed evidence that the husband had repeatedly abused her – on the grounds that such conduct is ‘common’ in Morocco and that the ‘Koran … sanctions such physical abuse’.

“While the condemnations of this decision have been swift, some of the criticism has been for the wrong reasons. Of course, there is the pious outrage of the German politician Ronald Pofalla, general secretary of the Christian Democratic Union, who somewhat hyperbolically took the verdict as (further?) evidence that Islam threatens the German body politic. The New York Times quoted this far-sighted politician as saying ‘When the Koran is put above the German Constitution, I can only say, “Good night, Germany”.’

“Not much has been made of the utter casualness with which this judge could make gross generalizations about Moroccans, the Quran and, implicitly, Islamic law.”

Mohammad Fadel at Eteraz.org, 26 March 2007

See also New York Times, 23 March 2007

‘Quebec’s Le Pen’ likely to make major election gain

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A young conservative populist sometimes described as Quebec’s Jean-Marie Le Pen is likely in today’s election to throw a spanner into the separatist versus federalist competition that has dominated Quebec politics for decades.

Polls indicate Mario Dumont’s Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ), a small fringe party for the past three elections, is about to seize the balance of power in the first minority parliament in 129 years. The ADQ has side-swiped the separatist Parti Quebecois and the ruling federalist Liberals, led by Jean Charest, by exploiting a backlash against multiculturism, especially Muslims.

A debate has developed throughout the province about what constitutes reasonable accommodation to the cultural and social practices of expanding ethnic communities. It was fuelled when, for example, a conservative Hasidic synagogue forced a sports centre to paint the windows of its swimming pool so students would not see people in swimming costumes.

Muslim headscarves and niqabs have also become a subject of controversy, especially when an 11-year-old girl was thrown out of a football match for wearing one. Quebec’s chief electoral officer has ordered that Muslim women must bare their faces if they want to vote, after an outcry over his original ruling that face coverings were acceptable.

M. Dumont, who describes himself as an autonomist wanting more power for Quebec, will probably tonight be in a position to implement many of the rightist, inward-looking policies on which he has campaigned. Both M. Charest and the Parti Quebecois leader, Andre Boisclair, seemed oblivious to the issue until polls showed M. Dumont was surging ahead.

Independent, 26 March 2007

‘A veiled threat by fanatics’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Paul Ross“Common sense seems to have prevailed in the High Court ruling giving schools the right to ban Muslim girls from wearing the full face niqab.

“Judge Stephen Silber rejected a 12-year-old grammar school pupil’s demand to wear one at school. She said it was her human right to turn up looking like a Muslim version of Bat Girl. He disagreed….

“This may seem like a small case but more and more it seems that extreme – and extremely vocal – Muslims are pushing away at our laws and customs in the name of religion when in fact it’s fanaticism.

“The judge agreed with the school’s view that wearing the niqab could lead to peer pressure on other Muslim girls to follow suit. Where’s the freedom of choice in that? But the bullying, bleating extremists never seem to be put off by a set-back. They also appear to have no sense of shame.

“On the same day the niqab decision was announced Britain’s most prominent Islamic organisaion, the Muslim Council of Britain, said that Muslim kids should have separate changing rooms for swimming and sport with individual cubicles – even for primary school kids – prayer rooms and single sex classes for biology lessons, which should stress ‘Islamic morals’. Oh, and they also want different uniform rules, a plea which has already been booted out.

“Of course these demands are not just unreasonable – they are downright impossible. And the Muslim Council of Britain must know that if they read even the occasional infidel’s newspaper or have an ounce of sense in their bearded bonces…. But it’s not really about getting what they want – it’s about making a lot of noise and nuisance and promoting a sense of grievance among Muslims – to keep the anger and resentment simmering.

“That’s why Mr Justice Silber’s verdict is so important. Respect and tolerance for other religions, yes – and a little tolerance by some Muslim leaders of Judaism and Christianity would make a real change.”

Paul Ross in the Daily Star, 25 February 2007

Is Islam compatible with a republic?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Is Islam compatible with a republic? With Islamic radicalism running rampant both in America and throughout the West, all people of goodwill and those who love liberty must emphatically answer, No! With this said, what will America do about the enemies in our midst? Continue to put our heads in the sand and ape the idiotic rantings from the propaganda press? – ‘Islam is a religion of peace’; ‘Islam welcomes all faiths’; ‘George W. Bush is the biggest enemy of freedom, not al-Qaida’; and other asinine babblings of the political left, or will real men rise up, demand that the FBI put every mosque and imam in America under constant surveillance (as J. Edgar Hoover would have done) and find out what is really going on with our Muslim friends here in America?”

Ellis Washington in World Net Daily, 24 March 2007

Tatchell and Pim Fortuyn

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Over at Aaronovitch Watch, Bruschetta Boy makes some astute points in response to Peter Tatchell’s Democratiya article:

“… he is surely aware that being nasty to minority groups, who in general have a hell of a time, is something that you have to do very carefully indeed if you’re not going to cross the line into ordinary garden-variety racism. I can’t find any reference on the internet to Peter’s views about Pim Fortuyn and would be grateful for any pointers since I’m sure that he’s said something about him. It’s not exactly as if we’re in any danger of the List Peter Tatchell becoming a big force in British anti-immigrant politics, but Fortuyn does represent the far end of where it’s possible to take this line of reasoning, and those people on the Left who don’t feel comfortable in having a go at immigrants for this reason aren’t scared of nothing. A quick glance at the notorious ‘Harry’s Place’ comments boxes shows how careful you have to be about the kind of mates you tend to pick up if you make a career out of saying that we are in danger of being overwhelmed by aliens whose values are inimical to our own.”

New Zealand Muslims slam ‘conference of bigots’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mosques and MiraclesA conference of Christian church leaders on the “threat” of Islam to New Zealand is being condemned as a “conference of bigots” by senior New Zealand Muslims.

The organiser of the Mosque and Miracles conferences, national director of Middle East Christian Outreach Murray Dillner, said the conference would address the threat posed by Islam to New Zealand society – a threat he likened to the terrorist attacks in the United States of September 11, 2001.

“It’s an underlying threat, but it’s like the twin towers – they imploded. Islam does the same thing to a society – it makes it implode,” he said. “The mindset of Islam is to take over the world. They will do that by any means they can. The church in England ignored Islam. If the church in New Zealand doesn’t rise up, we will be in the same situation.”

Federation of Islamic Associations president Javed Khan said it was a “conference of bigots”. “It’s fearmongering; Islamophobia. The organisers are prejudiced, biased bigots,” he said. “For heaven’s sake, we are less than 1 per cent of the population. Muslims have been in New Zealand for a century. No Muslim has ever done anything like what they are afraid of.”

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Daily Mail columnist defends tolerance and equality

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Frances Childs“Several years ago I started work at a prestigious sixth form college on the outskirts of London…. I was utterly flummoxed when I entered the classroom on my first day to be confronted by three girls in the back row, sitting side by side wearing the niqab, the full-face veil which leaves only a tiny slit for the eyes. Recovering myself, introductions were made. The voices behind the veils told me their names but – because there were no faces to put them to – I promptly forgot them.

“In the year that I taught the class, the girls never sat next to anyone else. They never entered into class discussion and I admit that I never asked them their opinions about the books that we read. Simply, they embarrassed me…. So it was with delight that I read this week that schools will be able to ban pupils from wearing the full-face veils….

“The issue of the veil and Muslim girls has been sorted out once and for all in France. Unhampered by any concerns about possibly offending this or that group, the French government passed a law banning the wearing of any religious insignia at all…. Perhaps it’s time we passed a similar law in this country rather than simply letting individual schools decide the dress code. Otherwise, religious fundamentalists will be back, pushing ever harder against the barriers of tolerance, common sense and equality that we have fought so hard to preserve in this country.”

Frances Childs in the Daily Mail, 22 March 2007

Danish editor who published Prophet cartoons wins prize

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Danish newspaper editor who published controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2005 was awarded on Monday a free press prize for his “determination and courage.” The Danish-based Free Press Society awarded Flemming Rose the inaugural international Sappho Prize, worth $3,568 (€2,685).

The publication of the 12 cartoons in the daily Jyllands-Posten in September 2005 prompted an international dispute.

Lars Hedegaard of the Free Press Society said the prize honoured a “journalist who combines excellence in his work with courage and a refusal to compromise.” Hedegaard compared the pressure placed on Rose and his newspaper to apologise for publishing the cartoons to those voices calling for the appeasement of Nazi Germany at the dawn of World War II.

“Decisive to our decision was Rose’s courage to print the cartoons and to stand his ground under the worst storm any journalist has ever endured,” Hedegaard said.

Today’s Zaman, 20 March 2007