Category Archives: Right wing

Defamed mosque secretary awarded damages

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A former staffer at a Sydney mosque has been awarded $125,000 in damages after being defamed by a newspaper report that claimed he was a supporter of terrorism.

Two articles and an editorial in News Limited’s The Australian newspaper in June 2003, claimed the then secretary of the Dee Why mosque, Romzi Ali, was involved with the terrorism linked group Laskar Jihad.

Handing down his judgment in the NSW Supreme Court today, Justice Bruce James said reading the articles had affected Mr Ali’s health and that he was “frightened, alarmed, shaken and broken”.

One article said Mr Ali was raising money for Laskar Jihad operations in 2000, adding that he had denied the claims.

In the defamation case against Nationwide News in 2005, a jury found the article contained meanings that Mr Ali was a supporter of terrorism and “that he has raised money for the operations of Laskar Jihad, an organisation which does not worry about doing killing in pursuit of its political objections”.

Justice James said the meanings were “serious” and had even caused Mr Ali to think about leaving Australia.

AAP, 15 March 2007

More nonsense on Islam and Islamism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Reflections on IslamThe Canadian National Post publishes an excerpt from a new book, Reflections on Islam, written by one of its columnists, George Jonas:

“Islam is one of the world’s great religions. Islamism is a radical movement of intolerance, coercion and terror. The followers of Islam are a billion faithful Muslims around the world. The followers of Islamism include Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda, Sheikh Omar and his Taliban, the nuclear ayatollahs of theocratic Iran, the militants of Hezbollah, the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria, the late Shamil Bashayev’s human bombs from Chechnya and a string of other terrorists in far-flung parts of the globe. Unfortunately, they also include some of our neighbours down the block or around the corner….

“Islamism is not Islam. The two are not to be equated. But is there something about Islam that is conducive to the formation of extremist sects and radical movements? Is Islam a Petri dish in which a culture of fundamentalism thrives? Arguably, yes.”

National Post, 15 March 2007

Israeli ‘expert’ on Islam draws sell-out audiences in Australia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Raphael Israeli (2)Controversial Islam expert Professor Raphael Israeli has delivered two sell-out lectures in Melbourne – but avoided the question of whether his grim warnings about Muslim population growth in Europe also applied to Australia.

Professor Israeli, a Hebrew University academic with more than 20 books to his name, told more than 360 people on Sunday night that Islam was at odds with the fundamental pillars that support a democracy.

In a talk sponsored by Issues of Concern for Justice and Society (ICJS), he said a clash between the Koran and democratic principles was inevitable because of Islam’s rigid adherence to shari’a law. Earlier, he told a separate audience of about 350 people that Turkey’s possible entry into the European Union (EU) could cause a major headache for Europe, effectively doubling the EU’s Muslim population.

The two talks proceeded despite a major controversy over Professor Israeli’s visit, triggered when the visiting academic told the AJN he believed the Australian Government should place a cap on Muslim immigrants.

One of the primary sponsors of the trip, the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, withdrew its support following a storm of protest over the comments. But the State Zionist Council of Victoria (SZCV) and the Australian Friends of the Hebrew University continued to back the scholar, as did the Shalom Institute at the University of NSW, which initially brought the academic to Australia as a scholar-in-residence.

Members of Zionist youth movement Habonim Dror protested the SZCV’s support of Professor Israeli last Wednesday night, handing out flyers critical of his remarks and the council’s decision to give them voice.

“As an affiliate of the SZCV, we express our deepest disappointment at the council’s decision to co-sponsor this event,” the flyer said. “The suggestion that Australia should cap Muslim immigration to our country is racist and an allegation that we find deeply offensive and counterproductive.”

Australian Jewish News, 15 March 2007

Why not invite the BNP to write for the Grauniad?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Picking up on an almost equally stupid piece by Sunny Hundal, David T asks why the Guardian doesn’t publish articles by fascists like BNP leader Nick Griffin: “It cannot be that the Guardian has an objection to far right sectarians, as it runs pieces by Muslim Brotherhood supporting Faisal Bodi, Anas Altikriti, Ismail Patel and Soumaya Ghannoushi.”

Harry’s Place, 14 March 2007

Comment is Free recently posted an interesting piece by Marc Lynch (of Abu Aardvark fame), reporting sympathetically on Muslim Brotherhood bloggers. Is Lynch a “far right sectarian” too, then? Nah, in David T’s hall of mirrors he’s probably categorised as a fascist fellow-traveller.

Islam motivates terrorism: Canadian psychologist

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nearly a month since Israeli Apartheid Week was held on campuses across North America and Europe, campus and community groups answered back with Freedom and Democracy Week, a series of lectures about home-grown terrorism, religious extremism and the “war on terrorism”. The event, which was held at the Bahen Centre at the University of Toronto from March 5 to 8, was sponsored by Zionists at the University of Toronto, a chapter of Betar-Tagar Canada; B’nai Brith Canada; Hasbara Fellowships; Stand With Us; and the Canadian Coalition for Democracies.

Steven Stein, a psychologist who has offered his expertise to the US Air Force, Canadian Forces and special units of the Pentagon, and is the CEO of Multi-Health Systems, the largest Canadian publisher of psychological tests, presented a lecture titled “The Psychology of Terror: Inside the Head of Religious Extremists”. He said that while some may cite the “Israeli occupation” as the reason for terrorism in Israel, he believes that religion is the main reason. He said that it is the passion for the religion that drives terrorism. “It is a duty, a call to God, it’s what Allah wants.”

Canadian Jewish News, 15 March 2007

‘We don’t need Iranian students in this country’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“I do not want thousands of Iranian students in my country, and if we allow the Iranians, what about the Saudis, Syrians and Lebanese? … Those Islamic students will return to their respective countries with the same deadly, ingrained hatred for us they grew up with, only better educated and much more sophisticated…. Under no circumstances should Middle Eastern students be allowed into this country by the ‘thousands’. That would be pure suicide.”

Letter in Florida Sun-Sentinel, 14 March 2007

The inspirational effect of Phyllis Chesler

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“I recently read one of the best and most insightful columns I’ve ever seen. ‘How my eyes were opened to the barbarity of Islam: Is it racist to condemn fanaticism?‘ by Dr Phyllis Chesler originally appeared in The Times of London on March 7, 2007…. If every American were to read ‘How my eyes were opened’ I honestly believe that all but perhaps half a dozen Marxist holdouts would be all for leveling Teheran and Damascus tomorrow, at the very least.”

Erik Rush at Renew America, 12 March 2007

Abdiel Abdalhayy comments: “Smart, well-lettered racists and Islamophobes like Dr Chesler have to consider that semi-literate racists and Islamophobes like Erik Rush will, more than anyone else, wrap their meaty fists around articles like ‘How my eyes were opened’ and drag them through their dark, stupid world. Once likeminded racists who aren’t smart enough to blog on RenewAmerica.us have someone read articles like Rush’s to them, they’ll distill the message even further, and maybe take action. That’s the real weapon Chesler points at people like me, whether or not she realises it – or cares, for that matter.”

Abdiel, 12 March 2007

‘Keep Muslims out of Australia’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Fred_NileAustralia should give priority to Christians wanting to flee persecution in Muslim countries the leader of the Christian Democratic Party, the Reverend Fred Nile, says. Mr Nile, a member of the NSW upper house, has called for a 10-year moratorium on Muslim immigration to Australia.

There had been no serious study of the potential effects on Australia of the more than 300,000 Muslims who are already here, he said. The CDP leader wants a study to look at the examples of the Netherlands and France, where the Muslim minority has become large enough to “flex its muscle”.

“The same thing is happening in our city of Sydney … they (Muslims) concentrate and virtually by population numbers they dominate that actual community,” he told Southern Cross Broadcasting today.

The NSW Greens called on the major parties to publicly reject Mr Nile’s call for an immigration moratorium and cancel any preference deals with his party. “Rev Nile’s statement makes NSW look ugly and racist,” Greens MP Lee Rhiannon said. “All public figures should distance themselves from such an unacceptable policy.”

Sydney Morning Herald, 12 March 2007

Australian Muslims announced on Monday, March 12, plans to form a political party to fight the spiraling Islamophobia in the country, opening the membership door for people of different faiths. “The political parties are focusing too much unfair attention on Muslims,” Kaysar Trad, spokesman of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia (IFAA), told Agence France-Presse (AFP). “We have to do whatever we can to make politicians focus on real issues rather than diversions on Muslims.”

Islam Online, 12 March 2007

Churchill blamed Jewish community for failure to integrate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

ChurchillAs Britain’s wartime prime minister, he led the fight to crush Nazism and its plans to exterminate the Jewish race. Yet, even as Hitler was stepping up the persecution and Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF) were fomenting unrest in Britain, Sir Winston Churchill believed that Jewish people were “partly responsible for the antagonism for which they suffer”.

Churchill penned the controversial views in 1937, only a year after Mosley’s blackshirts had clashed with Jews and other locals on Cable Street in east London and just months after Jews in Germany were banned from holding many professional occupations.

In comments that foreshadow the current debate on multiculturalism, Churchill argued that a tendency to form a “distinct and separate community” runs counter to the idea that settlers should be “100 per cent British” irrespective of their race and religion.

“The central fact which dominates the relations of Jew and non-Jew is that the Jew is different,” he added. “He has a different tradition and background. He refuses to be absorbed. In every country the Jews form a distinct and separate community – a little state within the state.”

Sunday Telegraph, 11 March 2007

Now, what does that remind you of? This perhaps?