Category Archives: Right wing

Another plug for Taj Hargey

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The legal efforts by a Muslim father to force a Buckinghamshire school to permit his 12-year old daughter to wear the niqab should be resisted by sensible integrated British Muslims. This misguided judicial action, if successful, will not only set a deplorable precedent for Muslim exceptionalism, but will also exacerbate frayed tensions between a (largely) self-segregating Muslim community and an antagonistic general public. This legal test case is so critical as to serve as a defining moment in the battle for the hearts and mind of Muslims in this country.

“The disputed decision by a father to protect the ‘human rights’ of his daughter by insisting that she wears the full-face mask in school should not be seen in isolation. It is at the root of a frightening theological convulsion that is underway in the Islamic world. Driven by a toxic combination of Wahhabi-Salafi-Ikhwani-Deobandi religious extremists, this militant movement seeks to resurrect the caliphate not only in the heartlands of Islam itself, but elsewhere as well.”

Taj Hargey (for background details see here) writes in the Daily Telegraph, 6 February 2007

And who exactly are these people who want to “resurrect the caliphate not only in the heartlands of Islam itself, but elsewhere as well”? Not even Hizb ut-Tahrir holds that position. Whatever your view on the niqab issue, to portray this as part of a campaign to impose an Islamic state in the UK plays to all the worst paranoid stereotypes about the “Muslim threat”. It’s no wonder Taj Hargey is enthusiastically promoted by the Torygraph and the likes of John Ware.

Unfortunately, Cristina Odone seems to have fallen for Hargey’s spurious claims to represent “moderate Muslims”:

Daily Telegraph, 6 February 2007

Meanwhile in an article entitled “School at centre of veil row gets overseas backing“, the Guardian reports that Hargey is boasting that he has the support and financial backing of a group calling itself the Muslim Canadian Congress. This is an organisation that participated in the hysterical “No sharia law in Canada” campaign against the proposal to extend state-sponsored faith-based family arbitration to Muslims in Ontario. In August last year a section of the MCC split away to form a rival organisation, the Canadian Muslim Union, accusing the MCC of aligning itself with the enemies of the Muslim community. The breakaway faction were denounced by the MCC leadership as “Canadian supporters of Hezbollah” – because they had joined a demonstration against Israel’s attack on Lebanon!

So this is where Hargey is getting his international support from – an organisation whose politics are evidently barely distinguishable from those of Harry’s Place.

Torygraph finds a Muslim it likes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim group has offered to help fund a school’s legal battle over its refusal to let a pupil wear the niqab in class. In an unprecedented move, the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford (Meco) has written to the head teacher to say it is prepared to contribute to a fighting fund. Taj Hargey, Meco’s chairman, said he was also willing to organise a campaign among Muslims nationally to resist “this largely Saudi-driven campaign to make the niqab a compulsory requirement for Muslim women”.

Daily Telegraph, 5 February 2007

A law unto themselves

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Welcome to Britain“The biggest press scandal of our time is not intrusion on royal privacy – which has just led to a reporter’s imprisonment – but the newspapers’ consistent and brazen disregard for the contempt laws. The police and the government, far from taking steps to apply those laws, have colluded in what amounts to a complete revision of British legal conventions. The Press Complaints Commission, always active in trying to protect the royals, has so far refused on this issue even to investigate.

“Take last week’s coverage of the alleged kidnap plans by Birmingham-based Muslims. ‘The execution plot: Terror gang planned to kidnap, torture and behead a soldier on our doorstep,’ announced the Sun. Just in case we wanted to know what an execution might look like, the front page showed the US hostage Nick Berg being executed in Iraq in 2004. The Times front page prominently quoted ‘a senior police source’, a ubiquitous and garrulous creature on these occasions: ‘This is Baghdad come to Birmingham … The soldier would have been filmed dressed up … like Kenneth Bigley.’ The Times duly printed a picture of Bigley, a Briton murdered in Iraq in 2004, in an orange jump suit.

“Under the sub judice laws, journalists are supposed, from the moment of arrest, to confine themselves to the barest details and to avoid publishing material which might prejudice a jury if the case came to trial. Judge for yourself whether the coverage fell within the laws.”

Peter Wilby in the Guardian, 5 February 2007

Via Indigo Jo Blogs

Bin Laden is the true representative of Islam, says Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yet another interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who states: “Bin Laden defined the world into Muslims and non-Muslims, and these had to either be converted or killed. I asked myself where I stood after I saw the pictures of people jumping out of the World Trade Center. As a Muslim I had to ask if I agreed with that. I was saddened to see Bin Laden’s citations were from the Koran and were consistent with the Islam I grew up with.”

She adds: “The 74 per cent of Muslims under 24 who said in a survey that women should wear the veil and want Sharia law to be introduced have gone for the consistency that Bin Laden offers.”

Asked if she sees any positive sides to Islam, she replies: “That’s like asking if I see positive sides to Nazism…”

Metro, 5 February 2007

For Yusuf Smith’s comments, see Indigo Jo Blogs, 5 February 2007

Fascists jump on the ‘sharia law’ bandwagon

Posted on by Bob Pitt

With evident approval, the British National Party has reproduced an article from the raving right-wing US website The American Daily taking up the popular paranoid fantasy about sharia-supporting Muslims undermining the British legal system.

Quoting a BBC News article on sharia courts, the article complains that this does not go far enough: “… the BBC seems completely ignorant of the abuse women and minorities suffer under Sharia laws the world over. Women are beaten, raped, murdered, mutilated and oppressed by Muslim ‘culture’ and English law should never turn its back on these vulnerable members of their society. This would be a travesty and a direct refutation of western morals that posit that all people are created equal and stand the same in the eyes of the law.”

However, an article in the Telegraph finds more favour with the author, on the grounds that it takes “a little more umbrage at the possibility of immigrant communities circumventing English law”.

BNP news article, 5 February 2007

And who was the author of the Torygraph piece? None other than Mad Mel’s hubbie, Joshua Rozenberg.

‘We find Muslim “handshake” cop’, boasts Sun

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“This is the Muslim WPC who sparked a row by refusing to shake top cop Sir Ian Blair’s hand. Natalie Smart, 26, wears the Metropolitan Police’s regulation hijab on the beat. And our exclusive photos show she takes breaks to pray towards Mecca. Met Commissioner Sir Ian was said to be ‘bloody furious’ when the WPC asked not to shake his hand at a passing-out parade of 200 recruits in December. The devout Muslim convert said she could not touch a man who was not her husband – and also declined a photo with Sir Ian to avoid ‘propaganda’. She now patrols on foot and on mountain bike in an affluent London suburb, part of a ‘safer neighbourhood team’ intended to build trust with locals.”

Sun, 5 February 2007

Current birth rates could produce Muslim domination, say right-wing Christians

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Population Research Institute says the Western world is facing a crisis as virtually every country has birth rates well below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. PRI spokesman Joseph D’Agostino says for the most part, only Muslims have high birth rates. “It’s because Christians and Jews are refusing to have children, refusing to get married, [and] having such low birth rates that the Muslims are going to inherit the Earth,” he explains.

D’Agostino says the future of the world will certainly be quite different if Muslims become the dominate population group in the coming decades. “I think we can see what life is like in Islamic countries,” he says. “I think Christians know that it’s a false religion. And we can see that the Muslim world is becoming actually more radical and, in many ways, is headed backwards into its barbaric phase.”

D’Agostino notes that it is only through immigration that the U.S. population continues to grow – and that the current situation begs a pragmatic solution: “If you don’t want the world to turn into Saudi Arabia, maybe people other than Muslims need to start having some kids at the rate the Muslims are having kids.”

One News Now, 2 February 2007

The war against the west (part 597)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

bnp-islam-posterMelanie Phillips replies to Maleiha Malik’s excellent Guardian article which draws a comparison between the anti-semitism of the early 20th century and Islamophobia today.

Mel takes particular exception to the notion of “anti-Muslim racism”:

“Since when were Muslims a race? Islam is a religion. It is the Jewish people who are victims of something well-nigh identical to racism. But of course, in order to appropriate to Muslims the victimisation of the Jews, Muslims have to be presented similarly as the victims of ethnic prejudice.”

According to this argument, the British National Party’s vile anti-Muslim propaganda is not racist, because how can there be racism towards adherents of a particular religion? The fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslims come from minority non-white ethnic communities is mere coincidence, apparently.

This is of course exactly the same argument that the BNP itself uses. It’s no wonder that the fascists list Phillips as one of the newspaper columnists “whose opinions … most closely match their own“.

Anti-Muslim bigot goes into the oil biz

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Terror Free Oil“The BBC reports that an outfit calling itself the ‘Terror Free Oil Initiative’ has set up a filling station in Omaha, Nebraska, touting oil not imported from countries which ‘support terror’ – meaning just about any Muslim country, in the Middle East or anywhere else. At the moment, they only use American and Canadian oil. (Clearly, they’re only talking about one sort of terror.) A few paragraphs into the report and we find out who their spokesman is: Joe Kaufman, the bigot behind ‘Americans Against Hate’, a group which dedicates itself to smearing Muslims and Muslim organisations.”

Indigo Jo Blogs, 3 February 2007

‘Taking the fight to Islam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Ayaan Hirsi Ali is not the only critic of Islam who lives with round-the-clock protection. But surely none wears their endangered status with greater style. The Dutch Somali human-rights campaigner looks like a fashion model and talks like a public intellectual. Tall and slender with rod-straight posture and a schoolgirl smile, she is a thinker of stunning clarity, able to express ideas in her third language with a precision that very few could achieve in their first. This combination of elegance and eloquence would be impressive in any circumstances. Under threat of death, it is nothing short of incredible.”

Andrew Anthony in the Observer, 4 February 2007

Another gushing tribute to the appalling Hirsi Ali who, to general relief among the Dutch Muslim community, has now left the Netherlands to work for the right-wing US think-tank the American Enterprise Institute – which is exactly where she belongs.