“The first Muslim member of Congress is linked to a radical Islamic school of thought that requires loyalty to the Quran over the U.S. Constitution, WND has learned.”
Category Archives: Right wing
Woman in veil ‘sparks fury’
Channel 4 has sparked fury by planning an “alternative” Christmas Day message delivered by a Muslim woman in a veil.
Radical Khadija Ravat, who lectures on Islam, will appear on its screens while the Queen is giving her traditional afternoon speech on the other channels. Mrs Ravat’s talk is expected to focus on the heated debate about the veil following the recent case of teacher Aishah Azmi losing her battle to wear it in the classroom.
Evangelical lobby group Christian Voice’s Stephen Green said the alternative message will “put people’s backs up”. He added: “The niqab is a veil of separation between Muslims and the indigenous Christian community. This will expose multi-culturalism for what it is – a bias against the Christian population.”
Tory MP Philip Davies, who represents Shipley, West Yorkshire, said: “It seems Channel 4 is being provocative towards Christians. I would recommend listening to what the Queen has to say. Kick Channel 4 into the long grass. You would think that for one day of the year, during what is still just about a Christian festival, they could leave political correctness alone.”
Mrs Ravat, 33, a radical Islamist from Leicester, spoke out about the veil after ex-Foreign Secretary Jack Straw declared it made community relations more difficult.
Daily Express, 6 December 2006
Call me an old sceptic, but given Channel 4’s past record in stoking up Islamophobia you suspect this is the exactly reaction they set out to provoke.
The old ‘multiculturalism causes terrorism’ myth
Commenting on the report “Migrants face new ‘Britishness’ test” the Telegraph takes the opportunity to repeat the usual right-wing, anti-multiculturalist nonsense about the causes of 7/7:
“The terrorist bombings of London’s transport system on 7 July, 2005, and their failed sequel two weeks later, brought a sharp public realisation that Britain’s attitude to absorbing immigrants needed to be rethought.
“For innocent civilians to be murdered in their scores in an indiscriminate attack was appalling, but even more shocking was the revelation that these acts had been planned by British-born Muslims: young men who had been raised and educated in this country, but clearly did not feel themselves to be a part of it. In the analysis and debate that followed these traumatic incidents, the scale of the problem became evident.
“Large communities of migrants were living in virtual cultural isolation in Britain. Often making no attempt to learn English, or to accept the national identity that they had adopted, these immigrant groups had been left to their own devices.
“The policy of multi-culturalism, which saw itself as tolerant and benign, had in effect encouraged them to remain tied to their old national or ethnic loyalties, rather than to participate in mainstream British life. The consequence of this failure to assimilate was a pernicious alienation that bred underachievement and a sense of grievance.”
Editorial in Daily Telegraph, 5 December 2006
Muslim and Jewish groups unite to condemn Prager
Conservative radio host and blogger Dennis Prager has now been criticized by both prominent Muslim and Jewish groups for his Townhall.com column attacking incoming Rep. Keith Ellison’s announcement that he will use a Quran during his ceremonial swearing-in as the first Muslim member of Congress.
Today, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Prager should lose his presidential appointment to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council because of “his intolerant views toward Islam in American Society.” Friday, the Anti-Defamation League said Prager’s position is “intolerant, misinformed and downright un-American.”
Prayer rooms would only aid terrorists, says Robert Spencer
Following the forcible removal of six imams from a US Airways flight, officials at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport have said they will consider setting aside a private area for prayer and meditation. Robert Spencer is not impressed:
“Imagine how convenient it would have been for Muhammad Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari and the rest of them on 9/11 if they had had access to a place like this. They would have had a nice Muslims-only room where they could gather and arrange their boxcutters and other necessary materials in peace, go over details of strategy – and get in their final prayers. Now that would have been thoughtful airport service.”
Except that, if Spencer had bothered to read the report, instead of just gleefully seizing on an opportunity to asociate Islam with terrorism, he would see that the airport officials are not proposing a “Muslims-only room” but rather a private area for prayer and meditation generally.
‘The hidden truth of the veil: it’s all politics’
“Britain, for all its faults, is not a society in which women are pestered or harassed as a matter of course. When we walk outside we have to contend with a tuneless wolf whistle at worst. For a woman here to argue that simply uncovering her face will automatically inflame the men around her to dangerous levels of lust is absurd: indeed, it is ostentatious modesty inflated to the point of vanity. To feel compelled to wear the full veil in Britain is the sexual equivalent of attending a Quaker meeting accompanied by three heavily-armed bodyguards.
“Behind this absurdity lurks something rather more worrying, however: the persistent agenda of a minority of Islamic fundamentalists to emphasise difference and push the boundaries of secular society. The arguments over Muslim women’s clothing have really been thinly disguised political battles, such as the 2002 attempt by the schoolgirl Shabina Begum to force her school to permit her to wear a cumbersome garment called the jilbab in contravention of school uniform. Begum’s brother, who was extremely vocal in court, was a reported member of the Islamic fundamentalist group Hizb-ut Tahrir….
“A clear, constant distinction between the sartorial obligations of private time and work time would surely relieve us all of mounting irritation, and deprive these wearisome attention-seekers of the substance they seem most eager to breathe in through the niqab: the oxygen of publicity.”
Jenny McCartney in the Sunday Telegraph, 3 December 2006
Newly elected Muslim lawmaker under fire
The first Muslim elected to Congress hasn’t been sworn into office yet, but his act of allegiance has already been criticized by a conservative commentator.
In a column posted Tuesday on the conservative website Townhall.com, Dennis Prager blasted Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison’s decision to take the oath of office Jan. 4 with his hand on a Quran, the Muslim holy book.
“He should not be allowed to do so,” Prager wrote, “not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American culture.” He said Ellison, a convert from Catholicism, should swear on a Christian Bible – which “America holds as its holiest book…. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don’t serve in Congress.”
See also Think Progress, 30 November 2006
In U.S., fear and distrust of Muslims runs deep
When radio host Jerry Klein suggested that all Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band, the phone lines jammed instantly.
The first caller to the station in Washington said that Klein must be “off his rocker.” The second congratulated him and added: “Not only do you tattoo them in the middle of their forehead but you ship them out of this country … they are here to kill us.”
Another said that tattoos, armbands and other identifying markers such as crescent marks on driver’s licenses, passports and birth certificates did not go far enough. “What good is identifying them?” he asked. “You have to set up encampments like during World War Two with the Japanese and Germans.”
At the end of the one-hour show, rich with arguments on why visual identification of “the threat in our midst” would alleviate the public’s fears, Klein revealed that he had staged a hoax. It drew out reactions that are not uncommon in post-9/11 America.
“I can’t believe any of you are sick enough to have agreed for one second with anything I said,” he told his audience on the AM station 630 WMAL (http://www.wmal.com/), which covers Washington, Northern Virginia and Maryland
“For me to suggest to tattoo marks on people’s bodies, have them wear armbands, put a crescent moon on their driver’s license on their passport or birth certificate is disgusting. It’s beyond disgusting.
“Because basically what you just did was show me how the German people allowed what happened to the Jews to happen … We need to separate them, we need to tattoo their arms, we need to make them wear the yellow Star of David, we need to put them in concentration camps, we basically just need to kill them all because they are dangerous.”
‘Islam and Christianity? There is no comparison’
“You’ve undoubtedly heard the expression, ‘comparing apples to oranges’. The expression is used when someone attempts an invalid comparison of things. This is exactly what today’s Christian-bashing world does when it attempts to compare militant Islam with biblical Christianity. The two are clearly incomparable.
“Recently, the stark differences between Mohammed’s Religion of the Sword and Christ’s Golden Rule have been clearly displayed. When Amish school children were murdered in Pennsylvania, prayers and forgiveness were the order of the day. How different was this from flying ‘fatwas’ and exploding suicide bombers, which our world has become accustomed to expect every time some Muslim gets looked at sideways?”
‘Shocking secrets of sharia courts’
“A shocking report today exposes the grip Islamic law now has on British society. Honour killings, polygamy, child marriages and mutilation are revealed in the study by Islam expert Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity. The findings come after the Daily Express told yesterday how secret courts are meting out Islamic justice and creating a two-tier legal system.
“The report outlines areas where hardline sharia law conflicts with Britain’s justice system and warns of attempts to include parts of Islamic law in British law. It says: ‘Since sharia has some regulations which relate to non-Muslims such changes in British law could impinge on non-Muslims too. They would affect individual human rights of freedom of choice and the religious freedoms of both Muslims and non-Muslims’.”
Daily Express, 1 December 2006
As we’ve noted before, you’d have thought the media would steer well clear of Sookhdeo since this self-proclaimed “expert” on Islam got the Sunday Telegraph into legal trouble by calling for one of the most reputable English translations of the Qur’an to be banned (see here, here and here). But there is evidently no end to the demand for ignorant bigots who are prepared to feed the anti-Muslim frenzy of the right-wing press.