On 7 October, as part of the ongoing anti-Muslim media campaign, the Sun ran a shock-horror story about “Muslim yobs who wrecked a house to stop four brave soldiers moving in after returning from Afghanistan”. Well, predictably, it turns out to have been total nonsense.
Category Archives: Right wing
‘Campus jihad’
Anthony Glees treats a US audience to his paranoid fantasies about terrorists taking over universities in the UK.
Yet another ‘Ban the Veil’ headline in the Express
A city with one of the country’s largest Muslim populations is to ask schools to ban veils in the classroom.
Education leaders yesterday confirmed that they are drawing up guidelines stating that both teachers and pupils must not wear them during lessons. The school chiefs claim that veils – called niqabs – could stop teachers identifying troublesome children.
They also fear that they could even lead to health and safety problems in Bradford, where around 15 per cent of the 470,000 population are Muslim. Spokesman Anthony Mugan said: “We would advise against the wearing of veils in schools because of reasons which will be listed in new guidelines.
“These will include the problems they could cause in identifying pupils, possible problems with communication and health and safety issues. However, it is up to individual schools to make the final decision as it is with the schools’ uniform policies.”
The new guidelines are being hammered out between Bradford City Council and a private contractor, Education Bradford, which runs the West Yorkshire city’s schools.
Bradford is the neighbouring local authority to Kirklees, where teaching assistant Aishah Azmi was suspended from a school in Dewsbury for refusing to remove her veil in class.
The move comes after a Daily Express telephone poll in which more than 99 per cent of readers supported the call for Britain to follow the lead of many Muslim countries, including Turkey and Egypt, and ban the veil.
Sun backs Trevor Phillips
“Prejudice is a worm that thrives in the dark and shrivels in the daylight. So says Trevor Phillips, head of the Commission for Racial Equality.
“What he’s rightly saying is that the only solution to the tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims – and the bloody riots he predicts may come – is an open debate. A debate unfettered by the political correctness that stops people on either side speaking boldly about our differences – how to resolve them or live with them.
“He has a point: A poll reveals nearly three-quarters of Britons won’t speak their minds over veils in case they cause offence. Which is mainly because many Muslims over-react to the slightest criticism of their religion. Such hypersensitivity impedes progress.”
Editorial in the Sun, 23 October 2006
‘The veiled conceit of multiculturalism’
The Australian offers its contribution to the veil “debate”:
“Religious beliefs are by definition sacred, and as much as possible they should be a private matter. But when an individual or a community feels that their personal practices should trump widely held values while also setting themselves apart, the question arises as to whether those people would not be more comfortable in a place where such behaviour is the norm.
“At its heart is the question of where tolerance should end and the old adage, ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans’, should kick in. While tolerance is certainly a positive virtue that should be strived for, it cannot be a cultural suicide pact…. Disappointingly, those who have traditionally been a positive force for the liberation of women against oppression in other spheres have here largely been silent on the question of Islam’s beliefs concerning half of humanity.
“… what confronts the West today is not so much a clash of civilisations as a clash of centuries. The jumbo jets that have enabled the mass immigration from Muslim countries to the West are, in effect, time machines that have brought millions of people from a pre-Enlightenment world – where men are the unquestioned bosses, stoning and forced amputation are punishments rather than crimes, and sectarian differences are worth dying over – to secular, liberal and postmodern democracies such as ours.”
Editorial in The Australian, 24 October 2006
Martin Bright backs Kelly
“When, in last May’s reshuffle, Tony Blair appointed Ruth Kelly to deal with Islamism, I was sceptical, I admit…. I have been forced to reconsider. Kelly’s recent statements show a sea change in government policy, driven by her determination to tackle the ideology of radical Islam head-on. Her speech on 11 October to groups representing British Muslims was a wake-up call not just to them, but to Britain at large….
“The MCB will receive no more state funding, she says, until it can show that it shares the common values of a democratic society: freedom of speech, equality of opportunity, tolerance, and respect for the rule of law…. Kelly has made a bold decision to take the ideological battle to radical Islam…. I am told that she spent recent months reading widely on the history of modern political Islam and that she has become fascinated by the subject. One publication she has read is a short pamphlet I wrote for the think-tank Policy Exchange, When Progressives Treat With Reactionaries.”
Martin Bright in the New Statesman, 23 October 2006
Bright must be really pleased with himself. He has helped persuade Kelly to sideline the most representative Muslim organisation in Britain and turn instead to the fraudulent pro-government Sufi Muslim Council.
BBC ‘biased in favour of Muslims’
“It was the day that a host of BBC executives and star presenters admitted what critics have been telling them for years: the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism.
“A leaked account of an ‘impartiality summit’ called by BBC chairman Michael Grade, is certain to lead to a new row about the BBC and its reporting on key issues, especially concerning Muslims and the war on terror. It reveals that executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a TV comedy show, but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity. Further, it discloses that the BBC’s ‘diversity tsar’, wants Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils when on air.
“At the secret meeting in London last month, which was hosted by veteran broadcaster Sue Lawley, BBC executives admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians.
“One veteran BBC executive said: ‘There was widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness. Unfortunately, much of it is so deeply embedded in the BBC’s culture, that it is very hard to change it’.”
EU’s fight against radical Islam
Henrik Broder, a prominent Jewish journalist in Germany, recently published a book titled, “Hooray! We Surrender!” which criticizes what the author refers to as “Europe’s weakness in its battle against Islam.”
“We must define what sets us aside as a society, and what values we must uphold in our struggle against Islam,” Broder tells Ynet.
Broder’s remarks come amid the ever-increasing tension in Europe between the traditional values and those of radical Islam, which are beginning to spread throughout the continent.
With the end of the Cold War 17 years ago, Europe was able to unite around values of democracy, individualism and a free market. But lately the atmosphere ion Europe has begun to change, and tolerant Europe has started to organize against radical Islam (and some say Islam in general), an ideology that is being referred to more and more as “an enemy of modern western society’s lifestyle.”
Until recently political correctness reigned in Europe, and those who dared point an accusatory finger at minorities were ostracized. When immigrants attacked their host-countries in Europe, the Europeans blamed western society for “inadequately absorbing them.”
Dialogue, not confrontation was the solution to the absorption difficulties of immigrants; criticism of the Muslim minority, part of which refused to accept the social ideals of the majority, was dismissed as racist – and so the Muslims in Europe did not integrate with the western population.
But following Madrid and London attacks, as well as the Muslim riots over the Mohammad caricatures, there are more and more signs indicating that the European Union is beginning to view Islam and the Muslim immigrants as an existential threat.
Sweden’s Muslim minister turns on veil
The latest media darling of Scandinavian politics is not only black, beautiful and Muslim; she is also firmly against the wearing of the veil.
Nyamko Sabuni, 37, has caused a storm as Sweden’s new integration and equality minister by arguing that all girls should be checked for evidence of female circumcision; arranged marriages should be criminalised; religious schools should receive no state funding; and immigrants should learn Swedish and find a job.
Supporters of the centre-right government that came to power last month believe that her bold rejection of cultural diversity may make her a force for change across Europe. Her critics are calling her a hardliner and even an Islamophobe.
Looks like Sweden has found its own Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Sabuni has already received the endorsement of Little Green Footballs and Dhimmi Watch.
Update: And Western Resistance and Pickled Politics.
Mail discovers ‘Veil teacher link to 7/7 bomber’
“The Muslim teacher suspended for refusing to work without her veil is connected to a hardline mosque where the ringleader of the July 7 bombers worshipped, it has emerged.
“The family of classroom assistant Aishah Azmi, 24, plays a key role at the fundamentalist Markazi mosque in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire – which was attended by suicide bomber Mohammed Sidique Khan. Until recently, Miss Azmi’s father was joint headmaster of the secondary school attached to the building. The family are known to worship there and may have encountered Khan before his terrorist act.”
Well, if Sidique Khan did attend the same mosque (and given the gulf that separated his methods from the apolitical approach of Tablighi Jamaat, I’ve always thought that was questionable) I suppose they might have met him. However, given that the Dewsbury Markaz holds 3000 people, statistically the chances of bumping into him would have been rather slight. As attempts to imply guilt by association go, this really is the pits.