Category Archives: Right wing

Another week, another racist onslaught against Muslims

Posted on by Eddie Truman

Another week, another racist onslaught against Muslims

By Eddie Truman

“Ban The Veil” screamed the Daily Express, in Glasgow Imam Shamsuddin is subject to a violent assault, in Liverpool a Muslim woman has a veil ripped from her face by a man shouting racist abuse, in Falkirk a mosque was deliberately set ablaze.

The cause of this renewed wave of attacks on the Muslim community?

Home Secretary Jack Straw’s political ambitions. Such is the all pervading climate of Islamophobia, it is now regarded as a political badge of honour to outbid your political rivals in being seen to be racist towards Muslims.

So now we have a situation in which Labour Party, yes Labour Party, ministers are falling over themselves to match the rhetoric of the British National Party. Incredibly, Race Relations minister, yes you read that right, Phil Woolas, joined the row over the teaching assistant suspended for wearing a veil by demanding that she be sacked.

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‘Why these “leaders” are a pain in the burkas’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“People are sick to death with pussy-footing around Muslim sensibilities and fed up with stories about veils, crucifixes and terrorist sympathisers having more rights than the average Joe.

“Last week I said let’s treat Muslims the same as every other Brit and I am delighted to see that at last some politicians are waking up, smelling the coffee and realising that I am right. It’s great that Race Minister Phil Woolas has finally discovered a backbone and told the Dewsbury Dalek that she either lifts the veil or picks up her P45. David Davis from the Tories is also right to warn Muslim leaders that they are ‘creating apartheid by shutting themselves off’.

“Now a new poll this weekend shows clearly that 57 per cent of voters want Muslims to do more to fit in. But still the so-called Muslim leaders don’t get it, do they? Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council Of Britain, says: ‘No group in Britain has been as systematically vilified in recent years in the media as British Muslims’.

“Oh, Inayat, please put a sock in it will you, mate. Look, no group in Britain has been such a pain in the burka as some of the Muslims in recent years and no group has contained elements that wanted to blow themselves and the rest of us up. The problem lies with your community and their failure to integrate, not with the majority population. The sooner you realise that and cease celebrating your victimhood and stop bleating about Islamophobia, the better for all of us.”

Jon Gaunt in The Sun, 17 October 2006

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Labour demonising Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Labour peer, Lord Nazir Ahmed, has accused the Government of sustaining “a constant theme of demonising” the Muslim community. Lord Ahmed told BBC Radio 4’s ‘Sunday’ programme that it had become fashionable amongst ministers to “have a go at the Muslims”.

Criticising the way the Government treats Muslims in the UK, Lord Ahmed argued: “If you look at every bit of rhetoric that has been coming out of the Government departments and very senior people it has been sort of targeting at the Muslim community leadership. That has opened up a way for the neocons, the right wing people who have been attacking the Muslims. Islamophobia has become a contemporary form of racism.”

Asked whether he was accusing the Government of putting out a coordinated plan to demonise Muslims, Lord Ahmed responded: “Well it seems like that. The Prime Minister talked about the Muslim leadership not doing enough when 100 of us were working throughout the whole year – those of us involved with the 7/7 inquiries – all of us together worked with the Government. That is why we made 64 recommendations and how many did the Government implement? Well I think there is only probably one, or one and a half.”

Lord Nazir insisted the Muslim community was working hard to stem the fermentation of extremism within localities.

Yet he was less complimentary of governmental efforts, as he rhetorically stated: “What has the Government done in terms of parallel communities, deprivation, ghettos that exist with the Muslim communities? There is a desperate need for economic regeneration and also economic and financial help in those communities so they can also enjoy the wealth of our nation.”

His comments come on the back of the row sparked by Jack Straw who last week revealed he asks Muslim women attending his surgery to remove the full-face veil.

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Mad Mel fights for ‘cultural survival’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

madmelMelanie Phillips subjects us to yet another episode of her paranoid “Eurabia” ravings, according to which 1.6 million British Muslims are engaged in the “Islamicisation” of a country with a total population of 60 million:

“The Christian values that once defined national identity have simply collapsed, creating a cultural vacuum which Islam – Britain’s fastest-growing and most assertive religion – is busily filling.

“Those who defend the Muslim veil are grossly misreading the situation. It is not some picturesque religious garment equivalent to the often curious attire worn by members of other religions. It is associated instead with the most extreme version of Islam, which holds that Islamic values must take precedence over the secular state. Only a small minority of British Muslim women choose to wear this veil. But unlike other religious attire, it is thus inherently separatist and perceived by some as intimidatory. That is why it is unacceptable.

“Belatedly, there seems to be a dawning recognition in Government of the extreme danger into which British society has been placed both by the doctrine of multiculturalism, which holds that upholding majority values is somehow illegitimate, and by the official policy of appeasing Islamic extremism. Hence Mr Woolas’s remarks, the show of ministerial support for Jack Straw, and the threat last week made by Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly to withhold funding from Muslim institutions that do not combat extremism….

“This is not about prejudice or discrimination. It is about cultural survival.”

Daily Mail, 16 October

‘The veil is banned in hospitals’ (well, one hospital)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Veil is Banned“The backlash against the veil grew yesterday as it was banned from hospitals. Muslim medical students were barred from wearing it when they talk to hospital patients. The move was ordered to ‘help to aid good communications’ between Muslim medical students, their colleagues and patients. Details of the purge of faceless medics surfaced as the nationwide storm about Islamic veils continued….

“The bar on a full-face veil was ordered at Birmingham University school of medicine. Chiefs decided that Islamic women can cover their faces in lectures and around campus but not in the ‘clinical environments’ of hospital buildings and GPs’ surgeries. Its women Muslim students must show their faces if they are talking to patients in hospital or surgery or if they are in meetings with other medical staff…. Only in the sterile surroundings of an operating theatre can they cover their faces – with regulation surgical masks.”

Daily Express, 16 October 2006

Selective blindness

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“London Mayor Ken Livingstone put his finger on a huge problem when he noted that, although there are a mere couple of hundred ‘potentially violent’ Muslims in London, they are getting far more than their fair share of headlines and other groups, with extreme right-wing views, are being virtually ignored in the national press.

“The mayor is certainly correct in his assessment of the emphasis in the press, but that is not the whole story by a long way. It is true that the BBC and most of the national daily papers have descended into the pit of sensationalism and are now verging on racism in their overemphasis on any story involving Muslims, veils and anything that can be used to justify this government’s extremist and rabid crusade against what it sees as the unacceptable face of Islam, whether veiled or not.

“However, this is not a one-way traffic. The hysteria that the press is apparently attempting to stir up is being fuelled and fed by Labour politicians who should know a damn sight better.”

Editorial in Morning Star, 16 October 2006

Tories accuse Muslims of ‘creating apartheid by shutting themselves off’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

David Davis (2)The Conservatives today accuse Muslim leaders of encouraging “voluntary apartheid” in Britain by shutting themselves away in closed societies and demanding protection from criticism.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, says that Britain risks social and religious divisions so profound that society’s very foundations, such as the freedom of speech, will become “corroded” and that the perfect conditions for home-grown terrorism will be created.

His stark intervention, in an article for The Sunday Telegraph, represents a toughening of the Tory stance on the dangers of Islamic radicalism and follows calls from some leading ministers for Muslim women to remove their veils. It is also a departure from the “caring Conservatism” message laid out by David Cameron.

Mr Davis says he supports the stance on veils adopted by Jack Straw, the Commons Leader, but believes the wider issue is one of the “very unity of our nation”.

“What Jack touched on was the fundamental issue of whether, in Britain, we are developing a divided society. Whether we are creating a series of closed societies within our open society. Whether we are inadvertently encouraging a kind of voluntary apartheid. At the starkest level, we may be creating conditions in the recesses of our society that foster home-grown terrorism.”

Sunday Telegraph, 15 October 2006

Robert Spencer welcomes this example of “Anti-dhimmitude from the Conservative Party”.

Dhimmi Watch, 15 October 2006

‘What we need is sisterhood’ – Salma Yaqoob on feminist opponents of the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Salma addressing rally“Veiled Muslim women are caricatured as oppressed victims who need rescuing from their controlling men, while at the same time accused of being threatening creatures who really should stop intimidating the (overly tolerant) majority. What is distinctly lacking is any sense of genuine empathy for British Muslim women and how this ‘debate’ may be impacting on them….

“White feminists who feel they are doing their Muslim sisters a favour should think again. The Muslim community in general, and Muslim women in particular, are on the receiving end of some pretty ugly racism. I don’t ask you to like the choices we make. I simply ask that you respect our rights to make our own choices, and join with us to defend our rights to exercise choices that are freely made. Right now what Muslim women need from non-Muslim women is a little sisterhood.”

Salma Yaqoob at the Guardian’s Comment is Free, 13 October 2006

Veil is ‘an invitation to rape’ – BHL

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The JC interviews French philospher Bernard-Henri Levy:

“Our time is almost up, but BHL becomes the most animated I have seen him when I ask him about Jack Straw’s intervention on Muslim women and the veil. ‘Jack Straw’, he says, leaning close to me, ‘made a great point. He did not say that he was against the veil. He said it is much easier, much more comfortable, respectful, to speak with a woman with a naked face. And without knowing, he quoted Levinas, who is the philosopher of the face. Levinas says that [having seen] the naked face of your interlocutor, you cannot kill him or her, you cannot rape him, you cannot violate him. So when the Muslims say that the veil is to protect women, it is the contrary. The veil is an invitation to rape’.”

Jewish Chronicle, 12 October 2006

Marginalising the MCB – ‘certainly a step in the right direction’ says Mad Mel

Posted on by Bob Pitt

madmelMelanie Phillips welcomes Ruth Kelly’s speech implying that the Muslim Council of Britain is to be sidelined by the government:

“… a rethink has undoubtedly taken place within the government about its strategy for combating Islamic extremism in Britain. The refusal by the Muslim Council of Britain to attend the Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration ceremony shocked ministers rigid and opened their eyes to the MCB’s extremism (John Ware’s fine Panorama programme on BBC1 undoubtedly helped, too). Then the debacle over the farcical committees set up after 7/7 to advise the Prime Minister on how to tackle Islamic extremism – which the Home Office promptly stuffed with Islamic extremists – helped them realise the blindingly obvious fact that Muslim so-called representative institutions were virtually all radicalised….

“It’s welcome news that the government will henceforth be marginalising groups like the MCB. This is certainly a step in the right direction. From all that I hear and read, I think there’s undoubtedly a realisation by government that its strategy so far has failed. And indeed, it can hardly be unaware of the widespread public fury and anxiety about all this. But – as I set out in Londonistan – this strategy of appeasement goes far wider and deeper than kowtowing to extremist representative institutions. I’ll only believe something significant is happening when I see the removal of Islamist advisers from Whitehall and a ‘fundamental rebalancing’ of the brains of the Metropolitan Police.”

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 11 October 2006