Category Archives: Right wing

Australians’ fear of Muslims is ‘common sense’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“No one should be surprised to learn that Australians want a tougher response to global terror for one simple reason – the Islamofascists who started this war show no sign of bringing their attacks on the civilised world to an end….

“Many believe that members of the Islamic community make no attempt to share those values which are identified as Australian. They see Muslim girls wearing clothing that has little do with their religion but a lot to do with political protest. They see weak state governments bowing before Islamic groups and exploiting their voting power.

“Australians are a tolerant people but they are tired of being told that their natural concerns about young Muslims who invoke their religion as they commit gang rape are demonstrations of Islamophobia, racism and paranoia.”

Piers Akerman in the Daily Telegraph (Australia), 28 August 2006

New Zealand MP tells Muslims to unveil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

bob clarksonNational MP Bob Clarkson’s mouth has landed him in trouble again after he said “Islam religion-type people” who wore burqas could be crooks hiding guns.

The Tauranga MP, who is known to shoot from the lip, said Muslim women should not wear the full-body veils if they wanted to “fit into our country”.

“Even walking down the street, to a certain extent, how do we know there’s not a crook with a gun hiding under a burqa? Who’s under that gown?” he said.

He was tolerant of all religions, but Muslims who wore burqas because of deeply held beliefs should “go back to Islam or Iraq”.

The comments, made days after a major diversity forum in Wellington, brought an angry reaction from Federation of Islamic Associations president Javed Khan.

Khan said: “If he is tolerant of all types of religion, why is he picking on Muslims wearing scarves and burqas? Would he have any problems with nuns wearing the same type of clothes, head covers and long skirts? Would he have problems with the Sikhs wearing turbans? When he says that people should fit into the country, what does that mean? That they should go in their bikinis?”

Stuff, 26 August 2006

Multiculturalism and ‘the British way of life’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ruth KellyIn today’s Daily Express Mark Palmer writes: “Yesterday Ruth Kelly, Labour’s Communities Secretary, warned in her own, typically fuzzy way that multiculturalism might not be such a brilliant idea after all. Well, not at the minute, at least, when there are Muslim extremists waiting for every opportunity to stir the racial-religious pot…. ‘We’ve moved from a period of near uniform consensus on the value of multiculturalism to one where we can encourage that debate by questioning whether it is encouraging separateness’, she said.”

Palmer broadly welcomes Kelly’s intervention. But he has his criticisms: “For starters, we have not moved from a ‘period of near consensus on the value of multiculturalism’ because for many of us it has never existed. Indeed, I would hazard to guess that the majority of tax-paying Britons have always regarded multiculturalism as a bad thing, increasingly so in a world where young men are prepared to drive aeroplanes into buildings and take bombs onto buses and Tube trains.”

He also raises another objection: “Kelly wants us to look at faith schools. She says Muslim parents should not be denied opportunities offered to Christians in sending their children to faith schools. But it is disingenuous to pretend that that all such schools serve the same purpose. Church and Jewish schools instil discipline and a moral framework. But unlike their Islamic counterparts they do not seek to keep children separate from British society.”

Palmer has his own recommendations as to how we should learn to live together: “Multicultural harmony will only be achieved when those from other cultures are prepared to accept the British way of life. And, lest we forget, Britain is a Christian country. The Church of England remains an institution worthy of respect – it’s a part of our heritage and has our sovereign as its supreme governor.”

Terrorism – blame the parents

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ginny Dougary is unimpressed by “all the sympathetic coverage in the liberal press about the poor, puzzled Muslims who feel that they are being picked on in airports and flights. If the parents of the young men who are attracted to this murderous martyrdom have lost control of their sons, then they must shoulder part of the blame. If the Muslims who choose to live in our society, with all its so-called tempting freedoms, do not protest against those who wish to destroy it, then how can they expect our tolerance?”

Times, 25 August 2006

Islam poses a threat to the West, say 53% in poll

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Telegraph Islam threat to westThe alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners and last year’s terrorist attacks on London have made more people fear Islam as a religion, not merely its extremist elements, a poll for The Daily Telegraph has found.

A growing number of people fear that the country faces “a Muslim problem” and more than half of the respondents to the YouGov survey said that Islam posed a threat to Western liberal democracy. That compares with less than a third after the September 11 terrorist attacks on America five years ago.

The findings were revealed as Ruth Kelly, the Communities Secretary, conceded that the multi-culturalist approach encouraged by the Left for two decades had probably been a mistake and could have contributed to the alienation that many young Muslims said they felt and experienced.

The YouGov survey confirms ministers’ fears that the country is becoming polarised between Muslims and the rest of the population, which is suspicious of them, and that a belief in “a clash of civilisations” has taken root.

Since a similar poll was conducted after the July 7 bombings in London last year, there has been a significant increase in the number of people worried about some of their Muslim compatriots.

The proportion of those who believe that “a large proportion of British Muslims feel no sense of loyalty to this country and are prepared to condone or even carry out acts of terrorism” has nearly doubled from 10 per cent a year ago to 18 per cent now.

The number who believe that “practically all British Muslims are peaceful, law-abiding citizens who deplore terrorist acts as much as any- one else” has fallen from 23 per cent in July last year to 16 per cent. However, there remains strong opposition to the security profiling of airline passengers based on their ethnicity or religion.

A higher proportion than last year now feels that the police and MI5 should focus their counter-terrorism efforts on Muslims and far fewer people are worried that such an approach risks dividing the country or offending law-abiding Muslims.

Most strikingly, there has been a substantial increase over the past five years in the numbers who appear to subscribe to a belief in a clash of civilisations. When YouGov asked in 2001 whether people felt threatened by Islam, as distinct from fundamentalist Islamists, only 32 per cent said they did. That figure has risen to 53 per cent.

Five years ago, a majority of two to one thought that Islam posed no threat, or only a negligible one, to democracy. Now, by a similar ratio, people think it is a serious threat.

Daily Telegraph, 25 August 2006

Fascists in Belgium – they’re not far-right racists but Muslims!

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Vlaams BelangThe Wall Street Journal carries a piece by Bret Stephens reporting favourably on developments in the Belgian far-right party Vlaams Belang (formerly the Vlaams Blok, which officially dissolved itself in 2004 after being convicted of inciting racial hatred). Noting that the party has a history of Nazi sympathies and Holocaust denial, Stephens adds:

“But that’s changing. Younger party leaders, realizing their anti-Semitic taint was poison, began making pro-Israel overtures. And the party’s tough-on-crime, hostile-to-Muslims stance began to attract a considerable share of the Jewish vote, particularly among Orthodox Antwerp Jews who felt increasingly vulnerable in the face of the city’s hostile Muslim community. Today, Vlaams Belang is the largest single party in the country.”

Stephens continues: “Meanwhile, the real fascists in Belgium are gaining strength, largely protected from scrutiny by the country’s ‘anti-racism’ legislation. At Brussels’s Imam Reza mosque, a preacher commemorated the 17th anniversary of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s death: ‘The enemies cannot extinguish the light of the Islamic Revolution.’ And in Molenbeek, the newspaper Het Volk published a study of the local Muslim population: The editor, Gunther Vanpraet, described the commune as ‘a breeding ground for thousands of Jihad candidates’.”

Wall Street Journal, 22 August 2006

Muslims should stop whingeing about Islamophobia – Jon Gaunt

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jon_Gaunt“When pasty-faced fat white blokes start blowing planes out of the sky in protest at the Government’s anti-obesity guidelines then I will be the first in the queue to be profiled and frisked. I’ll assume the position quicker than George Michael on Hampstead Heath.

“But until then I’m afraid young Muslim men should stop bleating about Islamophobia and racism and get used to the idea that if we are going to get our airports back to any sense of normality then they are the people who will be more likely to be stopped and searched.

“I don’t understand the fuss about the Monarch passengers who refused to fly with two blokes acting suspiciously on a flight from Malaga. We’ve been told to be vigilant and that’s what these people were being. Now the usual suspects are accusing them of paranoia, racism and Islamophobia….

“If Islam, as we are repeatedly told, really does mean peace then why aren’t the million-and-a-half moderates demonstrating that on London’s streets? I’m sure that the terrorists’ mate and fanatics’ friend Ken Livingstone could donate Trafalgar Square for a rally. He could even divert a bit of funding away from flying in mad Muslim clerics who want to slaughter gays and justify suicide bombings in Israeli pizza parlours, to help pay for peace banners.

“Of course there’s more chance of me going to paradise and deflowering 72 virgins than this happening.

“Despite being told since 9/11 that this isn’t a war against Islam I’m increasingly feeling as if Islam is engaged in a real and propaganda war against us and our way of life….

“John Reid now wants to bypass the Human Rights Act and intern terror suspects. He should go further and rip up the Act, secure our borders, investigate every young Muslim who has been to Pakistan and immediately stop the farce of airline restrictions for all and replace it with ethnic and religious profiling.”

Jon Gaunt in The Sun, 22 August 2006

‘British Muslim leaders’ and ‘sharia law’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Shahid_MalikAfter some thirty Muslim representatives met with Ruth Kelly on 14 August, the media spin on the discussion was that “Muslim leaders” had proposed that holidays should be introduced to mark Muslim festivals and that Muslim communities should be allowed to operate Islamic legal codes for marriage and family life.

This was reported in the Daily Mail  under the headline “Muslims call for special bank holidays“, while the Daily Mirror headlined their report “We must not give in to Muslim blackmail“. The Daily Star informed its readers that “British Muslims have demanded special bank holidays for religious festivals…. They also called for the UK to have Sharia law, which in the Middle East includes penalties such as stonings and amputations”, and the fascists of the British National Party echoed the Mirror with “Labour ministers threatened with Islamic blackmail“.

Ever eager to grasp the opportunity for a spot of self-promotion, Labour MP Shahid Malik contributed an article to yesterday’s Sunday Times, headlined “If you want sharia law, you should go and live in Saudi“, in which he wrote that he had been “asked by the media whether I agreed that what British Muslims needed were Islamic holidays and sharia (Islamic law). I thought I had walked into some parallel universe. Sadly this was not a joke. These issues had apparently formed part of the discussion the day before between Prescott, Ruth Kelly, the communities minister, and a selection of ‘Muslim leaders’. I realised then that it wasn’t me and the media who were living in a parallel universe – although certain ‘Muslim leaders’ might well be…. When Lord Ahmed, the Muslim Labour peer, heard my comments – I said essentially that if Muslims wanted sharia they should go and live somewhere where they have it – he accused me of doing the BNP’s work.”

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