“President Bush recently changed his definition of who ‘the enemy’ is from bin Laden and the al Queda terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 to ‘Islamic fascists’ in general, sending the right after Islam in general and Middle Easterners in particular.”
Dave Johnson in the Huffington Post, 20 August 2006
An article by Gabriel Milland in the 17 August issue of the Daily Express, reporting on a YouGov poll which found that three-quarters of respondents believed that Britain was engaged in a battle against “Islamic terrorists”, carried the misleading headline “Britain says: we’re at war with Islam“.
Asians in Media reproduces a letter of complaint sent to the editor of the Express: “I was disgusted to read your article headlined ‘Britain says: We’re at war with Islam’. This article is a disgrace because the headline does not in anyway correctly portray the contents of the article and has obviously been chosen purely to sell more newspapers.”
Asians in Media, 20 August 2006
Complaints can be sent to the editor at peter.hill@express.co.uk and to Mr Milland at gabriel.milland@express.co.uk.
Johann Hari has a go at Melanie Phillips et al in today’s Independent:
“There are intellectuals on the British right who are propagating a conspiracy theory about Muslims that teeters very close to being a 21st century Protocols of the Elders of Mecca. Meet Bat Ye’or, a ‘scholar’ who argues that Europe is on the brink of being transformed into a conquered continent called ‘Eurabia’.
“In this new land, Christians and Jews will be reduced by the new Muslim majority to the status of ‘dhimmis’ – second-class citizens forced to ‘walk in the gutter’. This will not happen by accident. It is part of a deliberate and ‘occult’ plan, concocted between the Arab League and leading European politicians like Jacques Chirac and Mary Robinson, who secretly love Islam and are deliberately flooding the continent with Muslim immigrants. As Orianna Fallacci – one of the best-selling writers in Italy – has summarised the thesis in her hymns of praise to Ye’or, ‘Muslims have been told to come here and breed like rats.’
“Rather than dismissing her preposterous assertions, high-profile writers such as Melanie Phillips, Daniel Pipes and Niall Ferguson laud Ye’or as a suppressed hero, silenced by (you guessed it) ‘political correctness’. Her name is brandished as a gold standard in right-wing Tory circles. It’s interesting that writers so alert to anti-Semitism have lent their names to an ideology that is so startlingly similar. In this theory, the Star of David has simply been replaced by the Islamic crescent. If the term has any meaning, this is authentic Islamophobia, treating virtually all Muslims as verminous sharia-carriers. So why are these people still treated as serious and sane by the BBC and its editors?”
Great stuff. And who could disagree? Unfortunately, having made these excellent points, Hari goes on to denounce Islamophobia Watch.
“The increasingly common juxtaposition of the words ‘Islam’ and ‘fascism’ in America is a result of the efforts to poison public opinion by the Neo-cons. They cut the White House to fit their own lines. President Bush first used terms with a Neo-con stamp like ‘Islamo-fascist’, ‘Islamic radicalism’ and ‘Islamo-fascism’ in a speech he made on October 6, 2005 at the National Endowment for Democracy. He later used such terms between the lines on different occasions. This subject caught Turkey’s attention the most last week by way of a statement Bush made after the London terror operation. It was reported by many Turkish press organizations that Bush used the term ‘Islamist fascist’. Actually, the U.S. president mentioned a war against ‘Islamic fascists’. The adjective ‘Islamic’ is used in two ways in English. The first means Muslim. The other means something conforming and belonging to the Islamic religion. If the first meaning was intended, it points to certain Muslims encouraging fascism. In the second meaning, fascism is directly linked to Islam. While Neo-cons, most of whom are enemies of both Muslims and Islam, say ‘Islamo-fascism’, let there be no doubt that they intend the latter meaning.”
Ali H. Aslan in Zaman, 21 August 2006
“How I wish that Betfair had a bet available on the number of times the anchor of tonight’s BBC 10 O’Clock News mentions the religion of the eleven alleged terrorists charged today. I’d plump for zero.
“UPDATE: It took 9 minutes – which included the anchor’s intro, the main report by the Home Affairs Correspondent and the report by the Security Correspondent – before any mention was made that there was a common link of any sort between those charged. So no mention whatsoever of the fact that they were Muslim.
“Then at 10.10 there was a report specifically about the reaction of ‘the community’ in Waltham Forest. No initial mention of the nature of ‘the community’ to which the reporter, Robert Hall, was referring – ie Muslim – but given that he was standing outside a mosque, and he talked about coming home from work for prayers, I think one could reasonably infer he meant Muslim. And half way into the report he did, indeed, use the ‘M word’.”
“Jewish groups were furious last night after a firebrand Islamic academic told an 8,000-strong Muslim rally that martyrdom in Israel was ‘just’.” Daily Express, 21 August 2006
“A British-based Muslim radical appeared to back suicide bombing yesterday when he claimed that dying for your beliefs was ‘just’. Dr Azzam Tamimi told an 8,000-strong crowd that standing up for your principles was the ‘greatest act of martyrdom’.” Daily Mail, 21 August 2006
The right-wing press reports on Dr Azzam Tamimi’s speech at the ExpoIslamia convention in Manchester.
Yet it is only a couple of weeks since the Times published an article glorifying a young British Jew who went to Israel to fight with the IDF: “despite his Leeds accent, Ben is an Israeli soldier. He is also cradling an Israeli-army issue Colt AR15 semi-automatic rifle stamped ‘Property of US Govt’. Ben, 26, who arrived in Israel last year, is one of thousands of those serving in the Israeli military either as newly arrived citizens or on army programmes for Zionists who want to defend Israel”.
Talk about double standards.
“‘A notorious pro-Israeli Islamophobe’, ‘desperate to discredit Muslims’, ‘a track record for displaying unfairness and twisting the truth’. Panorama’s leading reporter, John Ware, is not quite public enemy number one for many British Muslims – that is an accolade no doubt held by Bush or Blair – but postings such as these on the Muslim Public Affairs Committee website show he comes a close second…. He says he is one of five journalists – the others are Martin Bright, the political editor of the New Statesman, Melanie Phillips of the Daily Mail, the Observer’s Nick Cohen and the Times writer-turned-Tory MP, Michael Gove – who have been labelled by the MCB as ‘being in the vanguard of Islamophobia in this country’. ‘We don’t meet up like witches to discuss it’, jokes Ware. ‘We’ve all come to this view independently that – potentially – politics and Islam is an incendiary mix’.”
Needless to say, Ware indignantly denies that he’s an Islamophobe: “Islamophobic meaning an irrational fear of Muslims? Absolutely not.”
For our earlier coverage of Mr Ware and Panorama see for example here and here,
For Yusuf Smith’s comments, see Indigo Jo Blogs, 22 August 2006
Jewish groups are concerned over a speaker addressing an Islamic conference in Manchester on Sunday. Dr Azzam Tamimi, who is one of the guest speakers at the ExpoIslamia convention, has said suicide bombings are justified in certain circumstances. Louis Rappaport, president of the Jewish Representative Council of Gtr Manchester, said Dr Tamimi would not help Jewish-Muslim relations.
See also World Net Daily, 20 August 2006
You can imagine what the outcry would be if a Muslim organisation called for a supporter of Israeli state terrorism to be excluded from the platform of an event organised by the Jewish community.
British holidaymakers staged an unprecedented mutiny – refusing to allow their flight to take off until two men they feared were terrorists were forcibly removed.
The extraordinary scenes happened after some of the 150 passengers on a Malaga-Manchester flight overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic.
Passengers told cabin crew they feared for their safety and demanded police action. Some stormed off the Monarch Airlines Airbus A320 minutes before it was due to leave the Costa del Sol at 3am. Others waiting for Flight ZB 613 in the departure lounge refused to board it.
The Monarch pilot accompanied by armed Civil Guard police and airport security staff, approached the two men and took their passports. Half an hour later, police returned and escorted the two Asian passengers off the jet.
Websites used by pilots and cabin crew were yesterday reporting further incidents. In one, two British women with young children on another flight from Spain complained about flying with a bearded Muslim even though he had been security-checked twice before boarding.
Mail on Sunday, 20 August 2006
Robert Spencer comments: “no doubt all sorts of opprobrium is now going to rain down on the passengers’ heads: cries of ingrained ‘Islamophobia’, and calls by Muslim leaders and their willing Leftist stooges for some kind of institutionalized and nationwide ‘education’ (i.e. propaganda) campaign to prevent this sort of thing.”
For Osama Saeed’s comments, see Rolled Up Trousers, 20 August 2006
See also Pickled Politics, 20 August 2006
Update: See “Anger as ‘mob’ forces Muslim men off aircraft”, Independent, 21 August 2006
Thousands attending a Washington banquet for the new group Christians United for Israel have been told that the war on terror is really a war against radical Islam. The Israeli ambassador to the United States says Muslim radicals were the enemy on Nine-Eleven and are the enemy today in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran.