Category Archives: Right wing

‘Lefty lexicon’ lands Orange executive in big trouble

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mobile phone company Orange has suspended its community affairs manager after he posted what he termed a “lefty lexicon” on the blog site ConservativeHome which includes a description of Islamophobics as “anyone who objects to having their transport blown up on the way to work.”

Since Inigo Wilson posted his diatribe on what he sees as the abuse of language by “lefties” and especially the “rights industry”, Orange has received a flood of complaints from customers.

A campaign against him was mounted on the website of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPACUK). Yesterday it emerged that Mr Wilson has been suspended pending an internal Orange investigation. A spokesman for MPACUK said Mr Wilson’s views were extremely unhelpful at a time when British Muslims are increasingly being subjected to bigotry and prejudice, and bordered on racist.

Guardian, 17 August 2006

Over at Harry’s Place, David T “on balance” comes out in defence of Inigo Wilson: “I hope that Mr Wilson does not lose his job … to the extent that free expression is the principle at stake, the content of the speech is largely an irrelevant consideration.” Can you imagine David T taking a similarly “balanced” view if Wilson had been accused of anti-semitism?

Terrorism? Blame Pakistanis, says Stephen Schwartz

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Stephen Schwartz“With the foiling of the alleged conspiracy by radical Islamists to devastate transatlantic air travel – at the height of the US–UK tourist season – Britain has emerged, a little more than a year after the London Tube bombings, as the apparent main target for jihadist terror in Europe.

“This has little to do with British policies, poverty, discrimination or Islamophobia. Simply put, a million or more Sunnis of Pakistani background, who comprise the main element among British Asian Muslims, also include the largest contingent of radical Muslims in Europe. Their jihadist sympathies embody an imported ideology, organised through mosques and other religious institutions, rather than a ‘homegrown’ phenomenon, as the cliché would have it….

“Imported Muslim clerics are the basis of the threat. Islam in the UK is overwhelmingly influenced by imams and other religious officials born in Pakistan and trained in that country or in Saudi Arabia. Pakistani Sunni mosques in Britain are major centres for jihadist preaching, finance, incitement and recruitment.

“… the leaders of British Islam — exemplified by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) — have assumed a posture of truculence, obstruction and indignation when any suggestion is made that jihadist sympathies infect their ranks…. It may be impossible for General Musharraf to rid his country of jihadist violence. But Britain need not and must not permit Pakistani religious gangsters to continue their control of British Islam.”

Spectator, 16 August 2006

Update:  For Yusuf Smith’s comments, see Indigo Jo Blogs, 20 August 2006

‘Britain says: we’re at war with Islam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Thus the headline to an article by Gabriel Milland in today’s Daily Express which begins: “The majority of Britons believe that the UK and the West is in a global war with Islam.”

This claim is based on a YouGov poll for the Spectator, which found that three out of four respondents believed that Britain is engaged in a battle “against Islamic terrorists” (emphasis added).

The venomous media voices who think no Muslim is worth talking to

Posted on by Bob Pitt

With the government’s policy of engagement with Muslim community under strain, Madeleine Bunting takes on the “media commentators pouring out a flood of venomous advice on exactly why no Muslim is worth talking to anyway”. She points out that “there are many people in this country who have no interest in listening to any Muslim unless they can chorus their own loathing and suspicion of Islam – the former Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the case par excellence”.

Bunting writes: “Some of this armchair advice to government can be pretty briskly dismissed, such as the paranoid fantasies of the rightwing Daily Mail commentator Melanie Phillips in her book Londonistan or those of the Conservative MP Michael Gove in his book Celsius 7/7. Both authors haven’t troubled themselves to get much beyond revived imperial delusions of demented, violent Muslims (check out Britain’s history in India, Sudan or Egypt).

“More insidious is the comprehensive attack on Whitehall’s policy towards the Muslim community over the last decade by the New Statesman‘s political editor, Martin Bright. He argues that the government should have no truck with any Muslim organisation in the UK that has had any involvement with any person who has ever been influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood, the political Islamist organisation.

“That rules out the Muslim Council of Britain, the Federation of Student Islamic Societies and other mainstays of the government’s ‘engagement’ policy of the last 10 years. It would even include intellectuals such as Professor Tariq Ramadan (grandson, no less, of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood), who was a member of the government taskforce set up to tackle Islamist extremism last year, and a star turn on its travelling roadshow for young Muslims.

“We are talking sweeping here. In fact, implement Bright’s advice and you’ve got a pretty small tea party for your next round of engagement.”

Guardian, 16 August 2006

In response, right-wing blogger Scott Burgess rallies to the defence of “Martin Bright’s groundbreaking work” and denounces Bunting as one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “British fifth columnists “.

Daily Ablution, 16 August 2006

Marines’ Islamic Prayer Center ‘sends a bad signal’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An announcement that the U.S. Marine base at Quantico, Va., has refurbished a building to be used as a prayer room for Muslim soldiers and civilians on base is a “bad signal,” one critic has concluded.

The Marines announced earlier this summer that one of the buildings on the base had been repainted so that Muslims would have a place to pray and hold religious services. The new “Islamic Prayer Center” is the first of its kind on a Marine base, and “serves to express the Marine Corps’ recognition of diversity among service members and the commitment to provide continued support to all Marines regardless of race, religion, ethnicity or gender,” the base announcement said.

However, Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer said he wonders why the Marines do not seem concerned such facilities might to used to generate anti-American sympathies. “It’s going to go up as part of a testament to American multiculturalism and so on without any indication of the possibility that this could be a source of what we’re fighting against,” he said. “It just sends a bad signal.”

World Net Daily, 16 August 2006

Allison Pearson wrestles with her Islamophobic inclinations – and loses

Posted on by Bob Pitt

allison pearsonAllison Pearson writes: “Several opinion polls have measured Muslim anger with Britain. No survey has yet recorded the rest of British society’s anger and distress with Muslims. Yet you only have to start a conversation on the subject to unleash a flood of feeling. ‘I never thought I’d say this, but…’ People who don’t consider themselves racist are wondering how to deal with these new and dismaying thoughts.”

This is “a tragedy for the UK, which has done so much to accommodate its immigrant groups. Too much, probably. We failed to spell out the cultural norms we expect everyone to respect, with horrendous consequences. That letter from Muslim MPs warning the Government to change its policy on the Middle East because it was ‘inflaming extremists’ was a bloody cheek, quite frankly.

“Millions of Britons are angry with Tony Blair over Iraq. But he is our democratically elected leader and the foreign policy of this country is not going to be decided in a mosque in Waltham Forest. As for the suggestion by Dr Syed Aziz Pasha that Britain should introduce Islamic laws on family affairs, which apply only to Muslims, well, words fail me. Where would the concessions end? All women to cover their heads? Jews thrown into the sea? Burqa King? The Moral Maze presented by Michael Burqa?”

Daily Mail, 16 August 2006

‘Islamic fascists’ and ‘terror-prone Muslims’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Whenever Europeans get together to come up with ways to combat extremism and counter terrorism … they find themselves being the ones prescribed with making all the adjustments – as opposed to the terror-prone Muslims”.

Julia Gorin defends George Bush’s use of the term “Islamic fascists” and warns against accepting European notions of political correctness.

Front Page Magazine, 15 August 2006

For a more balanced view, see Lisa Miller’s article in Newsweek, 12 August 2006

‘Multiculturalism is to blame for perverting young Muslims’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Bishop of Rochester asks “how does this dual psychology – of victimhood, but also the desire for domination – come to infect so many young Muslims in Britain?” One reason is that “in the name of multiculturalism, mosque schools were encouraged and Muslim pupils spent up to six extra hours a day learning the Koran and Islamic tradition, as well as their own regional languages”.

Daily Telegraph, 15 August 2006

Terror threat? Blame Muslims and Labour

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Make no mistake, this terror threat is the fault of both the Muslim community and New Labour…. Labour’s complete immigration incompetence has fundamentally changed the character of this country and severely jeopardised our security. And Blair still goes on holiday! No wonder over 50 per cent of Brits want to get out of this septic isle. They are sick of being taxed to death by this Government and smeared as racist if they complain about unchecked immigration. They are being forced out of their own land….

“Labour are still not willing to do the single thing that could help solve this problem, which is to rip up the Human Rights Act NOW. This one single piece of legislation has effectively turned our capital city into Londonistan. The act is exploited by extremists and allows them to stick two fingers up at our laws and values. They’re aided and abetted by leeching lawyers while the more vocal sections of the Muslim community like to wallow in their own self-pity amid claims of social deprivation and Islamophobia….

“People have been remarkably tolerant since 7/7 but the bare-faced cheek of sending an open letter to Blair demanding a change in our foreign policy could act like a red rag to a bull.”

Jon Gaunt in The Sun, 15 August 2006