John Ware, the man responsible for last year’s Panorama stitch-up of the MCB, attacks the Foreign Office over links with Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Needless to say, he includes a plug for Martin Bright.
See also comments by Osama Saeed, Rolled Up Trousers, 12 July 2006
Time to round up the enemy within
By Jon Gaunt, The Sun, 11 July 2006
Now that cricket-loving ordinary Brit Shehzad Tanweer has released his video will, can we stop all the conspiracy theories and demands for a public inquiry into July 7.
Tony Blair was completely right to say that so-called Muslim leaders need to openly condemn the cancer that exists within their communities. And whether they like it or not this is a MUSLIM problem.
That doesn’t mean all Muslims are terrorists but it does mean that all the terrorists we are facing at the moment were or are Muslims, so the prime responsibility lies with the Muslim community.
Now after the disgusting statistic that 13 per cent – or more than 200,000 – British Muslims consider these scum to be martyrs, it is time for action and even more harsh words from Blair.
Forget about Muslim taskforces, social deprivation and exclusion. I want madmen like this cleaned off the streets. This 13 per cent needs to be identified and rounded up.
France has complained to World Cup winner Italy about a right-wing senator’s racist comments that the defeated French team was made up of “blacks, Muslims and communists”, the Italian media reported on Tuesday.
Racism has already threatened to cloud Italy’s victory, with reports that Italian defender Marco Materazzi provoked French star Zinedine Zidane, the son of Algerian immigrants, by calling him a “terrorist”. Materazzi denies making such comments.
There was no such denial from Roberto Calderoli of the Northern League, who lost a ministerial post in a centre-right government earlier this year for wearing a T-shirt with cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad offensive to Muslims.
As the victorious Azzurri returned to a heroes’ welcome in Rome on Monday, Calderoli celebrated it as a “political victory” over a mixed-race French team.
Italy had “beat a team which, in the quest for results, sacrificed its own identity by selecting blacks, Muslims and communists”, the senator said, in comments that were rejected by members of Italy’s new centre-left coalition government.
Sunny Hundal gives a plug to Martin Bright and his forthcoming Channel 4 attack on the MCB and Mockbul Ali. “When asked his thoughts on whispered accusations of him being Islamophobic, he says he finds the idea ‘laughable’.”
Yeah, right. This would be the same Martin Bright who told a FOSIS conference last year that he had no problem describing himself as an Islamophobe because, he explained, there is a lot in Islam to be fearful of.
I note that on Wednesday Bright is addressing a seminar organised by Policy Exchange, the right-wing Tory think tank headed by the appalling Dean Godson. Godson is a notorious opponent of the Peace Process in the north of Ireland, and the purpose of the seminar is evidently to draw a parallel between the the UK government’s supposed capitulation to Irish Republican “terrorists” and its capitulation to Islamism. In both cases, Godson’s line is that the government should reject dialogue and co-operation with organisations that have mass support in the community and instead turn to other individuals with more “acceptable” politics who represent nobody but themselves.
People like … well, Sunny Hundal.
“On 17 September this year Alton Towers is to be handed over to the Muslims for a day. There will, therefore, be no music, no gambling and of course no alcohol. The rides will be segregated between men and women and your usual ten quid botulo-burger’n’fries will be prepared in accordance with halal practice. There will be prayer mats scattered around, so that you can give thanks to Allah for not having been thrown head first out of the big dipper. Who knows – perhaps they will adapt some of the rides for the day: maybe the chamber of horrors will be full of Hasidic Jews wreathed in sinister smiles.”
Rod Liddle in the Spectator, 8 July 2006
A prominent US pastor and a former advisor to President George W. Bush has drawn fire from leaders in the Muslim minority, rights activists and politicians for calling Islam a “dangerous” religion.
“It appears that he doesn’t have that much knowledge about Islam,” Altaf Ali, executive director of the Florida Chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, told The Miami Herald on Saturday, July 8. He said he has tried unsuccessfully to meet with Dozier.
Appearing on the Steve Kane Radio Show, The Rev. O’Neal Dozier, a Broward clergyman and an ally of Governor Jeb Bush, criticized Islam as a “cult” religion.
“The Islamic religion in my view is a cult,” Dozier told the Herald Friday, July 7, when asked to recap the controversial comments he made earlier on the show. “On the show I said that Islam is a dangerous religion,” he added, refusing to disavow his comments.
Correspondents in Brighton have sent us the following report on the Omar Deghayes case:
The Sunday Times on 18th June published an article attacking the brother of the British-resident Guantánamo detainee Omar Deghayes. The Save Omar campaign has widespread support in Sussex, where Omar lived for many years and where his family still live. He came to live near Brighton as a child refugee, after his father had been assassinated in Libya. The campaign to secure Omar’s release is backed by the Argus newspaper in Brighton and by all six of the Sussex MPs – Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative. The Sunday Times article seems to be deliberately aimed at undermining this broad support.
At no time were campaign members consulted about any of the allegations made, so any reporting that the “revelation surprised supporters of the campaign” is untrue. They heard nothing of the allegations until the paper appeared, and they gradually realised that a man who introduced himself at a campaign meeting as a visitor to Brighton who had come to look after a sick relative for a fortnight, and asked if he could join the meeting, was in fact an undercover reporter.
The article presents a highly confused account of two separate issues: the history of the mosque, of which Abu Baker Deghayes is not the imam; and the campaign for justice for his brother, which is entirely separate from the mosque, and emerged from a local anti-war movement and Amnesty International. As a campaign for due process which grew out of concern for the preservation of civil liberties in the troubled waters of the war on terror, we support the family of Omar Deghayes and their quest for justice. Omar has been detained without charge or trial for four years. Nothing is known of his guilt or innocence, because he has been denied due process. Omar is in the legal vacuum created by the war on terror.
The campaigners point out that an hour of clandestine note-taking is not enough to come to anything like a real understanding of the long and painful history of the Deghayes family, and the making of allegations as to the character of Abu Baker Deghayes is shabby and tendentious.
“If Daniel Pipes is not diverting attention from Israeli murder of Palestinian schoolchildren, is not attacking Arabs and Muslims, or is not intimidating university professors in Middle Eastern studies, one would find him exercising his racism and extremism in his most recent project, Islamist Watch. The Middle East Forum website has been carrying a job announcement – the director for the forum’s new ‘Islamist Watch’ project. This project will add new weapons to Pipes’ long campaign against Islam and Islamists…. Given the years of campaigning against Islamists by Pipes, this suggests that Muslims in the US and the West are in for more hate campaigns and targeting. It is a recipe for increased paranoia, which may be what Pipes wants.”
Jihad Khazen in Dar Al-Hayat, 1 July 2006
“BRITAIN’S biggest fun park has sparked a race row – with a MUSLIMS-ONLY day. Up to 28,000 are expected at Alton Towers on September 17 when there will be no music, booze or gambling. Instead there will be prayer areas, Muslim stalls and all food served will be HALAL. Organisers Islamic Leisure have billed it the First National Muslim Fun Day and tickets can only be bought through their website. Non-Muslims phoning the Staffordshire park have been refused tickets. One, George Hughes, 19, who rang up for 15 tickets for a pal’s birthday, said: ‘I couldn’t believe it. It’s the only day we can go, yet I can’t because I’m not Muslim. Can you imagine all the fuss if there was a Christians-only day?'”
See also BNP news report, 28 June 2006 and Combat 18 discussion forum, 2 July 2006
“Today, the radical Islamist community stands strong in Texas and Connecticut as one unified force, under the aegis and aura of the Muslim Brotherhood, ready to assist the coming generation in its future quest to become even stronger. Unfortunately, the unity that brings these groups together is also the same unity that will attempt to destroy us from within – all along, while America provides them with a platform to express their anger and assist in our demise.”
Joe Kaufman at Front Page Magazine, 30 June 2006
Substitute “London” for “Texas and Connecticut” and “Britain” for “America” and it could be David T of Harry’s Place writing, couldn’t it?