Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has sounded a warning by saying Muslims would always identify themselves by religion before nationality. Australian Federation of Islamic Councils president Rahim Ghauri questioned the media mogul’s knowledge of Islam. “I don’t know how much experience Mr Murdoch has in dealing with Muslims, apart from the things that his reporters write about Muslims,” he said.
Category Archives: Right wing
‘Inconveniencing Muslims’
“Police have no right to rush into action on dubious intelligence, say most Muslims in poll”, a headline reads in today’s Guardian. Sounds reasonable to me. Not to Robert Spencer, though. He comments: “So it’s better to be blown up than risk inconveniencing innocent Muslims. I see.” We suspect that if Spencer himself were shot by police while walking down the stairs of his own home in his pyjamas, he might view this as rather more than a mere inconvenience.
More nonsense from David T
It’s not just the BNP who are pissed off about IslamExpo. They are joined by David T of Harry’s Place, who claims that “it is impossible to miss the dominant presence of the falangist Muslim Brotherhood and of other allied Islamist groupings. That much is apparent from the event’s home page, where the speakers who are pictured and presented prominently include a range of high profile Muslim Brotherhood activists, including … Tariq Ramadan”. So, according to this nonsensical argument, the Muslim Brotherhood are fascists and Professor Ramadan is one of their activists.
This would be the same Tariq Ramadan who has stated: “je n’ai pas de lien organique et organisationnel avec les Frères musulmans. Ma pensée est indépendante et ne s’élabore pas dans le cadre de leurs structures, dont je ne suis pas et que je ne représente pas, contrairement à ce que continuent à diffuser divers services de police en Europe…. j’ai des divergences de vue réelles et profondes avec la pensée des Frères, avec la façon dont sont gérées leurs structures et dont ils conçoivent leur engagement sur le terrain.” (Alain Gresh and Tariq Ramadan, L’Islam en questions, pp.35-6.)
But what can you expect from David T? Elsewhere he has denounced Yusuf al-Qaradawi as a “Qutbist“, when Qaradawi’s differences with Sayyid Qutb are publicly stated and indeed obvious to anyone with an elementary knowledge of the subject. And this from a man who announces in his Guardian Comment is Free profile that his field of expertise is “the state of the British Left generally, and in particular … its strange romance with political Islam”. Unfortunately, David T’s attitudes towards the Left and Islamism are determined by the same underlying principle – ignorant bigotry.
Michael Gove on the dangers of Tariq Ramadan
“The British State does not have the courage to face down the advocates of political Islam”, Tory MP Michael Gove tells us in an extract from his forthcoming book Celcius 7/7.
Gove is appalled by the fact that the Home Office is prepared to consult the MCB, the most representative Muslim organisation in the UK, along with people like “Professor Tariq Ramadan, grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Professor Ramadan is not, of course, obliged to follow in the footsteps of his forebears. But he gives it a good try. Professor Ramadan has been characterised as a moderate because he has said that he ‘agrees with integration’ of Muslims in the West. But he has also insisted that ‘we [Muslims] are the ones who are going to decide the content’. Bernard Kouchner, the French Socialist and former health minister, has described Ramadan as ‘absolutely a kook with no historical memory’ and ‘a dangerous man’.”
Gove complains: “A rising generation has been encouraged by those Muslims most prominent in public life to put their Islamic identity ahead of their British citizenship. That generation will have heard the Muslims most fêted by government pay tribute to terrorist leaders and fundamentalist ideologues as figures worthy of respect. That generation will also have had its sense of grievance nurtured even as its sense of separateness has been reinforced. For Islamists and their allies, it has been a golden prospect.”
For Osama Saeed’s comments see Rolled Up Trousers, 26 June 2006
Most Dutch say Islam incompatible with Western society
“Islam is incompatible with modern Western society, according to a majority of those responding to a recent Dutch survey. Most of the people polled expressed a negative view of Islam and Muslims. The survey was released the same week that a Dutch Justice Ministry report said radical Islam had made significant inroads among the country’s immigrants, posing a threat to the nation’s security.
“Known for its laissez-faire social attitudes, the sharp turn in public opinion against Islam in the Netherlands has sparked a debate that has prompted criticism of Queen Beatrix and the government for allegedly abandoning Western values in the face of Muslim pressure.
“The poll conducted by Dutch research firm Motivaction for the GPD newspaper chain on June 2 found that 63 percent of those surveyed believed Islam was incompatible with modern European life. More than a quarter of respondents said Muslim immigrants were rude, lazy, intolerant and prone to criminal behavior. They said the increase in Muslim immigration has had a negative effect on civic and social life….”
Ha’aretz boosts Bat Ye’or
“Bat Ye’or’s most recent book, Eurabia – The Euro-Arab Axis, which was published in English in 2005, could not have been published at a better time as far as she is concerned, precisely when the question of the Muslim immigrants’ integration into the continent and Europe’s cultural coloration is coming up repeatedly for discussion. The terror attacks in Madrid and London, the Prophet Mohammed cartoons, the murder of the Dutch director Theo Van Gogh and the riots about six months ago in the Paris suburbs have made these questions more critical. Europe, with its pluralist and democratic ethos, has hesitated in its reaction to these phenomena, although today there is a move toward policy changes.
“Europe’s hesitation has helped bolster extremist attitudes toward Muslim immigration in particular. In the political realm, this is seen among the far-right movements. In intellectual circles, this is evinced inter alia by people like the provocative Italian journalist and writer Oriana Fallaci, Dutch member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and also Bat Ye’or. Although all of these individuals are opposed to the extreme right and its violence, they are warning that Europe as a secular, enlightened civilization with a Judeo-Christian background is dying. In its stead, says Bat Ye’or, will come a civilization subjugated to Islamic forces and their jihad ideology.”
Global warming – a diversion from the threat of Islamic terrorism
A correspondent writes: “This is bonkers even by FrontPage standards – global warming is a conspiracy promoted by liberals in order to distract us from the threat of Islamic Fascism! Of course! Why hadn’t I noticed that before?”
See Dennis Prager’s article in Front Page Magazine, 20 June 2006
America and Islam: collision inevitable?
Yes, says Yousseff Ibrahim.
Blame it all on multiculturalism
“… both Canada and Britain need to face the fact that multiculturalism, which for both countries is an article of faith, has brought havoc in its wake. This doctrine holds that all minority cultures must enjoy equal status with the majority, and that any attempt to impose the majority culture over those of minorities is by definition racist…. In the wake of the London bombings, people came up with a litany of excuses – such as the war in Iraq, poverty or Islamophobia – to explain what had happened. There was a widespread determination to avoid discussion of the actual cause: religious fanaticism. The orthodoxy of minority rights means any criticism of minorities is deemed unsayable…. The greatest exponents of this morally upside-down grievance culture are those Muslims for whose pathological inferiority complex it seems to be tailor-made.”
Melanie Phillips offers her thoughtful advice to Canadians following the arrest of 17 suspected terrorists in Ontario.
Meanwhile, Matthew Norman has his own advice for Mad Mel: “I beg Melanie to learn meditation, yoga or some other technique for finding inner calm. This constant hysterical raging cannot be good for the health.”
Tariq Ramadan vs. Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Interesting report by John Lloyd in the Financial Times on the clash between Tariq Ramadan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the Engelsberg seminar in Sweden, though where Lloyd got the idea that Hirsi Ali is a “leader of European Muslim opinion” is anyone’s guess.