A draconian new law is expected to force immigrants to the Netherlands to sit a tough exam on Dutch history, geography and culture or face heavy fines. The rules, drafted by the country’s hardline immigration minister, “Iron Rita” Verdonk, and likely to be approved this autumn, will set a challenge for up to half a million mainly Muslim immigrants, including some who have lived in Holland for 30 years. The legislation, which is due to come into force on January 1 next year, requires immigrants to attend 600 hours of coursework before being tested. Failure to attend the course or pass the exam within five years will trigger an annual fine of almost £700, cuts in benefits or the termination of a residence permit.
Category Archives: Right wing
Daniel Johnson on Forest Gate
Daniel Johnson offers his take on the Forest Gate police raid for the benefit of US readers:
“At a press conference on Tuesday, the two Muslim suspects [sic] were flanked by ‘civil liberties heavyweights’. They included Gareth Pierce, a left-wing lawyer who also represents Guantánamo detainees and sundry other extremists, and Asad Rehman, a former sidekick to George Galloway (founder of the Respect Party) and self-appointed spokesman for every anti-Western, anti-war, anti-capitalist cause. Looking slightly out of place among the shaven-headed, bushy-bearded Islamists was Canon Ann Easter, a dean of the Church of England. Canon Easter had turned her church into a television studio for the benefit of this leftist-Islamist media circus. Somehow, it does not surprise me that the local mosque had declined to do this. The Islamists disapprove of women priests, but they presumably see in Canon Easter what Lenin called a ‘useful idiot’ who can reassure the infidels. Unfortunately, Canon Easter is by no means untypical. England’s established church has a deplorable record of ‘internalizing the hatred of the West that defines the shared universe of radical Islamism and the revolutionary left’, as Melanie Phillips puts it in her book Londonistan.”
Forest Gate Two – victims? Nah, says Simon Heffer
“First he heard a scream. The next thing Mohammed Abdulkayar remembered was making eye contact in the darkness with the man who stood at the bottom of the stairs. At that instant, without warning and, he says, without provocation, the police officer fired a shot which tore through his chest and exited through his right shoulder. He slumped against the wall, bleeding and senseless….
“Visibly distressed, with his wound still bandaged and with his arm in a sling, Mr Abdulkayar gave his first full account of the events of June 2…. ‘I was begging the police “please, please, I can’t breathe”. He just kicked me in my face and kept on saying “shut the fuck up”. One of the officers slapped me over the face. I thought they were either going to start shooting me again or were going to shoot my brother. I still didn’t know that it was the police because they hadn’t said a word about police’.”
Hugh Muir reports on yesterday’s press conference by the two innocent men targeted in the Forest Gate police raid.
For his part, Telegraph journalist Simon Heffer complains that “pacifists, anti-racists, radical Marxists, anarchists, anti-Blairists and others of varying degrees of conviction and opportunism” have “branded the two brothers in the Forest Gate raid ‘victims’ – a word used by the chairman of their press conference yesterday. It is a word that is clearly losing its force in our language. There seems to be a pursuit of moral equivalence with the more usual idea of a ‘victim’ of terror.”
New documentary denigrating Islam ready for release
A new documentary aimed at denigrating Islam and attempting to show that it is not a religion of peace but war and conflict is due to be released in three US cities on July 7. The documentary called “Islam: what the West needs to know” has been produced by a company with the improbable name of Quixotic Media and will be initially released in Washington, Atlanta and Chicago.
The 98-minutes film’s main idea, according to the producers, is that it is not correct that those who commit violence in the name of Islam misinterpret the religion’s teachings, because Islam is a “violent, expansionary ideology that seeks the destruction or subjugation of other faiths, cultures and systems of government”. The documentary consists of interviews, selected citations from Islamic texts and Islamic artwork, computer-animated maps, Islamic television broadcasts and footage featuring Western leaders. The producers claim that the film’s tone is “sober, methodical and compelling”.
Fallaci trial begins today in Italy
“Courtroom Jihad in Italy: the Fallaci trial begins today, no doubt with the mujahedin laughing behind their palms at the indignant compliant dhimmis.” Robert Spencer once again rallies to the defence of poor oppressed Oriana Fallaci.
Yes, that’s the same Oriana Fallaci who in a recent interview with the New Yorker threatened to blow up a mosque being built at Colle di Val d’Elsa, near Siena.
Forest Gate – it was a terrorist plot (according to Mad Mel)
Melanie Phillips thinks that the Forest Gate police raid may have involved terrorism after all. She suggests that Al-Qaida could have fed false information to the authorities in order to “lead the security forces up the garden path. This is because it is a core al Qaeda strategy to use dissimulation and false trails to confuse its terrorist targets. Drawing on the Islamic principle that lies or omissions for the ‘greater good’ of Islam are permissible, al Qaeda training manuals carry detailed instructions on the use of deception…. The aim of sowing such confusion is to produce precisely what is now happening in Britain. The security services are humiliated and made to look incompetent, with the result that people increasingly conclude that the terrorist threat is exaggerated. Warnings of the severity of such a threat are thus increasingly disbelieved, and with the nation’s guard lowered it becomes far easier to mount a truly deadly attack.”
Observer boosts Ann Coulter
A correspondent writes: “Think it’s worth mentioning that the latest Observer‘s review section is basically a huge plug for Ann Coulter’s new book. Her visage dominates the front page and there’s a gushing two page interview inside. Her nauseating racism is presented as ‘controversial’ bravery, ever-so-witty, she’s-got-a-point-y’know – all the usual trashy excuses that petit-bourgeois fuckwits trundle out for bigotry. Seems to me that the paper has made a strategic editorial decision to line itself up with this kind of Liberal Islamophobia and is pushing it systematically. Hardly surprising given its Bomb The Darkies position over the war, but still worth noting.”
Quite right, we should have posted on this. See the Observer, 11 June 2006
‘The Muslims are coming!’
The moment of Melanie Phillips’ panicked self-defenestration before the advancing Islamist horde is surely imminent, Andrew Murray suggests.
Jihad Watch on Dr Bari
Newly elected general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, Mohammed Abdul Bari, has given an interview to the Daily Telegraph in which he puts over a characteristically restrained and moderate message. But this is just not good enough for our friend Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch. He takes it as evidence that Dr Bari “holds to the same goal as that of the Al-Ghurabaa types, but is just slicker about it”. As for Dr Bari’s suggestion that relations between the police and Muslim communities in London would be improved by the recruitment of 3,000 more Muslim policemen, Spencer comments sarcastically: “Foxes Guarding the Henhouse Alert.”
‘England afraid to fly its own flag’
One of our readers has drawn our attention to an article by one Modi Kreitman that recently appeared in the Israeli online publication YNet News. It is headlined “England afraid to fly its own flag”, and Kreitman writes: “Following warnings by extremist Islamic group al-Muhajiroun, in which the group said that the red cross in the England flag symbolizes the ‘blood thirsty crusaders’ and the occupation of Muslims, some of the largest companies in England have ordered their workers not to wave the flags.”
The origin of the YNet News report is an article in the Sun newspaper which contains the following passage: “Anjem Choudary, a former leader of the Islamic extremist group Al-Muhajiroun, claimed the St George flag symbolised a bloodthirsty past. He said: ‘The cross does represent Christianity and for Muslims it also represents a crusader history of occupation and murder’.”
If you read the original piece, you can see how Kreitman has distorted it. In the Sun article, Choudary’s comment is given as an example of how some British Muslims refuse (for perfectly legitimate reasons, I would say) to wave the St George flag. There is no suggestion that Choudary issued any threats, nor does the Sun claim that the various companies that they say have banned the St George flag did so in response to threats from Choudary or anyone else. The Sun‘s argument is that the ban was motivated by the view that the flag is associated with racism and it blames “political correctness” for the decision.
So, basically, the YNet News article is a pack of lies.