“While Western Europe is turning Muslim, its Christian Churches are committing suicide. A Muslim would never allow his mosque to be turned into a dormitory for non-believers. This, however, is exactly what the Belgian Catholic Church is doing. The Belgian Bishops have already opened up 20 churches and chapels to illegal immigrants – so-called ‘sans-papiers’.”
Category Archives: Right wing
Australian Muslims reject attack by Cardinal Pell
The Islamic Council of Victoria have put out a media release in response to an article on Islam by Cardinal George Pell, Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, which drew on such writers as Daniel Pipes, Andrew Bostom and William Dalrymple to portray Islam as an inherently violent religion that poses a threat to Western democracies.
Predictably, Robert Spencer rallies to Pell’s defence: Dhimmi Watch, 5 May 2006
See also “Aussie Muslims slam priest for ‘ignorant’ Qur’an remarks”, Islam Online, 5 May 2006
Bush’s historian
“… in recent years his ideas have been based less and less on solid research, and directed more and more towards providing a scholarly veneer for the Bush administration’s Middle East policies. His track record in that area is pretty bad. He was one of the key figures promoting the invasion of Iraq and, presumably drawing on his knowledge of Turkey, he argued that his chum Ahmad Chalabi, the convicted fraudster, could become an Iraqi version of Ataturk. More recently, he has had some batty thoughts about an Islamic takeover of Europe by the end of the century – a prediction that is now ‘widely accepted’ according to at least one fear-mongering American commentator.”
Brian Whitaker celebrates the 90th birthday of Bernard Lewis, the man who discovered the “clash of civilisations”.
‘While Europe slept’
“In Europe’s supremely politically correct climate … it is considered racist and culturally oppressive to negatively talk about anything that is even peripherally related to Muslim immigration…. In many ways, Old Europe is already culturally destroyed. After the trauma of two world wars, Western Europe decided that its culture is not worth saving…. Anti-Americanism is not a philosophy that fills the void. Islam fills the vacuum more completely…. family unification rights are exploited in much of the European Union to bring whole clans of people from Muslim countries.”
David Forsmark in FrontPage Magazine, 3 May 2006
Still, it’s not all doom and gloom. Happily there are “small indications that there may be a silent majority in Europe who can be appealed to – Fortuyn, after all, probably would have been the Prime Minister of the Netherlands had he not been shot”.
Drink-soaked popinjay may initial Euston Manifesto
Drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay (not our description) Christopher Hitchens today teased the 977 lonely hearts the Euston Manifesto has brought together with a suggestion he may consider initialing the document. “So call me a neo-conservative if you must: anything is preferable to the rotten unprincipled alliance between the former fans of the one-party state and the hysterical zealots of the one-god one.” Hitch reveals that he has “been flattered by an invitation to sign it, and I probably will”.
There will be sighs of relief amongst many on the left who were likewise flattered to be asked to sign an attempt to establish a left neo-conservative grouping in the UK but read the manifesto and instantly realised what was going on.
See Christopher Hitchens, “At last our lefties see the light”, Sunday Times, 30 April 2006
Martin Sullivan adds: And now Mad Mel has declared herself “delighted” by the Euston Manifesto – “it’s great to see such a brave statement of decent principles and an open denunciation of the left for being on the wrong side of history. Such a challenge from within its own ranks is essential if the left is ever to stop causing so much lethal damage to the west”.
Meanwhile, online signatories to the Euston Manifesto have been outlining their motives for signing. Harriet Baber explains that “we liberals need to take back the Enlightenment” – which apparently means supporting human rights, “not peace, non-interference in the business of sovereign nations or respect for other cultures”. Neil Denny has signed in protest at a situation in which “to declare a support for Enlightenment values is to seemingly out oneself as an Islamophobe and a racist”. And Aidan Fleming adds: “The curse of democracy is the Qur’an. All supporters of the Euston Manifesto Group should read, The Sword Of The Prophet by Serge Trifovic. It should be declared that ISLAM is not a religion but a non-democratic political organisation.”
Times attack on Muslim college
An Islamic college accused of teaching extremist doctrine has hit back dismissing the article in The Times newspaper as immature and unfounded and describing it as a classic example of an Islamophobic report that incites to violence and hatred.
Hawza Ilmiyya in London, a Shiite seminary, labelled Sean O’Neill’s report as totally biased, erroneous and shocking, that was done to “provoke tension in different parts of society between Muslims and non-Muslims” and which has since led to the institution receiving threatening phones calls and death threats.
The article entitled: “Muslim students ‘being taught to despise unbelievers as filth’”, claimed that anonymous students from the college were disturbed and worried over a medieval text being taught that apparently described non-Muslims as “filth” and likened them to dogs and pigs.
But the college has rejected the portrayal of its academic environment as a “hotbed of religious intolerance and extremism” as going against the very ethos upon which it was established in 2002 – “to train religious scholars and Imams to serve the growing needs of the Muslim community in Britain”.
Mohammad Saeed Bahmanpour, the Director of Studies at the college, said that neither he nor any of his students had ever learned to “despise” anyone. “We do not even despise Sean O’Neill who has written this sensational and confusing report,” he said.
Europe threatened by Muslim hordes (part 346)
Jamie Glazov interviews Morten Messerschmidt of the Danish People’s Party. “Tell us the impact that Muslim immigration is having on Europe”, Glazov asks, to which Messerschmidt replies:
“It is well know that the Muslim immigrants are disproportional in representing crime records; that the hate towards Jews is increasing in Europe, because of these groups. The serious mistreatment of women, which we see in the Muslim world, is now also taking place in Europe. Therefore, we know that the lack of labor-participation, which is connected to these people living on welfare, is an economic threat to the stability of our societies. In many European countries we speak about the necessity of changing the welfare-payments, but the truth is that if we did not have the Muslim burden, many of these changes would not be required.”
US university won’t reprimand professor for racial slurs
Distancing itself from the remarks, Michigan State University (MSU) said professor Indrek Wichman was exercising his free speech right when describing Muslims as “brutal and uncivilized” and telling Muslim students to return to their “ancestral homelands.”
“He was cautioned that any additional commentary … could constitute the creation of a hostile environment, and that could … form the basis of a complaint,” Terry Denbow, a spokesman for MSU, was quoted as saying by Detroit Free Press. He stressed that the remarks, though “very inappropriate,” do not violate the university’s antidiscrimination policy.
In an e-mail to the university’s Muslim Students’ Association (MSA) on February 28, Wichman wrote: “I counsul [sic] you dissatisfied, agressive [sic], brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems [sic] to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile ‘protests’.” He was referring to global protests against Danish cartoons that ridiculed Prophet Muhammad.
“If you do not like the values of the West – see the 1st Ammendment [sic] – you are free to leave. I hope for God’s sake that most of you choose that option. Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.”
The Muslim Students’ Association called Monday for the university to issue a letter of reprimand. They have met several times with university officials since February 28 and went public with the e-mail Monday because the school had not acted. The student group also wants the university to implement diversity training programs for faculty and a mandatory freshman seminar on hate and discrimination.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), America’s largest Muslim civil liberties group, has also urged the university to reprimand the professor.
“The university needs to take appropriate disciplinary action in this case to demonstrate through its actions that anti-Muslim bigotry will not be tolerated on campus,” Dawud Walid, head of the Michigan chapter of CAIR, said in a statement on the group’s website. He said that it is “unconscionable” for a professor to use his university e-mail account to “foster a hostile learning environment for Muslim students.”
Pipes warns against sharia law … in Tennessee!
In the USA the case of Bill Hobbs has become a cause célèbre for the Right.
In February, as part of his defence of Jyllands-Posten’s decision to publish anti-Muslim caricatures, Hobbs invited readers of his weblog to “exercise your right to free expression by drawing pictures of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed”. As his own contribution to this worthy cause, Hobbs posted a stick drawing of the Prophet holding a bomb. The cartoon was entitled “Mohammed Blows”.
In response to a (Christian) critic who accused him of showing “distasteful insensitivity to people of other faiths”, Hobbs wrote: “I am insensitive toward religions that have a large number of adherents who are running around blowing stuff up and threatening to kill non-believers over cartoons. Yes, I plead insensitivity. I would prefer my children not grow up in a world governed by Islamofacists.”
As a result of the furore, Hobbs resigned from his job as an editor and news writer on the marketing and communications staff at Belmont University in Nashville, the assumption being that he jumped before he was pushed. Hobbs was immediately adopted as a hero by right-wing bloggers in the US. And now Daniel Pipes has waded into the fray. According to Pipes, writing at FrontPage Magazine, “this firing in Tennessee amounts to a capitulation to Islamic law. Each surrender means the Shari‘a will move inexorably forward.”
I used to think that Pipes was perhaps marginally less barking than Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, but these days it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell them apart.
Opus Dei paper prints prophet in hell cartoon
A cartoon depicting Muhammed in hell has been published by an Italian magazine close to Opus Dei, bringing angry criticism from Muslim groups and disapproval from the Vatican.
The drawing in Studi cattolici takes its inspiration from Dante’s Divine Comedy, in which the 14th-century poet imagines being guided through hell by the Latin poet Virgil, and sees the prophet cut in two as his punishment for spreading division. In the cartoon, Virgil points out another figure to Dante, saying: “And that one there with his pants down, that’s Italian policy towards Islam.”
The caption uses a play on words to suggest Italy has chickened out in its attitude to Muslims.
See also Daily Telegraph, 17 April 2006