Category Archives: Right wing

Muslims spread disease in hospitals, Sun claims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Some Muslims are undermining the battle to rid Britain’s hospitals of killer infections by refusing to wash their hands when visiting sick relatives. Dispensers containing anti-bacterial gel have been placed outside wards at hospitals all over Britain in a bid to get rid of superbugs like MRSA and PVL. It prevents people bringing in more infections. But some Muslims refuse to use the hand cleansers on religious grounds because they contain alcohol. Health watchdogs are so concerned they intend to meet with NHS bosses in the New Year to try and hammer out a solution.”

Sun, 29 December 2006

(Note also the accompanying “Outrage at ethnic pool” story.)

For a discussion of the Sun article see Rolled Up Trousers, 29 December 2006

Muslim group asks radio host to apologize

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim civil liberties group demanded an apology Thursday from the host of a Los Angeles-area radio show for making fun of a stampede that killed hundreds of Muslims during an annual pilgrimage. The Council on American-Islamic Relations asked for an apology from KFI-AM 640 host Bill Handel, who allegedly made fun of the deaths the same day they happened during a segment he called the “Annual Stampede Report.”

According to the civil liberties group, Handel imitated the people screaming and then joked that the Muslims at the pilgrimage should use a helicopter to monitor pilgrimage traffic, as is done in Los Angeles with the freeways. The group quoted Handel as saying: “This is Mahmoud Nolan. Hajj in the Sky. There is an accident…. Ali lost his sandal on the on-ramp to the Martin Luther King Jr. freeway.”

In March 2004, KFI issued an on-air apology after the group filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission following a skit that claimed Muslims have sex with animals, don’t bathe and hate Jews.

Associated Press, 27 January 2006

For Little Green Footballs, this is yet another example of “whining” by “thin-skinned Muslim advocacy groups” who are trying to “shut down free speech in the US”.

LGF, 27 January 2006

Yet another right-wing attack on multiculturalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Thanks to an epidemic of similar law and order problems in other Western democracies with Muslim immigrant populations, even left-wing liberals are beginning to join the dots, and question multiculturalism. It is not the ‘culturally diverse community, united by an overriding and unifying commitment to Australia’ as the Prime Minister, John Howard, put it in his Australia Day address, which is being questioned, but a welfare-driven ideology, corrupted by politicians chasing the ethnic vote, which has encouraged separate identities.”

Sydney Morning Herald, 26 January 2006

‘The pope’s unexploded bombshell’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Diana West takes up Pope Benedict’s reported statement that Islam is unreformable: “… the question shouldn’t be: ‘Why Can’t Islam Be More Like the West?’ It should be: ‘How can the West prevent itself from becoming more like Islam?’ One obvious answer is an immigration policy aimed at preventing the kind of Islamic demographic shifts we already see transforming Europe.”

TownHall.com, 23 January 2006

Exhibition will combat myths about Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Europe’s biggest exhibition of modern-day Islam will take place in London a year after the 7 July bombings in an effort to depict the religion in a positive light.

The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, is set to launch the event which hopes to “combat the myths, misconceptions and misunderstandings of Islam”. IslamExpo will consist of a series of exhibitions on Islam’s cultural heritage, lectures, debates, films, stand-up comedy and workshops at Alexandra Palace. Organisers plan to invite survivors of the Tube attacks to attend with a special commemoration on the day.

It is hoped that the event will help to improve relations between Britain’s 1.8 million Muslims and the wider community.

Independent, 23 January 2006

For details of Islam Expo, see here.

For the thoughtful comments of Jihad Watch supporters, see here.

More misrepresentation of Manji

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Another puff piece for Irshad Manji, who is apparently a leader of “reform-minded Muslims”.

Sunday Times, 22 January 2006

This despite the fact that Manji is almost universally loathed by Muslims, including the most “reform-minded” of her co-religionists. On the other hand, Manji is greatly admired by the likes of Melanie Phillips and Daniel Pipes.

And while the Murdoch press is happy to promote Manji, it has no hesitation in also publishing articles entitled “How my neighbourhood was lost to the multiculture“.

Dutch immigration restrictions draw fire

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dutch Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk’s recent anti-immigrant measures, including a rule to speak Dutch in public, drew fire from Muslim minority leaders as well as from her own party.

“Linking integration to speaking Dutch in the street is nothing but an attempt to turn a blind eye to certain realities on the ground,” Dris Boujoufi, the deputy chairman of the council of Muslim representatives in the Netherlands, told IslamOnline.net Sunday, January 22. “Immigrants of the second and third generations who were born, raised and taught in the Netherlands are yet unable to integrate though they speak Dutch.”

Verdonk told a meeting of her liberal VVD party on Saturday, January 21, that immigrants must comply with a national code of conduct by speaking Dutch in the street.

Her proposal drew immediate fire from some members of her own party. “I can’t see what would hurt the minister or others if I spoke Surinamese with a friend in the street?” asked Laetitia Griffith, a member of Amsterdam’s College of Aldermen which creates and maintains the city’s systems and policies jointly with the city council and mayor.

Islam Online, 22 January 2006

Watching Jihad Watch

Posted on by Bob Pitt

SpencerYusuf Smith draws our attention to a new blog, Watching Jihad Watch, whose author recently tangled with Robert Spencer over the latter’s statement, as reported by Sara Rosenbaum in her St Petersburg Times article about anti-Muslim hate-sites, that he bans racist comments from Jihad Watch. WJW offers some examples of the repulsive bigotry that has appeared on Jihad Watch, and quotes the following passage from an article written by Jihad Watch president Hugh Fitzgerald:

“… not only should migration be stopped, but life can be made more difficult, if not by the government, then by private individuals, so that Moslems will be discouraged from remaining. What do I mean? I mean that we, as private citizens, do not have to hire Moslems, we do not have to buy their goods, or make their lives, economically, more rewarding. It may seem mean, and many of you may be offended by it, and I am perfectly aware that there are nice Moslems, that there are those who simply ignore the main tenets of Islam. But as a group, the Moslems are a threat to me and those I love. Even the innocent ones, merely by being here, swell Moslem political power.”

The role of right-wing anti-Muslim bloggers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

AAH logoSara Rosenbaum writes on the phenomenon of right-wing US bloggers inciting hatred against Muslims, with particular emphasis of Joe Kaufman’s Americans Against Hate site (which in the interests of accuracy should be required to change its name to “Americans For Hate”):

“Kaufman’s site is only one of a constellation of blogs with names like JihadWatch.com, MilitantIslamMonitor.org, and WesternResistance.com that are dedicated to the surveillance of American Muslims. The blogs link to one another, with more-traveled sites amplifying stories from more obscure ones, like Kaufman’s. He claims he has not found a single mosque in Florida that is not linked to terrorists.

“A lot of people are listening. Last month, after Kaufman called a Tampa Muslim religious retreat a ‘jihad camp for children’ and wrote that the speakers were ‘linked to al-Qaida’, death threats poured in to the Presbyterian camp hosting the event. Muslims say the blogs breed hate. ‘He’s spreading lies, slandering individuals’, said Ahmed Bedier, spokesman for the Tampa Bay chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. ‘These are vigilantes’.”

St Petersburg Times, 16 January 2006

For Kaufman’s reply (condemning Rosenbaum as “biased and irresponsible”!) see here.

And for Western Resistance’s equally irony-free complaint that Kaufman et al have been subjected to a “smear campaign”, see here.

Robert Spencer isn’t happy either. He rejects Rosenbaum’s claim that he admitted to her that Jihad Watch attracts contributions from racists (see for example these comments on the London bombings) on the grounds that he has “pointed out ad infinitum that Islam is not a race” – and he says he never reads the comments anyway.

Jihad Watch, 16 January 2006

Osama Saeed argues that the lesson to be drawn from Rosenbaum’s article is that Muslims need to “get blogging” and counter the influence of the hate-sites.

Rolled Up Trousers, 16 January 2006