Category Archives: Right wing

US paranoia over the Caliphate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The word getting the workout from the nation’s top guns these days is ‘caliphate’ – the term for the seventh-century Islamic empire that spanned the Middle East, spread to Southwest Asia, North Africa and Spain, then ended with the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258. Specialists on Islam say the word is a mysterious and ominous one for many Americans, and that the administration knows it….

“So now, Mr. Cheney and others warn, Al Qaeda’s ultimate goal is the re-establishment of the caliphate, with calamitous consequences for the United States. As Mr. Cheney put it in Lake Elmo, referring to Osama bin Laden and his followers: ‘They talk about wanting to re-establish what you could refer to as the seventh-century caliphate’ to be ‘governed by Sharia law, the most rigid interpretation of the Koran’. Or as Mr. Rumsfeld put it on Monday: ‘Iraq would serve as the base of a new Islamic caliphate to extend throughout the Middle East, and which would threaten legitimate governments in Europe, Africa and Asia.’ General Abizaid was dire, too. ‘They will try to re-establish a caliphate throughout the entire Muslim world,’ he told the House Armed Services Committee in September, adding that the caliphate’s goals would include the destruction of Israel….

“A number of scholars and former government officials take strong issue with the administration’s warning about a new caliphate, and compare it to the fear of communism spread during the Cold War. They say that although Al Qaeda’s statements do indeed describe a caliphate as a goal, the administration is exaggerating the magnitude of the threat as it seeks to gain support for its policies in Iraq. In the view of John L. Esposito, an Islamic studies professor at Georgetown University, there is a difference between the ability of small bands of terrorists to commit attacks across the world and achieving global conquest.”

Elizabeth Bumiller in the New York Times, 12 December 2005

‘A mosque grows in Boston’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Boston MosqueDean Barnett presents “a case study in how the leadership of a large American Islamic group woos and works with politicians, attempts to intimidate its adversaries, and claims to champion moderation – all while keeping company with prominent proponents of hatred and violence” – such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

Daily Standard, 13 December 2005

Not exactly hot news. For earlier coverage, see for example Jihad Watch, 9 March 2004

‘The Pentagon breaks the Islam taboo’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Washington’s policy-makers have been careful in the war on terror to distinguish between Islam and the terrorists. The distinction has rankled conservatives who see scarce difference.” So Paul Sperry complains. Happily, it seems that things are about to change. A new Pentagon briefing paper reveals that “Islam is an ideological engine of war” and that the Prophet sponsored “terror and slaughter” against unbelievers.

Not only that, but the Pentagon’s specialists in Islamic studies have uncovered the strategy behind the well-known Muslim plot to conquer the West.

“The internal document explains that Islam divides offensive jihad into a ‘three-phase attack strategy’ for gaining control of lands for Allah”, Sperry reports. “The first phase is the ‘Meccan’, or weakened, period, whereby a small Muslim minority asserts itself through largely peaceful and political measures involving Islamic NGOs – such as the Islamic Society of North America, which investigators say has its roots in the militant Muslim Brotherhood, and Muslim pressure groups, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose leaders are on record expressing their desire to Islamize America. In the second ‘preparation’ phase, a ‘reasonably influential’ Muslim minority starts to turn more militant. The briefing uses Britain and the Netherlands as examples. And in the final jihad period, or ‘Medina Stage’, a large minority uses its strength of numbers and power to rise up against the majority, as Muslim youth recently demonstrated in terrorizing France, the Pentagon paper notes.”

Front Page Magazine, 14 December 2005

And the same online magazine features an article by one Julia Gorin exposing France’s abject cultural surrender to Islam and warning the rest of the West against following suit. “If France is any indication, it’ll still end in blood, only sooner.” See here.

Blame Muslims for Australian riots (3)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The attack on a surf patrol on Cronulla beach a week ago was the notional trigger for Sunday’s events, but the tangled roots of anger lie deep within the failed multicultural policies foisted on an unsuspecting nation decades back. Though sold with the help of such anodyne ditties as ‘I Am, You Are, We Are Australian’, it has long been apparent many people from certain migrant groups – notably Lebanese Muslims – neither think of themselves as Aussies nor wish to embrace the extraordinary tolerance identified as a remarkable Australian trait….

“Though branch-stacking politicians and academics might like to think multiculturalism is all about exotic clothing and tasty kebabs, those residents who have remained in suburbs subjected to the multicultural experiment feel neglected. They believe they have had to cope with carjackings, gang rapes, drive-by shootings, the occasional explosion at the football, amplified calls to prayer, and gangs of violent young men who boast that they are proud not to be Australian. They have watched newer residents adopt a culture of entitlement and victimhood such that unemployment rates among Muslims are now five and six times those of non-Muslims….

“Those who claim to be outsiders in Australian society must ask whether their isolation is self-imposed, whether they live in self-made ghettos and have made any attempt to accept the culture of the land they have chosen to live in. They have no one to blame but themselves, their parents and community leaders if they accept second-class citizenship and an apartheid of their own making.”

Piers Akerman in the Daily Telegraph, 13 December 2005

Blame Muslims for Australian riots (2)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Melanie Phillips agrees with Tim Priest: “… the widespread spin that has been placed on this disorder, that it has been caused by white racists and that what it reveals is that, under its veneer of multiculturalism, Australia is a fundamentally racist society positively heaving with people with despicable views who have been itching to have a pop at blameless Lebanese Muslims, is very wide of the mark. For it appears that the current unrest was sparked by Lebanese Muslim attacks on two indigenous lifeguards, and that this was only the tip of an iceberg of aggression by this minority which – thanks to the censorship imposed by multiculturalism – has gone all but unreported.”

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 14 December 2005

No to co-operation with Muslim moderates, Times columnist argues

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Islamist violence has … provided a wonderful, unexpected opportunity for these moderates to demand more power and money from the State. This will leave them and their favoured co-religionists as the main intermediaries between the state and the Muslim community…. The panel makes it quite clear that it is not for Islamists alone to make adjustments after 7/7: rather, it is a two-way process in which the needs of two million-plus Muslims weigh equally in the balance with those of all 60 million non-Muslims. British identity will have to evolve into a much looser concept to accommodate them…. One panellist, Tariq Ramadan, is a case in point. This grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood once had his visa revoked in America and was once kept out of France – but is most welcome here.”

Ulster Unionist groupie Dean Godson takes time off from defending the Routemaster bus to slag off the participants in the Home Office task force on the July bombings and its report Preventing Extremism Together.

Times, 13 December 2005

‘Is Islam the problem?’ Australian columnist asks

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Australia does not have a race relations problem. We have a clash of cultures and that’s a big difference – and maybe the problem is certain forms of Islam…. Any form of discrimination based on race or ethnicity – based on the colour of one’s skin or hair or eyes – is inherently immoral, illogical and evil. But culture and religion are behavioural. They involve values…. And if people freely embrace a culture that is antithetical to the prevailing social mores – in our case, I would hope, liberal, enlightenment values – then we are entitled to judge, object, censure and even discriminate…. I admit to feeling a little uneasy at the sight of a Muslim woman shrouded not simply in a headscarf but a face-concealing, head-to-toe chador, and wonder just how much choice she has had in deciding her lifestyle. I am not hugely sympathetic to a Muslim seeking asylum because he claims to have been discriminated against because of his support for sharia law. I cannot celebrate such culture…”

Andrew West in the Sydney Morning Herald, 13 December 2005

Blame Muslims for Australian riots

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Of course, the usual claque of agenda-driven ethnic community leaders were quick to condemn the Cronulla incidents as un-Australian and racist. Never mind the multitude of racist attacks on young Australian men and women during the past decade, which have now manifested into full-blown racial retaliation. In an article on this page nearly two years ago (‘Don’t turn a blind eye to terror in our midst’, January 12, 2004), I argued that the increasing frequency of racially motivated attacks on young Australian men and women – including murders, gang rapes and serious assaults by young men of Lebanese Muslim descent – would rise dramatically throughout Australia. These problems remain widespread and have been documented in the ensuing two years. Yet the NSW Labor Government and police have failed to address the issues in any way….”

Tim Priest in The Australian, 13 December 2005

Sharia – the paranoid Islamophobic fantasies of ‘Left’ and Right

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Homa Arjomand (2)Brett Lock of Outrage has woken from his blogging slumbers and posted a response to this item on Islamophobia Watch, which linked to a BNP article reporting Patrick Sookhdeo’s “shocking conclusion that Islamic (Sharia) law will filter into the existing British legal system”. We suggested that the fascists and Sookhdeo might consider launching a joint campaign against the “Sharia threat” with Outrage and the Worker Communist Party of Iran.

Lock demands: “How can they expect a gay human rights group NOT to oppose sharia law – a law which criminalises, menaces and – too often – kills our kind? And if they understand this, why the snide and slanderous suggestion that we’re in league with the BNP or other right wing fascists?”

Lock & Load, 11 December 2005

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