Category Archives: Right wing

The return of Mad Mel

Posted on by Bob Pitt

No doubt you were hoping that Melanie Phillips, like Omar Bakri, would make her holiday a long one. But she’s back, with a series of rants that indicate she’s had difficulty bottling up her rage over the past three weeks or so. Here’s the short version: the government’s crackdown on civil liberties doesn’t go nearly far enough, Inayat Bunglawala’s statement that the Panorama attack on the MCB was motivated by a pro-Israel agenda betrays “the signature obsession of the Muslim fanatic”, Patrick Sookhdeo’s Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity is an admirable source of information and analysis and so is Daniel Pipes, the Mayor London is a “groupie for Sheikh Yusuf Quaradawi”, there’s the usual swipe at “the anti-Israel bigotry of the British left”, and so on and so on.

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 26 August 2005

I particularly liked the letter Mel reproduces from one of her admirers denouncing the decision to issue Nottinghamshire police with green ribbons: “Incensed upon reading how the Chief Constable has issued his 4,000 officers with badges pledging support to the Muslim community in the wake of the London bombings I phoned and was put through to his PA…. I was given the usual gumph about how we shouldn’t tar one entire community with the same brush etc etc etc – usual liberal/public sector clap-trap. I suggested that they should in fact wear badges showing solidarity with the community under attack by the fanatical Muslims and the poor devils killed and maimed in these latest attacks. Whereupon I was accused of being a racist.”

It’s political correctness gone mad, I tell you.

Muslims who want Islamic law told to leave Australia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law should get out of Australia, a senior government minister has said, hinting that some radical clerics might be asked to leave.

Australia was a secular state and its laws were made by parliament, Treasurer Peter Costello told national television late Tuesday.

“If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you,” said Costello, who is seen as heir-apparent to Prime Minister John Howard.

“I’d be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another the Islamic law, that that is false.

“There’s only one law in Australia — it’s the law that’s made by the parliament of Australia and enforced by our courts. There is no second law.

“If you can’t agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country which practices it, perhaps, then, that’s a better option,” Costello said.

Asked whether he meant radical clerics would be forced to leave, he replied: “Where a person has dual citizenship, it might be possible to ask them to exercise that other citizenship. That might be a live possibility.”

AFP, 24 August 2005

Robertson, Chavez and double standards

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pat RobertsonState Department spokesman Sean McCormack called Pat Robertson’s remarks about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez “inappropriate”, but stopped short of condemning them. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the Pentagon isn’t in the business of killing foreign leaders, but he also did not denounce Robertson or his remarks. “He’s a private citizen. Private citizens say all kinds of things all the time”, Rumsfeld said.

Democrats called the Bush administration’s response tepid, and said it lends credence to the notion that the White House doesn’t want to offend some of its most loyal supporters. “It seems they are shuffling their feet when they should be running away from what Pat Robertson said”, Democratic political consultant Steve McMahon said. “That this president, who projects himself as brave and bold, doesn’t want to stand up to his own right wing is ironic.”

Associated Press, 24 August 2005

You can just imagine what the response of the Bush administration would be if an American Muslim leader were to call for the killing of a pro-US head of state. And their cries of outrage would of course be accompanied by articles explaining how the ideology of Islam inspires such violent fanaticism. However, when it’s the Reverend Pat Robertson – founder of the Christian Coalition of America, the man who supported Bush’s re-election last year and said he believed the president is blessed by God – calling for the murder of a supposed supporter of “Muslim extremism”, it’s a very different matter.

Michael Graham has a whinge

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“I made the one move certain to endanger my career: I told the truth about a minority group. And in the politically correct nation we live in today, that’s the fast track to the unemployment line…. I was fired, according to the termination letter I received from ABC Radio, for ‘offensive’ comments I made on the air regarding Islam and terrorism. Coincidentally, all of the comments deemed offensive by the Council of [sic] American-Islamic Relations were listed in my ABC disciplinary memo.

“I was also fired, according to ABC management, for my refusal to apologize for said comments. They further ordered me to agree to ‘additional outreach efforts’ to those ‘offended’ by my opinions. Would I be flipping burgers at the local mosque? Singing ‘Kumbaya’ with CAIR? Hugs for Hamas? Management wouldn’t say.”

Townhall.com, 23 August 2005

MCB and CAIR bigger threat than al-Qaeda, claims Daniel Pipes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Qaradawi and Mayor 2Daniel Pipes asks: “Do terrorist atrocities in the West, such as the attacks of September 11, 2001 and those in Bali, Madrid, Beslan, and London, help radical Islam achieve its goal of gaining power? No, they are counterproductive. That’s because radical Islam has two distinct wings – one violent and illegal, the other lawful and political – and they exist in tension with each other. The lawful strategy has proven itself effective, but the violent approach gets in its way.”

As an example of the efficacy of the “lawful and political” strand of Islamism, Pipes points out that “political imams like Yusuf al-Qaradawi instruct huge audiences on Al-Jazeera television and visit with the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone”.

Surely an argument in favour of the West building links with that wing of Islamism, you might think, in order to isolate and weaken the “violent and illegal” tendencies? Apparently not. According to Pipes, it’s the advances made by “lawful and political” Islamists that pose the greatest threat to western civilisation:

“In tranquil times, organizations like the Muslim Council of Britain and the Council on American-Islamic Relations effectively go about their business, promoting their agenda to make Islam ‘dominant’ and imposing dhimmitude (whereby non-Muslims accept Islamic superiority and Muslim privilege). Westerners generally respond like slowly boiled frogs are supposed to, not noticing a thing…. Terrorism impedes these advances, stimulating hostility to Islam and Muslims. It brings Islamic organizations under unwanted scrutiny by the media, the government, and law enforcement. CAIR and MCB then have to fight rearguard battles.”

So, basically, Pipes regards the likes of Al-Qaida as playing an essentially positive role! This is where the warped logic of Islamophobia leads you.

New York Sun, 23 August 2005

Chavez exports Islamic extremism

Posted on by Eddie Truman

You couldn’t make it up.

US far right Christian fundamentalist Pat Robertson tells the world that Hugo Chavez, the left wing President of Venezuala, is exporting communism and Islamic fundamentalism.

Robertson accused Chavez, a left-wing populist with close ties to Cuban President Fidel Castro, of trying to make Venezuela “a launching pad for Communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.”

CNN, 23 August 2005

Robertson’s solution to the problem? Easy, the US should assassinate Chavez as soon as possible.

‘Talking freely about the enemy’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Daniel Pipes takes exception to the US State Department’s description of Tom Tancredo’s call to nuke Mecca as “insulting and offensive”, and to the sacking of radio talk show host Michael Graham for describing Islam as “a terrorist organisation”. Daniel explains:

“I do think it vital that they and others be able to conduct a freewheeling discussion about the Koran, jihad, radical Islam, Islamist terrorism, and related topics, without fearing a reprimand from the U.S. government or a loss of their livelihood…. nothing can be off limits in this debate; and there must be no penalty for those who express their views.”

Daniel Pipes blog, 22 August 2005

If these are ‘moderate’ Muslims, give me the lunatic fringe any day, says Liddle

Posted on by Bob Pitt

If these are ‘moderate’ Muslims, give me the lunatic fringe any day

By Rod Liddle

Evening Standard, 23 August 2005

I hope you’ve already got your tickets for today’s gig at the London School of Economics by Imam Zaid Shakir. It’s going to be a sell-out and Zaid will be reprising his popular hit: “We Are All Collateral Damage in the War Against Terror”.

The good imam is one of those “respected” and “moderate” Muslims who has “condemned” the terrorist attacks upon London last month “unequivocally”.

You may judge for yourself whether that cumbersome superfluity of quotation marks is warranted by mulling over his assertion that both the 7 July terrorists and our own Prime Minister are “self-righteous murderers whose motives and proclamations mirror each other.”

For Mr Shakir, there is no distinction whatever to be made between a democratically elected politician and a fanatical medieval nutter with seven pounds of gelignite strapped to his waist. There’s condemned unequivocally and “condemned unequivocally”.

I don’t know if Ticketmaster has any seats left for Zaid’s performance, but you can always check the man out by tapping “Muslim Council of Britain” into Google and scrolling down its list of affiliates: Zaid’s gig is keenly awaited by a whole bunch of respected, moderate Muslims (you can supply your own quotation marks from here on in).

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