Category Archives: Right wing

Let’s stop pretending Muslim hardliners are a tiny minority – Express

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Let’s stop pretending Muslim hardliners are a tiny minority

By Leo McKinstry

Daily Express, 15 August 2005

Since the July bombings in London, there has been a remorseless barrage of official propaganda telling us we have nothing to fear from Islam. It is a religion of peace, we are told, compatible with the western values of democracy, freedom and equality. Politicians, police chiefs, broadcasters and church leaders have queued up to warn against judging the overwhelming majority of moderate Muslims by the actions of a few criminals.

Typical of this attitude was the claim of Brian Paddick, Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner, that “Islam and terrorism are two words that do not go together”.

But it is increasingly difficult to sustain this pretence in the face of all the evidence of dangerous Islamic fundamentalism in our midst. Far from existing only on the lunatic fringes, the hardliners are part of the Muslim mainstream. An investigation by BBC’s Panorama, to be aired next Sunday, has highlighted the extremism at the heart of the Muslim Council of Britain, the most important Islamic organisation in the country.

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‘Pakistanophobia’ spiralling in France

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The July 7 London attacks perpetrated by four British Muslims, including three of Pakistani origin, are having domino effects on the Pakistani minority in France, sparking an unprecedented Pakistanophobia.

“This close media and security scrutiny is really playing on the nerves of the Pakistanis in France,” Abdel Rahman Quraishi, the chairman of the Federation of Pakistani Organizations in France , told IslamOnline.net.

“A right-wing newspaper, for instance, launched a ferocious campaign against Pakistanis in France and placed them in one basket, calling them a ‘cause for concern.’”

Quraishi, who is also the imam of the main Pakistani mosque in Saint Denis, northern Paris , said the federation is planning to take legal action against the newspaper.

“A delegation representing the Pakistani minority went to the British embassy in Paris immediately after the attacks and offered heartfelt condolences,” he recalled.

Islam Online, 14 August 2005

Showing solidarity with Muslims insults gays – Rod Liddle

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rod_Liddle“The chief constable of Nottinghamshire police, Steve Green, has just bought 20,000 green ribbons for his officers to wear to that they can ‘show solidarity’ with the county’s Muslim community…. I suppose some people might find it a little sinister that the politically neutral police should have started making such a public declaration of allegiance. If you were gay, for example, you might wonder if the green ribbon meant that the entire police force supported Islam’s rigorous approach to homosexuality.”

Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times, 14 August 2005

‘Islamic radicals run brainwashing camps in Lake District’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamic extremists are running “indoctrination” camps in Britain’s national parks, a senior police officer has warned. “Wherever there’s a national park, you’ll find them – the Yorkshire Dales, the Lake District, the West Highlands.”

Colin Cramphorn, the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, says that the police need greater powers to combat the extremists’ efforts to radicalise young Muslims.

Mr Cramphorn, whose West Yorkshire force has played a leading role in the investigation into the July 7 bombings of London – the suicide bomber team was based on his patch – made his comments in an interview for The Spectator magazine.

Mr Cramphorn said: “Consider the training camps run in this country by the extremists. They’re not like IRA camps in Donegal where people are learning how to fire mortars. They’re actually pure indoctrination camps. It’s much more than just a few white-water-rafting trips in Wales.”

Mr Cramphorn, a former deputy chief constable of the RUC, voiced frustration at the extent of the authorities’ powers to combat such activities. He said that there might be lessons to be learned from the security and legal system evolved to tackle terrorism in Ulster. He added: “All we can do now is track them.”

Times, 12 August 2005

Update:  “The chief constable was using national parks as an analogy,” a West Yorkshire police spokeswoman explains. “He was not talking about camps as physical locations.”

Ontario Shariah law – a good decision

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Christian and Jewish family tribunals have successfully functioned in Ontario since 1991. But then treating women as lesser humans is not one of the religious tenets that christianity or judaism seems to embrace…. I believe that attempting to introduce Shariah into Canada is the beginning of a long campaign to islamicize this country – one way or another.”

Klaus Rohrich welcomes the decision to reject Islamic arbitration bodies in Ontario, but expresses regret that other, more civilised religions have suffered too.

Canada Free Press, 13 September 2005

This is the sort of right-wing bigotry the Worker Communist Party of Iran encouraged with their Islamophobic “anti-sharia” campaign.

Ban hijab not Bakri – Rod Liddle

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rod LiddleRod Liddle finds it ironic that “it is the Charles Moores of our world – the high church, High Tory Right – who are the most persuasive and clear-headed in their public antipathy towards Islam and towards those who would, under the banner of political correctness, afford this still primitive creed some sort of equivalence with post-reformation Christianity”.

On the other side are “those Left-liberal multiculturalist commentators who continue to delude themselves that Islam as a whole is easily compatible with the Western notions of freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, democracy and equality. As a result, we now have a false dichotomy – between something called moderate Islam and this rogue creature, extremist Islam”.

Banning a marginal figure like Omar Bakri is, from Liddle’s perspective, irrelevant. It is Islam as a whole that has to be taken on, by “ensuring that Muslim schoolchildren receive a secular education and banishing the hijab”.

Spectator, 13 August 2005

I’m always amused by these commentators who preach the virtues of “post-reformation Christianity”. This would include the US Christian Right and Ian Paisley, would it?

The Islamization of Europe

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Europe is gradually being transformed into a society in which Islam takes its place, not just as an equal alongside the many other faith communities, but often as the dominant player. This is not purely, or even primarily, a matter of numbers, but is more a matter of control of the structures of society. It is not happening by chance but is the result of a careful and deliberate strategy by certain Muslim leaders…..

“European Muslims are Islamizing many aspects of life…. Halal meat is now routinely served in many British prisons, schools and hospitals, sometimes to Muslim and non-Muslim alike, and the hijab is worn in British schools…. Despite all these advances, Muslims still tend to portray themselves as victims in European society, while the majority society in turn struggles to affirm them and to avoid giving any accidental offence.”

Patrick Sookhdeo on the Virtue Online, 11 August 2005

Muslim convert rejects radical label

Posted on by Bob Pitt

British Muslim, Abdur Raheem Green, has been blocked from coming to Australia. Mr Green attempted to board a plane from Sri Lanka to Wellington on Monday. The plane was due to make a one-hour stop in Brisbane en route. “I was told I could not board because the plane had to stop in Australia,” Mr Green told The Australian.

A man described by some Australian media as one of Britain’s most radical Muslim converts starts a speaking tour today for New Zealand Islamic Awareness Week. Abdur Raheem Green, who rejects the radical label, had been due to speak at the Auckland University of Technology on Monday but the public lecture was cancelled because he had to change his flight plans when he was refused entry to Brisbane for a one-hour stopover. Mr Green said he was told when checking in at Sri Lanka about three days ago that he could not land in Brisbane but was given no reason by the Australian High Commission.

New Zealand Herald, 9 August 2005

See also ABC News, 11 August 2005

The ban followed a right-wing campaign against Abdur Raheem Green, aimed at depicting him as a violent extremist.