Mick Hume reassures us that racism isn’t much of an issue in Britain, that Islamophobia barely exists and that the real problem is “our self-flagellatory culture”, which encourages asylum seekers to hate the country that has given them refuge.
These ex-RCPers are really something else, aren’t they? It is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish the contributions of Hume, Kenan Malik et al from the outpourings of the racist Right.
Muslim groups warn tabloids inspire attacks
Morning Star, 29 July 2005
Muslim community leaders accused “xenophobic” tabloids such as the Daily Express yesterday of sparking a violent upsurge of racial attacks in the wake of the recent terror attacks.
The Muslim Association of Britain said that the “hysterical” gutter press – the Express, the Daily Mail and the Sun – had stoked up racial unrest, simply to sell papers, putting British Muslims in danger.
The Islamic Human Rights Commission said that violent attacks have increased 13-fold since July 7. Committee chairman Massoud Shadjareh revealed that verbal and physical assaults have increased from a base rate of six or seven per week to more than 170 in the last fortnight.
Nine mosques have been attacked, a garage has been fire-bombed, people are being assaulted on the street and homes have had their windows broken, he revealed.
“Within the Arab mainstream, two sides are battling for the future of Islam. One is the establishment, which includes regimes and their elitist supporters in the press, academia, mosques, and elsewhere. For years, they have used a mechanism that nurtures incitement against others to stay in power – without free elections – and encourage the Islamist movement now terrorizing the world…. On the other side is the reformist camp, which is fed up with the establishment. Its supporters are allying with the West and backing the struggle against ideological sources of terrorism. They include opposition political figures, student movements, intellectuals, authors, and columnists.”
Steven Stalinsky gives a boost to the pro-imperialist Bush-admirers backed by MEMRI’s “Reform Project”, pretending that they represent a significant ideological force in the Middle East.
Front Page Magazine, 29 July 2005
In an open letter to MEMRI last year, written at the time the organisation was threatening Juan Cole with legal action for telling the truth about them, Marc Lynch had this to say about the Reform Project:
“it tends to select statements by pro-American reformers who concentrate on criticizing other Arabs … with little regard for the real debates going on among Arabs. Your selective translations therefore offer a doubly warped perspective on the Arab debates: first, over-emphasizing the presence of radical and noxious voices; and second, over-emphasizing the importance of a small and marginal group of Arabs who share your own prejudices. What you leave out is almost the entire Arab political debate which really matters to Arabs: a lively debate on satellite stations such as al Jazeera and al Arabiya and in the elite Arab press about reform, international relations, political Islam, democracy, and Arab culture which English-speaking readers would greatly benefit from knowing about.”
“Terrorism expert” Steven Emerson (you remember him – the man who insisted that Muslims were responsible for the 1995 Oklahoma bombing) pours scorn on a recent fatwa against terrorism and extremism (see here) issued by Muslim leaders in the US and Canada:
“In fact, the fatwa is bogus. Nowhere does it condemn the Islamic extremism ideology that has spawned Islamic terrorism….. It does not condemn by name any Islamic group or leader. In short, it is a fake fatwa designed merely to deceive the American public into believing that these groups are moderate…. I spoke with Judea Pearl, father of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl who told me that the fatwa was ‘vacuous because it does not name the perpetrators of Islamic terrorist theologies and leaders of Islamic movements like Yousef Al Qaradawi, Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al Zawahari, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc.’”
Counterterrorism Blog, 28 July 2005
That would be the same Qaradawi who was the subject of a sympathetic article by Daniel Pearl in the Wall Street Journal, would it? (See here.)
A British council has presented resource packs covering the basic teachings of Islam to primary schools across the London borough of Harrow in an effort to provide a better understanding of the Muslim faith, according to a local paper.
“The new resources will help school staff further develop their approach to high quality teaching of Islam – a religion that is far too often misunderstood,” the Harrow Times quoted as saying Councillor Navin Shah, leader of Harrow Council, which has become the first to fully fund the teaching of Islam in primary schools.
The resource packs include books, artifacts, CDs, videos and teaching aids covering the basic Muslim beliefs and practices through interactive class projects.
Resources for secondary schools are also being developed and will be available to schools across the borough, according to the paper.
The packs for primary schools were produced by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), in partnership with the Department of Education and Skills.
“We believe education is the key to creating a vibrant and understanding society,” MCB Secretary General, Iqbal Sacranie, told Harrow Times. “These resources, developed by our team of educationalists, aim to support the teaching of Islam in schools by making available creative, engaging and child-friendly resources on Islam and Muslims.”
Robert Spencer is understandably outraged that an extreme Islamist organisation like the Muslim Council of Britain should be allowed this opportunity to undermine the foundations of western society.
Robert Spencer reassures us that he doesn’t support nuclear attacks on Islam’s holy sites. Aside from anything else, “it contravenes Western principles of justice which, if discarded willy-nilly, would remove a key reason why we fight at all: to preserve Western ideas of justice and human rights that are denied by the Islamic Sharia law so beloved of jihad terrorists”.
Front Page Magazine, 28 July 2005
Well, we certainly look forward to Spencer explaining how the proposal made by his colleague Rebecca Bynum yesterday – that terrorist outrages should be met with reciprocal attacks on Muslim civilians – can be implemented while remaining true to those well-established Western principles of justice and human rights.
And it’s worth noting that Spencer’s supporters are quite taken aback by his refusal to support what they regard as Tancredo’s perfectly reasonable call for nuclear retaliation. See Jihad Watch, 28 July 2005
“Could it be that the young men who committed suicide were neither on the fringes of Muslim society in Britain, nor following an eccentric and extremist interpretation of their faith, but rather that they came from the very core of the Muslim community and were motivated by a mainstream interpretation of Islam?”, Patrick Sookhdeo asks.
“Muslims could also help by stopping the use of their bodies as advertising space for al-Qaeda. Muslim women should cast aside the so-called hijab, which has nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with tribal wear on the Arabian peninsula. The hijab … is now a visual prop of terrorism. If some women have been hoodwinked into believing that they cannot be Muslims without covering their hair, they could at least use headgears other than black (the colour of al-Qaeda) or white (the colour of the Taleban)…. Muslim men should consider doing away with Taleban and al-Qaeda-style beards. Growing a beard has nothing to do with Islam…. The bushy beards you see on Oxford Street are symbols of the Salafi ideology that has produced al-Qaeda and the Taleban.”
Right-wing Iranian exile Amir Taheri – a mainstay of the US neocon consultancy Benador Associates – offers some advice to Muslims.
“Jihadist groups operate ‘with impunity’ in UK.” Well, it must be true. Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch says so, and he has it on the authority of General Musharraf of Pakistan. You couldn’t find more reliable sources than that, could you?
However, when you read the Times article on which Spencer’s claim is based (see here), you find the only two “jihadist groups” that Musharraf claims “operate with full impunity” in Britain are Al-Muhajiroun, which dissolved itself last year, and Hizb ut-Tahrir, which states:
“Hizb ut-Tahrir is convinced that the change we seek must start in the minds of people and we do not accept for people or societies to be forced to change by violence and terror. Consequently, Hizb ut-Tahrir does not advocate or engage in violence. The party strictly adheres to Islamic law in all aspects of its work. It is an Islamic intellectual and political entity that seeks to change people’s thoughts through intelligent discussion and debate. We consider that Islamic law forbids violence or armed struggle against the regime as a method to re-establish the Islamic State.”
A sect that has a negative impact on Muslim communities in Britain, you could argue. But a “jihadist group”? I don’t think so.
Rebecca Bynum proposes the killing of Muslim civilians in retaliation for terrorist bombings:
To fight a terrorist war waged by Muslim civilians, we have no choice but to impose retaliatory measures on Muslim civilians, thereby impeding the advance of Islam, for that is the only thing the Islamic terrorists value, and this is by the standards of Islam they follow. Human life is, for true believing Muslims, famously Hobbesian – ‘nasty, brutish and short’ affair. Human life is not something cherished by Muslims; to be nurtured and preserved above all things, the way it is in our own Judeo-Christian tradition. The ideal Muslim life is one that is sacrificed for Islam. Therefore, we must make certain kinds of Muslim sacrifice, namely suicide bombings designed to kill infidels, totally untenable, and so damaging to the umma, the Community of Believers, and so damaging to the other instruments of Jihad, that the terrorism will cease, or be severely limited in scope.
Are these people seriously loopy, or what? We look forward to Melanie Phillips (who appears to have developed a mutual admiration for Jihad Watch) taking up this suggestion in her next Daily Mail column.