Category Archives: Right wing

Change foreign policy – top Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Senior Muslims have warned the Government that it needed to revise British foreign policy if it wants to put an end to the violence.

Dr Azzam Tamimi, from the Muslim Association of Britain, said the country was in real danger and that this would continue so long as British forces remained in Iraq. He described the July 7 bombings and the attempted attacks in London on Thursday as “horrifying” but said it was not enough to simply unite in condemnation of the bombers.

Dr Tamimi, speaking after a Sky News debate in Birmingham, said: “The latest developments very clearly show this is a very big thing. It’s not just a few individuals from Leeds. I think it’s time everybody got serious and engaged in an attempt to prevent it. Part of that would be to understand what’s going on.

”7/7, 21/7, and God knows what will happen afterwards, our lives are in real danger and it would seem, so long as we are in Iraq and so long as we are contributing to injustices around the world, we will continue to be in real danger. Tony Blair has to come out of his state of denial and listen to what the experts have been saying, that our involvement in Iraq is stupid.”

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‘Radical Islamists at Scots universities’ claim refuted

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Radical Islamic groups are trying to recruit students at Scotland’s universities despite attempts to ban them.

Extremist organisations such as al Muhajiroun and Hizb ut Tahrir are operating under different names and moving bases within the UK to avoid detection, it was claimed yesterday.

The National Union of Students (NUS) Scotland said it was concerned that extremist organisations were trying to operate on campuses and that, although several had been banned, they had circumvented this by changing their names.

The comments came as the author of a study about to be published, called How Safe are British Universities? , said it was vital that universities in Scotland worked more closely with the security services.

Anthony Glees, director of Brunel University’s centre for intelligence and security studies, said his research documented 14 cases since 1993 of people being charged with terrorism offences having been in contact with extremist groups on campus.

This included the case of Shamsul Bahri Hussein, a Malaysian who read applied mechanics at Dundee University and who has links with Jemaah Islamiah, the organisation accused of being behind a string of bombings in Indonesia, including the 2002 Bali blasts.

“The time for a softly, softly approach is over when you are dealing with people who will kill themselves for an ideal. It is a growing problem as more people are attending universities and as some are starved of cash they now recruit more from overseas without being careful enough of who they attract, ” Mr Glees said.

The Herald, 20 July 2005

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Tom Tancredo eyes White House run

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tom Tancredo has been called a one-trick pony of a politician, a man out of step with his party, a bigot. The Republican congressman vehemently opposes illegal immigration, and he created an uproar last week when he talked about nuking Muslim holy sites. No matter, Tancredo is pressing on and even hinting at a long-shot presidential bid in 2008.

Guardian, 22 July 2005

Another article blaming multiculturalism for the London bombings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Since the London bombings several columnists – from Tariq Ali in The Guardian to Phillip Adams in The Australian – have argued that the British brought them on themselves because of Britain’s intervention in Iraq. Well, they’re half right. The British (more precisely, their ineffectual governments) did bring those bombings on themselves.

“The Blair Government’s intervention in Iraq is not to blame. Rather, successive British governments have persisted in the multiculturalist folly that a nation can be built on separate but equal cultures. Moreover, under Tony Blair in particular, Britain’s immigration policies and border controls against illegal immigrants have become international jokes, and now a national tragedy.”

The Australian, 22 July 2005

Tribune publishes Islamophobic rant by Maryam Namazie

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Maryam NamazieThis week’s Tribune features an article by Maryam Namazie of the Worker Communist Party of Iran attacking “political Islam” – and indeed Islam of any sort. Namazie pours scorn on what she calls “the futile and ongoing support for a ‘moderate’ Islam”. Now, that’s exactly the sort of responsible message a progressive labour movement publication should be putting out in the present circumstances, isn’t it?

I particularly liked the quote from the WPI’s glorious founder-leader Mansoor Hekmat (now deceased) which concludes Namazie’s article. This urges us to recognise that “Islam and religion do not have a progressive, supportable faction”. According that logic, the left should be demanding the expulsion of Bruce Kent from CND.

The article is in fact based on a speech given by Namazie to a conference in Paris on earlier this month (see here). Predictably, that speech was greeted enthusiastically by Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch – although he found it a tad extreme (“I disagree with the recommendations about driving religion out of society”!).

The source of this hysteria

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tariq_RamadanPortraying Muslim scholars such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi and even Tariq Ramadan as extremists is absurd – and dangerous, Naima Bouteldja argues.

Guardian, 22 July 2005

An excellent article. However, the author is wrong in assuming that Professor Ramadan’s opponents in France are the main source of misinformation for right-wing journalists compiling attacks on him in Britain. Rather, it is US Islamophobes like Daniel Pipes and Steve Emerson who provide the Sun et al with their lies and distortions. The recent article in the Sun “exposing” Ramadan was a crude cut-and-paste job from articles by those two writers.

Se here, here and here.

Explainers not popes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The British right-wing press’s campaign of vilification against Islam continues today, with no less than three hostile articles by three of the usual suspects: Anne McElroy, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Amir Taheri. The last gets a two-page spread in which he is allowed to defame a large proportion, if not the entirety, of the scholarly body of Islam.”

Indigo Jo blogs, 20 July 2005

Defend ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’ from Qaradawi – Jihad Watch

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hugh Fitzgerald appeals to the Mayor of London to to renounce his appeasement of Muslim fanatics:

“Do you really want Qaradawi and his ilk to have their way? Think of the freedoms built upon, and enjoyed, by those who now live in Old Londinium. Think of Bracton. Think of Coke. Think of Locke. Think of of John Stuart Mill. Think of Harry Lauder, and Al Bowlly and Jack Buchanan and Elsie Randolph. Think of Vera Lynn.”

Dhimmi Watch, 21 July 2005

Norman Geras – apologist for imperialist war

Posted on by Bob Pitt

normblogNorman Geras, the neocons’ favourite “Marxist”, holds forth in the Guardian today, condemning those who have sought to relate the London bombings to the anger aroused in the Muslim world by Western imperialism and the Iraq war in particular.

Beneath the cloud of pseudo-moral indignation, it is not difficult to fathom the motives for Geras’s article. As one of the leading “left” cheerleaders for the invasion of Iraq, he himself obviously bears a small part of the responsibility for the London atrocities.

Geras writes: “It needs to be seen and said clearly: there are, among us, apologists for what the killers do…. There are apologists among us, and they have to be fought intellectually and politically. They do not help to strengthen the democratic culture and institutions whose benefits we all share.”

There could hardly be a better description of Geras himself, an apologist for imperialist warmongering who enthusiastically backed an invasion that caused the death of some 100,000 Iraqis, and who now lashes out in fury at anyone who tries to open a democratic debate about the wider political context of the London bombings.

Still, Norm does have his admirers. Mad Mel joins the US Right in paying tribute to the good professor.

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 21 July 2005

For a reply to Geras by Yusuf Smith, see here.