Category Archives: Right wing

Why Islam is disrespected (according to Jeff Jacoby)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Yes, Islam is disrespected. That will only change when throngs of passionate Muslims show up for rallies against terrorism, and when rabble-rousers trying to gin up a riot over a defiled Koran can’t get the time of day.”

Jeff Jacoby comments on the anti-US protests provoked by Newsweek‘s report, claiming they show that Muslims have a particular propensity to violence.

Boston Globe, 19 May 2005

Juan Cole replies: “Jacoby’s position is pure bigotry. We have to be clear about this. Anti-muslimism is a form of racial prejudice no different from any other. If Jacoby said, ‘What is wrong with those people of African descent, that they are so violent all the time when nobody else is?’ he’d probably be fired. It is not all right for him to do the same thing to Muslims. While Muslims are a religious group, in the contemporary United States they most often are racialized. It comes to the same thing.”

Informed Comment, 20 May 2005

Another secularist rant from Nick Cohen

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Oriana FallaciIn today’s Observer, Nick Cohen rallies to the defence of Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, who published a book immediately following the Madrid bombing in which she argued that Muslim immigration is turning Europe into “an Islamic province, an Islamic colony” and that “to believe that a good Islam and a bad Islam exist goes against all reason”. In an earlier book, published after 9/11, she wrote that Muslim immigrants in the West have “multiplied like rats”. (See here.)

Cohen takes a relaxed view of this racist filth. He opposes a decision by the Muslim Union of Italy to take legal action against Fallaci, portraying it as an attempt to suppress free speech. “What she says may not be true”, he concedes (may not be true?!), but he defends her right to say it. “Fallaci is a raging prima donna. Still, since when has it been a criminal offence for prima donnas to sing, however tunelessly?”

Would Cohen take a similarly relaxed view of a book which claimed that Jews are breeding like rats and turning Europe into a Jewish colony? I think not. In any case, under existing race relations legislation, the author of that sort of writing would be open to prosecution in this country. If that happened, I rather doubt that Cohen would write a column for the Observer condemning legal action being taken.

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Muslims have desecrated bibles and churches

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The images of Muslims rampaging over rumors and unproven allegations of ‘Koran abuse’ are troubling – but not because of the behavior of the mobs. What else should we expect from fanatics whose religion justifies a toxic combination of arrogant superiority, spiritual entitlement, and corrosive resentment over history’s repudiation of their inflated estimation of their world-historical role?”

Bruce Thornton at Private Papers, 29 May 2005

Ken says US and Muslims are at war (so Tory claims)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lost in translation

By Ken Livingstone

Morning Star, 28 May 2005

Tories on the London Assembly have got themselves seriously hot under the collar about an interview I gave to the Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera during the general election campaign.

They alleged, with plenty of huffing and puffing at this week’s Mayor’s Question Time, that I had said that “war has now started between the United States and the Muslims.” They based this assertion on a BBC translation into English from the Arabic translation of what I had originally said in English. I assured the Leader of the Tory group, Bob Neill, that I had said no such thing and that I had in fact warned against a new cold war against Islam.

Bob Neill refused to accept my assurances that the translation was wrong. He paid no attention in the Assembly meeting to my suggestion that he should watch the original interview. Instead he wound himself up into a right old lather, dismissing the notion that the BBC’s transcript from the Arabic back into English may not be accurate as “a fantasy.” Playing to the gallery, his flourishes suggested that I probably thought the BBC was part of a Zionist conspiracy!

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Oprah Winfrey – pawn of Islamist terror groups

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Oprah Winfrey’s popular print magazine – O – has an ongoing feature named ‘Rescuing the World’s Girls’. O‘s June 2005 edition focuses on the plight of an 18-year-old Palestinian who was tried, convicted and is currently serving time in an Israeli jail for conspiring to perform a suicide bombing. The author, David France, asks the question: ‘What would make a girl take such a radical and grisly step?’ France quotes an author and university professor who asserts that: ‘religion is not the cause [of Palestinian suicide terror]… these are people who define their situation as hopeless. They feel that they have no way to respond against what they see as Israeli military aggression.’

“Incredibly, the lengthy O article completely ignores a main factor behind Islamist terror – the incitement to violence that continually spews forth from Palestinian media and mosques …”

Front Page Magazine, 27 May 2005

Quebec squashes idea of Islamic tribunals

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In a pre-emptive strike against what it calls religious fundamentalism, the Quebec National Assembly has voted unanimously to condemn efforts to introduce Islamic tribunals in Quebec and in the rest of Canada.

During the debate yesterday on a motion tabled by the governing Liberals, members from all political parties opposed Muslim groups seeking to apply sharia, or traditional Islamic law, in marriage or other disputes in the Muslim community.

The decision, which drew immediate condemnation from some members of the Islamic community, echoed France’s recent and controversial prohibition of religious symbols in schools.

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US Muslims ‘decline to take a public stand against terrorism and extremism’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Kamal Nawash“In the first of its kind for an event organized by a major national Muslim organization, Kamal Nawash and the Free Muslims Coalition (FMC) recently held the Free Muslims March Against Terrorism. Not surprisingly, the leaders of every other major Muslim organization shunned the march and declined to take a public stand against terrorism and extremism.” So Joel Mowbray claims.

Front Page Magazine, 27 May 2005

According to one report of the 14 May demonstration, only 50 people turned up – see here. So if all the US Muslims who declined to participate in Kamal Nawash’s self-advertising stunt did so because they declined to take a stand against terrorism and extremism, then you can only conclude that virtually every Muslim in the US is a terrorist sympathiser. Which is basically Front Page Magazine’s line.

For some of the reasons why mainstream Muslim organisations didn’t support the “Free Muslims March Against Terrorism” see here and here.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the Left and multiculturalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

John Rosenthal boosts right-wing Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Transatlantic Intelligencer, 24 May 2005

Joe Katzman also applauds Ali’s attack on “the Left’s twisted version of multiculturalism”. As distinct from the true version of multiculturalism espoused by Mr Katzman, no doubt.

Winds of Change, 25 May 2005

It can only be a matter of time before Peter Tatchell issues a press release promoting the virtues of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.