Given that Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch has considerately announced that he is prepared to “encourage any Muslim individual or group who is willing to work publicly for the reform of the Islamic doctrines, theological tenets and laws”, you would think he’d welcome Tariq Ramadan’s appeal for a moratorium on hudud punishments, wouldn’t you? Well, only if you were naive enough to take Spencer’s statement seriously.
Category Archives: Right wing
‘Islam’s grand wizard of deception’
“No case illustrates the murderous deception of Western society by Islamic militants more than the recent episode involving Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss professor who was denied a visa to teach at Notre Dame.”
Steven Emerson in World Net Daily, 2 April 2005
‘Are you Islamophobic? Web witch-hunt in full swing’
“A new website has been set up solely to monitor the rather vague concept of ‘Islamophobia’. Considering upstanding New Humanist contributors and allies such as Nick Cohen, Polly Toynbee and Peter Tatchell have already fallen foul of these self-appointed watchers, chances are you, as an NH reader, are probably on the verge of being accused of being an Islamophobe. Any. Minute. Now.”
Panic breaks out among liberal secularists:
And we’ve attracted the attention of Jihad Watch, too. One contributor who couldn’t get the link to Islamophobia Watch to work asks: “Is it possible it has been shut down as a jihadist hate site already?” Sorry, ‘fraid not.
Government is ‘pandering to homophobic Muslims’ – Outrage
Protection from discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation has been excluded from five key provisions of the government’s new Equality Bill, the gay rights group Outrage! complains. According to Outrage! spokesperson Brett Lock, the government is “pandering to homophobic Muslims by excluding gay rights”.
Outrage! press release, 31 March 2005
So, nothing to do with pandering to anti-gay prejudice in Christianity or any other religion then, Brett – just Muslims?
For the Sunday Times article on which the Outrage! allegations are based, see here.
For Daniel Pipes’ response, see here.
Jihad Watch defends secularism
“The lesson of Turkey is that eternal vigilance on behalf of secularism is necessary, and those who have been the beneficiaries of such secularism are foolish not to recognize that it occasionally requires military force (that of the Turkish Army) and constant reinforcement of legal measures taken against the outward expression of Islam as a political and social force, to keep Islam in its place, since it cannot otherwise be dealt with or transmogrified into something less menacing.”
Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch proposes a solution to the problem of Islamists in Turkey participating in the democratic process and getting elected to parliament.
What are Islamic schools teaching? (Daniel Pipes has the answer)
Daniel Pipes claims that Muslim schools are training grounds for anti-semitism and “Islamist supremacism”. On the rare occasion that any such thing does occur, and Muslim teachers and community leaders say they are shocked and will take immediate action, their declarations are merely “fraudulent” according to Pipes.
Front Page Magazine, 29 March 2005 and Jewish World Review, 29 March 2005
Needless to say, Robert Spencer and his friends agree: Jihad Watch, 29 March 2005
Islam Online urges the spread of Islam in the West shock
“On this the holiest of days for Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholic, and Protestant Christians comes an article on the necessity of spreading Islam in the West.”
Muslims are seeking to spread their message – and, what’s more, they’re doing it on Easter Sunday. Robert Spencer is outraged.
‘Wrong from head to toe: a ridiculous and ominous decision in Britain’
“In the long annals of judicial stupidity, there can rarely have been a more idiotic judgment than that recently given by Lord Justice Brooke of the British Court of Appeal. It reads like the suicide note not of a country alone, but of an entire civilization.”
Theodore Dalrymple expresses outrage over the Shabina Begum case. “No expressed desire by a child or young woman to wear traditional clothing such as the jilbab can be taken as arising from free choice – even if, in any given instance, it is the result of such a choice – because of the oppressive nature of the subculture.”
Another anti-Muslim piece by Anthony Browne
Anthony Browne tries to set Christians against Muslims – with the assistance of Patrick Sookhdeo of the Barnabas Fund.
Update: For a reply to Browne, see here.
Racist, anti-Islam rhetoric mars Europe’s elections: study
The use of racist and xenophobic rhetoric, including by mainstream political parties, has dominated national and European Parliament election campaigns over the past two years, according to a new study.
The study, commissioned by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), maintains that immigrants and refugees from Muslim countries and Islam itself are primary targets of politicians who exploit feelings of insecurity in an increasingly complex and multicultural world.
French political scientist Jean-Yves Camus, who conducted the study, found that the theory of a so-called “clash of civilizations” is gaining ground.
For the ECRI report see here.