“There are no opinion polls which show that Muslim voters, moderate or less moderate, leap up and down with glee when Labour politicians gratuitously offend the Jews. But my guess is that they do.”
Rod Liddle claims that Labour is prepared to alienate Jewish voters in order to win Muslim support.
The Zionist lobby in Britain Tuesday renewed its campaign of vilification against London Mayor Ken Livingstone Tuesday after he defended the plight of the Palestinians resorting to suicide bombings. “He is a lackey of the Muslim agenda in this country,” Jon Benjamin, director general of the British Board of Jewish Deputies, said.
The UK’s Sunday Times and Sun newspapers have agreed to pay Yusuf Islam (formerly known as the singer Cat Stevens) substantial damages in respect of articles published on 17th and 19th October 2004.
Both reports falsely alleged that Yusuf Islam was or had been involved in supporting terrorism and suggested that, as a result, the US authorities had been right to refuse Mr Islam entry into the United States in September 2004.
As well as agreeing to pay substantial damages in relation to these false and highly defamatory allegations, both newspapers also published prominent apologies in which they acknowledged that Mr Islam is not, and never has been, involved in or supported terrorism, and that he abhors all such activities. Indeed, in apologising to Mr Islam both newspapers also pointed out that Mr Islam was recently presented with the “Man for Peace” award by a group of Nobel peace Laureates.
The newspapers have undertaken not to repeat these false allegations and also agreed to pay Mr Islam’s legal costs.
Mr Islam said: “It seems to be the easiest thing in the world these days to make scurrilous accusations against Muslims, and in my case it directly impacts on my relief work and damages my reputation as an artist. The harm done is often difficult to repair. However, I am delighted by the settlement, which helps vindicate my character and good name.”
Yusuf Islam intends to contribute the damages from both newspapers to relief projects for orphans which he has started in tsunami-hit South East Asia. He visited Indonesia in January and is set to release a charity single entitled Indian Ocean later this month, the proceeds of which will go to the same children’s fund.
“I have been supporting orphans and needy families for many years now,” continued Mr Islam, “and I don’t intend to stop. I have never knowingly aided any terrorist group or any charitable organization that equips or supports terrorists. I will continue working for peace and supporting the poor and destitute around the world.”
The fallout from the US ban on Tariq Ramadan continues. A wider attack on the Kroc Institute at Notre Dame University, the academic institution where Professor Ramadam was due to take up his position as a lecturer, has been launched by Front Page Magagine.
See Thomas Ryan, ‘The Fighting Islamists of Notre Dame’.
“New antiterrorism measures proposed by Britain’s Labour government in late January – including curfews, electronic tagging, and house arrest for terror suspects – were a step in the right direction for a nation increasingly beset by radical Islamists…. Yet, despite the almost-daily reports of terrorist schemes and anti-Semitic attacks coming out of Scotland Yard, some leading Labour-party officials still don’t grasp the severity of the Islamist threat – in fact, they are advancing ideas and policies that would strengthen it…. Rather than condemn the rise of Islamism in Britain, they seek to appease and cajole the country’s restless and growing Muslim minority by bowing to its every demand, no matter how much it would infringe on the rights of the British majority.”
Erick Stakelbeck and Nir Boms in the National Review, 9 February 2005
As part of its mission to discredit Arabs and Muslims, in the aftermath of the tsunami disaster the Middle East Media Research Institute devoted much effort to accumulating quotations from Islamic leaders explaining the disaster as the result of God’s anger with sinners. One of these was Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
MEMRI’s reports were reproduced in the Times, which gave over a whole page to what it called Islamic “tsunami conspiracy theories“.
Of course, Muslims were not alone in offering a “wrath of God” explanation for the disaster. Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbi, Shlomo Amar, declared that the tsunami was an “expression of God’s ire with the world”, while one of his predecessors, Mordechai Eliahu, argued that it was a product of divine resentment at Sharon’s decision to pull out of Gaza. Rabbi Yitzchak Kaduri, considered Israel’s leading Kabbalist rabbi, added that it was “not for naught that this place was hit, where many of our compatriots went to look for this-worldly lusts”.
But can you imagine the Times devoting a whole page to attacking Jewish views of the tsunami as a punishment for humanity’s sins? Obviously not, because this would rightly be construed as anti-semitic. But Muslims are considered fair game by the Murdoch press.
And not only the Murdoch press. Taking his inspiration from the Times piece, Peter Tatchell wrote a press release for Outrage! headed “Qaradawi says tsunami victims deserved to die“. Tatchell attacked Qaradawi as “a reactionary fundamentalist who says 150,000 people deserved to die because some of them were immoral and failed to observe his hardline interpretation of Islam”.
But Abu Aardvark challenged MEMRI’s summary of Qaradawi’s sermon.
He pointed out that, far from arguing that victims all deserved their fate, Qaradawi had stated that the tsunami presented a challenge to the faith of believers because “it took the honest and the wicked, the reverent and the licentious, the believers and the unbelievers alike”. Abu Aardvark concluded that “this does seem to be a case of MEMRI’s selective translation leaving readers with the wrong impression of his meaning”.
Abu Aardvark observed wearily that “rational discussions of Qaradawi seem to be virtually impossible these days. The demonization campaign seems to have worked, and people who really should know better just throw names around, casually equating Qaradawi with bin Laden and putting the most outrageous things in his mouth”.
“Tony Blair’s staunch support for President Bush over Iraq has done the Labour Prime Minister great electoral damage in Britain, not least among the country’s 1.8 million Muslims. Despite being traditional Labour voters, many are now threatening at the forthcoming general election to support either the Liberal Democrats, who have taken a strong line against the war, or Respect, an alliance between the far-left MP George Galloway and Islamic fundamentalists. The British government’s reaction has been a panicky attempt to appease the Muslim community.”
Melanie Phillips opposes the new law against inciting religious hatred and attacks Mike O’Brien’s article in the Muslim Weekly.
In an apparent victory for radical Muslims and the left wing of the American foreign policy establishment, President Bush has failed to take any action to renominate Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes to the board of the United States Institute of Peace.
Bush appointed Pipes, a conservative Middle East analyst and syndicated columnist who has drawn the ire of some Muslims, to the publicly funded institution on August 23, 2003, after a Senate hearing on the matter ended without the presence of a quorum necessary for a confirmation vote. The controversial recess appointment ended in early December with the closing of the previous Congress. The institute has removed Pipes’s name from the list of board of directors posted on its Web site.
Pipes told the Forward that he has not asked to be renominated by the president and that he had not queried the White House about its intentions. “My time there is finished,” he said of the institute.
The White House had nothing to add on the matter. “When there’s an announcement, we’ll go ahead and make one,” spokeswoman Maria Tamburri said.
Pipes said that he “tried to be helpful to the USIP,” but he acknowledged that “at certain times I was frustrated.”
The nomination of Pipes, who has made a career out of identifying and denouncing what he sees as radical Muslim penetration of American institutions, was opposed by senators Edward Kennedy, Tom Harkin and Christopher Dodd, all Democrats; Arab and Muslim groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations as well as the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and Middle East analysts Judith Kipper of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and William Quandt of the University of Virginia.
Many conservative-leaning newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and The New York Sun, supported it. Several Jewish communal agencies, including the American Jewish Committee and the Zionist Organization of America, supported Pipes.
David Harris, executive director of AJCommittee, said he still holds out hope that Bush will renominate Pipes. “We’re looking into it,” Harris said. “We’re eager to see him remain.”
“British ‘Islamophobia’ may be driven more from suspicion about the intentions of British Muslims to try to institute Sharia there, rather than racism or bigotry.”
Robert Spencer at Dhimmi Watch, 13 January 2005
Ken Livingstone has hit back at Tory critics over his support for a Muslim cleric. The London mayor believes Yusuf al-Qaradawi has been deliberately misquoted over his views on the tsunami disaster.
Conservatives went on the offensive this morning over remarks attributed to al-Qaradawi that the Asian tsunami was God’s punishment for sex tourism in the region. Tory London Assembly member Bob Neill attacked Livingstone, who invited al-Qaradawi’s visit to City Hall last September.
But the mayor hit back, saying al-Qaradawi’s comments had been ‘completely distorted’ by a pro-Israeli organisation. Livingstone said:
“Qaradawi’s position is completely distorted by MEMRI, group set up by a former Israeli intelligence officer, which provided the translation. Qaradawi is campaigning to raise funds for the victims of the Tsunami in the Muslim world. He is quoted everyday on Al Jazeera calling upon Muslims to contribute to the relief. In the speech referred to by MEMRI, Qaradawi specifically calls for help for all the victims without discriminating between them according to religion.”
MEMRI – Middle East Media Research Institute – was set up by Colonel Yigal Carmon, a former Israeli intelligence and counter-intelligence officer and advisor to Israeli prime ministers.
Livingstone said he did not agree with all al-Qaradawi’s views, including the view that the tsunami was God’s retribution, but insisted the cleric was a moderate. To ban leaders like him was to cut off dialogue with the whole Muslim community. He admitted al-Qaradawi was not going to be seen on “the next gay pride march” but defending his right to meet the cleric, who was widely respected as a Muslim leader of international standing.
Other religious leaders of other faiths, like Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, had also expressed views that the earthquake and tsunami wave was an act of God, but al-Qaradawi was being singled out by people holding Islamophobic opinions.