Category Archives: Secular

Outrage! make prats of themselves over Qaradawi again

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hijab Conference“The Crown Prince of Qatar should be stoned to death for being gay, according to Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim fundamentalist scholar who is based in Qatar. These allegations appear in the Middle East news magazine Aljazeera….

“Aljazeera quotes Dr Qaradawi as saying: ‘The scholars of Islam, such as Malik, Ash-Shafi’i, Ahmad and Ishaaq said that (the person guilty of this crime) should be stoned, whether he is married or unmarried’.”

Outrage! press release, 5 August 2005

As Islamophobia Watch has pointed out, the quotation is not from Dr al-Qaradawi at all, but from a Saudi Wahhabist named Mohammed Salih Al-Munajjid.

See here and here.

As for Qaradawi’s supposed fatwa “Homosexuality and Lesbianism: Sexual Perversions”, the link provided by Outrage! shows that this was not a fatwa issued by Qaradawi but by a “Group of Muftis”. Their fatwa did include a quotation from Qaradawi in which he summarised the opinions of various scholars on the punishment for homosexuality, but did not state his own view. Moreover, the quote was taken from his book The Lawful and Prohibited in Islam, which was published … in 1960!

If Dr al-Qaradawi does indeed called for the execution of gay men, then you would have thought that Outrage! would have been able to find some statement to that effect from his numerous writings and broadcasts over the subsequent forty-five years. They have been unable to find a single one.

‘Cleric who incites murder of gays must be banned from Britain’ – GALHA

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Qaradawi2Reacting to an Al Jazeera report that the Islamist cleric Yusuf Al-Qaradawi has called for the execution of the Crown Prince of Qatar because he is gay, the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA) has called on Home Secretary Charles Clarke to permanently ban Al-Qaradawi from Britain.

A spokesperson for GALHA said: “If there was any doubt about Qaradawi’s fundamentalist credentials, this latest outburst will put it to rest. To call for the execution of Prince Tameem Bin Hamad Al-Thani simply because he is gay flies in the face of all international human rights conventions. It is not acceptable in a developed nation such as Britain to allow people who encourage the murder of innocents to be permitted free reign to do it. Gay people must be protected from this kind of lethal hate-speech. We have written to the Home Secretary asking him to impose a permanent banning order on Qaradawi. Britain could surely do without such people at a time when religious tensions are so high.”

GALHA news release, 2 August 2005

Unfortunately for GALHA, as Islamophobia Watch has already pointed out the quote isn’t from Qaradawi at all, but from another person entirely. See here.

‘When will you Brits wake up?’ French journalist asks

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“In the ten years I have lived in London, I often wondered when it would happen. I don’t mean when British-born suicide bombers would blow themselves up, killing dozens of their fellow citizens – I would never have thought that possible – but rather, when British multiculturalism would finally show its inherent weaknesses.

“France and Britain have always had opposite views and policies about foreigners and their integration into society. British people often fail to understand the underlying principles of the French approach, prefering to brand it as intolerance, or even blatant racism – as, for example in the recent headscarf ban.”

Agnes Poirier of the French “leftist” newspaper Libération – who goes on to argue that “The message to Muslims has been, in effect, that it is all right for them to be a separate country-within-a-country” – joins the right-wing campaign to blame the London bombings on multiculturalism.

Evening Standard, 29 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”!).

GALHA calls on home secretary to ban Qaradawi

Posted on by Bob Pitt

GALHA’s secretary, George Broadhead, said: “As well as supporting extremist positions on many sensitive issues, notably suicide bombing, Dr Qaradawi is virulently homophobic. He is not the sort of person who should be welcomed here at any time, let alone at a time when the country is reeling from the kind of extreme violence that is spawned by his religion. We are particularly concerned about the incitement to violence and hatred that his preaching brings. There should be no room for bigots like him in our pluralist society.”

GALHA news release, 19 July 2005

WPI blames ‘the Islamic movement’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Such attacks are part of the wretched and cruel track record of the Islamic movement against innocent people, which places bombs in public places, carries out assassinations, killings, torture, execution and repression.” Thus the Worker Communist Party of Iran on the London bombings.

Note the use of the term “the Islamic movement” – which conveniently blurs the distinctions between Islam, political Islamism in all its shades, and Islamist terrorist groups.

WPI press release, 8 July 2005

For an alternative assessment, which analyses the terrorist acts of violent jihadist groups in terms of the contradictions and conflicts within Islam and Islamism, read Marc Lynch. He argues that the London attacks arise in part from an attempt at reassertion by the terrorist tendency within Islamism, who had been increasingly marginalised by reformists such as Qaradawi and Huwaydi:

“The London attack can be seen as an attempt by al-Qaeda to impose itself on this internal argument among Islamists and Muslims in the way it knows best: a spectacular, violent attack. A throw of the dice – an attempt to turn the debate back to clashes of civilizations, of an inevitable conflict between the West and Islam, of war and mistrust and fear. To shut down any rapprochement between the West and moderate Islamism – the kind of rapprochement which threatens al-Qaeda and the radicals where it counts, among the Muslim umma.”

Abu Aardvark blog, 7 July 2005

‘Ha, ha! This bill has incited luvvies to hate Labour’, Torygraph writer sneers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

stephenfryAnother jaw-droppingly ignorant attack on the religious hatred bill, by Jasper Gerard in the Sunday Times.

Still, we’re helpfully provided with Stephen Fry’s penetrating insights into the issue: “It’s now common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that,’ as if that gives them certain rights. It’s no more than a whine. ‘I’m offended by that.’ Well, so fucking what?”

Ah, the wonders of an Oxbridge education.

Sunday Times, 26 June 2005

Also worth noting that Fry’s description of the bill as “a sop to Muslims” has been approvingly quoted by the BNP. See here.

Labour left fails to stand up for right to incite anti-Muslim hatred, AWL complains

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Outlawing incitement to hatred on the basis of religious belief, as opposed to ethnicity, is a major attack on freedom of speech. It means extending the blasphemy laws which still, at least in theory, protect Anglican Christianity from rational public debate, to shield all religions with authoritarian impartiality.

“The bill is partly a cynical pitch to win back Muslim voters outraged by Blair’s warmongering and erosion of civil liberties (like the expansion of state funding for faith schools, and defence of the hijab) and partly the brainchild of a Prime Minister with a lot of respect for religious superstition and very little for human rights.

“So why did the left of the Parliamentary Labour Party, whose leaders have boasted that they will be ‘setting the agenda’ for this Parliament, fail to rebel?

“Unfortunately, on this issue as on many others, these MPs are highly representative of a left which is increasingly losing its political bearings. The ‘religious hatred’ law has elicited not a squeak of protest from the trade union movement; meanwhile the National Union of Students, on the initiative of the SWP and their Stalinist friends Socialist Action, has positively endorsed new Labour’s assault on respect for rational thinking and free speech.”

Sacha Ismael of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and Houzan Mahmoud of the Worker Communist Party of Iraq provide us with a good illustration of which section of the left has really lost its bearings. The section of the left that supports the right to incite hatred against Muslims and sneers at the defence of the right to wear the hijab.

Solidarity, 23 June 2005

‘We’ oppose an anti-incitement law, says Will Hutton

Posted on by Bob Pitt

willhutton“Being a Muslim, especially a Muslim woman, in Britain is for many a dispiriting and occasionally terrifying experience. The society that prides itself on tolerance has lost its bearings over Islam. On the streets, the prejudice that Islam is irrationally and murderously violent and menacingly foreign has spawned a subculture of hatred and abuse. If you are a woman in a hijab, being jeered at, even spat at, is routine. Many never venture from their houses.

“This is fertile ground for widespread racism and where the law is currently uncertain. Harassment and abuse are certainly illegal, but the threshold that incurs legal action is very high; equally illegal is the expression of hatred, or views that might incite hatred, towards a group or individual for their race.

“But the woman in a hijab could be African, Asian or Middle Eastern. It is not her race that makes her the object of hatred; it is her religious belief and culture that require her to dress in such a conspicuously different way and make her part of the hated group. The law, as currently framed, offers her no systematic protection, and no explicit penalty for a political party, say the BNP, that chooses to make such hatred a central plank of its electoral pitch.”

Thus Will Hutton in the Observer, 19 June 2005

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