Category Archives: UK

Cameron puts HT ban on back burner

Posted on by Bob Pitt

HizbAt Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Labour MP Clive Efford asked David Cameron, in connection with the government’s announcement that the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan would be added to the list of proscribed terrorist groups, why he has “not fulfilled his manifesto commitment” to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Cameron refused to answer the question, demanding instead: “why did the last Government have 13 years, yet the Pakistani Taliban were never banned? It has taken us eight months to do what they failed to do in 12 years.” (To which supporters of the last government might reply that Labour’s failure to proscribe the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan immediately after taking office in May 1997 could possibly be explained by the fact that the TTP wasn’t founded until December 2007.)

But the Tory Party’s 2010 election manifesto did indeed contain an explicit commitment to “ban any organisations which advocate hate or the violent overthrow of our society, such as Hizb-ut-Tahrir”. And when he was leader of the opposition Cameron repeatedly called for the proscription of HT (see for example here, here, here,here), as did other prominent figures in the Tory Party such as Pauline Neville-Jones, Chris Grayling and Patrick Mercer.

It was explained to Cameron by spokespersons for the Labour government that, while they were keeping HT under review, an organisation cannot be proscribed under the 2000 Terrorism Act unless there is actual evidence that it is “concerned in terrorism”. And in the case of HT, which is a peaceful if highly sectarian organisation that rejects any involvement with or support for terrorist activities, no such evidence exists.

Challenged in the Commons on Wednesday evening over the government’s plans to ban HT, Damian Green stated only that “Hizb ut-Tahrir is an organisation about which we have real concerns, and I can confirm that its activities are kept under review”. And ENGAGE draws our attention to an article in Thursday’s Daily Express which reports that “Downing Street insiders” have “admitted that there was a lack of evidence of law-breaking for such a banning”.

In short, it would appear that Cameron has now adopted exactly the same position on the illegalisation of HT for which he vehemently denounced Labour when they were in office. In a letter to the prime minister, Ed Balls has written: “Isn’t it the case that the issue has turned out to be more complicated in government than the grandstanding and simple soundbites you made in opposition?”

Precisely so. Without any concern for the civil rights of an organisation that operates entirely within the law, Cameron used the demand for the proscription of HT in order to score party political points against the Labour government, he appealed to voters in the 2010 general election on the basis of a manifesto promise he couldn’t keep, and then quietly abandoned it once he was in power.

Peter Oborne backs Baroness Warsi

Posted on by Bob Pitt

What she said yesterday has desperately needed saying by a mainstream politician for a very long time. I know this because, over the past few years, I have visited many Muslim communities and spoken to scores of Muslim leaders. With very few exceptions (such as Anjem Choudary, the fanatic who tried to organise a protest march by British Muslims through Wootton Bassett) they are decent people. Many have come from countries which persecute their citizens and trash human rights. So they are even more keenly aware of what it means to be a British citizen.

But – and this is why what Baroness Warsi has to say is so important – British Muslims get spat at, abused, insulted and physically attacked. Vandalism and mosque burnings are common, and often unrecorded. The far‑Right in Britain has changed its nature. In the 1980s, organisations such as the National Front and the BNP concentrated their hatred and odium on blacks and Jews. Today, racist organisations such as the English Defence League focus on Muslim immigrants.

One of the most troubling things about this racist violence and abuse is that it is legitimised and made respectable by so much of the daily conversation which takes place in the media. Over the decades, Britain has learnt through ugly experience not to insult and discriminate against almost every other minority: blacks, Jews, homosexuals, Irish. For some reason, Muslims are still seen as fair game.

Peter Oborne responds to Sayeeda Warsi’s speech, Telegraph blog, 20 January 2011

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Baroness Warsi – agent of Islamisation

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Warsi has now outed herself as at best a stupid mouthpiece of those who are bamboozling Britain into Islamisation, and at worst a supporter of that process. Either way, how David Cameron now deals with her will tell us much about how the Prime Minister will deal in turn with the great civilisational crisis that Britain now faces.”

Melanie Phillips responds to Sayeeda Warsi’s speech on Islamophobia.

Spectator blog, 20 January 2011

Mad Mel denounces Warsi

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The fact is that, while a very high proportion of Muslims are neither extreme nor violent, the evidence suggests that a terrifying number are – either supporters of Islamic terrorism (some 2000-plus according to the security service) or those who want to live under sharia law in Britain and/or Islamise the country and its institutions (some 40 per cent-plus, according to various polls).

In such circumstances, it’s remarkable how little prejudice there is against Muslims. And it’s the denial that there is any problem with any Muslims or with Islam, the refusal to halt the process of Islamising Britain and the attempts to censor and stifle discussion that really inflame people to boiling point.

Indeed, there are deeply totalitarian attempts across the west to suppress any association between Muslims and extremism or terrorism and isolate and punish any who make such an association.

Yet now the co-chairman of the Conservative Party has associated her party with such attempts. Indeed, her sinister attack on the media for spreading the “prejudice” of which she complains has to be seen as a direct threat to journalists like myself and others who speak and write about the Islamic jihad against Britain.

Not only is this an attempt to censor debate, but it is an example of the Orwellian discourse by and about the Islamic world in which words have come to mean the precise opposite of what they actually mean. It is the mind-bending formulation which, in the mouths of some Muslims, effectively says to the west: “If you say again that Muslims are extreme or violent we’ll kill you”.

It is essential that this kind of verbal bullying and blackmail is faced down. Yet now the co-chairman of the Conservative Party has associated her party with this mind-twisting intimidation….

Instead of using her unique platform to defuse extremism by telling a few home truths to the British Muslim community about its inflated and perverse sense of its own victimisation, Warsi has merely poured fuel onto the flames.

Warsi has now outed herself as at best a stupid mouthpiece of those who are bamboozling Britain into Islamisation, and at worst a supporter of that process. Either way, how David Cameron now deals with her will tell us much about how the Prime Minister will deal in turn with the great civilisational crisis that Britain now faces.

Melanie Phillips’s reasoned response to Baroness Warsi on her Spectator blog, 20 January 2011

Geller launches new movie

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Second wave of 911 attacks posterFuror over the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” has long since died down, but a group of conservatives has refused to let the issue drop.

A new movie titled “The Ground Zero Mosque: The Second Wave of the 911 Attacks” is set to premier at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), and it hopes to put the planned Park51 Islamic cultural center back in the spotlight.

Two groups that underwrote the film, Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), describe it as a “documentary.”

A poster for the movie includes a large image of the World Trade Center at the moment it was hit by the second airplane to meet its target during in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“The Ground Zero Mosque has become a watershed issue in our effort to raise awareness of and ultimately halt and roll back the advance of Islamic law and Islamic supremacism in America,” AFDI/SOIA director Pamela Geller said in a statement.

She continued: “This is the first documentary that tells the whole truth about the Ground Zero mosque. Be prepared to be shaken to your core. This movie rips the mask off the enemedia and the malevolent role they play in advancing and propagandizing the objectives of America’s mortal enemies.”

Raw Story, 20 January 2011

Man arrested in Carlisle after burning Qur’an

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Carlisle Quran burningA man has been arrested after a Koran was allegedly burned during an anti-Islamic rant, police have said.

He was reported to have stood on a street in Carlisle city centre on Wednesday making pronouncements against the Muslim religion in front of a large crowd. The man is then alleged to have set fire to the Koran he was holding before discarding it on the floor and hurrying away. Officers arrived at the scene a short time later and are now investigating.

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Posted in UK

US pastor Terry Jones banned from entering UK

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Terry Jones

Controversial US pastor Terry Jones has been barred from entering the UK for the public good, the Home Office says. The pastor, who last year planned a Koran-burning protest in the US, had been invited to address right-wing group England Is Ours in Milton Keynes. Mr Jones told BBC Radio 5 live he would challenge the “unfair” decision and his visit could have been “beneficial”.

A Home Office spokesman said: “Numerous comments made by Pastor Jones are evidence of his unacceptable behaviour. Coming to the UK is a privilege not a right and we are not willing to allow entry to those whose presence is not conducive to the public good. The use of exclusion powers is very serious and no decision is taken lightly or as a method of stopping open debate.”

Mr Jones said he had not been planning to break any laws while in England. “I’m not against Muslims, we are not against their religion,” he said. “We have, here in the West, freedom of religion and limited freedom of speech which we don’t have in their countries. What I am against is the radical element. If I came to England we would expect Muslims to rally with us.”

BBC News, 20 January 2011

Barry Taylor, the spokesperson for England Is Ours quoted in the report, is presumably the Barry Taylor who was formerly a member of Milton Keynes BNP and stood for the far-right England First Party in the Milton Keynes Council elections in 2008. That same year Taylor was responsible for organising the annual John Tyndall Memorial Meeting, where a “gathering of white racial nationalists” celebrated the life of the late founder of the BNP. In 2009 Three Counties Unity named Taylor as part of a group of individuals who “straddle a variety of nationalist groupings, having dealings with the BNP, Nationalist Alliance, British People’s Party (BPP) and lately, the England First Party”. It was leaked documentswritten by Taylor which revealed links between Luton BNP and the football hooligans known as the MIGs some of whose members played a central role in launching the English Defence League. England Is Ours are currently involved in a campaign against the contruction of a new mosque in Bletchley which is headed by Milton Keynes BNP organiser and former NF supporter Kieren Trent. However, despite his readiness to work with fascists of all stripes, Taylor is not universally admired on the far right.

Muslim leaders back Lady Warsi’s comments on Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim leaders tonight backed the Conservative party chairwoman, Lady Warsi, after she claimed Islamophobia had “crossed the threshold of middle-class respectability” in Britain and was now seen as normal and uncontroversial. The Muslim Council of Britain warned the spread could be “the beginning of something horrendous” in a British society with an estimated 2.4m Muslims.

At Leicester University tonight Warsi claimed that parts of the press had embraced casual Islamophobia and that other parts of society including employers and even school children would be next. “You could even say that Islamophobia has now passed the dinner-table-test,” she said, accusing Polly Toynbee, a Guardian columnist and Rod Liddle, a Sunday Times columnist, of invoking Islamophobia.

Her comments were the most strident intervention yet in religious affairs by a member of the coalition government and there were reports they had not been cleared by Downing Street. David Cameron’s official spokesman said: “She is expressing her view. He agrees that this is an important debate”.

Gulam Noon, the curry magnate, and Akeela Ahmed, chief executive of the Muslim Youth Helpline, were among other leading British Muslims to supported Warsi. “Islam is under attack, there is no doubt,” said Noon. “It is the responsibility of the press, the government and the Muslim community, to deal with it.”

Ahmed warned that young people increasingly feel Muslims are viewed as being different or apart from society. “I have Muslim friends who complain they go out after work and it is ok for their non-Muslim colleagues to make jokes about people with long beards or wearing burqas,” she said. “If you were to replace the word Muslim with black or Jew, you would be jumped on straight away as racist or antisemitic.”

Ibrahim Mogra, chairman of the mosques and community affairs committee at the Muslim Council of Britain, said Warsi was correct to try and tackle growing anti-Mussim attitudes which he said have been partly been caused by the public becoming “desensitised” to anti-Muslim messages in the media in the wake of Islamist terror attacks in the US and Europe while he said Muslims’ positive contributions to British society attract less coverage.

“When I reflect on the tragedy of the Holocaust I think about how the Jew was persecuted as a misfit and somebody not to be trusted, as an alien. The drip, drip of hatred and bigotry by the Nazis led to them being described as rats and murdered in a horrible way. This situation is nowhere near that but there is always a beginning for everything. I hope this is not the beginning of something that could be horrendous. We said ‘never again’ and we have to nip this in the bud.”

Guardian, 21 January 2011