Category Archives: UK

‘Dispatches’ to provide platform for BNP’s anti-Muslim bigotry

Posted on by Bob Pitt

bnp-islam-posterOne of Epping’s BNP councillors is set to feature on a controversial television documentary which attracts millions of viewers. Councillor Pat Richardson will speak candidly about her attitude towards Muslims living in Britain on the Dispatches programme scheduled to be screened on Channel 4 in July.

Mrs Richardson, who has the rare distinction of being the BNP’s only Jewish councillor, was interviewed for the programme during the local election count at Waltham Abbey Town Hall earlier this month, where she was elected to represent the Loughton Broadway ward.

Along with fellow BNP party members, she was questioned about her views on British Muslims by the show’s producer James Jones. Mrs Richardson said: “He was very polite and he followed us around throughout the morning.” Mr Jones said: “I chose to interview Pat Richardson as a subject because her background and political views make her an interesting subject.”

Epping Forest Guardian, 13 May 2008

‘We are sleep-walking into an Islamic caliphate’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“… there is an extraordinary passage when one of the most likeable and longest-serving members of the team, and a former radical Sixties firebrand to boot, turns on radical Islam and the fact that we are sleep-walking into an Islamic caliphate. He describes suicide bombers as ‘racists, fascists and bastards’, deplores the credulity of right-on, anti-American attitudes, and insists that ‘self-hatred is the cancer at the heart of our nation’.

“It’s always dangerous to assume that any character’s words represent the view of the playwright….. But this play seems to me to mark a defining moment on the English stage when the conventional liberal pieties that largely obtain in our theatre are finally put under fierce scrutiny, and Jihadist Islam is at last denounced as a malign evil.”

Charles Spencer reviews Richard Bean’s new play The English Game.

Daily Telegraph, 13 May 2008

Obama Islam smear changes stripes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“When the Islam smear against Obama first came out, it was based on the idea that he is currently, a Muslim. Then the Pastor Wright controversy put that mess to rest, since Obama’s affiliations to an obviously Christian Church became front and center. Now there is a new Islam smear. This one says that Obama was a Muslim – and as a result, he is going to arouse the wrath of Muslims around the world who are going to want to kill him for apostasy (converting away from Islam, punishable by death).”

Ali Eteraz responds to an article by Edward Luttwack in the New York Times, which he describes as “solid fear-mongering”.

Huffington Post, 13 May 2008

Daily Telegraph leader writer and Catholic Herald editor Damian Thompson (“Barack Obama ‘could face Islamic execution'”) hails the NYT article as “fascinating stuff”: Telegraph blog, 12 May 2008

Birmingham professor speaks at extremist Islamic group debate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

HizbA University of Birmingham professor and student have come under fire for supporting a debate held by an extremist Islamist organisation.

Sociology professor John Holmwood spoke at a debate on secularism organised by the Hizb-ut-Tahrir group, which on its website constitution calls for a pan-Islamic caliphate and the execution of people who convert from Islam. Yasmin Patel, who was elected to be the minority students’ support officer on the Guild of Students at the university, sent out emails encouraging attendance at the debate.

Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which translates as Party of Liberation, is a global political group, which has been accused of fostering extremism against women and Jews. Its constitution calls for a state of constant war against Israel.

Prof Holmwood said the meeting, held in Small Heath on Sunday, had not been involved with extremism and it was important to engage groups in debate. He said:

“There were about 100 people there, probably 100 per cent Muslim, but 90 per cent of them weren’t Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Not engaging views is more dangerous than some of the opinions of those you are engaging with. I went there not knowing what to expect. What happened was there was a good debate and people came up afterwards and said some of them wanted to come up to the university and talk about issues of secularism, and that can only be a good thing.”

Adam Sher, secretary of the University of Birmingham’s Jewish Society, said: “A minority officer, in my opinion, shouldn’t be espousing the views of Hizb-ut-Tahrir.”

Birmingham Post, 13 May 2008

For the origins of this witch-hunt, see The Ministry of Truth and Harry’s Place.

Munira Mirza joins Boris’s team

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Munira_MirzaA glamorous young Muslim [sic] woman is the latest Cameron favourite to be parachuted in to keep a close eye on Johnson. Munira Mirza, who argues that racism in the UK is greatly exaggerated, is to serve as a cultural adviser to the mayor.

She is the third member of his new team to have worked for Policy Exchange, the organisation behind many of the policies adopted by Cameron’s Conservatives.

Mirza’s appointment will also be viewed as an attempt to neutralise any accusations that Johnson is racist, especially as he seeks to slash grants to fringe ethnic groups, many of which received lavish funding from Livingstone.

Mirza believes race relations policies based on multicultural ideas have been divisive.

Sunday Times, 11 May 2008

For more on Munira Mirza and Policy Exchange see here. Pointing to Mirza’s asssociation with the tendency around Spiked Online and the Institute of Ideas, which was formerly the Revolutionary Communist Party, we wrote that the ideology promoted by the ex-RCP these days “fits in quite well with Tory values”. And in another piece we observed that the RCP had “morphed into a bunch of right-wing libertarian individualists whose obvious natural home now is the Tory party”. How right we were.

Update:  See also Jenny Bourne’s comment piece on the Institute of Race Relations website.

BNP leadership challenger to Griffin says Muslims taking over Dewsbury

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Colin AutyDewsbury BNP councillor Colin Auty has launched a claim for the party’s leadership in a bid to save the town from being “swamped by immigration”.

Coun Auty, who has represented Dewsbury East since 2006, said he would bring a more moderate approach than that of current BNP leader Nick Griffin. But one anti-BNP campaigner told the Reporter that Coun Auty was still a fascist representing a far-right party.

Coun Auty claimed no other parties were addressing the problems in Dewsbury and without action the town’s culture and traditions would be lost. He said:

“In 30 years Dewsbury will not be a British town. We already have six Muslim councillors and a Muslim MP. In 30 years it will be unrecognisable to me as an indigenous British town. As far as I’m concerned this is a country called England and we’ve got our roots, our traditions, our values. I don’t want to diversify.

“It isn’t an issue of skin colour – that doesn’t matter to me – it’s the cultural thing. It’s what’s happened in towns like mine. I feel, and many people feel, that we’re being swamped by immigration. Unless we can get some semblance of equality for the indigenous white Britons in areas like this, then the cohesion will go out of the window.”

Dewsbury Reporter, 9 May 2008

Practising Muslims ‘will outnumber Christians by 2035’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

By 2035, there will be about 1.96 million active Muslims in Britain, compared with 1.63 million church-going Christians, according to calculations by Christian Research, a think-tank. The figures are published in the latest in a series of reports entitled Religious Trends.

The think-tank has warned that 4,000 churches could close by 2020 if congregations continue to shrink at current rates. Christian Research describes its aim as encouraging “change in Christian culture so that by 2010 more churches are growing”.

The Church of England moved to discredit the research last night, criticising its methodology and saying the results were “flawed and dangerously misleading”. A C of E spokesman said: “These sorts of statistics, based on dubious presumptions, do no one of any faith any favours. Faith communities are not in competition and simplistic research like this is misleading and unhelpful.”

The research does not compare like with like, according to the spokesman. The number of practising Muslims, for instance, is based on the number of people who said they were active in the 2001 census. If the same process were applied to Christians it would give a figure of 20 million active churchgoers, according to Church House, the headquarters of the C of E.

Daily Telegraph, 8 May 2008

See also the Times and the Daily Mail.

Agreeing with the BNP …

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Well, even a stopped clock is right two times a day and so it is that I find myself rather agreeing with the BNP’s recently elected to the London Assembly Richard Barnbrook who says that he will press for the Union Flag to be flown permanently over City Hall, for burkas to be banned from public buildings and for official celebrations to mark St George’s Day. He will resist the planned construction of a huge new mosque, the biggest place of worship in Britain, in Newham, East London.

“This seems fair enough to me – after all London IS British and not merely an overseas branch of Islamabad. I think the Burqa SHOULD be banned, and feel that the huge new mega mosque planned for East London should also be banned until such times as existing mosques prove they are not little more than recruiting offices for Jihad, and surely the flying of the Union Flag over City Hall is non-controversial?”

A Tangled Web, 6 May 2008