Category Archives: UK

BBC Asian Network – young Asians poll

Posted on by Bob Pitt

There’s some interesting stuff buried in this ICM poll of British Asians aged 18-34, particularly on the vexed issue of “Britishness”, which has been used to accuse minority communities in general, and Muslims in particular, of a failure to integrate.

The question “Thinking about your nationality, to what extent do you feel British?” produced the following figures for those answering “completely” or “a lot”: British Asians – 59%; Whites – 73%. For those answering “a little” or “not at all”, the percentages were: British Asians – 38%; Whites – 26%.

This didn’t stop the BBC heading its press release “Over a third of British Asians don’t feel British” – which of course ignored the fact that over a quarter of white people evidently feel much the same way. Indeed, 38% of white respondents from Scotland said that they felt only “a little” or “not at all” British – exactly the same figure as that for British Asians.

Broken down on the basis of religious affiliation, the figures for young British Asians who feel “completely” or “a lot” British were: Sikh – 77%; Muslim – 64%; Hindu – 46%; Christian – 46%. The figures for British Asians who said they feel only “a little” or “not at all” British were: Christian – 52%; Hindu – 51%; Muslim – 35%; Sikh – 20%.

So it can be seen that, among young British Asians, Muslims in fact have a significantly more developed sense of British identity than either Christians or Hindus.

This did not prevent BBC News from running an article, headed “Many Asians ‘do not feel British’“, which featured a picture (subsequently removed) of two Muslim women wearing the niqab, reinforcing the perception that British Muslims are particularly lacking in a sense of “Britishness”.

See also Dave Hill’s post at Comment is Free, 31 July 2007

Posted in UK

Racist vandals target Barking mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ignorant vandals have daubed racist graffiti on the wall of Barking’s mosque in a shock insult to the Muslim community. The highly offensive slur was painted in one foot-high, silver letters, and it stretched over two metres of the wall.

Police were informed about the graffiti, outside the Al Madina Mosque, in Victoria Road, Barking, over the weekend. They contacted the council who sent out an emergency team to clean it off early on Sunday morning to remove the obscenities.

The people responsible aimed to insult the Muslims who worship at the mosque by using an offensive ethnic term, and what is widely-considered one of the crudest words in the English vocabulary.

Barking & Dagenham Post, 1 August 2007

Posted in UK

BBC Newsnight and File on 4 misled public in their allegations about Hizb ut-Tahrir

Posted on by Bob Pitt

HizbIn a ruling published earlier this month, the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit (ECU), found that Newsnight and File on 4 had misled the public by broadcasting allegations in November 2006 concerning Hizb ut-Tahrir that were not based on evidence.

The ECU noted that both programmes alleged that Hizb ut-Tahrir, or a splinter group of its members, was responsible for planning a fire-bomb attack on a Croydon synagogue, based on information passed on by the shadowy organisation Vigil. The ECU ruled that this “was not a strong enough basis on which to mount such a serious allegation”.

In addition, Richard Watson, a reporter for Newsnight, misled listeners when he assured the Home Office Minister, Tony McNulty, that File on 4 had clear evidence that Hizb ut-Tahrir “seeks to propagandise on behalf of terrorists and glorify terrorism”. No such evidence existed and to this date the Home Office has not received any material from Newsnight, File on 4 or Richard Watson concerning Hizb ut-Tahrir. The ECU ruled that the programme did not cite sufficient evidence to justify these allegations.

Commenting on the ECU ruling, Dr Imran Waheed, media representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir, said, “In what has already been a mensis horribilis for the BBC, the ruling of the ECU dents the credibility of the reports on Newsnight and File on 4 which were dominated by smear and innuendo. The allegations presented by Newsnight and File on 4 were serious, but completely lacking in credibility. The BBC has a responsibility to its viewers and listeners to ensure balance and impartiality when relying on shadowy sources that are not open to public scrutiny. The BBC should not be a propaganda outlet for such organisations and their claims should be scrutinised. The BBC is a public broadcaster that must take its responsibilities to rigorously examine issues in an impartial manner seriously.”

“It is unfortunate that media outlets are able to rely on shadowy organisations and anonymous uncorroborated sources. Too often they operate on the margins of journalism by straying into the arena of smears and propaganda. It is also important to remember the context of last November’s fictitious and slanderous BBC allegations. The timing of the report by File on 4 and Newsnight was closely associated with the desire of the Home Office to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir as Blair visited Musharraf and offered £480m for the ‘war on terror’.”

Hizb ut-Tahrir press release, 1 August 2007

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‘Why are we so scared of offending Muslims?’ demands Hitchens

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hitchens“Islamic belief, however simply or modestly it may be stated, is an extreme position to begin with. No human being can possibly claim to know that there is a God at all, or that there are, or were, any other gods to be repudiated…. it is even further beyond the cognitive capacity of any person to claim without embarrassment that the lord of creation spoke his ultimate words to an unlettered merchant in seventh-century Arabia. Those who utter such fantastic braggings, however many times a day they do so, can by definition have no idea what they are talking about….

“Why, then, should we be commanded to ‘respect’ those who insist that they alone know something that is both unknowable and unfalsifiable? Something, furthermore, that can turn in an instant into a license for murder and rape?”

Christopher Hitchens in Slate, 30 July 2007

Hitchens would of course claim that he is hostile to all religions, not just Islam. Somehow, though, I can’t see him putting his name to a piece subtitled “Why are we so scared of offending Jews?”

Trampling on democratic rights

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Four 20-year-old Bradford University students and a 19-year-old school student were jailed after a trial at the Old Bailey for being found with material said to be ‘glorifying Islamic terrorism’ on their computers. Aitzaz Zafar, Usman Malik and Awaab Iqbaal were jailed for three years each, Akbar Butt was jailed for 27 months and the school student, Mohammed Irfan Raja was given two years’ youth detention.

“Such is the atmosphere created by politicians and the media after the attempted terror bombings in London and Glasgow earlier this month that there was very little opposition in the media to what are police state measures – the jailing of these youths merely for downloading material readily available on the Internet….

“There is clearly some disquiet in establishment circles at the way democratic rights are being trampled on in such cases. David Livingstone, an associate fellow in international security at Chatham House, home of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, appeared as a witness for the defence at the trial. He told the Today programme that there was no evidence that the five had planned to instigate a terrorist attack. ”

Chris Talbot at the World Socialist Web Site, 31 July 2007

It’s also worth comparing the treatment of these youth with that received by far-right extremist Robert Cottage who didn’t just download files from the internet but was actually caught in possession of the materials required to manufacture explosives.

Call for unity after Muslim talks

Posted on by Eddie Truman

Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, tonight met with leaders of the Muslim community in Scotland. He said: “Events last month show the importance of not being divided as a society. Our response is about how you ensure Scotland is held together as a community and as a society. One of the clear objectives of terrorists is to divide communities from each other – to divide them from within.”

Osama Saeed, Scottish spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, believed Scotland could be “a beacon to the world” in Muslim and non-Muslim relations. He said: “I’m sure this meeting would have been taking place anyway, but obviously it has taken on a new light given the events at Glasgow Airport last month. Good community relations do not happen by accident and need to be striven for. We’ll be presenting the work that we’re doing, the executive have their ideas and initiatives, and I’m sure there are many areas where we will work together.”

BBC News, 31 July 2007

Are Muslims being censored in the Conservative Party?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A comment on the Muslim Public Affairs Committee website attacks the Conservative Party leadership for refusing to take on board criticisms of the “interim report” Uniting the Country (pdf here – MCB’s response here) which was issued in January by the Tories’ policy group on National and International Security, chaired by Dame Pauline Neville-Jones:

“When the report was first published, a leading group of Muslim Conservatives came together to offer a response to their party’s policy group. They were scathing in their attack of what they considered to be a ‘weak and damaging document which made unsubstantiated comments’. Authors of the report included Lord Sheikh, Kabir Sabar, Imtiaz Amin, Yousif Miah, amongst others. Their comments were dismissed out of hand. Muslims within the party who voiced concern at the tone of the report found themselves sidelined from an increasingly influential set of people around Cameron.”

The expanded version of Neville-Jones’ report, published last week as An Unquiet World (pdf here), shows how contemptuously criticisms were dismissed. “Uniting the Country” is incorporated unchanged into the new publication. The attack on Muslim Council of Britain is retained (see the MCB’s response here), the division of Islamists into two groups – those who aim to destroy Western society by violent means and those who seek to achieve the same objective by exploiting “democratic freedoms” – is repeated word for word, and there is the same ignorant attack on Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who it is claimed is a follower of Sayyid Qutb and was supposedly banned from entering the UK when Michael Howard was home secretary.

However, Dame Pauline’s report has met with an enthusiastic reception from Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society, who welcomes the Tories’ insistence that “the Government is wrong to communicate with people from ethnic minorities as though they were members of groups rather than individual citizens”. A principle which, if applied literally, would of course deprive minority ethnic communities of any opportunity of collectively influencing the government. Would Sanderson apply the same reasoning to secularists? Evidently not, because the NSS energetically demands the right to be consulted over state policy on religious issues. Yet, in Sanderson’s view, minority communities (and their faith-based organisations in particular) should be excluded from collective representation in the public sphere.

Rod Liddle again

Posted on by Eddie Truman

Rod Liddle continues to use his Sunday Times column to illustrate his descent into the depths of anti Muslim racism. This week he writes about Shambo the holy bullock which was worshipped by monks of the Skanda Vale Community and which tested positive to a tuberculin skin test and was subsequently put down.

With officials of the Welsh Assembly involved in the decision, Liddle writes: “But I wonder too if the members of the assembly would have dared to make their decision if it were Muslims rather than Hindus who chose to revere cattle? And what would have happened if they did? By now there would be priests set alight from Jakarta to Rabat, effigies burnt, fatwas issued. Cardiff airport would be missing an international departure gate.”

Jasper Gerard finds evidence of ‘Muslim separateness’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“A British Airways plane was delayed after three of Sheikh Badr Bin Khalifa al-Thani’s most valuable wives refused to sit next to male passengers. Which was out of character for the Qatari royals, really. You see, earlier they had graciously consented to make their accommodations with decadent western ways – while shopping in the designer boutiques of Milan. A trivial story, highlighting an un-trivial trend: the move towards Muslim separateness.”

Jasper Gerard in the Observer, 29 July 2007