“As anti-Semitism once clothed itself in the rhetoric of anti-capitalism, today the rising tide of Islamophobia parades itself in the clothes of secularism.” Owen Jones urges the Left to stand firm against the rising tide of anti-Muslim hatred.
Category Archives: UK
Backlash fears as Asian newsagent is firebombed in Glasgow
Fears of a backlash against Muslims are rising tonight in the wake of the car bomb plot. It came as a Pakistani-born Scotsman’s newsagents was ram-raided and fire-bombed in Glasgow. Racial incidents rose in the days after the July 7 bombings and there was a similar backlash after the September 11 attack.
Tonight a prominent Muslim leader spoke of his fears of a “rising hostility” towards the Asian community. Osama Saeed, the Muslim Association of Britain’s Scottish spokesman, made the warning as police launched an investigation into the attack on a newsagent’s in the early hours of the morning.
In a chilling echo of the attack at Glasgow Airport on Saturday, a car was reversed at speed into the shop, crashing through metal shutters before the driver apparently dosed it with petrol and set it alight. As he fled – in a second vehicle with waiting driver – explosions ripped through the shop causing a massive fire.
Mr Saeed said: “This incident sounds very much like it is some sort of copycat crime, which is extraordinary because someone would have gone to the trouble of premeditating that attack. It is not an emotional reaction. They’ve waited, they’ve got the car and the materials. It suggests there is a rising feeling of hostility where people feel comfortable in the company of others acting in a grotesque fashion.”
On Monday, fire bombers attacked what they thought was the rear of the Islamic Centre, in Bathgate, West Lothian. But they mistakenly damaged an adjacent estate agency.
Speaking of his fears of a backlash Mr Saeed said: “In some ways it was expected as there was a backlash after September 11 and 7/7. But we have got to stress to people we are in this together and we are all in the same boat. We have all been victims.”
Brown denies Iraq terror link
Prime Minister Gordon Brown claimed on Sunday that British foreign policy had nothing to do with the latest attempted terror attacks. In an echo of his predecessor Tony Blair, Mr Brown claimed that this weekend’s shambolic bomb plots were the work of phantom menace terror group al-Qaida.
He claimed that the would-be bombers were not motivated by the carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan but had “a grievance against society, particularly against the values that we represent and the values decent people of all religions represent”.
“Irrespective of Iraq, irrespective of Afghanistan, irrespective of what is happening in different parts of the world, we have an international organisation trying to inflict the maximum damage on civilian life in pursuit of a terrorist cause that is totally unacceptable to most people,” he declared.
Identifying the bomb plot with Islam and British Muslims, Mr Brown said: “We have got to fight a battle for hearts and minds. We have got to separate those moderate members of our community from a few extremists who wish to practise violence and inflict maximum loss of life in the interests of a perversion of their religion.”
But Stop the War Coalition convener Lindsey German said: “The government is in denial on this question. Even a government inquiry last year found that the growth of terrorism in Britain was due to the war in Iraq. There is one simple fact – before the Iraq war, Britain was not under threat from terrorism and now it is. What Britain needs is not more terror laws but a change in foreign policy.”
Morning Star, 2 July 2007
Police vow to clamp down on anti-Muslim backlash
Police chiefs and senior politicians moved to reassure Scotland’s Muslim communities yesterday amid fears of a backlash after the terrorist incident at Glasgow airport.
As police waited to question the two men arrested after the failed car bomb attack, the justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, said neither was “born and bred” in Scotland. “Any suggestion to be made that they are homegrown terrorists is not true,” he said. Police said two minor incidents of racist abuse had been reported since the attacks but promised to clamp down on any backlash.
Mohammad Sarwar, the Labour MP for Glasgow Central, said constituents had been threatened since the incident. But he said there was no evidence that any of Scotland’s imams or mosques had been fomenting hatred. “The message is moderate and liberal,” he said. “Glasgow airport is used by a vast majority of Muslims and people of all faiths. This attack was an attack on all of us, on our city and our communities.”
Osama Saeed, Scottish spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, said there had “not been a peep of extremism” in Scotland to date, adding: “You hear about individuals and groups in London and elsewhere in England, but there has been no presence of this here.”
Scotland’s first minister, Alex Salmond, also said the attack was out of character. “Scottish society is very strong, with a strong sense of community,” he said. “In Scotland, the Muslim community is part of the fabric of society, and is hugely important for social life, and this community link will remain strong.”
See also Daily Record, 2 July 2007
And Osama Saeed’s comments at Rolled Up Trousers, 1 July 2007
Muslim groups ‘appalled by sinister plot’
Community leaders were yesterday quick to condemn the terror attacks in Glasgow and London, while politicians played down fears of a backlash against British Muslims.
MPs, Muslim organisations and police chiefs were universal in their condemnation of events and emphasised the moderation of the vast majority of British Muslims. Mohammad Sarwar, the MP for Glasgow Central, led calls to condemn extremists who “brainwash” British-born Muslims, adding the Glasgow outrage had come as a major shock in a country in which mosques preach a moderate message.
He said: “This is a big surprise … we were not expecting this type of incident in Scotland. This is the first incident that has happened in Glasgow and everybody is shocked and terrified.”
Campaigners from the British Muslim Initiative issued a statement damning the incidents. A spokesman said: “We urge all British Muslims to fully co-operate with the authorities to apprehend and bring to justice the perpetrators.” The organisation’s president Muhammad Sawalha added: “We are utterly appalled by this sinister plot and commend the professionalism of the security services in aborting it.”
Osama Saeed, Scottish spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, said: “Terrorists do not care who they kill. We are seething with anger about this.”
See also “MCB condemnation with The Three Faiths Forum”, Muslim Council of Britain press release, 2 July 2007
The media and the bombings
The media coverage of the botched terrorist attacks in London and Scotland has been much as you might expect.
Yesterday we had BBC News 24 reporting that the police had stated that none of the suspects was of British origin – and then broadcasting a piece suggesting that the attacks had been carried out by young British Muslims who had been radicalised by the internet and then travelled to Pakistan to be trained as terrorists.
And nobody seems to have picked up on the contradiction of claiming that the attacks were carried out or inspired by Al Qaida, while at the same time reporting that the individual arrested in connection with the attack is a doctor of Iranian origin, and therefore presumably a Shia. [Update: Dr Mohammed Asha is in fact Jordanian. But how could we expect the Sun to tell the difference?]
Needless to say, right-wing (and liberal) commentators have been eager to pin responsibility on the Muslim community for failing to stop the bombers – who for all we know may in fact have had no connection with any section of the UK Muslim community. An article by Philip Johnston in the Telegraph carries the headline “We need Muslims to do more”, while the London Evening Standard goes with “Muslims must reject extremism”, asserting that “many Muslim leaders drag their feet”.
Over at the Independent, in an piece entitled “Sane, ordinary Muslims must stand up and be counted” (hailed as “a quite brilliant article” by Tory blogger Iain Dale) Yasmin Alibhai-Brown gives a boost to the tiny and irrelevant British Muslims for Secular Democracy and welcomes the government’s sidelining of the Muslim Council of Britain, which she describes as having acted as an “apologist” for the “killing brigades”.
Leo McKinstry in the Express rants that “British Muslims must show which side they are on”, complaining bitterly that “Alex Salmond claimed that ‘individuals, not communities‘ were responsible for terrorism, a piece of nonsense given that it is the Muslim community that has bred the terrorists. In London, Mayor Ken Livingstone was even more reprehensible. He dismissed the idea of any connection between Islam and terrorism, claiming that: ‘Muslims are less likely to support the use of violence for political ends than non-Muslims‘. Yeah, right, tell that to the relatives of those killed in the July bombings, or the Twin Towers, or the Bali attacks or the Madrid massacre.”
Mad Mel in the Mail calls for a ban on Hizb ut-Tahrir (who have in fact publicly opposed the attacks) and goes on to assert that “while most British Muslims say they would have no truck with terrorism or violence, an insupportable number of them do endorse appalling ideas”. Mel has an explanation for this state of affairs: “Our [sic] Muslim community is particularly vulnerable to Islamist extremism because of the collapse of Britain’s belief in itself and the corresponding rise of multiculturalism and minority rights.”
An editorial in the Express headed “We should abandon failed policy of multiculturalism” chimes in with the recommendation that the government should adopt a programme of “no state funding for Muslim faith schools and … an end to so-called ‘chain migration’ under which young British Muslims are pressured into marrying foreigners to afford their extended families a route into the UK…. It is surely also time for the Government to consider a legal ban on the burkha in public places. This is a nation where law-abiding citizens are not ashamed to show their faces. The era of politically correct cultural surrender must be brought to an end.”
And, in the right-wing blogosphere, David T of Harry’s Place takes the opportunity to have another go at Osama Saeed of MAB, accusing him of advocating “the deliberate slaughter of civilians” and helpfully providing a link to an earlier post describing Osama as a proponent of “clerical fascism“.
BNP backs Butt
“Muslim extremists are targeting Scottish people because they what [sic] to destroy our British Christian way of life and replace it with an Islamic state. It is not about Iraq, it’s not about Afghanistan, it is about the Islamic Jihad for this country. We exist in their minds in Dar al-Harb or the House of War, which is the term used to refer to those areas outside Muslim rule i.e. Scotland.”
BNP regional voices, 2 July 2007
Sounds like the fascists have taken their inspiration from Hassan Butt. And why not? His line of argument feeds their Islamophobic ravings.
Robert Spencer is a fan, too: “Butt here says what I have said for years: that the jihad arises from Islamic imperatives, not from the actions of the West.”
More nonsense about ‘Islamism’ from Ed Husain
Ed Husain, Melanie Phillips’s favourite Muslim, furthers his media career with another disgraceful attack on mainstream Muslim organisations, and in particular the East London Mosque, in the Evening Standard.
Appeasement is not an answer to the bombers
The threat of radical Islam is as great as ever – and those, like the Mayor, who seek to gloss over the danger, should heed this warning
By Ed Husain
Evening Standard, 2 July 2007
Once again, London is plunged into fear and confusion. Perhaps we had been lulled by a series of successful convictions of bomb plotters. But all along, the jihadists were at work, building their cells, arming themselves, recruiting, making plans. And it is only by a miracle that London escaped carnage far, far worse than that wreaked on 7 July 2005. Police seem to have a good chance of rounding up this particular cell. But either way, radical Islam is back with a vengeance. In fact, it never left.
So I listen to the Mayor of our great city and I wonder, what will it take for him to wake up? More bombs in central London? Another attack on the Tube? As someone who was seduced by Islamists such as Omar Bakri, I know how charismatic these firebrands can be. But at the time, I was an impressionable teenager. What’s Ken’s excuse?
Don’t get me wrong. Being a big-tent liberal is laudable; but to fail to discern the difference between Islam, the religious tradition, and Islamism, the extremist political ideology hell-bent on destroying the West, is a disaster for us all. By confusing regular religious Muslims with fanatical ideologues, Ken blurs the lines between right and wrong, and allows radicalism to flourish within sections of London’s Muslim communities.
On Radio 4 this weekend, Ken and I took part in a debate about terrorism. Despite my repeatedly asking Ken to condemn Islamism, he refused to do so. He correctly lambasted Saudi Wahhabis for their role in promoting an intolerant and violent creed. Yet what we call al-Qaeda is an illegitimate child of Islamism and Wahhabism combined.
While living in Saudi Arabia two years ago, I remember watching in horror television images of Ken walking around with Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric based in Qatar, whose publicly stated attitude is that suicide bombers are martyrs. Yet it was Ken who said that ‘of all the Muslim thinkers in the world today, al-Qaradawi is the most positive force for change’. By promoting these extremists, and their supporters, Ken gives them legitimacy. He helps set in motion the conveyor belt to terrorism.
The new fundamentalism
A devastating reply to Hassan Butt by Anas Altikriti.
The spread of terror
Blaming terrorism on some unspecified evil ideologues within the Muslim community may please warmongers, but it won’t help us defeat the violent extremists, argues Inayat Bunglawala.