Category Archives: UK

MCB formally responds to Tory Party’s ‘Uniting the Country’ report

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Muslim Council of Britain has today written to the Conservative Party leader, Rt. Hon. David Cameron, to send him their formal response to the ‘Uniting the Country‘ interim report published by the Tory party’s Group on National and International Security.

“The MCB document is a necessarily robust response to the accusations levelled at leading Muslim organisations in the Tory report. Regrettably, the Uniting the Country interim report does very little to help unify this nation but plenty to try and further divide and fragment British society. It is a poorly researched exposition by authors more intent on serving cynical ideological goals. The Conservative Party can choose to listen to those sane voices within the Party who base their arguments on years of dialogue and experience derived from actually speaking with Muslim communities and a range of Muslim organisations across the country. Or, it can listen to a doctrinaire, agenda-driven faction. We urge the former,” said Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain.

In keeping with the ethos of the MCB, this response does not reject the Report outright. In an otherwise poorly researched and poorly argued exposition, there are extremely rare morsels of wisdom from which we can all learn. These include the question of integration and the empowering of women. But this Report significantly undermines the exploration of these subjects. For this to be successfully championed, the Conservative Party would need to commission a different report with a newly assembled policy group. The MCB stands ready to help in this endeavour.

MCB news release, 2 May 2007

Download MCB response (pdf) here.

‘When will the British stop appeasing terror?’ demands Mad Mel

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Londonistan“Islamist extremism in Britain must be stopped and British values reasserted and stoutly upheld. To defeat such extremism, we have to make it abundantly clear that we will not give an inch to those who want to destroy our values. But we appear instead to be doing nothing to stop the spread of radical Islamism. Indeed, in a myriad different ways we are giving out the lethal message that we have neither the will nor the courage to defend our way of life….

“Despite the Prime Minister’s promise to outlaw the radical group Hizb ut Tahrir (which believes that Britain should be an Islamic state), the Government refuses to do so….

“Above all else, we should absolutely refuse to countenance the spread of Sharia law, which is not only inimical to our own deepest principles but aims to supplant our own laws. Yet we are turning a blind eye to the steady Sharia-isation of our country. We have ignored the development of informal parallel Sharia jurisdictions, enforced by Sharia courts, in areas heavily populated by Muslims….

“Now Gordon Brown has said Britain should become the centre of global Islamic banking. But this is heavily backed by Saudi Arabia which will use it to further its objective of Islamising the West and may even provide a cover for the financing of further terror.

“This craven appeasement of extremism gives Islamists the unmistakable message that Britain is theirs for the taking….. all of us are put in infinitely greater danger not just from terrorism, but from a culture that still seems to be sleepwalking to oblivion.”

Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail, 1 May 2007

You can see why BNP supporters say Phillips is one of their favourite newspaper columnists, can’t you?

Straw calls on Muslims to develop sense of ‘Britishness’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jack Straw 3The UK’s growingly multiculturalism requires a reinterpretation of what it is to be British, Jack Straw has said.

Writing in The World Today, a monthly periodical published by thinktank Chatham House, the leader of the Commons believes unity can only be achieved around a citizenship fostering universal values of democracy and freedom.

These values should be linked to citizenship by referring to the British experience of the last 1,000 years – from Magna Carta, the civil war and the “fight for votes” to “the fight now against unbridled terror”, he writes.

In The News, 30 April 2007

“How can ethnic minorities play more of a part in British society? Jack Straw thinks he has the answer. They ‘must subscribe to … the core democratic values of freedom, fairness, tolerance and plurality that define what it means to be British’, he writes today in an article for the Chatham House thinktank. ‘It is the bargain and it is non-negotiable.’

“This is not the first time the leader of the House of Commons and MP for racially mixed Blackburn has discussed the rights and responsibilities of ethnic minorities. His latest salvo stacks the responsibilities heavily on the side of immigrants and their descendants. Mr Straw’s string of abstract nouns are as distant from life on the street as the fluffy white clouds up above, but still our ethnic minorities must understand and accept them. Only then, apparently, will they deserve the rights that come with being British.”

Editorial in the Guardian, 30 April 2007

Straw’s Chatham House article can be read (pdf) here.

‘Now Muslims Get Their Own Laws’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Now Muslims Get Their Own Laws“Muslim radicals have established their own draconian court systems in Britain. Controversial Sharia courts have been set up in major towns and cities to impose Islamic law and enable Muslims to shun the legitimate British legal system. Last night religious leaders and politicians expressed outrage that Sharia law is gaining an increasing foothold in our society.

“The Daily Express can reveal that one of the controversial courts has been set up in the home town of the 7/7 London bombings ringleader. Mohammed Sidique Khan was responsible for the Edgware Road Circle Line explosion which killed six people and injured 120. Our investigation has found that the Sharia court system has been set up in the heart of Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, and that it is the model for others across the country which are operating outside the British legal process….

“Philip Davies, the Tory MP for Shipley, said: ‘I am absolutely appalled and find the prospect of such courts totally terrifying. Places like this should be closed down…. It simply can’t be tolerated’.”

Daily Express, 30 April 2007

Of course, the Jewish community has been operating its own Beth Din courts for years. But you can imagine the outcry that would rightly follow if the Express ran a front-page story headlined “Now Jews Get Their Own Laws in Britain”.

In the same issue of the Express Leo McKinstry whips up further Islamophobic hysteria in a comment piece that begins: “The wail of the mosque is signalling the end of traditional British justice.” Using language that could easily have been taken from a BNP election leaflet, McKinstry continues: “In a political climate of craven appeasement towards Muslim extremism, the Islamification of our country is steadily accelerating.” He observes: “Muslims continually bleat about so-called ‘Islamophobia’ but the isolation they experience from mainstream society is of their own making. British society has bent over backwards to accommodate Islam.” Indeed, “unlike in France, the hijab headscarf is allowed in schools” – a situation that McKinstry would evidently rectify if he could.

(Note, by the way, that McKinstry pays tribute to the role played by Homa Arjomand of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran in blocking the introduction of faith-based arbitration for Muslims in Ontario.)

Predictably, the fascists are full of enthusiasm for the Express report, which of course plays straight into their hands:

“The story should be a wake-up call for all British voters. It is now or never to turn back the tide of Islamic colonisation. Successive Labour and Conservative governments have betrayed the British electorate by opening the doors to waves of bogus asylum seekers, predominantly from Islamic countries in Africa and the Middle East but under Blair’s regime, Labour have not only held the door wide open, they have allowed Muslim immigrants to rearrange the furniture and displace the original occupants.

“Voters can punish the Labour traitors on Thursday by voting for the only party which will use its influence on local councils to stop any planning applications to convert houses, former pubs and other buildings into Islamic community centres, mosques or Sharia courts. A nationwide swing to the BNP will send a loud signal of protest to the establishment that we will not tolerate the creeping Islamification of our country.”

BNP news article, 30 April 2007

For a letter of complaint to the Express from Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain, see MCB news article, 30 April 2007

Fighting fascism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Fighting fascism

By Ken Livingstone

Morning Star, 28 April 2007

THE local elections next month provide an opportunity to reject the racist politics of the fascist British National Party.

The BNP is a fascist organisation.

At the general election, the fascists stood convicted criminals as candidates in some seats, only removing them when they were exposed as such.

The BNP is racist. The BNP stands for an all-white Britain, which could only be achieved by using violence.

David Copeland, who carried out the London nail bombings in Brixton, Brick Lane and Soho, said: “My aim was political. It was to cause a racial war … then all the white people would go and vote BNP.”

Six million Jewish people were murdered in the nazi Holocaust, but BNP leader Nick Griffin was convicted for inciting racial hatred after a magazine that he published denied the reality of the Holocaust.

The BNP has scored more electoral success than any other British fascist party in history and it is essential that the anti-fascist vote is mobilised.

The BNP wishes to present itself as a respectable party but, in fact, this is just a lie – it is engaged in a deception of the public and the media.

Writing in 1999, Griffin revealed his strategy for the BNP, which was to cloak the party in respectability in order to take the fascists closer to their ultimate objectives.

“Politics is the art of the possible, so we must judge every policy by one simple criterion – is it realistically possible that a decisive proportion of the British people will support it?

“If not, then to scale down our short-term ambitions to a point at which the answer becomes ‘yes’ is not a sellout, but the only possible step closer to our eventual goal.”

Griffin sees short-term fake respectability as a tactic towards ultimate goals that have not changed.

Continue reading →

‘Racism’ row over Preston mosque vote

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The controversial decision to allow a mosque to be built in a Preston conservation area has taken a new twist with politicians turning it into a race row. Conservative councillor Geoff Driver was accused of racism after he named Labour councillors he had spoken to about their roles in the approval of the place of worship in Watling Street Road, Fulwood. At a Town Hall meeting yesterday, he claimed one member of the planning committee, Coun John Browne, had abstained because of the “power of the Muslim vote.”

Coun Driver, who represents the Greyfriars ward of Fulwood, said: “The decision made by the planning committee was an absolutely outrageous one that defied all logic, all planning regulations and went dead against the advice of the officers. It leads you to ask why would that happen? Perhaps there’s a sinister reason why it was approved and I think there was. I’m of the opinion that if any other application had been made, even if it had been a Christian place of worship, it would have been rejected.”

Preston Today, 27 April 2007

Muslim schools – ‘a ticking time-bomb waiting to explode’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Speaking at a seminar on the subject of segregation, Nick Johnson of the Commission for Racial Equality asked: “If a Muslim child is educated in a school where the vast majority of other children are also Muslim, how can we expect him to work, live and interact with people from other cultures when he leaves school? This is a ticking time-bomb waiting to explode.”

BBC News, 26 April 2007

See also Daily Express, 27 April 2007

Which of course ignores the findings of a recent study by Dr Andrew Holden who stated: “The greater degree of racial tolerance in an overwhelmingly Asian/Muslim populated school again calls into question the common sense assumption that mixed schools represent the most tolerant environments.”

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