Category Archives: UK

Bin Laden is the true representative of Islam, says Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yet another interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who states: “Bin Laden defined the world into Muslims and non-Muslims, and these had to either be converted or killed. I asked myself where I stood after I saw the pictures of people jumping out of the World Trade Center. As a Muslim I had to ask if I agreed with that. I was saddened to see Bin Laden’s citations were from the Koran and were consistent with the Islam I grew up with.”

She adds: “The 74 per cent of Muslims under 24 who said in a survey that women should wear the veil and want Sharia law to be introduced have gone for the consistency that Bin Laden offers.”

Asked if she sees any positive sides to Islam, she replies: “That’s like asking if I see positive sides to Nazism…”

Metro, 5 February 2007

For Yusuf Smith’s comments, see Indigo Jo Blogs, 5 February 2007

Fascists jump on the ‘sharia law’ bandwagon

Posted on by Bob Pitt

With evident approval, the British National Party has reproduced an article from the raving right-wing US website The American Daily taking up the popular paranoid fantasy about sharia-supporting Muslims undermining the British legal system.

Quoting a BBC News article on sharia courts, the article complains that this does not go far enough: “… the BBC seems completely ignorant of the abuse women and minorities suffer under Sharia laws the world over. Women are beaten, raped, murdered, mutilated and oppressed by Muslim ‘culture’ and English law should never turn its back on these vulnerable members of their society. This would be a travesty and a direct refutation of western morals that posit that all people are created equal and stand the same in the eyes of the law.”

However, an article in the Telegraph finds more favour with the author, on the grounds that it takes “a little more umbrage at the possibility of immigrant communities circumventing English law”.

BNP news article, 5 February 2007

And who was the author of the Torygraph piece? None other than Mad Mel’s hubbie, Joshua Rozenberg.

‘We find Muslim “handshake” cop’, boasts Sun

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“This is the Muslim WPC who sparked a row by refusing to shake top cop Sir Ian Blair’s hand. Natalie Smart, 26, wears the Metropolitan Police’s regulation hijab on the beat. And our exclusive photos show she takes breaks to pray towards Mecca. Met Commissioner Sir Ian was said to be ‘bloody furious’ when the WPC asked not to shake his hand at a passing-out parade of 200 recruits in December. The devout Muslim convert said she could not touch a man who was not her husband – and also declined a photo with Sir Ian to avoid ‘propaganda’. She now patrols on foot and on mountain bike in an affluent London suburb, part of a ‘safer neighbourhood team’ intended to build trust with locals.”

Sun, 5 February 2007

Show British Muslims some respect, urges Roy Hattersley

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Roy Hattersley“… much of what is said and written about Muslim Britain carries a clear message. Live like us or risk being treated like pariahs….  was it necessary to spread the lurid stories about kidnapping, torture and beheading before it was clear that anyone would be accused of those abominations? The Muslim people of Birmingham, who are as horrified by such atrocities as residents in the home counties, did not regard the unattributable briefing as proof that the arrests were justified. They wrote them off as propaganda – propaganda against them. And, intended or not, it had the malign result of increasing the suspicion in which all Muslims are held.

“The way in which the police behaved in Birmingham last week won few, if any, recruits to the ranks of al-Qaida or its supporting cadres. But it did alienate a large number of basically decent young men who ought to be on the authorities’ side. The grandsons of immigrants – born and educated here – are not prepared to accept the slights of second-class status that their grandparents bore with fortitude. Convincing them that society wants Muslims to enjoy the full benefits of citizenship is not only a moral necessity. It is essential to the eventual triumph of the rule of law. All they need is a little respect. They received too little last week.”

Roy Hattersley in the Guardian, 5 February 2007

The war against the west (part 597)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

bnp-islam-posterMelanie Phillips replies to Maleiha Malik’s excellent Guardian article which draws a comparison between the anti-semitism of the early 20th century and Islamophobia today.

Mel takes particular exception to the notion of “anti-Muslim racism”:

“Since when were Muslims a race? Islam is a religion. It is the Jewish people who are victims of something well-nigh identical to racism. But of course, in order to appropriate to Muslims the victimisation of the Jews, Muslims have to be presented similarly as the victims of ethnic prejudice.”

According to this argument, the British National Party’s vile anti-Muslim propaganda is not racist, because how can there be racism towards adherents of a particular religion? The fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslims come from minority non-white ethnic communities is mere coincidence, apparently.

This is of course exactly the same argument that the BNP itself uses. It’s no wonder that the fascists list Phillips as one of the newspaper columnists “whose opinions … most closely match their own“.

‘Taking the fight to Islam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Ayaan Hirsi Ali is not the only critic of Islam who lives with round-the-clock protection. But surely none wears their endangered status with greater style. The Dutch Somali human-rights campaigner looks like a fashion model and talks like a public intellectual. Tall and slender with rod-straight posture and a schoolgirl smile, she is a thinker of stunning clarity, able to express ideas in her third language with a precision that very few could achieve in their first. This combination of elegance and eloquence would be impressive in any circumstances. Under threat of death, it is nothing short of incredible.”

Andrew Anthony in the Observer, 4 February 2007

Another gushing tribute to the appalling Hirsi Ali who, to general relief among the Dutch Muslim community, has now left the Netherlands to work for the right-wing US think-tank the American Enterprise Institute – which is exactly where she belongs.

‘Is justice served by these tales of beheading?’ asks Nick Cohen

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nick Cohen 3Nick Cohen writes: “Last week’s papers were full of accounts of the supposed plot by nine men held in raids in Birmingham. Every type of paper, upmarket and down, ran headlines such as ‘Terror gang planned to kidnap, torture and behead a soldier on our doorstep’ or ‘Terror hitlist named 25 Muslim soldiers’ with barely an ‘alleged’ thrown in to hint that none of the claims had been proved in court.”

Observer, 4 February 2007

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More irresponsible gibberish from Joan Smith

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Joan Smith displays her ignorance about the meaning of political Islam, and fingers veil-wearing Muslim women as terrorist pawns. Political Islam in all its variants is “an authoritarian political ideology based on a literal reading of the Koran”. What Islamists “want to replace is liberal secular democracy”. In furtherance of that aim, they are “trying to create as much dissension as possible, training young British men in foreign terror camps, facilitating terrorist attacks in the UK and hoping the wider Muslim community feels victimised when the police claim to have uncovered another terror cell. They’ve had some success in persuading Muslim women to adopt the niqab and jilbab…”

Independent on Sunday, 4 February 2007