Category Archives: UK

‘Molly Campell’ joins Taliban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Having had to abandon their initial lies about Misbah Rana – that she had been kidnapped by her Pakistani father, that she was being subjected to a forced marriage – the media have now come up with a new angle. Mishbah (or Molly Campbell, as they still insist on calling her) has been recruited by a group of al-Qaida sympathisers. She has joined a madrassah in Islamabad where one of the teachers even holds the outrageous view that when Muslim countries are attacked by the US they should resist.

Times, 11 January 2007 and Daily Mail, 11 January 2007

See also Abdiel, 12 January 2007

Update:  See “Misbah’s father denies school bid”, BBC News, 13 January 2007

Guantánamo protest at US embassy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Guantanamo protestA British boy whose father has been detained at the Guantanamo Bay camp delivered a letter to Downing St, ahead of a protest outside the US Embassy.

Anas el-Banna, 10, handed in his fourth letter to Tony Blair, reflecting the years his father had been held. He was accompanied by MP Sarah Teather, as campaigners marked the fifth anniversary of the camp’s opening.

The demonstration was one of a number organised around the world by human rights group Amnesty International. A petition was also handed in.

More than 300 protesters gathered outside the US embassy for the hour-long demonstration. They were dressed in orange boiler-suits, as worn by prisoners in the early stages of the camp, as well as blindfolds, goggles and face-masks.

BBC News, 11 January 2007

Boy charged over fire bomb attack

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Medina DairyA teenager has been charged with arson in connection with a fire bomb attack on a dairy owned by a Muslim family.

The Medina Dairy in Dedworth, Berkshire, was the scene of several nights of violence in October last year. Police arrested at least eight over the disorder and put a dispersal order in place around the dairy.

The 16-year-old boy from Windsor, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was charged over an incident on 4 October. A police spokesman said: “The charge relates to an incident at the dairy in Vale Road on the evening of 4 October 2006, where a bottle containing accelerant was allegedly thrown at the property’s front door.”

The boy has been bailed to attend Maidenhead Youth Court on Tuesday 16 January.

BBC News, 10 January 2007

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad supports restoration of caliphate shock

Posted on by Bob Pitt

HizbMore nonsense from Mad Melanie Phillips. She writes: “Hizb ut Tahrir, which has been banned in the Middle East, the United Kingdom and Germany, was going to host a Sydney conference this month to promote the takeover of Australia as part of an Islamic caliphate.”

And she quotes a Herald Sun report describing the HT video advertising the event: “In what appears to be a call to arms, the video features slogans attacking the United States and capitalism, and features militant anti-Western Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shaking his fist, before the slogan ’embrace the revival’.”

Mel welcomes the news that Bankstown City Council whose town hall was to be used for this event has cancelled it. She concludes: “Let’s hear it for Bankstown, which understands the difference between a liberal principle and being played for suckers in the attempt to destroy it. But the incident also dramatises the extent to which Australia is squarely in the global Islamisation frame.”

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 11 January 2007

It’s difficult to know where to begin. HT has not been banned in the UK, nor does it aim to take over Australia – its objective of restoring the caliphate is restricted to majority-Muslim countries. But perhaps the most bizarre claim is that the HT video included a clip of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Does Phillips really think that a video promoting the re-establishment of the caliphate would feature a prominent Shia politician? Or perhaps she should make the effort to view the HT video on YouTube. Does the individual concerned even look like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Read HT’s own response here.

Regent’s Park Mosque is accused of extremist links

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mosque promotes fundamentalists preaching hatredMosque ‘promotes fundamentalists preaching hatred’

By Amar Singh

Evening Standard, 10 January 2007

LONDON’S busiest mosque has been accused of promoting Islamic fundamentalists who vilify Jews, call for Sharia law in Britain, blame Christians for deliberately spreading Aids in Africa and preach intolerance towards all non-Muslims.

The allegations against London Central Mosque in Regent’s Park follow a 12-month investigation by the Channel 4 Dispatches programme. It found the mosque’s official bookshop sells DVDs containing the speeches of two radical preachers, Sheikh Feiz and Sheikh Khalid Yasin.

In one, Sheikh Feiz is seen imitating the snorting noises of a pig when referring to Jewish people, whom he says will be killed when the day of judgment arrives. He says: “This creature will say, ‘Oh Muslim’ behind me is the Jew. Come and kill him. They will be [makes snorting noises] all of them, every single one of them.”

Sheikh Yasin, a charismatic American convert, has said the koran calls for men to “beat women lightly” and told Muslims they should never regard non-Muslims as a friend. The controversial cleric is vaunted on the mosque’s official website alongside other “famous visitors” such as ministers Jack Straw and Mike O’Brien. In DVD footage, Sheikh Yasin says: “The whole delusion of equality of women is foolishness… there is no such thing.”

He also claims Western powers are behind the Aids epidemic in Africa. He says: “Missionaries from the World Health Organisation and Christian groups went into Africa and inoculated people for diphtheria, malaria, yellow fever and they put in the medicine the Aids virus, which is a conspiracy.”

Both men are linked to the Wahhabi brand of Islam, which is dominant in Saudi Arabia and well-funded. Wahhabis are some of the most radical and fundamentalist Muslims, believing in Sharia law and interpreting the koran literally. Moderate Muslims are deeply concerned about its spread to the UK.

Continue reading →

With friends like these …

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An Israeli writer warns against accepting the support of anti-Muslim bigots in Europe who declare their support for the state of Israel. She argues:

“… many of these new friends are Muslim-bashers first and Israel-backers second. Their blanket condemnation of Muslim communities on their continent rings eerily familiar. Their sweeping verdict against a whole civilization has that strange déjà vu feel…. I, for one Israeli, would be grateful to my newfound buddies if their sympathy for me did not rely on the trashing of another religion. Unlike them, I’m touched by the sight of young Muslim women in European university campuses. They remind my of my own grandmother, a student in Prague who had to flee after the Nazi rise to power, and of all the other young and hopeful Jews whose dreams and lives were shattered by the European culture they so admired. I will therefore not solicit support based on unqualified dislike of other human groups…. Beware of Islamophobes bearing gifts.”

Wall Street Journal, 7 January 2007

Mad Mel is not happy.

None are more equal than others

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“… just as the followers of different faiths should be protected against unfair discrimination in the provision of goods and services, so too should people on account of their sexual orientation. It seems to be an unanswerable argument. And it is one that British Muslims should be supporting….”

Inayat Bunglawala and Abdurahman Jafar at the Guardian‘s Comment is Free, 9 January 2007

Posted in UK

Why is my dad far away in that place called Guantanamo Bay?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Guantanamo5Ten-year-old Anas el-Banna will walk to the door of Number 10 Downing Street this week to ask for an answer to the question he has been trying to have answered for four years: Why can’t my Dad come home?

His father, Jamil, is one of eight British residents languishing among the almost 400 inmates at the American base at Guantanamo Bay, which opened five years ago to the day this Thursday – the day of Anas’s protest.

Mr Banna, was taken to Guantanamo Bay four years ago after being seized in Gambia along with fellow detainee Bisher al-Rawi. He was accused of having a suspicious device in his luggage. It turned out to be a battery charger. No charges have been made. He suffers from severe diabetes, but his lawyers say he has not been offered medication and has been denied the food he needs. His eyesight is now failing.

A year ago, his son wrote to Tony Blair for the second time to ask why the Government was not helping him return home. The then six-year-old did not even receive a reply. The second letter elicited a cursory note from the Foreign Office. It stated that because Mr Banna is not a British citizen, although his wife and children are, nothing could be done for him.

Independent, 9 January 2007