Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) gets in on the scaremongering campaign over the proposed Islamic Centre at Abbey Mills in London. The CBN piece features an interview with Irfan al-Alawi of Stephen Schwartz’s Center for Islamic Pluralism (co-author with Schwartz of last week’s Spectator article) who states that the Abbey Mills mosque will become a threat to security “once the youth have been brainwashed, and been captured by the satanic ideology of the Tablighis”. Al-Alawi adds: “The person who is really behind it is Ken Livingstone.”
Category Archives: UK
Local councils to ‘spy’ on British Muslims
The British government is launching a controversial multi-million-pound package to help local authorities spy on Muslims to tackle so-called “extremism”, a British daily reported Saturday. Council staff will be asked to “establish systems to share potential risks or concerns at the local level with councils and staff acting as the eyes and ears for police in countering threats”, the Daily Mirror said.
The government’s tactics in tackling extremism has been criticized by Muslim leaders as misguided, counterproductive and a virtual “witch-hunt”. Some of its policies and comments by ministers have been blamed for provoking Islamophobia and alienating the country’s 1.8 million Muslim community, at a time when the government refuses to accept the damaging effects of its foreign policy, including the Iraq war.
See also Daily Mirror, 6 January 2007
Protection from press racism never looked gaunter
“Newspapers were a green light to discriminate against black communities after the press watchdog ruled that rules banning ‘prejudiced’ articles were meant only to protect individuals. The bizarre decision came as a result of complaints to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) about an article in The Sun newspaper written by columnist and broadcaster Jon Gaunt.
“This website, and many of our readers, took issue with a column on 24th October last year, which claimed human rights were ‘just for foreigners, fanatics, freeloaders and perverts’…. It accused a Muslim schoolteacher Aishah Azmi of wanting to ‘stitch up our way of life’ by contesting an employment courts’ decision to ban her wearing the full veil in class even when adult male colleagues are present….
“But in a ruling received today by Blink, the PCC noted that their code of conduct (Clause 12) was ‘designed to protect the individual and is not generally applicable to groups of people. As such, the complaint that the article discrimiated against Muslims in general could not raise a breach of the Code. In this instance the Commission noted that the only individual who might have been the subject of prejudicial or pejorative reference was Ms Aishah Azmi, who had not raised a compliant about the matter’.”
Lester Holloway reports, BLINK website, 8 January 2007
Fascists campaign against ‘mega-mosque’
Complaining that the proposed Abbey Mills Islamic Centre “will change the face of the landscape and will be a defiant symbol of the extent of this alien religion in our capital city”, the BNP urges its supporters to vote in an Evening Standard online poll which poses the question “Are you in favour of the £100m mosque?”
BNP news article, 7 January 2007
The online poll is here.
Swindon mosque bomber is jailed
A racist thug who tried to firebomb a mosque and daubed sick graffiti on its walls was jailed yesterday.
Mark Bulman, 22, got five years for the attack in which he wrote “Go to Auschwitz” and “Allah is a pervert” on the building.
He also painted a Nazi swastika on its walls after smashing a window and lobbing in a petrol bomb. But it failed to explode in the empty building.
See also “Racist jailed for arson attack on mosque”, Swindon Advertiser, 6 January 2007
Another article from the Advertiser sheds a revealing light on the British National Party’s new “respectable” image. A couple of months earlier, when a teenager was convicted of an arson attack on the same mosque, a spokesman for the Swindon branch of the BNP had stated: “We just want to say that justice has been done and he deserves to be locked up for this attack on the Muslim community.” And who was this BNP spokesman? None other than Mark Bulman.
‘Revealed: preachers’ messages of hate’
“Muslim worshippers are being urged by radical clerics to ignore British law.” Jamie Doward plugs a forthcoming documentary in the Channel 4 Dispatches slot.
MPs don’t know Sunnis from Shias
When you are chairman of your party’s international office and its human rights commission and a member of the all-party parliamentary Friends of Islam group, it might be advisable to swot up on what is happening in the Middle East. However, constituents of Gary Streeter, the Tory MP for South West Devon, must hope that he knows more about Dartmoor than he does about the Muslim world.
Streeter confessed last week he did not know the difference between a Sunni and a Shi’ite. He was one of 30 Middle East “experts” from the world of politics put on the rack over Iraq, Iran and other countries in the region by The Sunday Times. Streeter, once private secretary to John Major, the former prime minister, also failed to identify Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran.
He was not alone. Many of those quizzed did not know their Hamas from their Hezbollah. Both Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat MP for Brent East, and Sally Keeble, Labour member for Northampton North, thought Hezbollah was an organisation based in Palestine.
Anne Milton, the Tory MP for Guildford, wears the dunce’s cap after getting 13 out of 14 questions wrong. It even slipped her mind that she was a member of the Friends of Islam group. “Ooh, am I?” she said. “Oh yes, I suppose so. I forgot. I don’t think I’ve sat on it yet.”
The witch-hunt against the ‘mega-mosque’ continues
Irfan al-Alawi and Stephen Schwartz of the so-called Center for Islamic Pluralism continue the witch-hunt of Tablighi Jamaat over the proposed new mosque – or “Ken’s mega-mosque” as they now dub it – at Abbey Mills in East London. The article contains the welcome news that Asif Shakoor and the Sunni Friends of Newham, who were co-operating with Irfan al-Alawi in the campaign against the mosque, “now profess indifference about the project”.
‘Radical Islam and British universities’
“It is fairly common knowledge that insofar as terrorism is concerned, what happens in England will most certainly, eventually, happen in America. FSM Contributing Editor Adrian Morgan, in this utterly shocking and carefully documented expose, informs us of our future. When you read this, you will not be able to sleep until you are certain that we can stop such infiltration in our own homeland.”
Family Security Matters, 4 January and 5 January 2007
Makes Anthony Glees appear almost reasoned and objective by comparison.
Parish at war over ‘anti-Islam’ booklet written by local doctor
The community of the most northerly parish on the Shetland mainland has been left bitterly divided over the suspension of a local doctor who distributed a controversial religious pamphlet to his patients which critics claim is highly offensive to Muslims.
Dr Mick Russon, who has been an associate GP at the Hillswick health centre since 2004, was suspended by the Shetland Health Board after he sent out a 46-page booklet, entitled Proclamation, to more than 200 people in the parish of Northmavine. The health authority took the disciplinary action after receiving a complaint from a member of the public. His case has now been referred to the General Medical Council.
The pamphlet makes no direct reference to the Islamic faith, but critics claim that Dr Russon’s repeated references to a “Babylonian Moon God” and Satan are a thinly veiled attack on Allah and that he is asserting that Islam is Satanic.
Dr Russon states in the pamphlet: “Satan is the Babylonian Moon God; a cult that has become probably the most oppressive of women throughout time. There are probably more people worshipping the Moon God at this moment in time than at any previous time in the history of mankind; it is probable that most who follow him do so out of fear and not reverence.
“As each successive world empire has reached its height, it is largely the conflict between politics and finance that brings it down. We have seen this only too well in recent days, when the buildings that represented the centre of global trade were destroyed by those who carry the symbols of the Babylonian Moon God. I of course refer to the events now universally referred to as 9/11.”