Category Archives: UK

‘1 in 10 British Muslims won’t shop a terrorist’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Tens of thousands of British Muslims would NOT shop someone they believed took part in a terror attack. A shock News of the World poll today reveals almost ONE IN TEN would not tell the police if they suspected a fellow Muslim was involved in an atrocity. With a million Muslims over 16 in Britain, it suggests a staggering 90,000 would turn a blind eye. And the figure is even worse among Muslims aged between 16 and 24, with 15 per cent saying they would not tell. Our poll also shows six per cent – or 60,000 Muslims – think attacks like the July 7 bombings are justified.”

News of the World, 24 September 2006

See also Press Association, 24 September 2006

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‘We’ve stopped standing up for Britain’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Minette Marin (2)Minette Marin is upset by a report that Gloucestershire police have turned down some white would-be recruits, on the (according to her, self-evidently absurd) basis that they want to raise ethnic minority recruitment to 7% of the total by 2009 (last year the figure was 1.6%). She writes:

“What, in this lamentable story, is this guilty obsession with race, this daft and patronising determination to exclude and demoralise the indigenous people? It is actually imposed in Gloucestershire by people who are mostly white males themselves. What is wrong with them? Why are they unwilling to hold the line against thoughtless, intrusive, guilt-ridden, destructive stupidity? One word for it is self-hatred. Another is decadence.

“It is for the same reasons, whatever they may be, that we are so obviously failing to hold the line against the extremes of Islam. We no longer carry high the standard of free speech for fear of offending people, usually Muslims. Stalwart citizens have recently felt it their duty to reprimand the Pope and a former Archbishop of Canterbury for discussing Islam and violence – for even raising such offensive questions.

“The results, for which we have only ourselves to blame, are alarming. Anyone who heard it must have been horrified by a British Muslim haranguing John Humphrys on Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday. Abu Izzadeen, the Jamaican convert who had heckled the home secretary at a meeting with Muslims, sounded even more terrifying on the air. Aggressive, illogical and blustering, he expressed his hatred of our government and its ‘crusade’ against Muslims. He thinks free speech and democracy are incompatible with Islam.

“When Humphrys asked him what was wrong with democracy, with trying to change things through Britain’s democratic process, he replied that ‘democracy means sovereignty for man, Islam means sovereignty for sharia … The UK doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to Allah’, and Allah has put Muslims on earth to implement sharia (Islamic law). So, Humphrys insisted, ‘the Islamic process but not the democratic process?’ ‘Yes’, said Izzadeen confidently, ‘that’s right’.

“It would be comforting to assume that Izzadeen is solitary and ignorant. Unfortunately he isn’t. An NOP poll for Channel 4 found that almost one in four British Muslims believed that the slaughter in London on July 7 was justified. Muslim community leaders can say what they like about Islam being all about peace; it’s perfectly clear that not all Muslims see it that way. For a long time now they have spread rage and resentment among their people and we have lacked the will and the instinct for self-preservation to resist it.”

Sunday Times, 24 September 2006

These days, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish the outpourings of “mainstream” right-wing commentators like Marin, with her indignant concern for the oppression of “the indigenous people”, from the sort of filth you read on the BNP website.

‘Fury as BBC gives preacher of hate a platform’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Abu IzzadeenThe Daily Mail reports: “The BBC sparked fury today for giving prime-time exposure to a known Islamic extremist. Abu Izzadeen appeared on Radio 4’s Today programme on the 8.10 slot normally reserved for ministers…. Listener Alan Newlands wrote saying: ‘I’m outraged by the amount of time you have given to this madman. I’m outraged by the insult to the Muslim community you perpetrated by allowing this man to appear to represent even a tiny minority.’ …  Dominic Grieve, shadow attorney general, said: ‘Abu Izzadeen is clearly a malevolent religious fanatic but he is certainly not representative of the Muslim community in Britain’.”

It’s not often I say this, but I agree with the Mail and Dominic Grieve. Muslims have repeatedly complained about the media coverage given to isolated lunatics like Abu Izzadeen and Anjem Choudary. Yusuf Smith recently commented:

“Until he sloped off to Lebanon, one of Omar Bakri’s ludicrous utterances after another were given front-page treatment by various newspapers and by the BBC, and other fringe figures were invited onto such shows as BBC Radio 4’s Today (particularly when Rod Liddle was in charge). These people are as significant as they are only because they are indulged by the media; their media profile is not matched by a similar standing in the community. The problem is that their demands are often seen by the public as ‘these Muslims’ demands’ when they are in fact the demands of a very small group.”

Hijab-wearing television presenters? ‘I’ll dispose of my TV set’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A letter writer in the Torygraph takes issue with Ruth Kelly’s suggestion that British TV should employ hijab-wearing Muslim women in more visible roles:

“On the very day that the Islamic radical Abu Izzadeen declares our Home Secretary persona non grata in a Muslim enclave, Ruth Kelly urges that Muslim women wearing the hijab should be given front-line roles in the media.Utterly predictable, of course, but the moment I see a female television presenter wearing the hijab will be the point at which I shall dispose of my set and surrender the licence. This is Britain, not Saudi Arabia or Iran.”

Daily Telegraph, 22 September 2006

Muslims attack BBC for airing interview with extremist

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The chief Muslim organisation in Britain has condemned the BBC for giving a well-known Islamic extremist who hijacked a speech by the Home Secretary a prime-time platform to air his views today.

The decision to interview Abu Izzadeen today during the key 8.10am slot on the agenda-setting Today programme was heavily criticised by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which described Abu Izzadeen as a “thug” and accused the BBC of deliberately trying to generate publicity.

“We have received phone call after phone call from moderate Muslims who are appalled that the Today programme gave such an utterly marginal figure this prime-time spot to spout his bile almost interrupted,” said Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the MCB.

“There was no attempt to balance the interview or challenge his views by having a mainstream Muslim view featured. This really plays into the hands of those who think of Muslims as bigots. People are very upset about this misrepresentation of Islam.”

Times, 22 September 2006

Muslim schoolchildren ‘more liberal and tolerant’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim pupils are more liberal and tolerant than their white counterparts, according to a study released on Wednesday. Nearly a third of white youngsters questioned in Burnley, Lancashire believed that one race was superior, compared with 10% of Asians who thought the same. Almost half of the white pupils felt that respecting others regardless of religion was not important and a quarter did not feel it was important to tolerate people with different views.

More than 400 15-year-olds were surveyed about their attitudes towards race, religion and cultural integration earlier this year. The research was conducted by Lancaster University’s religious studies department. The pupils came from three unnamed non-religious schools, all in deprived areas. One in Burnley, attended mostly by white pupils, and two schools in Blackburn, where one had mostly Indian or Pakistani pupils and the other was ethnically mixed.

Study author Dr Andrew Holden said a “disturbing” finding of the survey was the response to the question of racial superiority. Nearly a third of the white pupils believed one race was superior compared with a tenth in the Asian school and under a fifth in the mixed school. Dr Holden said: “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.”

TES, 20 September 2006

See also “Research reveals Muslim pupils more tolerant than non-Muslims”, Lancaster University news release, 20 September 2006

Families of bombers to blame for 7/7 – Paul Routledge

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Paul Routledge“John Reid, the Iraq war boaster, may not have been the right man to say it and an East London Islamic centre may not have been the right place to say it. But it still had to be said – even at the risk of upsetting Muslims. There is a threat to the public from home-grown Islamic fundamentalists and British Muslims have a duty to monitor their own community for signs of incipient terrorists.

“They know better than anyone if young Ali is going off the rails, or has come under the ideological spell of a fundamentalist cleric. They see the signs better than a whole station full of coppers. They have a responsibility to take whatever action seems right, including informing the authorities, if someone they know seems to be on the brink of violent jihadism against fellow Britons. That includes parents, siblings, friends, clerics, youth workers and elders of the Muslim community.

“I’m sorry, but as Dr Reid admitted, there is no easy way of saying this. Silence, however, would be more culpable than speaking out. Just imagine if this habit of mind had been the norm before July 7 last year: the young Muslim bombers might have been apprehended before they set out on their deadly mission to London.”

Paul Routledge in the Daily Mirror, 22 September 2006

So, according to Routledge, it would appear that the families of the 7/7 bombers knew, or at least suspected, that the young men were “on the brink of violent jihadism against fellow Britons” but they kept quiet about it.

There is no easy way of saying this, but it still has to be said, even at the risk of upsetting Paul Routledge – he’s an ignorant, bigoted idiot.

‘Confronted by the Islamist threat on all sides, Europe pathetically caves in’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Last week we had the tragicomic spectacle of European Nato countries lining up to decline politely the request to beef up their forces in Afghanistan, many of whom are now fighting in perilously under-resourced conditions against a resurgent enemy. Then on Monday Jacques Chirac went to New York to upend the long, delicate diplomacy designed to deny Iran nuclear weapons. He said France no longer thought the UN should impose sanctions if Iran did not end its uranium enrichment programme…. Then, of course, we have had the predictable European outrage following the latest apparent provocation of Islamic extremists by free speech in the West – Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks last week on Islam….

“… the scale of Europe’s moral crisis is larger than ever. Opposing the war in Iraq was one thing, defensible in the light of events. But opting out of a serious fight against the Taleban, sabotaging efforts to get Iran off its path towards nuclear status, pre-emptively cringing to Muslim intolerance of free speech and criticism, all suggest something quite different. They imply a slow but insistent collapse of the European will, the steady attrition of the self-preservation instinct. Its effects can be seen not only in the political field, but in other ways – the startling decline of birth rates across the continent that represent a sort of self-inflicted genocide….

“The symptoms of this moral collapse may be far away from the affluent and still largely peaceful cities and towns of the old continent – in the mountains of Afghanistan, the diplomatic reception halls of Tehran and the angry Pope-effigy-burning streets of the Middle East. But there should be no doubt that it is closer to home where the disease has taken hold.”

Gerard Baker in the Times, 22 September 2006

‘Deadly peril of allowing Muslim ghettos to flourish’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In today’s Daily Express, Mark Palmer warns of the threat from “Muslim ghettos”. He makes a comparison with “… the Chinese community, whose members do tend to live in various Chinatown areas of big cities but who, by virtue of their businesses and their appreciation of what this country has to offer, readily feel integrated…. The new Muslim ghettos by contrast are ideal breeding grounds for fanatics and unless we cut off the supply then we might as well admit defeat to the terrorists…. And it is no good Cabinet Minister Ruth Kelly saying that Muslim women wearing hijab, or headscarves, should be employed in front-line roles in the public eye. She thinks hijab-wearing Muslims presenting the news on TV will encourage more Muslim women to apply for jobs in the media. It might – but it will also encourage the likes of Izzadeen to push on with their relentless battle to ‘implement’ Islam. Rather than making Muslims feel more a part of British society, it could just as easily provide them with a further incentive to separate themselves.”

TV roles urged for women wearing hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim women wearing hijab, or headscarves, should be employed in front-line roles in the media, said a report published yesterday by Ruth Kelly, the minister for women. More women wearing hijab needed to be seen in the public eye, particularly on television, to encourage more Muslim women to put themselves forward, it said. Miss Kelly said the Government was giving priority to helping ethnic minority women to overcome discrimination at work and play a more prominent role in public life.

Daily Telegraph, 21 September 2006

Well, at least Ruth Kelly can get something right. Stand by for a spate of denunciations in the Torygraph’s letters column.

Our friend Giraldus Cambrensis provides an example of what to expect: “Ruth Kelly wants more hijabs on TV? Is she is an executive of a TV company? When Muslims comprise only 3% of the population, what do the other 97% of the population want on their telly? Hopefully her words will be treated as the vacuous inanities that they really are. What about the stamp-collectors in Britain? Why are they not represented on the television?”

Western Resistance, 21 September 2006