Category Archives: UK

Another bigot backs the Pope

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jon_GauntJon Gaunt throws his considerable intellectual weight behind the Pope in today’s Sun:

“We are constantly being told to be tolerant and understanding of the Muslim faith. Well, do you think it would be possible just for a minute for Muslims to be tolerant of our humour, culture and literature? Why, as the former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey said, can’t the Muslim community take criticism? … There’s no sound of laughter around this religion and if there were it would be drowned out by the sound of feet treading on eggshells. Why?

“It started with the West’s capitulation to the religious nutters and fanatics of Iran who declared a fatwa on Salman Rushdie over his novel The Satanic Verses nearly 20 years ago…. The row over the Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad was an absolute joke, and again the West gave in to the mad mullahs and extremists of the Muslim world who stirred up trouble, protests and intimidation by circulating the pictures around the globe.

“Not content with intimidating artists, politicians and newspaper editors, these people are now even trying to deny the Pope free speech. The Pope wasn’t preaching hatred. He was basically saying there is no place for violence in any religion. Who can take offence at that?

“The truth is, of course, that the Pope was showing he had more moral backbone than most leading politicians. He has previously demanded that Muslim clerics condemn ‘any connection between your faith and terrorism’.”

BNP applauds Mad Mel

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Mad Mel Phillips, the Daily Mail’s ranter-in-chief, says in a typically temperate post on her blog that the positive response to young Dave Fotherington-Cameron’s recent anti-neocon foreign policy speech from the ‘profoundly anti-Jew, anti-Israel, simply vile’ Muslim Public Affairs Committee is proof positive of the ‘moral and intellectual decline’ of the present-day Conservative party.

“Now if we read this right (and one can never be entirely sure with Mel), she’s saying that if an ‘extremist’ group expresses agreement with a part of your work, you’re lost. Heartening, then, to hear from the eminently mainstream British National Party that in general, ‘the opinions of the Daily Mail … and columnist Melanie Phillips are those that most closely match our own’.”

Jon Henley in the Guardian, 19 September 2006

For the BNP’s quoted endorsement of Mad Mel, see here.

‘Muslims must shop their extremist kids’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

John ReidIn today’s Sun John Reid suggests that Muslims in Britain are not doing enough to combat terrorism. Following some initial conciliatory remarks, he writes that “the Muslim community must choose between accepting the propaganda of the terrorists and taking on would-be terrorists at every opportunity”.

It boils down to a lecture to parents on controlling their children, though it is clear that the families of the 7/7 bombers didn’t have the slightest idea what they were up to. However, Reid offers some handy hints on how to spot the danger signs: “look for changes in your teenage sons – odd hours, dropping out of school or college, strange new friends.” By those criteria, there must be an awful lot of terrorist suspects out there.

And I thought this bit was priceless: “Some may think it is better to accommodate extremists in the hopes of influencing them for the better, but as I know from the bitter experience of dealing with militants in the Labour Party, you cannot compromise with fanatical beliefs.”

The Militant Tendency as al-Qaida, Ted Grant as Osama bin Laden! And a lecture on the impossibility of influencing extremists to take a more moderate course sounds all the more bizarre coming from Labour right-winger who is a former member of the Communist Party.

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Muslim world divided over Pope’s apology

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pope Benedict’s admission that he was “deeply sorry” for offending the sensitivities of Muslims does not necessarily mean that the worst crisis of his papacy is over yet. Speaking in Rome yesterday, the Pope said that the views of the 14th-century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus that he quoted last week – describing Islam as “evil and inhuman” – were not his own.

In Britain, some senior Muslims welcomed the Pope’s apologies but suggested that he would have to make a further apology to stop the row escalating.

Massoud Shadjareh, of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, said: “He needs to convince that this is a genuine apology because many people are aware of the sort of things he has been saying for a long time. Threats are not the way forward but some of the things he has said have been music to the ears of racists.”

Guardian, 18 September 2006

Britain ‘resurrects culture of racism’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Britain ‘resurrects culture of racism’

Morning Star, 18 September 2006

Race relations campaigners warned at the weekend that the British and US governments have “resurrected a culture of primitive racism” after the terror attacks in both countries.

The way the terrorist threat has been dealt with has produced overarching racism in which ethnic minorities are perceived as terrorists or illegal immigrants, said Institute of Race Relations (IRR) director Dr A. Sivanandan. He told Saturday’s conference at Conway Hall in central London that the multicultural Britain created after the second world war had been “destroyed”.

“The war on asylum and the war on terror – one the unarmed invasion, the other the armed enemy within – has produced the idea of a nation under siege, and, on the ground, a racism that cannot tell a settler from an immigrant, an immigrant from an asylum-seeker, an asylum-seeker from a Muslim, a Muslim from a terrorist”, said Dr Sivanandan.

But he insisted that the damage done to the whole fabric of society and democracy was more insidious, with constraints on the freedom of speech, plus the undermining of laws and the independence of the judiciary.

He went on: “It is that adamantine resolve to deny the connection between cause and effect that has also prevented the government from seeing that in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the systematic dismemberment of Palestine, it is they and their American bosses who have declared jihad on Muslims the world over and given sustenance to terrorism.

“And having refused to acknowledge it, they have no choice but to stir up more and more fear in order to pass more and more draconian legislation that further erodes our liberties.”

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How to deal with Muslims – Martin Amis offers some advice

Posted on by Bob Pitt

martin amisGinny Dougary has posted the text of her Times magazine interview with Martin Amis, who opines:

“… the only thing the Islamists like about modernity is modern weapons. And they’re going to get better and better at that. They’re also gaining on us demographically at a huge rate. A quarter of humanity now and by 2025 they’ll be a third. Italy’s down to 1.1 child per woman. We’re just going to be outnumbered….

“There’s a definite urge – don’t you have it? – to say, ‘The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order’. What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan. Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children. They hate us for letting our children have sex and take drugs – well, they’ve got to stop their children killing people.”

Ginny Dougary website, 17 September 2006

‘The Pope must die, says Muslim’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Typically, the Mail prefaces its coverage of the controversy over the Pope’s remarks with a quote from the ludicrous Anjem Choudary, leading its readership to believe that this fruitcake with a few dozen deluded followers represents some significant current of opinion within Britain’s Muslim communities.

Daily Mail, 18 September 2006

You do sometimes wonder whether the right-wing press has Choudary on a retainer.

Qur’an incites violence, Times columnist claims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rees Mogg“Journalists should not criticise Pope Benedict XVI for his lecture at Regensburg. He has done only what every sub-editor on the Daily Mail does every day. Confronted with a long and closely written text, he inserted a lively quote to draw attention to the argument. We all do it. Sometimes the quote causes trouble, but more often it opens up an argument that is needed.

“The question is not whether the quotation from the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus is offensive: it is. The question is whether the emperor is justified in what he said. His main thrust was at least partly justified. There is a real problem about the teaching of the Koran on violence against the infidel. That existed in the 14th century, and was demonstrated on 9/11, 2001.”

William Rees-Mogg in the Times, 18 September 2006

Why do ‘we’ keep having to apologise to Muslims, Ruth Gledhill asks

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“… I do have some sympathy for the Pope’s predicament. It is indeed a tragic irony, as many have noted, that a speech intended to further interfaith dialogue and understanding has had precisely the opposite effect, actually provoking outbreaks of extremism of the very kind he was warning against. And the general population is with the Pope. In a Sky poll of viewers, nearly everyone, more than 98 per cent, said he should not apologise.

“After all, we in the West have truly suffered at the hands of the Salafi Jihadists, as the Archbishop of York suggests we call them. We’ve had 9/11, 7/7 and narrowly escaped another. There is Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, and I am among those who firmly resist placing responsibility for the ills committed in these wars solely at the feet of the West. It does seem bizarre that we do keep having to apologise to Muslims.

“‘Turn the other cheek’ says the Christian religion of the West and we do seem to keep doing just that. In spite of the fact that those responsible for the terrorist atrocities would themselves confess to being of the Islamic faith, and of committing their crimes in the name of Islam, even to write about Islam and terrorism in the same sentence is fast becoming surefire way to end up on Islamophobia Watch at the very least.”

Ruth Gledhill’s weblog, 16 September 2006

Posted in UK

Once again, Melanie Phillips rallies to the defence of western civilisation

Posted on by Bob Pitt

madmelSurprise, surprise – Mad Mel sides with Pope Benedict: “the Pope’s real crime surely lay in speaking a truth that is denied by the many who claim that Islam is a religion of peace. On the contrary, Islam does indeed have a long history of imposing its faith on the world by the sword.”

Unlike European Christians, of course, who have spread their faith across the world by purely pacifistic means.

Mel concludes with a dire warning: “Our greatest danger comes from those in the West who … have mentally surrendered to the irrationality and false logic of those who accuse the West of aggression simply because it defends itself against Islamic holy war. This surrender has already resulted in a degree of self-censorship and back-to-front thinking, with accusations of ‘Islamophobia’ hurled at those telling the truth about the violence practised by some Muslims in the name of Islam.

“If we are ever to defeat the global jihad against free societies, it is vital to tell that truth – that it is the West that is under attack. It is in that context that the Pope’s remarks must be seen – defending Christianity and western civilisation from an onslaught that has not just snuffed out many innocent lives, but seeks to snuff out freedom and truth itself.”

Daily Mail, 18 September 2006