Category Archives: UK

Basildon Islamic Centre gutted by fire

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sarfraz Sarwar and Basildon Islamic CentreBasildon’s Islamic Centre has been almost destroyed in a suspected arson attack.

The fire raged through the Triangle Community Hall in High Road, Laindon, which is leased to the Muslim community group, at about 3.30am yesterday. A large crowd gathered to watch as five crews of firefighters battled to contain the blaze. It severely damaged about one-third of the building, with the roof worst affected.

Sarfraz Sarwar, the centre’s founder and leader, said: “We are just lost for words at the moment. The building is completely gutted. The police think it was arson. But my aim is to get this busy place sorted out one way or another, and to keep on working. We are not going to run away or be defeated. We would like to carry on our community services as usual in a small corner of the town.”

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White extremists use terror videos to threaten Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Far-right extremists have adopted the tactics of Islamic jihadists by posting videos on the internet in which they threaten to behead British Muslims.

The films show balaclava-clad white British men brandishing guns, knives and clubs, calling on all Muslims to leave the United Kingdom or be killed. One appears to be a soldier who has served in the Gulf. In one film a man tells Muslims to “go home” or risk being burnt alive. He threatens: “I’ll cut your head off,” and claims to have “comrades” across Britain who have “had enough”.

The videos have all been made since the arrest three weeks ago of suspects connected to the alleged plot to blow up transatlantic jets. Their style mimics the “martyrdom videos” of Islamic radicals talking about their plans for terrorist outrages against the West.

The release of the videos on YouTube, an American-based open-access website, coincides with reports of a rise in the number of attacks on mosques. Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, said the videoed threats were extremely worrying. “There is no question there has been an increase in attacks on mosques and Muslims,” he said.

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US Muslims plagued by discrimination after 9/11 attacks

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Discrimination and harassment by law enforcement have come to plague American Muslims in the years since the terrorist attacks of September 11. There have been suspicious looks, slurs, physical attacks, extra screening at airports and arrests on groundless charges. And it seems to be getting worse. A recent Gallup poll showed that 39 percent of Americans admit to being prejudiced against Muslims and that nearly a quarter say they would not want a Muslim for a neighbor.

“Most Americans don’t know Muslims except for those they work with in an urban environment so all the information they get is through the media,” said Dawud Walid, director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations.

After having shown some restraint in his rhetoric after 19 Muslim men affiliated with Al-Qaeda flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President George W. Bush has of late been using far more inflammatory language such as “Islamofacists”, Walid said. “When the religious and political leaders use polarizing language these are the unfortunate side effects. It stretches from the likes of (Christian Coalition leader) Pat Robinson all the way up to President Bush.”

AFP, 3 September 2006

Charles Johnson is not impressed, seeing this as yet another example of the mainstream media falling for “CAIR’s spurious claims of an ominous rise in ‘hate crimes’ against Muslims”.

Little Green Footballs, 3 September 2006

Another hate-filled rant from Mad Mel

Posted on by Bob Pitt

madmel“More than 30 Muslim groups, along with Muslim MPs and peers, demanded that the Government change its foreign policy in order to placate terrorists. This blackmail was followed by a demand from other representatives [in fact, just one representative – ed.] that a pair of Islamic religious festivals should become official holidays and that Islamic laws relating to marriage and family life be applied in Britain. These were not moderate attitudes.

“In Australia, the government has adopted a robust approach to such extremism. It has said that those Muslims who want to live under sharia law should leave the country, and that Australian Muslim leaders need to denounce terrorism in all its forms around the world.

“By contrast, rather than challenging the ideology driving Islamic terror, Britain remains paralysed by the back-to-front thinking which blames its own policies for the terrorism that threatens it. This paralysis is largely caused by multiculturalism, the doctrine which holds that minorities cannot be held responsible for the wrong that they do since they are always somehow the victims of the majority.

“This doctrine has pushed Left-wingers into the arms of Islamic radicals who are sworn enemies of the West. When Trevor Phillips, the black chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, repeated his concerns about the failure of multiculturalism, London’s mayor Ken Livingstone jeered that he expected Mr Phillips soon to join the racist British National Party.

“This was the same Ken Livingstone who last year publicly embraced as a ‘reformer’ Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the Islamic extremist who calls for suicide bombings in Iraq and Israel and perpetrates gross libels against the Jews. Yet despite such an endorsement of true racism and fascism, the Mayor remains popular — and still remains in the Labour Party.

“Such a state of denial goes far beyond the Left. The political and security establishment still refuses to grasp that it is not enough — vital though this is — to thwart terrorist plots and break up terrorist cells. Action also needs to be taken against the paranoid, hate-filled ideas driving so many to these terrible acts….

“Virtually nothing is being done to prevent the recruitment to terror still taking place on university campuses, which have long acted as hotbeds of radicalisation, or in prisons or youth clubs. Even worse, Islamic extremists have been recruited into the very heart of Whitehall as government advisers, in the wholly misguided belief that appeasing religious fanaticism will draw its venom.”

Daily Mail, 2 September 2006

‘My vote’s for Trevor, not Ken’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Joan SmithJoan Smith takes sides in the dispute between the Mayor of London and Trevor Phillips, the newly appointed head of the CEHR who is of course a great favourite of Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch. In particular, and predictably, she endorses Phillips’s views on multiculturalism:

“Phillips’s pronouncements on the subject are robust – earlier this year he suggested that Muslims who want to live under Islamic law (sharia) should leave the country – but more coherent than anything the Mayor of London has come up with. Livingstone’s take on multiculturalism certainly isn’t mine. It’s a form of relativism that allows him to park his values when they’re inconvenient and embrace religious extremists with repellent views on women and homosexuals. Living in a society that has abolished the death penalty, Livingstone welcomes to London a Muslim cleric whose website discusses whether death is the appropriate penalty for gay men, and appears at public events with an academic who refuses to call for a ban on the hideous practice of lapidation….

“In fact, the biggest threat to multiculturalism comes not from organisations such as the BNP but politicians such as Livingstone who refuse to have this debate, seeking to close it down with accusations of racism and Islamophobia. The UK is a diverse society, but it won’t remain so if millions of ordinary people feel they’re not allowed to criticise the minority who hate gay people, treat women as second-class citizens and support political or religious violence.”

Independent on Sunday, 3 September 2006

The “academic who refuses to call for a ban on the hideous practice of lapidation” is of course Tariq Ramadan. As I think we’ve observed before, rejecting engagement with an influential Muslim liberal like Professor Ramadan is a sign that Islamophobia has reached the point of dementia. It can only be a matter of time before Joan Smith joins the likes of Melanie Phillips in ranting on about “Eurabia” and the Muslim plot to destroy western civilisation.

‘This prejudice is forcing me to leave Britain’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Ever since the London bombings I have been more and more disquieted by the attitude of so many people towards the Asian community, in particular the Muslim section. The fact that there are few visible differences to most people between a Hindu, Sikh or Muslim has meant that everyone in this community is now suffering from increased, negative, racially motivated attention.

“Finally I have come to the conclusion that for most liberally minded British Asians like myself, the answer is to get out. I am weary of prolonged searches at airports, ferry ports and the like. My last encounter at the Eurostar terminal in Paris involved being asked: ‘What is the purpose of your visit to the UK?’ Bearing in mind that I have a UK passport which shows my place of birth as Glasgow, I was puzzled by this question.”

Nadeem Butt in the Independent, 1 September 2006

‘Muslims feel like victims. The West feels guilty. Is the world going mad?’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Gerard Baker supports racial/religious profiling as long as it is “carried out properly and indeed respectfully”. He continues:

“But to argue, as is now common, that it is another example of harassment of and discrimination against Muslims by an increasingly aggressive and hostile State and society, is not only a bit rich. It sounds disturbing like another example of what is becoming a dangerous pathology among many Muslims – to wallow in a self-imposed and eagerly embraced status of victimhood. This condition places the blame for every ill in their lives, in their communities, in the West and in the countries of the Middle East, on the imperialist oppression of the white man, the American and, of course, the Jew, never once stopping to consider even the possibility that their plight might be, in part at least, their own making….

“The failure of Palestinians to create an orderly and successful society is blamed on ‘the occupation’. The failure of many Muslims in Europe, especially in Britain, to integrate effectively is laid at the feet of a white racist society that excludes them…. Of course, this celebration of victimhood plays to the West’s deep sense of guilt, producing a fearful complementarity that makes today’s crisis so potent – a civilisation all too willing to accept the blame for the woes of a people all too willing to blame them.”

Times, 1 September 2006

The Muslim threat to Western universities

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), scene to a growing number of anti-Semitic incidents from an increasingly pro-Islamic campus, issued a threat to one of its Jewish students to cease his protests against anti-Semitism at the University. Gavin Gross, an American, had been leading a campaign against the deterioration of conditions for Jewish students at SOAS, which is part of the University of London. SOAS had witnessed an escalation of anti-Jewish activity, in both severity and frequency. At the beginning of the year, the Islamic Society screened a video which compared Judaism with Satanism.”

Front Page Magazine, 1 September 2006

A reason to hate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“One of the most bewildering sights since last month’s dramatic Heathrow alert has been the succession of government ministers insisting that the terrorist threat has nothing to do with Iraq and British support for American foreign policy. Such political certainties fly in the face of all the empirical evidence I have found in a year of investigating how young Muslims are radicalised and recruited to fight in Iraq, not just in Britain but across Europe and the Middle East. Whenever and wherever I asked the families and friends of suicide bombers why their loved ones had been prepared to blow themselves up, top of their list was Iraq. Some were radicalised by the alleged illegality of the US invasion, others by torture at Abu Ghraib and abuses by the American military, and all by the continuing occupation of a Muslim land by foreign forces – including the British army.”

Peter Taylor in the Guardian, 1 September 2006 

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