Category Archives: UK

MCB ‘not doing enough to stamp out extremism’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Britain’s leading Muslim organisation is not doing enough to root out anti-Western extremism, eight out of ten people believe. A new opinion poll day suggests an overwhelming majority think the Muslim Council of Britain should do more to tackle dangerous radicalism in young Muslims. The survey, carried out for PR Week magazine, found 78 per cent of people overall, rising to nearly 90 per cent of over-55s, strongly agreed the organisation was not doing enough.

Daily Mail, 31 August 2006

Considering that most respondents have probably never even heard of the MCB, still less have any knowledge of its activities, it would be difficult to come up with a more stupid opinion poll. All the poll succeeds in registering is a high degree of ignorant anti-Muslim prejudice among the general population.

This hasn’t prevented mindless right-wing Islamophobes from seizing on the poll’s “findings” to attack the MCB. See, for example, Western Resistance, 31 August 2006

Muslim Miss England accuses Blair

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The country’s first Muslim Miss England has accused Tony Blair of fuelling hostility towards Islam in the wake of the London bombings. Hammasa Kohistani, 19, said the attacks of July 7 last year had in some ways brought communities together, as people from many different backgrounds were killed. But statements from the Government in the year since the bombings had created “negative stereotypes” of Muslims, she said.

Press Association, 31 August 2006

Don’t penalise all Britons – just Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Americans are at last waking up to the threat posed by British-born Islamists…. The fact that Americans are worried is gratifying. This column was among the first to warn about the radicalization of the British Muslim community. But there is a risk that, having ignored the danger hitherto, Americans may now overreact by penalizing all Britons, not just the minority who really do threaten security.

“It is true that opinion polls show that a significant proportion of British Muslims have at least some sympathy for jihadist extremism, and that even their leaders are unwise or unscrupulous enough to use the threat of terrorism to put pressure on Tony Blair to abandon his support for America and Israel. It is also true, however, that the overwhelming majority of non-Muslim Britons are just as hostile to Islamist terrorism as Americans.

“Even more significantly, the British – like the Americans – are now much more concerned about Islam than was the case five years ago. They no longer believe the assurances of ‘moderate’ Muslim leaders or their non-Muslim apologists that Islam is a religion of peace. People are much better informed and understand that there is a real problem about Islamic theology, which is constantly used to justify jihad against America, Britain and Israel, while suicide ‘martyrs’ are glorified.

“About half of all Britons now see Islam as such, not merely its most extreme versions, as a potential threat to their way of life – not before time. It is not only the war on terror that has to be won; there is a culture war, too. This involves resisting the encroachments of aggressive multiculturalism, which acts as a Trojan horse for Muslim demands to live under Shariah law or to censor legitimate criticism or comment.”

Daniel Johnson in the New York Sun, 31 August 2006

Faith schools – they’re OK so long as they’re not Muslim

Posted on by Bob Pitt

lord bakerIn a letter to the Times, Lord Baker of Dorking has written: “The Government, in its first flush of multiculturalism, allowed new exclusive faith schools to be established and funded by the state…. There are 100 Muslim schools waiting to apply. Their entrance criteria are explicit: the purpose is to create a total Muslim personality, and the required familiarity with the Koran means that non-Muslims would not be acceptable.”

Oddly enough, when he was education secretary under Thatcher in the late 1980s, I can’t remember Baker proposing to withdraw support from the thousands of Church of England schools that receive state funding.

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OAP beaten unconscious in attack close to mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A disabled Bangladeshi pensioner was beaten unconscious with his own walking stick in a vicious assault in Wirral. Police are treating the attack on the 71-year-old as racially motivated and last night appealed for calm in the Muslim community

The pensioner, who is partially sighted and registered blind, was attacked by two men after he left the Shahjalal Mosque on Borough Road, Birkenhead, on Saturday evening. One of the men punched the victim in the face and he fell to the floor. They then took his walking stick and beat him until he was unconscious.

When the victim came round the offenders had fled. He managed to walk to his home nearby and alerted a neighbour to what had happened. The pensioner was taken to Arrowe Park hospital where he received treatment to a three-inch cut on his head and severe tinnitus, from which he is still suffering. He also lost a front tooth in the attack.

DI George Davies of Merseyside police said: “This was a despicable attack on a 71-year-old man who was walking home from the mosque after prayers.

“We are determined to find the cowards who carried out this sustained and brutal attack on a defenceless man and are appealing for members of the community who may know who is responsible for this to come forward. Nothing was stolen during the incident and at this moment in time we believe that the attack was racially motivated.

“Borough Road is a very busy thoroughfare and I am sure that many motorists will have driven along Borough Road on Saturday night and they could have information which could prove vital to our investigation.”

He added: “We are appealing for calm in the Muslim community and are working with the local elders to reassure them and to ask if anyone witnessed the attack.”

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‘Boycott stamp depicting Muslim holiday’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The US Postal Service recently decided to introduce a new postage stamp celebrating Eid. One US commentator is not best pleased:

“I am against those who use their extremist beliefs of their religion to attack people, entire families, destroy lives, homes, and countries in order to gain attention to their ’cause’. It is these people, these radical, rebel extremist, terrorists that thought nothing about boarding planes on 9/11 bent on destroying the United States and its people.

“Therefore, I am supporting a boycott of the issuance of this USPS postage stamp, and I urge everyone reading this column to do the same. Using this stamp would be like a slap in the face to those who have lost their lives at the hands of the very people this stamp now honors. Being politically correct can only go so far!”

New Albany Tribune, 29 August 2006

Britain is ‘a hornets’ nest of Islamic extremists’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Daily Mail editorialises about the claim in the US magazine New Republic that Britain now presents a greater security threat to the United States than Iran or Iraq:

“Which country poses the greatest threat to America’s homeland security: Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea? None of the above, according to a growing body of opinion across the Atlantic. The answer, say many American pundits, is the United Kingdom.

“At first sight, this looks outrageously ungrateful. After all, aren’t British troops dying every week, both in Afghanistan and Iraq, for an American foreign policy slavishly followed by Tony Blair? Yet the more you think about the charge – spelt out in the current New Republic magazine and echoed by American think-tanks of every persuasion – the more truth you can see in it. Hasn’t Britain indeed become, in the words of Nile Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation, ‘a hornets’ nest of Islamic extremists’? How have we let this come about?

“Much of the answer lies in our authorities’ spineless refusal to confront Islamic extremism for fear of being thought anti-Muslim. Americans gape in disbelief when our senior policemen’s first reaction to every terrorist atrocity is to try to appease religious extremists. Or when Ministers employ apologists for terrorism as special advisers to the Foreign Office.”

Daily Mail, 30 August 2006

Hopefully, Mockbul Ali will sue.

Muslim faith schools defended

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Britain’s race relations chief defended last night the right of Muslims to open their own schools. In remarks that put him at odds with Ruth Kelly, the Communities Secretary, Trevor Phillips said that Muslims had as much right as other religious groups to educate their children according to their beliefs. Last weekend Ms Kelly said the Government had to stamp out Muslim schools that were trying to change British society to fit Islamic views.

But, in a lecture to the Royal Geographical Society, Mr Phillips criticised the view, now rapidly gaining ground, that faith schools, and Muslim schools in particular, were incompatible with full social integration. He said: “What the proponents of this view really want to say is one of two things. One, a perfectly valid view, is that religion should be banned from the public sphere and practised only in private if at all. The other, not at all valid in my view, is that Muslims can’t be trusted to run schools, like Christians have done for centuries.”

Times, 30 August 2006

Multiculturalism, terror and shariah

Posted on by Bob Pitt

osama saeed 2“The argument of the government goes roughly as follows. Asians have lived parallel lives in this country for too many years, and because of this segregation, they care nothing at all for white people and are thus quite willing to blow them up on public transport.

“This is simply not true. For one, Al-Qaeda have regard for nobody’s lives, and white people should not take it personally. US, UK, and Australian targets have been hit in Muslim countries, resulting in the deaths of many hundreds of their co-religionists. For Al-Qaeda, there are no rules to the game. They kill, and it doesn’t matter about your creed or colour in pursuit of their goals.

“The second count on which it’s not true is that it bears no resemblance to the bombers we know about to date. Richard Reid the shoebomber was a white convert. The July bombers all spoke English. One was a teaching assistant, one worked in his father’s fish-and-chip shop, one was married to a white Englishwoman, and one was known to have gone on wild drinking binges (thus passing Jon Snow’s integration test).”

Osama Saeed at Rolled Up Trousers, 28 August 2006