It has been a difficult year for young Muslim men in Britain since four of their co-religionists – Hasib Hussain, Mohammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer and Germaine Lindsay – carried out the bombings that killed 52 people in London. As the anniversary of the 7/7 attacks approaches, there is a nervous feeling among those living in Scotland. Some argue that their repeated condemnations of the bombings are forgotten; others feel they have been forced to condemn too much while receiving little in return. Many react with annoyance to the suggestion that they are linked to the actions of men they view as misguided extremists and undeserving of the term Muslim. There is the frequent reminder that Muslims, too, were victims of the London bombers, while others are critical of the media for “drumming up” an Islam versus the West conflict.
Category Archives: UK
The Sun and Nazis combine to incite anti-Muslim prejudice
“BRITAIN’S biggest fun park has sparked a race row – with a MUSLIMS-ONLY day. Up to 28,000 are expected at Alton Towers on September 17 when there will be no music, booze or gambling. Instead there will be prayer areas, Muslim stalls and all food served will be HALAL. Organisers Islamic Leisure have billed it the First National Muslim Fun Day and tickets can only be bought through their website. Non-Muslims phoning the Staffordshire park have been refused tickets. One, George Hughes, 19, who rang up for 15 tickets for a pal’s birthday, said: ‘I couldn’t believe it. It’s the only day we can go, yet I can’t because I’m not Muslim. Can you imagine all the fuss if there was a Christians-only day?'”
See also BNP news report, 28 June 2006 and Combat 18 discussion forum, 2 July 2006
Nazis condemn ‘effete liberals’ of ACPO
“The war on terror, a euphuism [sic] for dealing with those militant Islamics hell bent on bringing death and destruction to the West, has received a killer blow from Britain’s own top cops. The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has announced plans to assign family liaison officers to assist relatives of terrorist suspects arrested by anti-terrorist units….
“The effete liberal response to dealing with those intent on murdering western infidels is a far cry from the actions of others in a similar position. US Colonel Alexander Rodgers was fighting Muslim extremists in the Phillippines in 1911. He introduced a system of burying all dead Muslim juramentados in a common grave with the carcasses of slaughtered pigs. This relatively simple device resulted in the withdrawal of juramentados to sections not held by Rodgers.
“This latest bid to appease the fifth column of home grown militants reveals how those charged with safe-guarding our streets and the majority community from death, injury and damage, are thoroughly unfit for their role.”
More nonsense from David T
It’s not just the BNP who are pissed off about IslamExpo. They are joined by David T of Harry’s Place, who claims that “it is impossible to miss the dominant presence of the falangist Muslim Brotherhood and of other allied Islamist groupings. That much is apparent from the event’s home page, where the speakers who are pictured and presented prominently include a range of high profile Muslim Brotherhood activists, including … Tariq Ramadan”. So, according to this nonsensical argument, the Muslim Brotherhood are fascists and Professor Ramadan is one of their activists.
This would be the same Tariq Ramadan who has stated: “je n’ai pas de lien organique et organisationnel avec les Frères musulmans. Ma pensée est indépendante et ne s’élabore pas dans le cadre de leurs structures, dont je ne suis pas et que je ne représente pas, contrairement à ce que continuent à diffuser divers services de police en Europe…. j’ai des divergences de vue réelles et profondes avec la pensée des Frères, avec la façon dont sont gérées leurs structures et dont ils conçoivent leur engagement sur le terrain.” (Alain Gresh and Tariq Ramadan, L’Islam en questions, pp.35-6.)
But what can you expect from David T? Elsewhere he has denounced Yusuf al-Qaradawi as a “Qutbist“, when Qaradawi’s differences with Sayyid Qutb are publicly stated and indeed obvious to anyone with an elementary knowledge of the subject. And this from a man who announces in his Guardian Comment is Free profile that his field of expertise is “the state of the British Left generally, and in particular … its strange romance with political Islam”. Unfortunately, David T’s attitudes towards the Left and Islamism are determined by the same underlying principle – ignorant bigotry.
Michael Gove on the dangers of Tariq Ramadan
“The British State does not have the courage to face down the advocates of political Islam”, Tory MP Michael Gove tells us in an extract from his forthcoming book Celcius 7/7.
Gove is appalled by the fact that the Home Office is prepared to consult the MCB, the most representative Muslim organisation in the UK, along with people like “Professor Tariq Ramadan, grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Professor Ramadan is not, of course, obliged to follow in the footsteps of his forebears. But he gives it a good try. Professor Ramadan has been characterised as a moderate because he has said that he ‘agrees with integration’ of Muslims in the West. But he has also insisted that ‘we [Muslims] are the ones who are going to decide the content’. Bernard Kouchner, the French Socialist and former health minister, has described Ramadan as ‘absolutely a kook with no historical memory’ and ‘a dangerous man’.”
Gove complains: “A rising generation has been encouraged by those Muslims most prominent in public life to put their Islamic identity ahead of their British citizenship. That generation will have heard the Muslims most fêted by government pay tribute to terrorist leaders and fundamentalist ideologues as figures worthy of respect. That generation will also have had its sense of grievance nurtured even as its sense of separateness has been reinforced. For Islamists and their allies, it has been a golden prospect.”
For Osama Saeed’s comments see Rolled Up Trousers, 26 June 2006
Arab News on Islamophobia
“The announcement that the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations is to launch a media campaign to create a better understanding of Islam and Muslims in the US is welcome, though not before time. The cancer of anti-Muslim feeling in the US had begun to spread well before 9/11. Since then, it has been on the rampage. If anything, the assessment in a recent Cornell University survey that around half of Americans have a negative view of Islam and want the US government to curb the political activities of Muslims in the country is almost certainly a considerable underestimation of the problem.
“Islamophobia is a double poison. If not stopped it will so destructively impact relations between the US and Muslim countries that the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Not that Islamophobia is purely an American problem; it is active in Europe, India, parts of Africa, and in too many parts of the non-Muslim world. There, in its second venomous outpouring, it is at its most cruel. It is Muslims in non-Muslim societies who feel the effect; traditionally dressed Muslim women screamed at in supermarkets in middle America, spat at in parks in middle England, their veils torn from their faces in France or Australia or Netherlands; it is Muslim homes daubed with offensive slogans, mosques vandalized, a community fed a constant diet on TV and in the press on how backward Muslim society is. This is Islamophobia is action.”
Editorial in Arab News, 23 June 2006
Tariq Ramadan in Prospect
There’s an interesting interview with Tariq Ramadan in the July issue of Prospect magazine.
Cohen gets it wrong again
Nick Cohen, with characteristic disdain for the facts, tells us in connection with last Sunday’s demonstration outside Scotland Yard: “… in the event, only a hundred or so people turned up, many of whom were white Islamists from the Socialist Workers party. Since then, nothing.”
Yusuf Smith replies: “Sorry Nick, but as one who was there I can say that the majority of attendees by far were Muslims. Yes, the usual contingent of Marxists of various hues, or perhaps I should say tones, was in attendance, some of them trying to push bits of paper under our noses (though interestingly, I didn’t see any copies of Socialist Worker), but most of the demonstrators were Muslims who were demonstrating against attacks on Muslims. As for the ‘since then, nothing’ bit, there is another demo planned for today in Plashet Park, which is as it happens very near to Forest Gate. The likely reason why last Sunday’s event was not as well-attended as some might have hoped (though it was a couple of hundred at least, not just 100) was that the local community had decided to make their views known at Plashet Park.”
Blame it all on multiculturalism
“… both Canada and Britain need to face the fact that multiculturalism, which for both countries is an article of faith, has brought havoc in its wake. This doctrine holds that all minority cultures must enjoy equal status with the majority, and that any attempt to impose the majority culture over those of minorities is by definition racist…. In the wake of the London bombings, people came up with a litany of excuses – such as the war in Iraq, poverty or Islamophobia – to explain what had happened. There was a widespread determination to avoid discussion of the actual cause: religious fanaticism. The orthodoxy of minority rights means any criticism of minorities is deemed unsayable…. The greatest exponents of this morally upside-down grievance culture are those Muslims for whose pathological inferiority complex it seems to be tailor-made.”
Melanie Phillips offers her thoughtful advice to Canadians following the arrest of 17 suspected terrorists in Ontario.
Meanwhile, Matthew Norman has his own advice for Mad Mel: “I beg Melanie to learn meditation, yoga or some other technique for finding inner calm. This constant hysterical raging cannot be good for the health.”
Thousands march with family raided by police
Thousands of protesters led by members of the family caught up in the anti-terrorist raid in east London two weeks ago demanded an apology from police yesterday for their “barbaric and unacceptable” treatment.
The march ended in a demonstration outside Forest Gate police station, where protesters attacked the leaking of “lies and misinformation” after the arrest and questioned the failures of intelligence which led to the disastrous raid.
“The police are doing their job, but they should be doing it properly,” said Muddassar Ahmed, a spokesman for the march organising committee. “The intelligence agencies have much more to answer for.”
March organisers estimated that 5,000 gathered for yesterday’s protest, which was the first mainstream demonstration to take place near the scene of the raid. It drew together a diverse coalition including moderate Muslim groups, Respect, the Conservatives and Stop the War.
Two elderly white women wearing floral print dresses mingled with women in hijab and men in white shalwar kameez. One of the women, Madeline Channer, 63, said: “The police were very heavy-handed and abused these two young men. I was brought up to respect the police but this sort of behaviour eradicates that respect.”