Liars and their lies

Fascist at MFE“Brett Lock of Outrage is free and easy with accusations of lies, when tilting at the Socialist Action windmill. He would do well to observe that there is little point in lecturing others about your own sins. Notwithstanding his claim that the BNP ‘boycotted’ the rally over ‘free speech’, the BNP’s own site, and its Civil Liberty front, are quite clear. They supported the rally and their members attended. One of the bourgeois liberals that Lock makes mention of, Johann Hari, is quite open about the fact that he marched with fascists.”

Letter from Tony Greenstein in the Weekly Worker, 6 April 2006

See also the letter from Ian Donovan.

Meanwhile, having backed Tatchell’s decision to share a platform with hard right-wingers and racists, Lock continues to defend Outrage’s call for the Muslim Council of Britain to be denied a speaker at the Unite Against Fascism conference in February. There is, Lock explains, no real difference between the MCB and the fascists: “a BNP success in the local elections would be catastrophic, but frankly, given current indicators, the success of an MCB-aligned candidate could be equally disastrous for gay people”.

Lock & Load, 6 April 2006

‘Freedom of speech’

Padraig Reidy of the New Humanist has a go at Denis Fernando, Socialist Action, Respect, the Muslim Association of Britain and Eamonn McCann – all in one short Tribune piece. Needless to say, they’re all guilty of “selling out political ideals to religion”. By which, of course, he means “Islam”.

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Islamophobic? Not us, says UKIP MEP

Nigel FarageUK Independence Party MEP Nigel Farage has threatened to sue over Tory leader David Cameron’s claim that UKIP contains “closet racists”. According to the Guardian, Farage cited the recent expulsion of four Italian Northern League MEPs from UKIP’s grouping in the European parliament after one of the League’s leaders wore a t-shirt printed with cartoons satirising the prophet Muhammad. Farage said: ‘We thought the Italian Northern League were OK. But they have become Islamaphobic to an extent we find unsettling … We adopt a firm line on immigration and asylum. But you haven’t got to be racist to do that’.”

This would be the same Nigel Farage who, according to former UKIP leader Alan Sked, rejected the inclusion of a statement on the party’s membership form opposing discrimination against minorities. “We will never win the nigger vote”, Sked quotes Farage as saying. “The nig-nogs will never vote for us.” As for anti-Muslim bigotry, former UKIP member Aidan Rankin has recounted his disillusionment with the party: “I listened, with increasing loathing, to a repertoire of anti-Muslim barbs from people who knew nothing whatsoever about Islam and were proud of their ignorance…. Islamophobia pervades its internal dialogue.”

Clash fan questioned

An Asian salesman was hauled off a plane as a suspected terrorist because he was listening to The Clash song ‘London Calling’. Harraj Mann, 24, was quizzed for three hours by Special Branch after his taxi driver overheard the lyrics, which include the lines “war is declared and battle come down”.

The mobile phone seller, from Hartlepool, said: “I got a taxi to Teesside Airport and it had one of those things that plugs into your music player. I played Procol Harum, ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’ first, which the taxi man liked. I figured he liked the classics, so I put on Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’. Then, since I was going to London I played The Clash and finished up with ‘Nowhere Man’ by The Beatles. He didn’t like Led Zeppelin or The Clash but I don’t think there was any need to tell the police.”

Durham police said: “By the time it was established the man did not pose a security risk, the plane had taken off.”

Daily Mirror, 5 April 2006

See also BBC Tees, 5 April 2006

The Noble Qur’an and the Telegraph

We recently gave coverage to the controversy over Patrick Sookhdeo’s interview with the Telegraph, and his reported claim that a well-known translation of the Qur’an by Abdalhaqq and Aisha Bewley calls for “the killing of Jews and Christians, and … sets out a strategy for killing the infidels and for warfare against them”. The Telegraph eventually apologised to the Bewleys. (See here, here, here and here.)

However, the paper failed to print a letter by Ahmad Thomson or his review of the Bewleys’ translation that he asked to be published as a corrective to the Sookhdeo accusation. Ahmad kindly sent us a copy of the letter and review along with an introduction outlining the dispute between the Bewleys and the Telegraph. You can read it here.

Gay Muslim claims Islamophobia denied him post as student leader

Pav AkhtarThus the headline to a Pink News article analysing the narrow defeat of Pav Akhtar in the elections for National Union of Students president last week.

Over at Harry’s Place, the inimitable David T has suggested that homophobia on the part of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies was to blame: “FOSIS refused to back Akhtar. It isn’t clear exactly why that was, although the rumour is that the ‘sinister reason’ was his sexuality.” (Needless to say, David also implies that Pav is a member of a left group called Socialist Action. But then, it seems there are very few of us on the left who David doesn’t think are members of Socialist Action.)

As for the reasons for Pav’s defeat, Pink News quotes him as saying that both Islamophobia and homophobia might each have played a minor part but that the result had more to do with “factional politics”, with FOSIS failing to back him as part of “a deal to get their preferred candidate elected as secretary”. Does David T ever get any of his facts right?

Man jailed for racist slurs

A man who shouted racist insults at Muslim worshippers outside a Cumbria mosque has been jailed for six months. Bryan Cork shouted slurs including “proud to be British” and “go back to where you came from” outside Carlisle’s Brook Street mosque. He pleaded guilty to racially aggravated harassment on 30 November at the city’s Crown Court on Tuesday. Judge Paul Batty, QC, told Cork, of Thompson Street, Carlisle, that racism in any form would not be tolerated.

BBC News, 4 April 2006

See also “Racist who shouted at Muslims is jailed”, News & Star, 4 April 2006

Yet another innocent British citizen whose freedom of speech has been suppressed in the interests of political correctness, as I’m sure many of the participants in the “March for Free Expression” would be the first to point out.

Posted in UK

Joe Kaufman’s anti-Muslim malice

“Kaufman’s malice leaves no Muslim out of its reach. He has condemned Muslims that any regular reader of their writings would know are peaceful people solely on the grounds that they articulate normative Muslim doctrine and participate in mainstream Muslim organisations. In some ways it is par for Front Page’s biased and often malicious course; much of its content consists of diatribes against Muslims and other immigrants, but Kaufman’s practice of flagrantly twisting people’s words, apparently not caring if his claims can be easily debunked, bring it to a new low.”

Yusuf Smith takes apart right-wing US blogger Joe Kaufman.

Indigo Jo Blogs, 4 April 2006

‘Islam’s imperial dreams’

karsh“… to this day, Islam has retained its imperial ambitions. The last great Muslim empire may have been destroyed and the caliphate left vacant, but the dream of regional and world domination has remained very much alive…. Like the leaders of al Qaeda, many Muslims and Arabs unabashedly pine for the reconquest of Spain and consider their 1492 expulsion from the country a grave historical injustice waiting to be undone. Indeed, as immigration and higher rates of childbirth have greatly increased the number of Muslims within Europe itself over the past several decades, countries that were never ruled by the caliphate have become targets of Muslim imperial ambition. Since the late 1980’s, Islamists have looked upon the growing population of French Muslims as proof that France, too, has become a part of the House of Islam. In Britain, even the more moderate elements of the Muslim community are candid in setting out their aims…. this world-conquering agenda continues to meet with condescension and denial on the part of many educated Westerners.”

Efraim Karsh of King’s College, London, in the Wall Street Journal, 4 April 2006

Tariq Ali on the Left and Islam

Interviewer: “It is of course the assassination of the film-maker Theo van Gogh and the threats made against the liberal member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali which have particularly drawn attention to Islam in the Netherlands. Like her, you are an unbeliever who comes from the Muslim world. Have you already felt threatened?”

Tariq Ali: “No, never. I travel a lot both in the Muslim world and in the rest of the world, but I have never yet felt threatened. Why is that? It is no doubt because people who don’t agree with me about religion know that I am an enemy of imperialism. I unceasingly criticize imperialism and all its works, more than the believers do. Whereas Hirsi Ali and people like her in the United States and in Europe make a profession out of attacking Islam. There are other important questions in the world. Why do these people concentrate endlessly on Islam? In the way that they attack Islam, they go along with existing prejudices.”

ZNet, 2 April 2006

Posted in UK