Category Archives: UK

Fascists launch ‘referendum’ on Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP Islam leafletTaking immediate advantage of last week’s acquittal at Leeds Crown Court, the British National Party has launched a new leaflet inciting hatred against Muslims. The fascists announce that they intend to turn the May council elections into a “referendum” on Islam. The editor of the BNP paper, Freedom, is quoted as saying:

“We have had suicide bombers in London and we are seeing riots across the Channel. However the media and our Government try to cloud the issue by blaming British and French society and not the terrorists and rioters. They deliberately avoid pinpointing the driving force behind these attacks, which is a religion that is alien to these shores and in its latest fundamental form threatens our very way of life.

“A large section of British people feel threatened by the rapid growth of the Muslim population in Britain but at present have no way of voicing this concern. Our ‘May 4th is Referendum Day’ campaign will give people that voice. Every vote for the British National Party tells Tony Blair of this groundswell of disquiet.”

BNP news release, 5 February 2006

Gary Younge on the Danish cartoons controversy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anti-semitic cover“In January 2002 the New Statesman published a front page displaying a shimmering golden Star of David impaling a union flag, with the words ‘A kosher conspiracy?’ The cover was widely and rightly condemned as anti-semitic….

“A group calling itself Action Against Anti-Semitism marched into the Statesman’s offices, demanding a printed apology. One eventually followed. The then editor, Peter Wilby, later confessed that he had not appreciated ‘the historic sensitivities’ of Britain’s Jews. I do not remember talk of a clash of civilisations in which Jewish values were inconsistent with the western traditions of freedom of speech or democracy. Nor do I recall editors across Europe rushing to reprint the cover in solidarity.

“Quite why the Muslim response to 12 cartoons printed by Jyllands-Posten last September should be treated differently is illuminating…. they are vilified twice: once through the cartoon, and again for exercising their democratic right to protest. The inflammatory response to their protest reminds me of the quote from Steve Biko, the South African black nationalist: ‘Not only are whites kicking us; they are telling us how to react to being kicked’.”

Excellent article by Gary Younge in the Guardian, 4 February 2006

In the opinion of this Islamophobia Watch contributor the New Statesman cover was indeed anti-semitic and protests against it were justified. We have reproduced it here from Ha’aretz.

MPACUK condemns protesters

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A march in which protesters chanted violent anti-Western slogans such as “7/7 is on its way” should have been banned, a leading British Muslim said.

Asghar Bukhari said the demonstration in London on Friday should have been stopped by police because the group had been advocating violence. The chairman of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee said the protesters “did not represent British Muslims”.

More protests over cartoons of Muhammad on Saturday passed off peacefully.

Mr Bukhari told the BBC News website: “The placards and chants were disgraceful and disgusting, Muslims do not feel that way. I condemn them without reservation, these people are less representative of Muslims than the BNP are of the British people.”

BBC News, 4 February 2006

Mad Mel on cartoons controversy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“With holy war declared openly upon the west, with death threats being issued against cartoonists and editors, with Danes, Scandinavians and other Europeans being hunted for kidnap and in fear of their lives, with blood-curdling intimidation, with mob demonstrations, calls to behead westerners and rallying cries for ‘holy war’ by Islam against Europe, the governments of Britain and America are busy prostrating themselves before this terror, apologising for ‘causing offence’ and blaming the victims of this assault; while their intelligentsia earnestly debates whether it is wrong to insult someone else’s religion, for all the world as if this were a university ethics seminar rather than a world war being waged by clerical fascism against free societies and with people in hiding and in fear of their lives for having exercised the right to protest at religious violence and intimidation.”

Melanie Phillips exercises a responsible and calming influence on the situation.

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 4 February 2006 

‘We’ are quite distinct from Muslims, Telegraph asserts

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Muslims who choose to live in the West must accept that we, too, have a right to our values, and to live according to them. Muslims must accept the predominant mores of their adopted culture…. Those Muslims who cannot tolerate the openness and robustness of intellectual debate in the West have perhaps chosen to live in the wrong culture.”

Thus an editorial on the Danish cartoons controversy in the Daily Telegraph, 3 February 2006

Note the familiar use of “we”, evidently referring to the white majority community. “We” are to be distinguished from Muslims, who are presumably to be categorised as “them”. Muslims are instructed that they “must accept” the dominant non-Muslim culture, and are told that, if they refuse to do so, they should go back where they came from.

The Guardian is much more measured: “Yesterday’s acquittal of two British National party officials on race hatred charges for attacking Islam – and the triumphalist scenes as the two freed men emerged from court – are part of the context that must be weighed in asserting any right to publish cartoons that offend Muslims. So too is the political situation in Denmark itself, where the cartoons were first published, and where a large and strongly anti-immigrant party provides part of the parliamentary coalition supporting Denmark’s centre-right government. What is the message that is being sent, both in the BNP acquittal context and in the Danish context, by insisting on publishing such images? Those questions cannot be ducked – and nor can the answers.”

Editorial in Guardian, February 2006

‘Humiliating’ attack on London mayor in pro-imperialist US magazine

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Francis Wheen“Bad news for London’s Mayor: he has a humiliating cameo role in the latest issue of America’s most venerable Left-wing journal, Dissent. In an illuminating account of how the remnants of the radical Left in Britain have aligned themselves with fundamentalist Muslims, it mentions Ken Livingstone’s embrace of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Qatar-based cleric who supports homophobia, suicide-bombers in Palestine and the subordination of women. For the benefit of American readers who haven’t heard of Livingstone, the author describes him as ‘Galloway-lite’. Even before Celebrity Big Brother, this would have been pretty rude. Since the recent televised shenanigans, it is surely the most wounding insult in the political lexicon.”

Francis Wheen writes in the Evening Standard, 31 January 2006

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