Category Archives: UK

Can ‘we’ tolerate homophobia for much longer?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Iqbal SacranieBenjamin Cohen responds to Iqbal Sacranie’s views on homosexuality and civil partnerships:

“It used to be the case that libertarians and liberals could argue with some justification that tolerance is a necessary part of a liberal society. As a liberal, I could say to Sir Iqbal: ‘I disagree with you but I tolerate the right for you to be intolerant.’ However, I’m not sure that we can continue be tolerant of those who show so little respect for our liberal way of life….

“Perhaps he needs to consider what the inclusion of ‘Britain’ in the name of his organisation means. In my view, this means engaging with the realities of modern British life, engaging with our tolerance of views and practises alien to our own and our desire for liberty and equality to be spread across our nation. As an alternative, there are many other countries where one could reside in order to escape these peculiar liberties of modern British life.”

Pink News, 4 January 2006

You can’t help but be struck by the casual racism underpinning this comment piece. We, the British, show “tolerance of views and practises alien to our own”, which presumably includes Islam. So Muslims are somehow different from “us”, the British, and if they don’t like “our” liberal way of life they have the option of leaving “our” country and pursuing their “alien” practices elsewhere.

You can imagine the outcry if similar comments were made in relation to Orthodox Jews in Britain, on the basis of Jonathan Sacks’ views on homosexuality – which aren’t, in fact, greatly different from Iqbal Sacranie’s. Sacks is on record as warning against “a real danger that the abolition of Section 28 will lead to the promotion of a homosexual lifestyle as morally equivalent to marriage” (see here) and, like Sacranie, he opposes civil partnerships as contrary to his religious principles (see here).

It’s also worth noting the comments section to the Pink News article. “Sam” observes: “There are plenty of countries where it is ok to discriminate against gays but not this one. Why doesn’t he go and live in one of them like Iran?” And “Don” responds: “I agree. If Iqbal doesn’t like it here, he could go to any number of Islamic countries where he would no doubt be warmly welcomed.” This is followed by the note that an “offensive comment” has been removed by Pink News staff. But the above remarks are apparently not deemed offensive by the moderators. Would they be equally happy with comments suggesting that, since the Chief Rabbi is opposed to Britain’s liberal legislation on gay rights, he too should leave the country?

Update:  Someone has posted excerpts from our piece in the Pink News comments box, and the article has now been rewritten to take account of our criticisms.

Andy Armitage defends ‘free speech’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Former editor of the now defunct Gay and Lesbian Humanist magazine Andy Armitage replies to the Guardian piece on the split in GALHA. He continues to defend his decision to publish the notorious article by Diesel Balaam. “Neither the writer of that article nor we as editors are racist. We criticise religions and do not care about the racial origin of people who practice them.”

Guardian, 4 January 2006

Needless to say, Robert Spencer is fully behind Andy. Dhimmi Watch, 2 January 2006

Nazis back Anthony Browne

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A message of support from the British National Party: “Well done to Anthony Browne for putting across the case against Political Correctness so well….”

BNP news article, 4 January 2006

The Metro article that the BNP applauds, which plugs Browne’s views on political correctness, in fact features a photograph of Anthony Browne the children’s fiction writer! Hopefully, he’ll sue.

‘We should stand together to fight Islamophobia and homophobia’, Tatchell lectures MCB

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A British Muslim leader has told the BBC he believes homosexuality is “not acceptable” and denounced new same-sex civil partnerships as “harmful”.

Head of the Muslim Council of Britain Sir Iqbal Sacranie said introducing the partnerships did “not augur well” for building the foundations of society. Nevertheless, he told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme, everyone should be tolerant.

Peter Tatchell of gay rights group OutRage! said: “It is tragic for one minority to attack another minority.”

BBC News, 3 January 2006

The BBC News report concludes with a further quotation from Tatchell that is even more jaw-droppingly hypocritical: “Both the Muslim and gay communities suffer prejudice and discrimination. We should stand together to fight Islamophobia and homophobia.”

In reality, Tatchell’s position is that, so long as mainstream Muslim organisations refuse to take a progressive stand on gay rights, he will refuse to co-operate with them in opposing anti-Muslim bigotry – indeed, he feels entitled to form a bloc with the Right in whipping up Islamophobia.

Needless to say, in the case of other religions he doesn’t apply the same stringent criteria in building alliances. He is quite happy to form a bloc against Robert Mugabe with Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube, whose views on homosexuality, we strongly suspect, are hardly more progressive than Iqbal Sacranie’s.

Gay magazine in race row

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sick Face of IslamThe GALHA dispute (see here, here, here, here, here, here and here) finally makes the mainstream press.

According to Imaan, a support group for gay and lesbian Muslims, the anti-Islamic views of GALHA are just the tip of the iceberg in the gay community. “These comments are completely outrageous,” said Imaan’s spokeswoman, Rasina X. “In lots of ways the gay community reflects the straight community but Galha has gone beyond what the average straight person thinks. These comments are disgusting. They are worse than what the BNP would publish. It is racist.”

Guardian, 2 January 2006

Anthony Browne is coming

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Followers of Islamophobia Watch will be familiar with Anthony Browne of “Islam really does want to conquer the world” notoriety, the man who was paid for an anti-immigration article by a right-wing US website. Well, Anthony has authored a new Civitas pamphlet entitled The Retreat of Reason, which attacks the scourge of political correctness. As you might expect, he repeats the endless right-wing refrain that multiculturalism has produced Muslim “ghettos” which in turn produced the July bombings in London.

See BBC News, 3 January 2006

Among the politically correct “myths” that Browne denounces is the view that anti-semitic attacks are carried out by white skinheads, whereas in reality (according to Browne) the perpetrators are young Muslims.

Civitas press release, 2 January 2006

And what is the source of Browne’s information? If you consult pp.12-13 of his pamphlet, you’ll find that it’s taken from a report entitled Manifestations of Anti-Semitism in the European Union commissioned by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, which the EUMC refused to distribute because of its unreliability. In his recently published book Beyond Chutzpah (p.35), Norman Finkelstein writes:

“the EUMC maintained that the report … was ‘biased’ and ‘lacking in empirical evidence’. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana concurred that ‘it did not meet the criteria of consistency and quality of data’. In fact, the data assembled in the Manifestationsreport, the standards it used to measure anti-Semitism, and the conclusions it reached barely rose above the comical.”

Which hasn’t prevented Browne’s pamphlet being hailed by Melanie Phillips.

Postscript
Also worth noting are the following passages from Browne’s pamphlet:

“One of the most successful campaigns for victim status has been by Muslim groups in Britain, notably the Muslim Association of Britain, which increases its clout by inflating the number of Muslims in Britain by a million more than the official census, and by accusing anyone who tackles its extremist Islamist agenda of ‘Islamophobia’. Although it has a thoroughly oppressive agenda (supporting terrorism against innocent civilians, promoting the rights of husbands to beat their wives and the execution of gays), the MAB passes itself off as oppressed so convincingly that it has fooled the PC establishment, notably the Guardian, Independent and BBC, into promoting it unquestioningly” (p.43).

And further on: “Now, one of the biggest issues facing Britain is the rise of radical Islam among Britain’s growing Muslim communities. The politically correct response – and that of the British government – is to pander to Islamic militancy by, for example, curbing the freedom to debate Islam, creating tax-funded Islamic schools and campaigning for Muslim Turkey to be admitted as the biggest member of the European Union” (p.54).

But Browne is prepared to give credit where its due. He applauds “Peter Tatchell, a man of such uncompromising principles that he has infuriated many on the relativist left” – in particular with his hysterical campaign against Yusuf al-Qaradawi (p.25).

Western civilisation succumbs to Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“If a population ‘at odds with the modern world’ is the fastest-breeding group on the planet – if there are more Muslim nations, more fundamentalist Muslims within those nations, more and more Muslims within non-Muslim nations, and more and more Muslims represented in more and more transnational institutions – how safe a bet is the survival of the ‘modern world’?”

Mark Steyn in the New Criterion, January 2006

Melanie Phillips is impressed (“great piece by Mark Steyn”), but Robert Auster feels that Steyn’s emphasis on demographic changes and the West’s “lack of civilizational confidence” (due to “the progressive agenda – lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism”) underestimates the evils of Muslim immigration.

See Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 2 January 2006 and View From the Right, 1 January 2006

Blogs, threats force Muslim meeting to relocate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Chantal CarnesChantal Carnes didn’t recognize herself. A friend had e-mailed her a blogger’s article. It described Carnes as a supporter of terrorists, a fan of suicide bombing. Her friend thought the article was a joke. “No, dude,” Carnes said. “This is really serious.”

Carnes, a Chicago resident who converted to Islam 11 years ago, was scheduled to speak at a spiritual retreat for Tampa Muslims this weekend. But after bloggers alleged that the event was a thinly veiled terrorist indoctrination, anonymous callers bombarded the Muslim American Society of Tampa with death threats and curses. The director of the Lithia church camp that was to host the event decided to close the camp for the weekend after she, too, received threats.

On Dec. 27, blogger Joe Kaufman began writing about an event he called “a jihad retreat for children.” Over the course of the week, he wrote that Carnes was “well known in the radical Islamist American community.” He wrote that the retreat’s other speaker, Mazen Mokhtar of New Jersey, was linked to al-Qaida. Other bloggers quickly picked up the theme. “You gotta start your kids on the road to martyrdom early, or there’ll be no one left to murder,” a blogger known as “Ace of Trump” wrote about the retreat.

St Petersburg Times, 1 January 2006

Spies, lies and censorship

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Spies lies and censorshipHuman rights campaigners demanded a full inquiry yesterday into mounting evidence that MI6 agents were involved in the abduction and torture of terror suspects in Greece.

The Ministry of Justice in Athens has launched its own inquiry into allegations that 28 Pakistanis were held and mistreated in the wake of the July 7 London bombings.

Greek lawyer Frangiskos Ragoussis has filed a criminal complaint against eight Greek agents and one British agent – Athens MI6 station chief Nicholas Langman – for the alleged abuses. If formal charges are filed, Mr Ragoussis said that he will seek Mr Langman’s extradition.

The controversy deepened after British newspapers colluded with a voluntary government “D-notice” to prevent them from naming Mr Langman, although Greek Sunday newspaper Proto Thema – with the biggest circulation in the country – had already revealed his identity, adding that he had plotted the operation on Greek soil.

Morning Star, 30 December 2005

Surge in stop and search of Asian people after July 7

Posted on by Eddie Truman

The number of Asian and black people stopped and searched in London streets by police using anti-terrorism powers increased more than 12 fold after the July 7 bombings, The Guardian has learned.

In the two months after three underground trains and a bus were bombed more than 10,000 people were stopped and searched by the Metropolitan police. None of the searches resulted in an arrest or a charge related to terrorism.

Before the attacks Asian people were already more likely than their white fellow Londoners to be stopped under counter terrorism powers, according to police figures. But the gulf grew bigger after the attacks. According to Met figures 2,405 Asian and black people were stopped while walking, compared with 196 last year.

Guardian, 24 December 2005