Category Archives: UK

MEMRI is made of this

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Leon Collins (Letters, September 7) suggests the Middle East Media Research Institute provides an impartial selection of what is being said and published in Arabic. Many reliable sources would dispute this. A recent Foreign Office memo, leaked to the Observer, stated: “The founding president of Memri is retired Colonel Yigal Carmon, who served for 22 years in Israel’s military intelligence service. Memri is regularly criticised for selective translation.” Using Memri as the source for information on Islamic leaders is like using the Conservative press office as the only source for information on Labour. At the very least, the nature of the source should be made clear. Better, journalists should have their material translated independently.

Ken Livingstone
Mayor of London

Letter in the Guardian, 10 September 2005

Iran hangings: chronicle of a manipulation

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Outrage Iran Hanging ProtestPedro Carmona writes: “Faisal Alam, a US queer activist of Pakistani origins and the founder of the group Al-Fatiha (made up of US queer Muslims), argues in the magazine Queer that the campaign to condemn Iran was organized without any effort to confirm the veracity of the information on the part of the groups which called for it, in contrast with the three major human rights organizations which advised of the imprecision of the information upon which the protests were based…. Alam frames his discussion of this manipulation in the context of increasing Islamophobia in Europe and North America, and of the ‘Axis of Evil’ campaign of the Washington government….”

Carmona continues: “The anti-Iranian campaign which has been promoted by certain gay and lesbian groups has been based upon strongly biased information, incomplete and on occasions openly untrue. It certainly appears to be a premeditated exercise in misinformation. Likewise suspicious is the warm reception of these mobilizations on the part of conservative groups and parties which have never defended gay and lesbian rights, or which have even promoted openly homophobic initiatives, as is the case of the Republican Party in the US. Unfortunately, the protest campaign, which we should acknowledge at least to be ill-informed and misguided, is now unstoppable despite new data and clarifications. The petitions continue to circulate, maintaining the version that Mahmud and Ayaz were hanged ‘for the mere fact of being gay’. It is comprehensible that our rage at the continued homophobic abuses we see lead us to react immediately and without too much consideration; but these reactions might convert us, while we believe ourselves to be struggling for the liberation of gays and lesbians, into mere puppets of greater interests.”

Another useful exposure of Outrage’s campaign over the execution of two youths in Mashhad, Iran, in July.

Indymedia, 8 September 2005

For earlier coverage, see here.

Outrage! in ignorant attack on Islam shock

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Human rights campaigners and refugees from Islamist persecution will protest against the introduction of Sharia law in Canada, outside the Canadian High Commission, in London on Thursday 8 September 2005 from 12 noon – 2 PM. The protest is being supported by gay human rights group OutRage! and one of the keynote speakers will be OutRage! organiser, Peter Tatchell.”

Outrage! press release, 7 September 2005

Outrage! appends articles by Maryam Namazie, Azar Majedi and Homa Arjomand – all central committee members of the Worker Communist Party of Iran. Namazie attributes the Canadian proposal to “the racist concepts of multi-culturalism and cultural relativism. It promotes tolerance and respect for so-called minority opinions and beliefs”. And we can’t be having that, can we?

In fact, as anyone who has studied the subject will be aware, the proposal is not to introduce Sharia law but to amend Ontario’s Arbitration Act, which already allows Jews and Christians to choose religious arbitration if they like, in order to extend the same opportunity to Muslims. Oddly enough, I can’t remember Tatchell protesting outside the Canadian High Commission when Jews and Christians in Ontario were accorded that right. But then, I was forgetting, for Tatchell and Outrage! Islam is a uniquely evil religion.

‘Radical Muslims’ meet to discuss ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A radical Islamic group yesterday drew 1,000 delegates to a London conference as it debated how to fend off Prime Minister Tony Blair’s plans to ban it in Britain.

Hizb ut-Tahrir leaders also used the forum to react angrily to new claims that the organisation – already barred from operating in universities – is engaged in a secret campaign to recruit students to its cause.

The political group, which advocates the establishment of a theocratic state and Islamic governance in the Middle East, is likely to be targeted by the Government in any crackdown on alleged radicals in the wake of the London bombings.

Dr Imran Waheed, the Birmingham-based spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir in the UK, denied accusations the group has supported violence or is responsible for the radicalisation of young Muslims.

He said the conference, held at a Quaker meeting house in Euston, central London, was intended to prove his organisation was not engaged in “evil ideology”.

Continue reading →

Mad Mel and Robert Spencer denounce FO memo on Qaradawi

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Melanie Phillips (“Britain’s Foreign Office fifth column”) has a rant at the Foreign Office memorandum recommending that Yusuf al-Qaradawi should not be banned from Britain, as Mel and her mates have been demanding.

As always when reading Phillips’s tirades, you have the sense of stepping into a parallel universe – one in which Britain’s “own Foreign Office is acting as a kind of appeasement fifth column in the very heart of government”; one in which “there has never been a single authoritative challenge to the veracity or integrity of MEMRI’s authoritative translations, which have opened the eyes of the west to what the Arab and Muslim world is really saying”.

As for Mockbul Ali, the author of the FO’s document, with its accurate characterisation of MEMRI’s role, Mel comments: “when Ali gets to the Jews, his guard slips and he endorses the conspiracy theory which is the signature of the Islamic extremist.”

But Mel does have a good word for one person. Yes, it’s our old friend Nick Cohen, whose “fine polemic in the Observer” receives her enthusiastic endorsement.

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 5 September 2005

Meanwhile over at Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer too rallies to the defence of Yigal Carmon and his associates: “What did MEMRI do? It printed what Qaradawi said. And once again doing so has been characterized by jihadist Muslims and their allies as ‘hatred’.” As for the memo’s point that Qaradawi’s view on Palestine and Iraq are not unusual amongst mainstream Muslims, Spencer retorts: “That’s true: they’re not unusual. Neither was Nazism among Germans.”

In the comments section to this post we have the usual paranoid ravings about how the FO’s policy on Qaradawi “will grant the jihadists every single thing that they wish for, without having to fire a shot, and reduce us all to dhimmi servitude” … plus declarations of support for Peter Tatchell and the Worker Communist Party of Iran.

Dhimmi Watch, 5 September 2005

Outraged Europeans take dimmer view of diversity

Posted on by Bob Pitt

It was less than genteel, not the kind of thing a Londoner liked to admit, but Matthew Pickard couldn’t help himself when drawn into a discussion about the recent bombings on the city’s transit system. There is an “undertow”, he said, a feeling of resentment toward ethnic communities that had long been welcomed.

“My friends, who are all educated and professionals, they’re saying, ‘What gives those people the right to come up from other countries and set up homes and set up families and then start bombing and maiming people?’,” the 33-year-old engineering consultant said. “They just don’t move in and integrate with society. They move in and take over. I just think enough’s enough.”

Los Angeles Times, 5 September 2005

Revealed: the heroin smuggling shame of Islamic leader’s father

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Mail on Sunday makes an issue of the fact that Inayat Bulglawala’s father was convicted of smuggling heroin back in the 1980s. As Inayat patiently explained to them: “We have a principal in Islam that sins are not inherited. It wasn’t me who committed the crime.” Other papers, to their credit, appear to have ignored the Mail‘s crude stitch-up. However, it did strike a chord with the fascists.

See BNP news article, 4 September 2005

Immigration control advocate rallies GOP activists

Posted on by Bob Pitt

US congressman Tom “nuke Mecca” Tancredo continues his anti-migrant campaign, the East Valley Tribune reports.

“Tancredo has … called for a reduction in legal immigration, saying American culture is in danger of being overwhelmed and washed away by a tide of foreign residents who aren’t assimilating quickly enough. And he has actively encouraged the Minuteman Project and other unauthorized civilian groups who claim to be helping the federal government by conducting their own border patrols. ‘The situation on the border is tinderbox with some people armed to the teeth who are racists or affiliated with hate groups and who are being urged on by elected officials such as Tancredo’, said Mark Potok, director of a Southern Poverty Law Center project that tracks hate groups.

“Tancredo added fuel to the criticism in July when he told a Florida radio station the U.S. would have to consider using nuclear weapons against Islamic holy sites such as Mecca if Muslim terrorists ever detonate a nuclear device in an American city. Even many fellow immigration control advocates said Tancredo had gone too far. But Tancredo refused to apologize, as his statements fit into his belief the war on terrorism is fundamentally a fight against a religion that desires the destruction of Western civilization, instead of a battle against a small, radical element at the edges of mainstream Islam.”

Telegraph boosts Fallaci

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Reprinting an article that originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Telegraph devotes a whole page to boosting the Italian racist Oriana Fallaci, recently in the news after her “supporters” leaked the information that she had held a private discussion with the pope.

Sunday Telegraph, 4 September 2005

Given that Brett Lock of Outrage! recently attacked this site for criticising right-wing Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, it can only be a matter of time before he and Peter Tatchell declare their solidarity with Fallaci too.

Indy stitches up Hizb

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The lead story in the Independent on Sunday is headlined: “Islamic group in secret plan to recruit UK students.” Yes, it’s the Independent pursuing its vendetta against Hizb ut-Tahrir.

The article seeks to make an amalgam between Hizb and the now defunct al-Muhajiroun, stating that they “both deny supporting violence”. This was clearly not true of al-Muhajiroun, who under Omar Bakri’s buffoonish leadership held provocative rallies celebrating 9/11, whereas Hizb has repudiated terrorism.

The article, which mixes in references to al-Qaida and the London bombings, is clearly intended to present Hizb as some sort of terrorist threat – a charge rejected even by those, including the MCB, who strongly oppose Hizb’s sectarian interpretation of Islam – and to provide backing for the government’s undemocratic plans to proscribe the organisation.

Update:  Read Hizb ut-Tahrir’s response here.