“Islamic extremists denied entry to the United States would be banned automatically from Britain under anti-terror measures outlined by the Cabinet yesterday. Charles Clarke plans to prevent Muslim figures such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Tariq Ramadan entering the United Kingdom if they have been barred from the US or European Union.”
See also the Daily Telegraph, 15 July 2005
“Since the bombings, many of the leading voices of British society have given the impression that they are less concerned about the atrocity that claimed the lives of more than 52 innocent people than the need to protect the Muslim community from any backlash…. The impression has been sedulously created that this act of Islamic terrorism by four Muslim boys from Leeds had nothing to do with the Muslim community or indeed Islam.” So Melanie Phillips argues.
Phillips goes on to offer a stern lecture to Muslims: “above all, the responsible Muslim community and its leaders – who are the majority – must come out of denial and unequivocally condemn the extreme interpretation of Islam that is twisting the minds of the minority of zealots in its midst”.
Presumably Phillips wrote this on an isolated mountaintop without access to the media.
The British National Party, which used images of the bombed London bus on a leaflet, has failed to gain a council seat at a by-election. Labour held the Becontree seat in the east London borough of Barking and Dagenham with a majority of nearly 800.
The BNP used a photograph of the bus with the caption, “maybe it’s time to start listening to the BNP” .
The winning candidate, Alok Agrawal, said after the result: “It was very sad using a national tragedy in order to try and gain votes. They thought people were fools. They thought people would fall into a trap. But the voters have massively rejected them. They have told the BNP ‘We don’t want you in Barking and Dagenham’.”
See also NAAR news article, 15 July 2005
BETRAYED: How British Intelligence Has Been Neutered by Politicians in Its Quest to Infiltrate the Enemy Within
By Tom Bower
Daily Mail, 15 July 2005
… Under Britain’s constitution, it is the Prime Minister’s sole right to identify targets for the intelligence services to monitor, and he also has the power to decide the limitations on their operations. But, as part of the New Labour ruling elite’s obsession with multi-culturalism and fear of upsetting Muslim sensibilities, the orders to Britain’s intelligence chiefs were deliberately kept within narrow parameters, with very little room for proper investigation.
The result is that Mr Blair’s desire not to annoy the Muslim community, upon whom Labour depends for a hardcore of votes, severely circumscribed the formal identification of those extremist Muslims in our midst who have become this country’s ‘enemy’.
“One of the most absurd sights we have been forced to watch whilst cringing from our settees in the last week has been the sight of various Establishment figures ranging from the Neo-Druid liberal Arch-Bishop of England, Prince Charles and Tony Blair all lining up to deliver their sermons on the mount about the true nature of Islam and how almost all the Muslim population of Britain have no understanding of their own religion. They tell us ‘the terrorists are a minority and have no support in the Muslim community’ but this is just another lie they are using to try and delude us into accepting more of the same liberal bullshit that they have been feeding us for years.”
“… the MAB/Muslim Brotherhood’s position isn’t foreign at all. Its old fashioned totalitarianism, with a theocratic flavour, and we’ve seen it before and fought it before. We are at a crux time. The creeping ‘mainstreaming’ of an extremist ideology has to be resisted, and it can be resisted in part by holding firm to the basic liberal traditions of pluralism, liberty and democracy. The MAB/Muslim Brotherhood’s greatest weakness is that they are an extreme organisation. However and wherever they try to disguise that we need to challenge them, as we challenge Nick Griffin’s rebranded BNP.”
David T offers us his insights into the Muslim Association of Britain.
His position on the Muslim Brotherhood is, in fact, considerably more hardline than that of the Bush administration. See here.
Police patrols have been stepped up around mosques and Muslim communities in Scotland amid fears of a racist backlash in the wake of the London bombings. The greater police visibility in Edinburgh follows an unprovoked attack on a teenage Asian boy, who was beaten up on a busy street in broad daylight by a white skinhead who shouted racist abuse.
The 16-year-old boy, who has not been named, was with an 11-year-old friend on Leith Walk when the man began shouting at them at about 2pm on Tuesday. The man then punched the older boy repeatedly, knocking him to the ground, before running off when an elderly Asian man intervened.
The teenager was taken to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary with a suspected fractured cheekbone, bruising and cuts. Police are appealing for witnesses.
The assault follows attacks on the Shah Jalal Mosque in the city and a Pakistani community centre, both of which were defaced with racist graffiti last Thursday. Doors were daubed with the words “Islam Scum” and “This centre sympathises with terrorists”.
Police, who described the attacks as appalling, said that reports of verbal abuse against Asians had increased in the past week in Edinburgh and Glasgow, home to Scotland’s largest Asian communities.
Muslim leaders warned the Asian community yesterday to be on guard and to report any racial incidents to officers.
At this of all times, BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme launches an attack on the Muslim Council of Britain, accusing them of supporting suicide bombing. Needless to say, Dr al-Qaradawi’s name features prominently. Inayat Bunglawala replies on behalf of the MCB.
“British politicians are not only having to review domestic security.They are being forced to think again about the mix of liberal policies pursued by successive governments since the 1960s – collectively known as multi-culturalism. Multiculturalism was designed to bring different communities together, but its critics argue it has only served to keep them apart.”
“The first piece of disinformation long peddled by champions of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan is that al-Qaida and its supporters have no demands that could possibly be met or negotiated over; that they are really motivated by a hatred of western freedoms and way of life; and that their Islamist ideology aims at global domination. The reality was neatly summed up this week in a radio exchange between the BBC’s political editor, Andrew Marr, and its security correspondent, Frank Gardner, who was left disabled by an al-Qaida attack in Saudi Arabia last year. Was it the ‘very diversity, that melting pot aspect of London’ that Islamist extremists found so offensive that they wanted to kill innocent civilians in Britain’s capital, Marr wondered. ‘No, it’s not that,’ replied Gardner briskly, who is better acquainted with al-Qaida thinking than most. ‘What they find offensive are the policies of western governments and specifically the presence of western troops in Muslim lands, notably Iraq and Afghanistan’.”
Seumas Milne in the Guardian, 14 July 2005