Category Archives: UK

Muslim school not to become state school

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“A Nottingham school has failed in its bid to become only the fourth Muslim state primary in the country. The independent Islamia School in Hyson Green had applied to become a voluntary-aided state school, which would entitle it to Government funding. But the school’s application has now been turned down by Nottingham’s School Organisation Committee, which is made up of city councillors, governors and church leaders.

“The decision has angered the school’s staff and members of the Muslim community…. Anas Altikriti, of the Muslim Association of Britain, which has supported similar applications, said: ‘The Muslim community in Nottingham have been dealt with unjustly. There will be huge disappointment, not just in the city’.”

Nottingham Evening Post, 13 May 2005

Still, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch will be pleased. So will Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society who said: “We are relieved.”

The Mayor of London, political Islam and the Worker Communist Party of Iran

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Effectively, the Mayor of London is appeasing a movement which is quite vicious”, Fariborz Pooya of the Worker Communist Party of Iran explains. “We have seen the activities of this movement in the Middle East, as well as in Europe. This is a fascist movement. It reminds me of Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, who in the late 1930s went to Germany and brought with him a piece of paper, waving it to the crowds, saying here, I have the word of Mr Hitler that he is not going to go to war – who says he’s aggressive? The following year Hitler rolled his tanks into Poland.”

WPI Briefing No.177

So watch out for Dr al-Qaradawi invading London at the head of a Panzer division.

Daily Star: ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ encourages Muslim terrorists

Posted on by Eddie Truman

The UK’s Daily Star has a go at using the film Kingdom of Heaven to keep the pot boiling over Muslim terrorist scare mongering.

Apparently Ridley Scott’s epic is promoting “Osama bin Laden’s version of history” – the verdict of Cambridge professor Jonathan Riley-Smith.

Worst of all, Ridley Scott is apparently depicting Muslims as sophisticated and civilised while showing the crusaders as barbarians.

In a separate box out, Daily Star hack Jerry Lawton turns his hand to history in a piece entitled “1,000 years of conflict”.

Back of the class for Jerry though – he says that the Crusades started in 1076 when Muslims captured Jerusalem. Wrong Jerry, that was 400 years earlier in 638. Pope Urban’s call for the retaking of Jerusalem wasn’t until 1095.

Thanks to the always excellent Arab Media Watch for drawing this to our attention.

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Free speech for Islamophobes – National Secular Society

Posted on by Bob Pitt

After Norwegian evangelical Christian preacher Runar Søgaard delivered a sermon in Stockholm in which he attacked Islam, describing the Prophet as “a confused paedophile”, the media was quick to find a Muslim extremist prepared to issue a death threat against him.

However, the head of Sweden’s council of imams, Hassan Moussa, said although the comments “injure millions of Muslims all over the world”, they must not lead to violence like the murder last year of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. “We assure all honest Swedes that the tragic developments we witnessed in Holland will not take place here,” Moussa wrote in Expressen newspaper. “Those who cast stones against us will not get stoned in return. We beg those who threatened Søgaard, in the name of Islam, to let Swedish law judge between him and us. Do not under any circumstances take the law into your own hands.” But the Muslim community is suing the preacher for hate crimes. “See you in court, Runar,” Moussa wrote.

And how does Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society report this? Under the headline “Swedish Muslims repudiate violence against anti-Muslim bigot”, perhaps? No, under the headline “No free speech for Islamophobes, say Islamists in Sweden”.

NSS Newsline, 8 May 2005

Lib Dems form alliance with ‘anti-Semitic fringe groups’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Along with transforming themselves into the antiwar party, the Liberal Democrats have attempted to seduce British Muslims away from the Labour party by allying themselves with fringe Sunni Muslim fundamentalist groups. The Liberal Democrat calculation is that British Muslims have been radicalized, and that the views of sectarian, anti-Semitic fringe groups have a resonance in the Muslim community.”

National Review, 5 May 2005

This is the sort of nonsense the right-wing media in the US publishes about British electoral politics.

Four British Muslims make it to parliament

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Four Muslim candidates won British elections, in what many of the three-million strong minority hailed as a considerable victory that could lead to a more political role in the heavy-weight European country.”

Islam Online, 6 May 2005

“Only four Muslims were elected to the House of Commons. The three main political parties fielded 48 Muslim candidates at the general elections, most in unwinnable seats, and altogether a record 74 Muslim candidates stood for elections. There should be at least 20 Muslims in the House of Commons to reflect its population.”

Muslim News, 6 May 2005

Posted in UK

Election results indicate influence of Muslim vote and issue of war

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The Muslim Association of Britain welcomes the role of the Muslim vote in numerous constituencies which affected clearly either the outcome of the vote or the share thereof. It was absolutely clear that the Muslim community decided to utilise their numbers in several dozen constituencies to bring about a recognition of the issues of concern to them, particularly the anti-terror laws and the war in Iraq.”

MAB press release, 6 May 2005

See also BBC News, 6 May 2005

Posted in UK

Galloway’s victory shows that all Muslims are extremists

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The Bethnal Green and Bow result is the single most damaging threat to race – properly, religious – relations since Enoch Powell’s river of blood speech and the rise of the NF in the 1970s. Those of us who seek to show that Muslim extremists are the exception, not the rule, and that mainstream Muslims pose no threat to Western democracy, have been dealt a severe blow.

“Until Galloway’s result – based on demagoguery and the idea that there is indeed a fundamental split between the Muslim way of thinking and that of non-Muslims – it was possible to argue convincingly, as I have sought to do, that maintream Muslims had nothing in common with the extremists.

“But the Bethnal Green and Bow result makes that argument very difficult. Galloway did not win because he was supported by a small number of Muslim extremists – those who clearly pose a threat to the West and have to be imprisoned. He won because of support from precisely those mainstream Muslims whom I, and others, have argued did not support their militant brothers.”

A hysterical rant by Stephen Pollard against Muslim voters in Bethnal Green & Bow.

Stephen Pollard’s weblog, 6 May 2005

Needless to say, this assessment is endorsed by Melanie Phillips.

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 6 May 2005