Category Archives: UK

Muslims protest over terror laws

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hundreds of Muslims have taken part in marches through London and Blackburn to protest anti-terror legislation.

Saturday’s protests were organised by more than 50 Islamic organisations including Stop Political Terror and the Islamic Human Rights Commission.

Dr Adnan Siddiqui, an organiser of the London march, said: “This demonstration sends a clear message against the climate of fear that has been created.”

The Blackburn protest was aimed at the local MP, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

BBC News, 30 April 2005

See also IHRC press release, 30 April 2005 and Islam Online, 30 April 2005

Hizb ut-Tahrir issues death threats against George Galloway (not)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An article in the new freesheet, the London Line, on Ulil Abshar-Abdalla of the Indonesian organisation Jaringan Islam Liberal, contains a major blooper. Apparently London is “home to Hizb ut-Tahrir, one of Islam’s extreme voices … its members recently issued death threats against Respect candidate George Galloway”.

London Line, 28 April 2005

Don’t they read the papers? Over a week ago the Evening Standard – and Galloway himself – were threatened with legal action when they falsely reported that he had been attacked by members of Hizb ut-Tahrir (see here and here). London Line better hope that their lawyers are more competent than their fact-checkers.

Jailed candidate begins campaign

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Vote BabarAn alleged terror suspect yesterday launched his bid to become an MP from within the walls of Belmarsh high security prison. Babar Ahmad is fighting an attempt by the US government to extradite him to face charges that he raised money over the internet to support terrorism in Chechnya and Afghanistan.

The former IT worker, 30, is standing in the London seat of Brent North for Peace and Progress, the human rights party founded by the actors Corin and Vanessa Redgrave. His election literature calls for a tightening of extradition rules and an end to “police brutality and torture”.

At a press conference to launch Mr Ahmad’s campaign, Mr Redgrave said: “Electing Babar would be the most powerful message on human rights and justice that could be given. Just let the Americans try to say that an elected MP should be extradited.”

Guardian, 27 April 2005

For the Free Babar Ahmad website, see here.

‘The hypocrisy of Islam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Islam means peace and love and Muslims only want to be left alone to practice their beliefs – in peace. This is one of the greatest lies of the last century but many Muslims continue to say it, over and over, like a mantra, perhaps more to convince themselves than the rest of the world.”

FaithFreedom.org, 26 April 2005

Elsewhere on this revolting right-wing site an article can be found on Islam and women. It begins:

“The situation of women living in Islam-stricken societies and under Islamic laws is the outrage of the 21st century. Burqa-clad and veiled women and girls, beheadings, stoning to death, floggings, child sexual abuse in the name of marriage and sexual apartheid are only the most brutal and visible aspects of women’s rightlessness and third class status in the Middle East.

“Apologists for Islam state that the situation of women in Iran and in Islam-stricken countries is human folly; they say that Islamic rules and laws practiced in the Middle East are not following the true precepts of Islam. They state that we must separate Islam from the practice of Islamic governments and movements. In fact, however, the brutality and violence meted out against women and girls in nothing other than Islam itself.”

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USA and political Islam are two sides of one coin (says crazed sectarian)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Another classic of left Islamophobia from Maryam Namazie of the Worker Communist Party of Iran:

“It is political Islam that hangs the likes of sweet 16-year-old Atefeh Rajabi for ‘acts incompatible with chastity’ in city centres, stones Maryam Ayoubi for adultery, throws acid in the faces of those who refuse to veil, beheads prostitutes, and legally permits sexual apartheid and misogyny.

“All of you will have become uncomfortably familiar with this right-wing reactionary political movement from September 11 onwards when it went about its business as usual but this time outside its zone of influence and power. Political Islam and its ruling class would also turn this world into another Iraq if it could.

“This vile movement may make many claims as the USA does in order to legitimise its barbarity – from people’s liberation to democracy to rights – but they are only claims to dupe and legitimise. It cares as much for the liberation of the people of Palestine and Iraq as the USA does – not more, not less.

“Both will indiscriminately maim and slaughter the very people they claim to defend. One will behead Westerners feigning defence of women prisoners in Iraq with one hand whilst killing Iraqi women who refuse to veil with another. The other will feign a defence of rights through indiscriminate bombings whilst its soldiers’ boots are trampling over tortured naked bodies.”

Iranian.com, 26 April 2005

As usual, no distinctions are made between different tendencies within the broad category of “political Islam”, some of which are of course democratic-reformist in character, and an equals sign is placed between the world’s major imperialist power and the likes of Al-Qaida. I think most of us know which is the main threat to world peace. Evidently the WPI doesn’t.

Maddening mullahs let young Muslims down (claims Muriel Gray)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“… there were no theological surprises for those familiar with the principles of Islam, as naturally everything the young folk fancied doing, singing, dancing, even drawing human figures upon which a textile student required to sketch fashion designs, was simply forbidden. Why even ask?”

Muriel Gray watches Sharia TV.

Sunday Herald, 24 April 2005

The National Secular Society approvingly quotes the standfirst stating that “Islam is its own worst enemy in these times of street violence, race hatred and political malevolence”.

NSS Newsflash, 25 April 2005

US guards at Guantanamo tortured me, says UK man

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A British resident has claimed he was tortured by US guards at Guantanamo Bay, suffering violent sexual assaults, near drowning and an attack in which he was blinded. The Independent on Sunday has been given a detailed account from Omar Deghayes of repeated abuse by American and Pakistani interrogators over the past three years including electric shocks and sodomy by US guards.

The allegations, made by human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, have persuaded British ministers to take up Mr Deghayes’s case. In some of the most disturbing allegations to emerge from Guantanamo, Mr Deghayes also accuses US and Pakistani interrogators of beating him repeatedly since his arrest three years ago, smearing his face with human excrement, starving him of food, and withdrawing light and clothing.

Independent on Sunday, 24 April 2005

Pope Benedict XVI: Enemy of Jihad

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“In choosing Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger to succeed Pope John Paul II as Pope Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church has cast a vote for the survival of Europe and the West. ‘Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century,’ historian Bernard Lewis predicted not long ago; however, judging from the writings of the new Pope, he is not likely to be sanguine about this transition. For one thing, the new Pope seems to be aware of the grave danger Europeans face: he has called upon Europe to recover its Christian roots ‘if it truly wants to survive’.”

Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch holds out hope that the new Pope may mark an improvement on his predecessor who “kissed the Qur’an and pursued a consistent line of conciliation toward the Islamic world”.

Front Page Magazine, 20 April 2005

Melanie Phillips welcomes this as “a typically informed and thoughtful piece by Robert Spencer”. She agrees that “it is only if Christianity manages to retake the lost continent of Europe and revive its abandoned faith that the moral relativism behind whose banner Europe is marching steadily towards the cultural precipice will be defeated – and with it the colonising ambitions of Islam to fill the void”.

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 20 April 2005

For Muslim concerns about the Pope’s vision of a “Christian Europe”, see Islam Online, 20 April 2005