Category Archives: USA

Idaho Senate passes human rights resolution after mosque hit by swastikas

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BOISE, Idaho – Senators passed a symbolic measure highlighting Idaho’s commitment to human rights, just days after an Islamic mosque in Boise was targeted by swastika stickers. It reaffirms the state’s commitment to “freedom from discrimination because of race, color, religion, sex or national origin or disability.” Senator Edgar Malepeai argued the resolution sends a message to racist or bigoted groups that Idaho doesn’t tolerate hateful acts.

In the 1980s and 90s, meetings of the Aryan Nations in Hayden Lake in northern Idaho earned the state a reputation as a haven for racist groups. Malepeai says he’s concerned the incident at the Islamic Center of Boise last week could be a harbinger of renewed neo-Nazi activity. Malepeai says, “We need to respond to this resurgence of hate, and a resolution is a necessary step.”

Associated Press, 14 March 2007

‘We don’t need Iranian students in this country’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“I do not want thousands of Iranian students in my country, and if we allow the Iranians, what about the Saudis, Syrians and Lebanese? … Those Islamic students will return to their respective countries with the same deadly, ingrained hatred for us they grew up with, only better educated and much more sophisticated…. Under no circumstances should Middle Eastern students be allowed into this country by the ‘thousands’. That would be pure suicide.”

Letter in Florida Sun-Sentinel, 14 March 2007

Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Islam’s plot to conquer the West

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ayaan Hirsi AliAyaan Hirsi Ali is untrammeled and unrepentant: “I am supposed to apologize for saying the prophet is a pervert and a tyrant,” she declares. “But that is apologizing for the truth.” She does not believe that Islam has been “hijacked” by fanatics, but that fanaticism is intrinsic in Islam itself: “Islam, even Islam in its nonviolent form, is dangerous.”

The most grievous failing of the West is self-congratulatory passivity: We face “an external enemy that to a degree has become an internal enemy, that has infiltrated the system and wants to destroy it.”

Ms. Hirsi Ali notes Muslim birth rates are vastly outstripping those elsewhere (particularly in Western Europe) and believes this is a conscious attempt to extend the faith. Muslims, she says, treat women as “these baby-machines, these son-factories…. We need to compete with this,” she goes on. “It is a totalitarian method. The Nazis tried it using women as incubators, literally to give birth to soldiers. Islam is now doing it.”

Wall Street Journal, 10 March 2007

Robert Spencer is impressed.

Multiculturalist fanatics and the suicide of Western civilisation

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Only one faith on Earth may be more messianic than Islam: multiculturalism. Without it – without its fanatics who believe all civilizations are the same – the engine that projects Islam into the unprotected heart of Western civilization would stall and fail. It’s as simple as that. To live among the believers – the multiculturalists – is to watch the assault, the jihad, take place un-repulsed by our suicidal societies. These societies are not doomed to submit; rather, they are eager to do so in the name of a masochistic brand of tolerance that, short of drastic measures, is surely terminal.”

Diana West at TownHall.com, 10 March 2007

Swastika stickers left at Idaho mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BOISE, Idaho — A few swastika-emblazoned stickers have been left on a mosque and another building in town, prompting a police investigation, officials said.

The stickers were reported Sunday as children arrived at the Islamic Center of Boise for Sunday school, said Furqan Mehmood, the center’s education director. The stickers were left on a door and other surfaces, apparently on Saturday afternoon, officials said.

Somali refugees who went to the mosque to pray that day noticed them but didn’t report them; they were unfamiliar with the swastika symbol and assumed they were benign, Mehmood said.

The stickers promoted Combat 18, a loosely organized neo-Nazi group that likely originated in Britain, officials said.

The incident violates Idaho’s felony malicious harassment law, said police spokeswoman Lynn Hightower. The stickers peeled off easily, leaving no damage.

In February, the stickers were found at a property management business, Hightower said. It is unclear why the business was targeted.

Associated Press, 9 March 2007

See also “CAIR asks FBI to probe Nazi vandalism of Idaho mosque”, CAIR press release, 10 March 2007

Islamophobia and the ‘West’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“As the non Marxist philosopher-athelete, Lawrence Peter ‘Yogi’ Berra, said, ‘this is dejavu all over again’. Although the global political situation may be different, present-day anti-Muslim racism (broadly defined) not only bears a good deal of resemblance to the anti-Jewish racism or anti-Semitism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but some of the social economic factors are similar, as are the political forces exploiting and developing this racism….

“Those who challenge expressions of intolerance against Muslims in the U.S. are mocked by chauvinists and the political Right generally for being ‘politically correct’ as those who praised the achievements of Jewish immigrants and the richness of Jewish immigrant culture a century ago were mocked by chauvinists and the political Right as naïve and misguided believers in a ‘melting pot’ society who were protecting socially dangerous elements….

“As Marxists we must both understand and oppose the present attacks on Islam as a religion and Muslims as people as a continuation of both the search for scapegoats at home and enemies abroad by the most reactionary supporters of our ruling class, just as we actively fought and fight against anti-Semitism.”

Norman Markowitz in Political Affairs, 6 March 2007

‘You cannot be American and Muslim at the same time’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The US website Aljazeerah.info reports that one of the main speakers at the so-called “Secular Islam Summit” told CNN’s Glenn Beck that Islam cannot be reformed. Wafa Sultan told Beck: “Believe me, personally, I don’t believe Islam really can be reformed unless we recreate a totally new belief system…. I don’t see any difference between radical Islam and regular Islam…. You cannot be American and Muslim at the same time.”

Watch video here. Transcript here.

And as for Shaker Al-Nabulsi’s stupid assertion that no leading figure within Islam has issued a fatwa against Osama bin Laden, see here.

Why socialists should resist Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Deepa KumarAn excellent article by Deepa Kumar in the US Marxist journal International Socialist Review analyses the “orientalist” ideological roots and pro-imperialist mythology of Islamophobia. She concludes:

“Confronting Islamophobia and challenging American racism towards the people of the Middle East is an essential precondition for the rebirth of a strong antiwar movement…. And while Bush argues that ‘the calling of our generation’ is to fight ‘Islamofascism’, we need to assert instead that the calling of our generation is to build an anti-racist antiwar movement that can challenge the attacks on Muslims and Arabs domestically and that can stop U.S. imperialism in its tracks and shape the course of the twenty-first century. Our future, quite literally, depends on building such a movement.”

ISR, March-April 2007

For orientalism, see also Grace Lally’s article in Socialist Worker, 24 February 2007

Daniel Pipes fights the worldwide threat of Islamism — from Malibu

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Pipes calls himself a ‘soldier’ in the war against Islamic fundamentalism…. He soon plans to unveil Islamist Watch, a Web site which he describes as an attempt to monitor nonviolent radical Islam in the West…. Like his father, Daniel Pipes has a reputation for bluntness and a willingness to go against conventional wisdom – both in the academy and elsewhere. Whereas Richard Pipes sounded the alarm against appeasing the Soviets, Daniel Pipes preaches against working with radical Muslims, no matter how law-abiding, scholarly or open-minded they might appear. Instead, ‘like David Duke and Louis Farrakhan’, Pipes said, ‘Islamists should be ostracized socially and politically’.”

Jewish Journal, 6 March 2007

‘How my eyes were opened to the barbarity of Islam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The appalling Phyllis Chesler (the US feminist who has compared Tariq Ramadan to Hitler) complains that “Western intellectual-ideologues, including feminists, have demonised me as a reactionary and racist ‘Islamophobe’ for arguing that Islam … is the largest practitioner of both sexual and religious apartheid in the world and that if Westerners do not stand up to this apartheid, morally, economically and militarily, we will not only have the blood of innocents on our hands; we will also be overrun by Sharia in the West.”

Times, 7 March 2007

The so-called “landmark Islamic Summit Conference in Florida” that Chesler is so enthusiastic about is also boosted by the likes of Family Security Matters and Front Page Magazine.