Category Archives: USA

‘The onus is now on Muslims to integrate’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Today’s Observer publishes a number of letters in response to Henry Porter’s article in last week’s issue. All of them support Porter’s stance – “a wake-up call to all liberal, law-abiding citizens” – and they include one by raving US right-winger Carol Gould (for an example of her balanced view of British Muslims see here and here).

Yet another illustration of how liberals and the most obnoxious sections of the Right find common ground in their ignorance of, and prejudice against, the Muslim community.

Though, to be fair, even the Sunday Times manages to fit in a couple of pro-Muslim letters in today’s issue. When it comes to Islamophobia, the Observer manages to be marginally worse than the Murdoch press.

Critic of Islam finds new home in US

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yet another article about the appalling Ayaan Hirsi Ali, though this one is a bit more balanced than the eulogies that have appeared in the British press (even if it does fudge this issue of why Hirsi Ali left the Netherlands).

Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR is quoted as saying: “We believe that she will bring an increase to the level of anti-Muslim bias in this country that we saw her bring to the situation in Europe. Unfortunately her message is one of bigotry, not one of mutual understanding.”

Hooper is reported as accusing Hirsi Ali of exaggerating her attacks on Islam in order to further her own agenda. “She is just one more Muslim-basher on the lecture circuit.”

Associated Press, 10 February 2007

In books, a clash of Europe and Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Award nominations are generally occasions for exaggerated compliments and air kisses, so it was something of a surprise when Eliot Weinberger, a previous finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award, announced the newest nominees for the criticism category two weeks ago and said one of the authors, Bruce Bawer, had engaged in “racism as criticism.”

The resulting stir within the usually well-mannered book world spiked this week when the president of the Circle’s board, John Freeman, wrote on the organization’s blog (bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com): “I have never been more embarrassed by a choice than I have been with Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept,” he wrote. “Its hyperventilated rhetoric tips from actual critique into Islamophobia.”

The fusillade of e-mail messages on the subject circulating among the Circle’s 24 board members mirrors a larger debate over a string of recently published books that ominously warn of a catastrophic culture clash between Europeans with traditional Western values and fundamentalist Muslims – books including Londonistan by Melanie Phillips, The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion by Robert Spencer, and America Alone by Mark Steyn.

New York Times, 8 February 2007

Fascists jump on the ‘sharia law’ bandwagon

Posted on by Bob Pitt

With evident approval, the British National Party has reproduced an article from the raving right-wing US website The American Daily taking up the popular paranoid fantasy about sharia-supporting Muslims undermining the British legal system.

Quoting a BBC News article on sharia courts, the article complains that this does not go far enough: “… the BBC seems completely ignorant of the abuse women and minorities suffer under Sharia laws the world over. Women are beaten, raped, murdered, mutilated and oppressed by Muslim ‘culture’ and English law should never turn its back on these vulnerable members of their society. This would be a travesty and a direct refutation of western morals that posit that all people are created equal and stand the same in the eyes of the law.”

However, an article in the Telegraph finds more favour with the author, on the grounds that it takes “a little more umbrage at the possibility of immigrant communities circumventing English law”.

BNP news article, 5 February 2007

And who was the author of the Torygraph piece? None other than Mad Mel’s hubbie, Joshua Rozenberg.

Current birth rates could produce Muslim domination, say right-wing Christians

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Population Research Institute says the Western world is facing a crisis as virtually every country has birth rates well below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. PRI spokesman Joseph D’Agostino says for the most part, only Muslims have high birth rates. “It’s because Christians and Jews are refusing to have children, refusing to get married, [and] having such low birth rates that the Muslims are going to inherit the Earth,” he explains.

D’Agostino says the future of the world will certainly be quite different if Muslims become the dominate population group in the coming decades. “I think we can see what life is like in Islamic countries,” he says. “I think Christians know that it’s a false religion. And we can see that the Muslim world is becoming actually more radical and, in many ways, is headed backwards into its barbaric phase.”

D’Agostino notes that it is only through immigration that the U.S. population continues to grow – and that the current situation begs a pragmatic solution: “If you don’t want the world to turn into Saudi Arabia, maybe people other than Muslims need to start having some kids at the rate the Muslims are having kids.”

One News Now, 2 February 2007

Anti-Muslim bigot goes into the oil biz

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Terror Free Oil“The BBC reports that an outfit calling itself the ‘Terror Free Oil Initiative’ has set up a filling station in Omaha, Nebraska, touting oil not imported from countries which ‘support terror’ – meaning just about any Muslim country, in the Middle East or anywhere else. At the moment, they only use American and Canadian oil. (Clearly, they’re only talking about one sort of terror.) A few paragraphs into the report and we find out who their spokesman is: Joe Kaufman, the bigot behind ‘Americans Against Hate’, a group which dedicates itself to smearing Muslims and Muslim organisations.”

Indigo Jo Blogs, 3 February 2007

‘Taking the fight to Islam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Ayaan Hirsi Ali is not the only critic of Islam who lives with round-the-clock protection. But surely none wears their endangered status with greater style. The Dutch Somali human-rights campaigner looks like a fashion model and talks like a public intellectual. Tall and slender with rod-straight posture and a schoolgirl smile, she is a thinker of stunning clarity, able to express ideas in her third language with a precision that very few could achieve in their first. This combination of elegance and eloquence would be impressive in any circumstances. Under threat of death, it is nothing short of incredible.”

Andrew Anthony in the Observer, 4 February 2007

Another gushing tribute to the appalling Hirsi Ali who, to general relief among the Dutch Muslim community, has now left the Netherlands to work for the right-wing US think-tank the American Enterprise Institute – which is exactly where she belongs.

Pastor who vilified Islam ‘honoured for faithfulness to Scripture’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Christian leaders from six continents gathered in New York City Jan. 26 to recognize an Australian pastor who became one of the first people indicted under the country’s new ‘religious vilification’ law, which makes public criticism of any religion – including Islam – a hate crime. Daniel Scot, an Assemblies of God minister from Brisbane, received the Kairos Journal Award for his refusal to ‘compromise truth for fear of jail’. The award is given annually to individuals who demonstrate faithfulness to Scripture and pastoral courage. It also honors those who respond to what the journal calls a ‘kairos moment’ – a moment that calls for timely Christian action.”

Baptist Press, 31 January 2007