Category Archives: USA

Lawsuit filed in support of Muslim scholar barred from US

Posted on by Bob Pitt

tariq-ramadan2Citing the case of a prominent Muslim scholar who has been barred from the United States, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit yesterday seeking to strike down a clause of the USA Patriot Act that bars foreigners who endorse terrorism from entering to this country.

The suit was filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan on behalf of the scholar, Tariq Ramadan, and three national organizations of academics or writers who have invited him to speak to their members. The groups, including the American Academy of Religion, the leading American organization of scholars of religion, say Mr. Ramadan has never expressed support for terrorism. They also argue that the Patriot Act clause has been applied to stifle academic debate in the United States.

New York Times, 26 January 2006

‘The pope’s unexploded bombshell’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Diana West takes up Pope Benedict’s reported statement that Islam is unreformable: “… the question shouldn’t be: ‘Why Can’t Islam Be More Like the West?’ It should be: ‘How can the West prevent itself from becoming more like Islam?’ One obvious answer is an immigration policy aimed at preventing the kind of Islamic demographic shifts we already see transforming Europe.”

TownHall.com, 23 January 2006

Exhibition will combat myths about Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Europe’s biggest exhibition of modern-day Islam will take place in London a year after the 7 July bombings in an effort to depict the religion in a positive light.

The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, is set to launch the event which hopes to “combat the myths, misconceptions and misunderstandings of Islam”. IslamExpo will consist of a series of exhibitions on Islam’s cultural heritage, lectures, debates, films, stand-up comedy and workshops at Alexandra Palace. Organisers plan to invite survivors of the Tube attacks to attend with a special commemoration on the day.

It is hoped that the event will help to improve relations between Britain’s 1.8 million Muslims and the wider community.

Independent, 23 January 2006

For details of Islam Expo, see here.

For the thoughtful comments of Jihad Watch supporters, see here.

Watching Jihad Watch

Posted on by Bob Pitt

SpencerYusuf Smith draws our attention to a new blog, Watching Jihad Watch, whose author recently tangled with Robert Spencer over the latter’s statement, as reported by Sara Rosenbaum in her St Petersburg Times article about anti-Muslim hate-sites, that he bans racist comments from Jihad Watch. WJW offers some examples of the repulsive bigotry that has appeared on Jihad Watch, and quotes the following passage from an article written by Jihad Watch president Hugh Fitzgerald:

“… not only should migration be stopped, but life can be made more difficult, if not by the government, then by private individuals, so that Moslems will be discouraged from remaining. What do I mean? I mean that we, as private citizens, do not have to hire Moslems, we do not have to buy their goods, or make their lives, economically, more rewarding. It may seem mean, and many of you may be offended by it, and I am perfectly aware that there are nice Moslems, that there are those who simply ignore the main tenets of Islam. But as a group, the Moslems are a threat to me and those I love. Even the innocent ones, merely by being here, swell Moslem political power.”

The role of right-wing anti-Muslim bloggers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

AAH logoSara Rosenbaum writes on the phenomenon of right-wing US bloggers inciting hatred against Muslims, with particular emphasis of Joe Kaufman’s Americans Against Hate site (which in the interests of accuracy should be required to change its name to “Americans For Hate”):

“Kaufman’s site is only one of a constellation of blogs with names like JihadWatch.com, MilitantIslamMonitor.org, and WesternResistance.com that are dedicated to the surveillance of American Muslims. The blogs link to one another, with more-traveled sites amplifying stories from more obscure ones, like Kaufman’s. He claims he has not found a single mosque in Florida that is not linked to terrorists.

“A lot of people are listening. Last month, after Kaufman called a Tampa Muslim religious retreat a ‘jihad camp for children’ and wrote that the speakers were ‘linked to al-Qaida’, death threats poured in to the Presbyterian camp hosting the event. Muslims say the blogs breed hate. ‘He’s spreading lies, slandering individuals’, said Ahmed Bedier, spokesman for the Tampa Bay chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. ‘These are vigilantes’.”

St Petersburg Times, 16 January 2006

For Kaufman’s reply (condemning Rosenbaum as “biased and irresponsible”!) see here.

And for Western Resistance’s equally irony-free complaint that Kaufman et al have been subjected to a “smear campaign”, see here.

Robert Spencer isn’t happy either. He rejects Rosenbaum’s claim that he admitted to her that Jihad Watch attracts contributions from racists (see for example these comments on the London bombings) on the grounds that he has “pointed out ad infinitum that Islam is not a race” – and he says he never reads the comments anyway.

Jihad Watch, 16 January 2006

Osama Saeed argues that the lesson to be drawn from Rosenbaum’s article is that Muslims need to “get blogging” and counter the influence of the hate-sites.

Rolled Up Trousers, 16 January 2006

Right-wing rants – a selection

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A short selection of anti-Muslim rants from the last week. There’s so much of this stuff on the internet these days, particularly on right-wing US sites, that it becomes tedious to chronicle it all. But here’s a few examples:

“Islam is worse than a plague, worse than leprosy, worse than hunger and famine, which cause bodily damage to humans. Islam slowly, like a canker, gnaws at the soul and the spirit. Islam stops your brain from thinking, and empties out your love and kindness for others. Islam will turn you into a killing machine.”

“Islam as a cult is based on blood letting. Either Muslims kill one another or they kill non-Muslims. For them to kill one another because of something in the Koran agreeing with same, then no crime has been committed.”

“Of course, the Koran is a poison book scribed by demons. It is laden with killing and torture dictates from Allah that must be carried out if one is to call himself ‘Muslim’.”

“The abuses at Abu Ghraib Prison were wrong. But they seem like adolescent pranks (e.g. naked human pyramids and underwear put on a head) when they are compared with Muhammad’s methods of torture…”

From Think and Ask, MichNews, MichNews again, and American Thinker.

The sickness of Front Page Magazine

Posted on by Bob Pitt

David Horowitz and his friends are not about to let an appalling human tragedy get in the way of a piece of rampant Islamophobia. They offer a link to an Associated Press report on the deaths in Mina, Saudia Arabia, under the headline “Muslim Pilgrims Kill 345 in Hajj Stampede”.

Front Page Magazine, 13 January 2006

See also CAIR’s selection of comments from Jihad Watch applauding the deaths.

CAIR action alert, 13 January 2006

Muslim bashing seemingly in vogue

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim bashing seemingly in vogue
Vitamin flier portraying Sen. Durbin in headwear now a sign of the times

By Adam Jadhav

St Louis Post-Dispatch, 9 January 2006

What in the world do dietary supplements have to do with turbans and terrorism?

That political head-scratcher confronted at least some vitamin buyers around the nation who found a flier with their mail-order nutrients carrying the bold headline, “Get a Turban for Durbin!”

An image shows Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, wearing the headwrap, common in parts of the Middle East and south Asia and sacred religious garb in some faiths, including the entire Sikh religion.

The flier’s kicker: “Keep Congressional Terrorists At Bay.” The flier was distributed last month by a pro-vitamin and supplement group.

Critics say the flier is yet another example of Muslim bashing. The designer of the flier, who has since pulled it, admits that it was over the line but said he put it out to draw attention to what he thinks is improper action by Durbin.

Continue reading →

British Muslim group declares new jihad – twice!

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hide under your beds, Robert Spencer has uncovered “A new declaration of war on Britain and the West – from Omar Bakri, formerly one of Britain’s highest-profile jihadists”.

Jihad Watch, 9 January 2006

I think Robert must be running short of jihadists to frighten us with. He’s already announced this “new declaration of war”, based on the same YNet story, back in October last year.

Jihad Watch, 20 October 2005