Surely all terrorists are Muslims?

Red Eye ad“The plot: A terrorist corners a luxury resort hotel manager on a red-eye flight. He blackmails her into changing the hotel room of the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, so that terrorists can launch a Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) into his suite….

“Some comments by posters on this site predicted I would hate ‘Red Eye’ because the main terrorist, Jackson Ripner, played by Cillian Murphy (of Irish descent and with blue eyes), was not Islamic. But, are the terrorists, for whom Ripner works, Islamic? Perhaps. Before the missile is launched, you can hear those for whom Murphy is working speaking almost inaudibly. If you listen carefully and speak Russian, as I do, they are saying, ‘Adin, Dva, Tri, Chetiri’, which translates to ‘One, Two, Three, Four’. They could, therefore, be Chechnyan terrorists.

“And that’s my one criticism of the movie. To wit, that director Craven doesn’t tell or impress upon you whether the terrorists are Muslim, in another politically correct move, designed to dodge the criticisms of Islamist groups, like CAIR.”

Debbie Schlussel reviews the movie “Red Eye”.

Front Page Magazine, 22 August 2005

Anti-racism 1, Islamophobia 0

Yessss!! Radio talk-show host Michael Graham, who was suspended by station WMAL last month for describing Islam as a “terrorist organization” (see here), has now been sacked. Strange to relate, some people are not happy. See Front Page Magazine, 22 August 2005

See also Robert Spencer, who posts a link to this “shameful story” under the heading “WMAL fires Michael Graham, earns the opprobrium of all free people”! Dhimmi Watch, 22 August 2005

Further details of the sacking from Islam Online, 23 August 2005

Scotland on Sunday and Jihad Watch applaud Moderator’s stand

Moderator“At last, a Christian leader breaks the deafening silence that, for too long, has muzzled those whose duty it was to speak out on behalf of the values of western society. The courageous comments of the Rev David Lacy, Moderator of the Church of Scotland, condemning the Islamist ‘hypocrites’ who treat their hosts as ‘enemies’ while leeching off the National Health Service, will find an echo among many of those people who fill his church’s pews – just as they will no doubt be deplored by voices within the liberal Kirk establishment. We say ‘courageous’ because, in recent decades, a climate has been generated, across all the Christian denominations, enforcing a liberal orthodoxy on church leaders from which they deviate at their peril.”

Editorial in Scotland on Sunday, 21 August 2005

Over at Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer applauds this as a welcome example of “anti-dhimmitude”.

Dhimmi Watch, 21 August 2005

Browne was paid for V-Dare article

Remember Anthony Browne? You know, the man who has written Islamophobic articles for the Spectator and the Times, is a great admirer of Panorama reporter John Ware and was recently exposed by the Newshog blog as having contributed to a right-wing anti-migrant US website, V-Dare. Well, it now turns out that at least one of Browne’s pieces was actually commissioned and paid for by V-Dare. Not so much “show me who you friends are”, more “let’s have a look at who your paymasters are”.

Jeff Jacoby and ‘the real Muslim moderates’

Anyone who thinks the witch-hunt against the Muslim Council of Britain is an isolated case should take a look at what’s happening over on the other side of the Atlantic, where the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has been subjected to a hostile right-wing campaign along almost identical lines.

The fact that CAIR has roundly denounced terrorist atrocities in the US and Britain is dismissed by its critics, who shift the argument onto the issue of the CAIR leaders’ position on the Palestinian resistance. They then go on to argue that the government should sideline a broad-based, mainstream, representative body like CAIR and concentrate instead on dialogue with “real moderates”, comprising individuals and groups who have hardly any influence at all within Muslim communities but have the “right” line on the Israel/Palestine question.

You have to ask – whose interests does this campaign against CAIR serve, those of American people or those of the Sharon government?

See, for example, Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe, 18 August 2005

CAIR’s fatwa: ‘a bogus gesture’

Steven Stalinisky – director of that well-known source of objective information, the Middle East Media Research Institute – offers his opinion on the fatwa against terrorism promoted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Surprise, surprise, Stalinsky finds himself in agreement with another equally reliable source, Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project.

Front Page Magazine, 16 August 2005

‘Can infidels be innocents?’ Daniel Pipes asks

PipesDaniel Pipes explains that fatwas issued by mainstream Muslim organisations condemning terrorists for taking the lives of innocent people are meaningless … because some extremists reject the view that non-Muslims are innocent.

So when the British Muslim Forum stated in July that “Islam strictly, strongly and severely condemns the use of violence and the destruction of innocent lives”, according to Pipes this did not necessarily include “those traveling on the Underground and bus lines in London earlier in the month”.

Front Page Magazine, 15 August 2005

Muslim convert rejects radical label

British Muslim, Abdur Raheem Green, has been blocked from coming to Australia. Mr Green attempted to board a plane from Sri Lanka to Wellington on Monday. The plane was due to make a one-hour stop in Brisbane en route. “I was told I could not board because the plane had to stop in Australia,” Mr Green told The Australian.

A man described by some Australian media as one of Britain’s most radical Muslim converts starts a speaking tour today for New Zealand Islamic Awareness Week. Abdur Raheem Green, who rejects the radical label, had been due to speak at the Auckland University of Technology on Monday but the public lecture was cancelled because he had to change his flight plans when he was refused entry to Brisbane for a one-hour stopover. Mr Green said he was told when checking in at Sri Lanka about three days ago that he could not land in Brisbane but was given no reason by the Australian High Commission.

New Zealand Herald, 9 August 2005

See also ABC News, 11 August 2005

The ban followed a right-wing campaign against Abdur Raheem Green, aimed at depicting him as a violent extremist.

Irshad Manji attacks multiculturalism, calls for less tolerance

Irshad Manji Trouble With Islam“As Westerners bow down before multiculturalism, we anesthetize ourselves into believing that anything goes. We see our readiness to accommodate as a strength…. Radical Muslims, on the other hand, see our inclusive instincts as a form of corruption that makes us soft and rudderless. They believe the weak deserve to be vanquished. Paradoxically, then, the more we accommodate to placate, the more their contempt for our ‘weakness’ grows. An ultimate paradox may be that in order to defend our diversity, we’ll need to be less tolerant.”

Irshad Manji in the New York Times, 9 August 2005

Characteristic of Manji’s method is her reference to the play “Corpus Christi” by Terrence McNally, in which Jesus was depicted as a gay man. She tells us how in 1999 “Christians protested the show and picketed its European debut in Edinburgh, a reasonable exercise in free expression. But Omar Bakri Muhammad, a Muslim preacher and a judge on the self-appointed Sharia Court of the United Kingdom, went further: he signed a fatwa calling for Mr. McNally to be killed….”

Except that, if Bakri had indeed called for McNally to be killed, he would certainly have been prosecuted. In fact, what Bakri did was issue a fatwa “authorising” McNally’s execution by the Islamic state, while making it clear that individuals had no right to carry out the sentence. In other words, short of the establishment of Bakri’s version of the caliphate, which is not exactly an imminent threat, McNally was in no danger at all.

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Political correctness has crushed criticism of Islam in US, Robert Spencer claims

Over at Front Page Magazine Robert Spencer has a whinge about “the abysmal state of public discourse about Islamic terrorism today. The forces of political correctness as well as prominent American Islamic advocacy groups seem to be doing all they can to make sure that the American people are not exposed to any serious investigation of the genuine root causes of Islamic terrorism – such as I have undertaken in my new book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) [never miss an opportunity to give the book a plug, eh Robert?]. Even speaking the truth about Islam is becoming increasingly difficult in today’s stifling politically correct atmosphere”.

Well, looks like Islamophobia Watch is soon going to be out of a job, then.