Desecrating the Qur’an: The straw that broke the camel’s back

“Some non-Muslims are asking: ‘Why are Muslims so upset about the desecration of the Qur’an while there were no protests when their own fellow Muslims were being tortured and killed?’ There are several responses. First, the Qur’an is a sacred book because it is the Word of God; therefore, it is natural to be outraged by its desecration. Second, of course Muslims are also distressed and outraged by the torture and killing of their fellow sisters and brothers. Third, I believe that the desecration of the Qur’an was the catalyst for protests by Muslims all over the world because after the deaths of thousands of civilians in Palestine, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Iraq, the exposure of the Abu Ghraib pictures and the revelations of torture in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay by American soldiers, in my opinion, the desecration of the Qur’an was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Bint Adam writes. Islam Online, 2 June 2005

Bush says Amnesty report ‘absurd’

US President George Bush has dismissed as “absurd” an Amnesty International report that said the US was setting back the cause of human rights. The human rights group described the US Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba as “the gulag of our time”. There have been allegations that guards at the camp had desecrated the Koran, prompting protests in Muslim countries. But Mr Bush said on Tuesday: “The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world.”

BBC News, 31 May 2005

Earlier, US general Richard Myers has described Amnesty’s report as “absolutely irresponsible”. How do you handle people who … who aren’t part of a nation-state effort, that are picked up on the battlefield … that if you release them, or if you let them go back to their home countries, that would turn right around and try to slit our throats, our children’s throats?” he said.

BBC News, 30 May 2005

Cf. the evidence of former US Sgt Erik Saar who stated that, of the 600 prisoners held at Guantánamo, no more than a few dozen were “hardcore terrorists”. He added: “The US Government portrays Guantánamo as a place where we are sending the worst of the worst, but this is not true. Guantánamo … set a precedent in labelling people as enemy combatants, blurring the line between right and wrong. You can see it as the seed that may well have led to the naked human pyramids in Abu Ghraib.”

BBC News, 9 May 2005

Still, Michelle Malkin has read Saar’s account of abuse at Guantánamo, and declares herself impressed by “just how restrained, and sensitive to Islam – to a fault, I believe – the officials at the detention facility have been”.

Townhall.com, 1 June 2005

For Amnesty’s reply to Bush, see here.

Discover the terrorist-supporting commies

guantanamo-bay“The detention facilities at Guantánamo, including Camp X-ray and Camp Delta, were constructed specifically to house individuals apprehended in the war on terror. Enemy combatants held at the camp must be foreign nationals who have either received training from al Qaeda, or who have been in command of 300 or more military personnel. They are among the world’s most brutal and committed Islamist enemies of the United States. By incarcerating and interrogating them, the U.S. hopes to gain crucial intelligence that could thwart future terrorist attacks against America and to keep them from returning to the terror war against the United States.”

Well, that’s reassuring. Thank God for Discoverthenetworks.org, is all I can say. They also provide a useful exposé of the Guantánamo Human Rights Commission, succinctly defined as a “human rights group committed to defending Islamic jihadists captured on the field of battle in Afghanistan and being detained at Guantánamo Bay”.

The piece continues: “The GHRC was founded by actress Vanessa Redgrave, a Trotskyite with a venomous hostility towards the state of Israel, and her brother, actor Corin Redgrave. A founder of the Marxist Party and a supporter of the Communist Workers Revolutionary Party, Ms. Redgrave has a long history of supporting terrorists…. GHRC co-founder Corin Redgrave is also a committed Communist and an apologist for terrorists.”

Discoverthenetworks.org, 1 June 2005

Discoverthenetworks deserve credit for exposing this plot against the free world. As a glance at its website reveals, the Guantánamo Human Rights Commission includes among its sponsors such notorious figures as Peter Bottomley, Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP, Margaret Drabble, the Bishop of Oxford and other well-known supporters of Islamist terrorism.

Guantánamo torture claims – ‘straight out of the Al-Qaida handbook’

“An al Qaeda handbook preaches to operatives to level charges of torture once captured, a training regime that administration officials say explains some of the charges of abuse at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp…. If captured, the manual states, ‘At the beginning of the trial … the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by state security before the judge. Complain of mistreatment while in prison’.”

Washington Times, 31 May 2005

Fellow musicians deny Tarik Shah planned to train jihadists

bassThe Bronx martial arts expert busted in an alleged plot to build a secret Al Qaeda training camp is a well-known city jazz musician who has backed greats like Abbey Lincoln and Betty Carter, friends said yesterday.

Tarik Shah, 42, has played bass at local clubs for years, and fellow musicians said they’ve never heard him espouse an allegiance to Osama Bin Laden.

“This man talks about music. That’s all he talks about,” said pianist Donald Smith, 61, who earlier this month played with Shah at St. Nick’s Pub in Harlem. “The only thing we know is he is a devout Muslim, loves God. He loves his family.”

New York Daily News, 1 June 2005

Last year, Tarik Shah played at a “Fighting for Peace” concert at New York’s Knitting Factory, held to honour the memory of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist killed by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002. See here.

Obviously this was just a cunning ruse because, according to an undercover FBI agent, two weeks earlier Shah had been boasting about cutting people’s throats. See Jihad Watch, 1 June 2005

There is an unholy alliance – Horowitz

alliance“British Laborite and progressive George Galloway calls for a formal uniting of the left in the West with the Islamic jihadists in the war on terror. Lawyers led by anti-American, pro-Communist, jihad sympathizer Michael Ratner descend on Guantánamo.”

David Horowitz claims vindication for the thesis presented in his book Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left that “the progressive left in the West was in a de facto alliance with the Islamic jihadists”.

Front Page Magazine, 31 May 2005

Why pick on Pipes?

PipesIn a recent email to Islamophobia Watch, George Carty writes: “…why have you included a lot of stuff about Daniel Pipes – a pretty bog-standard neoconservative – but nothing about far more extreme Muslim-haters such as Ali Sina (http://www.faithfreedom.org) or Jamie Glazov (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/authors.asp?ID=3)? It pains me to see Glazov’s sexualized ranting, or the warmongering of Victor Davis Hanson, go unrefuted. By the way I suggest you link to LGF Watch at lgfwatch.blogspot.com and Warblogger Watch at warbloggerwatch.blogspot.com.”

I suppose the reason for picking on Daniel Pipes is that he does exercise (or has done in the past) some influence on mainstream politics in the United States. Although Pipes now seems to have been rather sidelined by the administration, in 2003 Bush asserted his presidential powers to ensure Pipes’ appointment to the board of the United States Institute of Peace, overruling objections by a Senate committee. Last year, through his widely published articles on the issue, Pipes played an important role in justifying the decision by the Department of Homeland Security to withdraw Tariq Ramadan’s work permit and prevent him taking up his post at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

The other figures mentioned by George have received some coverage on Islamophobia Watch, and perhaps should have received more. But there is the question (and the same consideration applies to reporting the postings on Jihad Watch) as to whether comprehensively covering the ravings of individuals from the lunatic fringe of the US Right gives undue weight to their views. See for example yesterday’s demented rant by Ali Sina on FaithFreedom.org.

Of course, I lack any in-depth knowledge of US politics, and perhaps people like Sina have more influence than I attribute to them.

If anyone feels we’ve missed out on any relevant material please email us the details at editorial@islamophobiawatch.co.uk

Jihad Watch goes UK

madmel“Political correctness is turning lethal. Stockport Council is now using resource packs provided by the Muslim Council of Britain to teach schoolchildren about Islam, an initiative which is to be extended across the nation.” Melanie Phillips in another frothing-at-the-mouth attack on the MCB.

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 30 May 2005

Here’s a further reason why it would be a mistake to dismiss Robert Spencer as a politically marginal fruitcake. Mad Mel (whose views reach a mass audience via her Daily Mail column) not only bases her article on a post from Spencer’s blog (see here), she even borrows the title for her article from him – “Dhimmi Britain”.

Spencer, for his part, reciprocates with a tribute to “the incomparable Melanie Phillips”.

Dhimmi Watch, 30 May 2005

For a reply to Phillips by Yusuf Smith, see Indigo Jo Blogs, 30 May 2005

Spencer spells it out

Spencer“I have written on numerous occasions that there is no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists.” Robert Spencer spells it out.

Jihad Watch, 30 May 2005

This is the man who has also written: “Islam is not a monolith, and never have I said or written anything that characterizes all Muslims as terrorist or given to violence.” See here.

So, while it’s tempting to dismiss Spencer as an irrelevant right-wing crank, his pious declarations that he doesn’t regard all Muslims as terrorists, accompanied by more hardline statements that this is exactly what he does think they are, presents in a particularly crude and transparent form the sort of double-talk we hear from more sophisticated Islamophobes like Daniel Pipes.

Update:  For Spencer’s response, see here.

Why Islam is disrespected (according to Jeff Jacoby)

“Yes, Islam is disrespected. That will only change when throngs of passionate Muslims show up for rallies against terrorism, and when rabble-rousers trying to gin up a riot over a defiled Koran can’t get the time of day.”

Jeff Jacoby comments on the anti-US protests provoked by Newsweek‘s report, claiming they show that Muslims have a particular propensity to violence.

Boston Globe, 19 May 2005

Juan Cole replies: “Jacoby’s position is pure bigotry. We have to be clear about this. Anti-muslimism is a form of racial prejudice no different from any other. If Jacoby said, ‘What is wrong with those people of African descent, that they are so violent all the time when nobody else is?’ he’d probably be fired. It is not all right for him to do the same thing to Muslims. While Muslims are a religious group, in the contemporary United States they most often are racialized. It comes to the same thing.”

Informed Comment, 20 May 2005