The Crusader: Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“It makes me cringe when I hear references to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. An ex-Muslim, a former Dutch parliamentarian, and a feminist, Hirsi Ali is often trotted out as some sort of spokeswoman for moderate Islam. A few years back, she wrote a book (‘Infidel’) and produced a movie ‘Submission’) that condemn harsh treatment associated with Islam; since then, she’s been a celebrity. As blogger Shadi Hamid notes, ‘people seem intent on treating her as some kind of anointed spokeswoman for oppressed Muslim women, a reformer from within the faith or, worse, a kind of pseudo-Muslim Martin Luther’.

“But Hirsi Ali is no Martin Luther. She’s condescending, elitist, and inspires no respect amongst Muslims. Hamid points out that he has ‘yet to meet even one Muslim on the planet, secular or conservative, liberal or illiberal, who actually thinks that Hirsi Ali is helping the cause of internal Muslim reform’.”

Jeb Koogler at The Moderate Voice, 24 October 2007

‘Islamisation of Europe’ suffers setback in Netherlands

Posted on by Bob Pitt

There are significantly fewer Muslims in the Netherlands than previously believed, the country’s Central Bureau for Statistics said Wednesday, after a review of its census techniques. The CBS said it was cutting estimates to 850,000, or 5.2 percent of the country’s 16.3 million population, from 1 million, or 6.1 percent.

Associated Press, 24 October 2007

A bit of a problem, you’d have thought, for fantasists like Geert Wilders, Mark Steyn, Douglas Murray and David Icke who have been predicting an Islamic takeover of the Netherlands.

‘Every street in Britain could look like this in 50 years time’, warns Mail

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Every street could look like thisIn an article headed “Britain will be scarcely recognisable in 50 years if the immigration deluge continues”, Stephen Glover writes:

“The only question that interests me is whether a country that is recognisably British will survive in 50 or 100 years. British culture, whatever it represents, is evidently not worth preserving in the view of some on the Left.

“It is a curious paradox that some of its adherents believe that foreign cultures are worth safeguarding, but … when our own indigenous culture is threatened, we are told that it is parochial and small-minded to think about trying to defend it….

“Preserving one’s own culture is at least as important as preserving one’s infrastructure. Actually, it is even more important, because new hospitals, houses and roads can, with a struggle, be built – but culture, once it has been undermined, cannot be recovered.”

Daily Mail, 25 October 2007

And note the photograph chosen to illustrate Glover’s piece (reproduced above). It prominently features a Muslim woman wearing the niqab and is captioned: “Every street in Britain could look like this in 50 years time.”

Italy: eighth mosque attacked in Lombardy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A mosque in a small town outside Milan has been the target of a violent attack – the eighth on mosques in the region of Lombardy surrounding the city.

Italian media reports said the Alif Baa Islamic Centre, in the northern Italian city of Abbiategrasso, 20 kilometres west of Milan, was subjected to fresh violence on Wednesday. Witnesses said a masked man was seen throwing a Molotov cocktail inside the courtyard of the mosque from his motorcycle in the late afternoon. No major damage or injuries were reported in the attack.

This is the eighth assault against Islamic centres in the region of Lombardy in recent months. The Alif Baa Islamic Centre reported other attacks on 25 July and 10 August this year. Another mosque in the nearby city of Segrate was attacked on 5 August and the car of the Imam, Hamid Zariate, was destroyed.

AKI, 25 October 2007

Daniel Pipes backs Islamo-Fascist terror group

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Danny Postel analyses the politics of the Iranian organisation the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) – “an Islamist-Stalinist cult that was on Saddam’s payroll and the State Department considers a terrorist organization” – and points out that it has some unlikely allies:

“Here you have virtually everything the Right claims to oppose all rolled into one: Islamism, Marxism, terrorism, and Saddam. Naturally, then, neoconservatives would utterly deplore the MEK and everything it stands for, right? The MEK would in fact make an ideal target for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week and Terrorism Awareness efforts, no?

“Well, no. At least one of the carnival’s acts, it turns out, is rather fond of the Islamo-Stalinist-terrorist cult group, and has repeatedly argued for the removal of the MEK from the State Department’s list of terrorist groups and indeed urged the U.S. government to embrace it. Daniel Pipes, who will be speaking at Tufts on October 24th as part of the Horowitz high jinks, has made the MEK a recurring theme in his writings going back several years.”

AlterNet, 23 October 2007

Clearly, “Islamo-Fascist terror groups” are OK with Pipes so long as their Islamo-Fascist terrorist activities are aimed at the government of Iran.

Return of the Muslim other

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Soumaya Ghannoushi2“In a few days time a cluster of far-right groups under the name the Stop the Islamisation of Europe alliance will hold rallies in London, Copenhagen and Marseilles to demand an end to what they call ‘the overt and covert expansion of Islam in Europe’. Although the events are likely to attract no more than a handful of protesters, their message resonates widely. On Saturday the rightwing People’s party, notorious for its virulent hostility to ethnic minorities and Muslims, emerged as the victor in the Swiss elections, taking 29% of the vote, the best electoral performance by a party in the country’s elections since 1919.

“The far right is on the ascendancy in many parts of Europe. Beyond its explicit party political expressions, this assumes a more worrying form. What had been traditionally confined to the margins of dominant political discourse is progressively penetrating its mainstream, with parties of the centre absorbing much of the far right’s populist rhetoric. This underlies the complaint by Jean-Marie le Pen, leader of the racist National Front, that Nicolas Sarkozy had ‘stolen his clothes’. Across the Channel, the Tory candidate for the London mayoralty, Boris Johnson, believes that ‘to any non-Muslim reader of the Koran, Islamophobia – fear of Islam – seems a natural reaction’….

“Beyond all the noise about Europe’s ‘Muslim problem’ lurks a growing unease about the changing texture of European society. Gone are the days of pure white, Christian Europe. Now Europe is multi-ethnic, multireligious and multicultural, a fact which many find hard to swallow. Muslims are part of this evolving reality, but the idea that the continent is being Islamised is a figment of the right’s imagination.”

Soumaya Ghannoushi in the Guardian, 24 October 2007

Mohammed Atif Siddique sentenced to 8 years in prison

Posted on by Eddie Truman

When we wrote about Mohammed Atif Siddique’s conviction for terrorist related offences in September we commented that without the amended Terrorism Act of 2000 it was unlikely that the Crown would have been able to make a breach of the peace charge stick.

Today Siddique was sentenced to 8 years in prison on 3 terrorism charges, all of which are related to documents available on the internet.

During the trial there was no evidence produced that Mohammed Siddique was involved in planning any violence; a spokesman for Central Scotland Police said there was “no evidence that Siddique was involved in an actual terrorist plot”

In the days after he was found guilty the Scottish press carried ever more sensational claims about what Siddique was going to do if he had not been arrested and repeatedly referred to him as an “al-Qaeda-linked terrorist”.

The Scotsman suggested he “may” have been planning an attack in Canada while the right wing tabloids were absolutely sure he was going to behead the Canadian Prime Minister.

BNP candidate Robert Cottage was recently found guilty of possessing bomb making chemicals and was sentenced to 2 and a half years.

Mohammed Atif Siddique has been sentenced to 8 years in jail for being in possession of documents that one of the expert witnesses, Evan Kohlmann, has available on his website.

The conviction of Mohammed Siddique under the amended Terrorism Act and his 8-year prison sentence should concern every individual in the UK who questions the foreign policy of the British government; this is a piece of legislation that can be used to send people to prison without any evidence that they have actually done anything wrong.

‘Too many mosques’ in UK, says self-styled ‘communist’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Azar Majedi of the Worker Communist Party of Iran is interviewed by the French secularist magaizine Riposte Laïque (translation in Scoop). In response to the question “Que penses-tu du projet de Grande Mosquée du maire de Londres, Ken Livingstone?” Majedi replies: “Je m’y oppose complètement. On n’a pas besoin d’autres mosquées. Il y en a déjà trop.”

Too many mosques? Now where have we heard that before? Ah yes, it was here.

Smith creates ‘climate of fear’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Smith Creates Climate of FearSmith creates ‘climate of fear’

By James Tweedie

Morning Star, 23 October 2007

HOME Secretary Jacqui Smith appeared before the Commons home affairs committee on Monday for questioning on government plans to extend detention without trial for terror suspects.

The government is considering increasing the limit the current 28-day limit to 56 days – or even to an indefinite period with judicial oversight.

It is also examining the use of phone tap and other “intercept” evidence, imposing “enhanced” sentences for non-terrorist offences committed for a terrorist purpose and broadening the definition of terrorism to include acts carried out for racial and ethnic as well as political aims.

Ms Smith told MPs that the “time is right” for extending the maximum period beyond 28 days. But she admitted that there had not yet been a case where longer than the current four-week limit has been required.

Committee chairman Keith Vaz warned that extra detention power could disproportionately affect Muslims. “The worry about this is that we then stigmatise whole communities and, in my view, that is the road to ruin,” he said.

Human rights campaign Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti also warned that Britain was heading for a state of “permament emergency”.

“The Home Secretary’s revelation that the case has not been made for extending pre-charge detention will be met with considerable surprise,” she said. “There has been so much posturing by so-called experts that few people have remembered to ask for the hard evidence before any change is made.”

Fellow campaigners Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a briefing paper on counter-terrorism measures yesterday, entitled UK: Counter the Threat or Counterproductive? HRW associate Europe and Central Asia director Benjamin Ward said: “Locking up suspects without charge for months at a time is wrong in principle and wrong in practice. It violates the basic right to liberty and risks alienating British Muslims.”

The HRW paper pointed out that less than half of those detained under counter-terrorism powers have been convicted. It says:

“Adopting powers that allow terrorism suspects – many if not most of whom would doubtless be British Muslims – to be detained without charge for months at a time would be deeply damaging to the government’s efforts to win ‘hearts and minds.’ Judicially supervised pre-charge detention without time limits would amount to the reintroduction of internment, a policy widely acknowledged to have alienated communities in Northern Ireland.”

Mr Ward noted that Counter-terrorism Minister Tony McNulty has acknowledged that “the rules of the game haven’t changed” on civil liberties. “The government is finally saying the right things about human rights and security, but the proof will be in the policy,” he said. “If the government is serious about playing by the rules, it should shelve extended pre-charge detention.”

Campaign Against Criminalising Communities spokesman Les Levidow added: “The analogy with Northern Ireland is entirely correct. That is why we have always called detention without trial internment. It’s punishment without trial. The proposals to extend pre-trial detention and introduce post-charge questioning by police are designed for political harrassment.”

“These powers have been disproportionately targeted against Muslims. Clearly, the political aim is to intimidate these communities,” Mr Levidow continued. “These powers are not needed to protect us from violence. They are part of the government’s political aims of suppressing freedom of speech and creating a climate of fear.”

Another right-wing attempt to harness women’s rights to anti-Muslim bigotry

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The new video from the David Horowitz Freedom Center, The Violent Oppression of Women in Islam, is a graphic, nightmarish, and profoundly unsettling glance into the darkest recesses of our fellow man. Narrated by Nonie Darwish, this film accurately depicts the dehumanizing theology, brutal abuse, and degredation that comprise the daily lives of millions of women in the fascist portions of the Islamic world – arcing like a crescent from sub-Saharan Africa, through Iran, to north-central Asia and reaching into hidden pockets of the United States.”

Front Page Magazine, 22 October 2007

Update:  For Yusuf Smith’s comments, see Indigo Jo Blogs, 23 October 2007