Martin Amis on Islam – likened to ‘the ramblings of a British National Party thug’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

If Martin Amis, who has just taken up a teaching post at the University of Manchester, should happen to bump into the Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton on campus, it could be an uncomfortable meeting. In the new introduction to the 2007 edition of his classic book, Ideology: An Introduction, Eagleton launches an impassioned attack on the views of “Amis and his ilk” who argue that the West needs to clamp down on Islam.

The spur for Eagleton’s criticism is Amis’s assertion that, as the Islamic population swells, “the Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order“. Amis has suggested “strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan”, preventing Muslims from travelling, and further down the road, deportation. “Not the ramblings of a British National Party thug,” writes Eagleton, “but the reflections of Martin Amis, leading luminary of the English metropolitan literary world.”

Independent, 4 October 2007

Dutch Labour Party chair repudiates Ehsan Jami

Posted on by Bob Pitt

AMSTERDAM – Dutch Labour party PvdA chairman, Ruud Koole, says Islam critic and Labour council member Ehsan Jami is distancing himself from party ideology with his statements about Islam.

In an article published in daily newspaper, Volkskrant, Wednesday, Koole is quoted as saying that Labour representatives are “expected not to go against fundamental party principles in his public statements”.

On 27 September, 22-year old Jami and Freedom party (PVV) leader Geert Wilders co-wrote an article in the newspaper in which they stressed the need for strong criticism of Islam. “If we do not act now against the far-reaching Islamisation of the Netherlands,” the two wrote, “then the 1930s will be revived. The only difference is that back then the danger came from Adolf Hitler, while today it comes from Mohammed.”

Koole, in the Volksrant article Wednesday, refers to Jami’s remarks about the Islam as “degrading” and says they also contradict the principles of a democratic constitutional state “which guarantees freedom of religion”.

Jami is a Labour council member in Leidschendam-Voorburg and the chairman of the Committee for former Muslims. He has received little public support from his party following his criticism of Islam.

Expatica, 3 October 2007

Hate week comes to campus

Posted on by Bob Pitt

David Horowitz“If you wanted to know what Sen. Joe McCarthy would sound like if he came back from the dead, read David Horowitz’s explanation for ‘Islamofascism Awareness Week’, an event he is sponsoring on college campuses across the country from October 22-26.”

Aaron Hess reveals the veteran witch-hunter behind a new round of Islamophobia coming to US campuses.

Socialist Worker (US), 5 October 2007 

Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain statement on Panorama

Posted on by Bob Pitt

HizbHizb ut-Tahrir replies to last night’s Panorama programme How I Became a Muslim Extremist.

Among the talking heads featured on the programme was Douglas Murray’s mate James Brandon from the misnamed Centre for Social Cohesion, which the programme omitted to mention is a hardline right-wing think tank. And Andrew Green – who assured viewers that HT represents a “gateway” to terrorism – was introduced as a former Foreign Office expert, with no reference to the fact that he is now chairman of the right-wing anti-immigration campaign Migration Watch.

For Yusuf Smith’s comments, see Indigo Jo Blogs, 2 October 2007

Ohio radio host says Islam’s ‘goal’ is ‘sex with children’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

CINCINNATI – The Cincinnati office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Ohio chapter (CAIR-Ohio) today called on a local radio station to reprimand a talk show host who claimed that the goal of Islam is “sex with children for eternity.”

Yesterday, WLW-AM host Bill “Willie” Cunningham said on air: “The great war of this generation’s time is the war against Islamic fascists…. They do not live for life, they live for death. Only through death can they believe they can be with those 72 virgins in heaven and have sex with children for eternity, which is the goal of that religion.”

“These outrageous and inflammatory remarks can only serve to promote the kind of anti-Muslim hatred and bigotry that have such a negative impact on our society and on our nation’s international image,” said CAIR-Cincinnati Executive Director Karen Dabdoub. “Unfortunately, this troubling incident is further evidence of the growing level of rhetorical attacks on Muslims and Islam in the public arena.”

Dabdoub added that hate-filled words can and do lead to violent actions against Muslims. She said there have been several recent apparently bias-related incidents targeting Muslims in Ohio, including Nazi swastikas and the phrase “white power” spray-painted on a Toledo Islamic school and rocks thrown at worshipers outside a Columbus mosque.

Other recent incidents nationwide include a shot fired into a Texas mosque, a Muslim woman in New York being badly beaten in a bias attack, arsonists torching a mosque in Northern California, and vandals slashing the tires of vehicles owned by a Maryland Muslim activist.

CAIR press release, 2 October 2007

Arun Kundnani: How liberals lost their anti-racism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

How liberals lost their anti-racism

Liberal arguments that the West needs to defend “Enlightenment values” lead to a culture of bigotry, writes Arun Kundnani

Socialist Worker, 2 October 2007

A new sentiment has gripped mainstream liberal thinking in Britain over the last few years – one which regards Muslims as uniquely problematic and in need of forceful integration into ‘superior’ Western values.

For this new breed of liberal, previously cherished values of multiculturalism should be discarded, and the fight for racial and religious equality is irrelevant.

The recent publication of Nick Cohen’s book What’s Left? How Liberals Lost Their Way and Andrew Anthony’s more sharply argued The Fall-Out: How A Guilty Liberal Lost His Innocence provide the clearest statements yet of what this new liberalism stands for.

Their argument is straightforward – the major problem facing the West is a failure to stand up for its Enlightenment values.

Liberalism has been infected by guilt, they say, which prevents it from defending itself against the threat of Islamism – which is held responsible not only for terrorist violence, but also for ‘Muslim separatism’ in our cities.

Continue reading →

‘Asian grooming’ – Sunday Times and BNP find common ground

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The fascists applaud an article by Julie Bindel in the Sunday Times (or the “Times on Sunday” as they prefer to describe it):

“The story concerns the sex grooming of young British girls largely by Muslim men – something that up until relatively recently has been decried as a figment of the BNP imagination by the political establishment. Now, of course, following a number of convictions of such people in our courts that particular cat is well and truly out of the bag – much to the embarrassment of the political class that has continuously turned a blind eye to it in the name of ‘good community relations’!”

BNP Regional Voices, 1 October 2007

See also Home of the Green Arrow, 1 October 2007

Cf. the Guardian, 23 March 2006

Muslim ‘peace’ adverts launched

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islam is PeaceAn advertising campaign promoting British Muslims as integrated citizens who reject extremism has been launched. Islam is Peace – formed after the bombings in London in July 2005 – has initially placed adverts on the capital’s buses and Underground trains. They show a range of Muslims – including a policewoman, a Scout group and the chef Michael Barry – with the slogan “Proud to be a British Muslim”.

Organisers say research shows many Britons associate Islam with terrorism. The group insists that the religion demands that its followers live in peace with their neighbours within non-Muslim societies. But it says it recognises that Muslims have a duty to show that the vast majority of them wish to do so. After the initial London campaign, Islam Is Peace intends to launch a nationwide tour.

Ifhat Shaheen-Smith, one of the campaign organisers, said: “In the current atmosphere of suspicion and fear about Islam and British Muslims, truth is often confused with fabrications and stereotypes. Prejudice has become entrenched and sensationalistic media reporting is creating a climate of paranoia. There is a desperate need for openness, mutual understanding and a mature debate.”

BBC News, 1 October 2007

‘Cringing to Muslims is so pointless’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The right-wing media are predictably making an issue of Sainsbury’s reported decision to allow its Muslim checkout staff to opt out of& selling alcohol. Judging by the account in yesterday’s Sunday Times this would appear to affect a single employee in one Sainsbury’s store (plus two other workers who have apparently asked for dispensation from stacking the drinks shelves).

Ibrahim Mogra, chairman of the inter-faith committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, has said: “Muslim employees should look at the allowances within Muslim law to enable them to be better operating employees and not be seen as rather difficult to cater for.”

Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary-general of the MCB, has similarly been quoted as saying: “By selling alcohol you are not committing a sin. You are just doing the job you are paid for. Muslim employees have a duty to their employer and in supermarkets most people would accept that in selling alcohol you are merely passing it through a checkout. That is hardly going to count against you on the day of judgement.”

None of which prevents Peter McKay, in today’s Daily Mail, using the Sainsbury’s story as an example of the attempted Islamification of the West:

“There’s no doubt some Muslims living here want us to change so we are more in tune with their beliefs. Some of the wilder ones want to destroy our ‘infidel’ way of life altogether. The Nobel Prizewinning author Sir Vidia Naipaul complained about the latter group to Radio 4’s James Naughtie last week. This is what he said: ‘What I dislike about it is this element of parasitism. These people who want to come to other countries from their own benighted places. They twist the laws, they hire lawyers, they do bad things to get residence. And then, having got that, they wish to destroy (the society) which has welcomed them. I think that is simply awful. At the most basic level it’s a kind of ingratitude.’ Trinidad born, Sir Vidia can speak candidly without fear. No white politician from a major party would dare voice these sentiments. Everyone’s too terrified of sounding ‘racist’.”

Still, it’s good to see that Peter McKay includes the Muslim Council of Britain in the category of “sensible Muslims”, given that the paper regularly features rants by Melanie Phillips denouncing the MCB as an extremist organisation.