Tablighi Jamaat’s ‘rejection of Western democratic values’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The leader of the Christian Peoples Alliance on Newham Council, Councillor Alan Craig has called the controversial Muslim group behind the proposed Olympics mega-mosque “secretive” after they refused to attend a Muslim-organised public debate on Friday.

Cllr Craig, who spoke at the meeting, labelled the Tablighi Jamaat “controversial” and “secretive”, and added that the group’s no-show was “a classic illustration of Tablighi Jamaat’s rejection of Western democratic values and their secretive, isolationist ways of conducting themselves”.

He continued: “We can only conclude that their hidden arrogance is as large as their secretive ambitions. They reject face-to-face public debate and scrutiny of the issues. This simply feeds the silly superficial knee-jerk reactions of those like Ken Livingstone on the left and the Islamophobic racist hostility of the BNP on the right.”

Christian Today, 10 September 2007

For a statement by the trustees of the Abbey Mills mosque, see here.

See also coverage of the debate at BBC London, 10 September 2007

‘There’s a blurred line between moderate and extremist Muslims’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The terms moderate and extremist are not much use to us when considering Islam; they sort of merge with one another. You can be shocked, if you like, that almost half of Britain’s Muslims attend mosques where Riyadh [ul Haq]’s views are de jour. But you may then wonder what goes on in the other 50%: do they have ‘hardliner’ mullahs or not?”

Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times, 9 September 2007

Canada PM opposes Muslim veil decision

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Harper and friendCanadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Sunday he disagrees with a decision to allow Muslim women to wear veils covering their faces when they vote.

Elections Canada – an independent body that oversees national elections – said last week that Muslim women will be allowed to wear veils when they vote in by-elections later this month in Quebec, where the issue of the traditional covering has been hotly contested.

The decision means women who wear niqabs – which cover the entire face except for the eyes – or a burqa, an all-covering body veil, can bring a photo ID or another document proving their identity when they vote in the Quebec elections.

Harper said he “profoundly disagrees” with the decision and noted all four parties in Parliament this past spring voted to bring in a new law requiring visual identification of voters. “That’s the purpose of the law,” said Harper, speaking to reporters following an international summit in Sydney, Australia. ‘That was a law adopted virtually unanimously by Parliament. I think this decision goes in an entirely different direction,’ he said.

Harper said he hopes Elections Canada reconsiders, “but in the meantime, if that doesn’t happen, Parliament will have to consider what actions it’s going to take to make sure that its intentions are put into place.”

The decision comes after the Quebec’s chief election officer required Muslim women to show their faces in order to be allowed to vote in a provincial election. The decision was condemned by Muslim groups who said it forced women to decide whether to adhere to their religious beliefs or violate their faith and vote.

The by-elections – which typically occur when a Parliament members leaves their seat early – will be held on Sept. 17 in three different districts in Quebec.

The issue of the Muslim veil has repeatedly come up in the province, which is predominantly Catholic. In February, an 11-year-old Muslim girl participating in a soccer tournament in Quebec was pulled off the field after she refused to remove her headscarf.

Associated Press, 9 September 2007

Faith schools – OK for Jews but not for Muslims, says Boris

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Boris JohnsonThe JC interviews Boris Johnson, aspiring Tory candidate for Mayor of London:

“As mayor, I can assure you I certainly would not welcome people like Mr al-Qaradawi,” he says. But he also declines to score some easy, minority-friendly points over faith schools, which he admits he does not instinctively support.

“If I was able to start from scratch, I’d probably have an American system in which I wouldn’t allow faith to be any kind of bar to a child’s entry to a school,” he says. “But we have some wonderful faith schools and we have lots of institutions that work, we have fantastically energetic parent bodies, teachers, they get terrific results – I’m not going to monkey around with that.”

Yet he worries about schools that, without proper regulation, might encourage divisions between communities. He does not mean Jewish ones. “It’s pretty obvious what I’m talking about,” he says, rather gruffly. Indeed it is. “I do worry there are some communities, where faith schools that aren’t properly regulated and controlled could be places that encourage more division, and I want to see unity.”

Jewish Chronicle, 7 September 2007

Don’t demonise Deobandis

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The Times reports today on the activities of one of the Deobandi imams, Riyadh ul-Haq, the former imam of Birmingham Central Mosque. It accuses him of preaching hate. If the Times has evidence that he is guilty of such a crime, I hope they will present it to the appropriate authorities and let him be tried fairly and openly by our legal system. But equally, the Times should be careful not to preach hate in the name of exposing those who preach hate.

“I believe that the Deobandi imam training curriculum needs an overhaul; their teaching methods needs radical change and modernisation and their world view – especially about Islam and politics – requires serious reform. But in its exposure of Riyadh ul-Haq, the Times should not to tarnish all Deobandis as Britain-hating, bloodthirsty and sword-waging Talibans.

“I can name you many Deobandi imams who are fantastic ambassadors for interfaith dialogue and community cohesion. Many graduates of the Deobandi seminaries work in our civil services as active members of British society and provide brilliant expertise. I can name you great institutions that have been established by some of the graduates of the Deobandi seminaries here in the UK. They are providing world class education for many young people of the community. This report fails to balance its message by not highlighting any of the positive work undertaken by many graduates from the same institution.”

Ajmal Masroor replies to the scaremongering articles “Hardline takeover of British mosques” and “The homegrown cleric who loathes the British” in today’s Times.

Comment is Free, 7 September 2007

See also MCB statement, 7 September 2007

Plus Inayat Bunglawala at Comment is Free, 7 September 2007
and Yusuf Smith at Indigo Jo Blogs, 8 September 2007

The Times “exposé” is welcomed by the far right. See BNP news report, 7 September 2007

‘Radical Islamic sect’ may have East London in its grip, Standard warns

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In an article headlined “Radical Islamic sect ‘has half of Britain’s mosques in its grip’“, the Evening Standard takes up today’s Times witch-hunt against Deobandism.

An accompanying leader opines: “Given that the Deobandis have links with Tablighi Jamaat, the group applying to build Europe’s biggest mosque in east London, the exact nature of these views needs to be understood and confronted…. the planning authority concerned for the proposed east London mosque is the London Docklands Development Corporation. As a matter of urgency, this body has a duty to analyze the risk that such views may be promulgated in the building, and their potential effect on the mixed population of east London.”

Report: Libraries stock Islamic terror books

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Public libraries are stocking hundreds of Islamic books by advocates of ‘holy war’, with many glorifying acts of terrorism, a new report claims…. An investigation by a leading think-tank found extremist literature at six libraries, three in the London area, two in the Midlands and one in the North….

“In the report, Hate on the State, published by the think-tanks Vigil and the Centre for Social Cohesion, the authors warn that some libraries have become ‘saturated with extreme Islamist books’…. authors on the shelves include Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the radical Muslim Brotherhood, and Sayyid Qutb, a major influence on Osama bin Laden.

“Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain and a Government adviser, said: ‘These are authors who are widely read in the Muslim world and it is not surprising that they are stocked in areas where there happens to be the highest concentration of Muslims. It does not necessarily mean you agree with them, it is part of a free society’.”

Daily Telegraph, 6  September 2007

See also BBC News, 5 September 2007

Hate on the State can be downloaded (pdf) here.

BBC Newsnight devoted a large chunk of last night’s programme to promoting the report, assisted by Ed “Lock ’em up” Husain and Haras Rafiq of the neoconservative (and largely non-existent) Sufi Muslim Council.

See also Yusuf Smith’s comments at Indigo Jo Blogs, 5 September 2007

The ‘myth of Islamophobia’ (part 567)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“That Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the leader of the Union of Reform Judaism, the country’s largest Jewish denomination, would not only speak to a conference of the Islamic Society, as he did last week, but do so specifically with the agenda of denouncing ‘Islamophobia’ rather than using it as an opportunity to denounce the rising tide of Jew-hatred in the Muslim world, is a development that is as astonishing as it is lamentable. ‘Islamophobia’ is a red herring, a false debating point which seeks to change the subject from the very real threat of the infiltration of Islamist extremism in the United States to a focus on the mythical discrimination to which American Muslims are supposedly being subjected.”

Jonathan Tobin in the Jewish World Review, 5 September 2007

Standard columnist hails repression of Muslims in Germany

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anne McelvoyIn the London Evening Standard (5 September 2007) Anne McElvoy expresses her admiration for the repressive methods pursued by Angela Merkel’s government in response to the threat of terrorism:

“Germany has a different approach to its Muslim immigrants than Britain. There is less emphasis on a ‘hearts and minds’ campaign; her hardline interior minister Wolfgang Schauble ended up in constitutional hot water for suggesting that if a suspected terrorist was wrongly killed, it was preferable to risking the wider loss of innocent life….

“What is striking is the difference in tone. The vast efforts of the Government in Britain since the first bomb attacks have gone into improving community relations, attempting to find Muslim leaders who can separate potential extremists from the mainstream. Mr Brown has reversed some of the more confrontational Blairite policies, like the ostracism of the Muslim Council of Britain. Borderline organisations like Hizb ut-Tahrir remain unbanned.

“In Germany and France, facing increasingly agitated Muslim populations, this would be unthinkable. Vast numbers of suspects are kept under the equivalent of control orders, deportations of troublemakers are more swift and frequent…. Germany, as one senior minister told me recently, does not believe in a ‘softly softly’ solution. ‘Look where that got you’, he said.”

Does Galloway’s Respect Party want Islamic State in UK?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The question is posed in a letter to the East London Advertiser by a Labour Party member, one Stuart Madewell, who is evidently stupid and bigoted enough to believe that the way to win back Bethnal Green & Bow for Labour is to promote BNP-style racist fantasies about the threat of an Islamic state being established in a country where Muslims make up 3% of the population. In fact Madewell’s letter has been posted approvingly on the fascist discussion list Stormfront.