BNP backs Butt

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Muslim extremists are targeting Scottish people because they what [sic] to destroy our British Christian way of life and replace it with an Islamic state. It is not about Iraq, it’s not about Afghanistan, it is about the Islamic Jihad for this country. We exist in their minds in Dar al-Harb or the House of War, which is the term used to refer to those areas outside Muslim rule i.e. Scotland.”

BNP regional voices, 2 July 2007

Sounds like the fascists have taken their inspiration from Hassan Butt. And why not? His line of argument feeds their Islamophobic ravings.

Robert Spencer is a fan, too: “Butt here says what I have said for years: that the jihad arises from Islamic imperatives, not from the actions of the West.”

Jihad Watch, 2 July 2007

More nonsense about ‘Islamism’ from Ed Husain

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ed Husain, Melanie Phillips’s favourite Muslim, furthers his media career with another disgraceful attack on mainstream Muslim organisations, and in particular the East London Mosque, in the Evening Standard.

Appeasement is not an answer to the bombers

The threat of radical Islam is as great as ever – and those, like the Mayor, who seek to gloss over the danger, should heed this warning

By Ed Husain

Evening Standard, 2 July 2007

Once again, London is plunged into fear and confusion. Perhaps we had been lulled by a series of successful convictions of bomb plotters. But all along, the jihadists were at work, building their cells, arming themselves, recruiting, making plans. And it is only by a miracle that London escaped carnage far, far worse than that wreaked on 7 July 2005. Police seem to have a good chance of rounding up this particular cell. But either way, radical Islam is back with a vengeance. In fact, it never left.

So I listen to the Mayor of our great city and I wonder, what will it take for him to wake up? More bombs in central London? Another attack on the Tube? As someone who was seduced by Islamists such as Omar Bakri, I know how charismatic these firebrands can be. But at the time, I was an impressionable teenager. What’s Ken’s excuse?

Don’t get me wrong. Being a big-tent liberal is laudable; but to fail to discern the difference between Islam, the religious tradition, and Islamism, the extremist political ideology hell-bent on destroying the West, is a disaster for us all. By confusing regular religious Muslims with fanatical ideologues, Ken blurs the lines between right and wrong, and allows radicalism to flourish within sections of London’s Muslim communities.

On Radio 4 this weekend, Ken and I took part in a debate about terrorism. Despite my repeatedly asking Ken to condemn Islamism, he refused to do so. He correctly lambasted Saudi Wahhabis for their role in promoting an intolerant and violent creed. Yet what we call al-Qaeda is an illegitimate child of Islamism and Wahhabism combined.

While living in Saudi Arabia two years ago, I remember watching in horror television images of Ken walking around with Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric based in Qatar, whose publicly stated attitude is that suicide bombers are martyrs. Yet it was Ken who said that ‘of all the Muslim thinkers in the world today, al-Qaradawi is the most positive force for change’. By promoting these extremists, and their supporters, Ken gives them legitimacy. He helps set in motion the conveyor belt to terrorism.

Continue reading →

London mayor defends Muslims as bomb plot foiled

Posted on by Bob Pitt

London Mayor Ken Livingstone called on Britons Saturday not to demonize Muslims after a double car bomb plot was foiled in the capital, amid fears of a Islamist terror threat. “In this city, Muslims are more likely to be law-abiding than non-Muslims and less likely to support the use of violence to achieve political ends than non-Muslims,” he told BBC Radio. “They have played a good and active and growing role in creating a multi-cultural society,” he added.

He noted that terrorist acts had been carried out in London over the years by various groups including for example far-right groups. For years the British capital was wracked by violence by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). It was crucial to understand “that that doesn’t mean that all white men are potentially a threat to society any more than all Muslims are,” he added.

AFP, 30 June 2007

Fascists blame Glasgow car bomb on local Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Glasgow is Scotland’s largest city and home to an estimated 25,000 Muslims. We can expect the usual knee-jerk reaction from the establishment liberals that the alleged high levels of poverty found in the Muslim community is a factor driving young male Muslims to extremism. This is of course nonsense as high levels of poverty in Glasgow does not turn native Scots youths into suicide bombers. In reality the fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran, the Islamic holy book is the compelling factor behind these kinds of attacks; commanding as it does a holy war against non-believers to spread the word of Islam by any means necessary, including murder and mayhem. Suicide bombers are held in esteem by their immediate families and the wider Muslim community and those who die for Islam are promised ‘unlimited sex with 72 virgins in heaven’ … ‘beautiful like rubies, with complexions like diamonds and pearls’.”

BNP news article, 30 June 2007

Update:  Never a model of consistency, the BNP now argues that the terrorists were not in fact homegrown at all. Utilising a police report that “none of the suspects is British in origin”, the fascists demand: “Doesn’t common sense suggest that we should refuse entry into Britain to all would-be immigrants and ‘asylum-seekers’ either known, or suspected, to be adherents of a certain religion?”

Magistrate walks out over Muslim woman’s veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A magistrate is facing an inquiry after refusing to deal with a defendant wearing a full Muslim veil, the Judiciary of England and Wales said yesterday.

Ian Murray walked out of the case at Manchester magistrates’ court yesterday because Zoobia Hussain, 32, of Crumpsall, Manchester, was covered by a hijab. Hussain’s lawyer, Judith Hawkins, said her client was “shocked and distressed” and found Mr Murray’s treatment of her “insensitive and unacceptable”.

Miss Hawkins said she would submit a formal written complaint to the court on Monday. When the complaint is received, the judiciary will launch an internal investigation into Mr Murray’s behaviour, a spokesman said.

A spokesman for the Ramadhan Foundation said: “It is despicable that the judiciary is ignoring the guidelines about the wearing of the hijab set out only in February by the Judicial Studies Board. They require that magistrates and judges be ‘sensitive’ to a woman’s religious requirement to wear the hijab and work around it when possible.”

Daily Telegraph, 29 June 2007

Mr Murray does however receive the support of the BNP who opine: “Those pushy Muslims never let up trying to change the way we have done things in this country for centuries.”

Update:  See “Veil row magistrate reprimanded”, BBC News, 8 January 2008

Anti-Muslim attacks on the rise in the West

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The level of hate crimes targeted towards Muslims and those who are thought to look like Muslims within Europe and North America is dramatically high according to a new survey released June 6 by a human rights organisation. It was revealed at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Bucharest, Romania, by Human Rights First, a leading human rights group based in America, and was part of their annual hate crime survey.

Executive Director of Human Rights First, Maureen Byrnes, claimed that violence against Muslims was extremely high in 2006. In criticising governments for lack of actions, she said, “Efforts to combat these crimes are greatly hampered by the fact that majority of governments in Europe still fail to collect date on these attacks.”

The annual report looked at the level of crimes committed against Muslims during 2006 and the growing trend of Islamophobia around the world since the attacks of September 11 and 7/7 bombings.

The report found that the violence towards Muslims was aggravated after September 11, fuelled by “the perpetuation of stereotypes and generalizations about Muslims,” and that terrorism acts done in the name of Islam caused “random reprisals against those identified rightly or wrongly as co-religionists of the perpetrators.” It described horrific incidents towards Muslims, from verbal and physical assaults including fatal incident at individuals to arsenic attacks at mosques and desecration of the Islamic books including the Qur’an.

The Muslim News, 29 June 2007

‘Muslims hate dogs’ – shock revelation

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dog“Recently, your paper carried an article about dogs being sent to Turkey by an animal charity in the Borders. I read the item with a sinking heart and it is still worrying me. Surely, everyone must know that Muslims hate dogs.

“Respect and compassion, let alone kindness, towards animals is not part of Islamic culture and the wicked cruelty to animals that is commonplace in Islamic countries has never been a secret from the rest of the world.

“Turkey is an Islamic country. Expats living there do what they can to help the numerous abused animals. Why on earth would anyone think to send dogs from the UK, and ones that have already been unlucky enough to end up in a shelter, to an Islamic country?”

Letter in the Southern Reporter, 27 June 2007

We’re of course familiar with Islamophobia being packaged as a defence of women’s rights or LGBT rights, but the use of animal rights as a cover for anti-Muslim bigotry is now gaining ground. See for example the BNP’s attempt to win support by opposing halal slaughter as “the most barbaric and primitive method of killing animals imaginable”