‘Infidel’ author: Islam, West incompatible

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ayaan Hirsi AliWASHINGTON – A former member of the Dutch parliament whose life has been threatened by Muslim radicals warns that Islam is incompatible with Western civilization.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was raised as a Muslim in Somalia, but renounced Islam and moved to Europe, a story she recounts in her autobiography, titled “Infidel.” She moved to the United States last year.

In a speech Monday at the National Press Club in Washington, Ali urged journalists to recognize that all religions are not equal, and that Islam is violent, intolerant and oppresses women.

Ali said she was brought up believing in “a ferocious aggressive god,” but is now an atheist. She said Islam is growing because Saudi Arabia and Iran finance Muslim schools and mosques, while Christian churches have lost their missionary zeal.

CBN News, 19 June 2007

Read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s speech here

For the impact of Hirsi Ali’s visit to Australia, see Herald Sun, 20 June 2007

Gay rights, Islamophobia and double standards

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pride flagOver at the neocon blog Harry’s Place, Brett Lock of gay rights group OutRage! finally gets round to addressing the disgraceful campaign in Israel to ban the Jerusalem Pride march, which takes place tomorrow.

Brett omits any condemnation of, or indeed reference to, the threats of violence from Orthodox Jews or the appeal by the Mayor of Jerusalem to Israel’s High Court to stop the march, and it is now fully two weeks since the anti-Pride bills successfully passed their first reading in the Knesset.

This tardy and rather half-hearted response by Brett – and the failure of OutRage! or the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association to make any statement at all on the issue – stands in sharp contrast to the energy with which they all laid into Russia’s grand mufti last year over Moscow Pride. Somehow, OutRage! and GALHA seem to find homophobia so much more worthy of denunciation when it’s Muslims who are responsible for it.

In fact one might suspect that Brett’s belated post at Harry’s Place is little more than an attempt to cover OutRage! against criticisms by the Lesbian and Gay Coalition Against Racism, who issued a statement last weekend accusing Brett and his chums of hypocrisy. We can only endorse those criticisms.

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Blair ‘contemptuous’ giving Rushdie honour, say UK Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rushdie and VeilPrime Minister Tony Blair was accused Tuesday of rekindling the 18-year old controversy over Salman Rushdie by his government’s decision to give the notorious author a knighthood.

“Many will interpret the knighthood as a final contemptuous parting gift from Tony Blair to the Muslim world,” said secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, Abdul Bari.

Bari said that the Indian-born author earned “notoriety among Muslims for the highly insulting and blasphemous manner in which he portrayed early Islamic figures much-loved and honoured by them.” “The insensitive decision to grant Rushdie a knighthood can therefore only do harm to the image of our country in the eyes of hundreds of millions of Muslims across the world,” he warned.

Labour peer Lord Ahmed described Blair’s decision to approve the honor just before his steps down from power next week as double standards. “It’s hypocrisy by Tony Blair who two weeks ago was talking about building bridges to mainstream Muslims, and then he’s honouring a man who has insulted the British public and been divisive in community relations,” Ahmed said.

Bradford Council for Mosques in northern England also criticized the knighthood as an insult to Muslim religious sensibilities and as an endorsement of the author’s views. “The British government has acted extremely irresponsibly in knighting Rushdie at a time when it should be seeking to restore and strengthen the confidence of its Muslim subjects that it has their best interests at heart,” said council spokesman Ishtiaq Ahmed.

IRNA, 19 June 2007

See also Inayat Bunglawala at Comment is Free, 19 June 2007

Schools where children don’t speak English

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The interesting thing about this story is the use of a picture of some Muslims to illustrate a negative immigration story. Again. Sod Godwin’s Law – this sort of thing works on the same level as ‘Der Ewige Jude’, the Nazi propaganda film that intercut a documentary about the migration of Jews with shots of teaming rats to create a connection between the two. Here we have negative stories about immigration and ethnicity mostly illustrated with pictures of Muslims to create hamfisted links between the two. How many of the girls in the picture are actually British? How many speak English? Doesn’t matter for the Express.”

Five Chinese Crackers on another scaremongering piece in the Daily Express.

Sir Salman’s long journey

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Salman Rushdie“Driven underground and into despair by zealotry, Rushdie finally emerged blinking into New York sunshine shortly before the towers came tumbling down. Those formidable literary powers would now be deployed not against, but in the service of, an American regime that had declared its own fundamentalist monopoly on the meanings of ‘freedom’ and ‘liberation’.

“The Sir Salman recognised for his services to literature is certainly no neocon but is iconic of a more pernicous trend: liberal literati who have assented to the notion that humane values, tolerance and freedom are fundamentally western ideas that have to be defended as such.

“Vociferously supporting the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq on ‘humane’ grounds, condemning criticism of the war on terror as ‘petulant anti-Americanism’ and above all, aligning tyranny and violence solely with Islam, Rushdie has abdicated his own understanding of the novelist’s task as ‘giving the lie to official facts’.”

Priyamvada Gopal in the Guardian, 18 June 2007

Muslim officer is first on the beat donning hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rukshana Begum is, without question, one of a kind. This week, the 23-year-old will become the first police officer ever to wear the Muslim hijab, or headscarf, on duty in Cambridgeshire. And she can’t wait. “I’ve struggled to get where I am,” she admits. “But I feel that my generation is the one which is going to break barriers. I hope that people will look at me and think, ‘If she can do it, so can I’.”

Cambridge Evening News, 18 June 2007

Launch of the Council of ex-Muslims of Britain

Posted on by Bob Pitt

namazie and racist placards 2Maryam Namzie of the Worker Communist Party of Iran is pleased to announce: “A British branch of a new Europe-wide phenomenon is to be launched on Thursday 21 June in London. The Council of ex-Muslims of Britain is building on the stunning success of other branches already operating in Germany, Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. The British Humanist Association and National Secular Society are sponsoring the launch and support the new organisation.”

A comment on Namazie’s blog indicates the support that the new organisation can expect to attract: “Congratulations to this new group. I hope that you have much success and contribute to the end of Islam in Europe. Islam, like facism [sic] and totalitarianism, has no place in a modern Europe. These dead ideologies must be swept aside so that we can all move together into the future. A world without Islam is a world much closer to peace. Thanks for standing up and providing hope for the millions of people who are held captive by Islam – freedom is possible!!”

Maryam Namazie’s blog, 18 June 2007

Muslims under attack at centre

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims are being pelted with eggs and stones in anti-Islamic attacks on the South Woodford Muslim Community Centre seven years after it was destroyed in a petrol bomb attack.

“A few weeks ago there were people throwing eggs at children leaving the centre,” said Qaiser Malik, secretary of the Qurani Murkuz Trust behind the centre in Mulberry Way. “People have thrown eggs and stones from the flyover. They spit on our doors and have left ham and bacon on the doorstep. Apparently the same things are happening to people at bus stops in Woodford.”

Dr Mohammmed Essam El-Din Fahim, head Imam and chairman of the South Woodford centre, said Islamic hatred has been stirred up by BNP leaflets being distributed in the area condemning Islam and the mosque.

Wanstead & Woodford Guardian, 14 June 2007

Anti-Muslim protest by Master Race flops

Posted on by Bob Pitt

NF Islam Out of BritainThe Al Muhajiroun demonstration against “British Oppression” in Downing Street on Friday apparently passed off without incident. Reports indicate an attendance about 150, while the counter-protest initiated by Terry Blackham of the National Front attracted about 30 protestors according to the fascist website Stormfront – though photographs suggest it may have been even fewer.

Evidently expecting a huge response to his call for an anti-Islamist demonstration, Blackham had originally intended to march the vanguard of the White Race over to City Hall at the end of the demo to stage a mass protest against Ken Livingstone, so given the pathetic turnout he was well advised to abandon that idea. And over at YouTube you can watch an excerpt from Blackham’s inspirational address to his troops in which he predicts “world media attention on this event today”. Another slight misjudgement there, eh Terry?

On a more serious note, in a further speech to the demonstrators Blackham objected to the fascists being separated from the Al Muhajiroun protestors and declared that in future, instead of co-operating with the police, the NF will take direct action against Muslim communities: “This fucking barrier is a joke…. Let’s not have it…. You lot organise with me and we’ll turn up and we’ll oppose these [Muslims] at their mosques. I can’t wait until we can take their mosques down brick by brick.”

Surely there are grounds for Blackham being charged under the Public Order Act? Or are far-right racists – unlike Islamist extremists – immune to prosecution for inciting violence?