‘We cannot compromise with the cultures that are creating terrorism’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Basing himself on Shiv Malik’s “exceptionally penetrating article” in Prospect magazine – based on “research” that the BBC had the nerve to reject as “anti-Muslim” – Alasdair Palmer asserts that the problem of home-grown terrorism arises from allowing people from backward barbaric cultures into “our” liberal secular society:

“The central fantasy has been that immigrants from very different cultures to our own share our commitment to tolerance, personal freedom and the separation of politics from religion that has evolved in this country over the past 300 years…. One of the remarkable things about Mr Malik’s piece is that it is based around a recognition that it is impossible to explain how Khan, Tanweer and Hussain became suicide bombers without examining the culture from which they came…. Mr Malik’s article shows in arresting detail how a conflict within the culture of an immigrant group can lead to the radicalisation of the next generation. British foreign policy, which has been blamed for the creation of home-grown Islamic terrorists, has had very little to do with it…

“The reality is not all doom and gloom. The right to pursue happiness will surely eventually take root in a less violent and more liberal form among people from cultures that are inimical to it…. There are things that can be done to speed up the rate at which that happens, such as … ensuring that new arrivals learn English. Education is not an immediate panacea, however: the fundamentalist, tribal mentality has a remarkable ability to persist even after a successful education….

“The conflict between our culture and one that insists a father is obliged to kill his daughter if she marries outside her tribe, or which says that democracy should be forcibly replaced by theocracy, is a conflict for which there cannot be a compromise solution…. Government policy still seems based on the myth of multiculturalism: denying that the conflict is real. The Government has not even found the heart to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir, the group that openly recruits Muslims to violent jihad. It may even be on the receiving end of a government grant.”

Sunday Telegraph, 17 June 2007

For an alternative view of the causes of terrorism, see the Scotsman, 17 June 2007

Fascists claim to defend gay rights

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Following on from a post at Home of the Green Arrow, another BNP member denounces the recent Time Out fantasy about life in a Muslim-majority London. Taking inspiration from the Pim Fortuyn strategy of whipping up racism under cover of defending liberal western values against the Islamic takeover of Europe, the article notes that “one can only wonder how gays, who make up a substantial proportion of Time Out readers, feel about the prospect of a deeply homophobic Islamic London”. That would be as distinct from a gay-friendly fascist London, would it?

Meanwhile another Nazi group, the tiny British People’s Party, has characterised the Time Out piece as “a wake up call to White Londoners who still cherish their heritage and identity”.

Torygraph columnist applauds Kelly’s commission

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Commission on Integration“The message from the Commission on Integration and Cohesion is loud and clear. Multiculturalism has not worked…. For too long, local authorities have had a free hand to promote a multiculturalist agenda, wreaking untold harm on race relations…. The commission also recommends the withdrawal of funding for groups that represent only one particular ethnic group, religion or race, unless there are compelling reasons to do so…. The Government must now catch up with what many of us have been arguing for years; that many of Britain’s ethnic minorities are adrift in ghettoes and that some are proving to be incubators of radicalist tendencies and havens for criminals.”

Zia Haider Rahman in the Daily Telegraph, 15 June 2007

Cf. Lee Jasper’s comment on the CIC report: “This report fails to identify gross racist stereotypes and whipped up fear now targeted at Muslims and asylum seekers as a source of social conflict. Instead, without any basis in fact, it dangerously turns the blame onto the victims.”

Blink news report, 14 June 2007

And on the Matthew Bannister programme on Radio 5 yesterday morning, the featured speaker on the issue of integration arising from the CIC report was the BNP’s Nick Griffin. Listen here.

US Muslim civil rights cases jumped 25 percent last year – CAIR

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A report released today by a prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group indicates a 25 percent increase in the total number of complaints of anti-Muslim bias from 2005 to 2006, with citizenship delays being the major issue.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) report – the only annual study of its kind – outlines 2,467 incidents and experiences of anti-Muslim violence, discrimination and harassment in 2006, the highest number of civil rights cases ever recorded in the Washington-based group’s report. (Hundreds of anti-Muslim incidents reported immediately following the 9/11 attacks were detailed in a separate report.)

According to the study, called “Presumption of Guilt,” that total is a 25.1 percent increase over the preceding year’s total of 1,972 cases. One of the most significant increases is in the category dealing with government agencies, which rose sharply from 19.22 percent of total reports in 2005 to 36.32 percent in 2006. This increase was due primarily to the number of cases related to immigration issues such as citizenship and naturalization delays. CAIR also received 167 reports of anti-Muslim hate crime complaints, a 9.2 percent increase from the 153 complaints received in 2005.

CAIR press release, 14 June 2007

Wearing a headscarf in Detroit

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“You have nuns totally covered … and no one questions it. But when a Muslim does it, we’re from outer space.” The Detroit Free Press interviews Muslim women who wear the hijab.

One reader is not impressed: “There is no comparison between a covered nun and Islamic hijab. No one living in a Christian community has to worry about armed gangs breaking into a family home to threaten, beat or kill them because their daughters haven’t become nuns. Islamic women have to worry about that daily in the Islamic world, and even in European countries Islamic women are subject to ‘honor killings’.”

Catholic bigots denounce composer

Posted on by Bob Pitt

John Tavener“John Tavener is a gentle sort of chap … but his latest choral work, to be premiered at Westminster Cathedral on Tuesday, seems to have stirred up a hornets’ nest of angry Catholics.

“The work, The Beautiful Names, is a reflection on the 99 names for Allah and its production at the cathedral – a venue suggested by Prince Charles, who commissioned the work – has caused outrage among those of the faithful who think the building is being taken over by Islamists. One letter writer, Daphne McLeod, has spluttered about the cathedral being desecrated and honouring a false god.”

Guardian, 15 June 2007

Indeed, in her letter to the Catholic Herald Ms McLeod demands: “Can we be told what arrangements have been made to reconsecrate our Cathedral to the Precious Blood of Our Blessed Lord after this defilement?”

See also Daily Telegraph, 15 June 2007 and Sunday Telegraph, 9 June 2007

Alien nation?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“On Thursday the Commission on Integration and Cohesion is finally expected to publish its findings, but the project is based on some big misunderstandings. There is a widespread anxiety that we are ‘sleepwalking into segregation’, as Trevor Phillips put it in 2005 when he was chair of the Commission for Racial Equality….

“The whole debate about race in this country has shifted from multiculturalism, tolerance and anti-racism to integration and this sticky notion of cohesion. The onus of responsibility has shifted from tackling the white community’s racism to assessing the ethnic minority community’s state of integration. The latter is supposed to indicate the likelihood of extremism – the most dubious connection of all in this debate riddled with misconceptions – after all, Mohammed Siddique Khan, one of the 7/7 bombers appeared to be ‘integrated’ with a job in a primary school, a wife and child.

“This anxious, nervy debate has little connection to the evidence being turned up by UK demographers. Academics like Ludi Simpson, Danny Dorling and Ceri Peach say that the UK is going through a process of desegregation as established ethnic minorities move out of inner-city neighbourhoods into surrounding suburbs.”

Madeleine Bunting at Comment is Free, 13 June 2007

Read Commission on Integration and Cohesion report Our Shared Future here.

For the controversy surrounding one member of Ruth Kelly’s commission, Ramesh Kallidai, see Andrew Gilligan’s article in the Evening Standard (reprinted here). The issue is not so much Kallidai’s alleged association with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh but rather that he has deployed Hindutva myths about Muslims forcing young Hindu women to convert to Islam in the UK. It seems that while Kelly excludes representatives of the Muslim community on the basis of links with Jamaat-e-Islami or the Muslim Brotherhood, even though these links have no adverse impact on community relations in this country, she has no problems working with a Hindu admirer of the fascist RSS.

Muslim in final appeal to stop extradition to US

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ashfaq AhmadLawyers acting for Babar Ahmad are making a final appeal to the European Court of Human Rights to prevent the computer expert from London’s prestigious Imperial College being extradited to the US for allegedly running terrorist websites.

A decision on the case is expected to be made Thursday after Britain’s highest judicial authorities, the House of Lords, refused permission to appeal at the weekend.

“After three years of imprisonment without charge, Babar is being sent to face a flawed justice system in the United States,” said his family, who live in Tooting, south London. They said that his supporters from all over the UK will “hold the British Government responsible if he is subjected to any physical or psychological abuse.”

Law Lords rejected Babar’s appeal on Sunday when concluding that two points of law presented to them were not matters of “public importance”. But his family said that the refusal was a “complete travesty of justice”. The Attorney General and the Crown Prosecution Service had confirmed in writing several times that there is “insufficient evidence to charge Babar with any crime,” they said.

Muslim News, 13 June 2007