US radio station thanked for ‘Muslim Jeopardy’ skit apology

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today thanked a Minnesota radio station for reacting positively to concerns about an on-air skit that offended Muslim listeners.

A complaint received by the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) stated that KDWB-FM recently aired a segment called “Muslim Jeopardy” in which a person reportedly used a fake South Asian accent in announcing contest categories such as “infamous infidels,” “potent portables” and “smells like a Shia.” The complaint also stated that a female host was threatened with beheading when she got an answer wrong.

As a result of complaints about the skit, KDWB morning host Dave Ryan issued an apology and the station placed the following “Public Statement” on its web site: “KDWB does not condone making light of Islam and Muslims. We regret that listeners found the ‘Muslim Jeopardy’ comedy skit of one of our on-air hosts to be insensitive.”

CAIR news report, 2 October 2006

Are there no limits to the appeasement of Muslim “sensibilities” by would-be dhimmis? Are western cultural values to be inexorably eroded by the ideological onslaught of the Islamic hordes? Will no-one stand up for the basic democratic right of the white majority to promote offensive stereotypes of minority ethno-religious communities? Definitely another case for Robert Spencer.

Spain avoids offending Muslims – Robert Spencer is appalled

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Spanish villages are toning down traditional fiestas in which revelers blow up dummies representing the Prophet Mohammed for fear of offending Muslims, the newspaper El Pais reported on Monday.

One eastern Spanish village, Bocairent, decided to abandon the custom of packing the head of a dummy representing Mohammed with fireworks after seeing the angry response by Muslims to a Danish newspaper’s publication last year of cartoons of him.

El Pais found that several other villages in the Valencia region had also modified similar fiestas this year. It carried out the investigation after a Berlin opera house decided last week to cancel performances of Mozart’s “Idomeneo” because the production included a scene depicting Mohammed’s severed head.

Bocairent’s mayor, Antonio Valdes, said blowing up the Mohammed dummy was offensive. “It just wasn’t necessary, and, as it could hurt some people’s feelings, we decided not to do it,” he said.

The village may not have blown up the wood-and-cardboard Mohammed dummy this year – but it still threw it off a castle wall at the fiesta’s climax in February.

Villages all over Spain hold annual festivals to commemorate the “Reconquista,” the reconquest of Spain by Christians from the Moors, which was completed in 1492 after more than 700 years of Muslim rule in much of the country.

Spain is now once again home to a growing number of Muslims, mainly Moroccan immigrants, who villagers feel might be offended by some of their traditional celebrations.

Reuters, 2 October 2006

For Robert Spencer this is yet another “dhimmi” capitulation to the threat of Muslim violence: “After all, we don’t want any ‘hurt feelings’: if they don’t tone down the exploding of Muhammad, they might get … exploding Muhammads.”

Dhimmi Watch, 2 October 2006

New intolerance

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“In public elementary schools across the nation, students are taught that America is a land of equality and tolerance. We are all created equal, and we should treat each other with dignity and respect, regardless of race, gender or religion. However, it appears that some of us have forgotten these grammar school lessons. We have turned our fear of living in a post-9/11 society into intolerance towards Arabs and Muslims.

“A poll done earlier this year by the Washington Post and ABC News found that 46 percent of Americans think poorly of Islam today, along with 33 percent that believe Islam helps to cause violence against non-Muslims. A more recent USA Today/Gallup poll found that nearly 40 percent of Americans admit to feeling at least some prejudice against Muslims and 22 percent wouldn’t want to have Muslims as their neighbors. Is this what tolerance passes for in a post-9/11 society?”

Laura Taylor in the Cornell Daily Sun, 3 October 2006

Another supporter for the Pope…

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Pope Benedict XVI dropped one of his Prada shoes recently. Quoting the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus on the ‘evil and inhuman’ decree of Muhammad to spread Islam by the sword, he suggested that there’s not much talking ground between Christianity, a faith that has reconciled itself with reason, and Islam, a medieval system that has not. The common sense of Benedict’s observation was self-evident. Modern Christianity has a mild creed, a diminished view of its exclusivity, and is tolerant of disbelievers. Islam does not share these characteristics.”

Barbara Amiel at Macleans.ca, 2 October 2006

… and another

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“For the first time since the hate-filled creed of Islamic fundamentalism vomited itself onto this earth, Christianity has a chance to stand up for itself. Whatever interpretation you place on the Pope’s controversial address about radical Islam, he was merely expressing what any sane individual thinks about the vile activities of muslim insurgency. The time has now come to form a global Pan Christian Front to defend the Biblical principles of Jesus Christ before everything free and decent about our New Testament faith is eradicated from Western culture.”

John Coulter in The Blanket, 25 September 2006

Most Czechs afraid of Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Some three-quarters of Czechs have a negative attitude to Islam, while 60 percent are afraid of it, according to a poll conducted by the polling agency STEM, published by the daily Hospodarske noviny (HN).

The fears may have been enhanced by the recent information that there was a threat of terrorist attack in the Czech Republic. Besides, the Czechs have poor knowledge about the religion. Some 11 percent are of the view that Buddha or Abraham respectively are the founders of Islam.

Some 55 percent agree with the view that there is a threat of a war of Western and Muslim civilisations. Almost one half of those polled are afraid of immediate terrorist attack in the Czech Republic.

However, Czech intelligence services do not consider Czech Muslims immediate security risk. “The Muslims who have been living here for a long time respect our laws and do not seek any clashes, confrontation or violence,” spokesman for the BIS counter-intelligence Jan Subert told the paper.

According to the poll, 29 percent of Czechs consider Islam a sect and three-quarters of them would like to ban the building of mosques here.

There are three of them in the Czech Republic, namely in Prague, Brno and Teplice, North Bohemia. However, in the latter, Muslims have only one leased storey in a house. Both in Brno and Teplice, local authorities had voiced reservations about the construction of a building with a minaret, the daily says.

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Community pledge on mosque attack

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Community leaders in Preston are vowing to work together to avoid a repeat of disturbances in which an Asian teenager was stabbed outside a mosque. The pledge came after a three-hour meeting in Avenham involving police, politicians and community leaders.

About 200 people were involved in trouble on Sunday night after what police said were racially motivated attacks on cars parked at a mosque. Lancashire Police said bricks and concrete blocks were thrown at cars of people attending the Jamia Masjid mosque on Clarendon Street Sunday night.

Extra patrols have been mounted in the area. There were no problems overnight.

Ch Supt Mike Barton, of Lancashire Constabulary, met with local residents on Monday along with community leaders and councillors from Preston Council.

After the meeting, council chief executive Jim Carr read out a short statement which blamed the trouble on a “minority of criminals”.

He said: “Following the recent incidents in the Avenham area of the city, instigated by a small minority of individuals linked to criminal activity, we the wider community of Preston resolve to work closely together to tackle those individuals and make Avenham safe.”

Lancashire Police said bricks and concrete blocks were thrown at cars of people attending the Jamia Masjid mosque on Clarendon Street Sunday night.

About 100 officers were called to the scene after disorder broke out, though there were no arrests. A 16-year-old boy was stabbed in the arm but was not seriously injured.

BBC News, 3 October 2006

Pope’s attack on Islam vindicates BNP, fascists claim

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pope's QuoteUnder the headline “Pope’s quote echoes Nick Griffin’s concern”, the British National Party claims, not entirely unreasonably, that Pope Benedict’s attack on Islam bears a certain similarity to that made by BNP leader Nick Griffin:

“The Department of Public Prosecutions must be cursing the Pope after his remarks on Islam appeared to echo those of the British National Party chairman.

“In a speech to BNP members, Nick Griffin warned those present that Islam was a ‘wicked and vicious’ faith. These words and his chillingly correct prediction that 2nd generations Muslims living in Britain would become Britain’s first suicide bombers, led to him being arrested and charged with inciting racial hatred.

But now Pope Benedict XVI, in a lecture at a German University, has quoted a Byzantine emperor who characterized the Prophet Mohammed as introducing ‘things only evil and inhuman’ to the world and spreading Islam by the sword. As if to prove him correct, Muslims responded by burning down churches and killing a nun.”

Freedom, October 2006

Why I’m banned in the USA – Tariq Ramadan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

tariq-ramdan3Tariq Ramadan answers the US government’s claim that he has been banned from the US because he gave money to two Palestinian charities:

“In its letter, the U.S. Embassy claims that I ‘reasonably should have known’ that the charities in question provided money to Hamas. But my donations were made between December 1998 and July 2002, and the United States did not blacklist the charities until 2003. How should I reasonably have known of their activities before the U.S. government itself knew? I donated to these organizations for the same reason that countless Europeans – and Americans, for that matter – donate to Palestinian causes: not to help fund terrorism, but because I wanted to provide humanitarian aid to people who desperately need it. Yet after two years of investigation, this was the only explanation offered for the denial of my visa. I still find it hard to believe.”

The American Muslim, 2 October 2006

‘Let’s have an open and honest discussion about white people’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Gary Younge“Any candid discussion of race, immigration and asylum that was not racist would not just acknowledge fear and prejudice but challenge them both. Since ministers are not able to do that about ethnic minorities, maybe they should start off with a subject with which they are more familiar. Let’s have an open and honest discussion about white people.

“Let’s start by talking about how they don’t want to integrate. The stubborn rump of around 10% of whites who, according to a 2002 Mori poll, are hostile to racial equality and antagonistic to the very existence of non-white people in this country. Given a percentage point either way, that is the consistent figure who believe that to be truly British you must be white and who do not believe it is important to respect the rights of minority groups.

“Let’s discuss their inability to choose moderate leaders and the propensity of the leaders they do choose to murder innocent civilians abroad by their thousands. Let’s analyse their vulnerability to extremists such as the British National party, not to mention elsewhere in Europe, where fascism is once again a mainstream ideology.

“Let’s talk about the religious intolerance that rages in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and can be found in the highest levels of the state, where only Protestants can marry into royalty. And let’s not forget the terrorists white people have been rearing at home for years, whether they are bombing Brick Lane, parliament or shopping centres in Manchester, and the no-go areas in housing estates, football terraces and boardrooms.

“Only then perhaps will it become sufficiently apparent for those with insufficient imagination just how crude and crass the framing of the debate about Muslims has been. Any group of people will rightly bristle at the demand to answer collectively for the acts of individuals with whom they share an identity but over whom they have no control.

“The tolerant, secular, liberal society into which Muslims are being asked to integrate lies somewhere between mythology and a work in progress and, the responsibility for transforming it into a lived reality lies with all of us.”

Gary Younge in the Guardian, 2 October 2006