Robert Fisk at the Chicago Muslim convention

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Daniel Pipes is a bête noire, as is Steven Emerson, a freelance journalist who grinds out article after article about the ‘American jihad’ for such august papers as The Wall Street Journal, which, by the way, more and more reads like The Jerusalem Post. Emerson and his work are taken apart by al-Marati and his colleagues in a widely circulated booklet entitled Counterproductive Terrorism: How Anti-Islamic Rhetoric is Impeding America’s Homeland Security. ‘Those representing pro-Israeli groups continue to intimidate and marginalise those who are critical of Israeli policies by claiming this is pro-terrorism’, al-Marati says with a mixture of anger and weariness. ‘This is to the detriment of America, to the detriment of countering terrorism’.”‘

Robert Fisk speaks to Salam al-Marati, director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, at the Chicago Muslim convention.

Independent on Sunday, 3 September 2006

US Muslims face growing suspicion

Posted on by Bob Pitt

American Muslims have blamed politicians and the media for the US public’s increasing hatred and fear of Islam in the five years since the September 11 attacks.

“The trends of Islamophobia unfortunately are worsening,” Abdul Malik Mujahid, chairman of the Council of Islamic Organisations of Greater Chicago, said at the start on the annual meeting of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) on Friday. “During the last five years the Muslim community has been scrutinized by almost all branches of the government and the media to the extent that more than half a million Muslims have been directly touched by this process.”

“They continue to face dehumanization and a great trend of Islamophobia,” Mujahid said. Mujahid cited George Bush’s recent remark that if terrorism is not beaten in Baghdad then Americans will have to fight it in their own streets as a remark that casts suspicions on Muslims in their own country.

Al-Jazeera, 1 September 2006

Bush backs off ‘Islamic fascists’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

bush legion speech“President Bush has toned down his war rhetoric after Muslim-rights groups complained his description of the enemy as ‘Islamic fascists’ unfairly equates Islam with terrorism. In his speech to the American Legion Thursday, Bush backed away from the term, defining the enemy simply as ‘fascists’ and ‘totalitarians’.

“He said the war on terror was an ‘ideological struggle’ with terrorists who ‘kill those who stand in the way of their totalitarian ideology,’ but he did not identify the source of the ideology. His only reference to Islam during the speech was in noting that the Muslim terrorists are distorting the tenets of the religion. ‘Free societies are a threat to their twisted view of Islam,’ he said….

“While the White House declined to comment officially about the dropping of the term ‘Islamic fascists,’ a White House insider explained that the president is sensitive to concerns raised by Muslim leaders. ‘The president never meant to imply we’re at war with Islam, but some took it that way,’ the official said. ‘It’s not a climb-down as much as a recognition of the concerns of the Muslim community.’ …  Washington officials have been careful during the war on terror to distinguish between Islam and the terrorists so as not to offend Muslims. The distinction has rankled many conservatives who see little difference.”

World Net Daily, 1 September 2006

Though it may have pissed off the neocons, it seems to me that Bush’s American Legion speech represented only a marginal shift in his rhetoric. True, he avoided using the precise phrase “Islamic fascists”, but the thrust of his argment was the same. He outlined the familiar claim that the US is not engaged in wars of imperialist conquest but rather in a global battle to defend freedom against Muslim totalitarians. According to Bush’s paranoid fantasy, groups as different as Hezbollah and al-Qaida form “a single movement – a worldwide network of radicals who use terror to kill those who stand in the way of their totalitarian ideology”. This is, Bush opined, “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century”.

Australian PM stands by call on Muslims to integrate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

John Howard says he has no need to apologise for telling Muslims they need to embrace Australian values. Mr Howard sparked controversy yesterday after singling out Muslim migrants for refusing to embrace Australian values and urged them to fully integrate by treating women as equals and learning to speak English.

The call for a shift in attitude among some Muslims infuriated community leaders and comes as The Australian revealed the Prime Minister’s own Islamic advisers have already accused Mr Howard and senior ministers of fuelling hatred and mistrust by using “inflammatory and derogatory” language.

But Mr Howard today stood by his comments. “I don’t apologise,” he told reporters.

The Australian, 1 September 2006

Howard’s colleague Peter Costello is also sticking by his view that Muslims who put Islamic law above Australian law are not welcome in Australia.

‘This prejudice is forcing me to leave Britain’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Ever since the London bombings I have been more and more disquieted by the attitude of so many people towards the Asian community, in particular the Muslim section. The fact that there are few visible differences to most people between a Hindu, Sikh or Muslim has meant that everyone in this community is now suffering from increased, negative, racially motivated attention.

“Finally I have come to the conclusion that for most liberally minded British Asians like myself, the answer is to get out. I am weary of prolonged searches at airports, ferry ports and the like. My last encounter at the Eurostar terminal in Paris involved being asked: ‘What is the purpose of your visit to the UK?’ Bearing in mind that I have a UK passport which shows my place of birth as Glasgow, I was puzzled by this question.”

Nadeem Butt in the Independent, 1 September 2006

‘Muslims feel like victims. The West feels guilty. Is the world going mad?’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Gerard Baker supports racial/religious profiling as long as it is “carried out properly and indeed respectfully”. He continues:

“But to argue, as is now common, that it is another example of harassment of and discrimination against Muslims by an increasingly aggressive and hostile State and society, is not only a bit rich. It sounds disturbing like another example of what is becoming a dangerous pathology among many Muslims – to wallow in a self-imposed and eagerly embraced status of victimhood. This condition places the blame for every ill in their lives, in their communities, in the West and in the countries of the Middle East, on the imperialist oppression of the white man, the American and, of course, the Jew, never once stopping to consider even the possibility that their plight might be, in part at least, their own making….

“The failure of Palestinians to create an orderly and successful society is blamed on ‘the occupation’. The failure of many Muslims in Europe, especially in Britain, to integrate effectively is laid at the feet of a white racist society that excludes them…. Of course, this celebration of victimhood plays to the West’s deep sense of guilt, producing a fearful complementarity that makes today’s crisis so potent – a civilisation all too willing to accept the blame for the woes of a people all too willing to blame them.”

Times, 1 September 2006

‘Top 10 reasons Islam might not be a religion of peace’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“A passenger revolt occurred on a Malaga-Manchester flight. Vacationing Brits refused to fly with two Arabic-speaking men. This came in the wake of arrests of 21 British-born Muslims who were plotting to blow up as many as 11 trans-Atlantic flights. A spokesman for Britain’s opposition Tory party said the passengers panicked into ‘behaving irrationally’. Fancy that, not wanting to fly with members of a faith whose adherents keep trying to blow things up. Oh, how irrational!”

Don Feder at ChronWatch, 31 August 2006

Though, to be fair, Feder isn’t hostile to all Muslims: “Occasionally, we’ll hear from a Muslim not mired in the Dark Ages. Usually, they’re wondering where all of the other moderate Muslims are. One is Irshad Manji, a fellow at Yale University and the author of ‘The Trouble With Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith’. Ms Manji can author such a book while safely ensconced in New Haven. If she wrote a book suggesting – or even hinting – that Islam is less than perfection, while residing anywhere in the Muslim world, she’d be dead.”

‘Do we really need further convincing of the threat we face?’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Hezbollah’s black-clad legions goose-step and stiff-arm salute in parade, apparently eager to convey both the zeal and militarism of their religious fascism…. Meanwhile, we in the West who worry about all this are told to fret instead about being ‘Islamophobes’. Indeed, a debate rages over the very use of ‘Islamic fascism’ to describe the creed of terrorist killers – as if those authoritarians who call for a return of the ancient caliphate, who wish to impose 7th-century sharia law, promise death to the Western ‘crusader’ and ‘Jew’, and long to retreat into a mythical alternate universe of religious purity and harsh discipline, untainted by a ‘decadent’ liberal West, are not fascists.”

No, it’s not David T at Harry’s Place. It’s Victor Davis Hanson in the US neocon journal National Review.

NRO, 1 September 2006

‘Piggybacking on terror in Britain’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pipes 9-11“Two days after British authorities broke up an alleged plot to blow up multiple aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean, the ‘moderate’ Muslim establishment in Britain published an aggressive open letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair.

“It suggested that Mr. Blair could better fight terrorism if he recognized that the current British government policy, especially on ‘the debacle of Iraq’, provides ‘ammunition to extremists’. The letter writers demanded that the prime minister change his foreign policy to ‘make us all safer’. One prominent signatory, the Labour member of Parliament Sadiq Khan, added that Mr. Blair’s reluctance to criticize Israel increased the pool of people whom terrorists can recruit.

“In other words, Islamists working within the system exploited the thwarted Islamist terror plot to pressure the British government to implement their joint wishes and reverse British policy in the Middle East. Lawful Islamists shamelessly leveraged the near death of thousands to forward their agenda.”

Daniel Pipes in the New York Sun, 29 August 2006

It’s only a few weeks since Pipes wrote, in response to the adoption of the term “Islamic fascists” by George W. Bush: “The use of Islamic fascists should be seen as part of a decades-long search for the right term to name a form of Islam that is recognizably political, extreme, and often violent…. While Islamic fascists beats terrorists, let’s hope that a better consensus term soon emerges. My vote is for Islamists.”

Front Page Magazine, 14 August 2006

So, according to Pipes’ warped reasoning, Sadiq Khan MP and the alleged plotters of terrorist atrocities are all proponents of “a form of Islam that is recognizably political, extreme, and often violent” – it’s just that Sadiq Khan pursues his objectives “within the system”.

The Muslim threat to Western universities

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), scene to a growing number of anti-Semitic incidents from an increasingly pro-Islamic campus, issued a threat to one of its Jewish students to cease his protests against anti-Semitism at the University. Gavin Gross, an American, had been leading a campaign against the deterioration of conditions for Jewish students at SOAS, which is part of the University of London. SOAS had witnessed an escalation of anti-Jewish activity, in both severity and frequency. At the beginning of the year, the Islamic Society screened a video which compared Judaism with Satanism.”

Front Page Magazine, 1 September 2006