Muslim groups in the UK – the New York Times investigates

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The groups have drawn renewed attention since the arrests and charges this month in what the British police contend was a plot by Muslims, all of them British citizens, to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners. Anthony Glees, director of the Brunel University Center for Intelligence and Security Studies in London, said: ‘These groups are essentially Islamist cults, hidden communities, open only to “believers” who exist within open communities.’ … Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain, along with successor groups to Al Muhajiroun (an organization in London that was ostensibly disbanded in 2004) and the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, are engaged in some of the most aggressive activities to recruit followers, British terrorism experts said.”

The “British terrorism experts” include Anthony Glees and Shiraz Maher – who are exactly the people you’d talk to if you wanted to blur the distinctions between Muslim groups with completely different politics and associate them all with terrorism.

New York Times, 29 August 2006

London Mayor opposes racial profiling

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Racial profiling a recipe for alienation

By Ken Livingstone

Morning Star, 26 August 2006

The recent anti-terror raids and the subsequent charging of individuals for alleged terror offences has led to demands that Britain introduce profiling of passengers at airports.This would mean that some passengers would be targeted for much tighter checks at the airports.

But what this “profiling” really means is racial profiling.

It is important that anti-terrorism policing in London is intelligence-led and targets those engaged in terrorist activity. As Sir Ian Blair has repeatedly stressed, community support is essential to isolate terrorists and bring them to justice.

Racial profiling as increasingly advocated in some sections of the media is a totally opposite strategy. It alienates entire communities by making them potential suspects.hat would destroy the community confidence on which our defences against terrorism depend and fuel a sense of injustice amongst young people affected by it.It will also legitimise outbursts of racism which destroy good community relations.

If the media and some politicians are allowed to put whole communities under suspicion, then incidents like the passengers who demanded that two entirely innocent Asian men be removed their plane, or the family who were apparently turned away from the London Eye because they spoke Arabic, will become common.

If those kind of incidents are tolerated they will provoke precisely the breakdown in community relations which the terrorists and the extreme right want to see.

MPACUK urges protests against Jon Gaunt’s Islamophobic comments

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Please let’s get the islamophobe Jon Gaunt exposed for what he is. He is not only misrepresenting Islam but also advocating a witch hunt for all Muslims who have links with Pakistan, ‘He should (Mr John Reed) … investigate every young Muslim who has been to Pakistan and immediately stop the farce of airline restrictions for all and replace it with ethnic and religious profiling’. Yes, it is reminiscent of Nazi propaganda that so effectively and repulsively spread the hatred of the racist state against the Jewish people. Let us stop this hate mongering!”

The Muslim Public Affairs Committee urges protests to be sent to the Sun in response to Jon Gaunt’s recent piece in that paper.

MPACUK alert, 26 August 2006

Flaws in the government’s response to terrorism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“After each crisis there is a focus on the Muslim community not doing enough to root out militants, although the families of the terrorists have had no inkling of their doings. Statements are made about multiculturalism preventing the integration of Muslims in the west, although the terrorists are completely integrated in ways such as speaking English and participating in wider British society. Attention is concentrated on mosques and madrassas, although militancy is developed in secular spaces not religious ones. Immigration is seen as a problem, although the terrorists were born in Britain, their immigrant parents being the most law-abiding of citizens.”

Faisal Devji in the Financial Times, 27 August 2006

Centre planned by Islamic group

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Centre planned by Islamic group

By Glen Munro

Horticulture Week, 27 July 2006

A religious group is planning to build a £100m Islamic centre in east London with substantial landscaping features.

Abbey Mills Islamic Centre is the vision of the Islamic group Tablighi Jamaat. The complex would occupy 50,000 sq m in the Lower Lee Valley. It has been described as a long, undulating building, influenced by the “nomadic structures and the tented cities” of Islam. At night, it would be illuminated by millions of translucent tiles.

Mangera Yvars, the south London-based architects’ firm behind the centre, has said landscaping will be a big component of the project. The centre would be surrounded by an Islamic garden, to include vegetable gardens at the rear of the site and a dining piazza overlooking the Channelsea River.

“It is a landscape structure, not an edifice,” said project architect Ali Mangera. “The theme is centred around Islamic gardens, where there are water features with cool, contemplative spaces of shade.”

There will also be a mosque courtyard on the first floor, an open courtyard on the dome of the mosque and an outdoor forum space that is intended as an inter-faith discussion area.

The contract for the landscaping has not yet been offered for tender and the budget is in the process of being reviewed, while the parameters of the site in conjunction with the Olympic Village are under discussion.

Tablighi Jamaat said the centre would be open to anyone, without any obligation to be a member to the group.

Islamic centre opposed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Plans to open an Islamic cultural centre in a Tyneside town are being opposed over fears it could be targeted by extremists and bring house prices down.

North Tyneside councillors will consider the bid on Tuesday to turn a dance school in Percy Gardens, Whitley Bay, into the centre. Uses would include daily prayer sessions, Qur’anic, Bangla, English-speaking and computer classes.

A total of 56 objections have been sent to planning chiefs, for reasons that include fears that the centre could be a target for extremists, devaluation of surrounding properties, increased traffic, congestion, parking problems, noise and disturbance. At a public meeting attended by around 100 people, concerns were raised over traffic and that the use was not appropriate for a residential area.

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‘How right wing the left sounds’ – Rod Liddle on multiculturalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rod Liddle“Quick, somebody buy a wreath. Last week marked the passing of multiculturalism as official government doctrine. No longer will opponents of this corrosive and divisive creed be silenced simply by the massed Pavlovian ovine accusation: ‘Racist!’ Better still, the very people who foisted multiculturalism upon the country are the ones who have decided that it has now outlived its usefulness — that is, the political left….

“When an ICM poll of Britain’s Muslims in February this year revealed that some 40% (that is, about 800,000 people) wished to see Islamic law introduced in parts of Britain, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality responded by saying that they should therefore pack their bags and clear off. Sir Trevor Phillips’s exact words were these: ‘If you want to have laws decided in another way, you have to live somewhere else.’ …

“Multiculturalism insisted that communities always changed, were in a permanent state of flux and that if you were white and lived in Oldham or Burnley or Tower Hamlets then you had better get used to the idea quickly. This was a doublethink because the same latitude was not extended to the host population; while it was accepted that immigrants would naturally wish to band together and preserve their cultural identity, when the white working-class communities made similar protestations, this was regarded, once again, as evidence of an antediluvian racism. Your fish and chip shop is now a halal butcher? Your daughter’s school now has a majority of Urdu-speaking children? Good! Celebrate the change! Get over it….

“The news that the bombers of July 7 last year and those who allegedly plotted to blow up a whole bunch of aeroplanes were British born apparently came as a shock to the government. Well, it did not come as a shock to those of us who viewed multiculturalism as both dangerous and inherently racist…. In the end, it is not the mad mullahs at whom we should direct our wrath, but the white liberals who enabled them to prosper.”

Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times, 27 August 2006

‘What did we do to deserve your hatred?’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Their head scarves frame faces that are unmistakably Irish and their Dublin accents seem out of place among the strictures of their religious dress. They are unlikely targets of racial abuse, but Patricia Fitzpatrick, 43, and Lesley Carter, 35, have been spat upon, called Pakis, Osama Bin Laden and even ‘Jewish bastards’ on the streets of their native city. As converts to Islam they have joined Ireland’s estimated 26,000-strong Muslim population, which has become the focus of controversy since the discovery of planned terrorist attacks in Britain two weeks ago.”

Sunday Times, 27 August 2006

Australians’ fear of Muslims is ‘common sense’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“No one should be surprised to learn that Australians want a tougher response to global terror for one simple reason – the Islamofascists who started this war show no sign of bringing their attacks on the civilised world to an end….

“Many believe that members of the Islamic community make no attempt to share those values which are identified as Australian. They see Muslim girls wearing clothing that has little do with their religion but a lot to do with political protest. They see weak state governments bowing before Islamic groups and exploiting their voting power.

“Australians are a tolerant people but they are tired of being told that their natural concerns about young Muslims who invoke their religion as they commit gang rape are demonstrations of Islamophobia, racism and paranoia.”

Piers Akerman in the Daily Telegraph (Australia), 28 August 2006