‘Just because we’re Muslim, does not mean we are suicide bombers’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

plane 'bombers'Sohail Ashraf and Khurram Zeb, the two innocent Asian students marched off a jet at gunpoint because other passengers feared they were terrorists, have given an interview to the Mirror. They are remarkably restrained in their response.

Sohail is quoted as saying: “These are nervous times and I can understand why people are so panicked. All I would say is, ‘Don’t be paranoid. Don’t judge every book by its cover’. We might be Asian, but we’re two ordinary lads who wanted a bit of fun. Just because we’re Muslim, does not mean we are suicide bombers.”

Daily Mirror, 23 August 2006

Fascists in Belgium – they’re not far-right racists but Muslims!

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Vlaams BelangThe Wall Street Journal carries a piece by Bret Stephens reporting favourably on developments in the Belgian far-right party Vlaams Belang (formerly the Vlaams Blok, which officially dissolved itself in 2004 after being convicted of inciting racial hatred). Noting that the party has a history of Nazi sympathies and Holocaust denial, Stephens adds:

“But that’s changing. Younger party leaders, realizing their anti-Semitic taint was poison, began making pro-Israel overtures. And the party’s tough-on-crime, hostile-to-Muslims stance began to attract a considerable share of the Jewish vote, particularly among Orthodox Antwerp Jews who felt increasingly vulnerable in the face of the city’s hostile Muslim community. Today, Vlaams Belang is the largest single party in the country.”

Stephens continues: “Meanwhile, the real fascists in Belgium are gaining strength, largely protected from scrutiny by the country’s ‘anti-racism’ legislation. At Brussels’s Imam Reza mosque, a preacher commemorated the 17th anniversary of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s death: ‘The enemies cannot extinguish the light of the Islamic Revolution.’ And in Molenbeek, the newspaper Het Volk published a study of the local Muslim population: The editor, Gunther Vanpraet, described the commune as ‘a breeding ground for thousands of Jihad candidates’.”

Wall Street Journal, 22 August 2006

‘I know who I’d rather sit beside on a flight’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

monarch airline“Two young men flying from Malaga to Manchester last week were not quite up to speed with our new, unwritten laws…. They found themselves being removed from Monarch Airlines flight ZB613 because other travellers, very possibly white travellers, developed suspicions. A three-hour delay developed because the fearful refused to fly unless the pair were taken from the aircraft.

“They were ‘possibly’ in their 20s, after all, and ‘possibly’ of Middle Eastern – or was it ‘Asian’? – appearance. Someone said they looked constantly at their watches. Someone else thought they heard a language that may have been Arabic. Even holidaymakers are profilers these days, but only the white ones have legitimate reasons, apparently, for checking the time impatiently on a holiday flight.

“Monarch, at the time of writing, has been unable to confirm the grounds for these deep suspicions. The two men were removed, nevertheless, and charged with no crime whatever. They merely faced public humiliation, questioning and severe disruption to their own travel plans….

“What does the low-grade hysteria of those Monarch passengers achieve if not another small, useful publicity coup for extremism? What message does a lynch-mob mentality convey to a young Muslim who fears even to board a flight? How many more ‘mistakes’ can John Reid’s department afford? And where does any of it leave our fragile, assailed multi-culturalism? … The real risk now is that Britain, never a model of unity, will be deeply and permanently divided for reasons of race and faith.

“Mr Blair has said recently that there is an argument to be won, and that military means alone will not secure a victory for his ‘values’. I agree with the statement, but doubt his intentions. He can lecture Britain’s Muslims, by all means, on the subject of rights and responsibilities, but it is time that he also began to lecture the non-Muslim majority, and some of his own Ministers, on the meaning of civilised values.

“The concept is being eroded with each passing month. Who would you rather sit beside on a flight from Malaga? An obnoxious Mancunian drunk, or a pacific, and perfectly innocent, young Muslim? One might deserve the attentions of suburban vigilantes; the other certainly does not.”

Ian Bell in The Herald, 22 August 2006

Some good points, though it’s probably just as well the Herald doesn’t have a wide circulation among the people of Manchester.

Don’t blame multiculturalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The Commission for Racial Equality boss, Trevor Phillips, opened the floodgates to this erroneous debate about multiculturalism two years ago. Like the BBC newsreader George Alagiah, writing in yesterday’s Daily Mail, he blamed the ‘policies of multiculturalism’ for the alienation and radicalisation of British Muslims. Both men are prominent, powerful public figures and their views make front-page news. The damage they are causing to good race relations cannot be underestimated. ”

Simon Woolley at the Guardian’s Comment is Free, 22 August 2006,

You are now entering Eurabia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Long before the September 11 attacks, conservative intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic had begun to present the ‘green peril’ of Islamic fundamentalism as an existential threat to Western civilization comparable to communism and Nazism. In the 21st century however, a new school of thought has begun to emerge, which depicts Europe as a continent on the brink of imminent cultural and political subjugation to Islam. The more pessimistic exponents of this thesis have argued that Europe’s civilizational collapse is now so far advanced that Europe has effectively become a cultural and political hybrid called ‘Eurabia’.”

Matt Carr’s article from the July issue of Race & Class.22

MCB criticises lenient sentence for racist attacker

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Furious Muslim leaders last night criticised magistrates after a man escaped custody following a disgusting racist attack on two women. A court heard how jobless Daniel Thackray, 19, of Hen Felin, Aber, near Bangor, spat on two Muslim woman and then pushed one who was heavily pregnant. He received a six months’ custodial term suspended for 18 months which angered the Muslim Council of Britain.

Speaking after the case a Muslim Council spokesman said: “Society shows its revulsion at certain crimes by the way in which it sentences people. This almost gives a green light to hate crimes. Spitting at and pushing a pregnant woman is revolting. Spitting at anyone is a disgusting crime.”

Thackray will also have access to alcohol counselling. He must pay £100 compensation each to the pregnant Turkish mother, aged 46, and her 18-year-old daughter. He admitted two counts of racially aggravated common assault.

Prosecutor James Neary said at Llandudno Magistrates Court that the drunken teenager had said “f***ing Muslim” during the trouble at a bus stop in the centre of Colwyn Bay. He had pushed the mother after she went towards him. She fell backwards but was caught by her daughter. They went to the nearby police station and Thackray was arrested when he passed it.

Court chairman Owen Evans told Thackray: “This was disgraceful behaviour against two vulnerable victims.”

Daily Post, 22 August 2006

Muslim pilot reveals shock at being ordered off flight

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A British Muslim airline pilot yesterday described the “humiliating” moment when he was hauled off a transatlantic flight just before take-off. Amar Ashraf, 28, who was born in Wrexham, North Wales, said he felt “demoralised and humiliated” after being told to leave the flight from Manchester to Newark by a stewardess, and then being questioned by armed police. He believes his removal was down to having a “Muslim-sounding name”.

Independent, 22 August 2006

For the case of Dr Ahmed Farooq, to which the article refers, see CBC News, 19 August 2006

Dr Farooq was thrown off a plane in Denver last week after a fellow passenger observed him engaged in the “suspicious” activity of reciting his evening prayers. Robert Spencer has little sympathy for Dr Farooq: “These are the same prayers that jihad terrorists have prayed….”

Jihad Watch, 21 August 2006

Postscript:  Yusuf Smith draws our attention to the case of Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi-American blogger who suffered harassment when he tried boarding a plane from New York to California wearing a T-shirt with Arabic writing on it.

Racial profiling lobby would provoke breakdown in community relations

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In a statement today Mayor of London Ken Livingstone said:

“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 and bring to justice terrorists.

“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. That 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.”

GLA press release, 22 August 2006

Muslims should stop whingeing about Islamophobia – Jon Gaunt

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jon_Gaunt“When pasty-faced fat white blokes start blowing planes out of the sky in protest at the Government’s anti-obesity guidelines then I will be the first in the queue to be profiled and frisked. I’ll assume the position quicker than George Michael on Hampstead Heath.

“But until then I’m afraid young Muslim men should stop bleating about Islamophobia and racism and get used to the idea that if we are going to get our airports back to any sense of normality then they are the people who will be more likely to be stopped and searched.

“I don’t understand the fuss about the Monarch passengers who refused to fly with two blokes acting suspiciously on a flight from Malaga. We’ve been told to be vigilant and that’s what these people were being. Now the usual suspects are accusing them of paranoia, racism and Islamophobia….

“If Islam, as we are repeatedly told, really does mean peace then why aren’t the million-and-a-half moderates demonstrating that on London’s streets? I’m sure that the terrorists’ mate and fanatics’ friend Ken Livingstone could donate Trafalgar Square for a rally. He could even divert a bit of funding away from flying in mad Muslim clerics who want to slaughter gays and justify suicide bombings in Israeli pizza parlours, to help pay for peace banners.

“Of course there’s more chance of me going to paradise and deflowering 72 virgins than this happening.

“Despite being told since 9/11 that this isn’t a war against Islam I’m increasingly feeling as if Islam is engaged in a real and propaganda war against us and our way of life….

“John Reid now wants to bypass the Human Rights Act and intern terror suspects. He should go further and rip up the Act, secure our borders, 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.”

Jon Gaunt in The Sun, 22 August 2006

The war of fundamentalisms

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Soumayya Ghannoushi“Perhaps the one thing al-Qaida militants have proven good at, apart from the shedding of innocent blood, is fanning the flames of hostility to Islam and Muslims. From the darkness of their caves and hiding places, these self-appointed spokesmen for one and a half billion Muslims worldwide have excelled in stirring latent negative images of Islam within the western psyche. Through their senseless crimes, Islam, in the minds of most, has become a euphemism for mass slaughter and destruction. Thanks to them, racism, bigotry and Islamophobia could rear its ugly head unashamedly in broad daylight.

“The terrible irony is that Muslims find themselves helplessly trapped between two fundamentalisms, between Bush’s hammer and Bin Laden’s anvil, hostages to an extreme rightwing American administration, aggressively seeking to impose its expansionist and hegemonic will over the region at gunpoint, and to a cluster of violent, wild fringe groups, lacking in political experience or sound religious understanding. Although the two claim to be combating each other, the reality is that they are working in unison; one providing the justifications the other desperately needs for its fanaticism, ferocity and savagery.”

Soumaya Ghannoushi at Comment is Free, 21 August 2006