Fallaci threatens to blow up mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Oriana FallaciThe Italian author Oriana Fallaci, who once wrote that Muslims “breed like rats”, may be facing up to three years in prison after she vowed to blow up a mosque.

Ms Fallaci, 75, who has cancer, is due to appear in court next week charged with the lesser offence of vilifying Islam, punishable with a £3,450 fine. But after her latest outburst in the New Yorker last week Muslim leaders are demanding that she be tried for inciting religious hatred, which carries a three-year jail term.

The former journalist, who has said she will not attend Monday’s hearing in Bergamo, told the magazine that she intended to destroy a mosque being built at Colle di Val d’Elsa, near Siena. “I do not want to see a 24-metre minaret in the landscape of Giotto when I cannot even wear a cross or carry a Bible in their country, so I blow it up!” she said.

In a trilogy of books published after the attacks of September 11, Ms Fallaci lamented the Islam “invasion” into Europe. Judge Armando Grasso ruled in a preliminary hearing that Ms Fallaci had made 18 statements “offensive to Islam and Muslims”. Following her most recent comments, Adel Smith, the president of the Italian Muslim Union, said he would press for the sterner charge of inciting religious hatred.

Daily Telegraph, 7 June 2006

Another anti-Muslim slander from OutRage!

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dr BariThere is a particularly stupid post by Brett Lock of the Islamophobic gay rights group OutRage! today on the neocon blog, Harry’s Place. In all seriousness, Lock suggests that Mohammed Abdul Bari, the newly elected general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, has threatened a violent response to the police raid on the house in Forest Gate, East London, where chemical weapons were supposedly being manufactured for use in a terrorist attack.

Regarding Dr Bari’s role, Lock writes that “nothing in his statements to the press so far appear to concede that the police have a legitimate cause to act on tip-offs. Nothing he’s said (correct me if I’m wrong) has given the impression that he’s taken a leadership role in reassuring the Muslim community of the police’s bona fides and difficult task. Rather he has been a foghorn for grievances an increasingly skittish public is tired of hearing.”

In fact, as anyone not entirely blinded by ignorance and prejudice would know, the MCB has consistently supported police action against terrorism and has repeatedly urged Muslim communities to co-operate with and provide information to the police. Interviewed on the Radio 4 “Today” programme yesterday (listen here), Dr Bari stated:

“Since 7/7 the police have done a wonderful job. After 7/7 we had police officers making very positive comments and they were criticised by the right-wing media. So nobody is talking against the police. It is about the quality of intelligence … the community has to be taken on board to counter this scourge in society … The police have to do their job … if the community is worried … they will not get that mass co-operation. It is important to all of us to get the community on board. So information should come as quick as possible and that has to be disseminated within the community so that the community is assured.”

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It’s because they’re Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

I drove back from yesterday’s news conference at the Islamic Foundation of Toronto in the northeastern part of the city, but honestly, I could have just as easily floated home in the sea of horse manure emanating from the building.

So frequent were the bald reassurances that faith and religion had nothing -nothing, you understand – to do with the alleged homegrown terrorist plot recently busted open by Canadian police and security forces, that for a few minutes afterward, I wondered if perhaps it was a vile lie of the mainstream press or a fiction of my own demented brain that the 17 accused young men are all, well, Muslims.

But no. I have checked. They are all Muslims.

Christie Blatchford in the Globe and Mail, 5 June 2006

For a similar article by Andrew C. McCarthy, which claims that “the mainstream media continue to suppress the ‘Islam’ in Islamic terrorism”, see National Review, 5 June 2006

Pell ‘provocative’ over Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Australia’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, would rather provoke debate than have sensible discussions about Muslims, the Islamic Council of New South Wales (ICNSW) said. ICNSW spokesman Ali Roude today said Dr Pell admitted he knew little about his subject matter.

In an interview with a US Catholic newspaper, Dr Pell again declared Islam was more warlike than Christianity. The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney told the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) Australia hadn’t been affected much by Islamic threats following the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US. But he said this could change depending “on how many terrorist attacks” Muslim fundamentalists could “bring off successfully”, Fairfax newspapers reported today.

ICNSW spokesman Ali Roude today said Dr Pell admitted he knew little about his subject matter. “However, as a forceful speaker and thinker, sometimes he seems tempted to put a position forward to provoke debate rather than wait for sensible discussion,” Mr Roude said.

In the NCR interview conducted in Rome, Dr Pell said “the million-dollar question” was whether intolerance was a modern distortion of Islam or arose out of internal logic. “It’s difficult to find periods of tolerance in Islam,” he was quoted as saying. “I’m not saying that they’re not there, but a good deal of what is asserted is mythical.”

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Asians consider leaving Britain due to Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Growing Islamophobia after the Sep 11 attacks in New York and the July 7 bombings in London has reached such proportions that several Asian families are considering leaving Britain, according to reports. Asians, particularly Muslims, see themselves as being targeted by the security forces and fear becoming scapegoats. The Friday raid on a house belonging to a Muslim family in east London has further fuelled such fears.

Mohammed Azhar, a Kashmiri Briton, said that people were now “terrified” of being mistaken for extremists. “People feel unsafe and are thinking ‘we should go’, and these are people who have given a lot to this country. They have worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week. We are angry and we are scared. It’s a case of shooting first and asking questions later. They can say anyone is a terrorist,” he said.

India eNews, 6 June 2006

Posted in UK

‘Come to Londonistan, our refuge for poor misunderstood Islamist victims’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“According to remarks attributed in the past few days to security sources, no fewer than 1,200 Islamist terrorists are biding their time within British suburbs. Yet does Britain even now fully understand the nature of the threat it is facing, let alone have the will to deal with it? ”

Another thoughtful and responsible contribution from Melanie Phillips.

Times, 6 June 2006

Over at the white supremacist Stormfront forum a fascist has posted quotes from Phillips article, noting that “Melanie Phillips and the BNP share the same views, the only difference between the two is that the BNP have a solution to the problem”.

Who shot Abdul Kahar?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The situation is not irrecoverable. If mistakes were made in the latest operation, it is better for the police to admit to them frankly. There is a lot of goodwill out there. But after the fatal shooting of the innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, any attempt to mislead the public could well have bad consequences for us all.”

Inayat Bunglawala on the consequences of the Forest Gate police raid.

Comment is Free, 5 June 2006

False prophets

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“For a long time now, I have been meaning to take a cool, reflective look at Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji. The ordeal of keeping calm long enough to write about them and avoiding serious damage to my blood pressure at the same time was mainly what prevented me.”

Excellent post by Brian Whitaker at Comment is Free, 5 June 2006

See also the article by Laila Lalami that Whitaker recommends, in The Nation, 1 June 2006