Why the jig is up for Hirsi Ali in Holland

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Why the jig is up for Hirsi Ali in Holland

She catered to the worst prejudices about Muslims, Islam says Haroon Siddiqui

Toronto Star, 21 May 2006

The sudden fall from grace of Dutch Muslim MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali offers a cautionary tale about Western gullibility in these Islamophobic times.

She has been exposed as the equivalent of such Iraqi exiles as Ahmad Chalabi and Iyad Allawi. They told the tall tales the Bush administration wanted to hear to wage war. She told the stories the Dutch, and many Europeans, craved, to confirm their anti-Muslim prejudices.

Like the Iraqi exiles, she knew exactly which buttons to push.

She was an abused wife who had fled a forced marriage and also her vengeful family and clan. An “ex-Muslim,” she was out to liberate Muslim women and tame Islam to her liking and those of her benefactors.

She wrote and narrated the Theo Van Gogh documentary Submission about the subjugation of Muslim women that led to his murder and to death threats against her, placing her under 24-hour guard.

Along the way she let it be known she had lied about her name, age and how she had entered Holland in 1992, not directly from her homeland of Somalia but via Saudi Arabia, Kenya and Germany, a fact that would have undermined her claim, rather than expedited it.

The Dutch didn’t mind. Many refugee claimants embellish their stories. Besides, she was a heroine they had embraced, a “moderate” Muslim waging war against “fanatical” believers.

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Report on GALHA meeting

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yusuf Smith has posted a report of a public meeting on Friday evening organised by the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association on the subject of “Gays, Women and Secularists in Post-War Iraq”. The platform consisted of Peter Tatchell and Ali Hilli of OutRage! and Houzan Mahmoud of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq.

Yusuf reports that the first question from the floor was whether the speakers considered that Islam itself was to blame for the situation they were facing in Iraq. Ali Hilli replied that he did not accept this, that Islam was a religion of peace and love – at which point Houzan Mahmoud “interjected that this was not true” – but people use it for whatever purposes they want, as with other religions.

So it would appear that at least some members of OutRage! are capable of a rather more nuanced approach to Islam than the group’s most prominent figures.

BNP applauds Mad Mel

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Mad Mel Phillips, the Daily Mail’s ranter-in-chief, says in a typically temperate post on her blog that the positive response to young Dave Fotherington-Cameron’s recent anti-neocon foreign policy speech from the ‘profoundly anti-Jew, anti-Israel, simply vile’ Muslim Public Affairs Committee is proof positive of the ‘moral and intellectual decline’ of the present-day Conservative party. Now if we read this right (and one can never be entirely sure with Mel), she’s saying that if an ‘extremist’ group expresses agreement with a part of your work, you’re lost. Heartening, then, to hear from the eminently mainstream British National Party that in general, ‘the opinions of the Daily Mail … and columnist Melanie Phillips are those that most closely match our own’.”

Jon Henley in the Guardian, 19 September 2006

For the BNP’s quoted endorsement of Mad Mel, see here.

Islamophobia, double standards and discrimination in British legal system

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A new report by the  Islamic Human Rights Commission examines Islamophobia, double standards and discrimination in the British legal system.

“The results show that whilst an overwhelming 91% of respondents respect British law, most of those who were questioned in detail stated that they believed the law is unfair and furthermore only a handful feel protected by the law. Respondents mainly cite the police to be the greatest cause of conflict. There was an overwhelming response that the law neither recognised nor protected Muslims and that it was hostile to Muslims as a result of their faith.”

IHRC press release, 18 May 2006

Muslim hardship under spotlight

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Many Muslims in England face bleak employment prospects and endure poor standards of housing, a government-backed study has found. The report revealed Muslims were more likely than any other faith group to be jobless and living in poor conditions. It said 14% of Muslims aged over 25 were unemployed, compared with the national unemployment rate of 4%. University researchers in Birmingham, Derby, Oxford and Warwick also found Muslims had poorer levels of education. The study, commissioned to review the prospects of faith communities in England, also said Muslims were more vulnerable to long-term illness. And one in three lived in the most deprived areas of England.

BBC News, 14 May 2006

For comments by Anas Altikriti of MAB, see Islam Online, 16 May 2006

Posted in UK

‘We call it Islamic terrorism because it is terror inspired by Islam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Another incoherent anti-Muslim diatribe from Nick Cohen in the Observer. He applauds the editor of Die Welt who re-published the Danish cartoons on the grounds that “it is essential to protect freedom of expression because of all the pain we have invested to keep our liberal, secular society”. Somehow, you can’t imagine Cohen offering similar congratulations to an editor promoting “free speech” by printing anti-semitic caricatures. But publish racist illustrations directed against Muslims and Cohen will acclaim you as a defender of secular liberalism.

Cohen also takes exception to an admirable call by the EU to avoid the term “Islamic terrorism”. He objects that “the EU wishes to deny that political Islam inspires terrorists to blow up everything from mosques in Baghdad to tube trains in London, even when Islamist terrorists say explicitly that it does”. Perhaps Cohen would like us to refer to Bush and Blair as “Christian terrorists”, on the basis that they both make it clear that their politics are inspired by their religious beliefs? But then, I was forgetting – Cohen enthusiastically approves of that sort of terrorism, seeing the invasion and occupation of Iraq as a means of bringing liberal secular values to the benighted Muslim masses.

Mind you, Cohen does have one admirer – Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, who pays tribute to this “most welcome anti-dhimmitude from Nick Cohen”. Dhimmi Watch, 14 May 2006

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s lies

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Robert Spencer and Hirsi AliRather untypically, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch has rallied to the defence of an illegal Muslim migrant: “Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has spoken up repeatedly and heroically, at immense personal risk and loss, against the Islamic jihad ideology – and particularly its inhumanity to women – is being hounded by dhimmis in the Netherlands.”

It turns out that Hirsi Ali (or Hirsi Magan to give her right name), the one-time collaborator of Theo Van Gogh and MP for the right-wing anti-migrant party the VVD, told a lot of porkies to claim asylum back in 1992.

As one critic put it: “To secure for herself a promising career she besmirched her family and the Islamic background that gave her a good education. She deliberately painted a black picture of Islam that she never experienced as such, only to profit from it. The Dutch party she is an MP for, the VVD, knew she had lied. They used her in their anti-Islamist and anti-left campaign. And Ayaan Hirsi ‘Ali’ presented the world with a fancy story it very much liked to hear.”

Hirsi Ali has now been offered a job in the US with the neocon American Enterprise Institute, starting in September. Muslims in the Netherlands will be glad to see the back of her. Nasr Joemman, secretary of the Contact Organisation for Muslims and Government, said that Hirsi Ali’s attacks on Islam had caused “a lot of damage”. He added: “I celebrate that she is leaving the Netherlands. I hope that by her departure we can move forward with building a harmonious society.”

Salma Yaqoob replies to Nick Cohen

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Last week a little piece of history was made in Sparkbrook as I was elected to serve as Respect’s first Birmingham city councillor. For Respect, it was an important breakthrough. But it was significant too that I became the only female Muslim councillor in the city. This was a small step to the left in a city where too many people turned to the far right. Not for Nick Cohen, who sees only ‘…a slice of the electorate in a poor part of Britain that is so lost in identity politics and victimhood that it will vote for those who stoke their rage, no matter how worthless they are.’ This bigoted perception of Muslims has nothing in common with the realities of our lives or our struggles.”

Comment is Free, 13 May 2006