“While Western Europe is turning Muslim, its Christian Churches are committing suicide. A Muslim would never allow his mosque to be turned into a dormitory for non-believers. This, however, is exactly what the Belgian Catholic Church is doing. The Belgian Bishops have already opened up 20 churches and chapels to illegal immigrants – so-called ‘sans-papiers’.”
Tatchell ‘defends the Muslim community against Islamophobic discrimination’!
Peter Tatchell continues his campaign against the Muslim Council of Britain. He writes: “I defend the Muslim community against Islamophobic discrimination” and adds: “we still hold out our hands in friendship and solidarity with our Muslim brothers and sisters”. Clearly, Tatchell’s brain is an irony-free zone.
Australian Muslims reject attack by Cardinal Pell
The Islamic Council of Victoria have put out a media release in response to an article on Islam by Cardinal George Pell, Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, which drew on such writers as Daniel Pipes, Andrew Bostom and William Dalrymple to portray Islam as an inherently violent religion that poses a threat to Western democracies.
Predictably, Robert Spencer rallies to Pell’s defence: Dhimmi Watch, 5 May 2006
See also “Aussie Muslims slam priest for ‘ignorant’ Qur’an remarks”, Islam Online, 5 May 2006
A ‘referendum on Islam’
Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain analyses the BNP’s anti-Muslim campaign:
“Carefully hidden – from public view at least – is the old-style racism of the past. Gone is the continual blaming of the ‘coloureds’ for all the ills of our society. Behind the smiling mask and the sharper suits, however, the British National party is out vigorously peddling the same combustible mixture of half-truths, exaggerations and outright lies, but this time with one crucial difference.
“Since Nick Griffin took over the party leadership in autumn 1999, the remodelled BNP has energetically focused on promoting a new and more voter friendly one-line answer to all problems: it’s all the Muslims’ fault. Following on from its shameless attempt to exploit the tensions caused by the 7/7 bombings in London, the BNP has been trumpeting tomorrow’s May 4 local elections as a ‘referendum on Islam’. Griffin’s choice of Islam as a target for focusing hatred reveals how he has correctly sensed that stoking up anti-Muslim sentiment has now become more socially respectable in Britain – as also in much of Europe – than other forms of xenophobia….
“The BNP has not exactly been hindered in its anti-Muslim campaign by our tabloid papers with their regular diet of hysterical stories claiming that our national culture is under threat from minorities. Richard Desmond’s Daily Express and Daily Star titles have been particularly nasty in this regard…. A vocal band of pro-Israel commentators – led by Melanie Phillips, whose rants are routinely published in the Daily Mail – has also decided to zero in on British Muslims as constituting a mortal threat to civilisation as we know it….
“Even if the polls have overstated the support for the BNP, current trends right across Europe would seem to indicate that the BNP’s anti-Muslim campaign is here to stay for the foreseeable future.”
Fascism, racism and ‘Christian Voice’
“For the BNP, Christian is just another word for white, just as Islamic has become another word for Asian. Now that the religious hatred bill has been watered down, groups like the BNP are free to use religious affiliation as code for race, translating illegal incitement to racial hatred into legal incitement to religious hatred…. what is so utterly ridiculous about the BNP’s desire to defend ‘Christian culture’ is that the vast majority of Christians in the world are not white. The average Anglican, for instance is a black woman living in Africa.”
An interesting article by Giles Fraser, vicar of Putney, on the failure of the BNP’s attempts to link up with evangelical Christians.
However, Fraser’s claim that the breakdown of relations between the fascists’ front organisation, the Christian Council of Britain, and the fundamentalist group Christian Voice “demonstrates how deeply resistant Christianity is to all forms of racism” is questionable to say the least. Christian Voice’s position on Islam – “no Muslim has any assurance of salvation, except as a Jihadist, and it is this belief that physical fighting in the cause of Allah is the highest calling that makes Islam so dangerous and implacable” – is in fact a clear illustration of Fraser’s point about how denunciations of a religion are used as a cover for whipping up hostility against minority ethnic communities. If relations between the BNP and Christian Voice have soured, it is for reasons other than the latter’s attitude towards the fascists’ anti-Muslim racism.
Bush’s historian
“… in recent years his ideas have been based less and less on solid research, and directed more and more towards providing a scholarly veneer for the Bush administration’s Middle East policies. His track record in that area is pretty bad. He was one of the key figures promoting the invasion of Iraq and, presumably drawing on his knowledge of Turkey, he argued that his chum Ahmad Chalabi, the convicted fraudster, could become an Iraqi version of Ataturk. More recently, he has had some batty thoughts about an Islamic takeover of Europe by the end of the century – a prediction that is now ‘widely accepted’ according to at least one fear-mongering American commentator.”
Brian Whitaker celebrates the 90th birthday of Bernard Lewis, the man who discovered the “clash of civilisations”.
‘While Europe slept’
“In Europe’s supremely politically correct climate … it is considered racist and culturally oppressive to negatively talk about anything that is even peripherally related to Muslim immigration…. In many ways, Old Europe is already culturally destroyed. After the trauma of two world wars, Western Europe decided that its culture is not worth saving…. Anti-Americanism is not a philosophy that fills the void. Islam fills the vacuum more completely…. family unification rights are exploited in much of the European Union to bring whole clans of people from Muslim countries.”
David Forsmark in FrontPage Magazine, 3 May 2006
Still, it’s not all doom and gloom. Happily there are “small indications that there may be a silent majority in Europe who can be appealed to – Fortuyn, after all, probably would have been the Prime Minister of the Netherlands had he not been shot”.
London conference dissects Islamophobia
Leading Islamic scholars, politicians, journalists, non-governmental organisations and diplomats from the Islamic world and Western countries are gathering in London, on Tuesday and Wednesday to look at ways to stem the growth of Islamophobia in Europe.
The international conference, ‘Challenging Sterotypes in Europe and the Islamic World: Working Together for Constructive Policies and Partnerships’ – believed to be the first such meeting on the issue – is being organised by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
The conference’s inaugural speech, due to be delivered by OIC secretary general, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, was expected to focus on ways to repair the damage to Muslim-Western relations caused by the re-publication earlier this year of Danish-originated cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed by newspapers all over the world.
Scotland: Harassment of the Siddique family
On April 12th Mohammed Atif Siddique and his uncle were prevented from boarding a flight to Pakistan from Glasgow airport (see more on situation at Glasgow airport here). They were briefly detained and allowed to return to the family home in Alva, Scotland. The next morning the house was raided by dozens of MI5, Special Branch and uniformed police officers using the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2000.
Two uncles of Atif arrested at the same time were released from Govan top security police station at 2.30am in the morning without charge after 13 days in custody. Atif’s brother Asif was held for a further period but then released without charge.
Mohammed Rafiq, a farmer from the Punjab and the paternal uncle of Atif and Asif Siddique, said he was “deeply upset” at what had happened. “My wife and five children are both utterly shocked at this as well,” he said. “I had never heard of the word terrorism until I came to this country. I came to visit my family and all I want to do now is to go home. I will never come back to Scotland.” (The Herald)
Asif later revealed that police had questioned him about postcards found in the Siddique house from New York: “They found postcards I had got from friends who went on holiday to New York a few years ago. They asked me about who they were from and why I had them, which I found ridiculous because it was a holiday postcard. They also kept asking me what I thought about September 11 and I kept telling them that I condemned the attacks. We were shocked innocent lives should be taken like this.” (Sunday Mail)
On Thursday 27th April Atif Siddique was charged with offences under Section 58(1b) of the Terrorism Act at a specially convened court in Falkirk. The offences relate to the possession of documents or records containing information “likely to be useful” to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism. Atif was remanded in custody and will appear in court again this week.
German school suspends students for wearing veil
A high school in the German city of Bonn has suspended two Muslim girls for wearing a burka, an all-enveloping cloak worn by women in central and south Asia. The two teenagers who returned to school following the Easter holidays dressed in burkas were considered to have disturbed the peaceful running of the school and were handed initial suspensions of two weeks, a school official said.
August Gmünd from the local government, which supports the suspension, said the action had caused disruption throughout the school. “A heated discussion broke out in the school the instant the two girls turned up, not just amongst the kids, but also the teachers,” said Gmünd. “It was just impossible to maintain a controlled environment in the school.”