Joe Kaufman’s anti-Muslim malice

“Kaufman’s malice leaves no Muslim out of its reach. He has condemned Muslims that any regular reader of their writings would know are peaceful people solely on the grounds that they articulate normative Muslim doctrine and participate in mainstream Muslim organisations. In some ways it is par for Front Page’s biased and often malicious course; much of its content consists of diatribes against Muslims and other immigrants, but Kaufman’s practice of flagrantly twisting people’s words, apparently not caring if his claims can be easily debunked, bring it to a new low.”

Yusuf Smith takes apart right-wing US blogger Joe Kaufman.

Indigo Jo Blogs, 4 April 2006

‘Islam’s imperial dreams’

karsh“… to this day, Islam has retained its imperial ambitions. The last great Muslim empire may have been destroyed and the caliphate left vacant, but the dream of regional and world domination has remained very much alive…. Like the leaders of al Qaeda, many Muslims and Arabs unabashedly pine for the reconquest of Spain and consider their 1492 expulsion from the country a grave historical injustice waiting to be undone. Indeed, as immigration and higher rates of childbirth have greatly increased the number of Muslims within Europe itself over the past several decades, countries that were never ruled by the caliphate have become targets of Muslim imperial ambition. Since the late 1980’s, Islamists have looked upon the growing population of French Muslims as proof that France, too, has become a part of the House of Islam. In Britain, even the more moderate elements of the Muslim community are candid in setting out their aims…. this world-conquering agenda continues to meet with condescension and denial on the part of many educated Westerners.”

Efraim Karsh of King’s College, London, in the Wall Street Journal, 4 April 2006

Tariq Ali on the Left and Islam

Interviewer: “It is of course the assassination of the film-maker Theo van Gogh and the threats made against the liberal member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali which have particularly drawn attention to Islam in the Netherlands. Like her, you are an unbeliever who comes from the Muslim world. Have you already felt threatened?”

Tariq Ali: “No, never. I travel a lot both in the Muslim world and in the rest of the world, but I have never yet felt threatened. Why is that? It is no doubt because people who don’t agree with me about religion know that I am an enemy of imperialism. I unceasingly criticize imperialism and all its works, more than the believers do. Whereas Hirsi Ali and people like her in the United States and in Europe make a profession out of attacking Islam. There are other important questions in the world. Why do these people concentrate endlessly on Islam? In the way that they attack Islam, they go along with existing prejudices.”

ZNet, 2 April 2006

Posted in UK

Discord cannot deal defeats to fascism

On reflection, perhaps I’ve been a bit harsh on Tribune. Having got hold of a copy of the current issue, I find that it contains an excellent reply to Peter Tatchell by Kirsten Hearn of Regard (even if they manage to mis-spell her name).

Kirsten demolishes Tatchell’s article which rejected anti-fascist work with the Muslim Council of Britain on the grounds that the MCB is homophobic:

“To suggest we jettison the Muslim community from the anti-fascist movement at a time when the fascists are advancing by attacking Muslims is obscene. Today, in Europe, among the many communities being attacked by fascists and the extreme Right, it is possible to find many differences. We must instead seek the basis of common ground and effective opposition. Specifically, the MCB is an umbrella and mainstream body representing more than 450 Muslim organisations and therefore must be central to anti-fascist unity in this country.”

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A ‘swvil-eyed’ attack on Islamophobia Watch

We appear to have upset the comrades over at Tribune, who have taken exception to our criticisms of their readiness to give a platform to Islamophobes, and to Peter Tatchell in particular (see here).

An item in the magazine’s “John Street” gossip column in the current issue reads: “Tribune has fallen foul of the sane and rational people at Islamophobia Watch. This website, run by self-proclaimed defenders of the faith, claims to expose anti-Islamic sentiments. Journalists, particularly on the Left, who deemed to be the slightest bit anti-Muslim, are subject to self-righteous abuse. More sinisterly, their pictures and details are posted on the website. Tribune‘s latest ‘crime’ was to publish a piece by Peter Tatchell which was critical of Muslim Council of Britain leader Iqbal Sacranie’s swvil-eyed [sic] rantings on homosexuality. Anyone wishing to complain to Islamphobia Watch is advised that they would be wasting their time. It is run by couple of devout democratic centralists and does not countenance debate, disagreements or alternative viewpoints. How very fundamentalist of them.”

You do wonder whether this is an entry for a competition in which journalists were set the task of fitting the maximum number of factual errors into a mere eight sentences.

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Mad Mel and Condoleezza Rice

While the rest of us were applauding the withdrawal of Condoleezza Rice’s invitation to visit Masjid Al Hidayah in Blackburn, Melanie Phillips saw it as another example of intimidation by Muslims hostile to western values:

“The decision by the Blackburn mosque to cancel the planned visit by Condoleezza Rice is utterly unacceptable and deeply troubling. A mosque spokesman has said that it was cancelled not through dislike of Dr Rice but because of the threat by Muslim anti-war protesters to invade the mosque, thus compromising the safety of the visiting dignitaries. What an appalling state of affairs where the safety of the Foreign Secretary and a distinguished overseas visitor cannot be guaranteed against the threat of violent disorder. Aren’t we all supposed to be engaged in a war against this kind of menace to life and liberty?

“… the fact is that British Muslims are British and should afford Dr Rice – a principal member of the government of our major ally – an elementary degree of courtesy. After all, if the US government is to be treated in this way over the Iraq war, logic dictates that these British Muslims would regard the British government with identical hostility over its own part in that war. And that is a very troubling thought indeed. It implies that some of them do not identify themselves as British but adhere to a hostile set of values.”

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Johann Hari on the ‘March for Free Expression’

johann hariJohann Hari offers his assessment of last Saturday’s protest. “Communists mingled awkwardly with fascists”, he tells us approvingly, though unlike Tatchell he does at least have the honesty to admit that fascists participated in the demonstration.

Hari complains that a member of the Worker Communist Party of Iran was arrested for provocatively brandishing “silly cartoons of the Mohammed that some fundamentalist Muslims have declared to be blasphemous”.

The cartoons in question were in fact the most explicitly racist of the series published by Jyllands-Posten: one of the Prophet with a bomb as a turban and another of a wild-eyed Prophet wielding a knife, with two terrified veiled women cowering behind him – the implication of course being that Muslims are terrorists and misogynists.

We look forward to Hari defending the right of anti-semites to parade round Trafalgar Square with a caricature of a hook-nosed Jew counting money. After all, we have to defend freedom of expression at all costs, don’t we?

Evening Standard, 31 March 2006

‘NYU suppresses free speech about Islam’

The protest over the proposal by a student group at New York University to display the Danish cartoons has been successful. Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute is not happy: “Wednesday, in a shameful act, NYU broke its own official policy and denied free speech to its students. After having approved the display of the Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad for a panel discussion on free speech hosted by a student group, NYU’s administration reversed its decision in the face of Muslim protests.”

Front Page Magazine, 31 March 2006

Success! Condoleezza Rice Masjid visit cancelled!

Success!

MPACUK are happy to announce that following pressure from local Ulema, the local Blackburn community (SubhanAllah), Blackburn with Darwen Stop the War and MPACUK, the invitation to Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Masjid Al Hidayah has been withdrawn.

It has come to MPACUK’s attention that the spin being applied to the withdrawal of the invitation from the Foreign office and the Masjid Committee is that “an invasion of the Mosque was planned at Fajr time”. We can ensure the FO and the Masjid Committee that we will leave invasions to the specialists, Messers Straw and Rice.

A number of us had planned to spend some time after Fajr at the Masjid, read a little Quran, a few Nafl etc.

We hope that Masjid Al Hidayah’s late foray into the world of Dawah will continue as they stated in their justification for the invitation. They should perhaps start in tackling the segregated nature of Blackburn and try to bring communities together.

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Posted in UK