Fighting terror or pushing bigotry?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dan Gillerman“It’s hard to conceive how the United States will win a ‘war of ideas’ in the Islamic world when American leaders flock to a Washington conference where Muslims are publicly insulted and the U.S. officials fail to voice objections to the bigotry.

“That’s what happened at this week’s annual meeting of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee whose invitees included Vice President Dick Cheney, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, former Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards, Virginia’s ex-Democratic Gov. Mark Warner, and Sens. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and Susan Collins, R-Maine.

“In a luncheon speech on March 6, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman [pictured] entertained the AIPAC crowd with what the Washington Post described as ‘straight talk’, including a comment that came close to equating Islam with terrorism. ‘While it may be true – and probably is – that not all Muslims are terrorists, it also happens to be true that nearly all terrorists are Muslim,’ Gillerman said to the crowd’s delight.”

Robert Parry at Consortiumnews.com, 8 March 2006

The insulting remark was in fact a quote from Abdelrahman al-Rashid of al-Arabiya TV – which tells you something about the role played by pro-western Arab intellectuals like that.

Daniel Pipes finds comfort in Muslims killing Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

John Walsh on America’s leading Islamophobe, in Counterpunch 9 March 2006

Whether it is accurate to describe Pipes as a neocon in questionable, though, in the sense of advocating an aggressive US foreign policy aimed at removing hostile regimes under cover of imposing democracy. He has always been sceptical that “brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene” are ready for democracy.

Nick Cohen lines up with Mad Mel

Posted on by Bob Pitt

As we’ve repeatedly pointed out on this site, Islamophobia is the issue over which a whole section of the Left has lost its political bearings and adopted positions barely distinguishable from the racist Right.

Nick Cohen is of course a prime example. In his latest Evening Standard column, he denounces liberals for opposing the imprisonment without trial of the Tipton Three at Guantánamo Bay (“the Americans had reasonable grounds for picking them up”) and for attacking the intended illegalisation under the government’s proposed new anti-terror law of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an organisation that has repeatedly stated its opposition to terrorist attacks such as the London bombings. As for 7/7 itself, Cohen lectures us that it had nothing whatsoever to do with the crimes of western imperialism but was solely motivated by the “psychotic ideology” of Islamism.

A very similar argument is presented by Mad Mel, with whom Cohen increasingly finds common ground, in today’s entry in Melanie Phillips’s Diary.

Continue reading →

Fears for Belmarsh Muslim inmates

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BelmarshThe chief inspector of prisons has raised concerns about the treatment of Muslim inmates at Belmarsh maximum security jail in London.

Anne Owers says there is evidence of bullying and the prison is struggling to deal with the large proportion of Muslims held on terrorism charges. She said prison officers did not understand the social and religious behaviour of Muslim inmates.

BBC News, 9 March 2006

Begg ‘told FBI he trained with al-Qa’eda’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Moazzam BeggThe Daily Telegraph tries to counter the impact of Moazzam Begg’s new book Enemy Combatant by quoting from a “confession” that he signed under torture while held by the US in Afghanistan.

The Telegraph tells us that “US officials insist [the confession] was not obtained under duress”. Moazzam Begg has described his treatment as follows:

“… they interrogated me severely for almost the whole month and kept me in separate solitary confinement. They tied me up with my hands behind my back to my legs, kicked me in the head, kicked me in the back, threatened to take me to Egypt to be tortured, to be raped, to be electrocuted. They had a woman screaming in the next room whom I believed at that time was my wife. They bought pictures of my children and told me I would never see them again. All sorts of things like that.”

For recent interviews with Moazzam Begg see here and here.

Muslim vote tips the balance in Netherlands

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Yesterday’s municipal elections in the Netherlands were won by the Left. The Labour Party (PvdA) gained more than 500 town hall seats, an increase of 50 per cent compared with 2002, while the far-left Socialist Party (SP) doubled its number of seats. The Christian-Democrat CDA of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende and his government coalition partner, the free-market Liberal VVD, suffered heavy losses…. Today the center-left newspaper De Volkskrant writes that the immigrant vote has tipped the balance in favour of the Left. This should not come as a surprise. All across Europe, immigrants tend to vote for the Left.”

Paul Belien berates Muslims for exercising their democratic rights and voting against parties of the anti-migrant Right.

He adds: “The center-right VVD, the party of famous Dutch policians such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali … received only 1% of the immigrant vote.”

Brussels Journal, 8 March 2006

Bigotry toward Muslims and anti-Arab racism grow in US

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Juan ColeJuan Cole writes: “The constant drumbeat of hatred toward Muslims and Arabs on the American Right, on television and radio and in the press, has gradually had its effect. This according to a Washington Post poll. Even in the year after September 11, a majority of Americans respected Islam and Muslims, but powerful forces in US society are determined to change that, and are gradually succeeding. As they win, Bin Laden also wins, since his whole enterprise was to ‘sharpen the contradictions’ and provoke a clash of civilizations. Some 25% of Americans now say they personally are prejudiced against Muslims. And 33% think that Islam as a religion helps incite violence against non-Muslims, up from 14% after September 11. The Bush administration policy is to continually insinuate that the Muslim world is the new Soviet Union and full of sinister forces that require the US to go to war against them.”

Informed Comment, 9 March 2006

See also “Negative perception of Islam increasing”, Washington Post, 9 March 2006

Islamophobia masquerading as free speech

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Soumayya Ghannoushi“The truth is that today racism, intolerance, xenophobia, and hatred of the other hide behind the sublime façade of free speech, the defence of ‘our’ values and protection of ‘our’ society from ‘foreign’ aggression. Let us not be deceived about this rhetoric of liberalism and free speech. The Danish cartoons have nothing to do with freedom of expression and everything to do with hatred of the other in a Europe grappling with its growing Muslim minorities, still unable to accept them.

“Muhammad, who had been depicted in medieval legends as a bloodthirsty warrior with a sword in one hand and a Quran in another, is now made to brandish bombs and guns. Little seems to have changed about Western consciousness of Islam. The collective medieval Christian memory has been recycled, purged of eschatology and incorporated into a modern secularised rhetoric that goes unquestioned today.”

Soumaya Ghannoushi at Aljazeera, 9 March 2006

Standing up against hatred

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Right-wingers tried to fan the flames of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate at the University of California-Irvine (UCI) on February 28, sponsoring a meeting titled “Unveiling the Cartoons”. Following the lead of a few college newspapers that reprinted cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad as a terrorist, the UCI College Republicans sponsored the public meeting to display the offensive caricatures.

But Arabs, Muslims and their supporters didn’t take this provocation sitting down. As many 1,000 people turned out to counter the racists’ message, outnumbering the Republicans’ audience. “We are standing up against racism and hatred. We are not going to let it happen, not here,” said Quanita of the Muslim Student Union (MSU). Students at the protest wore armbands to express their solidarity and held banners saying “Stop Islamophobia!”

Socialist Worker (US), 10 March 2006

Jihad Watch denounces ‘Dhimmi Esposito’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

John EspositoRobert Spencer offers a characteristically restrained critique of John L. Esposito, who is generally agreed to be the leading western academic expert on Islam:

“The dhimmi Saudi shill John Esposito, whose word still reigns supreme in the White House, and who has praised the suicide-terror-endorsing Sheikh Qaradawi as a ‘reformist’, has now fallen so low as to echo paranoid conspiracy theories about Daniel Pipes being behind the printing of the Danish cartoons. He also recommends that Muslims promote themselves more aggressively in the West. And I’m sure that he will be ready to help with that promotion.”

Dhimmi Watch, 8 March 2006