‘Cartoon jihad: hunting the kids’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jens RohdeThe claim by Jens Rohde, political spokesman for the governing Danish Liberal Party, that “a daughter of one cartoonist was sought out by 12 Moslem males – they were looking to get to her. Fortunately she wasn’t at school” was repeated by right-wing US blogger Michelle Malkin, under the headline “Cartoon Jihad: Hunting the Kids”, and was widely repeated by the numerous other Islamophobes who infest the blogosphere.

The accusation was without any basis in fact, as Jens Rohde himself subsequently admitted. Even Robert Spencer has been forced to concede that the report was nonsense:

“The story about the threatening of the daughter of one of the Danish cartoonists, which I have now removed, turns out to be false. Its source, the Danish politician Jens Rohde, has misinformed the public – according to the cartoonist whose daughter is the subject of the story. In reality, 12 Muslim men did not come to the girl’s school looking for her. Instead, the whole thing was a dispute among two groups of ten- and eleven-year-old girls, and it had nothing to do with cartoon rage.”

No such retraction has been forthcoming from Malkin, however.

Anti-Muslim manifesto

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Another anti-Islam stunt involving a roster of characters, “left”, right and liberal, who have featured regularly on this website. They have signed a manifesto denouncing “the new totalitarianism”. It begins: “After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.” Maryam Namazie of the Worker Communist Party of Iran, who is one of the signatories, has posted the text on her blog, accompanied by the announcement that the manifesto would be “published in Charlie Hebdo, a French leftwing newspaper”.

Maryam Namazie’s blog, 2 March 2006

In fact, the manifesto first appeared in Jyllands-Posten, the right-wing Danish paper responsible for publishing the offensive anti-Muslim cartoons. The manifesto has also been enthusiastically welcomed by the likes of Little Green Footballs, Jihad Watch and Western Resistance.

In his book The Future of Political Islam Graham Fuller defines an Islamist as a person who holds the view that “Islam as a body of faith has something important to say about how politics and society should be ordered in the contemporary Muslim World and who seeks to implement this idea in some fashion”. Islamism is thus a category that includes a huge variety of ideologies and individuals, from Tariq Ramadan to Osama bin Laden.

As Soumaya Ghannoushi pointed out in an article entitled “The many faces of Islamism”, published in the Guardian last October: “Islamism, like socialism, is not a uniform entity. It is a colourful sociopolitical phenomenon with many strategies and discourses. This enormously diverse movement ranges from liberal to conservative, from modern to traditional, from moderate to radical, from democratic to theocratic, and from peaceful to violent. What these trends have in common is that they derive their source of legitimacy from Islam.”

By lumping all these trends together under the heading of “totalitarianism”, the signatories to the manifesto merely demonstrate their own ignorance and bigotry. It is all too reminiscent of Cold War propaganda that depicted all proponents of radical politics, from liberals leftwards, as “commies” who were intent on destroying democracy and imposing a totalitarian political system.

US cites exception in torture ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

guantanamo-bayBush administration lawyers, fighting a claim of torture by a Guantanamo Bay detainee, yesterday argued that the new law that bans cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody does not apply to people held at the military prison.

In federal court yesterday and in legal filings, Justice Department lawyers contended that a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot use legislation drafted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to challenge treatment that the detainee’s lawyers described as “systematic torture.”

Government lawyers have argued that another portion of that same law, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, removes general access to U.S. courts for all Guantanamo Bay captives. Therefore, they said, Mohammed Bawazir, a Yemeni national held since May 2002, cannot claim protection under the anti-torture provisions.

Washington Post, 3 March 2006 

Islamophobia on a US campus (2)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A student’s column in the Oregon State University campus newspaper has prompted protests by Muslim students, who say it is offensive to their faith.

The piece headlined “The Islamic double-standard” was written by OSU microbiology student Nathanael Blake and published in the Daily Barometer on Feb. 8. The column accused Muslims of expecting special treatment after a Danish newspaper published cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. Riots over the cartoons amounted to “savagery,” Blake said. “Bluntly put, we expect Muslims to behave barbarously,” his column said.

On Thursday, about a dozen students – including members of Muslim and Arab student groups – held a vigil on the campus to protest both Blake’s piece and the Danish cartoons. They handed out flyers that stated “While staying loyal to the main values of freedom of expression that founded this country, we also feel the need to reflect on the values of tolerance and acceptance on this campus.”

Continue reading →

Islamophobia on a US campus

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Irvine protestA student panel discussion that included a display of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons descended into chaos, with one speaker calling Islam an “evil religion” and audience members nearly coming to blows.

Organizers of Tuesday night’s forum at the University of California, Irvine, said they showed the cartoons as part of a larger debate on Islamic extremism. But several hundred protesters, including members of the Muslim Student Union, argued the event was the equivalent of hate speech disguised as freedom of expression.

Tensions quickly escalated when the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, founder of the conservative Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, said that Islam was an “evil religion” and that all Muslims hate America. Later, panelists were cheered when they referred to Muslims as fascists and accused mainstream Muslim-American civil rights groups of being “cheerleaders for terror.”

Fox News, 1 March 2006

See also “Cartoon display protested”, Los Angeles Times, 1 March 2006

Vatican accused of helping Islamic radicals

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Vatican has disconcerted Italian politicians – and some of the Roman Catholic church’s most senior prelates – by endorsing a proposal by radical Muslims for a weekly “Islamic hour” in schools with a strong Muslim presence. “If in a school there are 100 Muslim children, I don’t see why their religion shouldn’t be taught,” said Cardinal Renato Martino, a minister in the Vatican’s government, the Roman Curia.

The speaker of the Italian senate, Marcello Pera, who has launched a movement for the defence of Europe’s Christian values, said the suggestion was “the diametric opposite of any kind of attempt at integration”. In a note posted on the internet, he said it “tended, on the contrary, t11o reinforce the idea of an autonomous Muslim community inside the Italian state”.

Guardian, 11 March 2006

Marx and religion

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anindya Bhattacharyya analyses Marx’s attitude towards religion: “A careful examination of Marx’s writings on the subject reveals that while he certainly criticised religion, he was equally scathing about liberals who elevated criticism of religion over all other political concerns … he certainly had no time for those who used opposition to religion as an excuse to scapegoat religious minorities, while simultaneously singing the praises of a capitalist system that leads to poverty, racism and war.”

Socialist Worker, 4 March 2006

Clare Short opposes Blair’s HT ban plan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Clare Short calls on Blair to abandon Islamic party ban

Daily Telegraph, 2 March 2006

Clare Short urged Tony Blair to drop plans to ban the Hizb ut-Tahrir after the controversial Islamic party told MPs last night that it condemned the terrorist attacks in the West.

Miss Short, the former International Development Secretary, also defended her much-criticised decision to invite Hizb ut-Tahrir representatives to a meeting at the House of Commons.

The Prime Minister threatened to ban the group, which promotes the spread of Islam across the world, after the July 7 bombing attacks in London last year. The ban has yet to be implemented.

Miss Short, who quit the Cabinet in the wake of the Iraq war and has subsequently been one of Mr Blair’s fiercest critics, invited Hizb ut-Tahrir representatives to meet MPs and peers yesterday. The invitation was strongly condemned by Khalid Mahmood, the Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Bar, as “an affront” to mainstream Muslim opinion.

At the meeting, the labour peer Lord Ahmed said Hizb ut-Tahrir followers has once described Westminster as the “infidel parliament” while Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, criticised the party’s “potty” ideas.

Imran Waheed, a media spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir, insisted that the group had condemned last July’s atrocities in London and the 9/11 attacks in New York, and opposed “the deliberate targeting of civilians, either by states or organisations”.

Another MEMRI attack on Qaradawi

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yusuf_al_QaradawiYes, another attempt by the Middle East Media Research Institute to stitch up Yusuf al-Qaradawi as an anti-semite.

It’s the usual cut and paste job, with paragraphs and even individual sentences taken out of a much longer speech and amalgamated. At least in this case MEMRI has actually provided ellipses which allow the reader to see how the thing has been chopped up and put back together, which is more than they did on a previous occasion. Even from MEMRI’s butchered version of Qaradawi’s speech it’s quite clear that his remarks – “Our war with the Jews is over land, brothers. We must understand this. If they had not plundered our land, there wouldn’t be a war between us” – are directed against Israelis, not against the world Jewish community. Just over a year ago, at a time when it was under pressure over its misrepresentation of Qaradawi, MEMRI published a much longer transcript of an interview in which he outlined his real views on Jews and Judaism.

Of course, this hasn’t prevented the warmongers at Harry’s Place from uncritically endorsing MEMRI’s latest stitch-up of Dr Q. Yet, only a few weeks ago, when MEMRI published an equally dishonest hatchet job on Tariq Ramadan, David T and his friends ignored this. The reason is rather obvious. Even Harry’s Place readers have posted favourable comments on Professor Ramadan during the Danish cartoons controversy, and a discussion of MEMRI’s distortion of his role would have exposed that organisation as the bunch of lying propagandists that they are, thus making it a bit difficult to present MEMRI as a reliable source of information on Qaradawi’s views.

But what can you expect from Harry’s Place? David T recently launched a witch-hunt against Christian CND treasurer Neil Berry, whom he falsely accused of writing anti-semitic articles. They were in fact written by an entirely different Neil Berry. But, what the heck, it was the same name, and that was good enough for David T. And this from a blog that claims to uphold Enlightenment values. You know, respecting scientific evidence rather than relying on irrational prejudice, that sort of thing.

I note that David Aaronovitch, who repeated David T’s slurs on Neil Berry in an article in the Jewish Chronicle, has also retracted and apologised.