A history lesson from the fascists … courtesy of Mad Mel

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Islam has indeed played an important role in British history for several hundred years although not in the positive way the apologists for multi-culturalism claim. The southern coasts of England, Cornwall and Wales were throughout the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries particularly attractive to sea faring Muslims from north Africa. Their intent was not to settle and integrate, not to settle and build mosques but to steal away the population; forcing women and girls into sex slaves and the menfolk into becoming galley slaves and taken to markets in what is now Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco to be sold, exploited, abused and to face a life of agony and mental suffering from which death was the only escape. This dark period of British history has been swept under the carpet in recent years as the recounting of the horrific stories makes uncomfortable reading for those declining numbers of supporters of multi-culturalism.”

BNP website, 14 December 2005

Hang on, I recall reading this somewhere else. Now, where was that? Ah yes, it’s coming back to me. It was here.

Enemies of the state?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Four men deprived of their liberty for four years on suspicion of being international terrorists disclose today that they have not once been questioned by police or security services since being arrested.

The four, who were among 16 suspects detained without trial under post-11 September terror legislation, later overturned by the law lords, give harrowing accounts of the treatment they have suffered. All are now under virtual house arrest. Although three face deportation, The Independent has learnt that there is no prospect of the men ever being questioned over the offences they are alleged to have committed.

In interviews with Amnesty International, the four – three Algerians and a Palestinian – say their detentions have harmed their physical and mental health. They also complain that their treatment has had a devastating impact on their wives and families.

The men were interned in Belmarsh jail in south-east London – which has been called Britain’s Guantanamo Bay – and other high security prisons in conditions consistently condemned by human rights organisations. Their detentions were ruled illegal by the law lords a year ago and they have since been released on control orders with tough restrictions on leaving home.

Three were re-arrested in August under immigration powers pending deportation and released by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission Act (Siac) in October on very strict bail conditions amounting to house arrest. One of them told Amnesty: “We’ve been moving from one nightmare to another.”

Independent, 15 December 2005

US paranoia over the Caliphate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The word getting the workout from the nation’s top guns these days is ‘caliphate’ – the term for the seventh-century Islamic empire that spanned the Middle East, spread to Southwest Asia, North Africa and Spain, then ended with the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258. Specialists on Islam say the word is a mysterious and ominous one for many Americans, and that the administration knows it….

“So now, Mr. Cheney and others warn, Al Qaeda’s ultimate goal is the re-establishment of the caliphate, with calamitous consequences for the United States. As Mr. Cheney put it in Lake Elmo, referring to Osama bin Laden and his followers: ‘They talk about wanting to re-establish what you could refer to as the seventh-century caliphate’ to be ‘governed by Sharia law, the most rigid interpretation of the Koran’. Or as Mr. Rumsfeld put it on Monday: ‘Iraq would serve as the base of a new Islamic caliphate to extend throughout the Middle East, and which would threaten legitimate governments in Europe, Africa and Asia.’ General Abizaid was dire, too. ‘They will try to re-establish a caliphate throughout the entire Muslim world,’ he told the House Armed Services Committee in September, adding that the caliphate’s goals would include the destruction of Israel….

“A number of scholars and former government officials take strong issue with the administration’s warning about a new caliphate, and compare it to the fear of communism spread during the Cold War. They say that although Al Qaeda’s statements do indeed describe a caliphate as a goal, the administration is exaggerating the magnitude of the threat as it seeks to gain support for its policies in Iraq. In the view of John L. Esposito, an Islamic studies professor at Georgetown University, there is a difference between the ability of small bands of terrorists to commit attacks across the world and achieving global conquest.”

Elizabeth Bumiller in the New York Times, 12 December 2005

‘A mosque grows in Boston’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Boston MosqueDean Barnett presents “a case study in how the leadership of a large American Islamic group woos and works with politicians, attempts to intimidate its adversaries, and claims to champion moderation – all while keeping company with prominent proponents of hatred and violence” – such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

Daily Standard, 13 December 2005

Not exactly hot news. For earlier coverage, see for example Jihad Watch, 9 March 2004

‘The Pentagon breaks the Islam taboo’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Washington’s policy-makers have been careful in the war on terror to distinguish between Islam and the terrorists. The distinction has rankled conservatives who see scarce difference.” So Paul Sperry complains. Happily, it seems that things are about to change. A new Pentagon briefing paper reveals that “Islam is an ideological engine of war” and that the Prophet sponsored “terror and slaughter” against unbelievers.

Not only that, but the Pentagon’s specialists in Islamic studies have uncovered the strategy behind the well-known Muslim plot to conquer the West.

“The internal document explains that Islam divides offensive jihad into a ‘three-phase attack strategy’ for gaining control of lands for Allah”, Sperry reports. “The first phase is the ‘Meccan’, or weakened, period, whereby a small Muslim minority asserts itself through largely peaceful and political measures involving Islamic NGOs – such as the Islamic Society of North America, which investigators say has its roots in the militant Muslim Brotherhood, and Muslim pressure groups, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose leaders are on record expressing their desire to Islamize America. In the second ‘preparation’ phase, a ‘reasonably influential’ Muslim minority starts to turn more militant. The briefing uses Britain and the Netherlands as examples. And in the final jihad period, or ‘Medina Stage’, a large minority uses its strength of numbers and power to rise up against the majority, as Muslim youth recently demonstrated in terrorizing France, the Pentagon paper notes.”

Front Page Magazine, 14 December 2005

And the same online magazine features an article by one Julia Gorin exposing France’s abject cultural surrender to Islam and warning the rest of the West against following suit. “If France is any indication, it’ll still end in blood, only sooner.” See here.

Blame Muslims for Australian riots (3)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The attack on a surf patrol on Cronulla beach a week ago was the notional trigger for Sunday’s events, but the tangled roots of anger lie deep within the failed multicultural policies foisted on an unsuspecting nation decades back. Though sold with the help of such anodyne ditties as ‘I Am, You Are, We Are Australian’, it has long been apparent many people from certain migrant groups – notably Lebanese Muslims – neither think of themselves as Aussies nor wish to embrace the extraordinary tolerance identified as a remarkable Australian trait….

“Though branch-stacking politicians and academics might like to think multiculturalism is all about exotic clothing and tasty kebabs, those residents who have remained in suburbs subjected to the multicultural experiment feel neglected. They believe they have had to cope with carjackings, gang rapes, drive-by shootings, the occasional explosion at the football, amplified calls to prayer, and gangs of violent young men who boast that they are proud not to be Australian. They have watched newer residents adopt a culture of entitlement and victimhood such that unemployment rates among Muslims are now five and six times those of non-Muslims….

“Those who claim to be outsiders in Australian society must ask whether their isolation is self-imposed, whether they live in self-made ghettos and have made any attempt to accept the culture of the land they have chosen to live in. They have no one to blame but themselves, their parents and community leaders if they accept second-class citizenship and an apartheid of their own making.”

Piers Akerman in the Daily Telegraph, 13 December 2005

Blame Muslims for Australian riots (2)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Melanie Phillips agrees with Tim Priest: “… the widespread spin that has been placed on this disorder, that it has been caused by white racists and that what it reveals is that, under its veneer of multiculturalism, Australia is a fundamentally racist society positively heaving with people with despicable views who have been itching to have a pop at blameless Lebanese Muslims, is very wide of the mark. For it appears that the current unrest was sparked by Lebanese Muslim attacks on two indigenous lifeguards, and that this was only the tip of an iceberg of aggression by this minority which – thanks to the censorship imposed by multiculturalism – has gone all but unreported.”

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 14 December 2005

Islamophobia, racism and social context

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Brett LockBrett Lock, a leading figure in Outrage, the Islamophobic gay rights group, disputes the notion that, in the current circumstances, attacks on Islam are likely to fuel racism. He says he fails to see “how criticism can be ‘racist’ based on when it is said, rather than on what is said”.

Lock & Load, 14 December 2005

So, according to Lock’s logic, if he had been an atheist journalist in Germany at the time of Kristallnacht, he would have had no hesitation in publishing an article attacking the religious practices of the Jewish community. As long as the criticisms of Judaism were formally accurate, the social context and political consequences of the article would be irrelevant.

It’s also notable that Lock backs George Broadhead, secretary of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association, defending the latter’s right to describe Islam as “a barmy ideology”. In fact, the quotation from Broadhead, for which he was rightly condemned by anti-racists, read:

“There are two terms that, increasingly, annoy us: Islamophobia and moderate Muslims. What we’d like to know is, first, what’s wrong with being fearful of Islam (there’s a lot to fear); and, second, what does a moderate Muslim do, other than excuse the real nutters by adhering to this barmy doctrine?” (See here.)

Evidently, the fact that this irresponsible statement was published in the aftermath of the July bombings in London, and fed into a general racist propaganda campaign which refused to distinguish between moderate and extremist Muslims and blamed the terrorist attacks on Islam, is a matter of no importance for Lock.

No to co-operation with Muslim moderates, Times columnist argues

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Islamist violence has … provided a wonderful, unexpected opportunity for these moderates to demand more power and money from the State. This will leave them and their favoured co-religionists as the main intermediaries between the state and the Muslim community…. The panel makes it quite clear that it is not for Islamists alone to make adjustments after 7/7: rather, it is a two-way process in which the needs of two million-plus Muslims weigh equally in the balance with those of all 60 million non-Muslims. British identity will have to evolve into a much looser concept to accommodate them…. One panellist, Tariq Ramadan, is a case in point. This grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood once had his visa revoked in America and was once kept out of France – but is most welcome here.”

Ulster Unionist groupie Dean Godson takes time off from defending the Routemaster bus to slag off the participants in the Home Office task force on the July bombings and its report Preventing Extremism Together.

Times, 13 December 2005

‘Is Islam the problem?’ Australian columnist asks

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Australia does not have a race relations problem. We have a clash of cultures and that’s a big difference – and maybe the problem is certain forms of Islam…. Any form of discrimination based on race or ethnicity – based on the colour of one’s skin or hair or eyes – is inherently immoral, illogical and evil. But culture and religion are behavioural. They involve values…. And if people freely embrace a culture that is antithetical to the prevailing social mores – in our case, I would hope, liberal, enlightenment values – then we are entitled to judge, object, censure and even discriminate…. I admit to feeling a little uneasy at the sight of a Muslim woman shrouded not simply in a headscarf but a face-concealing, head-to-toe chador, and wonder just how much choice she has had in deciding her lifestyle. I am not hugely sympathetic to a Muslim seeking asylum because he claims to have been discriminated against because of his support for sharia law. I cannot celebrate such culture…”

Andrew West in the Sydney Morning Herald, 13 December 2005