Mark Steyn offers his views on the plan to build a new mosque as part of the Olympics redevelopment in London. “I may be a notorious Islamophobic hatemonger…”, he writes. For the first and possibly the last time, we have found a statement by Steyn that we can agree with.
Anti-Muslim racist receives award
Italian racist Oriana Fallaci has received an award for her “lifelong struggle against totalitarian ideologies”, FrontPage Magazine reports.
At a dinner in New York, ex-leftist David Horowitz gave a speech paying tribute to Fallaci’s contribution to “the war against Islamofascism” and acclaiming her as “a warrior in the cause of human freedom”.
Yes, that’s the same Oriana Fallaci who complained that Muslims in the West had “multiplied like rats”, turning Europe into “an Islamic province, an Islamic colony”, and who declared that “to believe that a good Islam and a bad Islam exist goes against all reason”.
Tendencies within political Islamism
“John Esposito and other scholars assert there are at least two trends within political Islam:
“A mainstream reformist trend that accepts democratic process, and believes in gradual change internally and coexistence externally. The majority of the Islamic movements belong to this category; including the eldest and largest ones, like the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and its branches all over the Arab world; and the Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan, the leading Islamic movement in southern Asia.
“A radical confrontational trend that believes in violence as the only efficient means, and does neither believe in democracy within their countries nor in coexistence with the Western world, especially with the US. Al-Qaida is the most obvious example of such movements. Although this trend is highly publicised in the American media, it is statistically very marginal element within the religious revival and activism spreading across the Islamic world today.”
Mohamed El-Moctar El-Shinqiti at Aljazeera.net, 27 December 2005
‘Muslim food – last straw for angry parents’ say fascists
“Outraged parents in the West Midlands have called it the ‘last straw’, an insult to Christians and evidence that our country has ‘sold out’ to an alien religion. Several hundred pupils of the George Salter High School in West Bromwich were recently given a letter to take home to parents advising pupils and parents alike that Halal products would be on offer in the school canteen.”
‘Giant mosque planned by extremists for London Olympics site’
The Sunday Times report that the Muslim proselytising organisation Tablighi Jamaat is hoping to raise finance for the construction of a new mosque as part of the Olympics redevelopment in London doesn’t find favour with the extreme Right. One website quotes that reliable source the Middle East Quarterly (founder: Daniel Pipes) to the effect that Tablighi Jamaat provides the ideological inspiration for al-Qaeda. “No wonder they want to erect a giant mosque and Islamic complex at the Olympic Games 2012. And the multiculturalist appeasers in Newham council, assisted by the appeasing fools in Blair’s government, will probably be jumping for joy to prove that Britain is tolerant of Islam by encouraging the construction of this proposed temple of terrorist ideology.”
Ian Paisley ‘meek and mild’ – shock revelation
We shouldn’t rewrite the classics to appease religious belief but changing texts is not always wrong.” Stephanie Merritt on the (apparently false) story that the Bristol Old Vic production of Marlowe’s “Tamburlaine the Great” changed the text in order to avoid offending Muslims.
While the article is quite balanced in its treatment of that particular issue, you can’t but be struck by the casually bigoted attitude towards the religious beliefs of minority communities. Thus we are told, yet again, that the extension of the racial hatred laws to cover incitement to religious hatred should be opposed because “belief is a choice, ethnicity is not”. Yeah sure – Muslims don’t need protection against the hate-propaganda of the BNP because they can avoid it by the simple expedient of changing their religion or embracing atheism.
And then we are warned that “an increasing number of religious groups – even meek and mild Christians – now include rogue elements who feel their freely chosen beliefs are not robust enough to withstand criticism or mockery and must be defended by threatening or violent means”.
So, unlike the aggressive religions of minority communities, Christianity is the province of the “meek and mild”. This would be the faith that features George W. Bush and Ian Paisley among its adherents, would it?
French NGOs blast writer for racism against rioters
A number of French NGOs launched on Friday, November 25, into a diatribe against intellectual Alain Finkielkraut for calling rioters a bunch of “rebels” with Muslim identity.
“Finkielkraut will be sued for inciting hatred,” vowed the chairman of Movement against Racism and for Friendship between People (MRAP), Mouloud Aounit. “There will be no dialogue with racists,” he said in a statement, adding that Finkielkraut and his ilk should know their limits.
Finkielkraut said in an interview with Haaretz last week that the problem with rioters is that they are “blacks or Arabs, with a Muslim identity.”
“Look, in France there are also other immigrants whose situation is difficult – Chinese, Vietnamese, Portuguese – and they’re not taking part in the riots. Therefore, it is clear that this is a revolt with an ethno-religious character,” he said.
The racist remarks by Finkielkraut further drew vitriol from other French NGOs.
The Audio-Visual Council (Le Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel) urged the France Culture radio to sack Finkielkraut and keep his weekly program from the airwaves.
The Jewish Union for Peace in France also censured the writer, issuing a strongly-worded statement blasting the Finkielkraut’s blatant racism in the interview. The interview’s headline “What Sort of Frenchmen are They?” is a case in point, it said.
SOS Racisme also joined the chorus of condemnation, demanding the intellectual to reconsider his statements hoping that it was just a slip of the tongue.
Senior government officials have frequently said that the recent turmoil has nothing to do with religion. Chief of Interior Intelligence Service Pierre de Bousquet told French RTL channel on Wednesday, November 23, Islam should by no way take the blame for the work of angry youths.
“We must address the roots and real reasons behind the unrest,” he said.
Islam Online, 26 November 2005
Although it was quite clear from Finkielkraut’s Ha’aretz interview that he held deeply racist views, as we’ve already noted his comments on the French riots were significantly milder than the Islamophobic rants we hear from Melanie Phillips.
Editor quits in gay row
The editor and deputy editor of a gay magazine have resigned after they were accused of printing racist articles.
The Lesbian and Gay Coalition Against Racism led a group of mostly ethnic minority protesters who slammed the Lesbian and Gay Humanist magazine – accusing it of having “demonised immigrants”. The last edition of the magazine carried a picture of two gay teens being hanged in Iran on the cover and, inside, raised questions about Islam. In another article it referred to “foreign settlers” as “often poor, ill-educated and culturally estranged Third Worlders” also claiming many of them are “criminals of the worst kind”. A statement criticising the magazine was signed by the gay Muslim group Imaan, the Black Gay Men’s Advisory Group and representatives of the Met Police and the Society of Black Lawyers.
Now editor Andy Armitage has quit, because he claims his publishers didn’t back him up. He denies the material was racist. He said: “I wouldn’t say it demonised them [immigrants]. It was robust and very analytical and it touched a few raw nerves. There are too many people of the political correctness brigade who conflate any criticism of religion with racism”. Armitage said he recognised that there are many moderate Muslims but he said the religion represents a “growing threat” to gays and women. The Pink Triangle Trust which publishes the magazine is meeting this Saturday to decide its future.
Pink Paper, 24 November 2005
Dar Al-Taqwa bookshop – PCC rules against Evening Standard
The Press Complaints Commission has upheld a complaint by Samir El-Atar, managing director of Dar Al-Taqwa bookshop, about an article headlined “Terror and hatred for sale just yards from Baker Street”, published in the Evening Standard on 28 July. As a result of the article, which falsely accused the bookshop of stocking literature advocating terrorism, “abuse and threats of violence had been made against staff and it had been necessary to invoke police protection”.
Complaint against extreme-right leader for ‘islamophobia’
A multicultural youth association and an anti-racist movement in Belgium have lodged a complaint against the leader of an extreme-right party for his recent comments made in an interview with a Jewish American magazine.
“Kif Kif” and “MRAX” (Movement against Racism, Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia) requested the Antwerp prosecutor to press with charges against Filip Dewinter, head of the Flanders-based Vlaams Belang (or Flemish interest) party for “inciting hatred”. They also demanded that his parliamentary immunity be lifted and that public subsidies to the extreme-right party be cancelled.
In an interview with the New York-based “Jewish Week”, published last month, Dewinter admitted that his party has an “Islamophobia”. Asked why Jews should vote for a “xenophobic” party, Dewinter replied: “Xenophobia is not the word I would use. If it absolutely must be a phobia, let it be islamphobia.”
“Yes, we are afraid of Islam. The Islamisation of Europe is a frightening thing. If this process continues, the Jews will be the first victims. Europe will become as dangerous for them as Egypt or Algeria”, he added.