French Muslims change name to get a ‘chance’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Abdel Rahim” has changed his name to “Peres” and no longer brags about his Arabic roots in public to spare himself police and employers’ discrimination, and dozens have opted for the new lease of life to escape the harsh reality.

“Neither my family in Morocco nor my Muslim colleagues in France knew that I changed my name on official papers,” the 23-year-old French-naturalized Moroccan told IslamOnline.net Monday, November 21. “The new name gave me a job and put me on an equal footing with my work colleagues, who knew nothing about my background.”

He said that his dark complexion further represented a stumbling bloc to his ambitions. “But I found a way out by pretending that I was of Spanish origins,” he said, with a bitter laugh on his face. “When I was Abdel Rahim, I never received any response from five companies for which I had applied,” he added. “But Peres was accepted now in two jobs and has to choose.”

Islam Online, 21 November 2005

Anti-Muslim ‘racism’? There’s no such thing, Daniel Pipes assures us

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pipes 9-11Daniel Pipes complains: “My talks at university campuses sometimes occasion protests featuring Leftists and Islamists who call me names. A favorite of theirs is ‘racist’. This year, for example, a ‘Stand up to Racism Rally’ anticipated my talk at the Rochester Institute of Technology, I was accused of racism against Muslim immigrants at Dartmouth College, and pamphlets at the University of Toronto charged me with ‘anti-Muslim racism’.”

And it’s not just Daniel who is traduced in this way: “When U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo raised the idea of bombing Islamic holy sites as a form of deterrence, a Nation of Islam leader in Denver, Gerald Muhammad, deemed his comments racist.”

Pipes has the answer to these slanders. “Islam being a religion with followers of every race and pigmentation, where might race enter the picture?” he demands.

New York Sun, 22 November 2005

This is, of course, precisely the argument used by the Nazi BNP to evade Britain’s racial hatred laws. According to Pipes’ reasoning, those of us who argue that the fascists’ hatred of Islam is inspired by the fact that the vast majority of Muslims are non-white are guilty of misrepresenting poor innocent Nick Griffin and his friends as racists.

Sky censured for ‘Muslim wrestler’ show

Posted on by Bob Pitt

'Muhammad Hassan'Sky Sports has been censured by a media watchdog for resurrecting a character from the larger than life world of American wrestling who had been “killed off” after being accused of inciting anti-Muslim sentiment among fans.

World Wrestling Entertainment, the successor to the World Wrestling Federation franchise that became popular in the UK during the 1990s, was forced to axe the character of Muhammad Hassan from the ring after complaints in the wake of the July 7 London bombings.

But Sky Sports was yesterday censured by the media regulator Ofcom after the digital channel included the character in a programme which went out just over two weeks later on July 25.

The Great American Bash, a highlight of the WWE calender, brought together characters from its Raw and Smackdown strands of programming.

The character, played by an American, Mark Copani, entered the ring wearing an Arab headdress and surrounded by a phalanx of masked men in combat clothes who were described by the commentators as his “sympathisers”.

There was also use of emotive language, including the words “martyr”, “sacrifice” and “infidel” and footage of a previous clash between him and another wrestler was set to music that sounded like the Muslim call to prayer.

After the programme, Sky approached WWE to ensure the character would be withdrawn, and it ended his contract.

Guardian, 22 November 2005

‘Moslem’ rioters driven by hatred of indoor plumbing – shock claim

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The rioters in Clichy-sous-Bois are immigrants alright, immigrants (or the children of immigrants) from North Africa – Moslem immigrants driven by the same burning hatred of the West (democracy, tolerance, sanitation, in-door plumbing) seen in the streets of Tehran, Ramallah, Jakarta and Islamabad.”

Don Feder in Front Page Magazine, 21 November 2005

Mad Mel finds a co-thinker …

Posted on by Bob Pitt

… and no, we’re not talking about Nick Griffin. Mel has found an interview with French intellectual Alain Finkielkraut in the Israeli paper Ha’aretz that she claims supports her own view that it was Islam, not poverty, discrimination and alienation, that was behind the unrest in France.

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 21 November 2005

In reality, Finkielkraut’s take on the riots, bad though it is, still falls some way short of Phillips’s unhinged Islamophobia: “I have not spoken about an ‘intifada’ of the suburbs, and I don’t think this lexicon ought to be used.”

Finkielkraut’s main concern is to “wage war on the ‘war on racism'”. You can understand why he might not be happy about anti-racist campaigns. On the subject of football, he offers the following insight:

“People say the French national team is admired by all because it is black-blanc-beur [black-white-Arab]. Actually, the national team today is black-black-black, which arouses ridicule throughout Europe.”

Mayor launches Islam Awareness Week

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A leading Islamic organisation was today kicking off its nationwide awareness week in the capital in an effort to promote better understanding of the religion and its historical links with Britain.

Mayor Ken Livingstone was launching Islam Awareness Week at a ceremony at City Hall with the message “One London”. Guest speakers at the ceremony include author and leading historian Professor Nabil Matar and secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain Sir Iqbal Sacranie.

Shafeeq Sadiq, national co-ordinator of Islam Awareness Week, said: “We need to remember the positive spirit that embraced the nation, and especially the capital, after London won the Olympic bid. It is with such optimism and hope that we will defeat terrorism.”

Now in its 12th year, the Islamic Society of Britain’s initiative aims to bring Muslims and non-Muslims together through a host of events and activities being held in towns and cities across the country.

During the week, the capital will see an east London mosque throw open its doors to the public, the staging of Islam-themed exhibitions and lectures and the screening of a film exploring the life of a great Muslim philosopher.

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Why Britain needs a religious hatred law

Posted on by Bob Pitt

bnp-islam-posterWhy Britain needs a religious hatred law

By Murad Qureshi

Morning Star, 21 November 2005

This month anti-racists celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the introduction of the first race relations legislation in Britain.

Among its other provisions, the ground-breaking 1965 Race Relations Act made it an offence to use threatening, abusive or insulting words with intent to stir up racial hatred. However, while the Act marked an important first step in providing legal protection to minority communities from racism, it proved difficult to secure convictions for this particular offence.

In 1968 four members of a far-right organisation calling itself the Racial Preservation Society were prosecuted under the Act after publishing an anti-immigration newsletter in which they warned against “racial mixing” and accused politicians of encouraging “racial levelling.”

Even though the material plainly had the effect of inciting racial hatred, the prosecution was unable to prove that this was what the defendants intended – as was required by the 1965 Act. The defendants claimed that their intention was not to incite hatred but merely to educate the public about the consequences of immigration. As a result, they were acquitted.

In his inquiry into the death of Kevin Gately at an anti-fascist protest in London’s Red Lion Square in 1974, Lord Scarman argued that the racial hatred law needed “radical amendment to make it an effective sanction, particularly in relation to its formulation of the intent to be proved before an offence can be established.”

Subsequent legislation amended the law along the lines proposed by Lord Scarman. Part 3 of the 1986 Public Order Act improves on the original 1965 law by criminalising words and actions that have, or are likely to have, the objective effect of stirring up racial hatred. The 1986 Act allows the defence that the incitement of hatred was not intended, but, rather than the prosecution being required to prove intent, the onus is now on the defendant to demonstrate the absence of intent.

This is hardly a draconian law and, under the 1986 Act, it is still far from easy to mount a successful prosecution for inciting racial hatred. Earlier this year, the Attorney-General stated that, since 1987, when the Act came into force, only 65 people had been prosecuted for inciting racial hatred, resulting in 44 convictions. Indeed, the Commission for Racial Equality has complained that “the evidential test under the Public Order Act is extremely difficult to satisfy.”

A more fundamental weakness in the existing legislation, however, is that Jews and Sikhs are protected against incitement to racial hatred as members of monoethnic religions while multi-ethnic faith groups such as Muslims and Hindus are not.

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Study deflates myths about Euro Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Some key components of Europe’s anti-Muslim rhetoric have been discredited. Take the following:

  • It is alleged that Muslims in Europe are recipients of and hence unduly influenced by foreign funding, a code word for petro-dollars from Saudi Arabia.
  • It is said that radical foreign-born imams (clerics), are a source of militancy and should be deported. Some have been, particularly from France.
  • Given Europe’s large Muslim population of about 15 million, the continent is a battleground of the war between Islam and the West.

All these assertions are alarmist nonsense, says a soft-spoken American political scientist, after extensive research in France, Germany, England, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden. In her new book The Islamic Challenge: Politics and Religion in Western Europe (Oxford) Jytte Klausen of Brandeis University has outlined conclusions that puncture popular myths.

Haroon Siddiqui in the Toronto Star, 20 November 2005

Nazi embraces Sookhdeo

Posted on by Bob Pitt

bnp-islam-posterBNP leader Nick Griffin warns of the threatening Muslim conquest of Europe, taking as his text an article by “Patrick Sookhdeo, the brave International Director of the Barnabas Fund”.

Der führer applauds Sookhdeo’s prescience: “Dr. Sookhdeo published his essay on ‘The Islamization of Europe‘ on August 11th, several months before the start of the weeks of carefully orchestrated violence by Muslim ‘youths’ in hundreds of French towns and cities gave us a glimpse into what we must all expect as the Islamists’ drive to take over our European homelands moves into its next phase.”

Griffin is not entirely uncritical, though: “Dr. Sookhdeo is to my mind downplaying his case – perhaps on account of not being in a position to keep such a close eye as ourselves on the multi-culti Islamophile activities of Britain’s liberal elite.”

Still, overall it’s an enthusiastic thumbs-up to Sookhdeo’s analysis from the fascists.

BNP website, 21 November 2005

Sookhdeo must be really proud of himself. Invitations from Boris Johnson to write for the Spectator, applause from Melanie Phillips, and now endorsement from the BNP. Evangelical Christians, Tories, right-wing Zionists and Nazi racists all coming together in one big happy Islamophobic family.

Acpo warns that Terrorism Bill will alienate Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) privately opposed four of the government’s 14 main proposals announced after the July 7 London bombings. Other proposals could damage community relations, Acpo believes.

The confidential Acpo assessment of the 14 or so measures concludes that all risk alienating Muslims. Senior officers believe they must increase the levels of confidence British Muslims have in the police. According to a document seen by the Guardian, the four measures from which Acpo withheld support were:

  • Amending human rights laws to get round obstacles to new deportation rules.
  • Making the justification or glorification of terrorism anywhere an offence.
  • Automatically refusing asylum to anyone linked to terrorism anywhere.
  • Banning the alleged extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir and successor groups to al-Muhajiroun. Acpo says it knows of no intelligence to justify a Hizb ut-Tahrir ban.

Guardian, 21 November 2005