And you think our website is sarcastic

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“When we saw the title of Paul Akers’ Oct. 30 essay, ‘Why Islam didn’t conquer the world‘, we were pleased to see a too-often-ignored subject such as the early history of Muslim-Christian relations receive space in our community’s newspaper. Mr Akers’ attempt to bring what is clearly a keen interest in European history to the attention of readers is to be commended. His vivid prose style, clearly reminiscent of the comic books that inspired him as a child, retains the reader’s attention.”

Nabil Al-Tikriti, Mehdi Aminrazavi, Ian Campbell, Farhang Rouhani and Ranjit Singh reply to Paul Akers’ article on the horrors that would have befallen the world if Charles Martel had lost the battle of Tours in 732.

Free Lance-Star, 19 November 2005

Austria mosques guarded after mysterious attack

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A rare attack near a mosque in Vienna has prompted Austrian police to increase patrols in areas having Muslim places of worship. The Interior Ministry has decided to intensify police patrols around the city’s 60 mosques.

Police were investigating a mystery explosion near Osman mosque in Vienna on Wednesday, November 16, in which houses and parked cars were damaged. Vienna’s 17th District was rocked by a powerful blast and windows of houses and cars were broken, but no casualties were reported.

“The mosque is not likely to be the target of the bombing,” Turfa Bagaghati, Deputy Chairman of the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), said in Friday sermon at the Shura mosque. “If the mosque was the target of the attack, why did not the assailant go directly and throw the bomb inside the mosque instead of a nearby house,” he wondered.

Yet, he made it clear in case the mosque was targeted, Muslims would not remain silent. “We will take positive and peaceful stance by demonstrating and denouncing the attack to let officials know we are not helpless,” he added.

The Islamic Religious Authority, the official Muslim body in Austria, condemned the attack, but said one must not jump to conclusions and wait until the investigation takes its course.

Islam Online, 19 November 2005

A Muslim responds to ‘five questions’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In a recent commentary, radio talk show host Dennis Prager posed five questions “that law-abiding Muslims need to answer for Islam’s sake, as well as for the sake of worried non-Muslims”. Prager said his questions were prompted in part by recent rioting in France “by primarily Muslim youths”, despite the fact that neutral experts say the violence had little to do with Islam and it was Muslim leaders who ultimately helped quell the violence.

Hussam Ayloush of CAIR replies to Prager’s questions.

The American Muslim, 19 November 2005

Would-be führer speaks

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP Islam Out of BritainNick Griffin addressed the massed ranks of the BNP (all 130 of them) at the fascists’ conference in London this weekend:

“… he explained the true long-term significance of the Islamic riots and commando-style arson wave in France, and of less dramatic developments in Britain such as the presence on Britain’s airwaves of more than thirty Islamic community radio stations during Ramadan. We are entering, he said, the Intifada phase of a well-organised Islamic drive to conquer the whole of Europe. This will become the overriding issue of our Age, and the only way in which the BNP – the only effective defenders of our traditions, freedoms, Western civilisation and identity – can win in this struggle is through organisation, sacrifice and unity.”

BNP news article, 20 November 2005

Yes, take out the party-political reference to the BNP, and it does rather sound like Melanie Phillips, doesn’t it?

Liberals rally against religious hatred bill

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Free ExpressionIn excerpts from a forthcoming book entitled ‘Free Expression is No Offence’, Philip Pullman, Monica Ali, Philip Hensher and Salman Rushdie consider the threat to free speech contained in the government’s Racial and Religious Hatred Bill.

Frankly, it’s a lot of pretentious waffle, interspersed with ignorant remarks.

Guardian, 19 November 2005

“If you choose to stop being a Muslim, you are an apostate and, depending on where you live, liable to severe punishment, which might include the death penalty. So being a Muslim is partly a matter of choice and partly one of coercion.” (I must hurry and warn a Muslim friend of mine, who is considering converting to Christianity.)

“Hate-speech laws in Canada, Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands have not resulted in a decrease in insults directed towards Jews, Muslims, Turks, African immigrants or other minorities. In fact there has been growth in support for the extreme right in those countries.” (If this is an argument against introducing a religious hatred law, it’s equally an argument in favour of abolishing the existing racial hatred laws. Is that what is being proposed?)

“… a cynical vote-getting attempt to placate British Muslim spokesmen, in whose eyes just about any critique of Islam is offensive…. New Labour is playing with the fire of communal politics, and in consequence we may all be burned.” (Oh piss off, Salman.)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali to make gay Islam film

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Somali-born Dutch MP who collaborated on the film that led to the murder of director Theo van Gogh has written a sequel, about Islam’s attitude to gays. Ms Ali told Dutch media that she had co-written the script with Van Gogh in the summer of 2004, months before he was killed last November. “I examine the position of homosexuals in Islam in the film Submission II,” she told the De Volkskrant newspaper.

BBC News, 17 November 2005

And what exactly is this film intended achieve? To improve the situation of gay Muslims … or to promote the view of Muslim “immigrants” as backward people undermining liberal Dutch values? The fact that Van Gogh was an admirer of Pim Fortuyn and regularly referred to Muslims as “goatfuckers” gives you a hint as to what the answer might be.

‘The French insurrection: cars burn, Islam benefits’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Riot police“… for a white Frenchman who’s technically a Catholic but probably an agnostic, it must be depressing to open the newspaper each morning and read yet another headline about an alien creed that seems intent on imposing itself on his country. If it’s a really ‘class’ newspaper like Le Monde, the editorial will probably inform him that the fault for this state of affairs is largely his own and that he will soon be expected to pay the price economically while redoubling his efforts to be exquisitely sensitive about all things Muslim. How long he’ll put up with this, that is the question.”

Brendan Bernhard in LA Weekly, 18 November 2005

Liberals and takfir

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Qaradawi2“Declaring takfir on the jihadist leaders is the rhetorical equivalent of fighting terror with terror. The practice of takfir is the hallmark of the most radical, totalitarian fringe of Islamism: the assumption of the right to unilaterally declare a Muslim a non-Muslim and thereby condemn him or her to death (literally or figuratively). Any vision of a liberal or moderate Islamism should reject takfir on principle.”

Marc Lynch goes on to criticise MEMRI’s “exposure” of Yusuf al-Qaradawi for his refusal to call for the excommunication of Bin Laden: “His rejection of the act of takfir, even when it might be politically expedient to do otherwise, should be applauded for what it is: an important stand for moderation and against extremism.”

Abu Aardvark blog, 17 November 2005

Fascists take advantage of loophole in racial hatred law again

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“We are all now only too familiar with the despicable practice of Muslim gangs preying on white schoolgirls in Keighley for purposes of ‘grooming’. A process leading to a life of prostitution, drug addiction and degradation for the unfortunate girls concerned. We are also equally aware of how this matter is being played down and minimalized by officialdom, purely to ‘preserve good community relations’.

“So why do Muslim gangs seek out white and/or Christian, rather than Muslim, girls to pimp and exploit? Although we know this is a question that the Muslim Council of Great Britain could answer by quoting extensively from Koranic verse, we are not naïve enough to believe that they will so do. This being yet another question about their ‘religion of peace’ they cannot, or perhaps more accurately, dare not answer.”

BNP news article, 17 November 2005