BBC News in tangle over ICM poll

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yesterday BBC News online reported an ICM poll on religious attitudes under the headline “Many ‘less positive about Islam'” (see below).

In fact, the poll found that 73% of respondents said the London bombings had made no difference to their views on Islam, and only 19% said they now felt less positive. After complaints, the BBC replaced the article with another one. The new piece is headlined “Britons ‘back Christian society'”.

Even that finding is somewhat dubious, given that the question was loaded. Interviewees were asked whether they backed a society “based on Christian values originating from the bible such as human life being regarded as sacred” – which rather implied that if you rejected such values you were in favour of killing people!

Continue reading →

Fascists join Mad Mel and Boris Johnson in warning of the nightmare of Eurabia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The one small consolation that I get when I imagine the future of our Europe nations transformed into the nightmare state of Eurabia, is that after all the French Nationalists, Jews and homosexuals, Christians, Hindus, Pagans, Atheists and Communists have all been killed by the Muslim extremists – is that it will then be the turn of all those demented white liberals that defended the Islamic terrorist Al Qaeda Youth Brigades that began the European Intifada in 2005, to be dangling like so much dead meat from the street lights of Paris and Toulouse. They, like us, will not escape the nightmare of Eurabia.”

BNP website, 15 November 2005

French minister says polygamy to blame for riots

Posted on by Bob Pitt

France’s employment minister on Tuesday fingered polygamy as one reason for the rioting in the country.

Gérard Larcher said multiple marriages among immigrants was one reason for the racial discrimination which ethnic minorities faced in the job market. Overly large polygamous families sometimes led to anti-social behaviour among youths who lacked a father figure, making employers wary of hiring ethnic minorities, he explained.

The minister, speaking to a group of foreign journalists as the government stepped up efforts to improve its image with the foreign media, said: “Since part of society displays this anti-social behaviour, it is not surprising that some of them have difficulties finding work … Efforts must be made by both sides. If people are not employable, they will not be employed.”

The riots, and the government’s slow reaction to the violence, has led to widespread criticism that France’s ruling class is out of touch with the rest of the country. Mr Larcher’s comments could further fuel the debate and are likely to outrage Muslim and anti-racism groups in France.

Financial Times, 15 November 2005

Media has anti-Muslim bias, claims report

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The portrayal of Arab and Muslim people in the western media is “typically stereotypical and negative”, according to a new study of perceptions of Islam.

The report, commissioned by the Kuwaiti government and based on a surveys and interviews with media experts, claims that terrorism, anti-Americanism and the Iraq occupation dominate TV news coverage of the Middle East.

“In the past 30 years of thousands of TV show series, there have been less than 10 characters who have been Arab-Americans,” the report claims.

“In print stereotypes are not so obvious, except in cartoon caricatures, but they still occur and anti-Muslim bias is more insidious. The terms Islamic or Muslim are linked to extremism, militant, jihads, as if they belonged together inextricably and naturally (Muslim extremist, Islamic terror, Islamic war, Muslim time bomb).

“In many cases, the press talks and writes about Muslims in ways that would not be acceptable if the reference were to Jewish, black or fundamentalist Christians.”

The report says the portrayal of Islam is improving in “certain prestigious news organisations” but that TV news continues to be dominated by coverage of terrorist attacks and hostage images “to shock and engage jaded viewers”.

“Western media organisations must see normal Muslims in everyday life, as professionals, educators, parents, community leaders and participants,” it adds.

The study claims that TV news and documentaries have the strongest influence on people’s views of Islam, followed by newspaper coverage.

Guardian, 14 November 2005

‘Ziauddin Sardar explains the long history of violence behind Hizb ut-Tahrir’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Thus the headline to an article in the New Statesman, 14 November 2005

And what precisely is this “long history of violence” on the part of Hizb ut-Tahrir that Ziauddin Sardar explains to us? Er … actually there isn’t one. He tells us that HT “has not, strictly speaking, advocated violence. But this does not mean that it is not a violent organisation.” Now there’s a reasoned argument for you. An organisation does not advocate (never mind practise) violence … but it’s violent all the same. Needless to say, this rubbish is applauded by the likes of Harry’s Place and Norman Geras.

A Muslim colleague recently told me that Ziauddin Sardar was almost as bad as Irshad Manji, and I thought that was an exaggeration (I quite enjoyed Desperately Seeking Paradise). But now I’m not so sure.

Is the BBC lost in its own Moral Maze?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“In my article earlier this year (19 July 2005), I questioned the BBC’s persistence in keeping the anti-Muslim Melanie Phillips on the panel of the Radio Four programme, The Moral Maze. Four months on and her poisonous spin continues to fill the airwaves twice a week…. She utilises every opportunity on air to pour scorn on Islam and Muslims. The BBC shoulders the blame for promoting Ms Phillips at a time when the need for community cohesion and sincere dialogue has never been more pronounced….

“In order to understand the absurdity of the BBC’s persistence in this matter, it would be instructive for the producers for one moment to consider what they would do if it became clear that a permanent panellist on one of their high profile programmes was also a hard-line ‘fundamentalist’ who routinely used the opportunity to ridicule Jews and Judaism?”

Shaykh Riyad Nadwi on the OCCRi website, 14 November 2005

French problem affects rest of Europe as well

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Haroon Siddiqui“France is proudly mono-cultural, insisting that its residents shed all their identities and ‘be French’…. Yet, when facing social problems, the French attribute them to their pluralism. To a lesser degree, Germany and others do the same. ‘Multiculturalism has failed, big time’, said Angela Merkel, on her way to becoming chancellor. But Germany never had a policy of recognizing all cultures. What it has is an immigrant population that long ago ceased to be only white and Christian. That’s what she was complaining about. So was former chancellor Helmut Schmidt, 85, saying of the 2.6 million Turkish Germans, that it had been a big mistake to have let them in.

“Immigration was fine until the wretched Muslims came!

“A second theme coursing through public debate concerns the adaptability or otherwise of immigrants/Muslims: ‘They do not integrate.’ ‘They do not fit in; they cannot fit in.’ ‘They live in France but are not of France’ (or Germany, Holland, Belgium, etc.). ‘They don’t consider themselves French’ (or German, Dutch, etc.).  But it is the French, the Germans and others who deny jobs to Arabs/Turks/Muslims because of who they are, while the latter cry out to be treated as the French/German/Dutch citizens and long-time residents that they are.

“This is a neat trick. You won’t let them forget their ethnic/religious identity but blame them for keeping it. You won’t give them jobs but blame them for not having any. You build barriers to integration but blame them for not integrating. You pursue policies of social and economic segregation that produce poor, crime-riddled ghettoes, but you accuse them of domestic Balkanization.”

Haroon Siddiqui in the Toronto Star, 13 November 2005

Continue reading →

‘Liberals are causing a European jihad’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“After more than two weeks of nightly violence, the rioting of Europe’s Muslim minority has finally begun to subside. While the French government and Main Stream Media may be eager to pretend that the events of the last month were an anomaly, or persist in the notion that the underlying issues that incited the violence are now being addressed, the current lull in the violence in Europe is just that; a lull. The violence is doomed to return in the future. Europe is fast becoming ground zero in clash of civilizations between two equally intolerant cultures, radical Islam and Liberalism.”

Renew America, 13 November 2005

Krauthammer on the ‘clash of civilisations’ in France

Posted on by Bob Pitt

What the uprising generation wants

By Charles Krauthammer

Time, 13 November 2005

The gendarmes have weapons. The kids they face in the street have mostly stones and Molotov cocktails. It is a mismatch. But it’s the cops who are the heavy underdogs – the cops and the France that the cops alone represent in those burning godforsaken ghettos where most Frenchmen dare not go.

On the one side are the protester-arsonists, many if not most of them Muslim, whom the Interior Minister called racaille (rabble) – young, restless, violent, vibrant, angry, jobless, envious and fecund. And on the other side is an aged and exhausted civilization, the hollowed-out core of European Christendom, static, aging, contented, coddled, passive and literally without faith. Who would you think will win in the end?

If you needed a snapshot of the balance of forces in this civilizational struggle taking place in France, consider only the incomprehension and inertness of the official French response. The President didn’t say a word for 10 days. The state of emergency wasn’t declared until Day 13. Meanwhile, the Interior Minister and Prime Minister offered dueling slogans and empty promises, with an eye more on their upcoming presidential contest than on the fire this time.

The best way to know the future is to look at simple demographics. There are an estimated 5 million Muslims in France. Of course, no one knows for sure, not just because of the uncounted illegal immigrants but because in France the government is prohibited by law from even asking about ethnicity and religion. It is not surprising that you don’t deal with a problem whose very contours you refuse to see or even inquire about.

France thus is approaching 10% Muslim. But things do not stand still. Even if there were no further immigration, which is a pipe dream, birth rates alone will soon drastically alter the balance. Muslims have the highest birth rate – three times the rate of non-Muslims – of any demographic group in Europe. The most common name for a newborn in neighboring Brussels is Mohammed. Childbearing rates among non-Muslim Frenchmen are well below replacement levels. The old French, like the rest of Europe, are literally disappearing.

“With current trends,” Professor Bernard Lewis has said, “Europe will have Muslim majorities in the population by the end of the 21st century.” The future? “Europe will be part of the Arab west, of the Maghreb [Muslim northwest Africa].” Today’s rioting youth are just a bit ahead of their time in claiming their upcoming patrimony.

Continue reading →

The crescent of fear

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Spectator Eurabian nightmare“… there have been whole legions of pundits wheeled out to offer an explanation. It’s deprivation, a lack of integration, poverty, unemployment, incipient French racism and so on. But the dreaded ‘M’ word has scarcely been mentioned at all; these were ‘young’ rioters or sometimes ‘immigrant’ rioters – they were never Muslim rioters. Islam was almost never mentioned … the suspicion persists that it is the North Africans who do not wish for integration – much as they might whine about a lack of employment opportunities – even more than the indigenous French…. It may well be that the motive for the rioting was nothing more than an inchoate grievance allied to youthful exuberance and a penchant for bad behaviour, but it was Islam which gave it an identity and also its retrospective raison d’être.”

Rod Liddle offers us his insights into the French riots.

Spectator, 12 November 2005

Regarding the French, Liddle assures us: “Of all the countries in Western Europe, they have pursued the most extreme form of that discredited ideology, multiculturalism…” What an ignorant prat.