Islam: Tony Blair’s challenge

Posted on by Bob Pitt

French journalist Claude Askolovitch is appalled by the concessions made to Muslims in Britain. Tariq Ramadan is being promoted by the Blair government “in order to appease radical Islam”. Members of Respect distribute leaflets outside mosques calling – shock, horror – for the defence of Muslim communities. The “one-time champion of the IRA”, the Mayor of London, is “today the defender of Muslim radicals”.

Still, Askolovitch does find one co-thinker. It’s our friend Kenan Malik, who declares that when he was young “racism was terrible”. Today that is no longer the case, apparently. Instead, “people fantasise about an imaginary Islamophobia”. The result is to “clear the ground for the Islamists”.

Nouvel Observateur, 27 October 2005

Muslim graves destroyed in Birmingham

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Grave desecrationDozens of Muslim grave stones have been smashed and pushed over in a cemetery in Handsworth in Birmingham. The desecration was discovered on Friday by relatives visiting the Muslim part of the cemetery. Leaflets were scattered, with insults against Muslims which were attributable to “Black Nation”.

BBC News, 4 November 2005

An unheard of group calling themselves the Black Nation has desecrated Muslim graves in Birmingham. There is speculation that the attack was not the work of African-Caribbeans. One Birmingham source said he had never heard of the “Black Nation” and that the incident had all the hall-marks of outsiders, possibly the far-right, trying to provoke further violence between African-Caribbean and Asian youths ahead of the weekend. The far-right has a long history of grave desecration against Jews and Muslims. None of the African-Caribbean figures Blink has spoken to had heard of the “Black Nation” raising the possibility it was the sort of stereotypical name a white racist might make up.

BLINK news report, 4 November 2005

FBI detains Muslims praying at football game

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Five Muslim football fans were detained and questioned during a game at Giants Stadium because they were congregating near an air duct on a night former President Bush was in the stadium, the FBI said Wednesday.

Some of the Muslims said they did not know they were in a sensitive area, and they complained that they were subjected to racial profiling while they were praying, as their faith requires five times a day.

“I’m as American as apple pie and I’m sitting there and now I’m made to feel like I’m an outsider, for no reason other than I have a long beard or that I prayed,” said Sami Shaban, a 27-year-old Seton Hall Law School student who lives in Piscataway.

At a news conference Wednesday, Shaban said he and four friends had just gotten to the September 19 New York Giants-New Orleans Saints game when they left their seats to pray. Around halftime, 10 security officers and three state troopers approached the men and told them to come with them, Shaban said.

The men were questioned and then were not allowed to return to their seats, but were instead assigned to seats in another section, Shaban said. Three guards stood near them, and escorted them to their cars when they left the stadium, he said.

Associated Press, 2 November 2005

‘Qaradawi calls for gay men to be executed’ … again

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ex-Marxist enthusiast for imperialist war Norman Geras has posted a message from journalist Andrew Anthony, who tries to justify his Guardian article from a couple of months back attacking Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

Normblog, 3 November 2005

Note that Anthony makes no attempt to defend his article’s claim that Qaradawi says it is a duty for Muslims to become suicide bombers in Iraq – a story originating with MEMRI, who produced the “evidence” for it by splicing together various sections of a speech made by Qaradawi … at a conference called to oppose terrorism. Nor does Anthony try to back up his assertion that Dr Q has “argued that it is OK to kill Jewish foetuses because they would grow up to be Israeli soldiers”.

However, he does stand by the following statement from his Guardian article:

“In 2003, Al-Qaradawi dealt with the punishment for the sin of homosexuality on the website Islamonline. ‘Should it be the same as the punishment for fornication, or should both the active and passive participants be put to death?’ he asked with theological dispassion, before concluding: ‘While such punishments may seem cruel, they have been suggested to maintain the purity of the Islamic society and to keep it clean of perverted elements’.”

Andrew Anthony obviously thinks he’s on solid ground with this one. Qaradawi’s statement was an “official religious judgment”, apparently – an “official fatwa”.

Actually, the Islam Online piece that Anthony cites is an anonymously compiled selection of quotations from various Islamic sources on the subect of homosexuality. The quote from Qaradawi – in which he summarises the views of other scholars but does not give his own opinion – is taken from a book called “The Lawful and Prohibited in Islam” which was published … back in 1960!

As we’ve pointed out a number of times before, if Qaradawi does indeed hold that gay men should be put to death, then a statement to that effect can presumably be found among his voluminous writings and statements over the subsequent forty-five years. A journalist with Andrew Anthony’s evident talent for detailed and reliable research should have no problem finding one, surely?

More offensive right-wing drivel about the Paris riots

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Paris“Lax immigration policies, prostration to the god of multiculturalism, and the refusal to fight fire with fire are three reasons why Muslim ‘youths’ in Paris are rioting in the streets. As I see it, the religion of Islam is inherently incompatible with the concept of individual liberty, a crucial component of western countries. It’s no accident that a culture like the West and a nation like the United States were envisioned and created by people who were either Christians and/or biblically literate and/or respected the Christian tradition. In countries under Islamic law, there’s no such idea as ‘individual liberty’. You’re either a Muslim or in danger of having your throat sliced open.”

La Shawn Barber’s Corner, 3 November 2005

This analysis is wholeheartedy endorsed by Robert Spencer, who heads his post “French rioters continue to prove multiculturalist relativism a dismal failure”. It appears to have escaped Barber’s and Spencer’s attention that official state policy in France is resolutely anti-multiculturalist, requiring as it does the subordination of minority cultures to the dominant French “national” culture. But never let facts get in the way of a right-wing cliché, eh?

Jihad Watch, 3 November 2005

Right-wing deputy Philippe de Villiers, leader of the Mouvement pour la France, who has said he wants to “stop the Islamization of France”, told RTL radio that the problem stemmed from the “failure of a policy of massive and uncontrolled immigration”.

Associated Press, 3 November 2005

‘Violent Muslim youth riot for seventh day in Paris’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The link is to Fox News but the headline is all Front Page Magazine’s own.

Front Page Magazine, 3 November 2005

Robert Spencer also supplies his own headline – “French Muslims riot for seventh night running” – to a Reuters report entitled “French youths riot for seventh night running”. He explains: “The difference between the Reuters headline and mine epitomizes the difficulty the French have in facing the real dimensions of this problem. For it is ultimately not a problem of disaffected youth who just need jobs and money, but of youth who consider the French government a foreign power, and one that ultimately must be replaced by a very different kind of government.” It’s suprising Robert doesn’t propose a headline reading: “Muslim rioters demand restoration of the Caliphate.”

Jihad Watch, 3 November 2005

And over at the BNP website we are told that “the scale of the violence by Muslim gangs is unprecedented and highlights the hatred and contempt for western society by the rioters”. This “demonstrates the folly of allowing a flood of inassimilable migrants into the heart of western cities”. In other words, an almost identical analysis to Robert Spencer’s.

BNP news article, 2 November 2005

For an alternative view see BBC News, 2 November 2005

The Islam debate in the Netherlands

Posted on by Bob Pitt

On Tuesday evening, the day before the Van Gogh commemoration, a debate on Islam was held in Amsterdam. Amidst tight security, some of the most prominent participants in the continuing Dutch Islam debate came together to discuss their views.

Perhaps the most remarkable contribution came from left-wing thinker Paul Scheffer, who put forward an argument he elaborated the same day in a commentary in the NRC Handelsblad newspaper. Muslims, he said, rightfully demand freedom of religion in Europe. The enjoyment of this right to freedom of religion, however, necessarily entails the duty to defend this right for others, both fellow Muslims and non-Muslims. Paul Scheffer argues that political Islam in particular is not ready to accept this basic democratic principle and is, therefore, in need of reform.

Paul Scheffer is one of the most reasonable and moderate voices among Dutch critics of Islam. More radical ones, such as Arabist Hans Jansen and Somali-born liberal-conservative MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, are less hopeful about the prospects for reform. They both argue that what they call “pure Islam” cannot be reconciled with the principles of democracy. In order to be democratic, Muslims therefore have to “dilute” Islam and strip it of some of its essential teachings.

According to Hans Jansen, Theo van Gogh’s murderer was primarily driven by verses of the Koran. Speaking at the debate in Amsterdam, he said: “Pure Islam has everything to do with terrorism. The Sharia advocated by its adherents always contradicts human rights”. Similar views can be regularly heard and read in the Dutch media.

Radio Netherlands, 3 November 2005

Row as Christmas lights renamed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Christmas is bannedA decision to call Christmas lights “Winter Lights” in south London has been condemned as showing a “total lack of respect” for Christians.

Advertisements for the switch-on of the lights in multi-cultural Lambeth have renamed them, apparently for fear of offending other faiths.

Tory councillor Bernard Gentry told the BBC: “Christmas appears to have been cancelled in our borough”.

BBC News, 2 November 2005

However, a council spokesman was quoted as making the not unreasonable point: “The term winter lights simply reflects the fact that a number of religious festivals take place over the winter period when the lights are switched on.”

The Times, 2 November 2005

Predictably, this produced the usual Islamophobic response in the right-wing press, with the Express splashing the story under the headline “Christmas is Banned: It Offends Muslims”. In fact the other obvious winter festival involving the display of lights is Diwali. So it would appear that the change of terminology was motivated more by the desire to avoid offending Hindus. And why not? You can imagine the outcry from the Tory press if the winter lights used at Christmas were described as “Diwali lights”.