Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch endorses Daniel Pipes’ verdict on Bush’s speech. But Spencer argues that the president should be more specific in his condemnation of Islamist terrorists and “announce that we are at war with their supremacist, expansionist ideology, which arises from Islam”. Still, the overall verdict is positive: “The force of events has brought the President far. Before he is done, he is likely to have gone farther still.”
‘Active Resistance to Islamification’ organisation launched
A former aide to Robert Kilroy Silk has launched a group which aims to fight back at what it views as “Islamofascism”. Tony Bennett, who worked as a researcher for the former politician and television presenter, is recruiting members for the Active Resistance to Islamification, which plans to “erect one sign or symbol that is offensive to those sensitive Muslim flowers in our midst for every one they succeed in removing from our society”.
Bennett, who believes Islam is an “evil force” but insists that he “doesn’t believe in discrimination”, added: “Last week one Muslim said he was offended by a picture of a pig and demanded that all things resembling pigs at his work were removed.” In retaliation Bennett painted a St George’s cross on a “Welcome to Harlow” road sign. Last year he left the UK Independence party after describing the prophet Muhammad as a paedophile.
Cross party coalition says no consensus on anti-terror law
On the day the government published its anti-terrorism bill, a broad cross-party coalition met to challenge a number of the government’s proposals.
The coalition says that the concessions announced by the government do not go far enough so that in its present form the legislation will not command the cross party and cross community consensus which is essential for it to be successful.
The coalition brings together the Mayor of London, the Scottish National Party, the Liberal Democrats, Labour MPs, the Green Party, major trade unions, Liberty, lawyers, the main Muslim organisations, Sikhs, Christians, the peace movement and many others.
The coalition held its first meeting on Wednesday 12 October, at Central Hall Westminster with one of the broadest platforms ever brought together around a single issue. Around one thousand people attended the meeting.
This law won’t fight terror – it is an incitement to terrorism
“… as the mayor of London pointed out yesterday, support for Nelson Mandela, the wartime resistance and any number of anti-colonial liberation movements would all have been crimes under this bill. In practice, of course, the law is intended to be used selectively: it is aimed not just at those who praise bomb attacks on the London tube, but at Muslims and others who believe that Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans and others have a right to resist occupation.
“If there were any doubt about that, Blair’s stated intention to use this bill to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir – reaffirmed this week by the Home Office – should dispel it. There is little love lost among many Muslims – let alone non-Muslims – for Hizb ut-Tahrir, which campaigns for a restored caliphate (or unified Islamic political authority) throughout the Muslim world and against participation in elections. Although it denies being anti-Jewish, the organisation had on its website until recently a statement which by any reckoning crossed the line from anti-Zionism into anti-semitism.
“But there is also no evidence at all that it is involved in terrorism – it condemned both the London bombings and the 9/11 attacks. It does not, however, condemn armed resistance in Iraq and Palestine, which is how the government plans to catch it. Along with the criminalisation of support for resistance movements, such a ban on a non-violent political party would be unprecedented in modern British history. When set against the toleration of the routinely violent and relentlessly racist British National party, it is scarcely surprising that Muslim opinion is overwhelmingly hostile to all the main planks of the legislation.”
Seumas Milne in the Guardian, 13 October 2005
US chaplain condemns ‘war on Islam’
A Muslim chaplain working for the US Army in Guantánamo Bay condemned his country’s “war on Islam” yesterday. James Yee told BBC radio that Islam is currently seen by US forces as the “religion of terror.”
When soldiers saw the chaplain practising the same faith as the prisoners that he ministered, he was treated with great suspicion and eventually arrested for “espionage,” he revealed. Mr Yee was accused of adultery and storing pornography on a government computer and was locked up in solitary confinement for 76 days, before all charges against him were suddenly dropped.
He spoke yesterday of the “atmosphere of hostility” toward all Muslims at the torture camp. “We say that the war on terror is not a war against Islam. But that is not how it felt most days at Guantanamo,” Mr Yee said.
“Every man behind the steel mesh wire of the cages practises the same religion, a religion that many people who work inside the prison understand only as the religion of terror. I was praying like the Muslims prisoners prayed. That must have meant to many people there that was somehow connected to extremism or terrorism,” he said.
All of the British citizens locked up at the US outpost in Cuba have been brought home, but one British resident remains there, in limbo and on hunger strike, because the Foreign Office refuses to help him. Libyan refugee Omar Deghayes lived in Britain for 20 years but never registered as a British citizen, so the government says that it has no duty to intervene on his behalf.
Independent peace campaigner Rachel Critchley will stage a 12-hour peace walk through London tomorrow, dressed in a bright orange Guantánamo-style boiler suit and shackles, to raise awareness of Mr Deghayes’s plight.
Morning Star, 13 October 2005
See also Islam Online, 13 October 2005
Dutch unveil the toughest face in Europe with a ban on the burka
The Netherlands is likely to become the first country in Europe to ban the burka, under government proposals that would bring in some of the toughest curbs on Muslim clothing in the world.
The country’s hardline Integration Minister, Rita Verdonk, known as the Iron Lady for her series of tough anti-immigration measures, told Parliament that she was going to investigate where and when the burka should be banned. Mrs Verdonk gave warning that the “time of cosy tea-drinking” with Muslim groups had passed.
The proposals are likely to win the support of Parliament because of the expected backing by right-wing parties. But they have caused outrage among Muslim and human rights groups, who say that the Government is pandering to the far Right.
See the comment by Yusuf Smith, who points out the misapplication of the term “burka” to any form of Islamic veil – which is in fact what Verdonk is proposing to ban. He also takes on the raving Islamophobes at Harry’s Place. And he introduces us to the term “jafi“, which I think should enjoy wider currency.
Klinghoffer killed by ‘Islamic terrorists’
Debbie Schlussel marks the twentieth anniversary of the murder of Leon Klinghoffer on the hijacked cruise ship Achille Lauro by accusing “Islamic terrorists” of responsibility for his death. Schlussel concludes:
“Klinghoffer’s murderers weren’t Christians. And they weren’t from Samoa or Fiji, either. They were Arab Muslims. The same group we keep denying is after us, today. WAKE UP, AMERICA!”
Front Page Magazine, 11 October 2005
Which of course rather overlooks the fact that Klinghoffer was killed by members of the Abu Abbas faction of the Palestine Liberation Front, a secular nationalist organisation.
Trevor Phillips is in danger of giving succour to racists
Lee Jasper replies to the chair of the Commission for Racial Equality: “Asked whether the word multiculturalism should be killed off, he replied: ‘Yes, let’s do that. Multiculturalism suggests separateness.’ Confronted by the Spectator‘s Rod Liddle and asked if Islam was an issue for the CRE – in particular if it was ‘merely a matter of culture’ rather than race – Phillips’s response spoke volumes. ‘Well privately I would go quite a long way down the route you’re taking. It is not primarily an issue of race.’ … But the truth is that vile anti-Muslim prejudice, using the religion of a community to attempt to sideline and blame it for many of society’s ills, is the cutting edge of racism in British society. Those who consider themselves anti-racists need to wake up to this fact.”
Christian group may seek ban on Qur’an
A Protestant evangelical pressure group has warned that it will try to use the government’s racial and religious hatred law to prosecute bookshops selling the Qur’an for inciting religious hatred.
Christian Voice, a fringe fundamentalist group which first came to public prominence this year when it campaigned against the BBC’s broadcasting of Jerry Springer The Opera, was among the evangelical organisations taking part in a 1,000-strong demonstration against the bill outside parliament yesterday as the House of Lords held a second reading debate on the measure.
Its director, Stephen Green, said the organisation would consider taking out prosecutions against shops selling the Islamic holy book. He told the Guardian: “If the Qur’an is not hate speech, I don’t know what is. We will report staff who sell it. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that unbelievers must be killed.”
It seems to have escaped Green’s attention that under the provisions of the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill it would be necessary for the Attorney General to initiate a prosecution. And what are the prospects of the Attorney General acceding to demands from a nutty Christian sect that Muslim bookshops should be prosecuted for selling the Qur’an? Precisely nil.
What is more worthy of comment is the fact that yesterday’s protest against the bill involved a block between right-wing evangelical Christians and militant secularists. According to reports in the Morning Star and the Metro, the former group brandished placards reading “Freedom to Preach” and “Don’t Let Terrorism Win”, and joined together in singing “In the Name of Jesus We Have the Victory”, while Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society hailed the demonstration (which had the official backing of the NSS) as “a measure of the breadth of the opposition to this bill”.
You might wonder what such disparate groups have in common. An interest in fomenting hatred against Muslims free from state interference, perhaps?
’60 percent of British Muslims support Al-Qaida’ claim
“I happened to hear President Bush’s speech last week in its entirety. It was a pretty mixed bag. Some of what he had to say obviously needed to be said – that there is no compromising or appeasing Islamic fascism is obvious. But he again either chose to ignore or was simply unwilling to bring up the fact that it’s not just Osama and al Qaeda we’re up against – it’s a substantial part of Islam. In Britain, after the 7/7 bombings, over 60 percent of British Muslims polled said they would not help the British government against al Qaeda or other Islamic terrorists.”
Robert Miller in the Jewish Weekly, 11 October 2005
And where exactly did Miller get that figure from? A YouGov poll conducted for the Daily Telegraph in the immediate aftermath of 7/7 asked British Muslims who they would tell if they suspected someone they knew might be planning a similar attack. 73% said they would inform the police, others said they would tell their family, friends or the local council, and only 3% said they wouldn’t tell anyone. I imagine this compares favourably with the percentage of non-Muslims prepared to inform on someone they suspected was planning a violent attack on Muslims.
Miller has an equally informed opinion on US foreign policy, where he suggests that the appropriate response to the current dispute with the government of Iran would be “a devastating raid on the Iranian oil fields”.
This only goes to prove that the US is the undisputed world leader when it comes to pop-eyed Islamophobia. By comparison, Melanie Phillips, Nick Cohen or GALHA appear almost level-headed.