Ministers ban 15 ‘terror groups’

Posted on by Eddie Truman

Fifteen international groups believed to be terrorist organisations are set to be banned, the Home Office has said.

These are on top of 25 international organisations already proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000, and a further 14 already banned in Northern Ireland. They include groups with links to Iraq, Uzbekistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Morocco.

The government is also planning to change the law so that it can ban groups which glorify terrorism. Being a member of a proscribed organisation under the Terrorism Act 2000 can be punished by a 10-year prison term.

BBC News, 10 October 2005

Egyptian reveals fresh Guantánamo horrors

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An Egyptian man freed from Guantanamo detention camp has revealed that US guards in the notorious facility “took pleasure” in torturing the inmates, who have been held for over four years without charge or trial. “The torture I suffered in the military camp left me crippled in a wheelchair,” Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted Sami Al-Leithy as telling the Egyptian television Sunday, October 9, night. “They used to grab me by the arms and then hurl me on the floor, on my back. They took pleasure in torturing us,” he said.

Islam Online, 10 October 2005

Stephen Schwartz on the whingeing Wahhabis

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Stephen SchwartzStephen Schwartz offers his assessment of a recent OSCE conference in Poland.

CBS News, 8 October 2005

In Schwartz’s world-view, of course, virtually all non-Sufi strands of Sunni Islam qualify as “Wahhabism”. Note also that the original version in the Weekly Standard carries the strap: “Extremists get together to worry about intolerance”! CBS evidently baulked at describing an OSCE meeting in such terms.

Schwartz writes: “The OSCE is, to put it bluntly, political correctness personified. Its agenda for combating intolerance and discrimination includes everyone from prostitutes to victims of schoolyard bullying.” After all, why should anyone waste their time worrying about the exploitation of sex workers or the victims of school bullies?

Continue reading →

Jihad Watch on the ‘clash of civilizations’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The phrase ‘clash of civilizations’, made famous by Samuel Huntington, is misleading. In Huntington’s formulation (he owed an unacknowledged good deal to Adda Bozeman, who taught at Sarah Lawrence in the days when Kurt Rausch taught painting to well-bred young women and Randall Jarrell was taking notes for ‘Pictures from an Institution’), there are the Sinic, the Orthodox, the Hindu, the Islamic, the Western, and so on. And these are all potentially clashing. But this is nonsense. There is only one clash that counts: that of Islam with all of non-Islam.”

Hugh Fitzgerald give his take on the “clash of civilisations” thesis.

And what solution does he propose? “… to put a complete stop to Muslim immigration, and to find creative ways to deport all Muslim non-citizens. These two measures would be accompanied by the creation of an environment where the practice of Islam is made not easy but difficult. Meanwhile, authorities would engage in wholesale efforts to explain, both to the population of Europe and to the Muslims in its midst, the real nature of Islam. They would explain why it is encourages despotism … economic paralysis … intellectual failure … and moral failure.”

Jihad Watch, 9 October 2005

Islamism – two views

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Islamism, like socialism, is not a uniform entity. It is a colourful sociopolitical phenomenon with many strategies and discourses. This enormously diverse movement ranges from liberal to conservative, from modern to traditional, from moderate to radical, from democratic to theocratic, and from peaceful to violent. What these trends have in common is that they derive their source of legitimacy from Islam, just as Latin American anarchist guerrillas, communists, social democrats and third-way Blairites base theirs on socialism. To view such a broad canvas through the lens of Bin Laden or Zarqawi is absurd.”

Soumaya Ghannoushi in the Guardian, 5 October 2005

“… who will get the blame if the rucksacks start exploding at the Gare du Nord? Will the liberal world look Islamism in the face and see a cult of slaughter and self-slaughter powered by messianic faith, the Jewish conspiracy theory of European fascism, imperialist dreams of world domination and a loathing of democracy, pluralism, religious tolerance and the emancipation of women?”

Nick Cohen in the Observer, 9 October 2005

It’s also worth comparing Soumaya Ghannoushi’s understanding of the causes of Islamist terrorism (see here) with Cohen’s. She offers a nuanced analysis which places ideology in its social context, whereas Cohen – the self-styled upholder of Enlightenment values and secular rationalism – produces only an ignorant, bigoted rant which denies that terrorism has any material basis at all.

More right-wing applause for Trevor Phillips

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The equality watchdog Trevor Phillips used to irritate the hell out of me. To be frank, I never felt he properly engaged with the real issues affecting modern multi-racial Britain. He always seemed to pussyfoot around the edges, indulging himself in the soft option of political correctness. Either I was plumb wrong … or the guy has just awoken from a kind of intellectual torpor and emerged, virtually overnight, as a clear-sighted, acerbic and fearless crusader against the long-held dogmas and obsessions of our traditionally self-serving race-relations industry.

“Phillips has transformed the office of Head of the Commission for Racial Equality into an abattoir for the slaughter of sacred cows. This week he took a series of cherished beliefs held dear for decades and put them to the sword. Some of the principal pillars of multi-culturalism – one of the most pernicious, wrong-headed creeds of modern times – were shaken to their foundations as he actually dared to ask questions that have been long proscribed. Such as, why it is necessarily wrong to describe people as coloured; why town halls should print forms in a variety of different ethnic languages; why Muslim pupils should be excused from wearing full school uniform.

“Another shibboleth to be chucked overboard was the traditional condemnation of the British Empire. Phillips actually praised it for mixing people of different races and religions, and exhumed the long-buried truism that the British people are not, by nature, bigots. ‘We created something called the Empire where we mixed and mingled with people very different from those of these islands,’ he said. This is terrific stuff….”

Richard Madeley (of Richard & Judy) in the Daily Express, 8 October 2005

A Robert Spencer doppelganger writes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Understanding what motivates the enemy is essential to defeating it. The commander in chief took a major step in that direction with last week’s speech tying terrorism to ‘Islamic radicalism’…. With Thursday’s speech, he also abandoned his mantra that Islam is a ‘religion of peace’…. The president could have gone even further to explain what motivates the terrorists. He left the impression they are all heretics distorting the idea of jihad and defiling their scripture…. The unpleasant truth is, Muslim terrorists are getting all these terrible ideas – from violent jihad to self-immolation to even the beheadings we’ve seen in Pakistan and Iraq – straight out of the text of their holy book.”

Investor’s Business Daily, 7 October 2005

I assumed that the anonymous author was in fact Robert Spencer, but apparently not. See Jihad Watch, 8 October 2005

On second thoughts, perhaps it was Brett Lock.

Egypt may allow first Islamist party

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An Islamist party in Egypt – which says a Christian can be head of state in a Muslim society – may become the country’s first legal religious party before the end of the year, if a court rules in its favour. Founders of the al-Wasat party have been trying for nearly 10 years to get a permission to operate. The party has already had its application turned down twice. The Egyptian constitution bans political parties with a religious agenda.

BBC News, 6 October 2005

Could this be the same al-Wasat party whose formation was welcomed by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, even though it was opposed by the Muslim Brotherhood? Yup, it’s the same al-Wasat party. And could that be the same Yusuf al-Qaradawi who is denounced by David T over at Harry’s Place as “THE ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood”? Yup, it’s the same Qaradawi.

Raymond Baker’s analysis (Islam Without Fear, pp.198-9) of the formation of the al-Wasat Party in 1996 is worth quoting:

“The Islamist reaction proved the most interesting and least predictable. Although the press initially described the party initiative as the work of the Muslim Brothers, the leadership of the Brothers strongly attacked the party and worked actively to undermine it. The aging leadership of the Brotherhood regarded the work of the young activists as a breach of discipline that threatened the bureaucratic and hierarchical organizational structure of the Brotherhood. They expelled the party founders for arrogance and disobedience that threatened to undermine the movement. They also instructed those members of the Brotherhood who had responded positively to the initiative to withdraw their support….

“In sharp contrast, the New Islamists welcomed this bold initiative of the young as a sign of vitality and hope. In their public responses, they chose to pay attention to the most progressive and forward-looking aspects of the party platform, taking them as hopeful signs that the Islamist body could act in moderate ways that fully engaged the energies and talents of the younger generation. Yusuf al Qaradawy lent the full weight of his prestige to support of the Wassat party, sharply criticizing the Brotherhood leadership for its disavowal.”

Danish cartoon controversy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten is facing accusations that it deliberately provoked and insulted Muslims by publishing twelve cartoons featuring the prophet Mohammed.

The newspaper urged cartoonists to send in drawings of the prophet, after an author complained that nobody dared to illustrate his book on Mohammed. The author claimed that illustrators feared that extremist Muslims would find it sacrilegious to break the Islamic ban on depicting Mohammed. Twelve illustrators heeded the newspaper’s call, and sent in cartoons of the prophet, which were published in the newspaper one week ago.

Daily newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad said one Muslim, at least, had taken offence. “This type of democracy is worthless for Muslims,” Imam Raed Hlayhel wrote in a statement. “Muslims will never accept this kind of humiliation. The article has insulted every Muslim in the world. We demand an apology!”

Jyllands-Posten described the cartoons as a defence for “secular democracy and right to expression”. Hlayhel, however, said the newspaper had abused democracy with the single intention of humiliating Muslims.

Lars Refn, one of the cartoonists who participated in the newspaper’s call to arms, said he actually agreed with Hlayhel. Therefore, his cartoon did not feature the prophet Mohammed, but a normal Danish schoolboy Mohammed, who had written a Persian text on his schoolroom’s blackboard.

“On the blackboard it says in Persian with Arabic letters that ‘Jyllands-Posten‘s journalists are a bunch of reactionary provocateurs’,” Refn said. “Of course we shouldn’t let ourselves be censored by a few extremist Muslims, but Jyllands-Posten‘s only goal is to vent the fires as soon as they get the opportunity. There’s nothing constructive in that.”

Copenhagen Post, 6 October 2005