Muslims who want Islamic law told to leave Australia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law should get out of Australia, a senior government minister has said, hinting that some radical clerics might be asked to leave.

Australia was a secular state and its laws were made by parliament, Treasurer Peter Costello told national television late Tuesday.

“If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you,” said Costello, who is seen as heir-apparent to Prime Minister John Howard.

“I’d be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another the Islamic law, that that is false.

“There’s only one law in Australia — it’s the law that’s made by the parliament of Australia and enforced by our courts. There is no second law.

“If you can’t agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country which practices it, perhaps, then, that’s a better option,” Costello said.

Asked whether he meant radical clerics would be forced to leave, he replied: “Where a person has dual citizenship, it might be possible to ask them to exercise that other citizenship. That might be a live possibility.”

AFP, 24 August 2005

UK Muslims decry ‘draconian’ terror guidelines

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The sizable Muslim minority in Britain decried the government’s new guidelines on deporting and barring Islamists suspected of inciting terrorism as too vague, warning they could further fan Islamophobia in Britain. “The list of ‘unacceptable behaviors’ announced by the Home Secretary as grounds for exclusion of foreign nationals from the UK is considered to be too wide and unclear,” the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) said in a statement posted on its web site.

“We are especially concerned that senior Islamic scholars will be barred from the UK purely on the basis of media witch-hunts orchestrated by pro-Israeli elements,” Inayat Bunglawala, MCB media officer, told Agence France Presse (AFP).

Islam Online, 25 August 2005

Ken Livingstone: ‘Nelson Mandela test’ to judge Clarke’s proposals

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mayor of London Ken Livingstone said he would apply a “Nelson Mandela test” to new proposals announced by the Home Secretary on Wednesday as a response to last month’s bombings. Livingstone said he would judge the proposals on whether it would have ensnared supporters of Nelson Mandela when he was earlier in prison after leading an armed anti-government struggle. He added that if Britain banned Sheikh Yussef al-Qaradawi from entering the country, he would take the government to court.

MAB press release, 25 August 2005

See also Islam Online, 25 August 2005

Clarke’s deportation list welcomed by GALHA

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association has warmly welcomed the ‘deportation list’ and hopes the ban will include the anti-gay cleric Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who visited Britain in October [sic] 2004. ‘We have written to the Home Secretary urging him to ban Sheik al-Qaradawi who has made his extremist views very clear in his speeches and books, and via his website, and who is currently banned from the USA,’ said GALHA secretary, George Broadhead. ‘Sheik al-Qaradawi supports the killing of homosexuals to keep society pure, the killing of Israelis (including civilians), the killing of apostates, and the mutilation of women’s genitals’.”

Rainbow Network, 25 August 2005

GALHA have been less forthcoming about why they have withdrawn their accusation that Qaradawi called for the Crown Prince of Qatar to be stoned to death. Their 2 August press release has now been removed from their site without any explanation. The misleading Aljazeera magazine report on which the press release was based has also been deleted.

Complain to BBC about Panorama programme – FOSIS

Posted on by Bob Pitt

John Ware’s Panorama programme “A Question of Leadership” aired Sunday night on BBC1 smeared respected Muslim organisations and leaders in Britain. FOSIS President Wakkas Khan said today:

“The programme has been a stain on the BBC’s record for fairness and impartiality. The producers have acted irresponsibly in its usage of quotations and editing. John Ware carelessly calls for Muslims to deny their right to engage in mainstream society. Islam is not only personal and spiritual in its nature but it also advocates justice and promotion of good through a strong political identity. It seems that to qualify as so-called ‘moderates’ Muslims are required to remain silent about oppression around the world; otherwise they are labelled as ‘extremists’.”

FOSIS action alert, 24 August 2005

Robertson, Chavez and double standards

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pat RobertsonState Department spokesman Sean McCormack called Pat Robertson’s remarks about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez “inappropriate”, but stopped short of condemning them. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the Pentagon isn’t in the business of killing foreign leaders, but he also did not denounce Robertson or his remarks. “He’s a private citizen. Private citizens say all kinds of things all the time”, Rumsfeld said.

Democrats called the Bush administration’s response tepid, and said it lends credence to the notion that the White House doesn’t want to offend some of its most loyal supporters. “It seems they are shuffling their feet when they should be running away from what Pat Robertson said”, Democratic political consultant Steve McMahon said. “That this president, who projects himself as brave and bold, doesn’t want to stand up to his own right wing is ironic.”

Associated Press, 24 August 2005

You can just imagine what the response of the Bush administration would be if an American Muslim leader were to call for the killing of a pro-US head of state. And their cries of outrage would of course be accompanied by articles explaining how the ideology of Islam inspires such violent fanaticism. However, when it’s the Reverend Pat Robertson – founder of the Christian Coalition of America, the man who supported Bush’s re-election last year and said he believed the president is blessed by God – calling for the murder of a supposed supporter of “Muslim extremism”, it’s a very different matter.

‘I am very pleased to be here next to Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Campaign Against Sharia CourtSpeech by Homa Arjomand, central committee member of the Worker Communist Party of Iran, at the Toronto conference against sharia law.

Comrade Arjomand declares: “I need to emphasize that I am talking about political Islam as a movement…. Their conduct is primarily in the form of opposition to the freedom of women, women’s civil liberties, and freedom of expression. It is misogynistic and goes against modernism…. Islamic terrorism is a military section of Political Islam…. Political Islam with its terrorist action clearly says that if you don’t recognize Islamic states, terrorism is what people in the West will face.”

Butterflies and Wheels, 23 August 2005

Yeah, the usual Islamism=terrorism nonsense that you get from the WPI (and from Nick Cohen, Searchlight magazine and the BNP, for that matter). The idea that Islamism contains reformist tendencies, who oppose terrorism and pursue democratic change, is of course completely absent from this hysterical Islamophobic discourse.

TUC urges action on Muslim plight

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim communities in Britain have faced too many “cheap calls to integrate” since last month’s London bomb attacks and should instead receive increased government funding to tackle widespread poverty and poor health, the TUC leader, Brendan Barber, said yesterday.

Publishing a report saying that people of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin are among the most deprived in the UK, Mr Barber warned that greater social inclusion was being jeopardised by high levels of poverty that risked potentially fuelling extremist beliefs.

“Social deprivation and poverty is no excuse for criminality, but it can be a breeding ground for poisonous beliefs of all kinds,” he said. “Even if there had been no bomb attacks, a civilised country should not tolerate such high levels of poverty and deprivation.

“We have had too many cheap calls for Muslims to integrate, some of which have come close to asking people to give up crucial parts of their identity. Building a tolerant liberal society where we are all free to express the different sides that make up anyone’s identity will be that much harder when some groups suffer from such extreme levels of deprivation and poverty.”

The TUC’s report, to be launched by Mr Barber today at the East London mosque, calls for government job creation and other programmes to be targeted at Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh. Out of every 100 white people, 20 live below the government poverty line, but 69 out of every 100 Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in Britain live in poverty, the study says.

Guardian, 24 August 2005

See also “End UK Pakistani and Bangladeshi poverty and deprivation says TUC”, TUC press release, 19 August 2005

Michael Graham has a whinge

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“I made the one move certain to endanger my career: I told the truth about a minority group. And in the politically correct nation we live in today, that’s the fast track to the unemployment line…. I was fired, according to the termination letter I received from ABC Radio, for ‘offensive’ comments I made on the air regarding Islam and terrorism. Coincidentally, all of the comments deemed offensive by the Council of [sic] American-Islamic Relations were listed in my ABC disciplinary memo.

“I was also fired, according to ABC management, for my refusal to apologize for said comments. They further ordered me to agree to ‘additional outreach efforts’ to those ‘offended’ by my opinions. Would I be flipping burgers at the local mosque? Singing ‘Kumbaya’ with CAIR? Hugs for Hamas? Management wouldn’t say.”

Townhall.com, 23 August 2005