Letter to Guardian defending Hizb

Posted on by Bob Pitt

I agree with the two Muslim MPs who oppose the banning of Hizb ut-Tahrir (Islamist clerics face treason charges, August 8). As a scholar who has some knowledge of their operations in the UK and abroad, I am convinced their modus operandi is through traditional political campaigning, not violence. Believing that nation states in the Middle East are artificial creations of western powers to divide Muslims and exploit oil resources, they seek social justice through the formation of a single Islamic state that serves the poor rather than corrupt clients of foreign powers. They argue that violence cannot be used to take control of the state, but the state can use the military to defend itself against other states.

As a political geographer and Christian socialist, I believe their historical analysis is correct and their conclusion well-reasoned. I cannot share their vision, for it ultimately maintains the Quranic commitment to just war theory that is as much part of the Middle East’s problems as the variants deployed by George Bush and Tony Blair. However, they are not terrorists and parliament must resist this unreasonable attack on freedom of speech.
Dr Nick Megoran
Cambridge University

Letter in Guardian, 9 August 2005

Muslims and non-Muslims rally to support Hizb ut-Tahrir

Posted on by Bob Pitt

After Prime Minister Tony Blair’s announcement that Hizb ut-Tahrir would be proscribed as a terrorist organisation, many Muslim and non-Muslim groups and personalities have expressed amazement and shock that a non-violent political party could be targeted in this manner. Moreover several UK national newspapers and leaked government documents have revealed that even the UK Home Office has stated that Hizb ut-Tahrir is not a terrorist party or a violent organisation.

Dr Imran Waheed, Media Representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain, said, “Since the statement of the Prime Minister, we have received dozens of messages of support from leading Muslim and non-Muslim groups and personalities. Not everyone may agree with our politics but everyone agrees that banning a non-violent political party is injustice and will set a very dangerous precedent.”

Hizb ut-Tahrir press release, 9 August 2005

Cruel confinement of ‘enemy combatant’ in United States

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A lawsuit filed against U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reveals the gratuitous cruelty inflicted on a foreign student held without charges for more than two years as an “enemy combatant” in a South Carolina naval brig, Human Rights Watch said. Although three men have been confined in the United States after being designated “enemy combatants” by President George Bush, the complaint by Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri provides the first look into the treatment of any of them in military custody.

“It is bad enough that al-Marri has been held indefinitely without charges and incommunicado,” said Jamie Fellner, director of Human Rights Watch’s U.S. Program. “Now we learn that his life in the brig has also been one of cruelty and petty vindictiveness. Whatever the Bush administration believes he has done or wanted to do, there’s no excuse for how they are treating him.”

HRW news release, 8 August 2005

More on Outrage! and Qaradawi

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Further to Outrage’s widely circulated, but entirely false, accusation that Yusuf al-Qaradawi called for the Crown Prince of Qatar to be stoned to death, anyone who wants an illustration of the sort of racist bigotry provoked by Outrage’s Islamophobic propaganda should take a look at the discussion of the Outrage press release at Gay.com.

A thread entitled “More Muslim savagery” contains this exchange of views:

“Is it just me or is anyone else sick to death of islam and it being constantly on our news and current affairs progs??? The murderers who placed those bombs on the London tubes and buses have certainly achieved one thing : to barrage us with endless islamic bullshit.”

“I totally agree with you. All the late night chat shows are now propoganda about how peaceful and tolerant Islam is!? If you believe that you’ll believe anything! Like that programme fronted by terry Christian on C4 in the week, ‘Sharia TV’, where we have to sit and listen to a load of Islamic (so called) moderates telling us how wonderful Islam is!? It makes me sick. Now this is a Christian country (at the moment) why not some late night programmes about Christianity or Judaism for a change instead of all this Islamic rubbish??????”

Another thread features the following exchange:

“Why don’t we set up a stoning of our own. Grab as many Moslems as you can find, take them to Trafalgar Square and announce that they will be publicly stoned for some trumped up charge, say adultary, then go down to Brighton and collect a few bucket load of stones and invite the audience to chuck a stone for Allah!… I firmly believe that Moslems clearly have an execution fetish and need help for it. Hangings, stonings, beheadings, whippings all sounds kinky to me!!!! Why the hell don’t these advocates of execution and torture get themselves off to the nearest rent boy who will fulfill their fetish, get a bloody good whipping and leave the rest of us alone! in peace?”

“Robert, dear, what self-respecting rent boy would want to provide Muslims a service? Anyway, goats are more up their street.”

Muslim public holiday? Appeasement of Islamist fanatics, says Mark Steyn

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Responding to Islamist terrorism in Britain and elsewhere, Germany is considering introducing a Muslim public holiday. As Mathias Dopfner, chief executive of Axel Springer, put it: ‘A substantial fraction of Germany’s government – and, if polls are to be believed, the German people – believe that creating an official state Muslim holiday will somehow spare us from the wrath of fanatical Islamists’. Great. At least the 1930s’ appeasers did it on their own time. But, in recasting appeasement as yet another paid day off, the new proposal cunningly manages to combine the worst instincts of the old Europe and the new.”

In an article that is even more incoherent and rambling than usual, Mark Steyn fulminates against the “German Islamist Appeasement Bank Holiday Weekend”.

Daily Telegraph, 9 August 2005

VA Muslim attacked by men shouting racist slurs

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today called on law enforcement authorities to treat an assault this morning on a Virginia Muslim woman as a hate crime.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reported that a 23-year-old Muslim woman, who is 8 months pregnant and wears and Islamic head scarf, said she was out for her morning walk in Arlington, Va., when three white men in a pick-up truck began screaming anti-Muslim and racist slurs at her. According to the victim, the men shouted, “You terrorist b*tch, go back to your country. . .You n*gger b*tch.” (The woman is African-American.) The truck drove away and then returned as the woman continued on her walk. One of the men, who was wearing military-style clothing, allegedly got out of the vehicle and began shoving the woman and preventing her from moving away. During the assault, he shouted, “You terrorist b*tch. . . We’re going to kick your a*s. . . you’re nothing.” The other men then called the attacker back to the truck and it sped off.

“We believe these types of incidents are the direct result of the growing level of virulent anti-Muslim rhetoric Americans are exposed to on the Internet, in newspaper editorial pages and on radio talk shows,” said CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper. “Our nation’s political and religious leaders must begin to challenge Islamophobic hate-mongers.” Hooper noted that a Washington, D.C., radio talk show host was recently suspended without pay for stating repeatedly that “Islam is a terrorist organization.” He added that an Illinois man was arrested just last Friday for threatening to bomb CAIR’s Capitol Hill headquarters. In July, a national council of American Muslim religious scholars issued a “fatwa,” or formal Islamic legal ruling, against terrorism and religious extremism. That fatwa has been endorsed by some 200 Islamic groups, leaders and institutions.

CAIR news release, 9 August 2005

Multiculturalism to blame for 7/7

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Anyone who has been keeping up with British opinion since the July 7 bombings will have noticed that ‘multiculturalism’ is under sharp attack. Multiculturalism preaches that we should allow and encourage immigrants and their children to maintain and celebrate their own culture apart from the national culture. Society should be not a melting pot but, in the phrase of former New York Mayor David Dinkins, ‘a gorgeous mosaic’. That mosaic, of course, looked less gorgeous as people surveyed the work of the British-born-and-raised bombers.”

Michael Barone at Washington Times, 8 August 2005

Telegraph readers debate hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hijab is Our RightAs you might anticipate, there is the usual racist crap: “… the real intention of this apparel is to denigrate women and deny them their individuality. As a Western woman, I regard this apparel as insulting to my sex, my religious beliefs and my cultural mores. If Muslims wish to enjoy the manifold benefits of living in the West, they must both respect and observe our customs as well as our rules.” (Katherine Barlow, Vienna, Austria)

However, some letter writers take a very different line:

“It will be a very poor outcome for all of us if we, the British people, allow ourselves to be manipulated by this campaign into attacking Muslim women. I would hope that the ideals inherent in the whole of our British culture would continue to respect women of all races, colours and creeds. Whatever these terrorists think, we are now a multicultural society…. Muslim women should not discard their hijabs. Otherwise the terrorists will have won.” (Geoffrey Collingwood, Brackley, Northants)

“Katherine Barlow (Letters, Aug 5) regards Muslim women’s apparel as an insult to her mores. I am English and have lived here all my life. I prefer not to wear the cleavage-displaying, thigh-revealing garb favoured by many of my compatriots. If I can choose to dress how I please, why on earth should Muslim women be criticised for similar choices?” (Linda Garrett, Potters Bar, Herts)

Daily Telegraph, 5 August and 8 August 2005

It’s a disturbing thought that there are Torygraph readers who take a much more progressive position on this issue than many liberals do.

Outrage! shows light-minded attitude to truth shock

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An article by Richard Kim in the US magazine The Nation offers a lengthy but interesting analysis of Outrage’s light-minded attitude to factual evidence when it comes to pursuing their Islamophobic agenda. Kim shows that Outrage’s press release claiming that two Iranian youth had been executed for being simply being gay (see here) was based on a dubious account by the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq cult and dismissed other reports that the two had in fact been convicted of gang-raping a 13-year-old boy at knife-point.

Richard Kim outlines how “Outrage!’s press release came to inspire an escalating series of demands and actions … appeals to the greatest democracy in the world to defend freedom against Islamic extremism, calls for the gay movement (and even individual would-be gay soldiers) to join the fight against ‘Islamo-fascism’ and pleas to European governments to sever ties with Iran and impose sanctions – at a time when the EU was engaged in delicate negotiations with Iran over its nuclear capacity. The story of ‘two gay teenagers executed in Iran’ was a compelling narrative that … offered up an unambiguous conflict between ‘Islamo-fascism’ and Western democracy”.

The Nation, 7 August 2005