Straw provokes outrage by claiming terrorism is ‘justified by Islam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw Tuesday provoked outrage in the Muslim community by claiming that terrorism is “justified by Islam.” Speaking to The Financial Times, he said “One of the things we’ve got to do is give [Muslim] leaders the confidence to face down terrorism justified by Islam.”

“His phrase ‘terrorism justified by Islam’ is utterly meaningless and deeply offensive to Muslims,” chair of the Muslim Council of Britain’s Media Committee, Inayat Bunglawala told Irna.

“Our scholars have made it clear that there is no basis whatsoever or targeting Muslims,” Bunglawala added. He also suggested that his provocative comments could add to the current backlash against Muslims following the recent London bombings.

“The foreign secretary of all people should know that no terrorism can be justified by Islam,” Bunglawala said. “His comments could unwittingly give succor to Islamophobes who are forever trying to link the face of Islam with violence,” he warned.

IRNA report, 2 August 2005

For Straw’s FT article, see here.

MAB response to ‘preachers of hate’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MAB logo“In the aftermath of the London bombings Tony Blair called on the Muslims to tackle hate preachers in their community. While the Muslim community has been under tremendous pressure to act against a possible few who advocate hatred and mass murder, the government seems to ignore individuals who preach hatred of Islam and Muslims.

“The level and extent of incitement of hatred against Islam and Muslims by some individuals and by certain sections of the media have risen substantially in the last few weeks. Unsurprisingly this has coincided with a phenomenal rise in hate crimes against Muslims around the UK.  We are forced to think that if such blanket hatred was aimed at another community the government would have been quick to react to it, but the government’s inability to do so raises serious questions among the Muslim community.”

The Muslim Association of Britain responds to recent articles by Anthony Browne, Jonathan Freedland and Patrick Sookhdeo.

MAB news release, 2 August 2005

Exploiting terror and death for bigotry and hate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Exploiting terror and death for bigotry and hate

By Ken Livingstone

Morning Star, 30 July 2005

The central pressing issue facing us in the wake of the bombings and attempted bombings in London over the past weeks is of course to apprehend those involved.

This is the issue that every Londoner, from tube driver to city banker will expect to be addressed.

But one issue that remains vital – and not at all unconnected to the task of stopping terrorism – is to stop the bombings from being used to promote bigotry and racism in our society.

In particular there is now a sustained campaign to use the bombings to attack the advances we have made against racism in our society by blaming multiculturalism, “diversity”, immigration, and even the “political correctness” of the police.

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Police ‘must single out Muslims’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims are certain to be singled out in police stop-and-search operations in the wake of the bombings, ministers have warned. Home Office Minister Hazel Blears gave her backing to a British Transport Police chief who vowed that his officers will not shy away from targeting Asians because they came from a group most likely to present the gravest threat. Chief constable Ian Johnston told a Sunday newspaper: “We should not bottle out over this. We should not waste our time searching old white ladies.”

Civil liberties groups attacked Mr Johnson, claiming that “racial profiling” could undermine race relations. But the Metropolitan Police and BTP believe that targeted stop and searches are vital at a time of high alert. Ms Blears said: “If your intelligence tells you that you’re looking for somebody of a particular description, perhaps with particular clothing on, then clearly you’re going to exercise that power in that way. That’s absolutely the right thing to do.”

Evening Standard (London), 1 August 2005

Blame terrorism on migrants – Daily Mail

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Deadly Cost of Open Borders

Editorial comment  in the Daily Mail, 1 August 2005

THE more we learn, the worse it gets.

One of the July 21 failed suicide bombers Hussain Osman was an Ethiopian posing as a Somali who used fake documents to gain asylum in this country (even though he’d been living for years in Italy) and later a British passport.

He fled Britain last Tuesday – five days after failing to blow up himself and others at Shepherd’s Bush Tube station.

Despite a national anti-terrorist alert at an unprecedented level neither he nor his passport were checked by British officials at Waterloo’s Eurostar terminal because such checks were scrapped last year as a cost-cutting measure. (With breathtaking insouciance the Leader of the Commons Geoff Hoon said yesterday the Home Office ‘will be looking at that’.)

Oh yes – and he and the rest of the terrorist cell have milked the benefits system of more than £300,000.

There, in a nutshell, is the scandal of our asylum and immigration system.

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Al-Qa’ida aren’t behind these bombings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

James Harkin, writing in the Independent (1 August), tells us that Al-Qaida is not a centralised worldwide organisation. Now there’s a revelation. He continues: “Turning the spotlight on Al-Qa’ida is a convenient lie. It helps us to avoid the uncomfortable truth that the London bombs were only the most poisonous fallout from the pallid recipe of multiculturalism, and its failure to inspire our ethnic young.”

MAB complains to the CRE over Times article

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MAB logoIn today’s The Times, Anthony Browne, a renowned Zionist Right-wing commentator who has made his campaign to attack Muslims and their faith in the most despicable manner, wrote another disgusting attack under the title ‘Fundamentally, We’re Useful Idiots’.

In his article, Browne chose to go out ‘all guns blazing’ and accuse Muslims of being the Nazis and Fascists of today, treating all others with disdain and considering them ‘sub-humans’. On more than one occasion, Browne wrote of the ‘similarities’ between Muslims and Hitler and also stated that the Eminent Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi is a moderate ‘in the same way that Mussolini was’.

It is clear that Anthony Browne has chosen to go beyond the pale and to blatantly accuse Muslims and particularly MAB of being fascists and Nazis. The magnitude of his statement regarding Sheikh Qaradawi can only be measured if one were to imagine the Pope being accused of being a Nazi, and the outcry and outrage that would generate.

Anas Altikriti, speaking on behalf of MAB stated earlier: “The Muslim Association of Britain will be forwarding an official complaint to the Commission of Racial Equality (CRE), and have written a letter to The Times in response to the article. “However, it is also vital that British Muslims contact The Times to sound their disgust of Anthony Browne and the hate-fuelled discourse he promotes. “At a time when all Muslims come under immense pressure from all corners through no fault of their own, Browne’s article can only lead to more hate, division and even violence against Muslims throughout the country.”

MAB press release, 1 August 2005

It’s weird the way we both despise and envy the ‘other’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Robert Fisk“We are fighting evil. Nothing to do with the occupation of Palestinian land, the occupation of Afghanistan, the occupation of Iraq, the torture at Abu Ghraib and Bagram and Guantanamo. Oh no, indeed. ‘An evil ideology’, a nebulous, unspecified, dark force. That’s the problem….

“The London suicide bombers were Muslims (or thought they were) so the entire Muslim community in Britain must stand to attention and – as Muslims – condemn them. We ‘Christians’ were not required to do that because we are not Muslims – nor were we required as ‘Christians’ to condemn the Christian Serb slaughter of 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica just over 10 years ago.

“All we had to do was say sorry for doing nothing at the time. But Muslims, because they are Muslims, must ritually condemn something they had nothing to do with.

“But that, I suspect, is the point. Deep down, I wonder if we do not think that their religion does have something to do with all this, that Islam is a backward religion, un-renaissanced, potentially violent. It’s not true, but our heritage of orientalism suggests otherwise.”

Robert Fisk in the Gulf Times, 31 July 2005

Qaradawi and MAB – ‘Islamic fascists’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

London vigil“Elements within the British establishment were notoriously sympathetic to Hitler. Today the Islamists enjoy similar support.

“In the 1930s it was Edward VIII, aristocrats and the Daily Mail; this time it is left-wing activists, The Guardian and sections of the BBC. They may not want a global theocracy, but they are like the West’s apologists for the Soviet Union – useful idiots….

“The support of Islamic fascism spans Britain’s Left. The wacko Socialist Workers Party joined forces with the Muslim Association of Britain, the democracy-despising, Shariah-law-wanting group, to form the Stop the War Coalition. The former Labour MP George Galloway created the Respect Party with the support of the MAB, and won a seat in Parliament by cultivating Muslim resentment.

“When I revealed on these pages last year both the fascist views of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the fact that he was being welcomed to Britain by Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, it caused a storm that has still to abate. Mr Livingstone claims that Sheikh al-Qaradawi is a moderate – which he is, in the same way that Mussolini was.”

Anthony Browne in the Times, 1 August 2005