Tom Tancredo has been called a one-trick pony of a politician, a man out of step with his party, a bigot. The Republican congressman vehemently opposes illegal immigration, and he created an uproar last week when he talked about nuking Muslim holy sites. No matter, Tancredo is pressing on and even hinting at a long-shot presidential bid in 2008.
Another article blaming multiculturalism for the London bombings
“Since the London bombings several columnists – from Tariq Ali in The Guardian to Phillip Adams in The Australian – have argued that the British brought them on themselves because of Britain’s intervention in Iraq. Well, they’re half right. The British (more precisely, their ineffectual governments) did bring those bombings on themselves.
“The Blair Government’s intervention in Iraq is not to blame. Rather, successive British governments have persisted in the multiculturalist folly that a nation can be built on separate but equal cultures. Moreover, under Tony Blair in particular, Britain’s immigration policies and border controls against illegal immigrants have become international jokes, and now a national tragedy.”
Tribune publishes Islamophobic rant by Maryam Namazie
This week’s Tribune features an article by Maryam Namazie of the Worker Communist Party of Iran attacking “political Islam” – and indeed Islam of any sort. Namazie pours scorn on what she calls “the futile and ongoing support for a ‘moderate’ Islam”. Now, that’s exactly the sort of responsible message a progressive labour movement publication should be putting out in the present circumstances, isn’t it?
I particularly liked the quote from the WPI’s glorious founder-leader Mansoor Hekmat (now deceased) which concludes Namazie’s article. This urges us to recognise that “Islam and religion do not have a progressive, supportable faction”. According that logic, the left should be demanding the expulsion of Bruce Kent from CND.
The article is in fact based on a speech given by Namazie to a conference in Paris on earlier this month (see here). Predictably, that speech was greeted enthusiastically by Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch – although he found it a tad extreme (“I disagree with the recommendations about driving religion out of society”!).
The anti-Muslim backlash continues
The Institute of Race Relations provides a further compilation of press reports about the post-7/7 backlash against British Muslims.
IRR news summary, 21 July 2005
Increases in hate crimes against Muslims are also reported in the South West and Wales.
For BBC reports see here, here and here.
The statement by one of the interviewees that the London atrocities were “nothing to do with Islam” reduces Robert Spencer to apoplexy:
“How long will Muslims and multiculturalists keep saying this? How long will a gullible public keep buying it? When will the denial end about exactly why these bombers are killing themselves and others, and how such bombers are recruited? Is Britain and the West going to play the dhimmi intellectually and morally all the way up to the time that it becomes necessary to assume the dhimmi role not just in metaphor but in reality?”
Enormous upsurge in anti-Muslim backlash
The Islamic Human Rights Commission is sad to announce that there has been a huge upsurge in the number of Islamophobic incidents reported to it in the two weeks following the London bombings.
The source of this hysteria
Portraying Muslim scholars such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi and even Tariq Ramadan as extremists is absurd – and dangerous, Naima Bouteldja argues.
An excellent article. However, the author is wrong in assuming that Professor Ramadan’s opponents in France are the main source of misinformation for right-wing journalists compiling attacks on him in Britain. Rather, it is US Islamophobes like Daniel Pipes and Steve Emerson who provide the Sun et al with their lies and distortions. The recent article in the Sun “exposing” Ramadan was a crude cut-and-paste job from articles by those two writers.
Explainers not popes
“The British right-wing press’s campaign of vilification against Islam continues today, with no less than three hostile articles by three of the usual suspects: Anne McElroy, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Amir Taheri. The last gets a two-page spread in which he is allowed to defame a large proportion, if not the entirety, of the scholarly body of Islam.”
Media blamed for Islam’s image
The misperception of Islam that led to the attacks on six Auckland mosques two weeks ago was fuelled by negative media portrayal of the faith, Auckland’s Muslim community says.
Last night at Ponsonby Mosque, Government and police officials re-iterated their support for New Zealand’s Muslim community in the wake of the mosque attacks on on July 10. The acts were an apparent backlash for the bombings in London three days earlier.
Ethnic Affairs Minister Chris Carter, Labour MP Ashraf Choudhary and Police Commissioner Rob Robinson joined other officials to hear the concerns of about 50 leaders and members of Auckland’s Muslim community.
The Muslim community was united in thanking the Government for its support and the police for their swift arrest following the attacks. But the loudest applause followed their own comments condemning the mainstream media’s portrayal of Islam.
Defend ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’ from Qaradawi – Jihad Watch
Hugh Fitzgerald appeals to the Mayor of London to to renounce his appeasement of Muslim fanatics:
“Do you really want Qaradawi and his ilk to have their way? Think of the freedoms built upon, and enjoyed, by those who now live in Old Londinium. Think of Bracton. Think of Coke. Think of Locke. Think of of John Stuart Mill. Think of Harry Lauder, and Al Bowlly and Jack Buchanan and Elsie Randolph. Think of Vera Lynn.”
Norman Geras – apologist for imperialist war
Norman Geras, the neocons’ favourite “Marxist”, holds forth in the Guardian today, condemning those who have sought to relate the London bombings to the anger aroused in the Muslim world by Western imperialism and the Iraq war in particular.
Beneath the cloud of pseudo-moral indignation, it is not difficult to fathom the motives for Geras’s article. As one of the leading “left” cheerleaders for the invasion of Iraq, he himself obviously bears a small part of the responsibility for the London atrocities.
Geras writes: “It needs to be seen and said clearly: there are, among us, apologists for what the killers do…. There are apologists among us, and they have to be fought intellectually and politically. They do not help to strengthen the democratic culture and institutions whose benefits we all share.”
There could hardly be a better description of Geras himself, an apologist for imperialist warmongering who enthusiastically backed an invasion that caused the death of some 100,000 Iraqis, and who now lashes out in fury at anyone who tries to open a democratic debate about the wider political context of the London bombings.
Still, Norm does have his admirers. Mad Mel joins the US Right in paying tribute to the good professor.
Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 21 July 2005
For a reply to Geras by Yusuf Smith, see here.