Yusuf Smith comments on the Tariq Ramadan case.
Irshad Manji on the London bombings
Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble With Islam and Daniel Pipes’ favourite Muslim, assesses the London bombings. Her conclusions? 1. They have nothing to do with Iraq; and 2. They are based on the authority of the Qur’an. Thanks, Irshad. That’s a real help.
Sun denounces Tariq Ramadan as terrorist supporter
The Sun launches a lying attack on respected Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan.
The accusations against Profesor Ramadan in the main article, by Anthony France, are mainly lifted (without acknowledgement) from a piece by Daniel Pipes written to justify Ramadan’s exclusion from the US in 2004 (see here). Pipes’ accusations were systematically demolished by Ramadan himself at the time (see here). The other accusations in the Sun article are taken from the discredited Steve Emerson (see here) – the “terrorism expert” who assured everyone that the 1995 Oklahoma bombing was carried out by Muslims.
Why Here? Why Now?
By Anthony France
Sun, 12 July 2005
A decision to invite an Islamic academic who justifies terrorism to a London conference provoked disbelief and dismay last night.
Professor Tariq Ramadan, an Egyptian-born Swiss citizen, will preach to young Muslims on July 24 – 17 days after the 7/7 outrage.
The visit by Ramadan – who has been banned from entering the US and France – is backed by £7,500-worth of funding from British taxpayers via the Metropolitan Police and the Association of Chief Police Officers.
But serving cop Norman Brennan, head of the Victims of Crime Trust, said: “Many will be horrified to learn that the Met and ACPO are funding an event where the speaker will be a man who believes suicide bombings are justified. The timing of this could not have been worse. Officers have spent the last five days picking up human remains with their bare hands.”
Security chiefs across the world have built up dossiers on Ramadan, 44.
Last year he was banned from entering the US after America’s Homeland Security Department said he had “endorsed terrorist activity”. In 1996 he was barred from France on suspicion of having links with an Algerian behind a terror campaign in Paris. In 1999 a Spanish judge declared that he had “routine contacts” with an Algerian al-Qaeda disciple.
Islamic militant or revolutionary?
Islamic extremist or the man leading reform of the faith? Professor Tariq Ramadan explains why his critics are wrong and why the London bombings mean more than ever that Western Muslims must split from the East.
He’s the man the Sun loved to hate. Five days after the London bombings, the newspaper ran a front-page story inviting readers to “MEET ISLAMIC MILITANT PROFESSOR TARIQ RAMADAN”, urging the government to ban the Swiss academic from a conference this past weekend.
A week later, The Sun had a change of heart and ran a second piece, describing him as a “hero of young Muslims”. Prof Ramadan came to London and indeed spoke to a large audience on the “Middle Way” at one of London’s largest mosques.
Calderoli: answer Islam with Crusades
“Islam has to be declared illegal until Islamists are prepared to renounce those parts of their pseudo political and religious doctrine glorifying violence and oppression of other cultures and religions. Islam promotes hatred and we now, after having tried the way of love, have to answer with the crusades of western peoples who still remember the battle of Lepanto”, wrote Roberto Calderoli, Northern League coordinator, in an editorial published in the party’s daily newspaper ‘La Padania’.
“Battles are not only won by armies but also by values. Unfortunately we lost those values when we gave up our Christian roots, our identity, our culture. The West is losing its battle. A world condemning Oriana Fallaci and approving a judge who frees terrorists taking them for soldiers has already lost the game. We are facing a real war where the enemy uses terrorism and we answer with flower power. Terrorism cannot be fought by offering peace but only by striking back the same way. Today we’re crying for the victims of London attacks together with their families and we suffer with those wounded, but tomorrow we have to fight back using the same arms.”
Needless to say, this meets with the wholehearted approval of Robert Spencer.
Stephen Pollard aids terrorists
“On Thursday Ken Livingstone gave his response to the murders: ‘It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion.’ He has been greeted with a paean of praise, even from his political opponents. And certainly, his words alone expressed the sentiments of all decent people.
“But with Mr Livingstone, the words alone are never enough…. Mr Livingstone has repeatedly defended the views of the Muslim cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and even invited him to City Hall to share his wisdom. Mr Livingstone has proudly hugged him in public. In doing so, the mayor shows himself to be a keen fellow traveller of a man who can be described with some precision as evil.”
Stephen Pollard joins Nick Cohen et al in playing into the hands of the terrorists by rejecting dialogue with democratic-reformist Islamism.
Campaigners call for action against Islamophobia
Campaigners call for action against Islamophobia
By Louise Nousratpour
Morning Star, 11 July 2005
Peace campaigners called for urgent action against burgeoning Islamophobia in the light of the London bombings after news of a series of hate crimes in and outside the capital yesterday.
The most serious of these incidents was an arson attack on the Shahjalal Mosque in Birkenhead, Merseyside, in the early hours of Saturday morning. The building was empty at the time, but one man living in a flat above the mosque was treated for smoke inhalation at the scene.
Merseyside TUC secretary Alec McFadden said that the trade union movement will not sit in silence over these “fascist and criminal” attacks on innocent people. “We all feared that, following the London attacks, far-right groups would use them to attack innocent Muslim communities”, he added.
Commenting on the arson attack, Mr McFadden said that he was convinced it was the work of fascist BNP members travelling in from neighbouring areas such as Oldham and Burnley. “Our Merseyside Coalition Against Fascism and Racism is very strong and, wherever the BNP raises its ugly head, we are there to stamp it out”, he insisted. Mr McFadden added that the coalition would be getting in touch with Muslim leaders in the area and “taking it from there”.
Islamists condemn terrorist attacks
“The grand imam of Al-Azhar, Sheik Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, condemned the bombers but went further, rejecting the argument that this attack could be justified as an attempt to force Britain out of Iraq. ‘This is illogical and cannot be the motive for killing innocent civilians,’ he said. More striking have been the condemnations from radical groups like Hamas, Hizbullah and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, all of which have denounced the bombings. Many of them have, of course, coupled their attacks on the terrorists with denunciations of American and British policies in the Middle East, particularly regarding Iraq and the Palestinian territories. But that kind of rhetoric is old news. What is new here is the fact that no one, not even Hamas, can continue to condone or even stay silent about these barbarities.”
An article by Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek, quoted favourably by Marc Lynch, who also provides some useful links to fatwas by Qaradawi and other leading figures in the Muslim world condemning al-Qaida.
The message of the Qur’an: a scholar writes
“All non-Muslims must be killed, enslaved and controlled by Muslims. Islam must rule the world. Islam is in fact a License to Kill in the name of Allah. Holy War is the holy law of Islam. This unique law called Jihad gives all Muslims the right to attack and kill non-Muslims, to loot, rape and enslave them, and to rule the world in the name of Allah. Jihad is as essential to Islam as the Resurrection is to Christianity.
“Those who want to know the truth about Islam must also read Hitler’s Mein Kampf and his Speeches. Hitler wrote his Mein Kampf in Landsberg in the Lech prison in 1924. Mein Kampf is popular in Muslim countries – with good reason. A comparison of the texts and ethos prove that their teachings and laws are almost identical to those of Islam. The only difference between Islam and the Nazi regime is that Islam claim to be a religion and this makes it even more dangerous. Islam orders genocide, slavery, the abuse of females and pedophilia.”
Jennifer King expounds the teachings of the Qu’ran.
‘How to lose a war’: Victor Davis Hanson on the failure to confront Islam
The West “has lost confidence in its old commitment to rationalism, free speech and empiricism, and now embraces the deductive near-religious doctrines of moral equivalence and utopian pacifism. Al Qaeda’s supporters will say that Thursday’s victims were killed because of Afghanistan or Iraq. Westerners will duly repeat the dull refrain that ‘Bush lied, thousands died’ in their guilt-ridden search for something we did to cause this.
“And so, rather than focus our attention on the madrassas and the mosques that preach hatred, we will strive to learn more about Islamic culture, as if our own insensitivity were the true culprit. Our grandfathers could despise Bushido – Japan’s warrior cult – without worrying whether they were being unfair to Buddhists; we of less conviction and even less courage, cannot do likewise.”
Victor Davis Hanson laments the failure of the West to confront Islam.