Interview with Tariq Ramadan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

SIThere’s an interesting interview with Tariq Ramadan in the current edition of the French journal Socialisme International. Among other issues, Professor Ramadan deals with the media bias against him, the hostility he provokes among a section of the far left, Islamophobia and racism, relations between Muslims and the left, and his views on Malcolm X and Karl Marx.

Socialisme International, Spring 2005

The journal is not available online but subscription details can be obtained from their website or from John Mullen at john.mullen@wanadoo.fr

Because of the prominent role he has played in the European Social Forum, Tariq Ramadan has been a controversial figure on the French left. Catherine Samary mounted a vigorous defence of Ramadan’s participation in the 2003 ESF (see here and here), though her article does not pretend to offer an overall evaluation of Ramadan’s ideas and political engagement.

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‘Islam’s double standard’ poses ‘threat to United States’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Islamic countries apply a double standard when it comes to the treatment of ‘holy books’ and people who differ in faith and practice from Islamic dogma. While Islamic groups in the United States are engaged in ‘sensitivity training’ sessions for non-Muslims that have included federal workers, the Ohio National Guard and U.S. Air Force Academy, there are no such training sessions directed at Muslims to teach them tolerance for non-Islamic faiths. Quite the contrary.

“While the slightest verbal or physical slight of any Muslim in America is immediately condemned by activist groups and sometimes the U.S. government, the denigration of Jews and Christians throughout much of the Islamic world is theological and political business as usual. Jews are regularly referred to as ‘apes and pigs’, mostly because that is what the Koran calls them…. To accept this Islamic double standard creates a significant threat to the United States.”

Cal Thomas at Townhall.com, 2 June 2005

Desecrating the Qur’an: The straw that broke the camel’s back

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Some non-Muslims are asking: ‘Why are Muslims so upset about the desecration of the Qur’an while there were no protests when their own fellow Muslims were being tortured and killed?’ There are several responses. First, the Qur’an is a sacred book because it is the Word of God; therefore, it is natural to be outraged by its desecration. Second, of course Muslims are also distressed and outraged by the torture and killing of their fellow sisters and brothers. Third, I believe that the desecration of the Qur’an was the catalyst for protests by Muslims all over the world because after the deaths of thousands of civilians in Palestine, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Iraq, the exposure of the Abu Ghraib pictures and the revelations of torture in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay by American soldiers, in my opinion, the desecration of the Qur’an was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Bint Adam writes. Islam Online, 2 June 2005

Club removes drink firm logo for ‘Muslim jerseys’

Posted on by Eddie Truman

rfcIt’s not often that this member of the Islamophobia Watch collective can be heard praising Rangers Football Club but we’ve got to hand it to them for providing their supporters with the option of buying replica kit without their sponsor’s logo.

This has been done in direct response to Muslim fans of Rangers who didn’t want to be seen promoting alcohol.

Osama Saeed, Scottish spokesperson for the Muslim Association of Britain, made an excellent point in broadening out the issue of alcohol saying:

“Muslims are prohibited from selling, serving and promoting alcohol so this has been a difficult issue for Muslim fans of Rangers for many years.

“We do welcome the move by Rangers but there are wider issues of whether it’s responsible for football clubs to be promoting alcohol in this way.

“I would imagine other non-Muslims would not want their children particularly wearing alcohol branding.”

The story has had wide coverage in Scotland. See Press Association and Glasgow Evening Times.

Bush says Amnesty report ‘absurd’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

US President George Bush has dismissed as “absurd” an Amnesty International report that said the US was setting back the cause of human rights. The human rights group described the US Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba as “the gulag of our time”. There have been allegations that guards at the camp had desecrated the Koran, prompting protests in Muslim countries. But Mr Bush said on Tuesday: “The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world.”

BBC News, 31 May 2005

Earlier, US general Richard Myers has described Amnesty’s report as “absolutely irresponsible”. How do you handle people who … who aren’t part of a nation-state effort, that are picked up on the battlefield … that if you release them, or if you let them go back to their home countries, that would turn right around and try to slit our throats, our children’s throats?” he said.

BBC News, 30 May 2005

Cf. the evidence of former US Sgt Erik Saar who stated that, of the 600 prisoners held at Guantánamo, no more than a few dozen were “hardcore terrorists”. He added: “The US Government portrays Guantánamo as a place where we are sending the worst of the worst, but this is not true. Guantánamo … set a precedent in labelling people as enemy combatants, blurring the line between right and wrong. You can see it as the seed that may well have led to the naked human pyramids in Abu Ghraib.”

BBC News, 9 May 2005

Still, Michelle Malkin has read Saar’s account of abuse at Guantánamo, and declares herself impressed by “just how restrained, and sensitive to Islam – to a fault, I believe – the officials at the detention facility have been”.

Townhall.com, 1 June 2005

For Amnesty’s reply to Bush, see here.

Work order for anti-Islamic arsonists

Posted on by Bob Pitt

AMSTERDAM — Den Bosch Court sentenced on Wednesday five teenage boys to community work orders and suspended jail terms for arson attacks at an Islamic school and mosque in Uden last year.

The Bedir primary school was completely destroyed when it was torched on 9 November last year, while the arson attack at the mosque three days earlier failed to set fire to the building. A makeshift fire bomb was used in both attacks and police arrested several VMBO pre-vocational high school students on 20 November.

The two oldest suspects, 16 and 17, were convicted of the attempted arson attack at the mosque. Three suspects – aged 14, 15 and 16 – set fire to the school. The attack at the school was condemned nation-wide.

Both crimes were part of a series of retaliatory attacks against Islamic targets in the days after the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a suspected Islamic militant on 2 November 2004.

Expatica, 1 June 2005

Muslims urged to denounce terror

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim communities must “shout out” against violent terrorists who “tarnish their religion”, former Nato secretary general Lord Robertson has said. But Muslim Council of Britain secretary general Iqbal Sacranie told BBC News: “British Muslims have repeatedly made clear they condemn acts of terrorism absolutely. Islam categorically forbids the taking of innocent lives.”

It was “odd” Lord Robertson had made this “surprising and unfortunate” call to Muslims rather than to the countries continuing the “illegal war against Iraq … in defiance of world opinion”, Mr Sacranie added. “This war has killed thousands of civilians and given rise in Iraq to the terrible crimes Lord Robertson wants us all to condemn.”

BBC News, 1 June 2005

Discover the terrorist-supporting commies

Posted on by Bob Pitt

guantanamo-bay“The detention facilities at Guantánamo, including Camp X-ray and Camp Delta, were constructed specifically to house individuals apprehended in the war on terror. Enemy combatants held at the camp must be foreign nationals who have either received training from al Qaeda, or who have been in command of 300 or more military personnel. They are among the world’s most brutal and committed Islamist enemies of the United States. By incarcerating and interrogating them, the U.S. hopes to gain crucial intelligence that could thwart future terrorist attacks against America and to keep them from returning to the terror war against the United States.”

Well, that’s reassuring. Thank God for Discoverthenetworks.org, is all I can say. They also provide a useful exposé of the Guantánamo Human Rights Commission, succinctly defined as a “human rights group committed to defending Islamic jihadists captured on the field of battle in Afghanistan and being detained at Guantánamo Bay”.

The piece continues: “The GHRC was founded by actress Vanessa Redgrave, a Trotskyite with a venomous hostility towards the state of Israel, and her brother, actor Corin Redgrave. A founder of the Marxist Party and a supporter of the Communist Workers Revolutionary Party, Ms. Redgrave has a long history of supporting terrorists…. GHRC co-founder Corin Redgrave is also a committed Communist and an apologist for terrorists.”

Discoverthenetworks.org, 1 June 2005

Discoverthenetworks deserve credit for exposing this plot against the free world. As a glance at its website reveals, the Guantánamo Human Rights Commission includes among its sponsors such notorious figures as Peter Bottomley, Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP, Margaret Drabble, the Bishop of Oxford and other well-known supporters of Islamist terrorism.

BNP condemns Muslim mayor

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The world’s largest religion is now number one faith in Greater Manchester. This is the conclusion which could be drawn from last weekend’s distinctly non-British spectacle when the city’s first Islamic Mayor was inaugurated in the city chambers.

“The ceremony on May 22nd appeared as if would be more suitable at home in the Middle East or Pakistan, than Britain’s third largest city. The swearing in of mayor Afzal Khan took place against a background chanting of ‘Tala Al-Badru Alayna’ sung in Arabic and was followed by recitations from the Koran. Only after this clear mark of an alien faith was stamped on the proceedings were prayers said, ‘of other religions’.”

BNP news article, 1 June 2005

Guantánamo torture claims – ‘straight out of the Al-Qaida handbook’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“An al Qaeda handbook preaches to operatives to level charges of torture once captured, a training regime that administration officials say explains some of the charges of abuse at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp…. If captured, the manual states, ‘At the beginning of the trial … the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by state security before the judge. Complain of mistreatment while in prison’.”

Washington Times, 31 May 2005