SWP: A pro-fascist party (say Jim Denham and David T)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

David T at Harry’s Place has discovered (with the assistance of Jim Denham of the AWL) that “the SWP has become a pro-fascist party” – on the grounds that it “has chosen to ally itself with bigots with slightly brown skins”. (No doubt these bigots also cook strange foods and fail to observe Germanic standards of hygiene.) David T explains: “allying itself with organisations – like the MAB – which are essentially theoconservative, if not theocratic, is pro-fascism”.

Bear in mind that Harry’s Place recently featured in a Tribune list of left-wing blogs. And I suppose in a sense that’s an accurate categorisation, because the views expressed there do represent a section of what passes for the left. Just as the pressure of the Cold War stampeded some socialists into a bloc with right-wing anti-communists, the present rise in anti-Muslim hysteria has resulted in certain self-styled leftists losing their bearings and embracing the ideas and arguments of the Islamophobic right.

Harry’s Place, 15 April 2005

Mother defends girl swept up in immigration raid, amid terror claims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The tiny store is more like a corridor off the sidewalk than a shop, and its dangling wares – $3 scarves, trinkets, cellphone covers – shiver each time the subway rumbles by. At the store, in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, a 16-year-old Guinean girl named by the government as a potential suicide bomber helped her father make a living when she was not in school or caring for younger siblings in her family’s apartment in East Harlem, the family says.”

New York Times, 15 April 2005

We must show our opposition to Islam, says Danish queen

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Queen MargretheQueen Margrethe II of Denmark has called on the country “to show our opposition to Islam”, regardless of the opprobium such a stance provokes abroad. Her comments further undermined the image of Denmark as a liberal haven for those seeking a new life in northern Europe.

The Danish government has already been accused of fuelling xenophobia by introducing measures which effectively closed the country to asylum seekers. But in overtly political passages from an official biography published yesterday Queen Margrethe makes comments certain to complicate her nation’s relationship with Muslims.

She said: “We are being challenged by Islam these years – globally as well as locally. It is a challenge we have to take seriously. We have let this issue float about for too long because we are tolerant and lazy.

“We have to show our opposition to Islam and we have to, at times, run the risk of having unflattering labels placed on us because there are some things for which we should display no tolerance. And when we are tolerant, we must know whether it is because of convenience or conviction.”

Daily Telegraph, 15 April 2005

See also “Danish queen says Islam poses global threat”, Islam Online, 15 April 2005

Update:  However, it was later argued that the Queen’s words had been misrepresented by the press and that her comments were directed at “radical Islam”.

See “Media distorted queen’s Islam remarks: Danish Muslim”, Islam Online, 18 April 2005

Al-Qaida ricin plot? Or not?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

After Kamel Bourgass was convicted for his part in an alleged Al-Qaida poison plot, while four other men were acquitted and charges were dropped against a further four, questions were raised as to whether there was in fact any plot at all.

Azad Ali of the Muslim Safety Forum, where top police officers and Muslim leaders discuss terrorism and other issues, said: “The ricin plot was part of government thinking and public justification in bringing in control orders. This will confirm the feeling in the Muslim community that it is being victimised on the basis of intelligence that was not tested in anything like a court, and when it is, it is thrown out.”

Guardian, 14 April 2005

Gareth Peirce, the solicitor for three of those found not guilty, called on the government to justify its claims about an Islamist terror plot: “There was never any ricin, there were no poisons made. There seems to be a pathetic, clumsy, amateurish attempt to make some by a man who was conceded, I think by all, to be a difficult, anti-social loner.”

BBC News, 14 April 2005

Richard Norton-Taylor points out: “The ricin claims were seized on most strikingly by Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, in his dramatic but now discredited speech on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction programme to the UN security council on February 5 2003, five weeks before the invasion. Insisting ‘every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources’, Mr Powell spoke of a ‘sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network’.”

Guardian, 14 April 2005

The Islamic Human Rights Commission noted: “Over 90 arrests were made in the anti-terror sweep that netted the men with 9 charges and only a single conviction. Yet, sensational reporting by the media coupled with almost daily prejudicial statements by the government and security services create an environment of fear which fuels racism and Islamophobia.”

IHRC press release, 13 April 2005

The Telegraph, though, remains convinced there was an Islamist terrorist conspiracy, assisted by lax immigration controls: “An illegal immigrant trained by al-Qa’eda to be one of its top poisoners was jailed for 17 years yesterday for leading a plot to terrorise Britain with ricin and cyanide.”

Daily Telegraph, 14 April 2005

Europe ‘failing to confront growth in racial violence’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

European governments have been accused of complacency and of failing to confront the scale of racist violence after a report by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia said only a handful of nations collected proper information. There was clear evidence “that attacks on Muslim communities increased in the months following 11 September” and some victims were wrongly identified as Muslims.

The Independent, 13 April 2005

See also Islam Online, 14 April 2005

For the EUMC report, see here.

Muslim backlash over war ruffles Blair’s Labour Party in election

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Britain’s Muslim vote and the backlash against the war in Iraq threaten to topple some Labour Party lawmakers, including the foreign secretary, in the May 5 national election. Inayat Bunglawala, the MCB’s media secretary, said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with the controversy swirling around the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, have angered and energized Britain’s 1.8 million Muslims.

Muslim News, 14 April 2005

See also “Livingstone urges British Muslims to vote Labour”, Islam Online, 14 April 2005

And “First hijab-wearing Muslim MP contesting election in Briton”, Kashnar News, 4 April 2004

Posted in UK

Unholy alliance: the ‘peace left’ and the Islamic jihad against America

Posted on by Bob Pitt

David Horowitz and John Perazzo claim that the anti-war movement in the US has allied itself with Islamic terrorism. They present “the first in a series of articles and visual maps describing the unholy alliances that have been formed between American leftists and radical Islam, unlikely allies who have joined efforts to oppose America’s defensive War on Terror and its war of liberation in Iraq. These are mainly (but not exclusively) de facto alliances, much as the Hitler-Stalin Pact was an alliance of convenience based on a common interest”.

Front Page Magazine, 13 April 2003

Now what does that remind me of? Well, it’s almost identical to the nonsense we hear about the left in Britain from Nick Cohen, Harry’s Place et al.