We need protection from the pedlars of religious hatred

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain replies to Charles Moore, in defence of the proposed law banning incitement to religious hatred.

Daily Telegraph, 14 December 2004

Over at Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer is not impressed: “What this law does is make Muslims a protected class, beyond criticism, precisely at the moment when Britain needs to examine, honestly and thoughtfully, the implications of having admitted into the country a large number of people with greater allegiance to the Sharia than to the present British state. The long night for Britain is just beginning.”

Dhimmi Watch, 15 December 2005

Racists in vicious anti-mosque fight

Posted on by Eddie Truman

BNP anti-mosque leaflet SwanseaRacists have launched a vicious hate campaign in Swansea to protest against the opening of a new mosque. Thousands of leaflets have been pushed through letter boxes in the Sandfields area of the city to whip up anti-Muslim sentiment, it is claimed.

The area has been targeted by doorstep campaigners from the British National Party because of plans to open a new mosque in St Helen’s Road. Activists from the party found out about the plan to convert the old St Andrews United Reformed Church from a leading Islamic website.

The building is currently derelict after it was gutted by arsonists two years ago. Conversion into a mosque would save it from being pulled down. Planning permission from the council would not be needed because the building would be retained as a place of worship.

According to the BNP website more than 70 far right extremists have already met in the city to discuss their plan of action. The Post can reveal that only last month party chairman Nick Griffin and the national treasurer John Walker visited the city to canvass the area.

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BNP leader held by police over racist remarks

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Police have arrested the leader of the far-right British National Party after he was secretly filmed calling Islam “a wicked, vicious faith”. The arrest of Nick Griffin, one-time host of French National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, was warmly welcomed by Muslims, some of whom said the government should ban the BNP altogether.

Police arrested Griffin, 45, at his family farmhouse in Wales and took him to West Yorkshire, where officers are conducting a major probe into the activities of BNP members. Griffin, later released on bail until next March, told reporters on Tuesday: “This is an electoral scam to get the Muslim block vote back for the Labour Party.”

Griffin’s arrest came two days after police detained the party’s 70-year-old founding chairman John Tyndall. They have now arrested 12 people on suspicion of incitement to commit racial hatred since the investigation began five months ago. None has been charged.

The police probe was triggered by a BBC documentary, broadcast in July, which included footage of Griffin giving a speech in the northern town of Keighley in which he railed against Islam and its holy book, the Koran. “This wicked, vicious faith has expanded through a handful of cranky lunatics about 1,300 years ago until it’s now sweeping country after country,” he said.

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Turn again, Dick Warrington

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Daniel at Crooked Timber has a thoughtful article on the proposed religious hatred law, even if he comes down against it:

“This is a bad and illiberal Bill, but most of the opposition to it is pretty ill-informed and quite ill-conceived. It’s got nothing to do with giving Abu Hamza the right to censor your every weblog post and everything to do with preserving public order in the United Kingdom. Furthermore, ‘Islamophobia’ is not a fictitious problem in as much as there are quite clearly ‘critiques’ of Islam which are being used as a fig leaf for outright racism and the self-styled defenders of ‘Enlightenment values’ don’t seem to regard this as any problem at all of theirs. In fact, an awful lot of people commenting on this issue don’t appear to be able to keep a decent degree of separation in their own minds between genuine civil liberties issues and just randomly having a go at Muslims for being backward and uncivilised. And if I was a Muslim, I daresay I’d be pretty hacked off at that.”

Crooked Timber, 13 December 2004

 

Daniel Pipes & Bernard Lewis vs. Tocqueville

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.”

Paul Eidelberg quotes Alexis de Tocqueville on Islam and asks: “Can anyone imagine scholars like Bernard Lewis and Daniel Pipes hinting, let alone saying, such a thing today about Muslims?”

Er … well actually, yes.

Foundation for Constitutional Democracy, 10 December 2004

Telegraph: No such thing as Islamophobia

Posted on by Eddie Truman

“In reality, evidence for ‘Islamophobia’ – as distinct from a justified fear of radical Islamist terrorism or a desire to protect our freedoms, institutions and values from those who hold them in contempt – is anecdotal and slight. I have met one ‘Islamophobe’ – the gay gentleman who cuts my hair, which is hardly a firm basis to jettison centuries of hard-won religious give and take.”

Michael Burleigh in the Daily Telegraph, 9 December 2004

Qaradawi’s dangerous ideas

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Abu Aardvark reveals that Yusuf al-Qaradawi has been denounced by Abu Musab al Zarqawi, al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, for his opposition to terrorism.

“Zarqawi’s fury with Qaradawi has received little attention because it doesn’t fit the current storyline – the whole ‘theologian of terror‘ thing – but it does suggest an important development in the real battles taking place in Arab and Muslim public opinion. Qaradawi is dangerous to the likes of Zarqawi, because he is vastly influential, he adamantly rejects his radical, violent, exclusivist vision of Islam and he instead offers a moderate, democratic, but genuinely Islamist alternative.”

See here.