“It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.”
MEMRI’s favourite Arab journalist, Abdel Rahman Al-Rashed of the Al-Arabiya news channel, makes his contribution to the rise in anti-Muslim prejudice, and slanders Yusuf al-Qaradawi into the bargain.
Daily Mirror, 6 September 2004
Cf. “Not all terrorists are Muslims & not all Muslims are terrorists”, Islamweb.net, 4 September 2004
“Prominent Muslims – and others – would have incitement to religious hatred rendered an offence in law. The atheist who began this column remains an atheist and cannot, in conscience, support such a notion. Justice and God tend to differ on certain important points. Islamophobia remains a fact, for all that, and it amounts to a declaration of war against some fellow citizens of mine. If they are the enemy within, these days, then so am I, God willing.”
Ian Bell writing in the Sunday Herald, 5 September 2004
“It could hardly be more embarrassing: the British Council, charged with promoting British values throughout the world, is forced to fire a senior press officer this week after he penned an extraordinary series of attacks on Islam.
“For those who doubt the very concept of Islamophobia, the columns of Will, aka Harry, Cummins in the Sunday Telegraph should be a set text. His brand of virulent paranoia combines racism – ‘all Muslims, like all dogs, share certain characteristics’ – with a particularly vicious aggression – the massacres in Bosnia were ‘more a tribute to (Muslims’) incompetence than their humanity’.
“This is very nasty stuff and one wouldn’t want to give it more space in another newspaper but for the fact that there is still a well-meaning, but fatally blind strand of opinion which refuses to accept the phenomenon of Islamophobia. Refuses to see how it represents a mutated form of racism, and refuses to see how such comments about Jews or blacks would be quite rightly regarded as unprintable.
“What makes the Cummins case so disturbing is that he didn’t lurk in the backroom of British National party offices, writing Nick Griffin’s speeches. No, he was at the very heart of a quintessential British institution. It exposes, in a way which can no longer be denied, how deep the worm of Islamophobia has crawled.”
Madeleine Bunting in the Guardian, 4 September 2004
“Two weeks ago I heard Condoleezza Rice say, ‘We must expand dramatically our efforts to support and encourage the voices of moderation and tolerance and pluralism within the Muslim world.’ Yet, such a person, Swiss Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan, slated to teach at Notre Dame this fall, was denied entry to the United States by the Department of Homeland Security.”
Diana Eck in the Boston Globe, 4 September
“The secularist arguments behind the hijab ban in France amount to nothing more than a denial of freedoms of expression and choice. Those who look upon the hijab with disdain will now feel at liberty to abuse those who wear it, given that the state legitimises their feelings. This state oppression will alienate the Muslim population in France. It will result in Muslim women being stigmatised. Secular fundamentalism is as abhorrent as religious extremism.”
Yasmin Ataullah writing in the Guardian, 3 September 2004
“In the West he may be deplored as an extremist, but in the Middle East he is no less condemned for his demand that Christians and Jews be respected.”
The British Council sacked a senior officer yesterday after investigating allegations that he wrote articles in The Sunday Telegraph that criticised Islam.
The government-funded body, which promotes cultural relations, said that it had dismissed an employee, believed to be Harry Cummins, a long-serving press officer. The investigation followed the publication of four articles written under the pseudonym Will Cummins.
In the pieces, which were attacked by Islamic organisations, Will Cummins said that Muslim voters had a “global jihad agenda”.
In one he said: “Christians are the original inhabitants and rightful owners of almost every Muslim land and behave with a humility quite unlike the menacing behaviour we have come to expect from the Muslims who have forced themselves on Christendom.”
The British Council has distanced itself from the content of the articles. “From the British Council point of view, it has been a pretty distressing and damaging period and we are still digesting the consequences,” a spokesman said.
The Sunday Telegraph declined to comment.
Britain’s largest Muslim group called yesterday for the sacking of the Sunday Telegraph newspaper’s editor over a series of articles attacking “the black heart of Islam”.
The author of four opinion pieces in the traditionally conservative newspaper described Islam as a “supranationalist army and state” and compared Muslims to dogs.
A media hunt for the author, who penned his views under a pseudonym, led to the communications office in London of the British Council, a state-funded body that aims to promote British culture abroad.
The British Council said yesterday it had sacked the author of the articles, Harry Cummins. The MCB, an umbrella body for over 400 Muslim groups, called for the Telegraph Group to follow suit by sacking editor Dominic Lawson.
“We are dismayed that the Telegraph Group have yet to take any action against the editor of the Sunday Telegraph,” said the MCB’s Abdul Bari in a statement.
One article said Britain feared Islam. “It is the black heart of Islam, not its black face, to which millions object,” Cummins wrote.
A law banning Islamic headscarves and other religious symbols from French state schools came into effect on Thursday, the first day of term.
“It is mind-boggling that some are still ignoring the facts and falling for the smooth double language of a dangerous fanatic.”
Olivier Guitta in The American Thinker, 1 September 2004