More fascist support for MFE

Posted on by Bob Pitt

toonophobia“Voltaire” – i.e. Peter Risdon of the “March for Free Expression” – has launched a new blog called Toonophobia. The definition it offers of the term is a parody of the 8-point Runnymede Trust definition of Islamophobia. Yes, positively Wildean in its wittiness, Peter.

Still, Peter has gained one new admirer, who writes: “Previously voltaire has stayed away from giving the impression that muslims are wrong in any way. Could this be the begginings of a tacit acceptance that people who follow a terrorist paedophile who openly raped the wives of his victims after beheading them, might not be the best bedfellows a country could ask for?”

BNP and Me, 30 March 2006

Islam and the West – bridging the gap

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Imam Sajid believes that the media “demonizes Islam”. After the Oklahoma bombing, for instance, the world’s media immediately speculated that a Muslim was responsible, “without checking the facts”. One can understand, therefore, Muslim frustration when tabloid headlines scream about Pakistan’s “Muslim bomb”. Britain’s and America’s nuclear arsenal would hardly be called Judeo-Christian.

But not only the tabloid press are to blame, says Philip Lewis, author of Islamic Britain, who, as advisor to the Bishop of Bradford on interfaith issues, also served on the Runnymede Commission. “We found that it was the quality press who were pumping out bile,” he says.

“Replace the word Muslim with Jew in any story on Muslims and it sounds anti-Semitic. That is Islamophobia,” says Yousif al-Khoei, who runs the al-Khoei educational and religious foundation in London.

For a Change, August/September 1998

Beware the intolerant certainties of European liberals: Islamophobia in Britain

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Beware the intolerant certainties of European liberals

By Trevor Phillips

The Independent, 25 October 1997

The problem with European liberals (small “l”) is their intolerance. They will oppose, to the death, any kind of bigotry but their own. Their capacity to know what is best for others is unlimited, riding roughshod over the fact that people may not choose the same values as most Western Europeans. The famous Voltairean assertion of the right to free speech appears to be limited to precisely that – a defence of a man or woman’s right to say what he or she likes, as long as he or she does nothing about it; at that point, tolerance runs out. Such is the liberals’ certainty that their own version of the world is right that they entertain no doubts at all about condemning others’ traditions, even where adherence to those traditions is the free choice of nearly a billion people worldwide.

This week the civilised, “rationalist” version of liberalism swung into action against Islam. Some people, including Polly Toynbee in these pages, clothed it in an assault on all religious practice, but the issue here is the growth of Islam, and the critique is moving rapidly from being a defence of human rights to a disrespect for others’ beliefs that verges on the racist.

Continue reading →

In defence of Islamophobia: religion and the state

Posted on by Eddie Truman

In defence of Islamophobia: religion and the state

By Polly Toynbee

The Independent, 23 October 1997

I am an Islamophobe. I judge Islam not by its words – the teachings of the Koran as interpreted by those Thought-for-the-Day moderate Islamic theologians. I judge Islam by the religion’s deeds in the societies where it dominates. Does that make me a racist?

For I am also a Christophobe. If Christianity were not such a spent force in this country, if it were powerful and dominant as it once was, it would still be every bit as damaging as Islam is in those theocratic states in its thrall. Christianity remains a lethal weapon in Northern Ireland.

If I lived in Israel, I’d feel the same way about Judaism. Everywhere in the world where religion dominates over the state, that is a bad place to live. Religiophobia is highly rational.

Continue reading →

UK more suspicious of Muslims than America and rest of EU

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Britons are more suspicious of Muslims than Americans and other Europeans, according to a poll for the Financial Times. Only 59 per cent of Britons thought it possible to be both a Muslim and a citizen of their country, a smaller proportion than in France, Germany, Spain, Italy or the US – the other countries polled by Harris Interactive.

The findings suggest that terrorist plots against the UK, including the London bombings of July 7 2005, have hardened British attitudes towards Muslims. Osama Saeed of the Muslim Association of Britain blamed the findings on what he called “a vicious campaign” by the press against the Muslim community.

Finanical Times, 20 August 2007

See also “Religious fault line divides Europeans” in the same issue.

Posted in UK

Hands off BNP ballerina, Gaunt demands

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP ballerina

Target the preachers of hate … not Simone 

By Jon Gaunt

The Sun, 16 January 2007

HOW many times did you want to kick in the TV last night?

I was fuming watching Dispatches about the preachers of hate that New Labour have allowed to infest some mosques in this country and who seem to be free to spread their hatred and religious intolerance among young British Muslims.

I am not saying all Muslims are fanatics, but clearly there are some who must now be regarded as the real enemy within.

However, rather than condemning these religious, fascist nutters and calling for the Government to boot them out, the usual suspects on the Left have been busy getting their knickers in a twist about ONE ballerina, Simone Clarke, who’s joined the BNP.

WHY?

The last time I looked, the BNP was a perfectly legal party in this country.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got no time for the knuckle-dragging boneheads and I wouldn’t vote for the bunch of racists if they were the last party in town.

[That seems a little harsh, Jon. After all, you and the BNP have so much in common. – ed]

But if someone wants to join them then surely, in a modern democracy, that’s their choice. However, the fascists on the Left, led by Ken Livingstone’s 100-grand-a-year race relations adviser, Lee Jasper, have been campaigning to get the dancer sacked.

These people are as bad as the BNP. The way to defeat an argument is by debate, not by shouting down an opinion or forcing someone to hide his or her real beliefs.

But what I always find strange is the deafening silence from right-on, Lefty bigots like Livingstone and Jasper when faced with Muslim fanatics like those exposed last night. They are the real enemy of democracy and our tolerant way of life, not some bird in a tutu.

Lefties treat these Muslim fascists with kid gloves and double standards.

It’s a case of: “Is it because I is Muslim?”

According to the Channel 4 show Blair has even invited some of these preachers to advise him after fellow fanatics slaughtered 52 innocents on 7/7.

For God’s, or Allah’s, sake, Livingstone even used ratepayers’ money to bring some of them to London to spread their peculiar form of tolerance.

Explaining why she joined the BNP, Simone said: “Some of the things they mentioned were the things I think about all the time, mainly mass immigration, crime and increased taxes.”

Simone, whose partner is a Cuban immigrant with a Chinese father, wants tighter border controls and is not in favour of “removing foreigners”.

Does this make her a fascist? Does she deserve the sack for this?

If so, then many of my listeners and readers would be selling The Big Issue too.

The simple, plain, stark facts are that a massive number of people are fed up with this unwanted level of migration into the country and don’t believe that any of the major parties are doing enough about it.

Being against mass immigration is not racist, threatening or dangerous, but allowing people to preach moral, religious and sexual supremacy is.

Anyway, Simone’s views pale into insignificance when compared to the rantings of the sexist, fascist, intolerant fools on display last night. They positively revelled in their extremism and religious intolerance.

They made me sick as they shouted “we Muslims have been ordered to do brainwashing”, “Allah has created the woman deficient, if she doesn’t wear the Hijab we hit her”, “take the homosexual man and throw him off the mountain.”

We should not tolerate fascists who judge people by the colour of their skin, who commit race hate crimes or preach the warped ideology of bigotry and intolerance that was on display in the Dispatches programme.

Race laws should apply to all and we shouldn’t pussyfoot around Muslim fanatics just because they are Muslim. A fascist is a fascist, is a fascist.

On my phone-in on TalkSport, and in my mailbag at The Sun, immigration, along with law and order, are the single biggest issues worrying people.

If the major parties continue to ignore this point and try to keep convincing us that the largest influx of foreigners in our history is good for us then people, even ballerinas who are married to a Cuban-Chinese geezer, are going to continue to turn to the extremist parties.

Luton: sale of site for Shia community centre is suspended following EDL campaign

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Stephen Lennon with anti-mosque placard2Plans to sell a large site in High Town to a Shia Muslim group have been put on ice by Luton Borough Council.

A campaign had been set up against the sale of the Old Drill Hall site by Darren Carroll, a relative of English Defence League leaders Stephen Lennon and Kevin Carroll, who claimed to have collected 1,500 signatures on a petition demanding the site was used for affordable housing.

Luton Borough Council said the site had been originally intended for housing, but economic conditions meant it had to sell the land on the open market.

But yesterday the council said a “change in government policy” had meant it had had to suspend the sale of the site, in which the Shia Masjid-e-Ali group were understood to be the preferred bidder.

The organisation is currently based in Moor Street but wanted to move to the Old Drill Hall and create a community centre, which it said would be open to people of all faiths.

Luton Today, 8 March 2011