How not to fight ‘campus extremism’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamophobia and anti-Semitism have no place in the university learning environment and universities should exercise due responsibility in protecting students against hate speech and racial or religiously motivated violence. But the histrionics of the debate, captured by the likes of Quilliam, HJS, Student Rights and Prof Anthony Glees, does little to better aid our understanding on the nature and complexity of the problem. Muslim and Jewish students deserve better than to be treated as political footballs or to have their right to free expression curtailed by imagined threats.

ENGAGE responds to an article in the Jewish Chronicle criticising University College London provost Malcolm Grant’s views on campus extremism.

Rita Verdonk leaves politics, recommends supporters to join PVV

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rita Verdonk TONRight-wing populist politician Rita Verdonk is standing down as head of Trots op Nederland (proud of the Netherlands) the political party she founded in 2007, according to media reports on Friday.

TON number two Arthur van der Putte told the Volkskrant Verdonk is standing down. She had been due to announce her decision during a television current affairs show later on Friday evening.

Verdonk set up the party after losing the VVD leadership battle to Mark Rutte and being expelled from the right-wing Liberals. She lost her seat in parliament at the last general election but TON took around 50 seats in the most recent local elections.

Van der Putte said Verdonk had spoken to Geert Wilders, leader of the PVV, and was recommending remaining TON members and councillors switch to supporting the anti-Islam party.

Dutch News, 21 October 2011

JROTC’s headscarf rule keeps girl from parade, spurs bias claim

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Demin ZawityA Ravenwood High School freshman said her Muslim beliefs were put to the test when commanding officers in her Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program told her she couldn’t both wear a headscarf and march in the September homecoming parade.

Demin Zawity, 14, has since quit the JROTC and returned to regular physical education classes, but the Council on American-Islamic Relations sent a letter of complaint to Williamson County Schools Director Mike Looney.

Zawity said she felt like crying when she was told she couldn’t wear the headscarf with her uniform. She’d been wearing it all along, but homecoming marked the first time she was going to wear her JROTC uniform as well. “They were making something that is not such a huge deal into something so dramatic,”she said. “The next day was the parade, and I couldn’t march. If I can’t march, I want it to be because I don’t want to and not because of my religious headwear.”

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On Utøya: new collection of essays analysing Breivik’s terrorist attack

Posted on by Bob Pitt

On UtoyaIn a challenging new book, a collection of Australian and British writers respond to the terrorist attack by Anders Breivik, and attempts by the Right to depoliticise it.

On July 22, 2011, Anders Breivik, a right-wing writer and activist, killed more than sixty young members of the Norwegian Labour Party on Utøya island. Captured alive, Breivik was more than willing to explain his actions as a ‘necessary atrocity’ designed to ‘wake up’ Europe to its betrayal by the left, and its impending destruction through immigration.

Breivik’s beliefs – expressed at length in a manifesto, ‘2083’ – were part of a huge volume of right-wing alarmism and xenophobia that had arisen in the last decade. Yet Breivik, we were told by the Right, was simply a madman – so mad, in fact, that he had actually believed what the Right said: that Europe was in imminent danger of destruction, and extreme action was required.

On Utøya: Anders Breivik, right terror, racism and Europe is a response to this attempt to deny responsibility, and any connection of Breivik’s act to a rising cult of violence, racism, and apocalyptic language. The editors and authors shine a light on Breivik’s actions, and argue that they cannot be understood abstracted from the far Right racist and Islamophobic social and political conditions in which it emerged.

Organised, written and produced within three months of the killings, On Utøya is a challenge to anyone who would seek to portray this event as anything other than it is – a violent mass assassination, directed against the left, to terrorise people into silence and submission to a far-right agenda. It concludes with an examination of the manufacture of hate and fear in Australia, and considers what is needed in a Left strategy to deal with the growing threat of far Right organising.

Edited by Elizabeth Humphrys, Guy Rundle and Tad Tietze, with essays by Anindya Bhattacharyya, Antony Loewenstein, Lizzie O’Shea, Richard Seymour, Jeff Sparrow and the editors.

More details here. Tad Tietze’s essay “Depoliticising Utøya: Anders Breivik as ‘madman'” can be read here.

Tennessee Islamophobes link up with Christian Concern

Posted on by Bob Pitt

COOKEVILLE — Sam Solomon may be an expert on Sharia law – but he doesn’t practice it. Not anymore. And tomorrow, the former Muslim and Islamic jurist from England will be at Tennessee Tech – one of several stops he’s making in Middle Tennessee in the coming days – to share his story of conversion and discuss different aspects of Sharia law, which is the legal system of the Islamic religion.

The conference, which is open to the public and welcomes people of all religious backgrounds and political affiliations, begins at 2 p.m. in the Multi-Purpose Room of the Roaden University Center. A question and answer session will follow.

Also speaking will be English social activist Andrea Williams, who, along with Solomon, works with England’s Christian Concern, an organization that seeks to introduce a Christian voice into law, the media and government. She will lecture on modern liberalism and how multi-culturism, political correctness and Islamization of British society is “destroying our traditional lifestyles and prohibiting an active Christian life.”

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Horowitz and Spencer’s Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Over at National Review Online (of all places) there’s an excellent article by Matt Duss, co-author of the Center for American Progress’s report Fear Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America. It is written in reply to David Horowitz and Robert Spencer’s recent piece denouncing what they claim is an “ugly campaign” to depict them as Islamophobes.

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Q Society organises speaking tour for Robert Spencer in Australia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Q Society announces:

America’s outspoken researcher and bestselling author on Islamism and Jihad has accepted our invitation to Australia. Robert will speak in all major cities between 26 November and 3 December 2011. At this critical time comes a unique opportunity for Australians to gain valuable insights from one of the foremost experts in this field. An issue which now troubles and concerns so many. The key theme for his first Australia tour is Socio-Political Jihad – Conquering the West without Swords, Guns or Bombs.

The Q Society has produced a video in which Spencer announces his imminent arrival in Australia.

For more on the Q Society see here.

Successful conference to defend multiculturalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Defend Multiculturalism conference

Over 400 anti-fascist campaigners came to a conference at the TUC’s congress centre in London last Saturday.

The event was titled Celebrate Diversity, Defend Multiculturalism, Oppose Islamophobia and Racism. It was called by Unite Against Fascism (UAF) and One Society Many Cultures, and sponsored by South East Region TUC (SERTUC). It challenged European politicians’ race to demonise Muslims and immigrants as they try to shift blame for the economic crisis and austerity. Speakers and delegates were united in calling for far-right mobilisations to be met with counter-protests.

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