Fire at Southampton halal food shop treated as arson

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Emdads Halal Food HallA blaze at a Southampton grocery store is being treated as arson, police have confirmed.

The incident at the Emdads Halal Food Hall, on Derby Road, St Mary’s resulted in 18 people being evacuated from their homes.

Residents were woken by an explosion and called the fire brigade around 4.50am, while one man living in a flat above the shop told how he was forced to jump from a first floor window to escape.

An 18-year-old man had arm burns, while another man was taken to hospital for treatment of a back injury and a three-month-old baby was checked for smoke inhalation.

Forensic investigation at the scene has continued today and police are appealing for witnesses.

Daily Echo, 28 January 2011

Liddle replies to Warsi

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Writing the current issue of the Spectator, Rod Liddle takes issue with Baroness Warsi’s criticism of his speech headlined “Islamophobia? Count me in!” Liddle objects that “she hadn’t heard, or read, the speech I made, or asked what I had meant. Condemning a speech solely because of its headline strikes me as being the very apogee of ‘shallow’.” Whereas Liddle’s bigoted ramblings are of course famous for their intellectual depth. So what did he say in his speech at the Evening Standard‘s “Is Islam good for London?” debate in November 2007? Liddle summarises:

My speech expressed a profound dislike of the ideology of Islam because it lends itself to a) homophobia, b) the subjugation of women, c) anti-semitism d) viciousness towards so-called apostates, e) authoritarianism and f) a somewhat medieval approach towards crime and punishment. And then there’s the barbarism of female circumcision, forced marriages and the notion that those who are not Muslims are not quite human, that their lives are worthless. These last three manifestations of Islamic thought are not universally present throughout the Islamic world, for sure. But the ideology facilitates them, offers them a weird sort of legitimacy.

The other manifestations of Islam I noted above, however, are universal within the Muslim world. OK, some Islamic states kill homosexuals while others merely imprison them. Some Islamic states merely loathe Jews, rather than loathing them and demanding their liquidation. Moderate Malaysia will put you in prison and take away your children for giving up your Islamic faith, while hardline Saudi Arabia will kill you. There are gradations of spite, violence, persecution and insecurity within Islam: but what there always is, beyond all doubt, is spite, violence, persecution and insecurity.

I was careful, in that speech to which she refers, to draw a distinction between Islam and Muslims….

You can imagine how it would go down with Britain’s Jewish community if Liddle delivered a speech headlined “Antisemitism? Count me in” in which he quoted bloodcurdling passages from the Torah, listed the atrocities committed by Israel as a self-proclaimed Jewish state and then concluded by observing that he drew a distinction between Judaism and Jews.

See Mehdi Hasan’s response to Liddle on his New Statesman blog.

Flying while Muslim – passenger thrown off plane in Denmark for reading about Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islam in Europe reports that the Scandinavian airline SAS removed Joakim Johansson, a Swedish convert to Islam, from a plane at Copenhagen’s Kastrup airport because he was reading manuscripts about Islam. After being interrogated by police and held in a cell for several hours, Johansson was eventually allowed to board another plane and continue his flight to London. Johansson commented: “I feel terrible that they generalise like this. They seem to think that a religious Muslim is automatically a terrorist.”

Mohamed ElBaradei says Muslim Brotherhood threat is ‘a myth that has been perpetuated and sold by the regime’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Perhaps Paul Goodman should watch it. He might learn something. This is a man who feels entitled to write a long piece at ConservativeHome about the threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood, even though he knows so little about the role of the Ikhwan in Egypt that he thinks “Brotherhood members sit in its parliament as independents”. As anyone with a passing acqaintance with Egyptian politics would be aware, the Ikhwan won 88 Assembly seats in the 2005 elections but in 2010 their presence was reduced to a single seat which they refused to take up in protest at the massive vote-rigging carried out by the Mubarak regime.

Another Gilligan witch-hunt bites the dust

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Andrew Gilligan has a piece in the Sunday Telegraph continuing his campaign against ENGAGE.

Alas for Gilligan, it seems that the campaign isn’t going well. Kris Hopkins and Greville Janner, who buckled in the face of a witch-hunt initiated by Gilligan (“Islamists establish a bridgehead in Parliament”) and taken up by Paul Goodman and Martin Bright, and announced that they would recommend that the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia should remove ENGAGE from its position as the group’s secretariat, finally got round to consulting other members of the APPG. They found that their proposal to remove ENGAGE has no support. Gilligan reports:

Kris Hopkins, Tory MP for Keighley, and the Labour peer Lord Janner, quit the new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia after failing to persuade their colleagues to sack a body called iEngage as the group’s secretariat.

iEngage, also known as Engage, is an organisation of Islamist sympathisers which has repeatedly defended extremists. Last year, it called on the Government to revoke a ban on a hardline foreign preacher who has said that “every Muslim should be a terrorist”.

The pass allows Mrs Bunglawala to enter Parliament without having to go through security checks and mix freely with ministers and MPs. It gives her the right to invite guests and to use Commons facilities. There is no suggestion that Mrs Bunglawala has been involved in any act of terrorism.

No, there’s just the weasel-worded accusation from Gilligan that ENGAGE supports extremists who advocate terrorism and that Shenaz Bunglawala represents some sort of security threat.

Gilligan isn’t meeting with much success in his self-appointed role as witchfinder general of Islamists, is he? Last year, you may recall, he intervened in the Tower Hamlets mayoral election to launch an attack on Lutfur Rahman, portraying him as a pawn of “Islamic fundamentalists” at the East London Mosque. The result was that Lutfur was elected as an independent candidate with a huge majority.

The moral for Muslims seems to be that if you want to win broad support, your best bet is to have Gilligan launch a campaign of baseless slander against you.

Islamophobia: does Labour measure up?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Labour Briefing masthead

Does Labour measure up?

By Bob Pitt

Labour Briefing, February 2011

“The Islamophobia Myth” – that was the title of an influential article by Kenan Malik published in the February 2005 issue of Prospect magazine. It argued that violence, hatred and discrimination against Muslims were at a very low level and that the threat of Islamophobia had been invented or at least greatly exaggerated, mainly by religious leaders hoping to suppress legitimate criticisms of their beliefs and to enhance their own status as community representatives. Malik’s thesis was welcomed in some quarters at the time, including among sections of the left.

Six years on, far fewer people would buy that argument. Hostility towards Muslims and their faith has reached such a pitch that to deny this represents a major threat is simply untenable. When the racist hooligans of the English Defence League take to the streets in towns and cities across the UK brandishing placards with slogans such as “We will never submit to Islam”, chanting “Burn a mosque down” and on occasion breaking through police lines to rampage through Muslim areas smashing shop windows and assaulting passers-by, who could seriously claim that Islamophobia is a myth?

Continue reading →

Dearborn, Michigan: man arrested over attempted terrorist attack on Islamic centre

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A California man is in jail on a terrorism charge after he was arrested in Dearborn for allegedly trying to blow up the biggest mosque in metro Detroit, Dearborn officials said today.

The suspect was arrested in the parking lot of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn on Monday, while hundreds were inside the mosque that sits along Ford Rd., police said. He came to the city because of its large Arab-American and Muslim population, police said.

Roger Stockhman, 63, was arraigned Wednesday on one count on a threat of terrorism or false report and one count of explosive-possession of bombs with unlawful intent for possession of Class C fireworks, Dearborn Police said. “He’s very dangerous,” Dearborn Police Chief Ron Haddad told the Free Press. “We took his threat to be very serious.”

Haddad said the man was previously known to law enforcement officials in other parts of the country. “He’s had a long history of being angry with the United States government,” Haddad said.

Stockhman, in jail on a $500,000 bond, drove from California to Dearborn and was caught with a car packed with high-end fireworks. The FBI has been notified about the incident, Haddad said. “He picked Dearborn as a stop because of the huge Arab and Muslim population,” Haddad said.

Dearborn has the highest concentration of Arab-Americans in the U.S. and has garnered increased attention in recent years as a center of Islam.

Haddad said that a witness said that Stockhman was planning to blow up the mosque. The suspect “appeared to be acting alone,” Haddad said. “His threat has been mitigated.”

A preliminary examination is set for Friday before Judge Mark Sommers in 19th District Court in Dearborn, police said.

The Islamic Center was holding a funeral at the time the suspect was found in the parking lot, with up to 700 people inside. But the suspect doesn’t appear to have known about the funeral, Haddad said.

Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly said the suspect “had a lot of high end fireworks. It was the max you could buy legally.” They were not “conventional explosives,” O’Reilly said. “But at that level, those things misused are terrific weapons.”

Dawud Walid, director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said “we thank law enforcement authorities for their quick and professional actions in this troubling incident.”

Detroit Free Press, 30 January 2011

See also CAIR news release, 30 January 2011

Sikhs Against the EDL backs ‘Love Leicester, Hate Racism’ demonstration

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sikhs Against EDL (2)

Sikhs Against the EDL press release

The racist and fascist EDL want to march in Leicester this Saturday, 4th February, to spread their racist poison.

To counter their unwanted presence and to stop them intimidating the local communities the antiracists will also take to the streets on the same day.

This is the second time in less than two years that the EDL thugs want to stir up racism and divisions among the city’s diverse community. Last time when they showed up in October 2010, they caused much violence and disruption.

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Douglas Murray welcomes the EDL as ‘a grassroots response from non-Muslims to Islamism’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

On 26 January the Worker-Communist Party of Iran’s front organisation, One Law for All, held a seminar at Conway Hall in London under the title “Enemies not Allies”, the purported aim of which was to repudiate both far-right organisations who use opposition to Islam to promote hatred of Muslims and also left-wingers who have worked with Islamists to resist racism and imperialist war. As the publicity for the seminar put it: “Bigots and neo-Nazis feigning to campaign for rights… ‘anti-racist’ groups promoting fascism… ‘anti-war’ rallies run by supporters of terrorism and dictatorship… Enough!”

The rejection of “bigots and neo-Nazis feigning to campaign for rights” didn’t go down too well with one of the platform speakers, however. Douglas Murray, Director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, couldn’t see why it was wrong for more mainstream right-wing Islamophobes such as himself to express solidarity with the likes of the EDL. As Murray put it:

“The English Defence League when they started protesting had banners saying things like ‘Sharia law discriminates against women’, ‘Sharia law is anti-gay’. Well I’m good with both of those sentiments, I’m sure most people in this room are. If you’re ever going to have a grassroots response from non-Muslims to Islamism that would be how you’d want it, surely.”

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Latest issue of Arches Quarterly – out now

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Arches Winter 2010Arches Quarterly – Volume 4 Edition 7

Latest Issue – Islamophobia and Anti Muslim Hatred

The Cordoba Foundation presents its Winter 2010 edition of Arches Quarterly, a journal providing nuanced analysis of the issues and developments in the arena of dialogue, civilizations, and a rapprochement between Islam and the West.

In this edition, Arches Quarterlyresponds to the rising levels of anti-Muslim hatred across the globe. Commonly referred to as “Islamophobia”, contributors discuss among other things, conceptual challenges posed by the term, the location of it in the racial imperial-colonial matrix and by providing examples from across the world, show that it is a reality in today’s climate. The issue also explores the responsibility of Muslim civil society to combat internal and external challenges.

In this edition:

Islamophobia and Terrorism: Impediments to the Culture of Peace — Prof Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu

Contemporary Islamophobia Before 9/11: A Brief History — Dr Chris Allen

Islamophobia and Hispanophobia: How They Came Together in the Euro-American Imagination — Walter D. Mignolo

Islamophobia & Anti-Semitism: History and Possibility — Rabbi Reuven Firestone

Islamophobia, Mimetic Warfare and the Bugaboo of Shari’a Compliance: Counter-Strategies for Common Ground – Dr Robert D. Crane

The New McCarthyism in Europe — Liz Fekete

Sweden and Anti-Muslim Hysteria — Kristoffer Larsson

Sole Protector, of What? Unpacking Turkey’s Anti-Muslim Policies — Dr Merve Kavakci Islam

Will Europe Surrender to Selective Racism? An Interpretative Model of a Worsening Phenomenon — Hossam Shaker

Muslims in the Polish Media: The New Folk Devil? — Dr Konrad Pedziwiatr

Islamophobia: A Deep-Rooted Phenomenon — Marwan Muhammad

Situating Anti-Muslim Hatred in Contemporary Indian Society —Ram Puniyani

The Defence of Omar Khadr in the Age of Islamophobia — Dennis Edney

Analysing the Growing Scepticism Towards the Idea of Islamophobia — Dr Nasar Meer and Professor Tariq Modood

British Muslim Organisations: The Target of an Orchestrated Neocon Campaign of Denigration — Dr Robert Lambert

South African Muslims Over Three Centuries: From the Jaws of Islamophobia to the Joys of Equality — Ebrahim Rasool

Download Arches Quarterly here

To order a hard copy of Arches, click here