Deal with Wilders comes under fire in VVD

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Prominent members of the conservative VVD party have renewed their criticism of the party’s intended cooperation with the anti-Islam PVV party of Geert Wilders. At a party meeting, senior leaders condemned the populist politician as “repugnant”. Among them were former parliament speaker Frans Weisglas and former cabinet ministers Frits Korthals Altes and Pieter Winsemius.

A majority, however, voiced support for party leader Mark Rutte, who is expected to become the new prime minister of a coalition cabinet with the Christian Democrats (CDA). With the support of the PVV the two parties will have a one-vote majority in parliament. It is not yet clear, however, if two or even more CDA MPs will refuse to support the agreement when the parliamentary party takes a vote next week.

RNW, 2 October 2010

Park51 designs revealed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Park51 design4

Visitors to the upper floors of the Muslim community center planned for near ground zero would walk through lofty spaces – for art exhibitions, for contemplation and prayer, for programs on interreligious dialogue, for a 9/11 memorial – as sunlight streams through irregularly shaped windows between white crisscrossing beams.

That is the image presented in the tentative architectural renderings that the planners of the center, called , have been showing at community meetings in recent weeks, and which were revealed to the wider public for the first time last week.

A sketch of the façade shows a latticework of white starlike designs, echoing patterns that can be seen in Islamic architecture and decorative tiles across the Middle East.

The design was meant to show “hints of tradition,” while the use of modern materials and glass panels would give an impression of translucence and “moving toward the future”, Sharif el-Gamal, the project’s developer, said in an interview last week.

An image of the façade has been in circulation since early this year, but last week the planners revealed renderings of how some interior spaces might look and how the center’s many amenities — including a restaurant, theater, day care center, gym and pool – might be stacked in a building of up to 15 stories.

There would also be a 9/11 memorial and a space open to people of “all faiths and of no faith” for prayer, contemplation and meditation, Mr. Gamal said.

New York Times, 2 October 2010

Over at the New York Post readers offer their views. Some examples:

“Wake up America, we have let the enemy in the gates. Only the return of Jesus Christ can save this doomed planet now. Mayor Bloomburg you self-hating Jew, take a stand AGAINST this travesty.”

“And new Yorkers did nothing. Disgusting.”

“I THINK I AM GONNA BE SICK!!!”

“what a slap in the face to all newyorkers. our city is doomed !”

“To be sure this is nothing more than a camel-humper’s wet dream that is never going to get built, all one has to do is take note of the burqaless, mini-skirted female in the 1st picture accompanying this article. That’s a complete pipedream with absolutely NO basis in muslim reality whatsoever.”

“Peculiar. It looks like the STAR OF DAVID crumbling from the top on down. Imagine that.”

“IF this provocative shaft for target pratice ever gets built, it will be proof that the politically correct idiots of New York have surrendered”

“Perfect place to hide WMD’s”

“‘We want to have a marriage between Islamic architecture and New York City.’ El-Gamal said. Hey… You already got that once, you jerk. It was a giant pile of rubble where the WTC once stood”

“Gee, which floor will house the ‘Muslim Women’s Issues Pavillion’? You know, the room where the forced cl1torectomies will take place? Anyone?”

“shortly after its completion, there will be more reports than you can count of radicals preaching death to infidels and ties to terrorist groups all over the world … as more and more mislams move closer to the mecca mosque, more and more people will move away including wall street taking NY’s brightest minds with them lower manhattan will become a no go zone like many places in europe … it will be a stark and depressing reminder of what happens when multicultural progressives are allowed to vote in your neighborhood”

“Osama Bin Laden and his boys must be very pleased to see a victory mosque rise from one of the buildings they damaged on 9/11”

“NO mosques, NO Muslims, NO exceptions”

“Note the falling Stars of David in the facade. Exactly the intended impression. Three cheers for Bloomberg.”

The rantings of ignorant bigots and anti-Muslim racists? Not according to Pamela Geller who advises her readers: “The comments over at the NY Post are the money.”

More halal hysteria – Mail claims victory over Waitrose

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Britain Goes Halal headline

Waitrose is to introduce a range of non-halal lamb products as a  response to customers’ concerns about its meat supplies. Until now, all lamb sold by the store has been slaughtered in accordance with Islamic law, with a Muslim reciting a prayer in Arabic over the meat. But Waitrose said last night that, from now on, organic Welsh lamb from its Duchy Originals range – established by Prince Charles to market produce from his estates – will no longer be halal.

Waitrose said they made their decision in order to give customers “more choice”. But their reversal of policy comes a week after The Mail on Sunday revealed how most British supermarkets were secretly selling halal meat – especially lamb – without telling customers.

The investigation found that most New Zealand lamb sold in major British supermarkets was halal, meaning that the prayer “In the name of Allah, who is the greatest” is said at the time of slaughter. Stores selling lamb slaughtered according to Islamic law included Waitrose, Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury’s.

After inquiries by The Mail on Sunday last week, Waitrose said: “We have decided to offer our customers an option to buy lamb which has not received the halal blessing.” Waitrose said that all their other lamb produced in the UK and New Zealand will continue to be halal without being described as such on the packaging.

Patricia Dunton, 67, from Totteridge, North London, said she had been shopping in Waitrose for more than 30 years. Speaking before the Waitrose announcement, she said: “As a devout Christian, I won’t buy Duchy Originals lamb ever again, and I won’t buy lamb from Waitrose. I don’t like the fact that an Islamic prayer has been said over it. It should have been labelled so that I know what I am buying.”

Mail on Sunday, 3 October 2010

This is the third weekend in succession that the Mail has pursued its campaign against halal meat. See here and here.

Wilders’ Berlin speech

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Here are some extracts from Geert Wilders’ speech in Berlin on 2 October:

Germany’s national identity, its democracy and economic prosperity, is being threatened by the political ideology of Islam. In 1848, Karl Marx began his Communist Manifesto with the famous words: “A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of communism.” Today, another specter is haunting Europe. It is the specter of Islam. This danger, too, is political. Islam is not merely a religion, as many people seem to think: Islam is mainly a political ideology….

The American political scientist Mark Alexander writes that “One of our greatest mistakes is to think of Islam as just another one of the world’s great religions. We shouldn’t. Islam is politics or it is nothing at all, but, of course, it is politics with a spiritual dimension … which will stop at nothing until the West is no more, until the West has … been well and truly Islamized.” …

A dispassionate study of the beginnings of Islamic history reveals clearly that Muhammad’s objective was first to conquer his own people, the Arabs, and to unify them under his rule, and then to conquer and rule the world. That was the original cause; it was obviously political and was backed by military force. “I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god but Allah’,” Muhammad said in his final address. He did so in accordance with the Koranic command in sura 8:39: “Fight them until there is no more dissension and the religion is entirely Allah’s.” …

“After Muhammad’s death, based upon his words and deeds, Islam developed Sharia, an elaborate legal system which justified the repressive governance of the world by divine right – including rules for jihad and for the absolute control of believers and non-believers. Sharia is the law of Saudi Arabia and Iran, among other Islamic states…. Under Sharia law people in the conquered territories have no legal rights, not even the right to life and to own property, unless they convert to Islam….

In 1954, in his essay Communism and Islam, Professor Bernard Lewis spoke of “the totalitarianism, of the Islamic political tradition”. Professor Lewis said that “The traditional Islamic division of the world into the House of Islam and the House of War …  has obvious parallels in the Communist view of world affairs…. The aggressive fanaticism of the believer is the same.”

The American political scientist Mark Alexander states that the nature of Islam differs very little – and only in detail rather than style – from despicable and totalitarian political ideologies such as National-Socialism and Communism….

Politicians from almost all establishment [parties] today are facilitating Islamization. They are cheering for every new Islamic school, Islamic bank, Islamic court. They regard Islam as being equal to our own culture. Islam or freedom? It does not really matter to them. But it does matter to us. The entire establisment elite – universities, churches, trade unions, the media, politicians – are putting our hard-earned liberties at risk. They talk about equality, but amazingly fail to see how in Islam women have fewer rights than men and infidels have fewer rights than adherents of Islam.

Are we about to repeat the fatal mistake of the Weimar Republic? Are we succumbing to Islam because our commitment to freedom is already dead? No, it will not happen….

Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky argues that after the fall of communism, the West failed to expose those who had collaborated with the Communists by advocating policies of détente, improved relations, relaxation of international tension, peaceful coexistence….

Islam is the Communism of today. But, because of our failure to come clean with Communism, we are unable to deal with it, trapped as we are in the old Communist habit of deceit and double-speak that used to haunt the countries in the East and that now haunts all of us. Because of this failure, the same leftist people who turned a blind eye to Communism then, turn a blind eye to Islam today. They are using exactly the same arguments in favor of détente, improved relations, and appeasement as before….

We must realize that Islam expands in two ways. Since it is not a religion, conversion is only a marginal phenomenon. Historically, Islam expanded either by military conquest or by using the weapon of hijra, immigration. Muhammad conquered Medina through immigration. Hijra is also what we are experiencing today. The Islamization of Europe continues all the time. But the West has no strategy for dealing with the Islamic ideology, because our elites say that we must adapt to them rather than the other way round….

My friends, when Ronald Reagan came to a divided Berlin 23 years ago he uttered the historic words “Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall”. President Reagan was not an appeaser, but a man who spoke the truth because he loved freedom. Today, we, too, must tear down a wall. It is not a wall of concrete, but of denial and ignorance about the real nature of Islam.

Torygraph discovers three – yes, three – schools in which pupils wear the niqab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Hundreds of girls are bring forced by British schools to wear the Islamic veil in a move which has been heavily criticised by mainstream Muslims”, the Sunday Telegraph reports.

And who are these “mainstream Muslims”? Yes, as you might expect, the two men asked for their opinions on the subject are Ed Husain and Taj Hargey.

Husain is quoted as saying: “It is absurd that schools are enforcing this outdated ritual – one that which sends out a damaging message that Muslims do not want to fully partake in British society. Although it is not the government’s job to dictate how its citizens dress, it should nonetheless ensure that such schools are not bankrolled or subsidised by the British taxpayer.”

Hargey says: “This is very disturbing and sets a dangerous precedent. It means that Muslim children are being brainwashed into thinking they must segregate and separate themselves from mainstream society. The use of taxpayers’ money for such institutions should be absolutely opposed.”

But the three schools the Telegraph identifies are all fee-paying private schools, none of which receives state funding. The accusation about the use of taxpayers’ money hinges exclusively on Tower Hamlets council having sold one of the named schools its premises in 2008 at below the property’s then market value. As the Telegraph admits, this was because the price had been agreed in 2004 when the market value was lower.

As for causing divisions between non-Muslims and Muslims, scaremongering articles like this – and irresponsible comments by malicious and unrepresentative attention-seekers like Ed Husain and Taj Hargey – have a far more damaging impact than the sight of veil-wearing pupils entering the gates of a few socially and religiously conservative Muslim schools.

Update:  Predictably, the story has been picked up by the Daily Express (“British girls forced to wear burkhas as part of school uniform”) and the Daily Mail (“The British Muslim schools where EVERY pupil is forced to to wear the veil – and Ofsted inspectors have approved them”). The Mail chips in with an editorial that accuses the schools of being “committed to secrecy and complete isolation from the rest of society” and opines that the situation “should be deeply disturbing to anyone concerned about racial harmony and social cohesion”.

Democrat backs Muslims’ right to cemetery

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sidney grave site

The former Democratic opponent of the town supervisor who wants a Muslim group to dig up two bodies they buried on private property says she thinks the reaction might have been different if the group wasn’t Islamic.

“I do wonder what the reaction would have been if a different group of people had owned the property,” Dawn Rivers Baker, Chair of the Town of Sidney Democratic Committee, told TPMMuckraker.

Baker ran against Bob McCarthy, the now-town supervisor for the village of Sidney, NY. He said in an interview earlier this week that the controversy over the town’s decision to consult a lawyer on whether they could have the Muslim Osmanli Naksibendi Hakkani Sufi Order dig up the graves located in town was ginned by the the “liberal media.”

“It’s kind of weird for me to be sitting here espousing property rights when I’m the Democrat and he’s the Republican, but it’s private property,” Baker said. “And it’s not even like these little private cemeteries are even unusual in rural areas because they’re not, because it’s not illegal, they’re not bothering anybody, and I don’t know why the town board has to bother them.”

The Muslim group is well liked and people don’t have a problem with the Muslim group, Baker said.

“There’s not a whole lot in the way of racial diversity here in Sidney, and there are certainly some people who are unpleasant about that, about race. It’s not a perfect place,” Baker said. “But at the same time, I know that I haven’t had any crosses burned on my lawn since I moved up here.”

Baker said that there were some initial plans to stage a protest at the next town board meeting, and Baker said she has heard the board is talking about moving the date or postponing the meeting because they want to avoid a media circus.

She said there are a lot of people concerned that the town is getting a bad rap because of the controversy. Stephen Colbert even joked this week about Sidney residents being scared of “Muslim vampires” in “sleeper-in-coffin” cells.

“They would very much like to set the record straight and let the world know, ‘Well the town supervisor might be a jerk, but the rest of us aren’t’,” Baker said.

TPM, 1 October 2010

Israel: Kadima MK proposes ‘banning the burqa’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A member of the current Knesset is proposing a law that would prohibit the wearing of any garment that obscures the face and prevents identification, in any government office, at any entertainment venue, and on any means of public transportation. According to the legislator proposing the law, Kadima MK Marina Solodkin, its primary purpose is to liberate women from irrational religious restrictions. The bill mainly targets devout Muslims.

Solodkin explained, “This past Passover vacation I was in southern France. And in this French province, I saw for myself, women in full burqa. I said, enough! For me, as a former Soviet citizen and believing Jew, I will never allow it in Israel.”

Solodkin continued, “When I followed the campaign in France, I started asking questions. But not questions about why the ban on the burqa was being proposed. Rather, I asked why it was not proposed beforehand! So late… Where were the Western liberals when they saw what was going on in their own countries, to their own citizens?”

Two days after France’s lower house of parliament banned the burqa, Solodkin proposed her own anti-burqa bill to the Israeli Knesset.

Haaretz, 2 October 2010

Wilders to address right-wing rally in Berlin today

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dutch politician Geert Wilders, known for his antagonism towards Islam, is to speak at an event in Berlin Saturday organised by a new right-wing party.

Die Freiheit (Freedom) party was founded in September by Rene Stadkewitz, another Islam-critic and a former member of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU).

In Berlin early Saturday, police erected barricades aroundthe Hotel Berlin where the event is due to take place, with left-wing groups – under the banner of “Send Geert Wilders Home” – having announced a counter demonstration.

The event comes as fears grow in German mainstream political parties of the emergence of a new anti-immigration, anti-Islam right wing movement.

DPA, 2 Otober 2010

Dutch Christian Democrats vote in favour of Wilders-backed coalition

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A majority of Dutch Christian Democrats have voted in support of forming a coalition government backed in parliament by Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam Freedom Party (PVV). At a party conference, 68 percent voted in favour of cooperation with the PVV, 32 percent against. A record 4,500 members attended the gathering.

The Christian Democrats intend to form a minority coalition with the right-wing VVD with parliamentary support by the PVV.

A number of prominent Christian Democrats spoke out against any form of cooperation with the PVV. They include two former prime ministers, past and present cabinet ministers and two current MPs. They argued that the PVV discriminates people for their religion and skin colour whereas the CDA aims to bring people together.

A definitive vote on the coalition agreement will be taken next week by the CDA parliamentary party. Under the constitution, MPs are free to vote without any constraints. It is not yet clear how two MPs who voted against the coalition agreement at the party conference will vote when the vote is taken by the parliamentary party.

RNW, 2 October 2010

See also Reuters, 2 October 2010

Wilders delivers anti-Islam speech in Berlin

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In a speech in Berlin Saturday, Dutch far-right lawmaker Geert Wilders said Germany needed a political party that could defend against what he called the dangers of Islam. His visit sparked angry protests.

Populist Dutch politician Geert Wilders, known for his strident anti-Islam and anti-immigration views, has held a speech in a Berlin hotel amid protests outside the venue.

“Germany too needs a political movement that defends the national identity of the country. Germany’s political identity, its economic success, is threatened by Islam,” Wilders told an audience of some 500 people at a hotel in Berlin’s Tiergarten district. “Islam is a dangerous political ideology for everyone,” Wilders, who is facing prosecution in the Netherlands for incitement to hatred, said.

The 47-year-old was invited to Berlin by a party founded in September by Rene Stadtkewitz, a former member of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) who is also a critic of Islam.

The event sparked protests in front of the hotel. Police said some 80 left-wing demonstrators holding up banners reading “Berlin Against Nazis – it’s our Right to Stop Them” and “Send Geert Wilders home” rallied in front of the hotel.

Deutsche Welle, 2 October 2010

Berlin anti-Wilders protest3