CNN editor sacked over Fadlallah tweet

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Octavia Nasr tweet

A senior Middle East editor at the US cable news channel CNN has been fired after she wrote on Twitter that she “respected” a late Lebanese Shia Muslim leader with links to Hezbollah.

Octavia Nasr lost her job after the 140-character tweet sparked fierce online debate and the channel’s management decided that her credibility had been compromised.

CNN management decided that Nasr, who had worked at the company for 20 years in mainly off-screen roles, should leave her job. “We have decided that she will be leaving the company,” said a company memo circulated on Wednesday.

Al Jazeera, 8 July 2010

See also Roy Greenslade, “CNN fires journalist for tweeting her praise for Islamic cleric”, Guardian, 8 July 2010

Martin Bright (of all people) to lead discussion on Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

martin_brightThe Festival of Spirituality and Peace in Edinburgh on 16 August features a session on the subject of “Antisemitism and Islamophobia”.

And who is the main speaker at this session? The festival programme informs us: “Martin Bright, political editor of the Jewish Chronicle (and formerly of the New Statesman) and presenter of C4’s Who Speaks for the Muslims? discusses Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia – and other expressions of discrimination or hate crime – with members of the Jewish and Muslim communities. When does comment or criticism of a group become discriminatory and how much objection to the criticism is ‘crying wolf’?”

The programme omits to mention that Bright is also notorious as the author of When Progressives Treat With Reactionaries, published by the right-wing propaganda organisation Policy Exchange, which depicted the MCB and other mainstream Muslim organisations as extremists and called on the government to break all links with them. Indeed, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Bright was hired by the Jewish Chronicle precisely because of his record in attacking representative Muslim organisations.

Is Bright really an appropriate person to introduce a discussion on Islamophobia – particularly at a festival billed as “a celebration of diverse cultures and communities”?

Irrationality and anti-Muslim stereotyping

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The demonization of Islam as a religion and of its adherents as individuals has reached the level of hysteria within the United States.

Although the fear of Muslims is usually cloaked in condescension or indignation, the source of this most recent version of bigotry is transparent and utterly predictable. There must be a nameless, faceless, sinister “other” upon whom we can hang our deepest anxieties and frustrations as a people. This kind of paranoia is not unique, but as its perpetrators on right-wing radio, FOX “News” and the far-right blogosphere can attest, it still works like a charm.

I would offer to Americans that if you’ve come to believe that it’s Islam that’s the source of our problems, you might as well pack it up and go home because the terrorists have already won.

Cynthia Boaz at the Huffington Post, 6 July 2010

Bob Lambert on the government’s flawed response to 7/7

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BusBritain’s fight against terrorism has been a disaster, because its “flawed, neo-conservative” direction alienated Muslims and increased the chances of terrorist attacks, a former leading counter-terrorism officer has told the Guardian.

Speaking to mark today’s fifth anniversary of the 7 July attacks in London, Dr Robert Lambert said the atrocity had led the Labour government to launch not just the publicly declared battle against al-Qaida, but a much wider counter-subversive campaign that targeted non-violent Muslims and branded them as supporters of violence.

Lambert, now an academic, served for 30 years as an officer in Scotland Yard’s special branch, dealing with the threat from Irish Republican terrorism through to the menace from al-Qaida. He was head of a counter-terrorism squad, the Muslim contact unit (MCU), which gained intelligence on violent extremists, and won praise from Muslims, even those who have criticised police.

Lambert said the Labour government adopted a “flawed, neo-con analysis to react to 7 July. The view was that this is such an evil ideology, we are entitled to derogate from human rights considerations even further.”

The effect of this, said Lambert, was to cast the net too wide: “The analysis was a continuation of the analysis after 9/11, which drove the war on terror, to say al-Qaida is a tip of a dangerous Islamist iceberg … we went to war not against terrorism, but against ideas, the belief that al-Qaida was a violent end of a subversive movement.”

Lambert said this approach alienated British Muslims, as those who expressed views such as opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, also held by non-Muslims, feared that holding such beliefs made them suspects. “The best way of tackling al-Qaida is to reassure the communities where it seeks support and recruits, is to show those communities that their grievances can be expressed legitimately,” Lambert said.

He said the fight needed to focus solely on the terrorists, and not on those who may share some of their political views, but who will express them peacefully. He said that British policies handed the terrorists propaganda victories. Such policies included the Iraq war, civilian casualties in Afghanistan, the torture of terror suspects at Guantánamo and elsewhere, rendition, the muted response to Israel’s attack on Lebanon and the attempt to hold terror suspects in the UK for 90 days without charge.

Guardian, 7 July 2010

Veil ban doesn’t target Muslims, French minister claims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Michele Alliot-MarieFrance’s justice minister went before parliament to defend a hotly debated bill that would ban burka-style Islamic veils in public, arguing that hiding your face from your neighbours is a violation of French values.

Michele Alliot-Marie’s speech at the National Assembly marked the start of parliamentary debate on the bill. It is widely expected to become law, despite the concerns of many French Muslims, who fear it will stigmatise them. Many law scholars also argue it would violate the constitution.

The government has used various strategies to sell the proposal, casting it at times as a way to promote equality between the sexes, to protect oppressed women or to ensure security in public places.

Ms Alliot-Marie argued that it has nothing to do with religion or security – she argued simply that life in the French Republic “is carried out with a bare face”.

“It is a question of dignity, equality and transparency,” she said in a speech that made little mention of Muslim veils. Officials have taken pains to craft language that does not single out Muslims: While the proposed legislation is colloquially referred to as the “anti-burka law”, it is officially called “the bill to forbid covering one’s face in public”.

Press Association, 7 July 2010

See also Al Jazeera, 7 July 2010

Banning the burqa compromises the very principles that we value

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The European Convention on Human Rights is the basis for our rights and freedoms. Crucially, it provides for freedom of expression, the right to protest, to stage controversial political theatre or to write an independent article. It also protects the right of individuals to choose their religious beliefs.

For this reason, I cannot support calls in the UK and across Europe to ban Muslim women from wearing the burqa or other garments that cover the entire body in public.

Have we become so arrogant as to believe that every woman who would wear a burqa is necessarily oppressed? Or so fearful that we see a potential terrorist behind women who cover themselves out of religious belief?

Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, in the Independent, 7 July 2010

Republican candidate jumps on ‘Ground Zero mosque’ bandwagon

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rick Lazio press conference

Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio challenged his Democratic opponent Wednesday morning to examine the legality of the funding for the proposed mosque near Ground Zero. “New Yorkers have a right to feel safe and be safe,” Lazio told reporters in Lower Manhattan. “There are serious security questions about the appropriateness of this mosque.”

Lazio demanded Attorney General Cuomo figure out where the backers of the Cordoba Mosque expect to get $100 million to build it. “Anyone who has evidence of wrongdoing should send it to us and we will review it,” Cuomo replied in a statement released later Wednesday.

In a letter he sent to Cuomo, Lazio cited press accounts that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who’s spearheading the mosque’s construction, is a “key figure” in an organization that funded the flotilla that sought to break Israel’s Gaza blockade.

Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles was a pilot on the plane terrorists crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11, said the Imam has written about his hopes of bringing strict Islamic Shariah law to the United States. “He means to use the Ground Zero location of the mosque to ‘leverage’ people to Islam,” said Burlingame, the co-founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America.

New York Daily News, 7 July 2010

Text of Lazio’s letter here.

See also New York Magazine, 7 July 2010

Update:  See Debra Burlingame’s contribution to Lazio’s press conference on YouTube.

The other 7/7 victims: Five years on, British Muslims reveal how the bombings left them angry, ashamed – and afraid

Posted on by Bob Pitt

7-7 Muslim PerspectivesFive years ago next Wednesday, on a day of horror and infamy, four bombs exploded on London’s public transport system, part of a series of coordinated suicide attacks. Some 52 innocent people were murdered, and hundreds more maimed or injured.

For weeks afterwards Londoners lived in fear, and rightly so. Two weeks later, four more bombs were detonated. Mercifully, this time none of the main explosive devices went off.

At this stage, it looked very much as though bombings might become a regular feature of British urban life, just as at the height of the war against the IRA in the Eighties.

Murtaza Shibli’s fascinating book of short essays by Muslims on their response to the 7/7 atrocities helps to explain why that has not come about.

Some might argue that focusing on Muslims is a myopic and self-indulgent response to an attack where the great majority of the victims were not Muslim. But Shibli makes the powerful if controversial case that Muslims, too, were the long-term victims of the 7/7 atrocities.

Society turned against them. Completely innocent people found themselves being blamed for a crime that they had not committed. Muslims were traduced, spat at and physically attacked.

Police stopped them in the street as terrorist suspects. Yaser Iqbal, a Birmingham barrister, recalls: “I can still vividly recall the menace and hatred in the eyes of almost every white face that stared at me on that day – and they all stared.” The atmosphere became so tense that one contributor to this volume came close to emigrating.

Peter Oborne reviews the new book 7/7 Muslim Perspectives in the Daily Mail, 7 July 2010

Demonstration in support of Staten Island mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Staten Island mosque demo

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Asking that they be treated like believers of other religions, about 50 supporters of a proposed mosque in Midland Beach today rallied support for the project on the steps of Borough Hall in St. George.

“The reaction to the sale of the convent hurt us,” said New Springville resident Heshm El-Meligy, speaking on behalf of the Arab Muslim American Federation. “We are Staten Islanders. We have the right to have a house of worship anywhere of our choosing according to the law of the land.”

The rally was organized by the Muslim American Society (MAS).

There has been fierce debate across the borough about whether MAS should convert an empty former convent, owned by St. Margaret Mary R.C. Church in Midland Beach, into a mosque and community center.

But Muslims have argued that they have as much right to be there as Catholics or Jews. “We don’t want a privilege that no one else has,” said El-Meligy, one of several speakers who addressed the crowd.

SILive, 7 July 2010

Update:  See “A move on Staten Island to broker mosque peace”, SILive, 8 July 2010