Weekend witch-hunts

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In the Observer, with the assistance of such reliable informants as Irfan al-Alawi (of Stephen Schwartz’s Center for Islamic Pluralism), Haras Rafiq (formerly of the Sufi Muslim Council and now of the “counter-extremism consultancy” Centri) and Maajid Nawaz (co-director of the Quilliam Foundation), Jamie Doward reveals that the Islam Channel is “linked to al-Qaida cleric al-Awlaki”.

Meanwhile, over at the Sunday Express, Paul Goodman MP accuses Wakkas Khan, the former FOSIS president who is part of Communities Secretary John Denham’s panel of faith advisers, of having “links to hardline Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir”.

You might not have thought it possible, but it does seem that anti-Muslim witch-hunts are becoming even more stupid and baseless than before.

Britons are suspicious towards Muslims, study finds

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The British public are concerned at the rise of Islam in the UK and fear that the country is deeply divided along religious lines, according to a major survey.

More than half the population would be strongly opposed to a mosque being built in their neighbourhood, the study found.

A large proportion of the country believes that the multicultural experiment has failed, with 52 per cent considering that Britain is deeply divided along religious lines and 45 per cent saying that religious diversity has had a negative impact.

The findings, to be published later this month in the respected British Social Attitudes Survey, show that far greater opposition to Islam than to any other faith and reveal that most people are willing to limit freedom of speech in an attempt to silence religious extremists.

Sunday Telegraph, 10 January 2010

Update:  See also ENGAGE, 11 January 2010

Muslim-American subjected to religious profiling at airport

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nadia Hassan is a frequent flier. Imagine her surprise when she arrived at the security checkpoint at Washington’s Dulles International Airport Tuesday and encountered what she calls, “racial, religious profiling.”

The 40-year-old Michigan-born Muslim-American, headed to Los Angeles, says she was singled out for what she calls a “humiliating” full-body search. When she asked why this was happening “the gentleman who was working there specifically told me that the reason I’m being put through this type of search is because I’m wearing a head scarf…. He actually came out and told me that that’s the reason why you are being targeted.”

She’s not alone. On Monday, a Muslim-Canadian woman says she was made to feel like a terrorist because she was wearing a headscarf. She says she was berated and banned from boarding a flight to the United States – all because of her faith.

The Council on American Islamic Relations calls these textbook cases of profiling. “It’s violating the law. It’s unconstitutional and un-American to single people out because of their religion. It’s a knee-jerk measure that’s going to cause panic and fear,” says the council’s national executive director, Nihad Awad.

CNN, 8 January 2010

Caldwell backs ‘desperate measures’ against Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Writing in the Financial Times Christopher Caldwell, author of Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, draws the lessons from the alleged attempt on the life of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard:

“Political violence is aimed at promoting a cause – in this case, special consideration for Islam. If a country cannot stop the violence directly, then the public will demand that it stop the violence indirectly, by thwarting the cause the violence serves. The rise of Geert Wilders’s party in the Netherlands, the referendum to ban minarets in Switzerland, theproposed ban on burkas in France – these are all desperate measures to declare that Islam is not the first religion of Europe.

“‘This is a war,’ the mainstream French weekly L’Express editorialised in the wake of the attempt on Mr Westergaard’s life. ‘To flee this conflict would be to buy tranquillity today at an exorbitant price in blood tomorrow.’ It concluded: ‘Banning every kind of full-body cover [the burka] in our public spaces is a necessity.’ This is not the non-sequitur it appears to be.”

France moves to outlaw the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The parliamentary leader of the ruling French party is to put forward a draft law within two weeks to ban the full-body veil from French streets and all other public places.

The announcement by Jean-François Copé, cutting short an anguished six-month debate on the burka and its Arab equivalent, the niqab, will divide both right and left and is likely to anger President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Mr Copé, in an interview with Le Figaro to be published tomorrow, said that he would bring forward a law which would impose fines of up to €750 (£675) on anyone appearing in public “with their face entirely masked”.

Independent, 8 January 2010

See also the Daily Star which reports, under the headline “Women to be fined for wearing Burkas”, that “Strict new laws are being considered in France to tackle Islamic extremism. And campaigners want the same tough penalties in the UK.” Who exactly are these campaigners, you may ask. Well, the Star has found two.

One is right-wing Christian extremist Stephen Green who tells the Star: “We ought to assert our Christian heritage as strongly as France does its secular heritage. There’s no doubt the burka is culturally divisive. Measures like fines would send out a great signal. If we don’t take action against Islam now we are going to see terrible problems in this country in 30 years’ time.”

Bizarrely, the Star informs its readers that “many leading Muslim groups believe the burka should be outlawed in Britain”. But the only example they offer is Diana Nammi of the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation, not hitherto known as a leading Muslim group, who is quoted as saying: “We support bans anywhere in the world.”

Looks like Damian Thompson’s proposal for an alliance between secularists and right-wing Christians on the basis of a common hatred of Islam is already being implemented.

UCL student union stands up for freedom and tolerance

Posted on by Bob Pitt

UCL student unionHugh Muir interviews James Hodgson, student union activities officer at University College London, who emphatically rejects calls for a ban on UCL’s Islamic Society. He tells Muir:

“Of course it is going to be difficult and I am sure we will get some stick, but we are going to defend the Islamic Society and its right to hear from controversial speakers. We will not allow extremist activities. But at the same time we are determined not to yield. The Islamic Society is not a hotbed of extremists. Its activities are prayer meetings, cultural events, debates and music. We are going to stand up for freedom and tolerance. Surely that’s what the terrorists want to destroy.”

Guardian, 8 January 2010

Update:  See also the Al Jazeera interview with FOSIS president Faisal Hanjra and “Islamic Societies Exposed” on the FOSIS website.

US grocery chain pulls calendar that listed Islamic new year

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Joyce KaufmanBowing to complaints from angry customers, Publix has agreed to remove a free 2010 calendar from its stores that mentions the beginning of the Islamic new year but not the anniversary of Pearl Harbor.

The flap started when South Florida radio talk show host Joyce Kaufman complained on her WFTL 850-AM program earlier in the week that the calendar identifies Dec. 7 as the start of the Islamic new year. She told her listeners to let Publix know if they were offended. “Not Pearl Harbor Day. Instead Happy new year, Islam, or some such?” she said on air Thursday.

“We have great diversity in our customers and wanted to include as many of them as we could, which is why we included the Islamic new year along with Passover, Palm Sunday and a number of the national holidays of our customers,” said Publix spokesman Shannon Patten. “Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day wasn’t included because it’s not a holiday.” Memorial Day and Veterans Day are included. But because of the complaints, said Patten, the free calendar is no longer available in stores.

“Getting the calendar pulled is more about a cottage industry of Muslim bashers who seek every opportunity to demonize Islam than it is about Pearl Harbor Day,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C. “Certainly, no one has an issue with including Pearl Harbor Day,” said Hooper, “But that’s not what this is about.”

Kaufman objected because she didn’t want World War II veterans “to be disappointed” and because she views Muslims as “an enemy who declared war on us,” Kaufman told the St. Petersburg Times. Furthermore, she said, she thought it was inappropriate to have holidays for people from the Caribbean and Central and South America on the calendar. “Why pander to Islamics and people from Peru, Belize, Cuba and Haiti?” she said on the phone. “It’s irrelevant in America.”

St Petersburg Times, 8 January 2010

Czech cardinal says Muslims are gradually conquering Europe

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Czech Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, the Archbishop of Prague, said Muslims were well placed to fill the spiritual void “created as Europeans systematically empty the Christian content of their lives”.

“Europe will pay dear for having left its spiritual foundations and that this is the last period that will not continue for decades when it may still have a chance to do something about it,” he said. “Unless the Christians wake up, life may be Islamised and Christianity will not have the strength to imprint its character on the life of people, not to say society.”

“Europe has denied its Christian roots from which it has risen and which could give it the strength to fend off the danger that it will be conquered by Muslims, which is actually happening gradually,” he said. “At the end of the Middle Ages and in the early modern age, Islam failed to conquer Europe with arms. The Christians beat them then. Today, when the fighting is done with spiritual weapons which Europe lacks while Muslims are perfectly armed, the fall of Europe is looming.”

He called on Christians to respond to the threat of Islamisation by living their own religious faith more observantly.

Daily Telegraph, 7 January 2010

Migration ‘threatens the DNA of our nation’, claims Lord Carey

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Writing in the Times, Lord Carey explains why he has signed up to a call for restrictions on immigration:

“The sheer numbers of migrants … threaten the very ethos or DNA of our nation…. Democratic institutions such as the monarchy, Parliament, the judiciary, the Church of England, our free press and the BBC … support the liberal democratic values of the nation. Some groups of migrants, however, are ambivalent about or even hostile to such institutions. The proposed antiwar Islamist march in Wootton Bassett is a clear example of the difficulties extremists pose to British society.

“Furthermore, the idea that Britain can continue to welcome with open arms immigrants who immediately establish their own tribunals to apply Sharia, rather than make use of British civil law, is deeply socially divisive.”

See also the Daily Mail. And the Daily Express, which headlines its story “Let Christian migrants in first, demands Carey”.

Update:  See “The church fights back against Islamification” by Damian Thompson, editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald, who writes:

“We have had to wait decades for this moment, but it has finally happened. A leading British clergyman has said something sensible about immigration…. Politicised Islam is at the forefront of his mind: he knows that Britain’s evangelical Christians are fed up with being told to develop ever closer ties with their Muslim neighbours…. In the long term, the future of Western civilisation can be secured only by an alliance between Christians and secularists against the totalitarian ideology of Islamism. That is a strange prospect; and even more uncomfortable is the realisation that Christianity’s survival as a mass movement may depend on something as prosaic as immigration control. But that is surely what Lord Carey is hinting at, and it is brave of him to do so.”

Further update:  See also “Damian Thompson on the ‘Islamification’ of Britain”, ENGAGE, 8 January 2010