Sharia law ‘same as Krays’, says Tebbit

Semi house trained polecatVeteran Tory Lord Tebbit provoked anger among Muslims yesterday by comparing Islamic sharia courts to gangsters. He likened the tribunals to the “system of arbitration of disputes that was run by the Kray brothers”.

The intervention from Lord Tebbit, the former Tory chairman and cabinet minister whose leading role in the Thatcher years has made him a revered figure for many in the party, reignited the row over Islamic courts and their role in the British justice system.

His comparison with the intimidation and violence used by the Krays to run their gangland empire brought an angry response.

Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “We can only wonder whether Lord Tebbit has ever set foot in a sharia council to see what they actually do before making such a baseless and ignorant comparison with the workings of the Kray brothers.

“Both Muslim sharia councils and Orthodox Jewish Beth Din courts exist to try and help resolve civil disputes amongst individuals through a voluntary process of arbitration. They are entirely legal and have to operate firmly within the law.”

Daily Mail, 5 June 2009


You’ll note that the Mail is incapable of reporting such issues without including some baseless reference to Muslim “anger”. So Inayat Bunglawala’s reasoned remarks have to be described as “an angry response”.

Although, to be fair, the Mail did at least make the effort to contact a representative figure from the Muslim community and ask for a comment, which is more than you can say for the Daily Express, the Daily Telegraph and the Sun.

Update:  See ENGAGE, 5 June 2009

Antwerp: Vlaams Belang protest against mosque

VlaamsBelangprotest2

Vlaams Belang held a protest yesterday against the mosque at the Sint-Bernardsesteenweg in Antwerp.

According to the party, with an area of 4,000 sqm, this would be the biggest in Flanders and would also have a koran school and imam training.

In recent days the VB gave out 50,000 flyers against the mosque which according to them would be a symbol of the Islamization of Antwerp and Flanders.

According to VB leader Filip Dewinter, the Jisr Al Amana mosque is everything but a good idea. “Islam is like a cuckoo which lays its eggs in our European next. We hatch them and will in the end be cast off,” he said.

The party walked through the local market with three women dresses in a burka with the slogan “Islam can harm your freedom”.

Islam in Europe, 5 June 2009

Thug demands ‘what’s your religion’ before launching racist attack

A man has told of a “horrifying” attack during which a group of friends were racially abused by a gang wielding baseball bats and golf clubs. One man was physically attacked by the group, leaving him with back injuries.

One of his friends told BBC Scotland that they had been approached by a man while they were in an Edinburgh garden. The man made racially abusive comments towards the four men, who were of Asian origin, before returning with a group of friends to carry out the attack.

The 21-year-old man who was injured in the attack Monday night was taken to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary for treatment and released the following day.

One of the Asian men, who wants to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, told BBC Scotland about the incident. He said the group of friends had been in the garden in East Pilton Farm Avenue when a man passed and asked them their religion.

“One of my friends said we were Pakistanis and he suddenly started being abusive about Pakistanis and Asians,” he said. “My friend said: ‘Please leave this place, we are having a good time, I want you to have a good time, take care of yourself’, but he couldn’t stop. He went away for about 15 minutes and came back with four of his friends and they were shouting leave our country, which is quite horrifying.”

He said the men then started hitting his friend with a golf club and baseball bats. The man said he was able to pull his friend into his flat. The gang smashed a glass door, but fled when police were called. The man said his 21-year-old friend was still in “a lot of pain”.

BBC News, 3 June 2009

Dutch far-Right comes second in European Parliament election

Geert Wilders’ far-Right anti-immigration party made significant gains in the European Parliament elections in the Netherlands on Thursday, according to exit polls.

The European Parliament elections had been widely expected to punish governments struggling to cope with the global economic crisis, and polls released by the ANP news agency and broadcaster NOS put the Right-wing Freedom Party on course to win four of the 25 Dutch seats in the parliament, after having none in the previous assembly. This put Mr Wilders’ party second only to the ruling Christian Democrats, which got nearly 20 per cent of votes, according to the poll.

Mr Wilders, who was banned from Britain by the Home Office because of his controversial views on Islam, won support from Protestant and Catholic voters disenchanted with what has been perceived as the growing influence of the nation’s 800,000 Muslims, many of them immigrants from Morocco and Turkey.

Mr Wilders, whose party was contesting European elections for the first time, campaigned on an anti-EU platform and criticised Turkey’s bid to join the EU. “Should Turkey as an Islamic country be able to join the European Union? We are the only party in Holland that says, it is an Islamic country, so no, not in 10 years, not in a million years,” he said.

Daily Telegraph, 4 June 2009

American right scorns Barack Obama’s speech to Muslim world

The American right scorned Barack Obama’s speech today, saying he had apologised for past American actions while failing to hold Arab and Islamic countries accountable for the words and actions of ­violent extremists.

US conservatives lashed out at the president for opening with a Muslim greeting in ­Arabic, for omitting to mention what they described as American successes in Iraq, and for exaggerating the number of Muslims living in the US.

While Republican party leaders were largely silent Thursday morning, conservative commentators and former Republican aides caricatured Obama as weak and insufficiently strident in his support for Israel.

“President Bush would never have criticised our military or our intelligence community on foreign soil,” a former Bush speechwriter, Marc Thiessen, said on Fox News. “He basically threw our military under the bus in front of a Muslim audience.”

Guardian, 4 June 2009

See also Media Matters for America, 4 June 2009

Resisting extremism in Luton

Anti-Al-Muhajiroun-protest2Farasat Latif was taking his daughter to school when he found out that the mosque he ran in Luton had been firebombed by right-wing extremists.

In the middle of the night two men in a stolen silver BMW had driven up to the Masjid Al Ghurabaa in the Bury Park area and poured petrol through a side window before making their getaway.

The anger that Mr Latif felt following that fire on 4 May could have been directed solely at the bigots who set his mosque alight. But the people he was most furious with were a motley collection of 15 to 20 young men who regularly preached a radical and intolerant brand of Islam from a street stall down the road and had helped foster the image that Luton was an Islamist stronghold.

Two weeks earlier those same men – most of whom are former members of the banned Islamist group Al Muhajiroun – had greeted soldiers of the Royal Anglian regiment who were returning from Iraq with screams of abuse and placards declaring them “Butchers of Basra”, “murderers” and “baby-killers”.

The protest outraged whole swaths of Britain, not least Luton’s 25,000 Muslims who knew all too well that their town would once again be associated with extremism.

Once the Masjid Al Ghurabaa was firebombed, in what police suspect was a retaliatory hate attack, Mr Latif sadly concluded that Luton’s ordinary Muslims were paying the price for the actions of the “Al Muhajiroun boys”. Which is why he decided to act against them. Shortly after Friday prayers last week he and 300 supporters marched down to Dunstable Road where the sect often set up their stall and told them in no uncertain terms that they were no longer welcome in Luton.

Mr Latif hopes that their decision to turn on the extremists within their own community will now prompt Luton’s white community to do the same. “I believe people on all sides are sick of the extremists,” he said. “I now hope the white working class will weed out the fascists and hate mongers just like we now have. Otherwise things will only get worse.”

Independent, 3 June 2009

Read Islamic Centre statement (pdf) here.

Global Day of Prayer London convenor claims Muslims ‘want to take over’

GDOP London

The convener of the Global Day of Prayer London has delivered a tough call to Christians in the UK to wake up and take an uncompromising stand for their faith.

Speaking at the Newham prayer meeting in East London, Pastor Jonathan Oloyede said that it was time for Christians to pray and act. He warned in particular of the threat posed by ungodly legislation being passed by Parliament and plans to build a so-called mega mosque at the site of the London Olympics.

“I used to be a Muslim. The Muslims don’t just want to build a mosque. They want to take over. If you want to roll over and play dead while the legacy of your forefathers is thrown in the dust and you can’t stand up and say enough is enough then you are not fit to be a Christian,” he said.

Pastor Oloyede said Christians in the UK needed to “stop trying to be nice and cute” in the face of threats to their faith and the wellbeing of the nation. “All that stuff about not offending anyone is nonsense. I used to try to be nice to everyone but God said to me: You cannot be my messenger by being nice to everybody. So are you going to just play nice or are you going to be a follower of Christ?” he said.

“Many Muslim leaders have told me that if the Christians in this country stood up for their faith they would back off. London, England, wake up! You choose which way this nation will go. Pray that this nation will wake up to its true calling and intercede until we see his glory.”

In a video message broadcast to the GDOP London prayer meetings, London Mayor Boris Johnson paid tribute to the many Christian-run projects he said were helping to build community cohesion across the capital.

Christian Today, 1 June 2009

There certainly are Christians who are helping to build community cohesion across the capital. But the convenor of Global Day of Prayer London is clearly not one of them.