Ramadan fallout leads to political crisis in Rotterdam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The right-wing liberal party VVD has quit the Rotterdam local authority over its refusal to sack theologist Tariq Ramadan as adviser.

Swiss-born Tariq Ramadan (46) was hired by Rotterdam in 2007 to help bridge the divide between the city’s Muslim and non-Muslim communities. He is also a guest lecturer at Rotterdam’s Erasmus university.

Last month, the Gay Krant, a newspaper for the homosexual community, accused Ramadan of making homophobic and mysogynistic statements in taped speeches. The VVD promptly demanded that Ramadan be dismissed as city adviser, but it backed down after consultations with coalition party GroenLinks (the Green party). The local authority meanwhile carried out its own investigation of Ramadan’s past statements and concluded that the Gay Krant’s accusations were baseless.

Now, the VVD has decided to quit the Rotterdam city authority over the Ramadan affair. Its two aldermen, Mark Harbers (economy) and Jeannette Baljeu (transportation) gave their resignations on Wednesday evening. Harbers said Ramandan’s views are at odds with “the freedom of its individual to choose his or her own lifestyle”.

NRC International, 23 April 2009

FBI provocateur behind terror plot

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A slick FBI informant roped four Muslim converts into a horrific terror plot to blow up synagogues and military jets by handing them piles of cash and gifts and even bags of weed, relatives of the suspects said today.

“Brother whatever you need, I will get it for you,” said the man who the four petty thieves knew as Maqsood, according to Kathleen Baynes, whose long-time boyfriend, James Cromitie is alleged to be the ringleader of the plot.

“He was very persistent and every time he came for James he took him away. They said they were going out to eat dinner,” she said. “Whenever we needed anything Maqsood would help – like financially – he gave us money to pay rent. He was just constantly around. It was like he was stalking him.”

Co-conspirator David Williams’s girlfriend Cassandra McKoy insists the men were duped into the plot with the lure of a cash payday and that religious hatred had nothing to do with it.

“They aren’t radicals they were just financially motivated. They aren’t terrorists. If Maqsood wasn’t in the picture they would’ve never come up with this idea,” she said. “This was not their idea. They make it sound like they sought him out and said we want to do this when he’s the one who approached them. He enticed them with money. Maqsood wasn’t even allowed inside the mosque, he waited in the parking lot for them and offered them $25,000 to join.”

New York Post, 23 May 2009

Terror raids ‘lessons’ warning

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cheetham Hill raidThe Muslim community’s confidence in the police is heading for crisis point following the release without charge of 12 men arrested in anti-terror raids, says one of Manchester’s leading politicians.

Coun Afzal Khan, a former Lord Mayor, said confidence could be lost because “too many times the police are getting it wrong.”

Eleven of the 12 men, who are Pakistani nationals in Britain on visas, face deportation after being handed over to the UK Borders Agency. The twelfth is a British citizen from Cheetham Hill.

Coun Khan – a councillor for Cheetham where four of the raids took place – said: “The Muslim community has always been supportive but we need to make sure that support is not lost. We are reaching a point where there is a danger of that.

“I am not saying the police should not act. I fully support the police and want them to protect us. My concern is that too many times they are getting it wrong. That is affecting the confidence in the relationship between the police and the public – particularly the Muslim community.

“It is having an adverse effect on internal community relations. An independent inquiry must look at the way the police are working and dealing with terrorism. If there are lessons to be learned, they need to be learned quickly.”

Manchester Evening News, 23 April 2009

SNP urged to drop ‘sectarian and divisive’ Muslim candidate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Times takes up the witch-hunt against Osama Saeed initiated by the Quilliam Foundation.

An SNP spokesman is quoted as saying: “This disgraceful attack is untrue from start to finish, and shows that the politics of smear is not confined to websites. The Quilliam Foundation has zero credibility … this smear must be seen for what it is. We have strong community relations in Scotland, and when we are all working to build unity, the very last thing we need is people with no knowledge of Scotland spreading nastiness and smears.”

Australia: churches unite against Islamic school

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Camden_Islamic_school_protestFour Christian churches have joined in an unprecedented attack on the Islamic faith in an attempt to stop a Muslim school being built.

Calling the religion an ideology driven by world domination, a submission to the Land and Environment Court yesterday said a proposed school at Camden was a “beachhead” in Islamic takeover of southwestern Sydney, threatening the Australian way of life.

The attack, co-signed by local heads of Baptist, Anglican, Presbyterian and the Evangelical Sisters of Mary churches, formed the spearhead of Camden City Council’s defence to a court challenge over its rejection of a development application for the Muslim school.

“Islam is not simply a private religion. It is driven by a powerful political agenda, it is an ideology with a plan for world domination,” the letter said. “The Quranic Society application to establish an Islamic school in Camden is typical of a regularly repeated pattern to form a beachhead in an area for the development of a sub-culture which, for the most part, regards its own legal system as superior to the current Australian law.”

They said the Muslim community would seek to dominate public space in Camden “as we have seen in Auburn, Bankstown, Lakemba and more recently Liverpool”.

The provocative submission was penned by Camden’s Baptist Pastor Brian Stewart, St John’s Anglican Rector Tony Galea, Presbyterian minister Warren Hicks and Sisters of Mary’s sisters in charge Sister Simone and Sister Gideona.

Use of the letter is a turnaround from previous claims that the council’s ruling was on the grounds of traffic congestion.

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I’m going to quit Scotland because people have been nasty to me, says bomb-threat racist facing jail term

Posted on by Bob Pitt

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAA racist who threatened to bomb Scotland’s biggest mosque last night whined he would quit the country – because people had been “nasty” to him.

Neil MacGregor had also threatened to behead one Muslim a week until every mosque was shut down. The thug faces jail after admitting a racist breach of the peace. But yesterday, he tried to defend his behaviour by claiming he’d been freaked out after viewing a film of a hostage being beheaded. And he claimed he was a reformed character who had turned to religion.

MacGregor bleated: “When all this is over, I will be leaving Scotland. I have had enough of it and the people. I have had nothing but nastiness here.”

Last night, a leading Muslim dismissed his self-pitying squeals as a cynical attempt to obtain a soft sentence. Osama Saeed, chief executive of the Scottish-Islamic Foundation, said:

“If he is insincerely trying to mitigate any punishment, I hope it is not successful. If he had been a Muslim looking at videos of people dying in Iraq and threatened, as a result, to blow up a church or behead Christians, there would have been an absolute storm about this and such an individual would be looking at a really hefty sentence.”

In one threatening email to police – which led to his conviction – MacGregor, 36, wrote: “I’m a proud racist and National Front member. We as an organisation have decided to deal with the current threat from Muslims in our own British way, like our proud ancestors.

“Our demands are very small. Close all mosques in Scotland. We see this is very easy – even you guys can handle that. If our demands aren’t met by next Friday, we’ll kidnap one Muslim and execute him or her on the internet, just like they did to our Ken Bigley.”

But yesterday, the vile racist bleated he felt like the victim following his arrest for the threatening calls and emails regarding Glasgow Central Mosque.

He claimed he became “enraged and emotionally upset” in February 2007 after viewing a video clip of a British hostage being beheaded in Iraq – and made his anti-Muslim threats.

MacGregor claimed to the Record that Osama Saeed had asked to meet him upon the completion of any sentence “to help combat Islamophobia”. But Osama said last night: “His claim is simply not true, though if he is sincere in wanting to tackle Islamophobia after his punishment we would work with him in the same way we would anyone else.”

He added: “It’s all too easy to dismiss MacGregor as a fantasist and lunatic – many of the Muslims convicted of terror offences could be similarly described.”

Daily Record, 22 April 2009

U.S. border screening under fire

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Unreasonable IntrusionsCivil liberties groups are renewing calls for the Obama administration to change screening at border posts by limiting questions about Americans’ political beliefs and religious practices and establishing a process for U.S. citizens and residents who are mistakenly included on terrorist watch lists to clear their names.

In a report to be released today, the Asian Law Caucus of San Francisco cited more than 40 complaints from U.S. citizens and immigrants that it has received since 2007 as evidence of “a much wider pattern of profiling and discrimination at U.S. borders.”

“Many people in America’s Muslim, South Asian and Middle Eastern communities have come to expect harassment and discriminatory treatment at our nation’s doorstep” when returning home, the report said.

Separately, Muslim Advocates, the advocacy arm of the National Association of Muslim Lawyers, issued a report saying that citizens should not be threatened with detention for not answering questions that go beyond establishing their legal status to enter the United States or whether they are carrying contraband.

The actions come as civil liberties groups press for a swifter response by the new Democratic president and Congress to long-standing complaints that security measures adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have subjected innocent travelers to unwarranted delays and scrutiny.

Washington Post, 20 April 2009

Read the Muslim Advocates report here.

US boycotts UN racism conference

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Durban conference

Washington has confirmed it will boycott a UN forum on racism in Geneva next week because of differences over Israel and the right to free speech.

The state department said the proposed text of the conference’s guiding document remained unacceptable despite having been amended significantly. The US and Israel quit a similar forum in Durban in 2001 when its draft document likened Zionism to racism. Current language about “incitement to religious hatred” also alarms the US.

Pro-Israel groups vehemently opposed participation while human rights advocates and organisations like TransAfrica and members of the Congressional Black Caucus thought it was important to attend. Immediately after the announcement, Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who heads the black caucus in Congress, said the group was “deeply dismayed” by the boycott.

BBC News, 18 April 2009

For the background, see “West fears Muslim countries will hijack UN Geneva racism conference”, Guardian, 17 April 2009

The amended draft statement for the Durban review conference can be consulted (pdf) here.

Paragraph 13, to which the Obama administration objects, says that the conference:

“Reaffirms that any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law; reaffirms further that all dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority or hatred, incitement to racial discrimination as well as all acts of violence or incitement to such acts shall be declared offence punishable by law, in accordance with the international obligations of States and that these prohibitions are consistent with freedom of opinion and expression.”

From which we can only conclude that the US government defends the right to promote “religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence”.

Update:  BBC News reports that Australia and the Netherlands have joined the US, Israel and Canada in boycotting the conference.

And now Germany too.

Further update:  The Telegraph backs Obama and demands to know why Gordon Brown doesn’t follow his example: “Durban II will be little more than a celebration of the alliance between anti-Western leftists and Islamists. Countries that take civil rights seriously are right to stay away. Why is Britain not among them?”