Muslim police anger over leaflet

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim police leaders are demanding to know why no action has been taken over a leaflet which blames Muslims for the heroin trade. The leaflet, distributed to hundreds of households in parts of Lancashire, Cumbria and Yorkshire, says people should “heap condemnation” on Muslims.

The Crown Prosecution Service said there was not enough proof it was meant to stir up racial or religious hatred. The National Association of Muslim Police said the CPS advice was flawed.

The leaflet says Muslims are “almost exclusively responsible” for the manufacture, transport and sale of heroin, 95% of which it says comes from the Afghanistan and Pakistan region. It says the process of “naming and shaming” Muslims will have a “positive effect” on bringing about the abolition of the heroin trade.

The Crown Prosecution Service said the contents of the leaflet were “racist” but has advised police that no criminal act had been committed. The National Association of Muslim Police said the CPS advice gave a green light to those behind the leaflet to continue distributing them.

BBC News, 19 September 2008

Update:  See also the Muslim News which quotes editor Ahmed Versi as stating, quite rightly: “It just shows that incitement to religious hatred legislation is inadequate and the BNP members use the loophole to target Muslims. If the leaflets were targeted at other ethnic communities like the Jews and Black people then the perpetrators would have been charged for incitement.”

US congressman proposes anti-Sharia law

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tom-TancredoAmid disturbing revelations that the verdicts of Islamic Sharia courts are now legally binding in civil cases in the United Kingdom, U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo (R-Littleton) moved quickly today to introduce legislation designed to protect the United States from a similar fate.

According to recent news reports, a new network of Sharia courts in a half-dozen major cities in the U.K. have been empowered under British law to adjudicate a wide variety of legal cases ranging from divorces and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

“This is a case where truth is truly stranger than fiction,” said Tancredo. “Today the British people are learning a hard lesson about the consequences of massive, unrestricted immigration.”

“When you have an immigration policy that allows for the importation of millions of radical Muslims, you are also importing their radical ideology – an ideology that is fundamentally hostile to the foundations of western democracy – such as gender equality, pluralism, and individual liberty,” said Tancredo. “The best way to safeguard America against the importation of the destructive effects of this poisonous ideology is to prevent its purveyors from coming here in the first place.”

Tancredo’s bill, dubbed the “Jihad Prevention Act,” would bar the entry of foreign nationals who advocate Sharia law. In addition, the legislation would make the advocacy of Sharia law by radical Muslims already in the United States a deportable offense.

Tom Tancredo press release, 18 September 2008

‘We are losing Europe to Islam’ – US political commentator says far right is the answer

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Diana WestSo claims US columnist Diana West. But don’t give up hope, all is not lost:

“Of the parties dedicated to resisting Islamization that I examined in Europe last summer, the most promising range from the sizeable Vlaams Belang in Belgium to the tiny Sweden Democrats, and include the Lega Nord in Italy, the Party for Freedom of Geert Wilders in Holland, the Danish People’s Party, the Swiss People’s Party and the Austrian Freedom Party.

“Such parties are unknown here, or ignored. Worse, they are shunned. Why? I believe it’s because their respective political opponents – the leftist media and governing establishments that are increasingly dependent on Islamic support, by the way – have successfully slandered these parties as ‘extremists’, ‘racists’, ‘fascists’ and ‘Nazis’.

“Is advocating freedom of speech ‘extreme’ or ‘fascist’? Is opposing Islam’s law, which knows no race, ‘racist’? Is supporting Israel (which these parties do far more than other European parties) ‘Nazi’? The outrageously empty epithets of the Islamo-socialist left seem calculated to stop thought cold and trigger a massive rejection reflex. In this way, resistance becomes anathema, and Islamic law, unchecked, spreads across Europe.”

TownHall.com, 18 September 2008

Vlaams Belang, to take just one example of the far-right parties that West endorses, is the successor organisation to the Vlaams Blok which formally disbanded in 2004 after being successfully prosecuted for “incitement to hate and discrimination”. It can trace its origins back to Nazi collaborators in the Second World War who assisted the occupation forces in sending thousands of Belgian Jews to their deaths.

Anger at Europe’s far right ‘anti-Islam’ conference

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nein zur IslamisierungA German far right group has stirred Muslim anger worldwide by holding a three-day “Anti-Islamisation Conference” to protest against the construction of mosques and Muslim immigration.

Prominent members of Europe’s far right, including French “Front National” leader Jean-Marie le Pen and Belgian far-right politician Filip Dewinter, have said they will attend the meeting in Cologne which is aimed at forging a European alliance against “Islamisation.”

The conference will include a rally in the centre of Cologne tomorrow which police say could lead to clashes with left-wing groups that plan a counter-demonstration. Trade unions, churches and other groups have also announced plans to protest against the conference.

The conference organiser is a local protest group called “Pro-Cologne” which campaigned against the city’s recent decision to allow the construction of a large new mosque with two 55-metre tall minarets. Around 330,000 immigrants live in Cologne, about a third of the city’s population.

Mosques are shooting out of the ground like mushrooms, the muezzin call and headscarves are flooding our streets,” Pro-Cologne said on its website. It said 150 “politicians and publicists” from all over Europe and 1,500 other participants will attend the conference at which it plans to launch a petition “against the Islamisation of our cities”.

The meeting has drawn fierce criticism from German politicians and city leaders in Cologne. The premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Juergen Ruettgers, said: “Those who abuse the cosmopolitan and democratic city of Cologne as a meeting place for right-wing radicals are against tolerance, against reconciliation, against humanity.”

Times, 18 September 2008

Anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim attitudes seen rising in Europe

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish feelings are rising in several major European countries, according to a worldwide survey released on Wednesday.

The Washington-based Pew Research Centre’s global attitude survey found 46 percent of Spanish, 36 percent of Poles and 34 percent of Russians view Jews unfavourably, while the same was true for 25 percent of Germans, and 20 percent of French.

The figures are all higher than in comparable Pew surveys done in recent years, the report said, and “in a number of countries the increase has been especially notable between 2006 and 2008.”

Opinions of Muslims are also dimming compared to previous years with 52 percent in Spain, 50 percent in Germany, 46 percent in Poland and 38 percent in France having negative attitudes toward them.

Reuters, 17 September 2008

See Inayat Bunglawala’s analysis at Comment is Free, 18 September 2008

Sadiq Khan calls for religious equality law

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sadiq KhanA minister has called for the Government to introduce a new religious discrimination law which would require public bodies to have a legal duty to promote equality between faiths, to reassure Britain’s Muslims that they are not second-class citizens.

Sadiq Khan, a government whip, wants a forthcoming Single Equality Bill aimed at stamping out discrimination on grounds of sex, race, gender and disability to include religion. He also calls for “Islamophobia in the workplace” to be tackled.

Under his proposal, public bodies would have to be proactive in tackling religious discrimination. The Equality and Human Rights Commission, chaired by Trevor Phillips, would issue guidance and codes of practice. “This would not apply exclusively to British Muslims, but it would make a significant difference to the experience of members of this community who, because of socio-economic status, are particularly reliant on public services,” Mr Khan says.

The Tooting MP, one of four Muslim Labour MPs, makes his controversial call in a Fabian Society pamphlet, Fairness not Favours, published today. He says a proactive approach to prevent religious discrimination would balance “harder edged” measures such as “clampdowns” on immigration and security and undercut attempts by Muslim extremists to exploit social disadvantage.

Independent, 16 September 2008

Al Jazeera TV focus on Irish family who want hijab in schools

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Arabic news network Al Jazeera has taken an active interest in the plight of an Irish girl who wants to wear a religious headscarf to school.

The Egan family from Wexford, who were caught up in the row over the wearing of the hijab in Irish schools have been featured on the Al Jazeera English channel. Liam and his wife Beverley requested that their 14-year-old daughter, Shekinah Egan, be allowed to wear the religious headdress to Gorey Community School last September, sparking debate on the issue.

The Government refused to take a stand on the issue, leaving it as a matter for individual schools. Mr Egan has accused the Government of repressing minority rights while “flaunting itself as the bastion of democracy”.

The father of the young schoolgirl spoke to the news network and said that, “It is time the world witnessed the true face of Ireland. “The issue of the hijab [Islamic headscarf] is a reflection of how Ireland treats its minorities,” he said. “It has silently repressed Muslim rights while flaunting itself as the bastion of democracy for far too long.”

Shekinah Egan was allowed to continue wearing the headscarf. However her father claims that several schools moved towards banning the wearing of the hijab, with one school in Dublin stating it violates the country’s “Catholic ethos”.

Ruairi Quinn, Labour Party spokesman, recently spoke about how immigrants who come to Ireland “need to conform”. However, the Egans in Wexford are an Irish family who have converted to Islam. Liam Egan converted to Islam at the age of 28 and his wife Beverley MacKenzie is British born.

“This is not an immigrant issue,” Liam Egan proclaimed. “It’s about freedom to practise religious beliefs. We should not follow the lead of France, where there is no tolerance. People say we should assimilate, but I was born in Wexford – I am Irish and Muslim.”

Evening Herald, 16 September 2008

Not so Bright

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In a recent post on his New Statesman blog Martin Bright takes issue with an article written by the notorious Holocaust denier Lady Michele Renouf who, he reports, “develops the most detailed description yet of the Zionist conspiracy of which I am supposed to be a part”. Bright’s piece is headed “Where the hard left and extreme right meet”, and he claims that Renouf’s article is “almost indistinguishable from the attacks on me from supporters of Ken Livingstone and the likes of Islamophobia Watch”.

Really? We’ve written quite a lot about Martin Bright over the years and you can check it all out here. We challenge Bright to produce a single post in which we’ve depicted him, à la Renouf, as part of some “Zionist conspiracy”. If Bright wants to polemicise against Islamophobia Watch, surely he could come up with something slightly less stupid than this.

Renouf’s position – she has a soft spot for the Islamic Republic of Iran because it organised a conference on the Holocaust which provided a platform for nutters like herself to promote their “revisionist” gobbledegook – is in any case hardly typical of the extreme right.

Nick Griffin of the British National Party – the only far-right organisation of any size and influence in the UK – no doubt had people like Renouf in mind when he condemned “those ‘hardliners’ who would rather attack the Jews than the Muslims”. He continued: “To even hint of making common cause with Islam – or put ourselves in a position when opponents can suggest to the masses that this is the case – is political insanity.” Instead, Griffin told BNP members: “We should be positioning ourselves to take advantage for our own political ends of the growing wave of public hostility to Islam currently being whipped up by the mass media.”

A wave of public hostility, we might add, to which the self-confessed Islamophobe, Martin Bright (“there is a lot in Islam to be afraid of”, as he explained to a FOSIS conference at City Hall a few years ago), has made a far from negligible contribution. And the BNP is happy to acknowledge his efforts. In 2006 the fascists applauded a Channel 4 documentary by Bright which chimed in with their own poisonous propaganda about the threat posed by mainstream Muslim organisations in Britain:

“Martin Bright of the New Statesman illustrated how the MCB which purports to be a ‘moderate’ organisation actually represents the most extreme and militant Islamic fundamentalists with links to the Jamaat al Islami [sic] and the Muslim Brotherhood which is itself linked to terror groups and has defended them.”

A case of “where liberal Islamophobes and the extreme right meet”, you might say.

More hysteria about Sharia law

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamic law has been ushered into Britain by the back door. Ministers have quietly given Sharia courts power to rule on Muslim civil cases. These range from divorce and financial disputes to domestic violence. But furious Tories said the step “pandered to Islamic extremists”. MP Philip Davies said: “There can be only one legal system – British law. This will lead to a segregated society.”

Powers of Sharia judges have been sanctioned at five courts in London, Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester and Nuneaton, Warwicks. Two more are planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh. If both parties in a dispute agree to abide by their rulings, they are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system.

Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, whose Muslim Arbitration Tribunal runs the courts, used a clause in the Arbitration Act 1996. It allows Sharia hearings to be classed as “arbitration tribunals”. But Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: “If these tribunals are passing binding decisions I would consider such action unlawful.”

Sun, 15 September 2008

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Liddle explains terrorism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“I’ve always held that Islam is largely to blame for the viciousness which is periodically unleashed upon us all in the form of bombings – that it is the credo, rather than the individual, which is principally to blame”, explains Rod Liddle in the Spectator.

But the broadminded Rod is prepared to concede that there are other causal factors. And no, of course it’s not foreign policy. Young Muslims drawn to terrorism are “narcissistic adolescent halfwits”, according to Liddle, who are “simply a different side of the coin to the stabbers, muggers and thugs of young, modern Britain: over-indulged, forever demanding of respect and redress”.

I ask you, where would British journalism be without Rod Liddle’s insightful political analysis?