Watch the Mayor of London answer a question about Qaradawi at the Stonewall hustings here.
The new generation of renegades
“Commentators Nick Cohen, David Aaronovitch and Andrew Anthony all had left-wing parents, and were involved in political campaigning around race, gender and class in the 1970s…. Although none of them has abandoned the whole progressive package, their main target is a left-liberal intelligentsia, which, as they see it, opposed the overthrow of a fascist dictator, Saddam Hussein, and is now in an unholy Faustian alliance – justified by modish, postmodern cultural relativism – with the far right.
“The far right in question is not the BNP, but political Islamism, represented by those main Muslim umbrella organisations that are seen to have links with Islamists in Muslim countries, particularly those who joined the coalition that organised the demonstration on February 15 2003 against the invasion of Iraq….
“Certainly, the progressive left is in alliance with a group whose traditional views run counter to some central planks of its platform. Twenty-five years on from Maydays, I have written a new play (Testing the Echo), which is partly about the temptation – on these understandable grounds – to reject any kind of religious affiliation, to brand fundamentalist Islam as brown fascism, and (thereby) to abandon an impoverished, beleaguered and demonised community.
“For, let’s be clear, the alliance to which the new defectors object – the alliance enabled by a multiculturalism that sought to give visibility and confidence to entire communities – is not just between a few deluded revolutionaries and the odd crazed Muslim cleric. Martin Amis denies he’s declaring war on the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims, but his ‘thought experiment’ about meting out collective punishment on Muslims (travel restriction, deportation, strip searching) ‘until it hurts the whole community’ makes no distinction between followers of Hizb ut-Tahrir and the man in the Clapham mosque. Cohen is careful to point out that ‘Islamism has Islamic roots’, and, clearly, the group that he dubs the ‘far right’ goes beyond the adherents of Jamaat-e-Islami.”
David Edgar in the Guardian, 19 April 2008
‘Reject the support of Islamists’ urges Toube
Writing in the Jewish Chronicle, Harry’s Place blogger David Toube argues that politicians should reject endorsements from the Muslim Association of Britain.
“Like the BNP, the MAB/Muslim Brotherhood is desperate to participate in mainstream politics, and to be recognised as the pre-eminent moderate Islamist voice, capable of acting as a bulwark against al Qaida. That is rather like turning to the BNP in the hope that they’ll help hold back fascist terrorist groups like Combat 18…. Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party should move quickly to make it clear that mainstream politics can do without the support of fascists.”
London mayoral election: It’s really no contest
GEORGE GALLOWAY argues why the choice facing Londoners couldn’t be clearer.
Morning Star, 19 April 2008
Any doubts about the topography of the battlefield in the race for London Mayor ought to have been dispelled this week with the shrill escalation of the Evening Standard’s attacks on Ken Livingstone.
Hundreds of billboards across the capital repeated the front page headline, “Suicide bomb backer runs Ken’s campaign.” It was a masterful piece of propaganda straight out of the playbook of the 1930s fascist propagandists whom Associated Newspapers were so attached to at the time.
The story actually amounted to little more than the fact that the British Muslim Initiative (BMI), an organisation that has co-hosted the major anti-war demonstrations, is working with others to ensure a large turnout of Muslim voters in the capital and is strongly advocating a vote for Livingstone for mayor.
The BMI is also calling for a vote for myself for the assembly and for Respect’s candidate in the City and East London constituency, Hanif Abdulmuhit.
Now you might have thought that Muslim activists arguing for democratic political engagement and taking part in lobbying, meetings, leafleting and all other activities that attend elections in Britain would receive plaudits from the self-styled defenders of the mother of parliaments. But no – the worthy aim of getting hundreds of thousands of Muslim voters to turn out at the polls is apparently evidence of a sinister, anti-democratic plot.
Binmen in Muslim areas ordered by police to snoop in residents’ rubbish bins
Police chiefs ordered binmen to act as spies by sifting through rubbish to look for pamphlets produced by Islamic terror groups. Town halls responsible for areas with large Muslim populations were summoned to London and told to get their refuse collectors to search bins for discarded documents or material that might identify and incriminate Islamic extremists. But the bin-searching instruction was deemed so potentially damaging to community relations that councils simply refused to carry out any sort of spying.
Bradford City Council leader Kris Hopkins said: “We were asked to snoop on our own residents by getting our binmen to rummage around people’s rubbish. But the idea that our binmen should be rooting around a wheelie bin to see if they can spot dodgy bits of paper or funny wires is ridiculous. Our binmen aren’t there to act like the secret police. They’re there to empty our bins. It goes without saying that if any of our staff spotted something illegal they’d call the police. But our job is to bring communities together, to help our communities live side by side, not do the dirty work for MI5.”
Colleagues jailed for race abuse
Three men have been jailed for three years for a campaign of racial harassment against a Muslim colleague.
Amjid Mehmood was tied to railings and force-fed bacon while a rucksack with protruding wires was put on his locker, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard.
Fellow road maintenance workers Lee McDermott, of Rowley Regis, and Sean Melaney and Phillip Skett, both from Birmingham, admitted racial harassment.
The nine-month campaign of abuse came to light when Mr Mehmood told police.
McDermott, 31, from Blue Stone Walk, Sean Melaney, 28, of Steatham Grove, Kingstanding, and Skett, 39, of College Road, Erdington, were each jailed for three years.
‘Red Ken: there’s method in his vileness’
“This column has long argued that mass, uncontrolled immigration was a deliberate policy to secure electoral advantage for Labour. Back in 1987, after Mrs Thatcher’s third victory, Labour concluded it could no longer rely on the old white working class. So it decided that it would import a new working class, which would then return the favour by loyally voting Labour.
“This was part of a wider strategy that also included the creation of a vast client state and putting as many members of the middle classes as possible on the payroll. It’s now coming to fruition in the London mayoral elections.
“There are 350,000 new voters on the electoral roll in the capital, most of them immigrants. There’s also a huge Muslim vote. Ken Livingstone reckons that 200,000 of them will swing it for him. So he’s sent his goons into mosques to rustle up support and lavished hundreds of thousands of pounds in grants on Muslim organisations. One of his most dedicated cheerleaders in the Islamic community is a big fan of suicide bombings and a supporter of Hamas, which wants to wipe Israel off the map.
“Now you know why Livingstone embraces Islamist headbangers, insults Jews and smears anyone who challenges him as a ‘racist’ or ‘Islamophobe’. It’s all done with a cynical eye on the ballot box. Vile he may be, daft he ain’t.”
Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, 18 April 2008
You do rather feel that Littlejohn is preaching to the converted here. A Daily Mail online poll on the London mayoral election currently has Livingstone at 11% and Boris Johnson at 78%. Now there’s a surprise.
Boy called Islam ‘banned from game show over name’
The parents of a nine-year old French boy called Islam are to sue a television company for discrimination after it allegedly refused to let him participate in a game show unless he changed his name. Angel Productions told the boy that his name “represented a religion that was not liked in France,” according to the parents cited by Le Parisien newspaper.
Islam Alaouchiche had been shortlisted for a place in a youth game show called “In ze boite” (In the box) on Gulli, a children’s channel. But when he turned up for the final audition with his parents, who have Algerian nationality, they were told by a casting agent: “There’s a problem, your son cannot keep his first name. Being called Islam if you are a boy is like a girl wearing the (Islamic) veil.” The woman suggested Islam use “another Arab name” such as Mohammed or Sofiane. But his mother Farah refused.
The family left the premises to return to their home near Paris and never heard from the company again.
Public pool bars father and son from its ‘Muslim-only’ swimming session
A father and his five-year-old son were turned away from their local swimming pool because they were the wrong religion. David Toube, 39, and his son Harry were told that the Sunday morning session was reserved for Muslim men only.
Mr Toube, a corporate lawyer, described his experiences on a blog. “I arrived at the pool to discover that they were holding what staff described to me as ‘Muslim men only swimming’,” he wrote. “I asked whether my son and I could go as we were both male. I was told that the session was for Muslims only and that we could not be admitted.”
Yes, it’s our friend David T from the “left-wing” blog Harry’s Place, finding his true political home in a right-wing Tory rag.
See also “Banned from swimming pool for not being Muslim” in the Daily Express, “Multiculturalism gone wild: UK father and son banned from public swimming pool for not being Muslims” at Dhimmi Watch and “No swimming for dhimmis: how will the Left excuse this latest Western Muslim ‘tolerance’?” by Debbie Schlussel.
Update: Read the excellent post by D.B. at The People’s Republic of Teeside, 19 April 2008
Brigitte Bardot on trial for Muslim slur
PARIS — French former film star Brigitte Bardot went on trial on Tuesday for insulting Muslims, the fifth time she has faced the charge of “inciting racial hatred” over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers.
Prosecutors asked that the Paris court hand the 73-year-old former sex symbol a two-month suspended prison sentence and fine her 15,000 euros (12,071 pounds) for saying the Muslim community was “destroying our country and imposing its acts”.
Since retiring from the film industry in the 1970s, Bardot has become a prominent animal rights activist but she has also courted controversy by denouncing Muslim traditions and immigration from predominantly Muslim countries. She has been fined four times for inciting racial hatred since 1997, at first 1,500 euros and most recently 5,000. Prosecutor Anne de Fontette told the court she was seeking a tougher sentence than usual, adding: “I am a little tired of prosecuting Mrs Bardot.”
French anti-racist groups complained last year about comments Bardot made about the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha in a letter to President Nicolas Sarkozy that was later published by her foundation. “I am fed up with being under the thumb of this population which is destroying us, destroying our country and imposing its acts,” the star of ‘And God created woman’ and ‘Contempt’ said.
Bardot has previously said France is being invaded by sheep-slaughtering Muslims and published a book attacking gays, immigrants and the unemployed, in which she also lamented the “Islamisation of France”.