‘Suicide bomb backer runs Ken’s campaign’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“An advocate of suicide bombing is among leaders of a group trying to mobilise Muslim voters to back Ken Livingstone, the Standard reveals today. For the past year, the group has been working on a strategy to win an estimated 200,000 Muslim votes in an effort to re-elect the Mayor. It includes a campaign of vilification aimed at his Conservative rival, Boris Johnson. It is being waged by Muslims 4 Ken, led by 39-year-old lecturer Anas Altikriti and Palestinian-born Azzam Tamimi, a supporter of Hamas, the militant group dedicated to the creation of an Islamic state of Palestine.”

Evening Standard, 16 April 2008

See also “Embracing Islam gives Ken new election hope” and “Ken’s friends“.

Read the response by the British Muslim Initiative and Muslims 4 Ken here and here.

And see also the statement by Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate Brian Paddick: “We have seen in the past how Ken Livingstone has invited the likes of Yusuf al-Qaradawi to City Hall, someone who holds abhorrent views, including treating women as second class citizens, the murdering of gay people and hatred towards Jews.”

Readers might also like to check out Tim Sebastian’s interview with Dr Tamimi which formed the basis of the Standard‘s headline (transcript here). Sebastian hectored, interrupted and badgered Tamimi throughout this long interview, basically accusing him of cowardice because he wouldn’t go to Palestine and become a suicide bomber himself. Eventually, Tamimi was provoked into making the remarks quoted by the Standard, which have been used against him ever since.

In clarification of his views, Tamimi later stated: “I said if I were to be put in the same circumstances that the Palestinians are put in, I might resort to doing that.” This may not be exactly what Tamimi said under the pressure of Sebastian’s harassment, but it’s the position he actually holds.

Update:  See also Anas Altikriti at Comment is Free, 17 April 2008

Why the BNP backs Boris

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Spectator Muslims are Coming“When confronted about his infamous choice of language to describe black people – ‘piccaninnies’ with ‘watermelon smiles’ – Boris Johnson’s responses ranged from claims of being misinterpreted to apologies for the offence caused. And when, a few days ago, Nick Ferrari questioned him on his no less distasteful statements on Islam, the Conservative candidate for the London mayoralty denied ever making them. He insisted that Ken Livingstone, the mayoral incumbent and his fellow guest on the breakfast show, was seeking to smear him. Islam, he emphatically declared, was ‘a religion of peace’.

“What a difference a mayoral race can make. Only two years ago, Johnson’s writings – readily available in the online archives of the Spectator and Daily Telegraph – were peppered with talk of the ‘paranoia of the Muslim mind’, of Islam’s ‘medievalism’, ‘heartlessness’ and ‘disgusting arrogance’. Islamophobia was, he maintained, ‘a natural reaction’ to ‘any non-Muslim reader of the Qur’an’. We must, therefore, dispose of the ‘first taboo’, he counselled, and accept ‘that the problem is Islam. Islam is the problem’….

“Given Johnson’s record on minorities, his endorsement by the far right as a second-preference candidate seems understandable, shocking though it may be. This signifies a worrying precedent in the history of the BNP – notwithstanding Johnson’s claim that he has no wish ‘to receive a single second-preference vote from a BNP supporter’. Never before has the BNP felt sufficiently fond of a mainstream mayoral candidate to lend him or her its support.”

Soumaya Ghannoushi in the Guardian, 16 April 2008

It might be added that during his tenure as editor of the Spectator Boris Johnson repeatedly published anti-Muslim articles by the likes of Rod Liddle, Anthony Browne, Patrick Sookhdeo and Mark Steyn.

Read Johnson’s views on Islam here.

Fascists advertise Muslim introduction agency

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Much embarrassment at the Green Arrow Forum, the bloggers’ website that supports the BNP. At the top of the site is an advertisement for singlemuslim.com, the UK’s leading Muslim marriage service. This has caused much consternation to the perplexed BNP bloggers.

It transpires that the ads are placed by Google, whose computerised brain must have noted that the Green Arrow constantly refers to Islam and thus thought this would be an appropriate site for lonely Muslim hearts. Some BNP bloggers have also twigged this and suggested that in future, Islam be referred to only as “the threat to the west” to avoid confusion.

Guardian, 15 April 2008

Europe or Eurabia?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pipes 9-11Daniel Pipes poses the question. His conclusion:

“… indigenous Europeans could yet rediscover their Christian faith, make more babies and again cherish their heritage. Yes, they could encourage non-Muslim immigration and acculturate Muslims already living in Europe. Yes, Muslims could accept historic Europe. But not only are such developments not under way, their prospects are dim. In particular, young Muslims are cultivating grievances and nursing ambitions at odds with their neighbours.

“One can virtually dismiss from consideration the prospect of Muslims accepting historic Europe and integrating within it. American columnist Dennis Prager agrees: ‘It is difficult to imagine any other future scenario for western Europe than its becoming Islamicised or having a civil war.’ But which of those two remaining paths will the continent take? Forecasting is difficult because the crisis has not yet struck. But it may not be far off. Within a decade, perhaps, the continent’s evolution will become clear as the Europe-Muslim relationship takes shape.”

The Australian, 15 April 2008

See also Pipes’ article in the Jerusalem Post, where he tells us that “Islamism represents the world’s leading anti-democratic force” and that Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the Muslim world’s leading advocates of representative democracy, “argues that elections are heretical”.

Terrorism in the name of Jesus? Everybody ignore

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Certainly he has not the fascinating look of a bin-Laden and does not live in the mysterious caves of the Hindu Kush, surely he has not the media appeal and the anchorman vocation which the ‘Master of Terror’ has shown to have in the last seven years; yet Roberto Sandalo (alias Robby the Mad or Commandant Franco) has more terrorist credentials than ‘Sheik Osama’. Roberto Sandalo, allegedly the leader of a Christian anti-Islamic terrorist movement called Fronte Combattente Cristiano or ‘Fighting Christian Front’. The mysterious group has been responsible, in the last year, for bomb attacks against Islamic centres and mosques as well as death threats to Muslims….

“To tell the truth, I thought that news about the first Christian anti-Muslim terrorist group would have attracted international attention and fostered new debates. Think, indeed, if the terrorist’s name instead of Roberto was something like Muhammad; imagine the titles, the talks, the politicians’ words and the special legislations proposed. Well, we do not have very much to imagine, we need only to open a British newspaper.

“But the news about a self-defined Christian terrorist and a Christian (mainly Catholic) terrorist organization has attracted virtually no attention. Nothing can be found, (at the moment in which I am writing) on the BBC (even BBC Europe) or the main British newspapers or the US. Furthermore, even those Italian newspapers which have dealt with the story, have not called the attacks, before often dismissed as the work of immigrants’ rackets and mafia, Christian terrorism, or referred to Mr Sandalo as a Christian terrorist (despite his own claim!).”

Gabriele Marranci at Islam, Muslims and an Anthropologist, 14 April 2008

SNP courting ‘radical Muslims’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Osama Saeed (4)“Osama Saeed, who has openly called for ‘a caliphate’, a pan-Islamic global state, has a serious chance of being elected for Glasgow Central when the failing Brown government finally calls a general election. Salmond doesn’t seem to care about the harm being done to the Muslim community by elevating someone such as Saeed, who last week was appointed to be a member of the Scottish government’s working group to look at the issue of Trident replacement.”

Tom Gallagher renews his campaign against the Scottish National Party and one of its leading Muslim activists.

Sunday Times, 13 April 2008

Update:  See also Postman Patel, 15 April 2008

He draws attention to the fact that Gallagher is a research fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington.

Muslim woman receives damages for headscarf slight

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A 20-year-old Malmö woman has been awarded damages after she was asked to leave a bus for wearing a veil. The woman has received 25,000 kronor ($4,203) from public bus service operator Arriva after an agreement was reached with the Ombudsman against ethnic discrimination (DO), according to local newspaper Sydsvenskan.

The woman was instructed to leave the bus in the southern Swedish city when she refused to remove the niqab veil that she was wearing as part of her sartorial hijab headdress. The bus driver had asked the woman to remove her niqab so that he could identify her, however the woman was using a bus pass that did not require identification.

“The bus driver has not acted according to Arriva’s values. There is no doubt where the fault lies and this is most regrettable. We are happy to pay out the money to make up for it,” said Jan Wildau at Arriva. As a result of the incident the bus driver, who was employed on an hourly basis, no longer works for Arriva.

The Local, 12 April 2008