“Islamist extremist Yusuf al-Qaradawi hates the West, thinks the UK is decadent and supports suicide attacks against civilians. So why does he want to visit the UK? It turns out he needs some medical treatment and the evil, decadent West is the best place to get it. It never ceases to amaze me how these preachers of hate can so easily put aside their supposedly deeply held convictions when it comes to their own comforts.”
Bill Carmichael in the Yorkshire Post, 1 February 2008
David Cameron was under fire yesterday after it emerged that the radical Muslim scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi had been admitted into the UK when the Tory leader was working in the Home Office.
Cameron, at prime minister’s question time on Wednesday, demanded that Gordon Brown ban al-Qaradawi: “He was banned by a former Conservative home secretary, so why will the government not ban him?”
But al-Qaradawi was allowed into the country five times by a Conservative home secretary, Michael Howard. On at least one of those occasions, in August 1993, Cameron was a special adviser to Howard.
Cameron based his claim on a mistake in a news story, subsequently corrected, in the Guardian in January last year.
For the earlier Guardian article, with correction, see here. The Guardian in fact made the mistake because it had simply repeated the groundless assertion in Uniting the Country, Pauline Neville-Jones’ report for the Tory Party (p.8 – pdf here), that Qaradawi “was banned from entering Britain by Mr Michael Howard when Home Secretary but has been allowed to visit the UK subsequently at the insistence of Mayor Livingstone”.
Cameron’s claim that Qaradawi “believes that the penalty for homosexuality is death” is also taken directly from Neville-Jones’ ignorant report. He obviously knows nothing about the subject.
The National Secular Society rallies to the defence of poor Sarah Desrosiers, the hairdressing salon owner who refused to employ a young Muslim woman who wears a headscarf. Now, where is it we’ve come across that argument before? Oh yes, it was here.
“The Islamic group accused of trying to seize control of Sydney’s Sefton mosque is part of a movement described as a recruiting ground for al-Qa’ida in a new terrorism intelligence report. The group attempting the takeover has members who follow the Tablighi Jamaat stream of Islam, described this week bythe private US intelligence group Stratfor as an ‘indirect line to terrorism‘. Members of the Tablighi movement have recently been linked to a terrorist cell in Spain that was planning a bomb attack in Barcelona.”
The Australian, 31 January 2008
Yes, it’s yet another dishonest attempt to associate the entirely peaceful proselytising movement Tablighi Jamaat with violent extremism. Predictably, this meets with the enthusiastic approval of Jihad Watch.
Anti-Muslim prejudice is dealt with less seriously than other forms of discrimination, a university study found. The research conducted at Bristol University examined 30 years of Government legislation and legal rulings to distinguish the difference between prejudice towards race, ethnicity and religion.
In the study, Dr Nasar Meer, research associate in the Department of Sociology at Bristol, found that Muslims are let down by race legislation because being a Muslim is recognised as a lifestyle choice or a “voluntary identity”. Dr Meer says other religious identities – such as Sikh and Jew – have had race law applied in their favour in a way not extended to Muslim communities. He said many Muslims view their faith as an “involuntary identity” as they are born into the religion.
He said: “We explored what legislation exists to help protect people with what we call an involuntary identity. People with an involuntary identity shouldn’t be disadvantaged by others’ views. The legislation should offer them support and make sure they’re not discriminated against. Muslims have been totally missed out of the protection offered by race-relations legislation because it treats Islam as a religion and not a race.”
Dr Meer said he has come across various examples of when hatred towards Muslims was dismissed but hatred towards other religions had not been tolerated.
Press Association, 31 January 2008
Download Dr Meer’s article here.
See also University of Bristol press release, 31 January 2008
The Leader of the Opposition has urged the Prime Minister to stop controversial Islamic theologian Yusuf al-Qaradawi from entering the country. Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons, David Cameron said that he was a “hate preacher” and should be denied entry.
Gordon Brown told MPs that the Islamic preacher is not in the country yet and in any case there are judicial processes that supervise deportations. He said a decision about whether to grant Mr al-Qaradawi entry into the UK will be made “very soon.”
Mr Cameron accused him of dithering: “People watching this will just conclude this Prime Minister cannot answer a question and cannot make a decision. Never mind the complete lack of vision, never mind the constant re-launches, just concentrate on keeping us safe.”
Yesterday Mr Cameron led calls to refuse entry to Mr al-Qaradawi and others who “preach hate, pit one faith against another and divide our society.”
The rector of one of Oxford’s largest Anglican churches last night called plans to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer from the city’s main mosque “un-English”. Charlie Cleverly, of St Aldate’s Church, in a seven-point statement to his congregation, called on the Central Mosque, in Manzil Way, to drop its plans to broadcast the messages.
He said: “I feel it is un-English and very different from a bell. When such an area is subject to such a call to prayer, it may force people to move out and encourage Muslim families to move in…. Bells are just a signal and have been around for 1,500 years. They are a terribly English part of our culture. I do not believe in the imposition of another culture on our country.”
At his Holy Smoke blog, Telegraph leader writer and Catholic Herald editor Damian Thompson recycles a story from Robert Spencer’s Dhimmi Watch site:
“After the death of a young Muslim man in a car crash in Sydney last month,” Thompson writes, “an Islamic crowd invaded a hospital in order to stop medical tests being carried out on the body in contravention of Sharia law, according to the Dhimmi Watch website. If the report is true, then this is another example of a global campaign by fundamentalist Muslims to replace civil law by Sharia – a process that has already taken root in British cities.”
Thompson goes on to quote the report from Spencer’s site: “The antecedent to the Muslim incursion on the Hospital came about on Monday the 17 December last, when a young Muslim male was airlifted to the Liverpool Hospital’s emergency ward by helicopter. The 19-year-old had been in a serious car accident, his car left the road and crashed into a tree … he died of his injuries, and it seems he and his hijab-wearing girl friend had been celebrating the end of Ramadan.”
The Australian blog Austrolabe comments: “If the victim and his ‘hijab-wearing girl friend’ were, as the anonymous author claims, celebrating the end of Ramadan when they had a serious car accident, why did this obviously critically injured young man wait two months before he was admitted into a hospital? In 2007, Eid ul-Fitr (the celebration marking the end of Ramadan) was on the 11th of October. This man was supposedly admitted into Liverpool Hospital on 17th December, 2007. We know that waiting lists at Liverpool Hospital are long, but that long?”
Update: Thompson has recanted. See Austrolabe, 31 January 2008
In this era of intolerance and cultural tension, the west needs to appreciate the fertile scholarship that flowered with Islam, argues Jim Al-Khalili.
“Boris Johnson will be answering questions on the BBC London (94.9FM) drive-time show at 5pm this evening. If it follows the same pattern as Ken Livingstone’s last week, the interview will happen at 6pm. The hosts are Eddie Nestor and Kath Melandri.
“Boris Johnson has been challenged many times about his remarks about Africans (piccaninnies etc) and on one occasion told the interviewer he was sick of talking about it. However, nobody has challenged him about his record as editor of the Spectator. In response to the July 2005 bombings and to the riots in Paris and elsewhere later that year, he printed articles only from non-Muslims hostile to Islam: himself, Mark Steyn and Patrick Sookhdeo….
“This man must be challenged! The number for the station is 020 7224 2000; email eddieandkath at bbc.co.uk or text 07786 200 949.”
Yusuf Smith at Indigo Jo Blogs, 30 January 2008