Martin Amis slams Islamism, scorns appeasers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Martin Amis (2)“When it comes to world affairs, most contemporary British authors suffer from a bad case of group thinking these days. Less predictable is Martin Amis, who spurns the warm-slippered conventions of the U.K. literati. His independent streak is again on display in ‘The Second Plane’,’ a new collection of essays, reviews and short stories, most of them about terrorism.

“One oddity about our age of terror is how enthusiastically godless European leftists have rallied to the defense of Islam. Amis is more consistent. Though he has turned from atheism to agnosticism, his distrust of religion remains unabated. Since it’s now impermissible to disparage individual faiths, he writes, let us disparage all of them.

“Amis does reserve a special derision for Islamism, saying its adherents view indiscriminate killing as ‘a divine delight’. Islam may not be bent on murder, but Islamism is, he says. That makes him an Islamismophobe, not an Islamophobe – if the word phobia even applies. A phobia is an irrational fear, he points out, and ‘it is not irrational to fear something that says it wants to kill you’.”

George Walden writes at Bloomberg, 24 January 2008

Florida Attorney General requires employees to watch anti-Muslim propoganda

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Muslim Public Affairs Council today sent a letter to Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, who serves as a campaign adviser to Rudy Giuliani, calling on him to cease subjecting his employees to blatantly anti-Muslim propaganda.

Last week, MPAC learned that McCollum sent an email to his employees requiring them to attend one of three screenings of a controversial video called “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” in the State Senate Building. In the email, McCollum says the screening is intended to help employees “better understand the threat that we face as a nation and society”.

McCollum is a former member of Congress (1981-2001) who served on the Republican Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare for the US Congress. The Task Force was first in issuing papers on the clash of civilization and promoting an anti-Muslim agenda in the US Congress.

“Obsession”, a 60-minute tirade of cherry picked inflammatory statements from foreign individuals interspersed with “analysis” from controversial American figures including self-proclaimed terrorism expert Steve Emerson, has been widely discredited since its release in 2006.

As Attorney General, McCollum is tasked with ensuring the rule of law in the State of Florida. It is concerning, then, that the very office that victims of hate crimes would turn to for legal aid and justice, is leading its employees to make decisions based upon bias and fear.

The American Muslim, 24 January 2008

Bright’s fright night

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bright’s fright night

Martin Bright’s feeble TV hatchet job on London Mayor Ken Livingstone may have missed its target, but it speaks volumes for the pro-war ‘left’, writes ANDREW MURRAY.

Morning Star, 23 January 2008

THE most remarkable moment in this week’s partisan hatchet job on London Mayor Ken Livingstone on Channel 4 was not in fact about the mayor at all.

It was the moment when reporter Martin Bright, in the course of a segment about Venezuela, dismissed the Chavez regime in terms straight from the Bush State Department handbook – allied to Iran, associated with cocaine-smuggling guerillas and accused of human rights abuses.

With that passing phrase, Bright managed to align himself with the global neocon agenda on the Middle East and Latin America as well as the matter ostensibly in hand.

For make no mistake, the travesty of journalism that was the Dispatches programme reveals two things above all. First, getting Livingstone out of office is now priority number one for the warmongering, Muslim-bashing neocon “left.” Second, they are now prepared to openly embrace even the reactionary Toryism of Boris Johnson in order to further this end.

One of only two people can be elected mayor this year – Livingstone or Johnson. And Bright, seconded by his soulmate Nick Cohen in The Observer, has effectively come out for a Johnson victory, so great is his venom against anything even approximating to an authentic socialist left.

That was made abundantly clear in the Evening Standard, in which Bright hyperventilated on his personal mission to see the mayor driven out of office.

“I feel it is my duty,” he intoned with a pomposity worthy of a higher office than political reporter on a small-circulation weekly, “to warn the London electorate that a vote for Livingstone is a vote for a bully and a coward who is not worthy to lead this great city of ours.”

Bright himself has form working to the agenda of the global right. He teamed up with the Policy Exchange, which is run by charter neocon and former Daily Telegraph chief leader-writer Dean Godson, to produce a pamphlet telling Britain’s Muslims how they should behave.

This venture earned him a public commendation from Richard Perle, the leading imperial strategist for the Reagan and Bush administrations and one of the chief boosters of the Iraq war in Washington. The Policy Exchange has since been accused of fraudulent research in a subsequent Muslim-baiting television programme.

Research was not an issue for “BoJo” Bright. When the shadow secretary of state for business and enterprise Alan Duncan popped up in the programme in the guise of a “former oil trader” to bear expert witness on Venezuela, we knew that we were not really in the realm of Woodward and Bernstein but in the party political broadcast zone.

A similar incidence of “research-light” was the risible interview with Marc Wadsworth, a former anti-racist activist who sensationally announced that some of Livingstone’s advisers were affiliated to the “Communist Fourth International based in Moscow.” Did no-one bother poor “Bright” with the news that the Communist International and the Fourth International were two entirely different and bitterly opposed bodies and that the latter has never ever been based in Moscow, a famously inhospitable location for Trotskyists?

As for the attack on “Socialist Action,” surely John Ross, Redmond O’Neill and the rest can, after eight years, be judged on their contribution to the running of London rather than their membership of any particular political group. This is simply McCarthyism at a puerile Daily Express level, an attempt to scare the Tories of Orpington and High Barnet into getting to the polls in May before the Soviet comes to town.

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Joan Wallach Scott in London

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Politics of the VeilPublic Lecture

FRENCH GENDER EQUALITY AND THE ISLAMIC HEADSCARF

with Professor Joan Scott

Date: Thursday 24th January 2008
Time: 6.30 pm – 8.00 pm
Venue: New Theatre, East Building, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE

Professor Scott takes a critical look at one aspect of the ban on Islamic headscarves enacted in 2005 in France. She will examine ‘a clash of gender systems’ as a way of trying to understand some of the force of the reaction to Islam there. Joan Wallach Scott is a Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Politics and History at Princeton, NJ. She is author of Gender and the Politics of History and, most recently, The Politics of the Veil. The event will be chaired by Professor Anne Phillips. Free admission and open to all. Entry is on a first come, first served basis.

For more information please contact:
Tel: 020 7955 6043
E-mail: events@lse.ac.uk

Britain’s Muslims are too extreme

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Britain's Muslims are too extremeMosques in Britain are spreading a dangerous brand of extremism that would be outlawed in Iraq – says the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq.

The “shocking indictment” came from Dr Barham Salih, who said he was appalled by the level of fundamentalism he found taking root here.

After visiting mosques in Lancashire, Dr Salih said: “I am not surprised that you British are facing so many problems with extremists after what I saw in those mosques in Blackburn. What I saw would not be allowed in Iraq – it would be illegal.”

Last night his comments re-ignited the debate on terror within the UK and led to a call for a tougher approach towards mosques. Intelligence expert Professor Anthony Glees warned: “This needs to be taken very seriously but the Government is turning a blind eye to it, which I believe is a grave mistake. It should be banned. The Government has to make it clear that there are some things that are simply not negotiable. This is one of them.”

It was during talks in Baghdad that Dr Salih made his shocking revelations to Shadow Culture Minister Tobias Ellwood. “I do not believe these comments can be dismissed out of hand. He went in the mosques and said literature he saw would be illegal. He was quite clear,” said Mr Ellwood. He added: “Is it not time that we took a much tougher approach to what is happening in the 1,300 mosques that we have in the UK?”

Muslim leaders in Blackburn dismissed the claims as “rubbish” last night but the town has had high-level links to terror in the past and been targeted by preachers of hate.

Daily Express, 23 January 2008

See also the Daily Mail, the Sun and the Star. And in an editorial headed “Labour too soft on evil” the Star comments:

“Mosques in Britain are filled with more hate for the West than those in Iraq. That’s the alarming verdict of Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Dr Barham Salih. He was shocked by what he discovered on a visit to Blackburn – home of Justice Secretary Jack Straw. “What I saw could not be allowed in Iraq – it would be illegal, ” he said.

“Muslim extremists in the UK have been able to distribute propaganda literature and videos as well as making bloodthirsty speeches. They have sent followers to al-Qaida training camps to prepare for jihad. And they inspired four Brits to become suicide bombers and kill 52 innocent people in London.

“Labour has adopted a softly, softly approach to the growth of Islamic extremism in Britain – taking years to clamp down on dangerous figures like Abu Hamza. As a result of this feeble approach – as Dr Salih found out – the extremists have gained in strength.“

Islam-West rift widens, poll says

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Most people in Muslim countries and the West believe divisions between them are worsening, a Gallup poll for the World Economic Forum (WEF) suggests. The poll also suggested that most Europeans thought more interaction with Islam would be a threat – though most Americans disagreed. WEF chairman Klaus Schwab said the poll pointed to “an alarmingly low level of optimism” over dialogue.

BBC News, 21 January 2008

Britain is a Christian country says minister

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A new “tool kit” for universities issued today by Bill Rammell, the Universities Minister, advises universities to draw up a national watch list of guest speakers who should be banned from speaking on campus. It also suggests that universities consider setting up multi-faith chaplaincies instead of separate prayer rooms for different faiths, to promote integration and prevent pockets of extremists forming.

Mr Rammell was adamant that Muslim students – particularly those coming from overseas – did not have the right to demand special treatment from British universities. “Britain technically is a Christian country with many secular features. It’s those two things. It’s not anything else. If you expect that you would have the same response to your faith needs in Britain as would happen within a Muslim or Islamic country, [you] would be disappointed,” he said.

His comments follow fears that some Islamic societies and prayer rooms in universities had become no-go areas for the authorities, where extremists may be free to preach hatred and violence to vulnerable students.

Times, 22 January 2008

See also “Extremists turn attention to Muslim women” in the Daily Telegraph and “Extremists are ‘grooming’ female students, security officials warn” in the Daily Mail.

BNP flyers circulated in Burnt Oak

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP changing face of london leafletThe Hendon & Finchley Times has reported that racist leaflets promoting the far-right British National Party have been distributed in Burnt Oak and Colindale in north London.

The flyers contrast a scene from 1950s Britain with three women in Islamic veils. Under the 1950s picture of an all-white street party the leaflet states: “… this is the way London used to be… If you would like London to be like this again, then support the British National Party.”

The paper states that the likely source of the flyers is the BNP presence in Harrow, where the fascists stood a candidate in a council by-election in December. Their candidate, Howard Studley, received 56 votes and finished last.

As Henry Grunwald of the Board of Deputies pointed out, the BNP’s aim in contesting that election was to win support within the Jewish community on an anti-Muslim programme, and their leafleting in Barnet may well have the same objective.

The Hendon & Finchley Times quotes Shakil Ahmed, of the Hendon Mosque, as saying that relationships between different communities in Barnet are good, but that there are always concerns about such views spreading.

He told the paper: “We don’t know what affect this is going to have. The worry in view of the nature of the flyer is that the hatred is going to be targeted at Muslim women on the streets dressing in this particular way. I don’t think we’ve had that many incidents in Barnet, but I’ve heard of things in Brent, where women in headscarves have been attacked for nothing. That’s not far away, so it is a concern.”

Barnet councillors have said that they will investigate whether the BNP flyers breach anti-racism laws.

Padilla sentenced to 17 years in prison

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jose PadillaMIAMI – Jose Padilla, the Brooklyn-born convert to Islam who was once accused by the government of plotting to detonate a “dirty bomb” in the United States, was sentenced on Tuesday to 17 years and four months in prison for his role in a conspiracy to help Islamic jihadist fighters abroad.

The sentence was more lenient than the federal sentencing guidelines recommended and was a blow to the government, which had requested the maximum penalty of life imprisonment for Mr. Padilla, 37.

In explaining her decision, Judge Marcia G. Cooke of Federal District Court in Miami acknowledged the gravity of the crimes Mr. Padilla had committed. But she questioned the range and impact of the conspiracy, saying that there was no evidence linking the men to specific acts of terrorism anywhere or that their actions had resulted in death or injury to anyone.

New York Times, 22 January 2008

Don’t vote for Ken says Bright

Posted on by Bob Pitt

martin_brightMartin (“I could think of nothing worse than to support Boris Johnson”) Bright has now come off the fence. A mere four days ago he was suggesting that voters should do no more than reconsider voting for Ken Livingstone in the London Mayoral election in May. Yet in today’s issue of the Tory rag the Evening Standard (or the Evening Boris, as it has recently become known) Bright tells his readers:

“I now believe Ken Livingstone is a disgrace to his office and not fit to be Mayor of London. Any Londoner with a progressive bone in his or her body should not consider voting for him in the forthcoming mayoral elections.”

At least this has the merit of consistency. And it’s entirely in line with Bright’s argument that the “left” (a term he laughably applies to himself and the likes of Nick Cohen) should form an alliance with the anti-Muslim right – hence his association with the right-wing think-tank Policy Exchange.

Give it another four days and no doubt we’ll see Bright officially signed up to Boris Johnson’s election campaign.

Postscript:  The exposure of Livingstone’s leftist allies at City Hall is a bit old hat, by the way, having been accomplished successfully several years ago.