In defence of Herouxville

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Herouxville (1)In January this year the small Quebec town of Herouxville hit the headlines when it published a code of conduct for migrants which among other things advised them that it was unacceptable to “kill women by stoning them in public, burning them alive, burning them with acid, circumcising them etc.”

In the National Post Jonathan Kay defended the citizens of Herouxville against the charge that their bigoted and stereotyped views about migrants (and Muslims in particular) represented an attack on multiculturalism from the right. He claims that such views have been “liberated from the odour of racism” and are now commonplace in what passes for the left:

“… in the culture wars, feminists, gay activists and other progressives are no longer willing to risk their winnings by pledging multicultural solidarity with traditional Muslims, Hasidic Jews and other socially conservative immigrant groups … muscular monoculturalism is no longer the purview of the right … it’s becoming a mainstream ideology, even a fashionable one, on the left.”

Update:  See also Yusuf Smith’s comments at Indigo Jo Blogs

Homeland Security apologizes for strip-searched Muslim woman in Tampa

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Homeland Security Department apologized to a Muslim woman who was detained at Tampa International Airport in April and strip searched at a county jail.

Safana Jawad, 45, a Spanish citizen who was born in Iraq, was detained on April 11 because of a suspected tie to a suspicious person, authorities said. Jawad was taken to jail, strip searched and held for two days before being deported to England.

Jawad filed a complaint and the agency apologized on Dec. 8. “On behalf of the Department of Homeland Security, I offer you my sincere apology for having to undergo a strip search,” wrote Timothy J. Keefer, acting chief counsel for the department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

Associated Press, 29 December 2006

Torygraph promotes Islamic reform

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“There are signs that a reform movement may emerge among this country’s two million Muslims, aimed at developing an interpretation of Islam that is compatible with liberal democracy. At present the chief spokesmen for Islam are quick to assume the mantle of victimhood and inclined to condemn all criticism as Islamophobia, a pseudo-psychiatric term implying fear and irrational hostility. But a younger generation is emerging, confident that their faith is a guide to a good life but aware that mainstream Islam embodied in Sharia law needs reform.

“The inequality of women under the law will never be acceptable in the West. The freedom to criticise religious beliefs and to join and leave faith traditions as individual conscience dictates is simply not consistent with the Muslim habit of threatening apostates with death. The view that the Koran must be binding for all time is not compatible with our commitment to learning from each other through free inquiry and the clash of opinion. The year 2008 could see the beginnings of a liberal British Islam willing to embrace equality under the law, freedom of religion, and freedom of interpretation.”

David Green of right-wing think-tank Civitas in the Sunday Telegraph, 30 December 2007

Note the sleight of hand here. Green applauds the development of “an interpretation of Islam that is compatible with liberal democracy” (so you can’t accuse him of being an anti-Muslim bigot, can you?) while simultaneously asserting that mainstream Islam in the UK – which he identifies with the oppression of women, death threats against apostates and a literalist intepretation of the Qur’an – is incompatible with liberal democracy.

But Civitas specialises in this sort of double-talk on Islam. See for example here.

‘Mamma li Turchi!!’, Italy and the Saladin Syndrome

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Today in Italy, the traditional fascist hatred of the Jew is increasingly substituted by a hatred of Muslims, all of them, children, women and men. Today Muslims in Italy are not so differently represented as their Semitic brothers were during the time of the Fascio and the Eia Eia alala.”

Gabriele Marranci examines the rise of Islamophobia in Italy.

Islam, Muslims, and an Anthropologist, 25 December 2007

Giuliani is the guy to chase ‘the Muslims’ back ‘to their caves’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

John Deady“The Guardian of London is conducting video documentaries up in New Hampshire. And they did a segment on Rudy in which they got a very off-kilter quote about Muslims from a Rudy campaign official in the state.

“The Guardian identifies him as John Deady, the co-chair of state Veterans for Rudy. Deady – and the key here is that he is a Rudy campaign official – says that Rudy should be our President because he has what it takes to tackle one of our ‘most difficult problems’, which he identifies as the ‘rise of the Muslims’. Deady adds that we need to ‘chase them back to their caves’ or otherwise ‘get rid of them’.”

TPM Election Central, 28 December 2007

Watch the Guardian video report here.

See also the follow-up article at TPM in which Deady defends his comments and goes on to state: “We’re not dealing with a rational mindset here. We’re dealing with madmen.” Asked if this is a reference to all Muslims, he replies: “I am talking about Muslims in general.” Asked to elaborate on his call to “get rid” of Muslims, Deady explained: “When I say get rid of them, I wasn’t necessarily [sic – emphasis added] referring to genocide.”

Update:  Deady has now resigned, according to Fox News. See also Ali Eteraz on the GOP’s Muslim problem.

Anger over plan to broadcast Muslim call to prayer in Oxford

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Oxford_Central_MosqueMuslim plans to broadcast a loudspeaker call to prayer from a city centre mosque have been attacked by local residents who say it would turn the area into a “Muslim ghetto”. Dozens of people packed out a council meeting to express their concerns over the plans for a two-minute long call to prayer to be issued three times a day, saying that it could drown out the traditional sound of church bells.

Dr Mark Huckster, who lives in Stanton Road and works at East Oxford hospice Helen House, told the Oxford Mail: “The proposal to issue a prayer call is very un-neighbourly, especially in a crowded urban space such as Oxford. I have lived in the Middle East and a prayer call has a very different feel to church bells and I personally found the noise extremely unpleasant, rather disturbing and very alien to the western mindset.”

Daily Mail, 24 December 2007

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‘Mosque call outrages Oxford’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Central Mosque Oxford“Muslim leaders have sparked outrage with plans to broadcast the Islamic call to prayer over the roof-tops of one of Britain’s most historic cities. Elders at Oxford Central Mosque want to blast it out three times a day. They have already discussed the controversial idea with council chiefs and are set to submit a formal application in the New Year.

“But the move has been met with fury by people living near the mosque in Oxford – known as the city of dreaming spires. They claim the two-minute call – to be broadcast over three large speakers – is noise pollution and offensive to other faiths.”

The Sun – rather belatedly – joins in the Oxford mosque hysteria.

Anti-Islamic outsider is top Dutch politician

Posted on by Bob Pitt

geert_wildersGeert Wilders, who compares the Koran to Mein Kampf, has been named the Netherlands’ politician of the year in a poll run by public broadcaster NOS.

Mr Wilders’ pithy and shocking soundbites – he warned of a “tsunami of Islamisation” – have dominated headlines, while his parliamentary outbursts have brought an adversarial style of politics to the muted consensus to which the Dutch are attuned.

Mr Wilders’ proposed solutions are deeply radical: stop all Muslim immigration, ban the building of mosques and ask the 1m Muslims among the Dutch population of 16m to “go to their own countries” or give up their religion.

He remains a highly controversial outsider and many Dutch Muslims and non-Muslims alike would rather not discuss him. But his Party for Freedom, the PVV, won nine of 150 seats in parliament in the last election and it regularly polls above that level.

The NOS poll naming him politician of the year combined votes from the public and those of the parliamentary press corps.

Financial Times, 27 December 2007

Whose liberation?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“One of the most elusive tasks I have faced at conferences has been a definition of ‘Muslim women’ from which I could lay out the terms of their suffering and, in a true pompous academic fashion, advance some proposals for their liberation. The moment the term ‘Muslim women’ is deconstructed, my argument reaches an impasse. On the other hand, incorporating it into any diatribe against misogyny, oppression and persecution threatens to reduce my argument to one where Islam is the sole culprit. More importantly, the conflation between women and Islam inadvertently lumps together close to 1 billion women from around the globe, a homogenising equation which overlooks many other contextual variables that have shaped the plight of these women.”

Salam Al-Mahadin at Comment is Free, 26 December 2007