Opposing the mega-mosque … on the basis of bigotry and ignorance

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Andy Armitage, former editor of Gay & Lesbian Humanist and the man responsible for its notorious “Sick face of Islam” issue (“redundant churches are sprouting onion domes and minarets. We are becoming strangers in our own land”), offers his insights into the dispute over the proposed Newham mosque:

“The ultra-orthodox Muslim group Tablighi Jamaat are behind the building. Among their adherents has been the Glasgow airport bomber, Kafeel Ahmed, the ‘shoe bomber’ Richard Reid and two of the 7/7 bombers…. And the fact that it could be stuck right in the middle of the British landscape is obviously worrying its opponents.”

Armitage warns that the building “could become Europe’s biggest mosque, with a capacity [of] 70,000 (according to last weeks Sunday Times), which is only 10,000 fewer than the proposed Olympic stadium only 500 yards away”. The Sunday Times article he links to is in fact from November 2005 – and the plans by architects Mangera Yvars to which the article refers have since been scrapped.

But don’t get the idea that the atheist Armitage is dogmatically opposed to all religions. Not at all. He’s happy to recommend the Christian Peoples Alliance website MegaMosqueNoThanks.com as “full of links and ideas for opposing the mosque”.

The Freethinker, 2 December 2007

Right and left Islamophobes – so difficult to tell them apart

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Robert Spencer comments on the Gillian Gibbons case: “Even Muslims in the West who condemned the arrest and sentencing of Gibbons did so in disquieting terms…. Muhammad Abdul Bari of the Muslim Council of Britain said: ‘There was clearly no intention on the part of the teacher to deliberately insult the Islamic faith’. But what if there had been? If Gibbons had named the teddy bear Muhammad in order to mock the Muslim prophet, would Muhammad Abdul Bari have approved of her being arrested, imprisoned, lashed or even executed?”

Jihad Watch, 3 December 2007

Now, where have we heard that stupid argument before? Yes, it was from Maryam Namazie and the self-styled Council of Ex-Muslims. Narrow-minded bigots think alike, eh?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sudanese embassy demoBritish Muslims protested outside the Sudanese Embassy over the treatment of jailed teacher Gillian Gibbons. The small but noisy group demanded the immediate release of Mrs Gibbons, who is currently serving a 15-day prison sentence in Sudan after her class of seven-year-olds named a teddy bear Mohammed.

Chanting “free, free Gillian” and “let her go, let her go”, demonstrators attempted to hand over a “goodwill teddy” to the embassy, but a staff member refused to accept the gift.

Some 20 British Muslims, including MP for Tooting Sadiq Khan and chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission Massoud Shadjareh, gathered outside the Sudanese embassy in Piccadilly. Leaders of the protest said they wanted to show that British Muslims supported Mrs Gibbons. Some arrived with their own teddy bears.

At the London demonstration, Catherine Heseltine, a 28-year teacher and member of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, condemned the action of hard-line Islamists. She said: “They are dragging the name of Islam through the mud. The overwhelming feeling in the Muslim community in the UK is that it is really sad the way Gillian Gibbons has been treated. I haven’t met a single British Muslim who has taken the naming of the teddy to be an insult.”

Mr Shadjareh, chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, said: “I find it offensive that Islam is being used in this way by the Sudanese government and the media. It is totally unacceptable by the Sudanese government and the press are trying to make this into another cartoon or a Salmon Rushdie issue.”

Press Association, 1 December 2007

Posted in UK

MCB finally embraces ‘British values’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Muslim’s Council of Britain’s uncompromising backing for Gillian Gibbons has rather thrown Islamophobes. How to register grudging support for the MCB’s stand while at the same time maintaining the implication that they are at heart dangerous extremists? Jasper Gerard finds the appropriate tone: “Could a row over a teddy have finally convinced them that the values of their homeland – Britain – are more sympathetic than a violent interpretation of Islam?”

Observer, 2 December 2007

More hysterical nonsense from comrade Namazie

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Maryam Namazie’s so-called Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain offers its take on the Gillian Gibbons case. The MCB, which forthrightly condemned Ms Gibbons’ arrest and stated that it was “appalled at the decision of the Sudanese authorities” to charge her, is falsely quoted as saying it found the situation merely “embarrassing”, and is further accused of favouring the lashing of people who insult Islam, while the adoption of an utterly toothless law against incitement to religious hatred is equated with death threats against apostates:

“The CEMB notes that Islamic organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain find the events in Sudan ’embarrassing’ – as indeed all supporters of the Shariah should. But they do so on the grounds that no insult to Islam was intended by Ms Gibbons. This implies that had an insult been perpetrated, it would have been deemed a crime and punishable according to the Shariah, which could have resulted in 40 lashes or worse. Recent death threats against apostates or the case of the Danish cartoons of Muhammad two years ago are some examples of how any criticism is deemed offensive or insulting. Islamists will not hesitate to use Islamic law where possible or other violent means to stifle such criticism. In line with this, they have been aggressively campaigning for a law on incitement to religious hatred in the UK, which will severely curtail freedom of expression.”

Maryam Namazie’s blog, 2 December 2007

Islam’s image

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Letters in the Daily Telegraph, 1 December 2007:

Sir – Muslim leaders in Britain keep trying to tell us that they are a loving, kind faith. Really? Hindus, Jews, Sikhs, Christians, and atheists, none of them like being offended. Who does? But the only faith that talks of lashings for naming a teddy bear and death for apostates is Islam.

Alastair Muir, Glasgow

Sir – How right Boris Johnson is (Comment, November 29) in appealing for all fair-minded Muslims to speak out against the extremists of their faith: but don’t hold your breath. Didn’t Edmund Burke say: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”?

Brian Foster, Shrivenham, Oxfordshire

‘No, I am not a racist’ claims Amis

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Martin Amis (2)Martin Amis responds indignantly to Ronan Bennett: “I DO NOT ‘ADVOCATE’ ANY DISCRIMINATORY TREATMENT OF MUSLIMS. AND I NEVER HAVE. And no one with the slightest respect for truth can claim otherwise.”

Sure, Martin, sure. When you said that stuff in the interview with Ginny Dougary (“The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan. Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community”) you were merely “adumbrating”, engaging in a “thought experiment”.

Mart goes on to claim that his hostility is solely towards Islamism as an ideology (needless to say, he equates Islamism with terrorism) and that his words in the Dougary interview were “not racist but simply retaliatory”. Which makes it difficult to explain his proposal for “strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan”.

And how would Amis characterise this statement from the interview? “They’re also gaining on us demographically at a huge rate. A quarter of humanity now and by 2025 they’ll be a third. Italy’s down to 1.1 child per woman. We’re just going to be outnumbered.” As Terry Eagleton pointed out, this is almost indistinguishable from the sort of paranoid fantasies you expect from the BNP.

Guardian, 1 December 2007

Calgary girl gets to play in soccer game after minor modification to hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

CALGARY – A 14-year-old girl who made national headlines over her determination to wear a Muslim headscarf while playing sports was allowed yesterday to compete in a soccer tournament. Safaa Menhem learned just moments before the game that she had been given the go-ahead to wear her hijab with just a few slight modifications. The pint-sized forward received a rousing ovation when she stepped onto the Calgary Soccer Centre pitch for her first shift. “I’m happy I got to play,” a beaming Safaa said after the game, which her team won 4-1.

Canadian Press, 30 November 2007

Bear scrutiny

Posted on by Eddie Truman

“The guilty verdict against Gillian Gibbons is absurdity itself. The case is triply insane: the storm generated over a pathetic teddy bear; the involvement of the state and judiciary; and finally the sentencing of the poor woman…. The truth is that this is a political affair from start to finish. Gibbons was collateral damage in a dispute between the Sudanese government and Britain.”

Soumaya Ghannoushi at Comment is Free, 30 November 2007