“A website has been launched by those campaigning against proposals for an enormous mosque close to the 2012 Olympic site. Newham councillor Alan Craig, of the Christian Peoples Alliance, says the site will counter ‘misinformation and spin’ put out by Tablighi Jamaat, the conservative Islamic organisation behind the plans.”
Jews and Muslims forge a bond in the Oxford mêlée
Jewish and Muslim student leaders at Oxford University have expressed hopes that their co-operation in trying to stop the David Irving-Nick Griffin debate on free speech on Monday night will herald a new relationship between the two groups.
Their members were among up to 2,000 banner-waving, chanting demonstrators who besieged the Oxford Union buildings for four hours in the centre of the university city. A sit-down protest blocked the narrow entry gate to the Union and stopped many of the sell-out audience from getting in.
The Union of Jewish Students and Oxford University’s Islamic Society carried a huge banner marked with the symbols of both organisations. Some Muslim demonstrators carried posters proclaiming “Hands off our Jews”, while the Jewish Society carried others saying “Hands off our Muslims”.
Jewish Society president Steven Altmann-Richer said: “Ironically, the first event we held with the Islamic Society was last term when someone from the Muslim Council of Britain talked to us about the dangers of the BNP.”
Ehsan Jami works on film on Islam
AMSTERDAM – Ehsan Jami, founder of the Committee for Former Muslims, has followed Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s example and made a short film about radical Islam, the Telegraaf reports.
The film entitled The life of Mohammed should be ready in February or March of next year and will cause more of a commotion than the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, the former Labour PvdA member says.
“I show how violent and tyrannical Mohammed was. This man murdered three Jewish tribes, killed people who left the faith, and married a 6-year-old girl, with whom he had sex when she was 9,” Jami says in comment on the contents of the 10-minute film.
Jami says it is a coincidence that Freedom Party PVV leader Geert Wilders is also working on a film on Islam at the moment.
British Muslims should protest teddy lunacy, says Boris
Reflecting on the Gillian Gibbons case in today’s Daily Telegraph, Boris Johnson expresses his regret at the passing of British imperial power and looks back with nostalgia to the days of Palmerston:
“There was a time when Britain would have sent a gunboat to rescue her. There was a time when MPs would have been holding furious debates on the matter, and bandying phrases such as ‘civis Britannicus sum’. In the old days there would have been démarche from Britain to Sudan, warning that His Majesty’s government would not suffer a hair on her head to be disturbed.”
Alas, “that time is past”, and we must look for other solutions. So Boris pompously lectures British Muslim leaders on their obligation to challenge the Sudanese government. True, Boris does admit that Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, has issued a statement calling for Ms Gibbons’ release.
Indeed he has. Dr Bari stated that he was “appalled” at the prosecution of Ms Gibbons. He went on to say: “This is a disgraceful decision and defies common sense. There was clearly no intention on the part of the teacher to deliberately insult the Islamic faith. The children in Ms Gibbons’s class and their parents have all testified as to her innocence in this matter. We call upon the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to intervene in this case without delay to ensure that Ms Gibbons is freed from this quite shameful ordeal.”
Boris doesn’t in fact bother to quote this statement but comments: “Let’s hear more of the same. Let’s see Muslim MPs on the news, appealing to Sudan to show reason.”
Doesn’t Boris read the papers? Even though the media has not exactly fallen over itself in a rush to publish statements about the case by British Muslims, it’s not been impossible to find them. Shahid Malik, minister for overseas development, responded to the news of Ms Gibbons’ arrest by saying that she should be praised for the work she has done teaching Sudan’s children, not locked up: “I’m gobsmacked. This is a terrible mistake. As far as I am concerned this is not Islam. There was no malice intended whatsoever. It seems 100 per cent purely innocent.”
Boris also writes: “If you want grounds for despair, read the entries on the BBC website, in which some British Muslims say that she should be punished; or read the entries from people in Sudan saying that the children should be punished.” Actually, if you want grounds for real despair, you’d do better to read some of the vile racist comments posted on the Sun and Daily Express websites. But that sort of thing is apparently of little concern to right-wing politicians like Johnson.
‘We are at war with all Islam’
The Spectator interviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has told a meeting organised by the Centre for Social Cohesion: “We are actually at war, not just with Islamism, but with Islam itself.”
Sample quotes from the interview:
“The Prophet would have not have disapproved of 9/11, because it was carried out in his example.” “I don’t believe there is such a thing as ‘moderate Islam’.” “Islam is hostile to reason.” “I was a Muslim once, and it was when I was most devout that I was most full of hate.”
“You, here in the UK, are in danger. Of course you can’t ban Islam outright, but you need to stop the spread of ideology, stop native Westerners converting to Islam. You definitely need to ban the veil in schools, and to close down Muslim schools because that’s where kids are indoctrinated…. You wouldn’t allow the BNP to run a school, would you?”
Her parting remark is: “Yes, I am at war with Islam, but I am not at war with Muslims.” The Spectator agrees that this is “a crucial difference”. Muslim communities, for whose demonisation Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s abusive and provocative comments provide ammunition, would find her assurance rather less convincing.
A few sandwiches short at this teddy bear’s picnic
“Muslims in this country don’t have a problem standing with Gillian Gibbons on these ridiculous charges. Predictably though, sections of the media have been quick to exploit their own agendas. Right-thinking people can easily see though that this is the usual case of Liberalism vs Authoritarianism, and clearly everyone in this country is on the side of the former in this case. It’s not another chance to pit Muslim vs non-Muslim.”
Osama Saeed at Rolled Up Trousers, 29 November 2007
‘Britain bows to Muslim banking’
“Britain’s Financial Services Authority published a paper yesterday ‘setting out its role in the development of the UK as the major European financial centre for Islamic financial products and services’. It’s Sharia banking. British government elites continue to move counter to majority sentiment in areas like immigration and Islam, and it’s feeding the growth of the British National Party, which has been lurking on the fringes of the political arena, waiting for its moment.”
Dale Hurd at CBN News, 29 November 2007
Dutch MP makes anti-Qur’an film
A rightwing Dutch MP said yesterday that he was making a film to highlight what he calls “fascist” passages in the Qur’an, in his latest high-profile criticism of Islam.
The interior and justice ministers expressed concern but said they had no authority to stop Geert Wilders screening his film. Wilders plans to depict parts of the Qur’an he says are used as inspiration “by bad people to do bad things”.
Less than 10 minutes long, the film is expected to be shown in late January. It will show “the intolerant and fascist character of the Qur’an”, said Wilders, whose anti-Islam campaign helped his Freedom party win nine seats in parliament in last year’s election.
In the past, Wilders has compared the Qur’an to Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf. He has claimed the Netherlands is being swamped by a “tsunami” of Islamic immigrants.
Joan Smith: Islam and the modern world don’t mix
Joan Smith offers her contribution to the “debate” (read: opportunity to incite further hostility towards Islam and Muslims) over the Gillian Gibbons case:
“It is not enough in these circumstances to claim that Islam is a religion of peace, and dismiss all the things non-Muslims don’t like – honour killings, relentless assaults on free speech, and now an accusation of blasphemy related to a teddy bear – as aberrations. The mores of the seventh century have no relevance in modern life….
“The damage that is being inflicted daily on the image of Islam doesn’t come from people like me, who are constantly accused of Islamophobia, but practices such as forced marriage, honour killings and heated denunciations of ‘Western’ values.”
‘Religious savagery is too much to bear’
“Scour the newspapers and you might just spot the story about a 19-year-old Saudi woman who is to receive 200 lashes for being in the same car as a man who wasn’t her husband or a relative. Her punishment is an act of such barbarity it triggers utter repulsion and fury. Sadly, the best we can do is recoil in horror at a religion prepared to condone the degradation of females….”
Sue Carroll in the Daily Mirror, 28 November 2007
But don’t get the idea that her article is an example of rising intolerance towards Muslims and their faith. Carroll continues:
“We Brits may be lacking on the football pitch but when it comes to tolerance we’re world class. You’d be hard pushed to find a nation more willing to bend over backwards to accommodate minority beliefs and sensitivities…. If Britain were to employ Sudanese tactics and impose its values on minorities living here, you wouldn’t see Parliament Square for the massed ranks of burkhas screaming for retribution.”