Racist graffiti plagues Ipswich

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A victim of a racially motivated vandalism attack spoke of his horror today as fears of an escalation of racist graffiti in Ipswich grew. Ipswich grocer Koysor Miah, who is a member of Ipswich’s Muslim community, spoke of his shock after vandals daubed a string of swastikas and racist abuse on shops and a mosque in the town. Mr Miah said the attacks would frighten worshippers at Shahjalal Mosque after it was one of seven buildings targeted this week.

Abusive words were scrawled on the mosque and the side of Al-Amin Halal Grocery, both on St Helen’s Street, and also on the exterior of a Suffolk New College building on Rope Walk. Swastikas were painted on a newsagent’s shutter and the side of the Millennium Martial Arts Centre building, both on St Helen’s Street, as well as in a subway on St Matthew’s Street and on a front wall of a Norwich Road property.

All the incidents apart from the swastika in Norwich Road were reported to Ipswich Borough Council on Tuesday.

Mr Miah, 35, who owns Al-Amin and worships at the mosque, said: “This is getting worrying. It’s happening more frequently and I don’t know what they want to achieve. “I care for everyone who comes to the mosque – the older people will be frightened.”

The businessman said he had suffered racist abuse from teenagers outside his shop a fortnight ago and they had knocked on his window and repeatedly opened and shut the door to annoy him. Someone has also repeatedly knocked on the door of the mosque in the middle of the night for weeks. Racist graffiti was also daubed on the mosque two years ago, he added.

Evening Star, 15 November 2007

Pat Condell on the MCB and community relations

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pat CondellSelf-styled “comedian” Pat Condell, hero of the National Secular Society, delivers his verdict on the Muslim Council of Britain – “duplicitous, mealy-mouthed, unprincipled, terrorist-sympathising scum” – and helpfully outlines his prescription for promoting harmony between Britain’s diverse communities:

“You know what’s good for community relations? People who come to this country and adapt happily to our way of life, or if they find it’s not quite to their taste they piss off and live somewhere else. That’s really good for community relations. If you don’t like how we do things in Britain, get out. You weren’t invited here and you’re not wanted here.”

In the course of this latest rant Condell expresses indignation that he has become something of a hero among racists and fascists too. Now, why do you suppose that might be, Pat?

Video (if you can stomach it) here.

Quebec mother considers teachers in hijabs a threat

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Reminding them of the Christian name of where they were – on Île Jésus – a young mother yesterday urged the chairmen of Quebec’s “reasonable accommodations” commission not to forget their Roman Catholic heritage. Geneviève April also had a warning for Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor: Don’t promote the rise of Islam in Quebec, because it will erode the identity of young French Canadians like her two children, who are exposed to it at school and daycare.

“As a mother, I’m very worried,” said April, 30, whose young son attends a multi-ethnic school that is 70-per-cent allophone and where the pupils are of 45 nationalities. “Children are sponges, and if my children are taught by someone (who is Muslim), they’ll start asking themselves who they are,” said April, the first of two dozen people who addressed the commission yesterday in Laval.

Teachers and daycare workers in hijabs, for example, are a threat, because “children trust the people looking after them, and (wearing the hijab) is practically a kind of subversion, and I think that’s deplorable and shouldn’t be accepted.”

Bouchard, a veteran historian and sociologist who grew up Catholic in Chicoutimi, asked April whether it’s OK for parents to transmit their religion to their children. Absolutely, she replied, but “I don’t want Muslim parents transmitting their religion to my children.”

“Culture and religion are interrelated,” and whereas Islam has no roots here, “Quebec culture is completely filled with allusions to the Catholic religion,” she said, noting that the Highway 15 hotel where the Laval hearings are being held sits on Île Jésus.

At his multi-ethnic school, her son is “in a bath of cultures, and his identity will be put to the test,” April said. If his teacher wears a hijab and many of his classmates are Muslims, her son may one day decide to become Muslim himself, “just to be like his friends, and I wouldn’t like that,” April said.

“That’s why you’d like hijabs to be banned in schools?” Bouchard asked.

“Yes,” April replied.

Montreal Gazette, 15 November 2007

Islam and Europe – there really is a conspiracy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“One rain-soaked evening, in a bus stop on the road leading to a castle overlooking the picturesque German town of Marburg, an especially frank piece of graffiti caught my eye: ‘To hell with Islam!’ In this remote, pastoral setting, the words at first appeared out of place. But in today’s Europe, and in Germany in particular, this sort of attitude toward Islam should come as no surprise. Since the September 11 attacks in America, and the subsequent terrorist attacks by al Qaeda on European soil, the Continent has witnessed a rising tide of hostility toward Muslims living there, from violent rhetorical outbursts to physical attacks on mosques and businesses….

“It is hard to avoid comparing this new animosity toward Muslims to the traditional manifestations of a much older hatred – anti-Semitism. The fear of a minority that practices an unfamiliar form of worship and is believed to be worming its way into Christian or Western culture, undermining its values, shaped the relationship between Europe and the Jews in its midst for hundreds of years….

“The temptation to draw parallels between past and present is unquestionably strong – but is it justified? There are certainly some notable points of similarity between prewar European anti-Semitism and the enmity directed toward the Muslim immigrants living in Europe now. However, there is a quintessential difference between the two: The fear of a Jewish conspiracy against European civilization had no basis in fact, whereas fear of the expansionist ambitions openly expressed by senior figures in the Muslim-Arab world, and shared by some ordinary Muslims, is not groundless….

“Egyptian born Muhammad al-Ghazali, one of the most outstanding contemporary Muslim scholars, conceives of the possibility that hundreds of thousands of immigrants ‘will not only keep their faith but will become pioneers in spreading it, if the Muslim nation wants this and will work toward achieving it’. Hamdi Hassan, who lectures on communications at al-Azhar University in Cairo, perceives the Muslim presence on European soil as proof that the spread of the Islamic faith has graduated from the defensive stage of the 18th and 19th centuries to a new phase of dissemination. And Muhammad al-Hanni, chairman of the Dar al-Ri’aya al-Islamiyya organization in London, believes Muslim immigrants represent the potential for establishing an ‘alternative civilization’ in the West, the decline of which we are now witnessing.”

Uriya Shavit in Azure, Autumn 2007

Reprinted in the Wall Street Journal, 14 November 2007

London’s PC despot

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“What kind of leader launches an open assault on the press, accusing it of jeopardising public safety and demanding that it put its ‘house in order’? What sort of ruler proposes ‘guidelines’ to the press on what stories it should cover, and even worse, what kind of language it should use to cover them, what kind of people it should employ, and what kind of values it should uphold and communicate to the mass of the population? Kim Jong-il, perhaps? Saddam Hussein, before he was chased into his hole in the ground and later executed? How about Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London?

“This week, ‘Red Ken’, as some people insist on calling him, launched a report on British media coverage of ‘Muslim issues’. Titled The Search for Common Ground: Muslims, Non-Muslims and the UK Media, the report was commissioned by Livingstone’s Greater London Authority. It explores the alleged rise of Islamophobia in the media. And in the name of tackling the apparent spread of prejudice through the papers (especially tabloid ones), Livingstone and his supporters have crossed a line normally only transgressed by despots: they’re using their political clout to try to shape the media in their own image. Strip away all the PC lingo about ‘protecting Muslims’, and the London mayor’s latest initiative comes across as an intolerable attack on press freedom.”

Brendan O’Neill continues the ex-RCP’s journey from ultra-leftism to right-wing “libertarianism”.

Spiked, 15 November 2007

‘Should I expect a knock on the door?’ More on the conviction of Samina Malik

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“What about Malik’s documents, the ‘records’ key to her conviction? Reports mention three – a service manual for a rifle, a jihadist text called ‘Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places’, and the Mujahideen Poisons handbook. It took me five minutes of Googling to get hold of them. The jihadist text turns out to be a fatwa by Osama bin Laden. Verso include it in a published collection of his speeches. Interest in the 7.62mm Dragunov sniper rifle implies, I suppose, that you have one. Or that you think guns are cool. The poisons handbook is a 23-page pamphlet summarising a lot of public-domain information. There’s a certain transgressive glamour to this material, and perhaps it indicates unhealthy interests, but I doubt that, if the possessor weren’t a self-declared jihadi sympathiser with a security pass at Heathrow, anyone would find it significant. Presumably an irreligious thirtysomething author can still read what he wants? Or should I really expect a knock on the door?”

Hari Kunzru in the Guardian, 15 November 2007

Brown is just a pathetic liberal says Michael Burleigh

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Michael BurleighMichael Burleigh isn’t impressed by Gordon Brown’s latest proposals to combat terrorism:

“Toughness is not really Brown’s thing; he prefers ‘values’ and ‘hearts and minds’. The most striking aspect of his proposals was the sheer number of agencies he was hoping to engage in preventative measures designed to pre-empt the radicalisation of young Muslims…. It conjured up a vision of a vast army of the public sector; good, ready and willing to aid Ahmed or Ayman get over the murderous rage that seems to derange a minority of Muslim adolescents….

“The dread word ‘deportation’ (surely a welcome prospect to any sincere Islamist fed up with life in Sodom-by-Thames) was touted, with a few figures rolled out to suggest that evil people are being expatriated. In reality, all attempts to deport foreign nationals are aggressively frustrated by human rights activists exploiting the European Human Rights Act that his predecessor signed into law…. Mr Brown also intimated that he will be seeking to persuade senior media figures to tone down reporting that allegedly gives rise to ‘Islamophobia’. This is sinister….

“Nor did Mr Brown have anything to say about organisations such as Hizb-ut Tahir – which function as sectarian totalitarian parties bent on dominating institutions they manage to infiltrate – beyond the pathetic assurance that they would not receive grants from local authorities….

“There was nothing in Brown’s speech about the plans to build a 25,000-capacity mega-mosque near the 2012 Olympic stadium in West Ham, which is intended to serve as a Muslim quarter for athletes and spectators during the Games, in flagrant violation of everything the Olympic Games represent.”

Daily Telegraph, 15 November 2007

Yes, this is the same Michael Burleigh who featured in this week’s “Is Islam good for London?” debate hosted by the Evening Standard … and he was one of the speakers who was supposed to be putting the case in favour! Although, to be fair, Burleigh did distance himself from Rod Liddle: “I have to say I agree with Mr Liddle that Islam is masochistic and homophobic, but I’m not sure I could agree with the accusation of fascism.”

Minister forced into terror law U-turn

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Minister forced into U-turnMinister forced into terror law U-turn

By James Tweedie and Louise Nousratpour

Morning Star, 15 November 2007

SPINELESS Security Minister Admiral Lord West made a rapid U-turn on detention without charge on Wednesday after a carpeting from control-freak Premier Gordon Brown.

Speaking on BBC radio at 8.10am, Lord West declared that he was not convinced of the need to extend pre-charge detention for terrorist suspects beyond the current 28-day limit.

“I want to have absolute evidence that we actually need longer than 28 days,” he said. “I want to be totally convinced, because I am not going to go and push for something that actually affects the liberty of the individual unless there is a real necessity for it.”

After his interview, Lord West scurried off to a meeting with Mr Brown and Home Secretary Jaqui Smith before a Commons statement on security.

By the time he emerged from the meeting at 9.15am, he had mysteriously changed his tune. “My feeling is, yes, we need more than 28 days,” he told reporters. “I personally absolutely believe that, within the next two to three years, we will require more than that for one of these complex plots. I am convinced that is the case,” said Lord West.

He later insisted in another statement: “I am quite clear that the greater complexities of terrorist plots will mean that we will need the power to detain certain individuals for more than 28 days.

“I am convinced that we need to legislate now so that we have the necessary powers when we need them. The government would be failing in its responsibility to protect national security if we waited until we needed more than 28 days to act.”

Referring to his original position, he claimed: “I was stating this morning that there will need to be scrutiny in the system, and robust evidence against individuals, to safeguard their rights.” He went on to plead that he was only “a simple sailor” and not a politician.

Respect MP George Galloway said: “It’s clear that even the security minister isn’t convince of the need to lock people up without charge for a longer period than even the dictatorship of Turkey used to do. If the minister is not convinced, why should anyone believe that the nodding heads on the Labour back benches truly believe it either?”

Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews archly observed: “Some people are remarkably easily persuaded.”

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‘How Ken whitewashed the Muslim extremists’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nick Cohen 3Nick Cohen is upset at the suggestion in the Mayor of London’s recently-published report on media coverage of Muslims that “journalists – including me – conveyed ‘negative associations’ when we wrote that Jack Straw was standing up for the rights of women when he criticised the full veil”. Poor Nick. How could this well-known friend of the Muslim community be so unfairly criticised?

Worse still, “a large chunk of the report was a devious attack on a Panorama exposé of the Muslim Council of Britain by John Ware of the BBC”. And to cap it all, Cohen reveals that the Mayor’s report was compiled with the assistance of that notorious extremist, Inayat Bunglawala of the MCB. Cohen concludes that we have here yet another shocking illustration of how “the Left is going along with the Islamist Right”.

Evening Standard, 14 November 2007