Monday, September 19, 2005 "Since the attack on America on 9/11, Muslims have been telling the world that Islam is peace, Islam is love, and Muslims never kill except in self-defense. Another Islamic lie is that Muslims never lie. There is hardly a Muslim living on this planet who truly believes Islam promotes peace and love."
Barbara J. Stock at ChronWatch, 19 September 2005
Sunday, September 18, 2005 A top Welsh university last night hit out after being labelled a haven for Islamic extremists in a new report. Swansea University described the claims as "alarming and irresponsible" after being named among 30 British universities where extremists and terror groups have been detected.
The report, by Anthony Glees, director of Brunel University's centre for intelligence and security services and one of Britain's leading terror experts, will be published this week. It lists universities where Islamic extremists, members of the far-right British National Party and animal rights fanatics have operated.
The report accuses Swansea of having played host to Muslim extremists and refers to Ramzi Yousef, a student who took part in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York. But Yousef had studied electrical engineering at now-closed West Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education, not Swansea University.
The report, entitled When Students Turn to Terror, is published by the respectable-sounding Social Affairs Unit, whose director is Michael Mosbacher. For some useful info about Mr Mosbacher, and his record of involvement with right-wing organisations, see here
Sunday, September 18, 2005 Sunday, September 18, 2005 "When Islam appears on the agenda, the goalposts are moved: the normal rational thought processes are not applied. Suddenly those Left-liberal shibboleths are not very important: they can be forgotten. Append the description 'Muslim' to anyone and all bets are off; he or she can get away with pretty much anything, be it the execution of homosexuals or the idea that Jews and Freemasons are running the government. This springs from the misconception, widespread on the Left, that being anti-Islam is in some way 'racist'. It is not. It has nothing to do with race."
Another anti-Muslim rant by Rod Liddle in the Spectator, 17 September 2005
"Nothing to do with race"? Well, apart from the fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslims are non-white, of course. But then, Liddle claims that his hardline anti-immigration stance has nothing to do with race either.
He identifies racism narrowly with prejudice against people on the basis of their skin colour. This of course ignores the fact that racist propaganda these days more often takes the form of diatribes against the supposed undermining of "British" values by "alien" cultures. From which standpoint Liddle is clearly categorisable as a racist.
Saturday, September 17, 2005 "The Terrorism Act of 2000, in section 59 1(a), 'Inciting Terrorism Overseas', clearly states, 'a person commits an offence if he incites another person to commit an act of terrorism wholly or partly outside the United Kingdom'. Needless to say, such an act also constituted an offense when committed in England. Yet Islamist imams were allowed with impunity to incite suicide bombing in British mosques, on the Internet and in the media. They were allowed to do so because this incitement chiefly targeted Israel.
"Although such incitement has recently lessened in intensity, the very same Islamist leaders, preachers, imams and scholars who supported it have been appointed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to a new task force to tackle extremism among young Muslims. Among the appointees are Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss grandson of Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Inayat Bunglawala, the spokesperson of the Muslim Council of Britain."
Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen have a go at Tariq Ramadan and Inayat Bunglawala, plus Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Ken Livingstone and George Galloway.
Saturday, September 17, 2005 "In linking Qaradawi, the spiritual adviser to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, with the modernising Pope of peace, Ken is trying to subvert the normal moral order about what is peace and what is war. He wants to do this so that he can advance the idea that Muslim grievances in the Middle East are the great moral challenge in our time, as once were slavery or apartheid (he constantly interpolates Nelson Mandela into the argument). He wants us to believe that the thinkers who exalt killing in this cause are modern, good and holy.
"It is similar to what he did with the IRA more than 20 years ago, when he ran the Greater London Council. He invited Gerry Adams to County Hall, arguing that death in Northern Ireland and in London was caused not by the people who actually killed people, but by the failings of the British state. Ken's analysis was later, in effect, accepted, though less luridly presented, by John Major, by the Northern Ireland Office and by Tony Blair."
Charles Moore in the Daily Telegraph, 17 September 2005
Sounds like a bit of a self-defeating argument to me.
Saturday, September 17, 2005 "Take the Christians who massacred the Muslims of Srebrenica. Or take the Christians – Lebanese Phalangist allies of the Israelis – who entered the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in Beirut and slaughtered up to 1,700 Palestinian Muslim civilians.
"Do we remember that? Do we recall that the massacres occurred between 16 and 18 September 1982? Yes, today is the 23rd anniversary of that little genocide – and I suspect The Independent will be one of the very few newspapers to remember it. I was in those camps in 1982. I climbed over the corpses. Some of the Christian Phalangists in Beirut even had illustrations of the Virgin Mary on their gun butts, just as the Christian Serbs did in Bosnia.
"Are we therefore in a position to tell our Muslim neighbours to 'grasp the nettle'? I rather think not. Because the condition of human rights has been so eroded by our own folly, our illegal invasion of Iraq and the anarchy that we have allowed to take root there, our flagrant refusal to prevent further Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank, our constant, whining demands that prominent Muslims must disown the killers who take their religious texts too literally, that we have long ago lost our moral compass."
Robert Fisk in the Independent, 17 September 2005
Saturday, September 17, 2005 
The Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) Saturday strongly refuted allegations of excessive 'Islamic extremism' on university campuses. "What we are seeing is an attack on some of the most active and respected Islamic societies across the country," said Faisal Hanjra, head of FOSIS Student Affairs.
Articles in the British press on Friday quoted a report to be published next week claiming that extremist organizations are operating on more than 30 university campuses across Britain. The leaking of the report came after Education Secretary Ruth Kelly urged vice-chancellors to clamp down on student extremists as part of the government's new focus in its so-called war on terrorism following July's bombing attacks in London.
But FOSIS, an umbrella organization representing over 90,000 Muslim students, said that the allegations of "Islamism" being rife on campuses were made without either defining it or outlining any methods of research to base such claims.
See also MAB Online, 17 September 2005
Saturday, September 17, 2005 A coalition of Muslim and civil-libertarian organizations yesterday demanded that Gov. Mitt Romney apologize for suggesting earlier this week that some mosques be wiretapped. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of Massachusetts delivered a letter, co-signed by 21 other organizations, saying Romney's comments depicted Muslims living in the United States as potential or actual terrorists.
"Governor Romney, the safety of Massachusetts is built upon the trust all residents – citizens and immigrants – have in their government," the letter stated. "Your willingness to profile and scapegoat an entire community based on religious affiliation only serves to erode trust and increase fear."
See also Boston Globe, 17 September 2005
Saturday, September 17, 2005 Sadly, the story of the Evening Standard's odious and wildly inaccurate article about the Dar Al Taqwa bookshop seems set to run and run. This week we have received a couple of updates featuring correspondences with the Standard Managing Editor Doug Wills.