Islamophobia Watch

"Last week, Danish police arrested three men who were allegedly plotting to murder one of the cartoonists whose satirical pictures of the Prophet Muhammad caused worldwide uproar on their publication last year. Danish newspapers, including some which had originally opposed the publication of the cartoons, immediately responded by reprinting the picture in question as a symbol of their refusal to be intimidated. The national broadcaster showed it too. The contrast with how such a crisis would be handled in Ireland or Britain could not be greater. Here, a mindset of appeasement has taken root. 'Don't upset the Muslims' is our official slogan."

Eilis O'Hanlon in the Sunday Independent, 17 February 2008

Ruth Dudley Edwards warns that "the catastrophe that the ideological multiculturists have brought upon Britain" may yet spread to the Republic of Ireland.

Sunday Independent, 11 November 2007

"Let me ask you something. Is it a rational decision for a secular-Christian society to admit thousands of Muslims into its midst? ... The question is especially apposite, because we now know the consequences for every single European society which has admitted large numbers of Muslims: social alienation, religious antagonism and outright terrorism. We know this. We all know it. And yet we continue to allow Muslim immigration. Why? What do we gain from it?"

Kevin Myers in the Irish Independent, 17 July 2007

"The other day when he was asked to react to the attempted car-bomb attacks on London, the city's mayor, Ken Livingstone, called for tolerance. Fair enough, you might say. But at whom was his call for tolerance directed? You are probably thinking, if you are a logical sort, that the call must have been directed at the fanatics who had come within an ace of killing and maiming possibly hundreds of people. But you would be mistaken. Instead Ken directed his call at his fellow, non-Muslim, Englishmen. He said that in the past Jews, the Irish and gays had been persecuted in England and now it was the turn of Muslims....

"The War on Terror, if that term can still be used, is revealing strange ideological fissures in Western societies. I came across these fissures in person last September when I took part in about eight radio discussions in the days after Pope Benedict had quoted the Byzantine emperor who had less-than-flattering things to say about Islam. The line-up on those shows was me playing my usual role as the Catholic commentator, a Muslim representative, and frequently a representative of what I suppose we'll have to call the secular left.

"On almost every one of these shows the secular left representative did his or her best to impersonate Ken Livingstone. First there was the usual ritualistic condemnation of the extremists, but this was then followed by a much more detailed discussion of why we are to blame for whatever Muslims extremists do to us. To all intents and purposes this placed the secular leftist firmly on the side of the Muslim representative....

"Essentially you had the guardians of tolerance siding with people who would crush homosexuals under walls if they could, and who would turn women into property given half a chance. And why this horrid sympathy? It is because the secular left's hatred of Western civilisation, and certainly Christianity, America and Israel, is such that they will side with anyone, no matter how unsavoury, who shares that hatred."

David Quinn in the Irish Independent, 6 July 2007

"Now that the Assembly in the Six Counties has been re-established we can expect some serious discussion on the future of education. However, writing in the Observer today, Nick Cohen takes the opportunity to once again depart from reality and pick and choose some arguments to further the spread of Islamophobia.... Disgracefully, he quips 'When white friends took their daughter to inspect one of them, the teachers all but begged them to send her there: hers was the only white face in the playground. They declined, as most parents would'."

good friday >>> easter monday, 13 May 2007

The Observer finds a Muslim it likes (i.e. who denounces mainstream Muslims as extremists):

"Beneath a basketball net in a freezing sports hall, a Muslim cleric is waging war on Islamic extremism. Imam Shaheed Satardien is taking a stand against those Muslims in Ireland whom he claims are too sympathetic to Osama bin Laden and the cult of the suicide bomber. At Friday prayers in the sports hall in north-west Dublin, the South African-born former anti-apartheid activist warns his multinational congregation against blaming other religions and the West in general for all Muslims' ills....

"Satardien fell out with the main Dublin mosque at Clonskeagh, singling out the influence of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian born sheikh who has spoken openly in support of suicide bombers and issued fatwas on gays. According to Satardien, al-Qaradawi's European headquarters is based at the Clonskeagh mosque in south Dublin. Its own website refers to al-Qaradawi and to Clonskeagh as the headquarters of the sheikh's European Council for Fatwa and Research.

"The authorities at the Clonskeagh mosque and at the South Circular Road mosque, the other main establishment in Dublin, angrily deny the extremist accusation. They point out that these mosques attract thousands of mainstream Muslims to their doors each week."

Observer, 14 January 2007

As an example of the sort of bigotry this sort of "liberal" reporting plays to, a right-wing Canadian Christian blogger writes that the Observer story offers "more reasons to halt Muslim immigration to Canada".

James Love on Religion and Culture, 14 January 2007

"For the first time since the hate-filled creed of Islamic fundamentalism vomited itself onto this earth, Christianity has a chance to stand up for itself. Whatever interpretation you place on the Pope's controversial address about radical Islam, he was merely expressing what any sane individual thinks about the vile activities of muslim insurgency. The time has now come to form a global Pan Christian Front to defend the Biblical principles of Jesus Christ before everything free and decent about our New Testament faith is eradicated from Western culture."

John Coulter in The Banket, 25 September 2006

"Their head scarves frame faces that are unmistakably Irish and their Dublin accents seem out of place among the strictures of their religious dress. They are unlikely targets of racial abuse, but Patricia Fitzpatrick, 43, and Lesley Carter, 35, have been spat upon, called Pakis, Osama Bin Laden and even 'Jewish bastards' on the streets of their native city. As converts to Islam they have joined Ireland's estimated 26,000-strong Muslim population, which has become the focus of controversy since the discovery of planned terrorist attacks in Britain two weeks ago."

Sunday Times, 27 August 2006

See also the Sunday Post, 27 August 2006