Islamophobia Watch

"When the Islam smear against Obama first came out, it was based on the idea that he is currently, a Muslim. Then the Pastor Wright controversy put that mess to rest, since Obama's affiliations to an obviously Christian Church became front and center. Now there is a new Islam smear. This one says that Obama was a Muslim – and as a result, he is going to arouse the wrath of Muslims around the world who are going to want to kill him for apostasy (converting away from Islam, punishable by death)."

Ali Eteraz responds to an article by Edward Luttwack in the New York Times, which he describes as "solid fear-mongering".

Huffington Post, 13 May 2008

Daily Telegraph leader writer and Catholic Herald editor Damian Thompson hails the NYT article as "fascinating stuff": Holy Smoke, 12 May 2008

"... there is an extraordinary passage when one of the most likeable and longest-serving members of the team, and a former radical Sixties firebrand to boot, turns on radical Islam and the fact that we are sleep-walking into an Islamic caliphate. He describes suicide bombers as 'racists, fascists and bastards', deplores the credulity of right-on, anti-American attitudes, and insists that 'self-hatred is the cancer at the heart of our nation'.

"It's always dangerous to assume that any character's words represent the view of the playwright..... But this play seems to me to mark a defining moment on the English stage when the conventional liberal pieties that largely obtain in our theatre are finally put under fierce scrutiny, and Jihadist Islam is at last denounced as a malign evil."

Charles Spencer reviews Richard Bean's new play The English Game.

Daily Telegraph, 13 May 2008

"With Senator Obama the presumptive Democratic nominee, the question facing America, increasingly, boils down to this: intensify the 'clash of civilizations', at the continued expense of domestic needs, or turn to diplomacy to resolve international conflict, so we can re-orient our national priorities to health care, education, economic recovery, and protecting the environment."

Writing in the Huffington Post Robert Naiman observes that John McCain "continues to flog the idea of a war on 'Islamic terrorism', even though the official policy of the United States Government is that there is no US war on 'Islamic Terror'." Naiman points out: "Of course, if America sees itself as facing an enemy of 'Islamic terror', while that might be very harmful to the U.S. internationally, it could be very useful domestically. It would be much easier to rationalize a military attack on Iran."

A glamorous young Muslim [sic] woman is the latest Cameron favourite to be parachuted in to keep a close eye on Johnson. Munira Mirza, who argues that racism in the UK is greatly exaggerated, is to serve as a cultural adviser to the mayor.

She is the third member of his new team to have worked for Policy Exchange, the organisation behind many of the policies adopted by Cameron's Conservatives.

Mirza's appointment will also be viewed as an attempt to neutralise any accusations that Johnson is racist, especially as he seeks to slash grants to fringe ethnic groups, many of which received lavish funding from Livingstone.

Mirza believes race relations policies based on multicultural ideas have been divisive.

Sunday Times, 11 May 2008

For more on Munira Mirza and Policy Exchange see here. Pointing to Mirza's asssociation with the tendency around Spiked Online and the Institute of Ideas, which was formerly the Revolutionary Communist Party, we wrote that the ideology promoted by the ex-RCP these days "fits in quite well with Tory values". And in another piece we observed that the RCP had "morphed into a bunch of right-wing libertarian individualists whose obvious natural home now is the Tory party". How right we were.

History textbooks being used by hundreds of thousands of public school students across the U.S. are blatantly promoting Islam, according to a new report by an independent organization that researches and reviews textbooks.

WND has reported several times on issues involving the promotion of Islam in public school texts, including a recent situation in which California parents complained their children were being taught that "jihad" to Muslims means "doing good works."

The new report is from the American Textbook Council, which was established in 1989 as an independent national research organization to review social studies textbooks and advance the quality of instructional materials in history.

In the two-year project, whose report was authored by Gilbert T. Sewall, the ATC reviewed five junior and five high school world and American history texts, concluding:

"Many political and religious groups try to use the textbook process to their advantage, but the deficiencies in Islam-related lessons are uniquely disturbing. History textbooks present an incomplete and confected view of Islam that misrepresents its foundations and challenges to international security."

World Net Daily, 10 May 2008

See also Right Side News, 11 May 2008

See Pastor Rod Parsley's views on Islam on YouTube

"Ken Livingstone spent my money – my money – welcoming Yusuf al-Qaradawi to City Hall as an honoured guest. He knew what he was doing. He did it largely to annoy Jews."

Daniel Finkelstein in the Jewish Chronicle, 9 May 2008

"Brigitte Bardot is facing prison if convicted for a fifth time of inciting racial hatred. Brigitte loves animals and hates Muslims, which is why she sent a petition to the president about halal butchers: 'I've had enough of being led by the nose by this whole population which is destroying us, destroying our country, imposing their ways.' Sarkozy takes a tough line on this sort of abuse. 'When you live in France', he is fond of reminding voters, 'you respect the rules. You don't have lots of wives, you don't circumcise your daughters, and you don't use the bath of your apartment to slaughter sheep in.' The peace prize is in the post, M President."

Fiachra Gibbons in the Guardian Paris Diary, 6 May 2008

"Well, even a stopped clock is right two times a day and so it is that I find myself rather agreeing with the BNP's recently elected to the London Assembly Richard Barnbrook who says that he will press for the Union Flag to be flown permanently over City Hall, for burkas to be banned from public buildings and for official celebrations to mark St George's Day. He will resist the planned construction of a huge new mosque, the biggest place of worship in Britain, in Newham, East London.

"This seems fair enough to me – after all London IS British and not merely an overseas branch of Islamabad. I think the Burqa SHOULD be banned, and feel that the huge new mega mosque planned for East London should also be banned until such times as existing mosques prove they are not little more than recruiting offices for Jihad, and surely the flying of the Union Flag over City Hall is non-controversial?"

A Tangled Web, 6 May 2008

"This result isn't just a wonderful victory for Boris and the termination of Livingstone. It's also a defeat for the campaign – an exceptionally dirty one, at that – waged against Boris by a small band of separatists claiming to act in the name of all London's Muslims."

Tory MP Paul Goodman attacks the role of the British Muslim Initiative and Muslims4Ken in the London mayoral election. (Yes, that the same Paul Goodman who David Cameron appointed as shadow minister for Communities.)

Conservative Home, 3 May 2008

See Anas Altiktiti's responses in the comments section. He writes: "Paul Goodman's piece is symptomatic of all that's wrong with politics and politicians today. Neither Mr. Goodman nor his party have ever asked to meet up with myself or with any of the organisations that he has so steadily listed, yet he hesitates not for a second to label me and those organisations as extremists. In fact his whole argument seems to suggest that all Muslims who voted for Ken Livingstone are on the extreme side, and that only those who voted for his party are 'moderates'."

And see also Anas's piece at Comment is Free: "The constituency we were addressing was worried about Islamaphobia. And we managed to ensure the issue of Islam, Islamaphobia and discrimination against Muslims was on every candidate's agenda and a hot topic in every hustings. If it did nothing else than persuade Johnson to clarify his views on Islam, assert his conviction that it is indeed a religion of peace, and get him to visit a few mosques in an attempt to win back votes he was convinced he had lost, then it was a great success."