Islamophobia Watch

"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

"Muslims have no problems at all with the Jews themselves. Our main conflict is with the Zionist movement. I hope that the Neturei Karta can introduce its stance to the Arab media so that people can know that there is a big segment of Jews opposing the Zionist entity."

The noted "anti-semite" Yusuf al-Qaradawi comments on his meeting with Ahron Cohen and Yisroel Dovid Weiss.

It is a relief to hear that Cohen and Weiss emerged from their meeting with Qaradawi unscathed. After all, we have it on the reliable authority of Peter Tatchell that Qaradawi's message is "destroy the Jews – all of them".

Gulf Times, 1 May 2008

See also Islam Online, 1 May 2008

Writing on his Abu Aardvark blog, Marc Lynch draws our attention to the detailed analysis by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point of Ayman al-Zawahiri's recent response to questions submitted over the internet.

Read the analysis (pdf) here

The authors note the importance Zawahiri attached to attacking Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to whom he devoted a large section of his response: "Zawahiri's disdain for Qaradawi is so strong that he says he 'wished' to be asked a question about the Egyptian legal scholar." They add: "Despite the priority that Zawahiri placed on answering a question regarding Yusuf al-Qaradawi, we found that only five of our 1,888 questions, or less than one-percent, dealt with Qaradawi by name."

Which does rather underline Ken Livingstone's point about Qaradawi's role in the Muslim world as the leading opponent of al-Qaida, doesn't it?

Ken Livingstone defended his decision to share a platform with a homophobic Islamic preacher as he and his challenger, Boris Johnson, were neck and neck in the race for the capital yesterday.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi has described homosexuality as an "unnatural and evil practice" and said the Koran permitted wife-beating in certain circumstances. The Qatar-based Egyptian cleric has also advocated the use of Palestinian children as suicide bombers and once claimed that Asian tsunami victims were punished by Allah because their countries were centres of perversion.

But speaking on BBC1's Politics Show yesterday, the London Mayor insisted he was right to welcome the cleric to City Hall as an "honoured guest" in July 2004. He said that while he did not agree with some of his views, al-Qaradawi did not support terrorism against the West. "He is a man who is prepared to say al-Qa'eda is wrong and to be very strong in that condemnation," he said.

Mr Livingstone's liberal approach to controversial figures such as al-Qaradawi has won him a friend in Azzam Tamimi, a Palestinian supporter of Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Mr Tamimi is part of a group called Muslims 4 Ken, which is aiming to mobilise Muslim voters to help re-elect Mr Livingstone for a third term on May 1. The group has accused Mr Johnson of being an Islamophobe and a racist. One article, written after the July 7 London bombings and entitled "Islam is the problem", has drawn particular criticism.

But Mr Johnson insisted yesterday that he believed Islam was a "religion of peace" and the problem was extremists taking the words of the Koran out of context. "The problem is people who wrench out of context quotes from the holy book of Islam, the Koran, and use it to inspire evil in men's hearts," he said, during the Politics Show debate between the mayoral candidates. Mr Johnson also used the opportunity to raise concerns about uncontrolled immigration to the capital.

Daily Telegraph, 21 April 2008

See also the Telegraph editorial "Ken and his contortions".

Watch the Politics Show here

Click to read more ...

Watch the Mayor of London answer a question about Qaradawi at the Stonewall hustings here

"An advocate of suicide bombing is among leaders of a group trying to mobilise Muslim voters to back Ken Livingstone, the Standard reveals today. For the past year, the group has been working on a strategy to win an estimated 200,000 Muslim votes in an effort to re-elect the Mayor. It includes a campaign of vilification aimed at his Conservative rival, Boris Johnson. It is being waged by Muslims 4 Ken, led by 39-year-old lecturer Anas Altikriti and Palestinian-born Azzam Tamimi, a supporter of Hamas, the militant group dedicated to the creation of an Islamic state of Palestine."

Evening Standard, 16 April 2008

See also "Embracing Islam gives Ken new election hope" and "Ken's friends".

Read the response by the British Muslim Initiative and Muslims 4 Ken here and here.

Click to read more ...

Daniel Pipes poses the question. His conclusion:

"... indigenous Europeans could yet rediscover their Christian faith, make more babies and again cherish their heritage. Yes, they could encourage non-Muslim immigration and acculturate Muslims already living in Europe. Yes, Muslims could accept historic Europe. But not only are such developments not under way, their prospects are dim. In particular, young Muslims are cultivating grievances and nursing ambitions at odds with their neighbours.

"One can virtually dismiss from consideration the prospect of Muslims accepting historic Europe and integrating within it. American columnist Dennis Prager agrees: 'It is difficult to imagine any other future scenario for western Europe than its becoming Islamicised or having a civil war.' But which of those two remaining paths will the continent take? Forecasting is difficult because the crisis has not yet struck. But it may not be far off. Within a decade, perhaps, the continent's evolution will become clear as the Europe-Muslim relationship takes shape."

The Australian, 15 April 2008

See also Pipes' article at Front Page Magazine, where he tells us that "Islamism represents the world's leading anti-democratic force" and that "Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Al-Jazeera television's imam, argues that elections are heretical".

The Doha-based Muslim scholar Sheikh Yousuf al-Qaradawi has condemned the anti-Islam film released last Thursday by a far-right Dutch lawmaker.

He said the release was part of "a scheme to commit offences against Islam by extremists in the West. They continue to instigate hatred and widen the gulf between Islam and the West. Our problem is mainly with the extremist segment in the West which spares no chance to attack Islam and provoke Muslims into battles. It seems they seek gains of some type by raising fears about Islam. We were trying to forget the offending cartoons published by the Danish newspapers. We wanted to turn a new page with the West. But they reprinted them again. Muslims do not seek clashes or conflict," Qaradawi told the IslamOnline.net website.

Qaradawi, who is also the head of the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS), told the website that Muslims should not tolerate frequent offences against Islam. "Muslims should demand that their governments implement a united and clear stance on such attacks. They should also boycott products of countries which accept such attacks by their citizens," he was quoted as saying.

However, Qaradawi appreciated the Dutch government for its stance on the movie saying that the response of the government was "positive". "I thank the government of Netherlands for condemning the movie," he said.

He also slammed the practices of Muslim extremists which, he said, distorted Islam's image. "Unfortunately, there are many Muslims who give the enemies of Islam the pretext to attack it. They give Islam a bad image because of their misinterpretation of the Holy Qur'an," he was quoted as saying.

About the content of the movie, he refuted its content as "baseless claims" saying that Qur'an in many of its verses calls for human brotherhood regardless of religion or ethnicity. "When wine was prohibited by Qur'an, the main reason for prohibition was that drinking can instigate hatred and cause troubles between people," he said.

On the so-called verses on Jihad which, the movie presented as an example of blood thirsty Islam, he said Islam does not tolerate killing. "Jihad in Islam was only to defend religion, home, honour and sanctities," he was quoted as saying.

Gulf Times, 30 March 2008

The British National Party denounces London mayor Ken Livingstone and his relations with the MCB and Yusuf al-Qaradawi. The fascists conclude that Livingstone is ... a fascist! (Note, by the way, the endorsement of Martin Bright and the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association.)

BNP news article, 25 March 2008

According to Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, Yusuf al-Qaradawi has taken time out from calling for gay men to be stoned to death in order to urge the murder of Wafa Sultan:

"... now he has directed his rage against Sultan, a fifty-year-old Syrian-American psychologist: 'She said unbearable, ghastly things that made my hair stand on end'. Specifically, 'she had the audacity to publicly curse Allah, His Prophet, the Koran, the history of Islam, and the Islamic nation'. He repeated that she 'leveled accusations against Islam and the Muslims, and cursed Allah, His Prophet, the Islamic nation, the shari'a, and the Islamic faith and culture'. These are serious charges, and Qaradawi states them in terms that his jihadist minions will understand as meaning that she must be killed."

Front Page Magazine, 25 March 2008

Even the MEMRI-edited transcript of Qaradawi's Al-Jazeera broadcast provides no basis for this hysterical nonsense.