Islamophobia Watch

On April 12th Mohammed Atif Siddique and his uncle were prevented from boarding a flight to Pakistan from Glasgow airport (see more on situation at Glasgow airport here). They were briefly detained and allowed to return to the family home in Alva, Scotland. The next morning the house was raided by dozens of MI5, Special Branch and uniformed police officers using the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2000.

Two uncles of Atif arrested at the same time were released from Govan top security police station at 2.30am in the morning without charge after 13 days in custody. Atif's brother Asif was held for a further period but then released without charge.

Click to read more ...

An Islamic college accused of teaching extremist doctrine has hit back dismissing the article in The Times newspaper as immature and unfounded and describing it as a classic example of an Islamophobic report that incites to violence and hatred. Hawza Ilmiyya in London, a Shiite seminary, labelled Sean O’Neill’s report as totally biased, erroneous and shocking, that was done to "provoke tension in different parts of society between Muslims and non-Muslims" and which has since led to the institution receiving threatening phones calls and death threats.

Muslim Weekly, 28 April 2006

The Times is evidently bidding to become the most Islamophobic "quality" paper in the UK. It recently devoted a double-page spread to Abu Izzadeen of the tiny, loony Saved Sect and an ex-Nazi fruitcake named David Wyatt – implying that these ridiculous individuals represent significant elements within Islam.

Drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay (not our description) Christopher Hitchens today teased the 977 lonely hearts the Euston Manifesto has brought together with a suggestion he may consider initialing the document. "So call me a neo-conservative if you must: anything is preferable to the rotten unprincipled alliance between the former fans of the one-party state and the hysterical zealots of the one-god one." Hitch reveals that he has "been flattered by an invitation to sign it, and I probably will".

There will be sighs of relief amongst many on the left who were likewise flattered to be asked to sign an attempt to establish a left neo conservative grouping in the UK but read the manifesto and instantly realised what was going on.

'At last our lefties see the light', Christopher Hitchens in the Sunday Times

Martin Sullivan adds:  And now Mad Mel has declared herself "delighted" by the Euston Manifesto – "it's great to see such a brave statement of decent principles and an open denunciation of the left for being on the wrong side of history. Such a challenge from within its own ranks is essential if the left is ever to stop causing so much lethal damage to the west".

Meanwhile, online signatories to the Euston Manifesto have been outlining their motives for signing. Harriet Baber explains that "we liberals need to take back the Enlightenment" – which apparently means supporting human rights, "not peace, non-interference in the business of sovereign nations or respect for other cultures". Neil Denny has signed in protest at a situation in which "to declare a support for Enlightenment values is to seemingly out oneself as an Islamophobe and a racist". And Aidan Fleming adds: "The curse of democracy is the Qur'an. All supporters of the Euston Manifesto Group should read, The Sword Of The Prophet by Serge Trifovic. It should be declared that ISLAM is not a religion but a non-democratic political organisation."

Senior members of Scotland’s Pakistani community last night revealed that they had approached the chief constable of Strathclyde Police to complain about the number of innocent Muslims being detained at Glasgow Airport.
Ashraf Anjum, president of the Glasgow Central Mosque, the largest in Scotland, said he had personally raised the issue with Sir Willie Rae last month in response to a growing number of incidents being reported to him.

Sunday Herald

Over at the Brussels Journal, Fjordman takes issue with Thorbjørn Jagland, president of the Norwegian parliament, who has warned against the rise of Islamophobia in Europe. Fjorman opines that the problem is not Islamophobia but Islam itself, and he outlines the familiar "Eurabian" fantasy about European culture swamped by waves of Muslim migrants:

"Combined with modern means of communication, we get the largest and fastest population transfers ever recorded, large enough to destroy nations or, in the case of Europe, perhaps even entire continents. This is 'the great extinction of peoples' and small Scandinavian nations with a few million inhabitants, a drop in the sea of humanity, will be completely crushed by these processes unless they take strong steps to limit immigration. That's the simple truth. Yet all our so-called leaders can do is warn against 'xenophobia'."

Brussels Journal, 25 April 2006

"When employment minister Margaret Hodge said eight out of ten white voters might vote BNP in Barking, it was linked by many in the media to a new report called The BNP: The Roots of its Appeal. This report is produced by Democratic Audit, an academic research unit based at the University of Essex, and funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.

"In fact the report is far more sober and nuanced in its assessment of the BNP threat than the media spin would suggest. It mentions polls in London in 2004 that found 23 percent of respondents said they 'might vote' for the BNP, as opposed to those who 'could never vote' for them. But it also cites poll data that 64 percent of people across Britain expressed a strong dislike for the BNP. This 'seems to confirm the existence of a large majority of voters for whom extremist parties advocating racist ideas are an anathema', the report's authors write....

"The authors explain how important it is for the BNP to be able to repackage racism in terms of defences of 'free speech' or attacks on Islam. 'It is this stance that allows them to campaign viciously on race and especially against Muslims while retaining an outward air of respectability,' they write."

Anindya Bhattacharyya in Socialist Worker, 29 April 2006

See also UAF news report, 25 April 2006

For the Democratic Audit/Rowntree Trust report, see (pdf) here

Jamie Glazov interviews Morten Messerschmidt of the Danish People's Party. "Tell us the impact that Muslim immigration is having on Europe", Glazov asks, to which Messerschmidt replies:

"It is well know that the Muslim immigrants are disproportional in representing crime records; that the hate towards Jews is increasing in Europe, because of these groups. The serious mistreatment of women, which we see in the Muslim world, is now also taking place in Europe. Therefore, we know that the lack of labor-participation, which is connected to these people living on welfare, is an economic threat to the stability of our societies. In many European countries we speak about the necessity of changing the welfare-payments, but the truth is that if we did not have the Muslim burden, many of these changes would not be required."

Front Page Magazine, 26 April 2006

Sky News are conducting a poll on the question: "BNP: do they have a place in British politics?"

Vote here

Distancing itself from the remarks, Michigan State University (MSU) said professor Indrek Wichman was exercising his free speech right when describing Muslims as "brutal and uncivilized" and telling Muslim students to return to their "ancestral homelands."

In an e-mail to the university's Muslim Students' Association (MSA) on February 28, Wichman wrote: "I counsul [sic] you dissatisfied, agressive [sic], brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems [sic] to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile 'protests'." He was referring to global protests against Danish cartoons that ridiculed Prophet Muhammad. "If you do not like the values of the West – see the 1st Ammendment [sic] – you are free to leave. I hope for God's sake that most of you choose that option. Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans."

Islam Online, 25 April 2006

See also Detroit Free Press, 24 April 2006

A Muslim student had to pay extra for security checks when applying for a visa to visit the United States, because his name was Mohammed. Mohammed Umar Haleem Khan, 22, was told by US Embassy officials that "a lot of bad people" shared his name. The Manchester Metropolitan University student had to pay an extra $80 (£45) to have his fingerprints checked against a US terror suspect database.

Mr Khan was planning to work for the Camp America project in Philadelphia. He said: "She asked me all the usual questions like what was my purpose for visiting and what was the nature of my job and then she said there was a problem with my name. She said there were a lot of bad people in the world with that name, meaning terrorists.... I'm sure that if some white candidate came along there would have been no problem."

Mr Khan added that he had never visited Afghanistan or any other trouble hotspots and could think of no reason why his name would cause a problem.

A spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain Inayat Bunglawala said: "This is a worrying incident and seems to fit a recent pattern whereby the USA appears to be treating all Muslims as potential terrorists just because of their religion. Although Muslim parents name their children from a wide variety of names – just like other parents – many of them, especially those from the Indian subcontinent, will often give their male children the name of Muhammad as a kind of respectful prefix in honour of the Prophet, even though the actual name by which these children are known will be something else. US Embassy officials ought really to have had the training to cope with basic elements of Muslim culture which would help prevent these kinds of unfortunate situations."

BBC News, 24 April 2006