ISLAMOPHOBIA: Anti Muslim Racism
Entries from September 1, 2006 - October 1, 2006
Nasrallah misrepresented
"The most famous opinions about Jews ascribed to Hizbullah's leader are: 'If they [the Jews] all gather in Israel it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide' and 'They [Jews] are a cancer which is liable to spread at any moment'. Charles Glass, the journalist who specialises on Lebanon and was once held hostage by Hizbullah, says both are likely fabrications."
Pig's head found outside mosque
A pig's head was found dumped outside a mosque in south Wales hours before the holy festival of Ramadan began, police have said. It was discovered outside the Jamia Mosque in Newport at 2230 BST on Saturday, 23 September. Gwent Police were called to the scene and have begun a hate crime inquiry to identify the culprit in what is being seen as "premeditated" attack.
Queen sanctions first ever Muslim prayer room at Windsor Castle
The Muslim month of Ramadan is being celebrated in Windsor Castle with the blessing of the Queen, it was revealed. A special prayer room has been set aside in Her Majesty's favourite residence for the Islamic month of fasting. The room is being used by just one person who works in the gift shops at the castle. Every workday at 1.30pm visitor services assistant Nagina Chaudhry locks herself in the room to roll out her prayer mat and point it towards Mecca. She then dons her hijab – headscarf – and begins the half-hour lunchtime prayer required of all Muslims during Ramadan. Miss Chaudhry said she was thrilled when castle bosses allowed her to use a specially-converted office in the historic Saxon Tower. "It feels amazing to be the first Muslim to read namaz (prayers) at Windsor Castle," said the 19-year-old.
This is London, 29 September 2006
Surely this is a case for Dhimmi Watch. How are we supposed to defend western civilisation and cultural values against the encroaching Muslim hordes when our head of state engages in such blatant acts of appeasement?
Tablet survey of Christian-Muslim relations
A narrow majority of Christians say that the Pope should not have quoted a derogatory remark about the Prophet Muhammad that sparked protests by Muslims around the world. Just over half the people who took part in a Tablet survey felt that Pope Benedict was wrong in his Regensburg lecture to cite the fourteenth-century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II, who said that Muhammad brought "only evil and inhuman things".
Bush and Islam: words versus deeds
"The wide gap between U.S. President George W. Bush's words and deeds vis-à-vis Islam and Muslims doomed to failure his speech at the United Nations on September 19, which could neither appease Muslims nor pacify the ever growing Islamophobia.
"President Bush has denied that the West is engaged in a war against Islam as a 'false propaganda', but confirmed his country's determination to carry on with its 'war on terror' and its 'great ideological struggle' at the start of the 21st century exclusively against Muslims and Muslim countries.
"Bush is also on record as saying that 'Islam is a religion of peace' and praising Islam's 'commitment to religious freedom', statements that were criticized by the popular U.S. televangelist Pat Robertson.
"These rare expressions of respect to Islam would have been welcomed by Muslims were they not swept to utter oblivion in the collective memory of the American public by his incessantly flowing anti-Muslim terminology: Islamic radicalism, Islamic fascism, Islamic extremism and extremists, Islamic or Islamist terrorism and terrorists, radical Islamists or Islamist and Islamic radicals, etc.
"His September 19 speech was almost exclusively confined to the Middle East, an overwhelmingly Muslim region. The absence of even a reference to the North Korean pillar of his so-called 'axis of evil' was revealing enough that his WWIII 'on terror' has shrunk to focus exclusively on the Muslim Middle East."
Nicola Nasser at Middle East Online, 29 September 2006
Carol Turoff and classic Islamophobia
"Criticizing the problematic elements within the Muslim world is fair game. I personally do it all the time as do many forward-looking Muslim leaders. However, looking at the worst possible case scenarios within the Muslim world in order to insinuate a general point about all Muslims or about Islam itself is as scholastically disingenuous as it is disrespectful to readers. It also constitutes classic Islamophobia."
Ahmed Rehab replies to Carol Turoff's ranting article in the Conservative Voice.
'Islam is NOT a religion of peace' – US Republican backs Pope
The Campaign on American-Islamic Relations is urging its supporters to respond to a piece by Frank Lassee, a Republican representative on the Wisconsin State Assembly, who wrote:
"The Pope's comments were right on the mark. Islam is NOT a religion of peace. It doesn't have a peaceful history of co-existence. And has created empires whose main goal was to convert or destroy all non-believers. Islam IS a religion intent on conquering the world. This global domination is preached and encouraged by Imams in mosques. And it is a central theme in the Koran, the Islamic Bible, and is an important part of their history."
Martin Sullivan
in Right Wing, USA, Resisting Islamophobia
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Mozart's Idomeneo should not have been cancelled
"I never thought this could be possible, but I agree with Angela Merkel. The Deutsche Oper should not have suspended its staging of Mozart's Idomeneo because of the scene depicting the severed heads of the Buddha, the Greco-Roman god Neptune, Jesus, and prophet Muhammad (interestingly, Moses' head was missing from the gruesome procession).
"When the controversial Danish cartoons were published last year, I saw them as a symptom of rising Islamophobia in Europe, particularly as they appeared in a rightwing paper under a rightwing Danish government notorious for its hostility to religious and ethnic minorities. And when a few weeks ago the Pope quoted a Byzantine emperor equating the Muslim faith with evil and inhumanity, I wrote that this was unacceptable coming from the representative of the largest religious institution in the world.
"Things are different this time. What we are dealing with is a creative artistic interpretation of the theme of the eclipse of the sacred.... So long as a creative and artistic work does not stigmatise a specific group, ethnic or religious, or seek to vilify it, it remains perfectly legitimate and within the parameters of free thought and expression. We need to draw a clear line between free thought and expression and the stirring of hatred against other races and religions. Mozart's Idomeneo should not have provoked this noise and controversy, and should not have been cancelled."
Soumaya Ghannoushi at the Guardian's Comment is Free, 28 September 2006
John Reid too soft on Muslims, Nazi claims
"Reid is keen to dismiss the idea of a clash of cultures because it undermines everything he believes; he ignores the evidence and refuses to recognise that it's happening now. And he attempts to explain it away by arguing that the 'meaning of Islam has been hijacked by extremists who are using it to sustain a violent and indiscriminate war'. According to Reid the people who bomb, threaten, and kill are not Muslims 'in the true sense of the word'....
"That the Home Secretary tried to enlist Britain's Muslim communities to do more to combat the extremists in their midst is an indication of his lack of understanding of the situation. He makes the mistake of believing that everyone aspires to see the world through the liberal looking glass. It is self delusion of the most dangerous kind. Muslims view the world according to the dictates of their own beliefs; their truths and realities are not the truths and realities of Western middle class liberals. All Muslims have as their long term aim the subjugation of the world under an Islamic theocracy – 'Muslims do not need British values. We believe Islam is superior, we believe Islam will be implemented one day'.
"Reid and the rest of the utterly gutless creatures that constitute the liberal establishment are trying to appease themselves out of a predicament with Islam that is entirely of their own making. They refuse to recognise that to the Muslim mindset appeasement and diplomacy as signs of weakness to be taken advantage of; Reid's interventions are encouraging the very clash of cultures that they are designed to deny."
Joe Priestley on the BNP website, 28 September 2006
Open season for attacking Islam
"There have been regular attacks to demonise Islam for many years, but until recent weeks, it has been expressed either in the form of gutter language by bigots, racists and extremist elements or voiced more discretely and subtly by more presentable sectors of society. Whenever political or religious leaders wanted to revile Islam they often have often used phrases like Islamic terrorists, Islamic extremists, Islamic radicals, etc. They often add such anti-Islamic provisos to say that though Islam does not teach and support terrorism, phrases like terrorists are using a 'twisted form of Islam' (Prime Minister, Tony Blair, after July 7 terrorist atrocities) or that terrorists subscribe to 'a branch of Islam that condones violence' (The Times, September 30, 2001) or 'Muslims have to look at why their religion breeds so many violent militant strains' (The Guardian, October 6, 2001) are deemed acceptable.
"However, in the last few months the discourse has changed and it became an open season to demonise Islam. The watershed was US President George W Bush's intemperate language last month when he described terrorists as 'Islamic fascists' – provocatively evoking, comparisons between Islam and the tyrannical fascist regimes of the past, effectively demonstrating that the war against terror is in reality a war against Islam and Muslims. The new series of attacks on Islam reached new heights with the tactless comments made by Pope Benedict XVI during a visit to Germany earlier this month. Previously it had been inconceivable that the spiritual head of one billion Catholics could make such an outspoken attack on Islam."