ISLAMOPHOBIA: Anti Muslim Racism
Entries from November 25, 2007 - December 1, 2007
Bear scrutiny
"The guilty verdict against Gillian Gibbons is absurdity itself. The case is triply insane: the storm generated over a pathetic teddy bear; the involvement of the state and judiciary; and finally the sentencing of the poor woman."
"The truth is that this is a political affair from start to finish. Gibbons was collateral damage in a dispute between the Sudanese government and Britain."
Ehsan Jami works on film on Islam
AMSTERDAM – Ehsan Jami, founder of the Committee for Former Muslims, has followed Ayaan Hirsi Ali's example and made a short film about radical Islam, the Telegraaf reports.
The film entitled The life of Mohammed should be ready in February or March of next year and will cause more of a commotion than the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, the former Labour PvdA member says.
"I show how violent and tyrannical Mohammed was. This man murdered three Jewish tribes, killed people who left the faith, and married a 6-year-old girl, with whom he had sex when she was 9," Jami says in comment on the contents of the 10-minute film.
Jami says it is a coincidence that Freedom Party PVV leader Geert Wilders is also working on a film on Islam at the moment.
Jews and Muslims forge a bond in the Oxford mêlée
Jewish and Muslim student leaders at Oxford University have expressed hopes that their co-operation in trying to stop the David Irving-Nick Griffin debate on free speech on Monday night will herald a new relationship between the two groups.
Their members were among up to 2,000 banner-waving, chanting demonstrators who besieged the Oxford Union buildings for four hours in the centre of the university city. A sit-down protest blocked the narrow entry gate to the Union and stopped many of the sell-out audience from getting in.
The Union of Jewish Students and Oxford University's Islamic Society carried a huge banner marked with the symbols of both organisations. Some Muslim demonstrators carried posters proclaiming "Hands off our Jews", while the Jewish Society carried others saying "Hands off our Muslims".
Jewish Society president Steven Altmann-Richer said: "Ironically, the first event we held with the Islamic Society was last term when someone from the Muslim Council of Britain talked to us about the dangers of the BNP."
Martin Sullivan
in UK, Resisting Islamophobia, Far Right Racists
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Alan Craig launches anti-'mega mosque' website
"A website has been launched by those campaigning against proposals for an enormous mosque close to the 2012 Olympic site. Newham councillor Alan Craig, of the Christian Peoples Alliance, says the site will counter 'misinformation and spin' put out by Tablighi Jamaat, the conservative Islamic organisation behind the plans."
Waltham Forest Guardian, 30 November 2007
The home page of MegaMosqueNoThanks.com piously declares: "This website will be both respectful and reasoned, reflecting our commitment to diversity and to the democratic society we live in. We deplore both the grandstanding politics of mega-mosque supporter Mayor Ken Livingstone at one extreme, and the hate-mongering of the political far-right at the other."
Leaving aside the idiocy of comparing the Mayor of London to the BNP, if Alan Craig wishes to conduct the debate in a "respectful and reasoned" manner he might start by repudiating his earlier irresponsible scaremongering statements – like this, for example – which have given credibility to the vicious "all Muslims are terrorists" propaganda promoted by the far-right racists he claims to oppose.
See also Christian Today, 30 November 2007
'Britain bows to Muslim banking'
"Britain's Financial Services Authority published a paper yesterday 'setting out its role in the development of the UK as the major European financial centre for Islamic financial products and services'. It's Sharia banking. British government elites continue to move counter to majority sentiment in areas like immigration and Islam, and it's feeding the growth of the British National Party, which has been lurking on the fringes of the political arena, waiting for its moment."
Dale Hurd at CBN News, 29 November 2007
British Muslims should protest teddy lunacy, says Boris
Reflecting on the Gillian Gibbons case in today's Daily Telegraph, Boris Johnson expresses his regret at the passing of British imperial power and looks back with nostalgia to the days of Palmerston: "There was a time when Britain would have sent a gunboat to rescue her. There was a time when MPs would have been holding furious debates on the matter, and bandying phrases such as 'civis Britannicus sum'. In the old days there would have been démarche from Britain to Sudan, warning that His Majesty's government would not suffer a hair on her head to be disturbed."
Alas, "that time is past", and we must look for other solutions. So Boris pompously lectures British Muslim leaders on their obligation to challenge the Sudanese government.
A few sandwiches short at this teddy bear's picnic
"Muslims in this country don't have a problem standing with Gillian Gibbons on these ridiculous charges. Predictably though, sections of the media have been quick to exploit their own agendas. Right-thinking people can easily see though that this is the usual case of Liberalism vs Authoritarianism, and clearly everyone in this country is on the side of the former in this case. It's not another chance to pit Muslim vs non-Muslim."
Osama Saeed at Rolled Up Trousers, 29 November 2007
Dutch MP makes anti-Qur'an film
A rightwing Dutch MP said yesterday that he was making a film to highlight what he calls "fascist" passages in the Qur'an, in his latest high-profile criticism of Islam.
The interior and justice ministers expressed concern but said they had no authority to stop Geert Wilders screening his film. Wilders plans to depict parts of the Qur'an he says are used as inspiration "by bad people to do bad things".
Less than 10 minutes long, the film is expected to be shown in late January. It will show "the intolerant and fascist character of the Qur'an", said Wilders, whose anti-Islam campaign helped his Freedom party win nine seats in parliament in last year's election.
In the past, Wilders has compared the Qur'an to Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf. He has claimed the Netherlands is being swamped by a "tsunami" of Islamic immigrants.
‘We are at war with all Islam’
The Spectator interviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Sample quotes:
"The Prophet would have not have disapproved of 9/11, because it was carried out in his example." "I don't believe there is such a thing as 'moderate Islam'." "Islam is hostile to reason." "I was a Muslim once, and it was when I was most devout that I was most full of hate."
"You, here in the UK, are in danger. Of course you can't ban Islam outright, but you need to stop the spread of ideology, stop native Westerners converting to Islam. You definitely need to ban the veil in schools, and to close down Muslim schools because that's where kids are indoctrinated.... You wouldn't allow the BNP to run a school, would you?"
Her parting remark is: "Yes, I am at war with Islam, but I am not at war with Muslims." The Spectator agrees that this is "a crucial difference". Muslim communities, for whose demonisation Ayaan Hirsi Ali's abusive and provocative comments provide ammunition, would find her assurance rather less convincing.
Pigs' heads at Australian Islamic school site
SYDNEY — Two pigs' heads were found at the site of a proposed Islamic school on Sydney's outskirts Wednesday, the school's backers said. An Australian flag was draped between the two heads, said Jeremy Bingham, spokesman for the Quranic Society.
"Someone has put a couple of stakes in the ground with a pig's head on the top of each stake and an Australian flag inside," Bingham told AFP. "The police are treating it as a crime scene and making investigations."
Earlier this month about 1,000 people attended a meeting to protest against the proposed school in Camden, in Sydney's far southwest, while a cross was previously found on the grounds.
The state government's Community Relations Commission condemned the latest protest as "a mindless act". "This insult and display of hatred is not something any fair-minded Australian would approve of," said commission head Stepan Kerkyasharian in a statement.
Muslim leaders condemned the incident, not the first in Sydney. "It's just quite sad really, we don't need this rubbish in Australia," Australian Federation of Islamic Councils spokesman Haset Sali said.
In 2005 anti-Muslim sentiment boiled over into ugly riots on the Sydney beach of Cronulla, where rioters targeted people of Middle Eastern appearance. And in 2004, a severed pig's head was similarly impaled in front of a Muslim prayer centre under construction in Sydney's northwest.