ISLAMOPHOBIA: Anti Muslim Racism
Entries from January 13, 2008 - January 19, 2008
Why Muslims back Ken
"Livingstone is a genuinely popular figure in London, including among the capital's 700,000+ Muslims. The mayor of London has a long and proud record of opposing racism and prejudice against minorities. And frankly, who can blame them for being a bit wary of a Tory opponent like Boris Johnson with his public references to black people as 'piccaninnies' with 'watermelon smiles'?"
Inayat Bunglawala replies to Martin Bright and Shiraz Maher.
Martin Sullivan
West didn't incite Islamic extremism, Blair says
Islamic extremists have no real grievance against the West, former British prime minister Tony Blair says, and Western democracies should stand up and say so.
Mr. Blair said that, faced with terrorism and extremist rage, liberal-minded Westerners sometimes assume that "there's something that we should be doing, or have done, that is causing this." In fact, he told a lunchtime audience in Toronto yesterday, extremism is the result of an internal fight over the future of Islam, not any crime or injustice perpetrated by the West against Muslims. "The truth is that they have no sense of grievance against us," he said.
If democratic countries want to defeat extremism, he said, they have to be ready to say that it is more than the extremists' methods they abhor. "It is the presumed sense of grievance. It is the idea that we are the cause of an injustice."
His comments got a round of applause from a sold-out audience in a downtown ballroom. Tickets to the event, An Afternoon with Tony Blair, co-sponsored by The Globe and Mail, went for $400 each.
Right-wing groups launch anti-Islamisation campaign
"We are not opposed to freedom of religion but we don't want Muslims to impose their way of life and traditions over here because much of it is not compatible with our way of life," Vlaams Belang's Filip Dewinter told Radio Netherlands Worldwide. "We can't accept headscarves in our schools, forced marriages and the ritual slaughter of animals."
In particular, the coalition called for a moratorium on new mosques, which they say "act as catalysts for the Islamisation of entire neighbourhoods."
"We already have over 6,000 mosques in Europe, which are not only a place to worship but also a symbol of radicalisation, some financed by extreme groups in Saudi Arabia or Iran," Mr Dewinter explained, citing a large new mosque being built in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam. "Its minarets are six floors high, higher than the illuminations of the Feyenoord soccer stadium!" he cried. "These kinds of symbols have to stop."
However, it is unclear how the group plans to tackle perceived threats such as the teaching of the Koran, apart from holding rallies in European cities with high immigrant populations.
Any website bans must include far right, say UK Muslim youths
A leading British Muslim youth organisation Thursday welcomed the government action against websites promoting hatred but expressed concern about plans announced Home Secretary Jacqui Smith that they could be "discriminatory". The Ramadhan Foundation said it was "concerned that action is not being taken on far right and fascist websites that also promote violence and hatred." Many that promote hatred and violence against minority communities that should be also closed, it said.
UK is 'slouching towards dhimmocracy' says Mad Mel
Mad Melanie Phillips condemns on the government's reported decision to drop the phrase "war on terror" when, according to Mel, what we are facing is "the attempt to murder large numbers of innocent people in the pursuit of a political aim – namely, the Islamisation of Britain".
Taking her inspiration from Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch website, Mel launches an attack on home secretary, Jacqui Smith, for stating that terrorists are behaving contrary to their faith, rather than acting in the name of Islam:
"The speech was a frightening demonstration of intellectual and moral funk. She said: 'As so many Muslims in the UK and across the world have pointed out, there is nothing Islamic about the wish to terrorise, nothing Islamic about plotting pain, murder and grief. Indeed, if anything these actions are "anti-Islamic".'
"This is demonstrably ridiculous. The campaign of terror being mounted against the free world is being perpetrated in the name of Islam, sanctioned and even mandated by leading Islamic scholars around the world, and rooted in Islamic theology – and in the history of violent jihadi conquest to which it gave rise that stretches back to the beginning of Islam in the seventh century....
"In its ignorance, panic and confusion over terrorist violence, the government has failed to grasp that Britain is being squeezed by a jihadi pincer movement of both terrorism and cultural aggression, each reinforcing the other and, according to plan, causing the governing class to descend into that state of cultural servitude to Islam known as 'dhimmitude'."
Reconsider voting for Ken says Bright
In his New Statesman blog Martin Bright offers his justifications for presenting an anti-Livingstone "documentary" for Channel 4 which can only aid Tory candidate Boris Johnson's campaign to replace Ken as London mayor.
Regular readers of Islamophobia Watch will be aware of Bright's politics. He accuses a section of the Left of forming an alliance with "the clerical far-right" ( i.e. representative Muslims organisations like the MCB or MAB) and to combat this he advocates an alternative alliance between the "real Left" (i.e. people like himself and Nick Cohen) and the Islamophobic hard Right. So a de facto bloc with Boris Johnson is much what you would expect from Bright.
Islamophobia Watch backs Harry's Place shock
Blimey. There's a post on Harry's Place we can agree with – this one by Rupa Huq, who lays into the Bishop of Rochester. And also into the likes of Shiraz Maher. Taking up a Times article in which Maher stated that "Nazir-Ali’s observations are not only valid, but don't go far enough", Rupa writes: "Articles with headlines like 'Muslim Britain [sic] is becoming one big no-go area' will be music to the ears of the far right but white liberals scared to offend insist on calling them 'brave'."
Pasquill explains himself
"It would be fair to say that when I started working in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office unit dealing with engagement with the Islamic world at the beginning of 2005, I did not have a great deal of knowledge about British Muslim politics. I had no particular reason to question the office's process of engagement with Muslim groups....
"It is impossible to overstate the effect of the London bombings. I was really shaken by the events of 7 July and they played a huge role in informing my thinking. I took a holiday in August and devoted it to reading up on political Islam and, in particular, the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's main Islamist group. The dominant view at the FCO was that it was a moderate organisation with which the UK could do business. My reading suggested otherwise, and I gradually became convinced of the totalitarian nature of its ideology."
Derek Pasquill explains his decision to provide Martin Bright with the internal FCO documents which formed the basis for Bright's pamphlet When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries, published by the right-wing think-tank Policy Exchange.
US Jewish leaders slam anti-Obama emails
Jewish leaders are condemning e-mails attacking Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama for secretly being a radical Muslim who attended a Wahhabi madrassa, false allegations that have been circulated on many Jewish and other list-serves.
Referring to "hateful e-mails that use falsehood and innuendo to mischaracterize Senator Barack Obama 's religious beliefs and who he is as a person," officials from nine national Jewish organizations sent an open letter to the Jewish community Tuesday "reject[ing] these efforts to manipulate members of our community into supporting or opposing candidates."
The non-partisan, multi-denominational coalition of leaders noted that they were not endorsing any candidate, but felt that "attempts of this sort to mislead and inflame voters should not be part of our political discourse and should be rebuffed by all who believe in our democracy."
Obama, whose middle name is Hussein and who spent some of his childhood in Islamic Indonesia, has faced a whispering campaign about his background since before he even announced his candidacy for president. But the volume and vitriol of the attacks have intensified following his victory in the Iowa caucuses earlier this month, which has propelled him in the polls.
Safiya Ghori, the government relations director for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said the debate has been framed as refuting "allegations that Barack Obama is a Muslim," continuing, "It's as if that's a stain, and nobody wants that stain."
New Huckabee adviser called for 'a cop in front of every mosque'
Earlier this month, Newsday columnist and Fox News contributor James Pinkerton joined former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign as a "senior adviser" who "will work at the intersection of policy and strategic messaging". Pinkerton, who worked in the White House under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, says he "felt called" to join Huckabee's campaign.
Three months before Pinkerton joined the campaign, he recorded an episode of Bloggingheads.tv with Mother Jones editor David Corn. During their conversation, Pinkerton declared that he would handle "American Muslims" by putting "a cop in front of every mosque" in America.