Absolutely unfuckingbelievable:
Official bungle may let al-Qaeda suspect go free
The Times
November 18, 2005
AN ALLEGED al-Qaeda ringleader may have to be freed after the Home Office accepted the blame for bungling his extradition to Italy.
MPs are demanding that Charles Clarke explain how the Government took so long to deal with Farj Hassan Faraj that time ran out for the Italians to put the 24-year-old Libyan on trial for plotting bomb attacks in Europe.
...
Massimo Meroni, a senior Italian prosecutor, said: “The whole thing has been a waste and I’m surprised at Britain. This man is a big player in international terrorism.”
...
France is losing patience with Britain over the fate of Rachid Ramda, who has been fighting extradition to Paris for ten years. Mr Ramda, 35, is accused of taking part in bombings on the Paris Métro. Two High Court judges threw out yesterday his claim that moves to deport him are legally flawed. His lawyers are considering taking the case to the House of Lords, which will cause months of further delay.
In a separate case a judge ordered that Moutaz Almallah Dabas, 39, a Spaniard wanted for the bombings of Madrid commuter trains in March last year, should be extradited to Spain within ten days under Britain’s new fast-track extradition laws. The deadline is unlikely to be met as Señor Dabas’s lawyers are expected to appeal.
...
Britain has failed to extradite a major terrorist suspect since the September 11 attacks. Legal battles have cost the taxpayer an estimated £10 million.
--------------------------------
Just as absolutely unfuckingbelievable:
Blair’s ban fails to silence Muslim preachers of hate
The Sunday Times
November 20, 2005
ISLAMIC extremists are targeting British Muslims with violent Al-Qaeda propaganda, in defiance of Tony Blair’s announcement four months ago that he would clamp down on preachers of hate.
London-based foreign extremists are using websites to post video footage of suicide operations and attacks by insurgents against coalition forces in Iraq. There are also postings of the execution of Russian soldiers by mujaheddin rebels in Chechnya.
...
There is growing exasperation among the Saudi authorities about the government’s apparent reluctance to tackle two Saudi citizens who are responsible for some of the most blatant incitement.
--------------------------------
Some background on the main characters.
Controversial imams
Telegraph
20/07/2005
--------------------------------
This article is the only one to shed any light on what might be going on behind the scenes. Also, I was amused by the impassioned comment from the Islamic Human Rights Commission.
Clarke outlines moves to expel troublemakers who back terror
Telegraph
25/08/2005
101 comments:
I honestly, honestly can't understand this. Can anyone please explain to me what our government thinks it's doing?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/20/ncivic20.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/12/20/ixhome.html
Blair backs down over test for Britishness
Telegraph
20/12/2005
Muslim imams, rabbis and other foreign clerics who want to preach in Britain will not have to sit a Britishness test after all, the Government said yesterday.
Earlier this year, the Home Office proposed a "civic" test for clerics - they must already show a proficiency in English - intended to show their commitment to building bridges with other faiths.
The idea was revived after the July 7 London bombings, and was seen as an attempt to keep out fundamentalist Muslim preachers. The climbdown follows the government decision last week to drop plans to give the police powers to shut mosques and other places of worship believed to harbour extremist preachers.
---------------------
And can anyone tell me why "driving extremism underground" is considered a *bad* thing?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1933440,00.html
Home Office dumps plan to close mosques
Times Online
December 15, 2005
Perhaps some German states have the balls the Home Office lacks?
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3242
Two Germans vs. Islamism
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
January 3, 2006
The interior ministers of two German states have recently advanced important measures for containing radical Islam. They bear close attention across the West. In Baden-Wurtenberg, Heribert Rech of the ruling Christian Democratic Union party has overseen the administering of a 30-topic loyalty test for applicants to become naturalized citizens. Following an intensive and sophisticated study by the Baden-Wurtenberg government of Muslim life, it developed a manual for the naturalization authorities explaining that applicants for citizenship must concur with the "free, democratic, constitutional structure" of Germany.
Because survey research finds that 21% of Muslims living in Germany believe the German constitution irreconcilable with the Koran, the written yes-no questions of yesteryear are history for Muslim applicants for citizenship. As of January 1, 2006, immigration officers who suspect Islamist leanings are instructed to probe further. Personal interviews will now last an hour or two and will be given to an estimated half of naturalization applicants.
The questions amount to a summary of Western values. What do you think of democracy, political parties, and religious freedom? What would you do if you learned about a terrorist operation underway? Views of the attacks of September 11, 2001, are a "key issue," the director of the alien registration office in Stuttgart, Dieter Biller, said: Were Jews responsible for it? Were the 19 hijackers terrorists or freedom fighters? Finally, nearly two thirds of the questions concern gender issues, such as women's rights, husbands beating wives, "honor killings," female attire, arranged marriages, polygyny, and homosexuality.
Same story in the Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/31/wtest31.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/12/31/ixworld.html
Germans to put Muslims through loyalty test
Telegraph
31/12/2005
The Sun has got his hat on, hip hip hip hooray.....
Abu Hamza jailed for seven years
BBC News
7 February 2006
Police face criticism over Hamza
BBC News
08/02/06
Police are facing questions over why they did not act sooner against radical Muslim preacher Abu Hamza al-Masri. Detectives were "very alert" to the activities of the cleric - jailed on Tuesday for seven years for inciting murder and racial hatred - in 1999. But the 47-year-old, from London, was not arrested until 2004. Anti-terror police say evidence was sent to prosecutors "on several occasions" but no action was taken by the Crown Prosecution Service.
Hamza's web of terror in heart of London
Telegraph
08/02/2006
Dunno much about this, sounds a plausible analysis to me.
You'd rate police incompetence a more likely reason for the failure to prosecute earlier than a high-level "Londonistan truce", then?
This all sounds like an episode of Hill St. Blues. I remember the D.A. (Irwin, I think) constantly telling the cops to go away and come back with some evidence that would stand up in court.
Anyway, do y'all think the Nick Griffin case was an example of a rushed / opportunistic prosecution? Or (for followers of the freedom of speech thread) is it simply a case that should not have been brought in the first place?
These are genuine questions, btw. I didn't follow the griffin case closely enough to know what I think on this one.
I still find myself wondering if the Londonistan truce (we won't bother you if you don't bomb us) is behind this, though I don't know what agencies (MI5? Government? Civil Service? Police? CPC? All?) would have been actively involved...
Police had Hamza 'murder evidence' 7 years ago
The Times
February 09, 2006
The proposed Britishness test for foreign-born religious ministers was quietly dropped at the end of last year, in contrast to the actions of the German state of Baden-Wurtenberg (see other comments in this thread). To the extent that any reason was given, the negative reaction to the proposal from minority groups was cited by the British govt.
On this morning's Today Programme it was revealed that surveys of various religious communities (including the Muslim) in Britain revealed that they were in fact in favour of the measure! Here's the report:
BBC - Radio 4 - Today Programme
16/02/06
0831 - Ann Cryer from Home Affairs Select Committee talks about why the Britishness test for foreign born religious ministers has been dropped
Listen | Permalink
Brown to boost Islamic banking
The Sunday Times
March 12, 2006
GORDON BROWN is drawing up plans to turn Britain into the most Islam-friendly economy in the western world.
The chancellor has given Muslim leaders private assurances that he wants to create a “level playing field” in the economy, so that more and more “sharia compliant” financial products can be offered to British Muslims.
...
“Making the UK and London a centre for Islamic finance means putting in place the tax and legislative framework that is supportive of Islamic products,” said a senior Treasury official. “On top of this, we’re also looking at promoting the City abroad as a centre for Islamic finance.”
Holland launches the immigrant quiz
The Sunday Times
March 12, 2006
TWO MEN kissing in a park and a topless woman bather are featured in a film that will be shown to would-be immigrants to the Netherlands. The reactions of applicants — including Muslims — will be examined to see whether they are able to accept the country’s liberal attitudes. From this Wednesday, the DVD — which also shows the often crime-ridden ghettos where poorer immigrants might end up living — will form part of an entrance test, in Dutch, covering the language and culture of Holland.
...
Famile Arslan, 34, an immigration lawyer of Turkish origin, agreed. “I have lived here for 30 years and have never been witness to two men kissing in the park. So why are they confronting people with that?” she said. She accused the government of preaching tolerance about civil rights while targeting non-westerners with harsh and discriminatory immigration curbs.
...
The measures were prompted in part by outrage over the 2004 murder of Theo Van Gogh, who had made a film about the oppression of women in Muslim communities. Applicants will sit the exam at one of 138 embassies around the world. They will answer 15 minutes of questions and those who pass the first stage will have to complete two “citizenship” tests over five years and swear a pledge of allegiance to Holland and its constitution. The centre-right government of Jan Peter Balkenende, the prime minister, believes the tests will provide an objective way of assessing the suitability of applicants by gauging how well prepared they are to make the transition to Dutch life and their willingness to integrate.
...
A spokeswoman for Verdonk said an edited version of the DVD would be available for showing in Middle Eastern countries such as Iran where it would be illegal to possess images of homosexuality.
Well, the DVD sounds more entertaining than Tebbit's cricket test.
Think I'll be ordering Mel's book soon!
BBC Radio 4 - Today Program
01/06/2006
0840 Two books have been written with very similar titles; Melanie Phillip's "Londonistan" and Gautam Malkania's "Londonistani". Each looks at multiculturalism in this country in the wake of the London bombings, but reach very different conclusions.
Listen
No offence, imam, but we must call it Islamic terror
Michael Portillo
The Sunday Times
July 09, 2006
After the terrorist outrages of July 7, 2005 ... [e]ven peace-loving Muslim spokesmen feel obliged to give credence to the perception that their community is being unfairly harassed. It causes some young Muslim men to withdraw further from a British society claimed to be hostile. At best that surrounds the terrorists with a penumbra of disaffected Muslims who may not condemn their crimes or denounce their murderous plots. At worst it enlarges the pool from which new bombers can be recruited.
It is there that Al-Qaeda has scored its greatest success. More significant for the long term than the bombs is the impact that terror has in dividing the groups that make up our society, and in increasing the appeal of militancy to those who can be duped into seeing themselves as repressed.
Muslim complaints about being victimised are perversely directed. Muslims are victims of the bombers, not of the state or the police. It is the terrorists who make Muslims potential objects of suspicion and fear because the bombers murder in the name of Islam. Muslims have every right to be outraged, but their fury should focus on the men of violence. The police action in Forest Gate was cack-handed and the shooting of one of the “suspects” was indefensible. But given the profile of the terrorists, Muslims are bound to be more affected. By analogy, when police are looking for a rapist they interview males without anyone believing them to be institutional men haters.
There are those who in the interests of community relations denounce linking the word Islamic to “violence” or “extremism”. They object that we did not call the IRA “Catholic terrorists”, nor do we speak of “Christian extremism” or link Christian fundamentalism to violence.
There are good reasons for that. Although the IRA is rooted in the Catholic community, its aims are political and secular. Although there certainly are Christian extremists today, just now they are not murdering people in the name of purifying the world. By contrast, across the globe human beings are being slaughtered in large numbers by Muslims quoting from the Koran and vowing death to infidels, including other Muslim sects. Their objectives are political and religious.
So to try to condemn the expression “Islamic violence” is a dangerous attempt at censorship that would hamper our understanding of the threat we face. The term is certainly offensive to Muslims, but the offence is caused by the bombers, not by those who describe the process.
Last week Tony Blair caused a furore by calling on Muslims to do more to control, denounce or deliver up the men who preach and practise violence. Some Muslim spokesmen said that was a divisive remark that stigmatised Muslims instead of recognising that the problem was one for British society as a whole.
The prime minister’s exhortation was valid. The bombers are not casualties of British society. Shehzad Tanweer, the Aldgate murderer, was only 22 yet left £121,000 after tax. The bombers’ grievances cannot be bought off with more money for schools or a new youth centre. They were corrupted, I assume, by theoreticians of annihilation from within their community. Their training was probably perfected in an Al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan.
Abdur-Raheem Green is an imam who believes that he preached to some of the 7/7 murderers and hopes that nothing he said encouraged them. When asked last week whether he would turn over to the authorities young men who were moving towards terrorism, his answer was ambiguous. He argued that it would be better for him to dissuade them rather than denounce them because that would risk creating further alienation. That is not the response that Blair, speaking for most Britons, is seeking.
There is another disagreeable ambiguity when some spokesmen link terror to British foreign policy. Anas Altikriti, the director of the Islam Expo (now taking place at Alexandra Palace in north London), wrote last week: “We will not stand for our country and people being terrorised nor will we stand for our government terrorising any other peoples.” That is presumably a reference to Iraq and Afghanistan. What does “will not stand for” mean?
Even Dr Taj Hargey, chairman of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford, a brave opponent of the fundamentalists who argues that the Koran does not authorise violence, calls on Britain to reappraise its foreign policy. In many Muslim minds, apparently, terrorism in Britain has to be understood (even if not condoned) as a reaction to Afghanistan and Iraq.
The chronology undermines that argument. The allied invasion of Afghanistan was a response to the terrorist murder of nearly 3,000 civilians in New York and Washington. No serious figure denies that Al-Qaeda organised the crime from its bases in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
Iraq is a more controversial case. It has become a mess. But relatively few Iraqis died when we invaded and overthrew their genocidal dictator. The vast majority of Muslims who have been killed since have been murdered by other Muslims — by Al-Qaeda, by Sunni and Shi’ite extremists or by Saddam Hussein loyalists. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the late Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq and a Sunni, urged death to Shi’ites whom he described as poisonous snakes and atheists. Al-Qaeda is determined to destroy the West, but in the short term most of its victims will be Muslims in any place where it can topple their government to replace it with a regime as repressive and homicidal as the Taliban’s was.
Many British people object to Blair’s foreign policy. But only Muslim suicide bombers claim it as a justification for murder. In Tanweer’s videotape released last week he links his crime to Afghanistan and Iraq. But just in case anyone is tempted to think that Britain could avoid terrorism by withdrawing from those countries, Tanweer also calls on us to end our military and financial links with America and Israel. The United States was attacked in 2001 not because it had invaded another country (except to save Muslim lives in Bosnia), but because it is rampantly secular and supports Israel’s right to exist.
If the drifting apart of the Muslim and non-Muslim communities in Britain has increased the danger of terror, it follows that reconciliation and integration would make us safer. I do not mean what I write here to exacerbate the divisions in any way. Rather I believe that we can move closer if we are more honest about what is happening. Mayhem is being unleashed globally in the name of Islam. There is no point denying it, especially since most of those butchered have been Muslim. The British state is not the problem but part of the solution. A tolerant society can survive only if it bands together to suppress intolerance because we are all victims of that intolerance.
Every Briton must join in that effort, no ifs, no buts and no excuses.
Guardian Journo Jackie Ashley interviews Melanie Phillips on her book 'Londonistan'. Is it just me or does the tone of Jackie Ashley's article strike anyone else as particularly patronising and dismissive?
Not really, though she is complacent about the issues Mel raises.
It may be that Mel's character in person is detrimentral to the power of her arguments to convince (dunno, I've never met her). I *have* read Mel's articles, and I don't find any overbearing tone there.
You may be right. What disappointed me was that there wasn't really any debate about those issues, just an insinuation that Melanie Phillips was a little 'bonkers'.
An interesting post from the Daily Ablution:
'Latest UK Foreign Aid Effort Targets Supporters of Terrorism'
[...]
Given the Sheikh's unequivocal position in support of suicide bombing, and Mr. Blair's pronouncement, it seems odd that the former would be provided a prominent platform by the Foreign Office - but that is precisely what happened at the "Muslims of Europe" conference this month, funded to the tune of £300,000 courtesy of the UK taxpayer. Today's Times notes that "Frances Guy, the senior civil servant in charge of the Foreign Office’s 'Engaging with the Islamic World Group', met Dr al-Qaradawi at the conference".
The Center right Think Tank 'Policy Exchange' have produced a paper about The British State and the Muslim Council called 'When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries'. The excellent Preface written by Jason Burke deserves quoting in full.
Preface
Jason Burke
Kabul, June 2006
“How do we engage with radical Islam? Can we separate the violent radicals who want to destroy and replace the modern state from the political Islamists who want to appropriate it?”
www.policyexchange.org.uk
When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries
The analysis of contemporary Islamic militancy has gone through various phases since the attacks of September 11th 2001. The first, which lasted about a year, was largely characterised by inaccuracy and imprecision. This was brought home to me very rapidly when I compared the lurid descriptions of the terrorist eagle nest at Tora Bora in the British press - replete with subterranean computer rooms, secret passageways, laboratories and such-like -
with the reality of paltry, rubble and excrement-filled caves that I myself inspected during the battle. It was reinforced when I read the statements by a series of often unsavoury governments around the world claiming that their local militant groups, many of which had been operating for decades and had roots in colonial and precolonial conflicts stretching back over centuries, were all part of a global terrorist super-organization called al Qaeda.
The second, recent, phase of analysis lasted through to the end of 2003. Thankfully, there was a growing recognition
that the earliest ideas about the nature of the threat were not accurate. However, there was still strong resistance to those who put forward alternative theses. Finally, from around the end of 2003, at least in Europe, there has been a widespread acknowledgement that al Qaeda is an idea, not an organisation, and a growing realisation that the phenomenon that had produced 9-11 and all the subsequent bombings and violence since was rooted not in the actions of a few bad men. Rather, it was rooted in political,cultural, social and religious factors of great depth and complexity - and in the often vexed interaction of the Islamic world with the West over a millennium or more.
Alongside this analytic process there has also been a steady evolution in terms of the discussion of the non-military policy that should be pursued to counter the new threat and to avoid any putative "clash of civilizations".
Thankfully, the primitive phase has ceded to the reappraisal phase which is itself in the process of giving way to the reality phase (at least in the UK and Europe). It is to this debate that Martin Bright's excellent, wellresearched and thought-provoking pamphlet makes a most important contribution. The author, alongside whom I spent several fruitful years working at the Observer, tackles key issues head-on. How do we engage with radical Islam? Can we separate the violent radicals who want to destroy and replace the modern state from the political Islamists who want to appropriate it? If so, how do we define those with whom we can work and those with whom any dialogue is not just fruitless but counter-productive, possibly dangerous and, arguably,profoundly immoral? Bright is exploring at a relatively theoretical level a problem that confronts me daily as a journalist working in the field.Who are our interlocutors?
Whose voices best represent the complex, diverse and dynamic societies that are bundled together in that terrible generalisation, the "Muslim world"? I am writing these words in a small guesthouse in the old city of Kabul. In the last two weeks I have spoken to moderate and hardline clerics, to the Taliban, to the Afghan authorities, to warlords (armed and disarmed), to taxi drivers, kebab salesmen, farmers (of poppy and other crops) and even to journalists. Yet the Western media often privileges those who shout loudest, have the most guns, hold the most animated demonstrations or are responsible for the most violence at the expense of the vast silent majority who merely want a quiet life that assures them a modest degree of prosperity, security and dignity.Martin Bright shows that the British government makes the very same mistake -- in listening hardest to those who force themselves to the front of the crowd. In so doing, the British government risks missing the critical truth -- that neither bin Laden and his jihadis, nor political Islamists like those of the Muslim Brotherhood, have a monopoly on the representation of the views and aspirations of the world's Muslims. In fact, it is the words of those stuck in the middle, caught between the campaigns of such men and the often deleterious effects of Western policies, that need to be supported and heard.After all, any solution to the current problems will ultimately rest with them.
Jason Burke is Europe Editor at the Observer. He is author of al-Qaeda: The true story of radical Islam. His latest
book, On The Road To Kandahar, was published in May.
And here is the conclusion from the Policy Exchange paper by Martin Bright.
Conclusion
It will surprise most people to learn that the Government’s strategy towards the British Muslim community has been driven in recent years by the Foreign Office rather than any domestic department of state. In recent months, this state of affairs has been made all the more confusing by a Government reshuffle, which shunted responsibility for “community cohesion” from the Home Office to the new Department for Communities and Local Government.
The relationship between the West and Islam is one of the defining issues of our times and there is no doubt that the British state takes its responsibilities in this area very seriously. The documents leaked to me over the past year confirm this. But they also show that the Government’s policy on British Muslims has been heavily influenced by the Foreign Office’s determination to engage with
Islamist radicals.
This has been described as “engagement for engagement’s sake” by Sir Derek Plumby, Britain’s ambassador to Egypt. This doctrine is also well expressed in a leaked
Foreign Office letter from April 2004 in which the then Director General for Defence and Intelligence, William Ehrman, outlines the strategy to Sir David Omand, the Security and Intelligence Co-Ordinator at the Cabinet
Office: “Given that we will never eradicate extremist tendencies, the key question is: what action is most likely to marginalise them, and deprive them of the (often only) passive support they need to do real damage? So far many Middle Eastern regimes are sticking by the wrong answer: suppression and gerrymandering of superficial bits of the
democratic furniture, instead of bringing moderate Islamist tendencies into the power structure while they are still moderate, and confronting them with the realities of power and responsibilities.” [DOCUMENT 10]
Whatever the arguments for engagement abroad,
where local circumstances may call for lines of communication with Islamist groups, there is no reason to believe this strategy is necessary for British Muslims. After all,
they enjoy full access to the democratic process and they are not aligned in great numbers to Islamist groups. There is deep confusion at the heart of Government about how best to deal with radical Islamist politics, as shown by the Government’s contradictory attitude to the British based
group Hizb-ut-Tahrir. A series of leaked emails from August 2005 showed the Cabinet split on the matter. The then Home Secretary, Charles Clarke was, unconvinced that the group should be banned, whilst the then Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, was an enthusiast for proscription (his friends at the MCB have always been bitterly opposed to Hizb-ut-Tahrir, for their reasons). The Northern Ireland Office, too, was worried that a ban might “read across” to paramilitary organisations involved in the
peace process – particularly Sinn Fein.Most significantly, the head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, and her counterpart at MI6, John Scarlett, were also resistant to the idea that intelligence information might be used to justify a ban. [DOCUMENT 11]
These exchanges underline that the Government has a serious problem with credibility. Because of the way intelligence was used in the run-up to the Iraq war, MI5 and MI6 are reluctant to let their institutional prestige be used to justify a political decision. A different, but no less acute credibility problem applies in its attempts to win the
hearts and minds of Britain’s Muslim communities. The Government tried to establish its bona fides by setting up the Preventing Extremism Task Force, but has failed to show that it is genuine in its desire to listen to what the silent Muslim majority has to say.
It has now emerged that just one of more than 60 recommendations of the Preventing Extremism Task Force has been implemented in full. It turns out that even this proposal (to set up a road show of moderate scholars
to tour Britain to talk to Muslim youth) had been planned in advance by Foreign Office mandarins. It was later presented as coming out of the grassroots task force process. Such bare-faced cynicism does not help build
trust in the Muslim communities, which are understandably wary of such civil service manoeuvres. The key word here is communities. It is impossible to overstate the ethnic and theological diversity of Britain’s Muslims: Sunni, Shia, Deobandi, Barelwi, Ismaili and
Ahmadiyya. The potential for sectarianism is endless. Any government wishing to grapple with this issue must take this as its starting-point.When this Government set up its Preventing Extremism Task Force, participants remarked on the absence of representatives from the Somali and Turkish Muslim communities, to name but two. Such an
oversight is symptomatic of the failure at the heart of Whitehall, where ministers and officials remain far too dependent on the MCB and its affiliate organisations for advice – another source of the mistrust referred to above. It is now essential that it reassess this relationship. A starting-point would be a refusal to deal with any organisation that is not truly representative of all British Muslims. Any over-arching structure is susceptible to infiltration and subversion – and the MCB is no exception. Further dialogue should be accompanied with serious conditions. For instance, it should no longer be acceptable for the British Government to deal with the leadership of the MCB whilst it refuses to accept certain branches of Islam as true Muslims. The Ahmadiyya sect has been active in Britain since the early 20th century and has been persecuted in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
One might have thought that a beleaguered Muslim minority might attract the support of the MCB – but instead, it has backed the stance of the Pakistani and Bangladeshi governments, which both refuse to recognise the Ahmadiyya as part of the wider Muslim family. When the Ahmadiyya opened Western Europe’s largest mosque in Morden, Surrey, the MCB said it did not regard the building as a mosque or consider the Ahmadiyya to be Muslims. Sir Iqbal Sacranie, then head of the MCB was reported to have said: “They can call their place of worship by any name except for a mosque because that is for Muslims. They are outside the fold of Islam.”
Of wider concern are the links of MCB affiliates such as the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) and Young Muslim Organisation UK (YMO) to the politics of radical Islamism.Where the leadership of the MCB turns to Pakistan and Bangladesh for inspiration, many affiliates such as FOSIS and YMO are more directly influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood. As the analyst Lorenzo Vidino has pointed out in his essay, “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Conquest of Europe”, such organisations are involved in a sophisticated strategy of implanting Islamist ideology among young Muslims in Western Europe. According to Vidino, in 1996, Muslim youth organisations from across Europe joined forces in Leicester to form the Forum of Muslim Youth and Student Organisation (FEMYSO), a pan-European focus for Brotherhood ideology. Vidino’s assessment would provide sober reading for any British minister considering engagement with Islamist youth organisations in Britain.
“What most European politicians fail to understand is that by meeting with radical organisations, they empower them and grant the Muslim Brotherhood legitimacy,” Vidino writes. “There is an implied endorsement to any meeting, especially when the same politicians ignore moderate voices… This creates a self-perpetuating cycle of radicalisation because the greater the political legitimacy of the Muslim Brotherhood, the more opportunity it and its proxy groups will have to influence and radicalise various European Muslim communities.” A year on from 7/7, it is difficult to understand how we find ourselves in this fix. There is no more serious issue and yet the Government is still struggling to engage with the genuinely moderate and liberal voices of British Islam and to sell the message of the benefits of integration to young Muslims most vulnerable to radicalisation. The Government needs also to ask itself who represents Britain’s largely silent Muslim women, let alone gay and lesbian Muslims, and all people of Muslim origin who do not define themselves primarily by their faith. There are no easy solutions but there are certain measures that could provide a way forward:
1 A full public inquiry into the events leading up to 7/7 This should concentrate on the intelligence gaps that led the bombers to slip the security net and the conditions that led to the radicalisation of the bombers. Without this, a unanimous recommendation of the Preventing Extremism Task Force, it is difficult to see how we can make any progress on the issues of integration.
2 A Royal Commission into British Muslim integration Building on the work of the Cantle report into the northern riots of 2001, this would build up a full picture of the problems faced by some of the poorest communities in Britain.
3 Revival of the Extremism Task Force In principle, the 7/7 Task Force was the right idea, but it has been shown to be little more than an elaborate PR exercise. It should be reinstated, allowed to call witnesses and given time to do its job.
4 The Home Office to take the lead on Muslim engagement and community cohesion This is too important an issue to be dealt with by a minor department of state such as the Department for Communities and Local Government. It is time to treat this issue with the urgency it merits and move it back to the Home Office. Any work being carried out by the Foreign Office in this area should be thoroughly reassessed and, if necessary moved to the Home Office
5 An end to the Government’s policy of “engagement for engagement’s sake” with the MCB Any body that represents itself as speaking for the Muslim community must demonstrate that is entirely non-sectarian and non-factional. The MCB has consistently failed in this area and the Government should consider cutting all ties until it has thoroughly reformed itself. For too long, the Government has chosen as its favoured partner an organisation which is undemocratic, divisive and unrepresentative of the full diversity of Muslim Britain. Until now, ministers have opted for the quick fix of engaging primarily with the representatives of political Islamism. This is no longer enough. Until the Government begins to reach out to those many Muslims who are not currently being heard, there is a real danger that the radicals will retain the initiative.
Martin Bright is presenting a documentary entitled 'Who Speaks For Muslims' which goes out tonight on Channel 4 at 7.30pm as part of it's 30 Minutes series.
19:30
30 Minutes
Who Speaks for Muslims?
Martin Bright, argues that the government is failing the people of Britain and ignoring the vast majority of the moderate Muslim community.
Voice of moderate Islam
Telegraph Editorial
20/07/2006
The Sufi Muslim Council (SMC), which was launched in London yesterday, aims to counter Islamic radicalism in this country by giving a voice to the silent majority. Haras Rafiq, one of its two co-founders, describes it as primarily a think tank that will draw up a moderate ideological strategy, rally Sufi bodies here and abroad, and enable partner organisations to deliver solutions to problems faced by the Muslim community.
Its launch follows publication of a pamphlet by the conservative think tank Policy Exchange that accuses the leadership of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), the largest organisation of its kind in this country, of being inspired by reactionary political movements in the Middle East and South Asia. The author, Martin Bright, political editor of the New Statesman, also argues that the Foreign Office has sought accommodation with radical Islam, thereby conveying the impression that it represents the mainstream.
The presence at yesterday's launch of Ruth Kelly, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, went some way towards correcting that bias. That she was joined by Conservative and Liberal Democrat spokesmen, as well as representatives of the Church of England and the Jewish Board of Deputies, suggests that the SMC enjoys broad support. This obviously irks the MCB, which has dismissed the new body as unrepresentative and divisive.
As to the first of these adjectives, the SMC has yet to prove that it speaks for the moderate, silent majority of British Muslims. With regard to the second, Islam is a diverse religion that deserves to be represented by a plurality of voices. In the light of what happened on July 7 last year, when four British Muslim suicide bombers killed 52 people, there is a crying need for the moderates to be better heard. The SMC's founders, by trying to articulate that point of view, deserve encouragement. By their fruits we shall know them.
He's an interesting character, this Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, a member of the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami, election fraudster and alleged war criminal. Just the kind of chap the FO apparently approves of.
Note: this Times article is apparently "the subject of a legal complaint".
Islamist hardliner heads for Britain
The Times
July 14, 2006
Advisers wanted cleric banned but his visa was not revoked
A HARDLINE Islamist cleric who government advisers wanted banned from Britain is scheduled to fly to London this weekend to attend events alongside Muslim community leaders. The Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office considered excluding Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, an MP in Bangladesh who preaches violent hatred against the West and is accused of war crimes, last year. But despite a series of e-mail exchanges in September, his visa was never revoked and the Home Office issued no exclusion order.
The Foreign Office’s Islamic issues adviser accused Mr Sayeedi’s detractors of being politically biased and said that his exclusion could jeopardise support from mainstream Muslims for the Government’s anti-terrorism agenda. Mr Sayeedi was last in Britain weeks after the July 7 bombings. Tomorrow he is scheduled to visit a housing fair at the London Muslim Centre, part of the East London Mosque. The mosque’s chairman, Muhammad Abdul Bari, is the newly elected leader of the Muslim Council of Britain.
...
[A] report quotes Mr Sayeedi as saying that Britain and the US “deserve all that is coming to them” for overturning the Taleban in Afghanistan. [An] e-mail ... continues: “He [Mr Sayeedi] has made a particularly offensive comment about Bangladeshi Hindus, comparing them to excrement. He also appears to defend attacks against the Ahmadiya (Islamist) community. “
...
Previous visits to the UK have been reportedly marred by violence caused by his supporters. In 2000, during one of his talks in Oldham, his supporters reportedly attacked and beat up five Bengali elders. “A rally in Banglatown was also attacked and three people, including a 65-year-old, were injured. A Bangladeshi community group wrote to the Prince of Wales in June 2004 appealing for Sayeedi to be banned from the UK.”
However, Mr Sayeedi’s case was defended by Mockbul Ali, the Foreign Office’s Islamic issues adviser, who voiced “extreme concern” about the political bias of sources being used to criticise the MP. Mr Ali wrote: “Websites of groups with a clear agenda/bias is not the way to prove exclusion [if a case does indeed exist].” Despite admitting that Mr Sayeedi was ultra-orthodox and held views “we would not endorse in any way”, Mr Ali then added: “He is someone who has a very big following in the mainstream British Bangladeshi Muslim community and is viewed as a mainstream Muslim figure. “Any steps taken on his exclusion from the UK must take that into account, especially at a time when we require increasing support on the Prevent/Counter Terrorism agenda from British Muslims.”
...
Murad Qureshi, a member of the London Assembly and the Metropolitan Police Authority, criticised the Government’s inaction. “I’ve been saying since the late 1990s that it doesn’t help to have characters like him passing through Britain,” he said. “The anguish he causes in the Bangladeshi community is not productive and his visa should be revoked. There are some very serious allegations over his head about war crimes.”
...
When asked why Mr Sayeedi was allowed into Britain, a [Foreign Office] spokesman said that he could not comment on leaked documents.
He added: “We understand the concern expressed over Mr Sayeedi’s visit to the UK. Mr Sayeedi’s visit is not at the invitation of the British Government nor do we plan to have any contact with him while he is here and the fact that Mr Sayeedi is here is in no way a signal of support for him or agreement with the views he espouses.” A spokesman for the Home Office said it would not comment on individual cases. No one from the East London Mosque was available for comment.
Promising words from Rufiq, usual bollocks from Bunglawala:
UK Muslims 'must admit extremism'
BBC News
Monday, 14 August 2006
The Muslim community in the UK must "admit it has a problem" with extremism, a Muslim leader has said. Harus Rufiq, of the Sufi Muslim Council, said the government must also give more support to those trying to root out extremism. ... The Sufi Muslim Council is one of the new Muslim groups to emerge over the past year and Mr Rufiq said: "The first thing that we need to do as a community is admit there is a problem. "It is like being an alcoholic - we need to stand up and say these things and have an open and honest debate."
Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "There is an acceptance of a real problem with extremism within a small section of the community. "The question is what you do to deal with it. We think the responsibility lies on both sides - the communities and the government."
Did anyone see this?
Observer TV Review 13/08/06
Dispatches: What Muslims Want - Channel 4
Andrew Anthony
In a week in which anxiety levels reached critical, Dispatches: What Muslims Want hardly made for reassuring viewing. The statistics alone were depressing. In a commissioned poll, one in three Muslims wanted to see Sharia law in Britain, five out of 10 thought 9/11 was a conspiracy by the US and Israel, and one in four said the 7/7 bombings were justified. But it was Jon Snow's interviews that really exposed the widening gap between young Muslims and mainstream life. Even among the more moderate voices there was a casual acceptance that the West was engaged in a war with Islam. One lad suggested that 7/7 was payback for 'roadside bombs in Iraq', apparently not comprehending that both were planted by jihadists.
One might laugh at the student of Islamic jurisprudence who argued that adulteresses should not be blown up in terrorist attacks because 'they should be stoned to death', if he didn't speak to a growing constituency of young Britons.
Some of the alienation that was expressed seemed all too understandable. The excessive drinking that is endemic in British culture and the pornographic sexualisation of women were cases in point. But the mounting political anger of a population that never organised to protest at mass Muslim killers like Saddam or Hafiz al-Assad or the current Sudanese government is a sign of a more troubling ideology. Snow, a decent liberal to his marrow, tried to play it down with his choice of language. To him a couple of Britain-hating Islamic zealots were 'separatists' not 'extremists'.
Yet he conceded that 'integration has come to an end' and one senses that the liberal establishment has no idea how it can be restarted. There certainly seems little appetite for an open debate. A Muslim reader wrote to me a few weeks ago to suggest that there ought to be a critical television history of Islam that began with looking at various scholarly theories of Mohammed's life rather than just the one a religion has settled on. But our own government came within one vote earlier this year of making such a programme subject to prosecution. For years a fiction of mutual respect and understanding has been the official line propagated on television. And in this pretend world denial has taken deep root. When Mohammed Sidique Khan's video confession of the 7/7 bombings was released, Mohammed Naseem, a Respect supporter and executive member of the Islamic Party of Britain (a group that believes Mossad were behind 9/11), went on television to claim that it could have been made by MI6.
I was interested to see amid the rolling news last week that when police made raids in Birmingham on Thursday morning they first informed an important 'leader of the community'. His name: Mohammed Naseem.
I didn't see it. Wish I'd managed to catch it though, sounded very interesting.
Here's a piece on the programme by Perry at Samizdata which confronts head on some of the issues raised in the show:
The importance of disrespect
The Channel 4 programme the other day called What Muslims Want raised a number of important issues. The presenter Jon Snow showed evidence that Muslims are not, as I had hoped, assimilating and in fact the process may be going backwards. If so, that means Muslims are unlike any other major immigrant group in Britain: Blacks, Eastern Europeans, Jews, Huguenots, Sikhs, Hindus, etc. have all become intermingled and inter-marriage is increasingly common. Not so for the Muslims. Snow also made the rather interesting distinction that most alienated Muslims in Britain are not 'extremists' so much as 'separatists': they simply want to live a separate Islamic life that draws little from British society. His argument on this was quite well made but it is also quite incorrect as I will soon explain.
Snow pointed out that there is considerable diversity of opinion amongst Muslims in Britain but there are a small number of key issues in which there is a very considerable Muslim consensus indeed, namely that of opposition to any British foreign policy that involved force being used against Muslims anywhere, opposition to free speech and opposition to common social liberalism (particularly issues relating to sexuality).
The first is an issue which should properly lie within the purview of democratic politics: at some point in the future Muslims may be able to find enough non-Muslims to support their apparently widely held views on foreign policy matters, though in truth I have my doubts. Nevertheless it is by no means impossible that British policies could one day be more to their liking. The second and third however is quite a different matter. It is intolerable that any attempt even be attempted to find 'middle ground' on free speech and social liberalism because there can be no middle ground. Muslims say that people should 'respect' each other, which is in truth both a lie and in any case arrant nonsense. One of the issues that seems to have a very broad basis of support, according to Jon Snow at least, is a spectacular lack of respect for people exercising social liberal values.
Now I have no problem with Muslims refusing to respect homosexuals, adulterers, women in short skirts or whatever else, because speaking personally I neither want not expect Muslim respect. I insist on their tolerance but their respect, or lack thereof, means less than nothing to me. As long as they do not try to stop women with short skirts walking down the street, or throw rocks at homosexuals and adulterers, I really do not care what they think.
But this is also where Jon Snow is incorrect to describe them as 'separatists'. If all Muslims in Britain wanted was to live in ghettos where Muslim social norms are accepted, well I really think that is a 'manageable' problem. However it seems that what they also want is to prevent me, by law, from poking fun at their religion and demonstrating just how much I do not respect the things they hold dear. They insist I tolerate their beliefs, which I regard as deeply offensive barbarism based on superstitious nonsense, yet will not tolerate my belief in the unlimited nature of civil free expression, because they find what I will say offensive. They are not 'separatists' because they want their prohibitions on poking fun at Mohammad to also apply to me. There ain't nothing 'separate' about that.
And so when Jon Snow suggests this issue is what may lead to violence and inter-communal strife, he is no doubt correct. And that may well be a process we need to go through. If the majority of the Islamic community in Britain truly does think that, they must not be accommodated, they must be utterly denied without apology and their repressive aspirations condemned.
Tolerance they get (for now), but it needs to be made clear that Muslim sensibilities do not trump secular values and they do not get a veto on what gets said about them or the things they value. They are free to respond in kind. However if that leads to violence by some extremists, well, so be it. They can say what they like about my values, I do not care and I suggest they take a similar attitude because I intend to say what I like about their values and any politician who tried to pander to them to prevent that from happening is someone to be implacably opposed.
To those who deny that passenger profiling at airports could possibly help, I suggest they peruse the sketches of the London terror suspects here.
None of them look like a Norwegian granny to me, and I would have thought that the hypothetical task of having to recruit a dozen Norwegian-granny-Islamist-converts would have been one of the trickier parts of the operation.
Britain 'is now biggest security threat to US'
Telegraph
29/08/2006
Britain now presents a greater security threat to the United States than Iran or Iraq, an American magazine said yesterday. In an article on Islamists headlined "Kashmir on the Thames", the New Republic painted Britain's Muslim communities as a breeding ground for violent extremism.
Citing recent opinion poll evidence suggesting that one in four British Muslims believed that last year's London Tube bombings were justified, the magazine said: "In the wake of this month's high-profile arrests, it can now be argued that the biggest threat to US security emanates not from Iran or Iraq or Afghanistan, but rather from Great Britain, our closest ally."
The magazine, with a circulation of 60,000-a-week, has its roots on the Democratic Left although in recent years it has backed much of President George W Bush's foreign policy. The claim is the latest in a series of hostile reassessment of Britain by Americans in the wake of the alleged plot to bring down transatlantic airliners. Many have been appalled both by the existence of enthusiastic jihadis in British cities and by the call from some of their leaders for a change in the country's foreign policy.
Other publications and the think-tanks that shape public debate in America have also issued stern criticism both of Britain's Muslims and of the Government. Nile Gardiner, of the Right-wing Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Telegraph yesterday that Americans were coming to view Britain as "a hornet's nest of Islamic extremists" and thought it posed ''a direct security threat to the US".
He said that if British-based terrorism continues, America is likely to respond harshly. "A major concern would be the tightening of travel restrictions unless the authorities start to crack down on Islamist militancy," he said. More than four million Britons enter America annually using the visa waiver programme. Any change would force Britons wishing to visit the US into lengthy queues at American diplomatic missions.
Mr Gardiner said the issue had not yet acquired a head of steam in Congress, but that another plot, or a "successful" attack by British Muslims on an American target, would be likely to spur an immediate response. Investor's Business Daily has already demanded an end to the programme because it "allows Pakistani Britons to dodge security background checks".
Much of the outraged American response this month was sparked by the call from Muslim leaders for a change in British foreign policy. The letter from six Muslim MPs and 38 community leaders said "current British Government policy risks putting civilians at increased risk both in the UK and abroad". The theme was taken up by the Wall Street Journal, which said: "It is typical of some of Britain's so-called moderate Muslims, who seem less concerned with fighting extremists in their midst than in excusing them."
The newspaper went on to attack Tony Blair's government for "cultivating and promoting such pseudo-moderate Muslim organisations". The BBC and the Foreign Office, described as "a preserve of Arabists", were also lambasted both for quoting extremists and allowing them into Britain.
------------
Kashmir on the Thames
The New Republic
25/08/06
It's not often that a Muslim Labour MP is my hero, but here we go:
If you want sharia law, you should go and live in Saudi
The Sunday Times
August 20, 2006
Shahid Malik, the Labour MP, explains why he told fellow Muslims that if they don’t like Britain they should pack their bags
Thanks Andy for this find. This piece, actually a review of a book Islamic Imperialism: A History, is well worth reading, as this excerpt discussing what it means to be a "moderate Marxist":
All or Nothing
Theodore Dalrymple
The quest for a moderate Islam may be futile
City Journal
4 June 2006
The week following the Muslim protests in London against the Danish cartoons—with marchers carrying signs calling for the beheading of infidels—other Muslims demonstrated to claim that Islam really meant peace and tolerance. While their implicit recognition that peace and tolerance are preferable to strife and bigotry did these Muslims personal honor, the claim regarding Islam was both historically and intellectually preposterous. Only someone ignorant of the most elementary facts could believe such a thing. From the first, Islam was a religion of pillage, violence, and compulsion, which it justified and glorified. And it is certainly not “the evident truth of the doctrine itself,” to quote Gibbon with regard for what, with characteristic irony, he called the primary reason for the rapid spread of Christianity throughout the civilized world, that explains the exponential growth of the Dar-al-Islam in its early history.
It is important, of course, to distinguish between Islam as a doctrine and Muslims as people. Untold numbers of Muslims desire little more than a quiet life; they have the virtues and the vices of the rest of mankind. Their religion gives to their daily lives an ethical and ritual structure and provides the kind of boundaries that only modern Western intellectuals would have the temerity to belittle.
But the fact that many Muslims are not fanatics is not as comforting as some might think. Consider, by way of illustration, Eric Hobsbawm, the famous, much feted, and unrepentantly Marxist historian. No one would feel personally threatened by him at a social gathering, where he would be amusing, polite, charming, and accomplished; if you had him to dinner, you wouldn’t have to count the spoons afterward, even though he theoretically opposes the idea of private wealth. In short, there would be no reason to suspect that he was about to commit a common crime against you. In this sense, he is what one might call a moderate Marxist.
But Hobsbawm has stated quite openly that, had the Soviet Union managed to create a functioning and prosperous socialist society, 20 million deaths would have been a worthwhile price to pay; and since he didn’t recognize, even partially, that the Soviet Union was not in fact on the path to such a society until many years after it had murdered 20 million of its people (if not more), it is fair to assume that, if things had turned out another way in his own country, Hobsbawm would have applauded, justified, and perhaps even instigated the murders of the very people to whom he was now, under the current dispensation, being amusing, charming, and polite. In other words, what saved Hobsbawm from committing utter evil was not his own scruples or ratiocination, and certainly not the doctrine he espoused, but the force of historical circumstance. His current moderation would have counted for nothing if world events had been different.
The shadow cast by a mega-mosque
By Philip Johnston
Telegraph Comment
25/09/2006
When Abu Izzadeen, the firebrand Islamist militant, berated John Reid last week for "daring" to visit a Muslim area, the Home Secretary bridled, as did many others, at his suggestion that part of London was off limits for a British minister of the Crown. There was nowhere in this country from which anyone should be excluded, Mr Reid said; nowhere that could be called exclusively Muslim. He was speaking just a couple of Tube stops from West Ham, close to the site for the 2012 Olympic stadium, where a huge row is about to erupt over plans to construct a mosque. However, this is not any old mosque built to serve the local community. It will be the largest place of worship in Europe, a gigantic three-storey Islamic centre, with schools and other facilities, able to hold at least 40,000 worshippers and up to 70,000 if necessary.
It will be called the London Markaz and it is intended to be a significant Islamic landmark whose prominence and stature will be enhanced by its proximity to the Olympic site. When television viewers around the world see aerial views of the stadium during the opening ceremony in six years' time, the most prominent religious building in the camera shot will not be one of the city's iconic churches that have shaped the nation's history, such as St Paul's Cathedral or Westminster Abbey, but the mega-mosque. Its arrival in London will be a significant coup for Islam and a major event for the country as a whole. It will also make Abu Izzadeen's depiction of that part of east London as "a Muslim area" seem remarkably prescient.
...
Its backers are the Tablighi Jamaat, a missionary organisation that says it is non-political and peaceful. Yet a senior FBI anti-terrorism official has called it a recruiting ground for al-Qa'eda, and the French secret services described it as "an antechamber for fundamentalism". Its current European headquarters are in Dewsbury, home town of Mohammed Siddique Khan, leader of the July 7 suicide bombers, who attended the local mosque. Much of the funding for the Markaz, which will cost about £100 million, is expected to come from Saudi Arabia.
Alan Craig, who lives about a mile from the 16-acre site on which it is to be built, is a Newham councillor representing the Christian People's Alliance. ... "I am concerned about the community and security impact of the mosque," he said. "Although permission has not yet been given, Muslims are moving into the area in preparation. The Savile Town area of Dewsbury where Tablighi Jamaat is currently based is now more than 90 per cent Muslim. This part of London has always been a very diverse community and that is how it should be kept. We can't have one group taking over." Mr Craig, who has inevitably been castigated as "anti-Muslim" by those who want to shut down any discussion, said he believed the local community would be denied a say. "They [the council] have not consulted local people at all but when the mosque master-plan is submitted, they intend to give it their formal approval. It is an undemocratic stitch-up."
It is suggested that the Markaz complex will become the "Muslim quarter" for the Olympics, acting as a hub for Islamic competitors and spectators, something that is surely contrary to the spirit of the Games, which are meant to bring people together, not keep them apart. Futhermore, in an irony not lost on Mr Craig, just a mile or so from where the mosque is due to go up, the Kingsway International Christian Centre, the biggest evangelical church in Europe with 12,000 worshippers on a Sunday, is coming down to make way for the Olympic stadium. Mr Craig wants an independent inquiry into the mosque, something that Newham council has not exactly fallen over itself to endorse. Somewhere along the way, there will be a role for Ken Livingstone, the mayor, whose London Development Agency has already signalled that he thinks it is a good thing for London to have an Islamic landmark.
An entertaining and informative interview: John Humphreys and Abu Izzadeen.
BBC Radio 4 Today Programme
22/09/06
0810 John Humphreys speaks to Abu Izzadeen, Muslim protester, who made the headlines this week by heckling the home secretary John Reid.
Listen | Permalink
I'm in a real quandary about Abu Izzadeen - on the one hand I'm all for news organisations reporting on the activities of extremists among us. On the other, I'm not sure if it's a good idea to give Izzy air time. I have a feeling that he (and Choudary) are firm believers in the adage about 'any publicity being good publicity'. I'm reminded of the section in Jon Ronson's 'Them' in which the KKK reformer is losing media coverage to a firebrand 'Real KKK' organisation who gives the media the racially inflammatory soundbites that make for the most exciting new bulletin.
Any thoughts from the journalistic ethics committe?
I'm on for giving them air time to expose their hypocrisy and disgusting viewpoints. The interviewers must be as ruthlessly aggressive as they are with domestic politicians. If they're given an easy ride we can all slit our own throats now and save them the bother.
Here's a new blog's take on Abu Izzadeen (or Trev as I like to call him*):
Home Secretary John Reid certainly looked surprised when he was told by Abu Izzadeen, that the minister had some front coming 'to a Muslim area'. Well, even I was surprised by that, because since when has Leytonstone been a 'Muslim' area? The radical Muslim Abu Izzadeen, sounds as if he spends more time in wannabe 'jihadist' chatrooms than he does on the streets of E.11. For all his talk of speaking on behalf of Muslims worldwide, and even in places where he's never been to - what I'd really like to know is, how could such a babbling fool exercise so much influence over the British media?
[...]
Again, this morning on the BBC's flagship radio programme Today, proves that in this current political climate, you no longer need to have a convincing arguement, nor do you need support from a constituency to galvanise attention from the British media - all you need to do is proclaim that you speak on behalf of the oppressed, and constantly remind us that Muslims in Britain have never had so bad.
[...]
The truth is, Abu Izzadeen thinks nothing of exaggerating the extent of discrimination against Muslims in Britain. The sooner the British media stop flattering such self-indulgent emotionalism, the better for us to debate what really matters, like 'what do we stand for' - but, don't get me wrong here, in a secular and pluralistic society, Izzadeen should have the right to say what ever he wants (even though he openly admitted on the Today progamme that he hates free speech - wonder where he got that idea from?).
*Abu's christian name is Trevor
Three News Items from Londonistan
Daniel Pipes Weblog
September 24, 2006
Short article. Most noteworthy, the new offence of "revving your car in a racist manner" and Pipes' closing comment that "what goes on in the UK has no parallel anywhere in the West".
Could the truth of that last statement and the fact that we were the first Western state to be attacked by home-grown Jihadis be a coincidence? I think not.
It's taken a while but this speech from Ruth Kelly could signal a change in the Government's attitude towards organizations like the Muslim Council of Britain:
There are also some people who don’t feel it right to join in the commemorations of Holocaust Memorial Day even though it has helped raise awareness not just of the Jewish holocaust, but also more contemporary atrocities like the Rwanda genocide. That’s also their right.
But I can’t help wondering why those in leadership positions who say they want to achieve religious tolerance and a cohesive society would choose to boycott an event which marks, above all, our common humanity and respect for each other.
...In future, I am clear that our strategy of funding and engagement must shift significantly towards those organisations that are taking a proactive leadership role in tackling extremism and defending our shared values. It is only by defending our values that we will prevent extremists radicalising future generations of terrorists
...I know this message will be challenging for some.
I make no apologies for that. The scale of the threat means doing any less would be a dereliction of our duty. It would be letting down those within your communities who are leading the fight against the extremists. It would be ignoring our shared values.
Full report here.
Comment is free: Respect is a two-way street
Peter Tatchell
Guardian Comment
25/10/06
There is a whiff of hypocrisy among some Muslims who, in the name of being spared offence, want to censor other people's opinions.
Red Ken's U-Turn Over Hamza's Son
LSE
31st October 2006
London Mayor "Red" Ken Livingstone was left red-faced today after making an embarrassing U-turn over the terrorist son of jailed preacher of hate Abu Hamza. Speaking at his weekly press conference at City Hall this morning Livingstone said he would be "happy" to have Mohammed Kamel Mostafa working on the underground.Mostafa was reportedly given a security pass to work for contractors on the tube network before bosses learned of his background.
When it was pointed out to Mr Livingstone during his press conference that 25-year-old Mostafa, the eldest son of jailed hook-handed cleric Hamza, had a terrorist conviction overseas he launched into a tirade and said: "We are happy to have him work here for us." However, within hours of the press conference the Mayor's office issued a press release in which Mr Livingstone stated it had been "correct to dismiss him." Mostafa has a conviction in Yemen for plotting to blow up British and US targets, and has recorded rap songs glorifying holy war and suicide attacks like those in London last July.
An absolute bullseye from my new Dude of the Month:
Mr Nazir-Ali argued it would never be possible to satisfy all of the demands made by Muslims because "their complaint often boils down to the position that it is always right to intervene when Muslims are victims... and always wrong when Muslims are the oppressors or terrorists".
Bishop attacks 'Muslim hypocrisy'
BBC News
5 November 2006
A senior Anglican bishop has accused many Muslims of being guilty of double standards in their view of the world. The Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, told the Sunday Times some had a "dual psychology" in which they sought "victimhood and domination". The Muslim Council of Britain said the comments were "not very helpful".
The bishop, whose father converted from Islam, also said situations such as teaching could require Muslim women not to wear full-face veils. Mr Nazir-Ali argued it would never be possible to satisfy all of the demands made by Muslims because "their complaint often boils down to the position that it is always right to intervene when Muslims are victims... and always wrong when Muslims are the oppressors or terrorists".
He compared Bosnia and Kosovo, where he said Muslims were oppressed, with the powerful position of the Taleban in Afghanistan, who he said had been the oppressors. He added: "Given the world view that has given rise to such grievances, there can never be sufficient appeasement and new demands will continue to be made."
...
In the Sunday Times, Mr Nazir-Ali referred to a "huge increase" in the wearing of Muslim dress in Egypt, Pakistan and Malaysia. He said: "I can see nothing in Islam that prescribes the wearing of the full-face veil. "In the supermarket those at the cash till need to be recognised. Teaching is another profession in which society requires recognition and identification."
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Bishop attacks 'victim' Muslims
Times Online
November 05, 2006
Nazir-Ali is definitely well worth listening to. If you were choosing someone to debate the Islamists on your behalf he'd be high up your list, I reckon. You can't accuse him of racism, imperialism, or even being anti-religious. Sound guy, good speaker.
BBC Today Program
06/11/06
0750 The Church of England's only Asian bishop Michael Nazir Ali, The Bishop of Rochester, on how to prevent Islamic extremism.
Listen | Permalink
Islamist activist works at Home Office.
"Immigration official is a senior member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a group Tony Blair had pledged to ban
A SENIOR member of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir is working as a computer technician at the Home Office, despite calls by Tony Blair for the group to be banned.
The activist, named as Abid Javaid, is said to be an official at the Immigration and Nationality Directorate in Croydon, one of the department’s most sensitive branches."
Paul Goodman MP gave a rather good speech before the Queens Speech. Here it is in full:
Mr. Paul Goodman (Wycombe) (Con): "We know that the central theme of the Queen’s Speech is the terrorist threat and our security response. I observe in passing that no Labour Back Bencher remains in place to make a speech on this or any other theme on the first day of our debates on the Queen’s Speech. I will do my best to fill the gap. This is my first chance to address the House about these issues since my constituents in High Wycombe woke up on 10 August to find themselves in the eye of a media storm about the aeroplane terror plot. Four of my constituents were arrested and two have since been charged with serious offences. I must, of course, presume that my constituents are innocent until or unless a court decides otherwise, but it is important to say that 10 August was an immeasurably sad day for High Wycombe and it is essential to pay tribute to Thames Valley police, to the local mosque committee and local imams, to Wycombe district council and to all local people for the good sense that they have shown during these difficult weeks and months.
More than 9,000 of my constituents are Muslims, almost 11 per cent. of my electorate. I thus represent more Muslim voters than any other Member of Parliament of my party. I therefore necessarily see one of my most important duties as a constituency MP and, indeed, more widely, as being to help to do what I can to create a moderate, prosperous and integrated British Muslim majority. The aeroplane plot, the Dhiren Barot trail and conviction, the Abu Hamza affair, the horror of 7/7, the attempted shoe-bomb atrocity by Richard Reid and the whole terrible history of recent events stretching back to 9/11 and beyond should remind the House-if, with our eyes also on currents events in Afghanistan and Iraq, we need any reminding-that this aspiration and our common security are under threat.
A central question about the Queen’s Speech, therefore, is whether both it and Government policy more broadly will curtail terror, build security and help to deliver that moderate, prosperous and integrated British Muslim majority that we all want to see. Ministers must thus convince the House that the analysis that accompanies their actions is thoroughly thought through. I shall risk a medical analogy: relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in Britain are clearly to some degree poisoned. Seeking to drain the poison and heal those relations is a bit like a doctor treating an illness. We have to diagnose the cause of the illness before seeking to cure it.
There is no shortage of diagnoses. Some claim that the main cause of Muslim alienation is racism and Islamophobia; others that it is poverty and lower life chances; and others still that the cause is intergenerational conflict between older people who, in some cases, still inhabit psychologically, if not physically, the hill villages of Pakistan and Azad Kashmir, and more rootless younger people who identify neither with traditional life in those villages nor with modern Britain. Other voices cite the failure of the multi-culturalist experiment in delivering social cohesion, and others point to foreign policy.
For myself, I believe that all those observations are part of any sensible diagnosis. As the first parliamentary Member of my party, as far as I know, to call publicly for an independent inquiry into the Iraq war on 2 June 2003, I am scarcely likely to argue otherwise. However, in my view these observations do not constitute the whole diagnosis. Clearly, there is something missing. Dhiren Barot, for example, cannot originally have been a victim of Islamophobia as he was raised as a Hindu. Jermaine Lindsay, the 7/7 bomber, cannot have been caught in an intergenerational struggle with Pakistani elders as he was black. Mohammed Sidique Khan, another 7/7 bomber, cannot have had his livelihood damaged by lower life chances as he was a graduate of Leeds Metropolitan university.
I suggest to the House that that missing something is the ideology of Islamism. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (David Maclean) said, Islamism is not Islam. Islam is a religion-a great religion at that and one, it seems to me, as various, as complex, as multi-faceted and as capable of supporting a great civilisation as Christianity. Islamism, however, is an ideology forged largely in the past 100 years, and that word ‘ideology’ should help to convey to the House a flavour that is as much modern as mediaeval.
Like communism and like fascism, those other modern ideologies, Islamism divides not on the basis of class or of race, but on the basis of religion. To this politician, it has three significant features. First, it separates the inhabitants of the dar-al-Islam-the house of Islam-and the dar-al-Harb-the house of war-and, according to Islamist ideology, those two houses are necessarily in conflict. Secondly, it proclaims to Muslims that their political loyalty lies not with the country that they live in, but with the umma-that is, the worldwide community of Muslims. Thirdly, it aims to bring the dar-al-Islam under sharia law.
I am not an expert on Islam, but I have learned enough about it since I was first elected to this place in 2001 to recognise that its view, and our inherited view of the difference between the sacred and secular, diverge. In our inherited view, the sacred and the secular are separate. The Christian tradition from which our inherited view springs has always acknowledged a distinction between what is God’s and what is Caesar’s. In Islam, that distinction is harder to perceive.
It is, of course, true that in the Muslim societies in which I have travelled sharia law and secular law exist side by side. In Pakistan, for example, there are both secular and sharia courts. None the less, the distinction is anathema, so to speak, to the Islamists. They look back for inspiration to Mohammed’s original political settlement, in which the religious and political were, in effect, one and the same. They are, as the phrase has it, ‘dreaming of Medina.’ They seek to restore the caliphate to a glory that is tinged with nostalgia and longing.
Let me give a hard example of what that means and its significance in the context of the Queen’s Speech. The Home Secretary was recently and notoriously heckled at a public meeting in Leyton by Abu Izzadeen, another convert to Islam, who was formerly known as Trevor Brooks. He said to the Home Secretary: ‘How dare you come to a Muslim area?’
That was not some random insult or interruption; Mr. Izzadeen knew what he was doing. He was asserting that Muslims are in a majority in the part of Leyton in which the Home Secretary was speaking. He was therefore claiming that part of the country as part of the dar-al-Islam. He was saying, in effect, that sharia law, not British law, should run in Leyton. Mr. Izzadeen’s version of sharia law would be consistent with dispensations for Muslims from some aspects of British law, the application of a sharia criminal code, special taxes for non-Muslims, a public ban on alcohol consumption and the closure of pubs and bars, and a ban on conversions from Islam to other faiths.
We can, of course, choose to dismiss Mr. Izzadeen as an isolated fanatic, but such a view may be unwise. There is polling evidence to suggest that his views tap into a reservoir of sympathy and support. For example, an ICM poll that was commissioned last February found that four out of 10 British Muslims want sharia law introduced to parts of this country. It is important to note that that almost certainly represents a degree of support for what I would call soft sharia-in other words, for the application of some sharia law in relation to family arrangements alone. None the less, even the implementation of soft sharia would mark, I think for the first time, one group of British citizens living under a different set of laws from other British citizens.
We must consider what the likely future effect would be on domestic Muslim support for sharia, and even for terror, of a further downward spiral events, of further international tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims, of further domestic terrorist incidents-which, alas, there may be-and of racist and xenophobic backlashes against British Muslims. That is the challenge that we all face together. In my view, it is a challenge to Britain that is no less pressing than the challenge of climate change, which has occupied much of the debate today. That is the challenge for the political and media classes as a whole, and it is especially the challenge for this Government and the security and terror-related aspects of the Queen’s Speech.
There are three tests for those parts of the Queen’s Speech and, in concluding, I will put them as questions. The first question is: does the whole Government machine clearly recognise that Islamism is a key element in poisoning relations between Muslims and non-Muslims? The evidence is ambiguous. The Prime Minister has said, crucially: ‘The rules of the game have changed’.
Individual Ministers, such as the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, whom I heard speaking on this matter last week, see the scale of the problem. However, as a brilliant pamphlet-Martin Bright’s “When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries”-for the think tank Policy Exchange indicated, the foreign policy, Home Office and security establishments are divided on how to deal with the Islamists. Anyone who doubts that those divisions exist should ponder the leaked memos from Government in relation to the proposed visit by Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, with which Mr. Bright illustrates his pamphlet.
The second question for the Government is: can they prove to the House and to the country that the proposals in the Queen’s Speech on security are inspired by the long-term good of the country, rather than by short-term political manoeuvring? That is a crucial question. Ministers must recognise that the yoking together of spin-which my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) mentioned and which I describe as the practices devised originally to deliver new Labour from the failures of the Kinnock and Foot years-and the selling of the Iraq war has eviscerated trust in the Government.
Alas, the habit of spin continues. The Chancellor now tells us that he wants to get tough on security, but, as I pointed out to the Prime Minister this afternoon, only £476,000 has been seized from suspect sources in six years and only four enforcement actions have been taken against Islamic charities-not that I am criticising Islamic charities as a whole, of course. The Home Secretary-that rival to the Chancellor, we read-will no doubt claim that he will be even tougher, but according to a written answer that I received recently: ‘There has been no centrally issued instruction to prison governors on the receipt of Islamist publications by prisoners.’-[ Official Report, 26 October 2006; Vol. 450, c. 2126W.]
That is remarkable. The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, for her part, must realise that those who sit on her new Integration and Cohesion Commission are unlikely to be optimistic, given that its predecessor, the huge “Tackling Extremism Together” project, has had only four of its proposals implemented. The Secretary of State for Education and Skills, in the wake of the collapse of his policy on admissions to faith schools, must now ensure that university principals strike the right balance between allowing free speech to flourish on campuses and closing down the incitement of violence, whether by Islamists or by anyone else. The Government as a whole must recognise that their motives in arguing for 90 days’ detention are greeted with deep suspicion, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) pointed out in his characteristically incisive speech earlier today.
The third and final question for the Government is: if they acknowledge the dangers posed by Islamism, and if their analysis is correct, will they see the necessary action through? The aftermath of the recent remarks by the Leader of the House about the niqab-remarks that I suspect were driven by his own concern about shariaisation-revealed deep uncertainty within the Government. Soon after he spoke out, voices were heard suggesting that his remarks had alienated moderates and driven Muslims into the hands of the extremists; that his words could have been better chosen; and that now was not the right time to have a public discussion about Islamism. I am not so sure. There is a deep problem. Politicians’ words can nearly always be better chosen, and now is never the right time, it seems, to have a public discussion about Islamism and integration. Broadly speaking, we have not been having this public discussion since the Rushdie affair, and my main concern about not having an informed, decent, consistent and rigorously thought through public discussion about Islamism centres on the effect that that postponement will have, not only on the non-Muslim majority, but on the Muslim moderates-the moderate and prosperous greater share of Muslims to whom I referred earlier.
The leadership of the Muslim community that I know best, in High Wycombe, is moderate and sensible. The community makes a huge contribution to the town. It is well integrated into both the main political parties and it produced the first Conservative Asian mayor in the country-Mohammed Razzaq-in the 1980s. However, it is clear that nationally, and especially among the alienated young, the moderates are not making the running; the Islamists are making the running. The moderates are in a position strikingly similar to that of the Social Democratic and Labour party in Northern Ireland, which has, in the past 15 years, been outpaced, outwitted and outsmarted by Sinn Fein-IRA, with consequences that are still fully to be seen. Deferring the debate further will only allow this process to continue. When it finally takes place, which it will, it will probably be noisier and nastier than would otherwise have been the case. It is essential that the moderates grasp that the main threat of the Islamists is as much to them as to anyone else.
This Queen’s Speech thus presents us with a choice-we can either take an approach that tends to lurch from pacification in the wake of future highly charged public rows, such as the veils controversy, to panic in the wake of future terrorist attacks, which we are, alas, told are only too likely to happen, or we can rise to the challenge in an informed, decent and consistent way. In facing the challenge, Opposition Members must acknowledge and be mindful of the fact that Ministers have a responsibility that none of the rest of us at present has to bear. George Orwell once wrote of the ‘deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs. ‘On 7/7, we heard the roar of bombs in London. I sometimes worry that the deep, deep sleep that Orwell described in the 1930s is still here in relation to Islamism in sections of the Government, parts of the political and media establishment, the House and the country. This is one of the most urgent problems facing us, and if we are in that deep, deep sleep, it is time for all of us to wake up."
I'm struggling to think of a comparable example of "moderate Islam" putting its head up above the parapet and attempting to fight (let alone win) the propaganda war.
Join the British Army and become a martyr, say Muslims
The Sunday Times
December 10, 2006
A GOVERNMENT-BACKED Islamic organisation is teaching young Muslims that dying while fighting for the British armed forces is an act of martyrdom.
The British Muslim Forum (BMF) explains to young people that even if a Muslim soldier dies in combat while fighting in an Islamic country such as Afghanistan, he will still be regarded as a martyr and a hero for this country.
The BMF is holding talks across Britain to persuade young people not to follow the teachings of Muslim extremists who instruct their followers that joining the British military is a “traitorous act”. Its aim is to counter radicals’ misuse of the term “martyr”, which has become associated with terrorist suicide operations. The BMF was a leading member in a taskforce set up by Tony Blair after the July 7 bombings to combat extremism among Muslims.
In its forums its case workers and imams cite Lance-Corporal Jabron Hashmi, 24, a British Pakistani from Birmingham who was killed in combat in July in Afghanistan. Islamic extremists have called him a “salaried traitor” as he died fighting Taliban Muslims at the command of non-Muslim generals. They argue he should not have received an Islamic burial as he died an “infidel”.
However, BMF case workers counter that he died a martyr. “We are calling him a martyr because he died fighting for his country. Islam teaches us to be loyal and abide by the laws of the land. We believe fighting for Britain is not being a traitor. And young people are getting the message,” said Khurshid Ahmed, the BMF’s chairman.
The BMF, a body representing 600 mosques, is one of Britain’s largest Muslim organisations. It is the government’s main working partner in the Muslim community.
Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times:
All going swimmingly — as long as you're not white and after a dip
Rod Liddle
Imagine that our municipal swimming pools had evenings set aside for white people only. There are some members of the white community who — unaccountably perhaps — feel uncomfortable sharing the same stretch of water as Asian people, despite the purifying effects of the chlorine. Partly it is a question of raw proximity, the fear that one might pick up a particularly virulent verruca, say. Or simply be forced to look at them, doing their strange Asian breaststroke, up and down the pool. Or worse in such damp and intimate surroundings, having them look at you, peering lasciviously from behind a pair of aqua goggles.
Of course this proposal would not be put forward in a racist manner, heaven forefend. In a way, it’s anti-racist. It’s a case of ensuring that every British community, no matter how insular and distraught, should have access to public facilities, without having to worry too much about members of the public who don’t look like them. Or you can think of it as a health and safety issue: there are white people who simply cannot bear to be alongside Asian people — and whether you like it or not, they need to learn to swim too. It is no use suggesting to them that their revulsion at being forced to mix with “foreigners” might be misplaced. So for one evening each week, get the Asians out of the pool. And the blacks too, for that matter. And the disabled. Better safe than sorry.
Two of our more enlightened councils, Wolverhampton and Croydon, are showing the way forward. They have instituted Asian-only swimming nights, where people from the sub-continent who feel uncomfortable swimming within the gaze of their white fellow citizens, can happily retreat into their own pristine, watery, laager. No whites allowed within spitting distance; not even white pool staff. There are already women-only nights at most municipal swimming pools, so that women can swim up and down in a forlorn attempt to get rid of that thickening around the waist, without having to breathe in the same microbes which have been recently exhaled by men. This new initiative goes beyond even this.
Some locals in Wolverhampton have complained, of course. They turn up at the pool with their towel and their swimsuit and are told, “Sod off, whitey; sorry, but it’s not your night.” And they fail to grasp that this is not really a restrictive measure at all, but a powerful, affirmative statement.
The next logical step is the one I have suggested above. Otherwise one is effectively saying that people who cannot abide co-mingling with neighbours of a different race (or religion) should forgo their swimming practice and thus, if they are unlucky enough to fall into a river, or are brusquely pushed, should be left to drown quietly.
And who could possibly agree with that? '
(Hat tip Daily Ablution)
Muslim urged to shun 'unholy' vaccines
Abul Taher
Sunday Times
28/1/07
A Muslim doctors’ leader has provoked an outcry by urging British Muslims not to vaccinate their children against diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella because it is “un-Islamic”. Dr Abdul Majid Katme, head of the Islamic Medical Association, is telling Muslims that almost all vaccines contain products derived from animal and human tissue, which make them “haram”, or unlawful for Muslims to take.
...
Katme, a psychiatrist who has worked in the National Health Service for 15 years, wields influence as the head of one of only two national Islamic medical organisations as well as being a member of the Muslim Council of Britain. Moderate Muslims are concerned at the potential impact because other Islamic doctors will have to confirm vaccines are derived from animal and human products.
There is already evidence of lower than average vaccination rates in Muslim areas, reducing the prospect of the “herd immunity” needed to curb infectious diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella.
Katme’s appeal reflects a global movement by some hardline Islamic leaders who are telling followers torefuse vaccines from the West. In Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and parts of India, Muslims have refused to be immunised against polio after being told that the vaccines contain products that the West has deliberately added to make the recipients infertile.
Katme said he was bringing the message to Britain after analysing the products used for the manufacture of the vaccines. He claimed that Muslims must allow their children to develop their own immune system naturally rather than rely on vaccines. He argued that leading “Islamically healthy lives” would be enough to ward off illnesses and diseases.
“You see, God created us perfect and with a very strong defence system. If you breast-feed your child for two years — as the Koran says — and you eat Koranic food like olives and black seed, and you do ablution each time you pray, then you will have a strong defence system,” he said.
----------------------------
Young, British Muslims 'getting more radical'
Daily Telegraph
29/01/2007
A bleak picture of a generation of young British Muslims radicalised by anti-Western views and misplaced multicultural policies is shown in a survey published today. The study found disturbing evidence of young Muslims adopting more fundamentalist beliefs on key social and political issues than their parents or grandparents.
Forty per cent of Muslims between the ages of 16 and 24 said they would prefer to live under sharia law in Britain, a legal system based on the teachings of the Koran. The figure among over-55s, in contrast, was only 17 per cent. In some countries, people found guilty under sharia law face penalties such as beheading, stoning, the severing of a hand or being lashed.
The study, by the Right-wing think-tank Policy Exchange, also found a significant minority who expressed backing for Islamic terrorism. One in eight young Muslims said they admired groups such as al-Qa'eda that "are prepared to fight the West".
Turning to issues of faith, 36 per cent of the young people questioned said they believed that a Muslim who converts to another religion should be "punished by death." Among the over 55s, the figure is only 19 per cent. Three out of four young Muslims would prefer Muslim women to "choose to wear the veil or hijab," compared to only a quarter of over-55s. Support was also strong for Islamic schools, according to the Populus survey of 1,000 people commissioned by Policy Exchange. Forty per cent of younger Muslims said they would want their children to attend an Islamic school, compared to only 20 per cent of over-55s.
Britain's foreign policies were a key issue among the Muslim population as a whole, with 58 per cent arguing that many of the world's problems are "a result of arrogant Western attitudes". However, knowledge of foreign affairs was sketchy, with only one in five knowing that Mahmoud Abbas was the Palestinian president.
Saudi-funded school 'teaches religious hatred'
Telegraph
07/02/2007
A Saudi-funded Islamic school in London has been accused of poisoning the minds of pupils as young as five years with a curriculum of hate. Colin Cook, 57, claims text books used by children at the King Fahad Academy in Acton, west London, describe Jews as "repugnant" and Christians as "pigs". The father-of-three, a Muslim convert, allegedly heard some of them saying they wanted to "kill Americans", praising 9/11 and idolising Osama bin Laden as a "hero".
Mr Cook, who taught English for 18 years at the Academy, was sacked from his £35,000-a-year post in December for alleged misconduct relating to the exams procedure. He is claiming £100,000 compensation for unfair dismissal, race discrimination and victimisation.
In legal papers lodged with Watford Employment Tribunal, he claims the Academy used text books by the Saudi government’s Ministry of Education which taught religious hate. "The schoolbooks presently in use describe Jews as 'monkeys' (or apes) and Christians as 'pigs'," he says in the documents. Students are asked to "mention some repugnant characteristics of Jews", and Year 1 pupils are asked to "give examples of worthless religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, idol worship and others", he adds.
He also alleges that when he complained to school chiefs about the content of the curriculum and questioned whether it complied with British laws, he was told: "This is not England. It is Saudi Arabia".
...
A report by Ofsted, the education watchdog, in March last year praised the school for offering pupils "a balanced education and opportunities to develop their intellect and skills".
------------------
Islamic school 'rips pages from textbooks'
Telegraph
08/02/2007
A Saudi-funded Islamic school at the centre of allegations of extremist teaching insisted yesterday it had "ripped out" the offending pages from all textbooks.
We’re far too nice to Muslim extremists
Minette Marrin
The Sunday Times
February 04, 2007
It is hard not to feel a desperate anger at last week’s news. Nine British Muslims have been arrested on suspicion of plotting to behead a British Muslim soldier, as a traitor to Islam, and to show a videotape of the act on the net to terrify us.
In the same week Policy Exchange, the think tank, has published a poll-based study that shows young British-born Muslims are far more alienated from mainstream society than their parents. Of British Muslims aged 16-24, 37% would prefer to live under sharia in Britain, 37% would like to send their children to Islamic state schools and — most incredibly — 36% think Muslims converting to another religion should be punished by death. Young British Muslims who say they “admire organisations like Al-Qaeda, which are prepared to fight the West” amount to 13%. For British Muslims aged over 55, the figures are much lower, at 17%, 19%, 19% and 3% respectively.
The usual immigrant experience of gradual integration has failed for more than a third of Muslims. All the exhaustive and intrusive efforts of the race relations industry have been counter-productive.
The Policy Exchange report argues that this alienation is largely due to more than 20 years of official multiculturalism. This benighted orthodoxy has emphasised differences and divisions and promoted a sense of grievance that is sometimes almost paranoid. This amounts to full-blown victimhood, whipped up not just by Muslim spokesmen but also by nonMuslim journalists and commentators and human rights activists in the victim industry, who complain, in defiance of the evidence, of growing Islamophobic attacks and persistent police harassment; they make comparisons with Nazi Germany. The mayor of London, no less, called at a recent conference for an end to the “media’s orgy of Islamophobia”.
These inflammatory accusations persist. For example, the supposedly moderate Dr Mohammad Naseem, a champion of interfaith dialogue, an honorary doctor of Birmingham University and chairman of Birmingham Central Mosque, said last Thursday that he believed the government was “pursuing a policy of maintaining a perception of a [terrorist] threat to justify the draconian antiterror laws they have been passing”. It had, he said, embarked on “a campaign to strike terror into the hearts of the Muslim people”, and he compared Blair’s Britain with Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union. He is encouraging people to disbelieve the police’s assurances last week that they are “not targeting faith communities but suspected criminals”. This is paranoia gone mainstream.
If this is what comes from a man supposed to be the voice of Islamic moderation, what can one feel but rage? However, unaccustomed though I am to looking on the bright side, I suppose I should try. There are some encouraging signs. This alleged plot to behead a British soldier was uncovered with the help of a brave Muslim soldier who allowed himself to be used as bait to draw out the suspected kidnappers. That was courage and patriotism well beyond the call of duty. We ought to be grateful, too, to the Muslim informants who give police and secret services invaluable information; a source told me last week that there is no lack of volunteers despite the intimidation.
The findings of the Policy Exchange report are not all negative. Despite the sense of victimhood that some Muslims feel and others try to excite, 84% said that on the whole they felt they had been treated fairly in this society, regardless of their beliefs. Even more strikingly, more Muslims (37%) than people in the general population (29%) feel that “one of the benefits of modern society is to criticise other people’s religious or political views, even when it causes offence”.
All the same, there remains a terrifying minority of disaffected young Muslims. What, if anything, can be done that isn’t already being done?
My counterterrorist wish list goes as follows. Silence all imams who break the law in their preaching with incitements to violence (the government’s record has been abysmal). Monitor all mosques; refuse visas to foreign imams who speak poor or no English (the government lost its nerve over this, as over so much). Control and monitor imams visiting prisons (the Prison Service is so shambolic that it is impossible to know whether all its 130 or so visiting imams have been security vetted). Segregate Islamist prisoners in jail (this is done in the best prisons but is out of control in the rest). Isolate radical Islamist prisoners (this is against the Human Rights Act). Stop them having internet access (not all prisons do).
More widely, recognise that the problem now lies with “self-radicalisation” in suburban front rooms. Stop the creation of religious schools (Blair sold the pass on this). Monitor madrasah schools. Restrain the practice of importing brides and bridegrooms in arranged marriages from the Third World (this is well known to inhibit integration, but the government abolished the “primary purpose” rules preventing such marriages, presumably for electoral advantage); this could be done by following the Danish example of strict entry requirements and a minimum age of 24, which enables young people to choose more freely. Spend much more money monitoring young dual-passport Britons’ trips to Pakistan and deport them for attending training camps (these routes are watched but it is expensive and the Pakistani government is unable to help).
Teach schoolchildren the facts about conditions in Muslim countries (as opposed to right-on grievances about the “black hole of Calcutta”). Teach them what happens in jails in Muslim states, compared with what has happened in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay. Teach schoolchildren and young adults what sharia involves; stop listening to the so-called representative bodies of British Muslims, not least the Muslim Council of Britain. Require the government to reveal the names and CVs of its advisers on Islamic affairs. Censor the violent Islamist recruitment sites on the internet, including the insidious hip-hop and rap sites. America and even China manage it for different reasons.
But all this is too little, too late. How can one not feel a furious, frustrated rage at the betrayal of our civilisation and our safety?
--------------------------
David Cameron rejects 'police state' claims
Telegraph
06/02/2007
David Cameron today rounded a Muslim leader who told him that anti-terror raids in Birmingham were comparable to the Nazis' persecution of the Jews. The Tory leader spoke out on a visit to Birmingham Central Mosque during which the claim was made by Dr Mohammad Naseem, chairman of the elders. "He's completely and utterly wrong and I think that's not responsible at all," Mr Cameron told reporters after a two meeting with Muslim leaders including Dr Naseem.
Well you can't say I only blog bad news.
The Jewish school where half the pupils are Muslim
Independent
01 February 2007
University accused of censoring lecture on "Islamic anti-semitism"
The University of Leeds was accused of infringing free speech last night when it cancelled a lecture on “Islamic anti-Semitism” by a German academic.
Matthias Köntzel arrived at the university yesterday morning to begin a three-day programme of lectures and seminars, but was told that it had been called off on “security grounds”.
Dr Köntzel, a political scientist who has lectured around the world on the antiSemitic ideology of Islamist groups, told The Times there were concerns that he would be attacked. He said that he was “outraged” that his meetings had been cancelled and had yet to receive an explanation.
The university, which acted after complaints from Muslim students, denied that it was interfering with the academic freedom of Dr Köntzel, and said that proper arrangements for stewarding the meeting had not been made.
Could it turn out that misplaced multi-cultural sensitivity stopped the police doing their job? Mind you, might just be bureaucracy/incompetence.
Father found guilty of honour killing
Telegraph
11/06/2007
A father of a 20-year-old woman who was killed and buried in a suitcase under a patio was today found guilty of her murder. Banaz Mahmod was strangled in a so-called "honour" killing after her family disapproved of her relationship with her boyfriend. Her father Mahmod Mahmod and his brother Ari Mahmod ordered the murder because they believed she had shamed the family.
A number of police officers are facing an internal disciplinary investigation over the handling of the case after it emerged that Miss Mahmod had told police four times that she feared for her life. She even wrote a letter naming those she thought would do it - one of whom later admitted his part in the killing. In footage recorded following an earlier attempt on her life by her father in December 2005, she said she was "really scared".
Not about London, but I put it in this thread firstly because it is so reminiscent of the London mega-mosque controversy that we have blogged about here.
Secondly, because it contains an unlikely alliance of Jews and far Right, perhaps to be expected in a world where Islamists and the Left so consistently ally.
And thirdly, because I thought of what would have been a great title for the story. Have a quick read, then I'll reveal all below...
Huge mosque stirs protests in Cologne
Telegraph
25/06/07
The construction of one of Europe's biggest mosques near to a globally famous Christian landmark has sparked a furious row in Germany. More than 150 members of Pro Köln, a Right-wing group, march in protest against the building of the 170ft high mosque in Cologne
Immigration and integration are hugely sensitive questions in Germany, which is home to a Turkish community of several million. But almost within the shadow of Cologne Cathedral, political correctness has now been replaced by bitter confrontation as the city's Muslims begin to build a 2,000-capacity mosque with twin minarets that will reach 170ft.
...
"It's not a popular plan," said Joerg Uckermann, the district's deputy mayor. "We don't want to build a Turkish ghetto in Ehrenfeld. I know about Londonistan and I don't want that here."
Mr Uckermann is part of a curious coalition of protest that has united Jewish intellectuals and neo-Nazis. Leading the charge is Ralph Giordano, a prominent Jewish author, who wrote recently that Germany was witnessing a "clash of two completely different cultures" and questioned whether they could ever be reconciled.
Stating that he had received death threats for his opinions, he added: "What kind of a state are we in that I can face a fatwa in Germany?"
...
"We live in a land of religious freedom," said Prelate Johannes Bastgen, the cathedral's dean. "I would be very glad if the same principle existed in Muslim countries."
And the title I thought of? "No de Cologne".
Re: honour killing, as I blogged above. Turns out it's a mix of political correctness *and* police infighting that's stopping these crimes being properly investigated. Brace yourself before listening to what some young British women have to say about what gets done to them, and a vox pop of British men (in impenetrable accents) proclaiming that this type of murder is "their right".
BBC Radio 4 Today Program
26/06/04
08:13 "Honour killing" is a peculiar name for murder, but our reporter Angus Stickler has learned that Islamic extremists are fuelling honour crime in this country.
Listen | Permalink
Can someone ask the MCB if *anything* bad could be connected to Islam?
Police 'ignoring honour violence'
BBC
20/07/06
The lives of women are being endangered because police cannot adequately deal with honour violence, it is claimed. Campaigners say many women who seek protection are sent home, having been dismissed as victims of a family tiff.
Honour crimes units to be piloted
BBC
20/07/07
'Honour' violence 'terror-linked'
BBC
26/07/07
But the Muslim Council of Britain said "honour" violence was a cultural practice, and nothing to do with faith.
I'm at a loss to explain this. Is it grotesque incompetence or a conspiracy? Either way the depths of idiocy / evil required seem implausible, but I don't have another explanation at hand.
Interpol boss criticises immigrant checks
Sunday Telegraph
07/07/2007
Britain is failing to check would-be immigrants against a global database of suspected terrorists, the head of Interpol has revealed. Ronald K Noble, secretary general of the policing organisation, accused the Government of "putting UK citizens at risk" through the lapse. At the same time, the Foreign Office came under fire from travel industry insiders for contracting-out vital security checks on immigrants to a private company based in India.
Criticism from such a senior figure as the head of Interpol will embarrass the Home Office. Mr Noble is a former official in President Clinton's administration whose responsibilities included overseeing the US Secret Service.
Mr Noble pointed out that most of the men arrested in connection with the failed London and Glasgow bombings had only recently arrived in Britain. He claimed that such attacks could potentially be prevented if the authorities compared immigrants' details against the Interpol database. While not disclosing whether any of the men in custody are on the list, he said: "We have the passport numbers, fingerprints and photos of more than 11,000 suspected terrorists on our database. But the UK does not check it against immigrants coming into the country or foreign nationals it has arrested. "The guys detained last week could be wanted, arrested or convicted anywhere in the world and the UK would not know."
He said that "the UK Government really needs to catch up and realise that unless it consults global databases for passports, names and photographs then it risks letting dangerous people roam free". Mr Noble also cast doubt on Gordon Brown's pledge last week to share a "watchlist" of potential terrorists with other countries. The Interpol chief said: "British citizens might be surprised to find that this watchlist announced by your Prime Minister last week has not been sent to Interpol.
"Why is it that some countries make sure passengers do not carry a bottle of spring water onto a plane, yet those same countries aren't careful to ensure that convicted felons aren't entering their borders with stolen passports?"
In a little-noticed move earlier this year, the Foreign Office transferred responsibility for security checks on immigrants from countries including India and Pakistan to VFS Global, a company based in India. The business, which employs local staff, even carries out the critical task of taking applicants' fingerprints and storing them electronically. Liam Clifford, of globalvisas.com, a migration advice firm, said: "Once you put this work in the hands of private companies overseas, you no longer have the same protection."
In February, the Foreign Office announced a £300 million, five-year detail to outsource the checks to VFS and US company, Computer Sciences Corporation. Whitehall officials insist the firms operate to high levels of security. A Government official revealed last week that within hours of the failed West End car bombing, the names of potential suspects were circulated to ports and airports using a new, high-tech system.
Julie Gillis, of the Home Office "e-Borders" programme, told a counter-terrorism conference that suspects' names were placed on to Project Semaphore, an electronic system which compares passenger details against law enforcement databases on travel routes which are considered high-risk. Had any of them tried to leave the country via these routes, officials would have been alerted.
Muslim Page 3 pin-ups' cause row
Metro
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
A racism row has broken out after villagers posed as 'Muslim Page 3 girls' during a carnival parade. The 17 revellers dressed in burkhas held up placards with names such as Miss Sleptwithajudgistan and Miss Hairyassisbadistan.
The group calling themselves 'The Page 3 Beauties from the Ramalama Ding Dong Times' were ribbing plans by Prince Charles' Duchy Estate in Cornwall to build a mosque nearby. They entered the carnival carrying banners, and praying to Mecca on the high street at St Columb Major near Newquay.
At one point the group rushed to a house shouting 'mosque, mosque', much to the amusement of the crowds. However, police stepped in when six students accused the group of racism. Insp James Pearce, who let the parade continue, said: 'As far as I was aware, they were dressed in the style of Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves.'
Carnival judges shortlisted the group to win the cup for the best entry but made a U-turn after the students complained. One of the 'burkha girls' said afterwards: 'It was ridiculous. We should be allowed to take the mickey out of whoever we want at carnival. 'If we hadn't been in those robes, they would have seen that two of us are not white.'
...
Residents claim the mosque is unnecessary as Cornwall has only 33 practising Muslims out of a population of 22,000.
Hardline takeover of British mosques
From The Times
September 7, 2007
Almost half of Britain’s mosques are under the control of a hardline Islamic sect whose leading preacher loathes Western values and has called on Muslims to “shed blood” for Allah, an investigation by The Times has found.
Riyadh ul Haq, who supports armed jihad and preaches contempt for Jews, Christians and Hindus, is in line to become the spiritual leader of the Deobandi sect in Britain. The ultra-conservative movement, which gave birth to the Taleban in Afghanistan, now runs more than 600 of Britain’s 1,350 mosques, according to a police report seen by The Times.
The Times investigation casts serious doubts on government statements that foreign preachers are to blame for spreading the creed of radical Islam in Britain’s mosques and its policy of enouraging the recruitment of more “home-grown” preachers.
Stories of self-inflicted dhimmitude even against the expressed opinions of Muslim community spokesmen.
Muslim medical students get picky
Sunday Times
October 7, 2007
Some Muslim medical students are refusing to attend lectures or answer exam questions on alcohol-related or sexually transmitted diseases because they claim it offends their religious beliefs. Some trainee doctors say learning to treat the diseases conflicts with their faith, which states that Muslims should not drink alcohol and rejects sexual promiscuity. A small number of Muslim medical students have even refused to treat patients of the opposite sex. One male student was prepared to fail his final exams rather than carry out a basic examination of a female patient.
The religious objections by students have been confirmed by the British Medical Association (BMA) and General Medical Council (GMC), which both stressed that they did not approve of such actions.
It will intensify the debate sparked last week by the disclosure that Sainsbury’s is permitting Muslim checkout operators to refuse to handle customers’ alcohol purchases on religious grounds. It means other members of staff have to be called over to scan in wine and beer for them at the till. Critics, including many Islamic scholars, see the concessions as a step too far, and say Muslims are reneging on their professional responsibilities.
This weekend, however, it emerged that Sainsbury’s is also allowing its Muslim pharmacists to refuse to sell the morning-after pill to customers. At a Sainsbury’s store in Nottingham, a pharmacist named Ahmed declined to provide the pill to a female reporter posing as a customer. A colleague explained to her that Ahmed did not sell the pill for “ethical reasons”. Boots also permits pharmacists to refuse to sell the pill on ethical grounds.
... The GMC said it had received requests for guidance over whether students could “omit parts of the medical curriculum and yet still be allowed to graduate”. Professor Peter Rubin, chairman of the GMC’s education committee, said: “Examples have included a refusal to see patients who are affected by diseases caused by alcohol or sexual activity, or a refusal to examine patients of a particular gender.” He added that “prejudicing treatment on the grounds of patients’ gender or their responsibility for their condition would run counter to the most basic principles of ethical medical practice”.
Shazia Ovaisi, a GP in north London, said one of her male Muslim contemporaries at medical school failed to complete his training because he refused to examine a woman patient as part of his final exams.
“He was academically gifted, one of the best students, but gradually he got in with certain Islamic groups and started to become more radical,” said Ovaisi.
“You could see there was a change in his personality as time went by. During the final exams he was supposed to treat a female patient in hospital. He refused to do it, even though it would have been a very basic examination, nothing intrusive. “But he refused and as a result he failed his exams. I was quite shocked and disappointed about it because I don’t see there being anything in our religion that prohibits us from examining male and female patients.”
Both the Muslim Council of Britain and Muslim Doctors and Dentist Association said they were aware of students opting out but did not support them. Dr Abdul Majid Katme, of the Islamic Medical Association, said: “To learn about alcohol, to learn about sexually transmitted disease, to learn about abortion, it gives us more evidence to campaign against it. There is a difference between learning and practising.
“It is obligatory for Muslim doctors and students to learn about everything. The prophet said, ‘Learn about witchcraft, but don’t practise it’.”
COMMENT
Having worked in hospitals in Saudi Arabia, I find it quite amusing that British Muslim doctors would refuse to treat alcohol and sex related illnesses. In Saudi, alcohol and sexually transmitted diseases are probably the biggest cause of avoidable early death.
bsamways, London, UK
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Fear of giving offence is killing our culture
Minette Marrin
Sunday Times
October 7, 2007
... A week ago The Sunday Times reported that some Muslim workers in Sainsbury’s are refusing to check out purchases of alcohol on the debatable ground that it’s against their religion. Whenever the sinful stuff is presented by a customer at the till, the Muslim expects an infidel colleague to hurry over and sully his or her hands with the transaction instead.
This is preposterous and a depressing sign of the times. But the painful truth is it would be just as preposterous to blame the Sainsbury’s Muslims. For years now ethnic minorities have been encouraged to insist on their cultural differences and on their human right to have these differences respected and actively promoted. It is hardly surprising that they have responded by doing so. It is those who have encouraged them who are to blame.
The point about this story is not the absurd demand, but that Sainsbury’s gave into it, quite unnecessarily, of its own free will. It wasn’t even being pressed to do so by any prominent Muslim figures. Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, leader of the Muslim Parliament, said last week: “This is some kind of overenthusiasm. One expects professional behaviour from people working in a professional capacity and this shows a lack of maturity. The fault lies with the employee who is exploiting and misusing their goodwill.”
Surely the fault lies with Sainsbury’s, for cultural funk. And it lies with all those others who out of some strange abandonment of common sense – such as the government’s laissez-faire guidelines on wearing Muslim veils in schools last week – bottle out.
... I remember being shown round a good care home for young people dying of a terrible degenerative disease. Unable to move, talk, see, hear, taste or eat, they had to be spoon-fed pureed food and the staff told me proudly that they made a point of respecting cultural and ethnic differences. In practice this meant that one person (the only person who was not 100% British) had a great deal of meat in her puree (unlike the others) because she was a Turkish Cypriot, from a meat-eating culture.
I could only assume these care workers were the victims of extensive brain washing. Theirs was the behaviour of underconfident and undereducated people who have been ceaselessly bullied by ideologues.
Re: this doctors/pharmacists story. The dangers of allowing Muslim doctors such discretion to impose their religious ideas on society as a whole are similar to, but worse than, those highlighted by Daniel Pipes as regards taxi drivers in Minnesota who did not want passengers carrying alcohol in their cabs. In this case the authorities proposed to allow such discretion:
Don't Bring That Booze into My Taxi
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
October 10, 2006
But on a societal level, the proposed solution has massive and worrisome implications. Namely, the two-light plan intrudes the Shari‘a, or Islamic law, with state sanction, into a mundane commercial transaction in Minnesota. A government authority thus sanctions a signal as to who does or does not follow Islamic law.
What of taxi drivers beyond those at MSP? Other Muslims in Minneapolis-St. Paul and across the country could well demand the same privilege. Bus conductors might follow suit. The whole transport system could be divided between those Islamically observant and those not so.
Why stop with alcohol? Muslim taxi drivers in several countries already balk at allowing seeing-eye dogs in their cars. Future demands could include not transporting women with exposed arms or hair, homosexuals, and unmarried couples. For that matter, they could ban men wearing kippas, as well as Hindus, atheists, bartenders, croupiers, astrologers, bankers, and quarterbacks.
So who do you believe? The Saudi King or Whitehall civil servants? I know where my money is.
King Abdullah says Britain is not doing enough to fight terrorism
29 October 2007
BBC
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has accused Britain of not doing enough to fight international terrorism, which he says could take 20 or 30 years to beat. He was speaking in a BBC interview ahead of a state visit to the UK - the first by a Saudi monarch for 20 years. He also said Britain failed to act on information passed by the Saudis which might have averted terrorist attacks. BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says Whitehall officials have strenuously denied this.
BTW, on that last comment, in case it wasn't clear, I'm actually with the Saudi king.
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Suicide bomb DVD targets children
Metro
December 18, 2007
A children's DVD which appears to glorify suicide bombing was being investigated by police today after being found on sale. The disc, filled with haunting images and dramatic music, features a young girl proclaiming that she will follow in the footsteps of her suicide bomber mother. The DVD, which was purchased in Bradford, West Yorkshire, is set to music sung by children in Arabic with English subtitles.
West Yorkshire was home to three of the suicide bombers responsible for the July 7 London bombings - Mohammad Sidique Khan, from Dewsbury, and Hasib Mir Hussain and Shehzad Tanweer, both from Beeston in Leeds.
The first video shows an Arab woman playing with her two children before leaving her home with dynamite tucked into her dress. She is approached by uniformed soldiers and the camera pauses on her thoughtful expression before a large explosion blazes across the screen. After finding out about the suicide on television, her small daughter finds a stick of dynamite in her mother's wardrobe and turns to the camera with the subtitles: "My love will not be by words. I will follow my mother's steps."
The head of Leeds counter terrorism unit (CTU), Detective Chief Superintendent John Parkinson, said: "We can confirm a DVD has been passed to the CTU for further investigation. "The DVD has been initially reviewed and officers are carrying out further inquiries regarding its content to establish whether or not any offences have been committed." The material was uncovered by the Yorkshire Post and passed to the police, who were unable to say where in Bradford the DVDs were being sold.
Archbishop / Sharia thread now here
Is the West doomed? Hmm.
Terrorist releases prompt u-turn
BBC News
28/03/08
Ministers have changed a controversial early release scheme after admitting two terrorism convicts were let out of jail early to ease prison overcrowding.
I say - let the Jordanians torture the fucker.
Preacher Abu Qatada wins appeal
BBC News
10/04/08
Islamic preacher Abu Qatada has won an appeal against deportation from the UK which could lead to him being freed. Qatada - in prison pending deportation to Jordan - has been dubbed "Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe".
Camilla Cavendish is one of my favourite columnists - here's her take:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/camilla_cavendish/article3716556.ece
Am watching Newsnight, they have just had an interesting item. I thought about blogging this in the You couldn't make this up thread. It turns out there's something of a security hole at British aiports. Just a little thing. It'll be in the news tomorrow I guess.
Newsnight
Wednesday, 7 May, 2008
Our lead report tonight is about airport security. You'll be reassured to know that those working airside have criminal record checks. That is apart from one group - foreign nationals. Believe or believe it not the government say they don't check their criminal records because, they tell us, it would be too complicated and cause delays.
Didn't take long. See previous comment.
Revealed: Afghan plane hijacker is now working as a cleaner at Heathrow
Daily Mail
17th May 2008
Airport security was condemned as a joke after an Afghan involved in the Stansted hijacking was found to be working at Heathrow as a cleaner. Police arrested Nazamuddin Mohammidy at Terminal 5 where he showed his British Airways pass allowing him access to secure areas. The Tories said it was a breathtaking breach of security and demanded immediate action from the Government.
Mohammidy, 34, was one of nine Afghans who won the right to live in Britain after hijacking a passenger flight in Afghanistan in 2000. The Boeing 727 was flown to Stansted in Essex where the captors threatened to kill the 160 passengers unless they were granted asylum. The gang was jailed but later released and given the right to remain in Britain rent-free, receiving £150,000 a year in benefits.
It emerged police pulled over Mohammidy as he was driving round Terminal 5 because they thought he was an unlicensed cab driver. He told them he worked at the airport and they were stunned when they checked out his story and found he was a former hijacker.
Mohammidy hijacked this internal Afghan flight and landed it at Stansted airport in 2000. He was escorted off the plane after a 4-day siege. Mohammidy works for a contractor used by British Airways to clean its offices and training centre at Heathrow. The airline insisted he did not have an "airside" pass which would let him near planes, but his BA credentials did grant him access to restricted areas, it is understood.
Echoes of the story that began this thread. The judges did say Qatada continued to pose a threat to national security.
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High court orders release of radical preacher Qatada
The Guardian,
Friday May 9 2008
The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, last night expressed her "extreme disappointment" at the decision yesterday by three high court judges to order the release of the radical preacher Abu Qatada, who has been described as Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe.
Qatada, who was still in Long Lartin maximum security prison in Worcestershire last night, is expected to be released next week, when bail conditions are expected to be agreed.
Good piece in the Telegraph on the legal background behind the Qatada case:
Abu Qatada case proves Human Rights Laws are flawed
"But the story of how the Government has been thwarted at every turn in its efforts to throw him out goes to the heart of everything that is wrong with our existing human rights legislation.
Five years ago, he was locked up in Belmarsh prison pending his removal from the country.
However, this immediately ran into human rights difficulties.
Under Article Five of the convention, signatory nations cannot imprison people without trial.
But under Article Three, Qatada could not be returned to a country - in his case Jordan - where there was a risk of inhuman or degrading treatment.
The Law Lords ruled that Qatada’s incarceration was unlawful under Article Five because there was no realistic prospect of his deportation (see Article 3) and was discriminatory because it only applied to foreign nationals.
So the Government introduced the control order system to apply to all suspects, foreign and home-grown.
These can, in theory, amount to house arrest but the courts ruled such draconian orders were forbidden under Article Five.
They had to be watered down to allow greater freedom of movement than the authorities believed was safe.
Then the Government decided to negotiate a memorandum of understanding with Jordan which would undertake not to maltreat Qatada if he was sent back
Qatada was once again imprisoned pending his deportation.
Then a few weeks ago the deal with Jordan was also struck down by the Court of Appeal.
It was concerned that evidence allegedly obtained under torture may form part of a future trial in Jordan.
Now, the Special Immigration Appeals Tribunal (SIAC) says Qatada must be let out of prison on bail.
The judges will no doubt be criticised yet again but they argue they are simply interpreting (some might say over-interpreting) the provisions of the ECHR.
This was made judiciable by the British courts under the Human Rights Act introduced in 1998 by the very ministers now complaining about its impact.
Over the years Tony Blair, Jack Straw and various ministers have hinted that they might try to get the convention changed or even withdraw from some of its provisions.
But nothing has happened. The Conservatives say they will repeal the Human Rights Act and bringing in a new Bill of Rights – but it will still be subordinate to the convention.
If Britain really wants to be able to tackle the terrorist menace it must accepts that the real problem is the convention itself.
It was drafted after the war to stop fleeing political dissidents being sent back to countries where they would be tortured or killed.
It is now being used to offer sanctuary in Britain to those who would do the nation harm. "
Is post-war Britain anti-Muslim?
"The Mail's Peter Oborne has written a pamphlet arguing this country and its media are Islamophobic. Doubtless, many will disagree with him, but his views can't be ignored.
The history of post-war Britain is a proud story of enlightenment and the steady eradication of irrational fears and resentments.
This country could be demonising Muslims
Prejudice against foreigners, homosexuals, gays and blacks has been softened or even eliminated.
But today, one resentment is stronger than ever. Islamophobia - prejudice against Islam - is Britain's last remaining socially respectable form of bigotry, and we should be ashamed of ourselves for it.
This dangerous demonising of the country's 1.6 million Muslim inhabitants is happening all around us.
Take the story in a red-top newspaper earlier this year about a bus driver who apparently ordered his passengers off his bus so that he could kneel towards Mecca and pray.
It was taken up by those who want to exaggerate and exploit divisions in our society and added to the growing list of perceived outrages committed by Muslims in this nominally Christian (though largely secular) country of ours. Pictures of the driver on his prayer-mat went the rounds.
Except it didn't happen like that. The truth was that his bus had been taken out of service by an inspector because it was running late, and the passengers switched to the one behind - not an unusual occurrence by any means, as bus travellers know.
Jack Straw
Ex-foreign secretary Jack Straw suggested women who wear viels can make community relations harder
The driver, with his bus temporarily idle, took the opportunity of a break and used it for his prayers. Meanwhile, as CCTV cameras show, the passengers waited for no more than a minute before boarding the next bus and going on their way.
That is the explanation the bus company would have given if it had had the chance. Instead, the newspaper chose to believe its one informant, a 21-year-old plumber, who had arrived late on the scene, jumped to the wrong conclusion and seen the chance to make some money by selling the story.
In these disturbing times, when Muslims are seen as fair game for any mischief or mendacity, the newspaper jumped at it. 'Get off my bus: I need to pray', screamed its headline, and another Islamophobic nail was hammered into the coffin of inter-racial harmony in this country."
Follow hyper link at top of this post to read full article.
Another one that could have gone in the you couldn't make this up thread.
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Sniffer dogs to wear ‘Muslim’ bootees
Sunday Times
July 6, 2008
Police sniffer dogs will have to wear bootees when searching the homes of Muslims so as not to cause offence. Guidelines being drawn up by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) urge awareness of religious sensitivities when using dogs to search for drugs and explosives. The guidelines, to be published this year, were designed to cover mosques but have been extended to include other buildings.
Where Muslims object, officers will be obliged to use sniffer dogs only in exceptional cases. Where dogs are used, they will have to wear bootees with rubber soles. “We are trying to ensure that police forces are aware of sensitivities that people can have with the dogs to make sure they are not going against any religious or cultural element within people’s homes. It is being addressed and forces are working towards doing it,” Acpo said. Problems faced by the use of sniffer dogs were highlighted last week when Tayside police were forced to apologise for a crime prevention poster featuring a german shepherd puppy, in response to a complaint by a Muslim councillor.
...
Ibrahim Mogra, one of Britain’s leading imams, said the measures were unnecessary: “In Islamic law the dog is not regarded as impure, only its saliva is. Most Islamic schools of law agree on that. If security measures require to send a dog into a house, then it has to be done. I think Acpo needs to consult better and more widely. “I know in the Muslim community there is a hang-up against dogs, but this is cultural. Also, we know the British like dogs; we Muslims should do our bit to change our attitudes.”
John Midgley, co-founder of the Campaign Against Political Correctness, said: “The police are in effect being overly sensitive to potential criminals and not being sensitive enough to the public at large who need to be protected. These sort of things have a counter-productive effect because they cause huge friction between different communities.”
Caroline Kisko, of the Kennel Club, said: “We would not condone any attempt to make search dogs wear special clothing, which could cause them distress.”
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Police advert row: It's the apology that's offensive, not the dog
The Times
July 3, 2008
Ross Clark
If I were diversity officer at Tayside Police I would go to great lengths to avoid offending Muslims. I would make sure that they were not stopped and searched just for looking a bit shifty, and, nothwithstanding the Government's victory in the Commons, I would want to make sure that young Muslims were not driven into the hands of radicals by being incarcerated for 42 days without charge.
What I would not do was make a police spokesman go down on his knees and grovel for supposedly causing offence by putting a picture of a dog sitting in a policeman's hat on a poster for a new non-emergency number. Tayside Police are now in a cleft stick - they have offended me with their stupidity. It isn't that I like cooing over pooches. Far from it. I share the Muslim view that dogs are unclean and shouldn't be allowed indoors. I'd happily round up every dog in Dundee and release them in the tundra where they would have to survive by reconnecting with their inner wolves rather than whimpering pathetically for another Bonio.
What irritates me about Tayside Police is that in trying too hard to promote interfaith relations they make things worse. Real people are not offended by such trifles as a pooch on a poster. When Dundee's reporters took to the streets to find offended Muslims they drew a blank.
A spokesman for the Al-Maktara Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies commented: “I would not say that a picture of a dog is offensive.” The Scottish Islamic Foundation commented: “There isn't an Islamic basis for taking an issue with a simple picture of a little puppy.” The idea that Muslims are offended by the very sight of a dog seems to derive entirely from one Dundee councillor, and even he didn't try to make out that he was upset, only that others “could” be.
By rolling over and apologising, the police have made themselves look weak and inadvertently given the impression that Dundee's Muslims are an intolerant bunch intent on Islamifying the British way of life. It was the same when Birmingham City Council banned Christmas decorations, claiming that they were offensive to ethnic minorities. Reporters struggled to find anyone offended by a Christmas tree (which, in any case, is a pagan symbol) but by then it was too late - Birmingham's ethnic minority population had taken the blame for spoiling the festive season.
With public bodies given to pathetic acts of apology, offence has become a useful political tool. If you want to make a politician or public body look ridiculous, all you have to do is play at being offended by something said or written - and wait for heads to roll. It is about time our leaders stopped falling for it.
More on the offensive puppy. Looks like there were actually complaints from Dundee shopkeepers. Not often I say this, but that Ibrahim Mogra is a dude imam.
UK police dogs get the boot(ee)
Calcutta Telegraph
July 7 , 2008
Last week, for example, Tayside Police in Scotland apologised after complaints that an advert featuring a German shepherd puppy could be offensive to members of the local Islamic community.
The advert sparked such anger that some shopkeepers in Dundee refused to display the police posters.
Dundee councillor Mohammed Asif said: “My concern was that it’s not welcomed by all communities, with the dog on the cards. It was probably a waste of resources going to these communities. They (the police) should have understood. Since then, the police have explained that it was an oversight on their part, and that if they’d seen it was going to cause upset, they wouldn’t have done it.”
British Transport Police recently indicated that Muslim train passengers’ aversions to sniffer dogs and body scanners would not prevent them being subject to random security searches.
..
Adding to the complication is the question of whether all Muslims consider all dogs to be impure in all circumstances.
Ibrahim Mogra, an imam, told a newspaper: “In Islamic law the dog is not regarded as impure, only its saliva is. Most Islamic schools of law agree on that. If security measures require to send a dog into a house, then it has to be done. I think Acpo needs to consult better and more widely. I know in the Muslim community there is a hang-up against dogs, but this is cultural.”
For what it's worth, I think there are some dots worth joining between the reports cited by JP and Andy's post of July 4th. (Not having a go at you JP, just think that some of the reporting may be similar to the 'Loony Left Councils ban bin liners" stories of the 80s.")
You think the dog-bootie story either didn't happen or isn't newsworthy? Or perhaps it did and it is, but it is being reported in a deliberately anti-Muslim manner?
I'm just saying that Oborne's article makes me think twice about the reporting of stories about Muslim's being oversensitive. There's a clearly a market for such stories and as such there may be an incentive for newspapers to exaggerate individual incidents. It's the same logic that sees the most nutty 9/11 apologists being invited onto Radio 4 - it makes for a more interesting / entertaining broadcast.
But I wasn't really commenting on specific cases. Just thought that your articles and Andy's Oborne piece made interesting reading companions.
Usual poll, usual results. Usual finding of extreme anti-semitism. Usual denials.
See various comments in this thread (look for eg "poll") and the Dispatches thread.
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A third of Muslim students back killings
The Sunday Times
July 27, 2008
Abul Taher
Radicalism and support for sharia is strong in British universities
ALMOST a third of British Muslim students believe killing in the name of Islam can be justified, according to a poll. The study also found that two in five Muslims at university support the incorporation of Islamic sharia codes into British law.
The YouGov poll for the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC) will raise concerns about the extent of campus radicalism. “Significant numbers appear to hold beliefs which contravene democratic values,” said Han-nah Stuart, one of the report’s authors. “These results are deeply embarrassing for those who have said there is no extremism in British universities.”
The report was criticised by the country’s largest Muslim student body, Fosis, but Anthony Glees, professor of security and intelligence studies at Buckingham University, said: “The finding that a large number of students think it is okay to kill in the name of religion is alarming. “There is a wide cultural divide between Muslim and nonMuslim students. The solution is to stop talking about celebrating diversity and focus on integration and assimilation.”
The researchers found that 55% of nonMuslim students thought Islam was incompatible with democracy. Nearly one in 10 had “little respect” for Muslims.
In addition to its poll of 1,400 Muslim and nonMuslim students, the centre visited more than 20 universities to interview students and listen to guest speakers. It found that extremist preachers regularly gave speeches that were inflammatory, homophobic or bordering on antisemitic.
The researchers highlighted Queen Mary college, part of London University, as a campus where radical views were widely held. Last December, a speaker named Abu Mujahid encouraged Muslim students to condemn gays because “Allah hates” homosexuality. In November, Azzam Tamimi, a British-based supporter of Hamas, described Israel as the most “inhumane project in the modern history of humanity”.
James Brandon, deputy director at CSC , said: “Our researchers found a ghettoised mentality among Muslim students at Queen Mary. Also, we found the segregation between Muslim men and women at events more visible at Queen Mary.”
A spokesman for Queen Mary said the university was aware the preachers had visited but did not know the contents of their speeches. “Clearly, we in no way associate ourselves with these views. However, also integral to the spirit of university life is free speech and debate and on occasion speakers will make statements that are deemed offensive.”
In the report, 40% of Muslim students said it was unacceptable for Muslim men and women to associate freely. Homophobia was rife, with 25% saying they had little or no respect for gays. The figure was higher (32%) for male Muslim students. Among nonMuslims, the figure was only 4%.
The research found that a third of Muslim students supported the creation of a world-wide caliphate or Islamic state.
A number of terrorists have been radicalised at British universities. Kafeel Ahmed, who drove a flaming jeep into a building at Glasgow airport last year and died of his burns, is believed to have been radicalised while studying at Anglia Ruskin university, Cambridge.
Wes Streeting, president of the National Union of Students, condemned the study. “This disgusting report is a reflection of the biases and prejudices of a right-wing think tank – not the views of Muslim students across Britain,” he said. “Only 632 Muslim students were asked vague and misleading questions, and their answers were wilfully misinterpreted.”
Some of the findings amplify previous research. A report by Policy Exchange last year found that 37% of all Muslims aged 16-24 would prefer to live under a sharia system.
Baroness Warwick, chief executive of Universities UK, said: “Violence, or the incitement to violence, has no place on a university campus.”
Peter Hitchens on Al Qaeda:
'There is no such organisation as ‘Al Qaeda’. The spooks know this, Cabinet Ministers know this and so do the ‘security correspondents’ who so readily trot out the spooks’ point of view on our broadcasting networks.
Of course, there are terrorists, and there are also fantasists, fanatics, low-lifes and camp followers who plot and attempt horrible things. Some of them even call themselves ‘Al Qaeda’ these days because they have learned that this is a good way to scare us.
But, while they are a menace, they are not as big or as organised a menace as the Government likes to make out.
The State and the vainglorious bureaucrats of the ‘security’ services need to pretend that the terrorists are a tightly organised and terrifying threat, to make themselves look big as well – and to help them get hold of new powers to snoop on us and push us around.
Some of you may remember the rather squalid behaviour, back in the summer of 2006, by the then Home Secretary, the unrepentant ex-communist brute John Reid.
Lightly tossing aside the wise tradition that in free countries Ministers stay out of criminal justice matters, he reeled out a boastful, alarmist statement about some arrests of alleged terrorists, using words so preju-dicial that I will not reproduce them here.
When, two years later, a jury was unconvinced by many of the claims made by the authorities in this case, the same nastiness re-emerged in a different way.
Tame commentators were briefed to hint – baselessly – that the jury were stupid, inattentive or lazy, or even to blame the Americans for forcing our police to act before they were ready.
What is all this about? Remember, the authorities were tailing the alleged plotters from April to August. They had filmed them, recorded their conversations, searched their homes.
If a real attempt had been made by the alleged plotters to blow up any planes, the police would have been able to prevent it.
But I suspect that someone, somewhere, wasn’t happy with that. What was wanted was not
just the prevention of a potential outrage through diligent surveillance.
What was wanted was a nice big propaganda success, after which we would face another call for detention without trial, compulsory identity cards, and all the rest of the 1984 rubbish this Government wishes to impose on us.'
The first comment on his blog attacks his assertion that there is no such organisation as 'Al Qaeda':
""There is no such organisation as ‘Al Qaeda’."
"And I suppose 9/11 was an inside job, and Bigfoot shot Kennedy?
Dang. I had immense respect for you until I read this. I loved your book. I knew you were in denial about the threat of terrorism, but lots of conservatives are. But if you actually believe there is no Al Qaeda, it is way past medication time for you, old chap."
To which Hitchens responds in the comments thread thus:
"Compare 'Al Qaeda' with actual terror organisations such as the Provisional IRA. The PIRA has a command structure, leaders,a defined cell structure, funds which are centrally controlled, its own political front organisation.
Where are the equivalents for 'Al Qaeda'? They don't exist.
Real terror groups (again such as the PLO, Hezbollah or Hamas) have features which 'Al Qaeda' simply lacks.
But for reasons of political expediency, journalistic laziness and propaganda, and also because the 'war on Terror' has to go on simultaneously with the appeasement of IRA and PLO terror, the pretence is maintained.
It is all very well to throw personal insults at me and suggest that I am unhinged, using pseudo-Freudian language. (What does it mean to claim I am 'in denial' about the terrorist threat. This is just an intolerant and ad hominem way of complaining that I disagree with Joyce's view of the subject)
"Joyce" should try actually arguing for the existence of the thing she believes to exist. If you study it, you will find it remarkably hard to do so. For instance , what does the incessantly-used phrase "all the hallmarks of Al Qaeda" actually mean? What are these hallmarks? What distinguishes the actions of 'Al Qaeda' from those of the actually existing ( and far more diverse) mass of Islamic terror organisations which exist, largely autonomously, in many parts of the globe? I did not say there was no such tendency, or no such ideology, loosely linking such groups. I just denied the existence of the sort of James Bond Villain organisation which 'Joyce' seems to believe in.
Posted by: Peter Hitchens | 14 September 2008"
Revealed: UK’s first official sharia courts
The Sunday Times
September 14, 2008
Abul Taher
Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases. The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence. Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.
Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims. It has now emerged that sharia courts with these powers have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester with the network’s headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Two more courts are being planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh.
...
Jewish Beth Din courts operate under the same provision in the Arbitration Act and resolve civil cases, ranging from divorce to business disputes. They have existed in Britain for more than 100 years, and previously operated under a precursor to the act.
...
There are concerns that women who agree to go to tribunal courts are getting worse deals because Islamic law favours men. Siddiqi said that in a recent inheritance dispute handled by the court in Nuneaton, the estate of a Midlands man was divided between three daughters and two sons. The judges on the panel gave the sons twice as much as the daughters, in accordance with sharia. Had the family gone to a normal British court, the daughters would have got equal amounts.
In the six cases of domestic violence, Siddiqi said the judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment. In each case, the women subsequently withdrew the complaints they had lodged with the police and the police stopped their investigations. Siddiqi said that in the domestic violence cases, the advantage was that marriages were saved and couples given a second chance.
Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “The MCB supports these tribunals. If the Jewish courts are allowed to flourish, so must the sharia ones.”
Wonder what's going on between Bakri and Hizbollah? Presumably the usual Shia/Sunni tiff?
Omar Bakri accused of training al-Qaeda terrorists
Telegraph
02 Jan 2009
An arrest warrant has been issued by Lebanese security forces over allegations the preacher gave weapons training to an extremist group called al-Qaeda Lebanon. ... Bakri added that the Lebanese government had "no problem with me", but that he was in danger because of his stand against Hizbollah, the militant group that draws from Lebanon's Shia minority.
Honour crime up by 40% due to rising fundamentalism
Daily Mail
7th December 2009
Police have seen 'honour' crime surge by 40 per cent due to rising fundamentalism, new figures show. Honour-based violence, including crimes like murder, rape and kidnap has rocketed in London during the past year. Reported instances of intimidation and attempts at forced marriage have also increased by 60 per cent.
A report into the scale of the problem by Scotland Yard found there were 161 honour-based incidents recorded in 2007-8, of which 93 were criminal offences. But in 2008/9 the number of incidents had risen to 256, with 132 being criminal offences. The latest figures indicate that the trend is continuing, with 211 incidents reported in the last six months until October, of which 129 were offences - more than double the number in the same period last year.
Police define honour crimes as offences motivated by a desire to protect the honour of a family or community.
Diana Nammi, of the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation, said the group is now dealing with four times more complaints relating to honour than two years ago. She said: More women are coming forward. They are becoming more aware of their rights in the UK, that there is help available and they feel confident enough to report matters to the police. But I also think cases and violence are increasing. One reason is the rise in fundamentalism. The problem is increasing in communities around the UK. We are seeing a rise not only in honour killings, but also in female genital mutilation and polygamy.'
She added: 'The rise in Sharia courts is another indication of more fundamental beliefs. There must be more support from the Government to organisations who are working to combat this problem.'
...
Detective Chief Inspector Gerry Campbell, of the Metropolitan Police, said: 'The description of this type of crime is misplaced. There is no honour in these crimes.'
I love this dude. Go Wole. Hat tip this excellent blog.
Wole Soyinka's British Problem
Daily Beast
31/01/2010
As religious violence deepens in his home country, Nobel laureate and Nigerian political activist Wole Soyinka shares his unbridled thoughts on Islamic terrorism and why England is a “cesspit”
...
What did the 76-year-old Mr. Soyinka—who divides his time between the U.S. and Nigeria—make of his country's placement on a watch-list of states deemed to be incubators of Islamist terrorism? "That was an irrational, knee-jerk reaction by the Americans. The man did not get radicalized in Nigeria. It happened in England, where he went to university.
"England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it. Remember, that country was the breeding ground for communism, too. Karl Marx did all his work in libraries there."
Why is Britain the way it is? "This is part of the character of Great Britain," Mr. Soyinka declares. "Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness." And so it is, he says, that Britain lets everyone preach whatever they want: It confirms a self-image of greatness.
...
The day before, in his lecture on The Road, Mr. Soyinka earned a burst of applause with his own, ingenious solution: "I think this is where our rocket engineers and astronauts can come to our rescue. We should assemble all those who are pure and cannot abide other faiths, put them all in rockets, and fire them into space."
...
In Mr. Soyinka's view, the origins of the current phase of the world's religious strife—including all of the bloodshed in Nigeria—lie with Ayatollah Khomeini and his fatwa against Salman Rushdie, in 1989. "It all began when he assumed the power of life and death over the life of a writer. This was a watershed between doctrinaire aggression and physical aggression. There was an escalation. The assumption of power over life and death then passed to every single inconsequential Muslim in the world—as if someone had given them a new stature.
"Al Qaeda is the descendent of this phenomenon. The proselytization of Islam became vigorous after this. People went to Saudi Arabia. Madrassas were established everywhere."
...
20 June a huge success against Sharia and religious laws
One Law For All
20/06/10
The pro-Sharia Al-Muhajiroun organised a counter-demonstration to the One Law for All rally. One of their members said: “We find many of these people who call for human rights and one law. They come and they say that they want equality. But what equality do you get when one man legislates over another?”
Interesting that this is how Liberty choose to interpret the fight for freedom.
Tory MP warned over requests to remove face veils
BBC News
25 July 2010
A Conservative MP has been warned he could face legal action if he refuses to meet constituents who wear burkas or niqabs, which hide their faces.
Lawyers for pressure group Liberty have written to Philip Hollobone stating the Equality Act obliges him to avoid discrimination.
The Kettering MP said he needed to meet voters face-to-face. He added he would invite those who did not remove their veil to communicate in a different way, such as by letter.
Intriguing. A story to follow.
Fighting Extremism: Anti-Terror Camp Opens
August 07, 2010
Sky News Online
Muslims are taking part in the UK's first anti-terrorism summer camp as part of a "spiritual war" against Al Qaeda recruiters. The three-day conference in Coventry is expected to attract around 1,300 young Muslims for sessions teaching religious arguments against extremists.
The event has been organised by the Pakistan-based Minhaj ul-Quran organisation whose leader, Dr Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri, has launched a fatwa - or religious ruling - against terrorism. His fatwa is described as a "resolute theological position, based on Islam's primary sources, on the necessity of eliminating terrorism".
Is Luton a breeding ground for terrorists?
BBC
15 December 2010
In common with many of the UK's other higher education establishments, there are agencies in India and Pakistan promising to get students places at the University of Bedfordshire. For a price, they can get you in and sort out the red tape, and there are few checks once you are in to see if you are actually studying.
And there are persistent stories that radical groups openly recruit in Freshers' Week and go out of their way to harass other minorities. The university denies it happens and says extremism is not tolerated, but privately many minority groups say it does happen and they are too scared to say anything.
When I have a separate 'Madridistan' thread I'll post this stuff there...
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The Spanish Ham Lawsuit and Other Muslim Problems Hitting Iberia
Hudson NY
December 23, 2010
A high school teacher in southern Spain is being sued for child abuse by the parents of a Muslim student who claims that the teacher "defamed Islam" by talking about Spanish ham in class. The case is one of a growing list of recent controversies that illustrate the increasing assertiveness of Muslims in Spain at a time when Spaniards are slowly waking up to the integration challenges posed by uncontrolled immigration from Muslim countries.
Although Spanish legal scholars are divided over whether the lawsuit has real merit, nearly everyone agrees that the case has potentially major implications for free speech in Spain. They also agree that the constant threat of lawsuits will force Spanish school teachers to carefully consider their choice of words in the future.
The latest dust-up occurred at the Instituto Menéndez Tolosa, a secondary school in the town of La Línea de la Concepción in the southern region of Andalusia, where José Reyes Fernández, a geography teacher, was giving a lecture about the different types of climates in Spain. During the class, Reyes mentioned that the climate in Andalusia offers the perfect temperature conditions for curing Spanish ham (Jamón Ibérico), a world-famous delicacy.
At this point, a Muslim student in the class interrupted Reyes and, according to local newspaper reports, argued that any talk of pork products is offensive to his religion. Reyes responded by saying that he was only giving an example and that he does not take into consideration different religious beliefs when teaching geography.
The Muslim student informed his parents, who then proceeded to file a lawsuit against Reyes, accusing him of "abuse with xenophobic motivations." Article 525 of the Spanish Penal Code makes it a crime to "offend the feelings of the members of a religious confession."
more...
Maybe I really should have a Madridistan thread:
Spanish Government Sponsors PA TV ad calling for Boycott of All Israeli Products
Palestinian Media Watch (via Hudson NY)
January 12, 2011
The Independent has a story about Baroness Warsi :
"A leading member of the Conservative shadow cabinet has argued against more Muslims going into Parliament because they lack "principles", a video obtained by The Independent reveals.
Baroness Warsi, the party's spokeswoman for community cohesion, was recorded saying that she did not want to see more Muslim MPs or Muslim Lords because "Muslims that go to Parliament don't have 'asool'". Asool is Urdu for "morals" or "principles"."
Correction - quite an old story, but might be relevant for the connection to Warsi.
So the tweet was "Says in the Holy Qu'ran Mohammad used to get his neighbours to vote by AV which of his 4 wives he'd shag each night.".
OK, so it's a piss poor (ie unfunny) joke, but so what? Does anyone else think the reactions (including the bloke getting sacked) are ridiculously OTT?
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Voting reformer gets the sack for 'anti-Islam tweet'
Standard
2 Feb 2011
Muslim groups were outraged, with Labour MP Khalid Mahmood calling for Mr Donnelly to be referred to the police. "This is outrageous and totally Islamophobic," Mr Mahmood said. "What has Islam got to do with AV?"
Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of Muslim youth organisation the Ramadhan Foundation, described the joke as "disgusting".
A Yes campaign spokesman said: "These comments were utterly disgraceful.... We ... are as offended by these appalling comments as any other right-thinking person."
WikiLeaks cables: US launched anti-extremist campaign to reverse UK radicalisation
Telegraph
04 Feb 2011
The United States launched a secret campaign to reverse the radicalisation of young Islamists in Britain, amid American fears that this country had the most hard-line Muslim communities in Europe.
...
The American plans followed concerns raised by the US State Department’s senior adviser for Muslim engagement, Farah Pandith, about the isolated nature of Muslim communities she encountered on a visit to Leicester, where they make up 11 per cent of the population. A confidential cable detailing the trip stated: “Despite the many positive programs in Leicester, the isolation of some parts of the Muslim community was striking.
“Girls as young as four years old were completely covered. Pandith commented afterward that this was the most conservative Islamic community she had seen anywhere in Europe.
“At a local book store, texts in English seemed designed to segregate Muslims from their wider community, urging women to cover themselves and remain in their homes, playing up the differences between Islam and other religions, seeking to isolate Muslims from community, and feeding hate of Jews to the young,” the cable said.
Fascinating vid, and a brave guy. A worthy use of 1'46" of your life.
As Salaam says, pointing at his fellow demonstrators, "these people's country has been attacked. It's like somone's firebombed your house. Would you get angry if someone firebombed your house?". He then goes on to say how he personally supports Britain and defends "true Islam".
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Muslim member of the English Defence League on demo
BBC
5 February 2011
Thousands of supporters of the English Defence League (EDL) demonstrated in Luton on Saturday in a massive rally against "militant Islam". Police kept them apart from a counter-demonstration by anti-racism campaigners.
The EDL's supporters included Abdul Salaam, a Glasgow man who says he is a Muslim and argues that more Muslims should take the same stand.
Here's a story that should distinguish genuine liberals from the closet fascism of the Left-Islamic alliance. As ever Tatchell stands for principle, I wonder if Livingstone will comment? And the investigation is a genuine test of where Tower Hamlet Council's heart lies.
Interestingly there's some suggestion in other reports that this poster campaign is by neo-Nazis seeking to make Islam look bad*. We have entered a surreal world; what difference would it have made to the doomed liberals of the Weimar Republic if fake Nazi propaganda posters attacking Jews had been pasted to walls by Communists seeking to diss their enemies? What difference would it have made to the even-doomder Jews? My friends, it wouldn't even have been a lie.
* Tatchell is in no doubt that Islamists are the culprits
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Islamists spark anger after calling for gay-free zone in East London
PinkPaper
15 February 2011
Islamists in East London have sparked anger after flyposting stickers which called for a gay-free zone. ... The professionally produced, anonymous stickers say: “Arise and Warn. Gay free zone. Verily Allah is severe in punishment.” The 'Gay free zone' slogan is within a diagonal bar across a rainbow flag.
Equality campaigner Peter Tatchell – who has been attacked by Muslim groups three times in the capital – condemned the behaviour. He said: "These stickers are part of a trend by Islamists and fundamentalists to target LGBT people. It is happening at universities and in communities. The main victims of this hate-mongering are LGBT Muslims.
"A venue attached to the East London mosque hosted a speaker who invited his audience to: 'Spot the fag.' There have been a series of homophobic threats and assaults by Asian youths on LGBT people in the East End over recent years. I’ve been attacked by Muslim youths three times in and around Brick Lane. In all three attacks, the assailants shouted religious slogans. My LGBT Muslim friends who live in the area are nervous and anxious. They fear attack and dare not reveal their sexuality.
...
“Both homophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry are wrong. Our communities know the pain of prejudice. LGBT and Muslim people should stand together, united against hate," he added.
The PinkPaper.com reader who alerted us to the story confirmed that Tower Hamlets council, which is headed by a Muslim, have removed all of the stickers are working with the police to identify the perpetrators. It comes just a week after a number of Islamic men were arrested for distributing leaflets which suggested gay people should suffer the death penalty.
...
"This small group of narrow minded people do not represent Islam or the Muslim community. In fact, a sentiment of rejection and condemnation for such a small group is growing among all Muslims. It is our duty to stop them and stand up to them whether we are Muslims, Jews or Christians."
A spokesperson for Tower Hamlets council told us: “We work hard to actively foster a climate of acceptance and tolerance, and combat all forms of discrimination and harassment within the borough. We are appalled by the actions of those who have produced and posted these stickers. We treat issues like this very seriously, and these incidents are being investigated by the borough's Hate Crime Team who are working alongside the local police."
The East-End gay bashing posters now have their own thread.
Interesting case study, Leicester.
The Most Islamic Community in Europe
Hudson NY
by Soeren Kern
March 24, 2011
Leicester, an industrial city in central England, is home to the most conservative Islamic population anywhere in Europe, according to American diplomatic cables that were obtained and recently released by the website, Wikileaks. Leicester is also on track to become the first majority non-white city in British history.
The politically incorrect observation was made by a senior US State Department official who visited the city as part of an effort to engage Muslim communities in Europe. It reflects how Leicester's long-ballyhooed experiment with multiculturalism is being challenged by Muslim separatism and assertiveness.
Two comments on the French burka ban:
Norman Geras comments here: From what he reads he suspects the law is symbolic and won't be enforced. "Still, if this is how those who usually enforce the law mean to proceed, so that the function of this particular law remains symbolic, merely declaratory, all the better. France will then have stepped back from the course of rank illiberalism it appeared to be about to embark on."
...and two:
Peter Hitchens also disagrees with the ban and also believes it will be unenforced by the authorities:
'French plans to outlaw the wearing of Islamic face-veils will not achieve anything of importance, and are, for the most part, a crude interference with private choice. I suspect that, after a few weeks during which Muslim militants will create deliberate confrontations, the law will be as rigorously enforced as (say) Britain's rather more important law against using a hand-held mobile phone while driving.
The real problem for France and for most other European countries is that they have permitted large-scale immigration from Muslim countries, and under the rules of multiculturalism they have from the start permitted and even encouraged Muslims to live differently from other citizens. the choice has been made. It's gone too far to stop with gestures of this kind. A ban on Islamic dress, by failing, will only serve to emphasise that these countries are well on the way to an accommodation with Islam. All that remains in doubt is how generous that accommodation will be. I have long said that it is quite possible that much of Europe will become formally Islamic in the years to come. The only real question is how long this will take. The eradication of Christianity from laws, customs, ceremonies, education and culture in general will make this process much easier than it would have been when these countries were actively Christian. I only hope Professor Dawkins is pleased as amplified calls of 'Allahu Akhbar' waver and echo from the Islamicised towers of redundant Victorian churches in the damp and misty air of North Oxford."
I'm a great admirer of PH, but to have a go at Dawkins cos you don't fancy living in Eurabia is just plain silly.
Is it silly? PH believes Dawkin's attacks on religion damage Anglican Christianity more than Islam. Hitchens argues that Dawkins by contributing to the marginalization of the christianity from British culture will make it even more likely that Islam will be the one to benefit from a religious revival (which PH thinks is on it's way).
Yes, it's silly. Dawkins' arguments are against all religions. If one happens to be more damaged than another by them then that's down to its inherent weakness - perhaps because its adherents are already acknowledging the cognitive dissonance that Faith creates in the mind of people of reasonable intelligence and enquiring disposition.
Given the crumbling edifice that is Christianity (and especially C of E) in the UK, PH is probably right about what will happen, but he's blaming the wrong target. Robust anti-religionists should focus their arguments on the thriving bastion of irrationality (Islam) rather than the terminal patient that is British Christianity.
Of course if it comes to it I'll back non-violent religionists over violent ones, but I can't see how pretending that beardie weirdie Gods, Spaghetti Monsters and chocolate teapots are real is gonna stop Eurabia. The problem is how to stop rationality morphing into wishy-washy multiculturalist defeatism. The solution is not pretending one invisible friend is realer than another.
Anjem Choudary, top-class wanker.
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[Video] Sharia Law: Battlefield London
Russia Today
05/08/11
There's Islamic leadership tension in Britain - with hardline Muslims trying to enforce Sharia law in London. From abstention to amputation, RT's Laura Emmett's been hearing how they want to instill their tough code on the capital.
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