Reports that the government of Angola has “banned Islam” have been welcomed by Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch.
Category Archives: Analysis & comment
Wakefield: EDL heavily outnumbered by counter-demonstrators
Hundreds of people gathered in Wakefield today to oppose a protest by the far-right English Defence League.
Community group We are Wakefield staged a multi-cultural celebration as a counter-protest to an EDL demonstration in the city centre this afternoon.
Around 100 EDL members gathered on Brook Street amid a heavy police presence for around an hour from 2pm.
Anne Marie Waters resigns from One Law for All
Anne Marie Waters seems to be making a habit of resigning these days. Last month she left the Labour Party – citing its support for multiculturalism, selection of Ken Livingstone as its London mayoral candidate, and imposition of legal restrictions on hate speech as reasons for her departure – and now she has resigned from her post as joint spokesperson for the anti-sharia campaign One Law for All.
Last week Waters’ co-spokesperson Maryam Namazie posted Waters’ resignation letter on the OLFA website. Waters says in it that she still believes the “fight against sharia and Islamism” is “one of the most important and urgent causes we face in the 21st Century”. But rather than conducting this struggle through OLFA she will be “working with other people and groups to speak out for democracy, liberty, and the right to freedom of speech and association”. No doubt she has in mind her friends at the Danish-Swedish “counterjihad” publication Dispatch International, to which she has become a regular contributor (her most recent article is entitled “Stoning to death is now a moderate position in the UK”).
Nick Cohen speaks at anti-Islam festival where former EDL leader is guest of honour
Lars Hedegaard accepts award for ‘Silent Conquest’ (left) and Nick Cohen with Firoozeh Bazrafkan (right)
Nick Cohen recently treated us to yet another of his “Left capitulates to Islamism” articles, this one in the Spectator. As is often the way with Cohen, he tried to evade accusations of Islamophobia by framing his arguments as an expression of admiration for a non-white opponent of Islam, in this case the Danish-Iranian artist Firoozeh Bazrafkan. He recounted:
When I met her, she was enduring a crash course in politically correct Europe’s many hypocrisies. White Danes reported her to the police for writing that Muslim men abuse and murder their daughters, and adding for good measure that the ‘Koran is more immoral, deplorable and crazy than manuals of the two other global religions combined’.
You could say that her remarks were offensive. You could say that the inattentive reader might just take them to mean that all Muslim men abuse and murder their daughters. But if every remark that someone might find offensive or misinterpret were banned, the human race would fall silent.
HuffPo whitewashes EDL
With Mehdi Hasan as its political editor, the Huffington Post UK has generally played a positive role in exposing the violent bigotry of the English Defence League.
However, it would appear that Mehdi has taken his eye off the ball, because the HuffPo has just published a photo essay on the EDL, introduced by Chris York and featuring the work of Ed Thompson, who we are told “spent three years documenting EDL rallies, attempting to get beyond the typical portrayal shown in the media”.
What this means, it turns out, is that Thompson rejects the established image of the EDL as an organisation infested with racists and thugs. His photos are accompanied by comments that show what could charitably be described as astonishing ignorance and naivety about the character of the organisation he’s been photographing.
Lib Dem parliamentary candidate calls for niqab ban
Fresh from assisting the former (but entirely unreformed) English Defence League leader Stephen Lennon to carry out a cynical rebranding exercise, and then joining his protégé in spreading inflammatory anti-Muslim rumours, Quilliam’s Maajid Nawaz has now taken up the battle against the niqab.
In an article for the Daily Mail‘s RightMinds blog, Nawaz declares: “It’s time we tackled head on the genuine security concerns and social consequences of face-veiling in modern Britain.” The Mail, of course, is notorious for its PC-inspired reluctance to address that issue.
Tariq Ramadan plots the conquest of the West
We’ve remarked in the past that depicting Tariq Ramadan (Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University) as some sort of dangerous extremist is a sure sign that Islamophobia has descended into complete dementia.
Judging by his article in the Telegraph denouncing the invitation to Professor Ramadan to deliver the annual George Orwell Lecture in London this week, Alan Johnson (pictured) would appear to be among those who have waved goodbye to rational thought on this subject.
Anne Marie Waters and Dispatch International – one more time
The appalling Anne Marie Waters, who is a member of the National Secular Society council and spokesperson for the anti-sharia campaign One Law For All, has featured on Islamophobia Watch a number of times. (So many times, in fact, that even I’m getting bored with the subject – which is why it’s taken me a while to get round to writing this piece.)
In addition to whipping up fear and hatred of Islam through the NSS and OLFA, Waters also hoped to acquire a parliamentary platform for her views, via the Labour Party. Unfortunately for Waters, the latter ambition proved irreconcilable with her other activities. Her attempt earlier this year to win selection as the Labour candidate for the Brighton Pavilion constituency was defeated, thanks not least to Andy Newman’s admirable work (see here and here) in exposing her Islamophobic views.
Last month Waters resigned from the Labour Party, announcing her decision in an open letter to Ed Miliband that was published in the “counterjihad” newspaper Dispatch International, to which she is now a regular contributor. The reasons Waters gave for leaving the party were that she was opposed to Labour’s support for multiculturalism, to Ken Livingstone’s selection as Labour candidate in the 2012 London mayoral election, and to Labour’s “introduction of insidious hate speech laws”.
Pat Robertson hails Stephen Lennon as a hero who is ‘fighting to save Britain’s future’
Following the publication in Dispatch International of Ingrid Carlqvist and Lars Hedegaard’s interview with Stephen Lennon, CBN News has published an adulatory report on the former English Defence League leader, based on an interview apparently conducted shortly before his departure from the organisation. In the accompanying video, Lennon is hailed by right-wing televangelist Pat Robertson as a hero who is “fighting to save Britain’s future”.
Dispatch International editors visit UK for a chat with Lennon
Dispatch International co-editors Lars Hedegaard and Ingrid Carlqvist in London with ex-EDL leader Stephen Lennon
Following the humiliating failure of their recent efforts to organise a Scandinavian speaking tour for the English Defence League leadership, Lars Hedegaard and Ingrid Carlqvist, co-editors of the notorious “counterjihad” publication Dispatch International, have travelled to the UK to talk to Stephen Lennon. The results of their discussions with the former head of the EDL can be found here and here.