Category Archives: Ireland

Irish show Muslims solidarity

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Irish community leaders in Britain have spoken out in support of Muslim immigrants in the wake of police raids in Birmingham that have seen nine men arrested in connection with an alleged terror plot.

Dr Mary Tilki, chair of the Federation of Irish Societies, told an audience at a regional FIS meeting in Liverpool at the weekend that she was concerned at the series of arrests as well as police raids last year in the East End of London.

She said: “I am particularly saddened by the abuse and hostility targeted at members of the Asian community. We have been there as a community and we know what it is like. I would like to think that Irish organisations and Irish people can support the Asian/Muslim community.”

Dr Tilki said since the terrorist bomb atrocities in the city it had taken more than 30 years for Irish people in Birmingham to feel safe in expressing their Irishness. She continued: “The Asians are no different and like us the vast majority abhor any link with terrorism.”

The FIS chair said that the Prevention of Terrorism Act had made legitimate the labelling of all Irish people as terrorists. She said: “Homes were raided; people were persistently stopped and searched but the level of conviction was low”.

And she warned: “The police and security services have a difficult job to do; their intelligence is arguably more sophisticated. But they do not appear to have learned lessons from the miscarriages of justice against Irish people”.

Irish World, 7 February 2007

‘Dublin imam takes on the fanatics’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Observer finds a Muslim it likes (i.e. who denounces mainstream Muslims as extremists):

Beneath a basketball net in a freezing sports hall, a Muslim cleric is waging war on Islamic extremism.

Imam Shaheed Satardien is taking a stand against those Muslims in Ireland whom he claims are too sympathetic to Osama bin Laden and the cult of the suicide bomber. At Friday prayers in the sports hall in north-west Dublin, the South African-born former anti-apartheid activist warns his multinational congregation against blaming other religions and the West in general for all Muslims’ ills.

Cast out by the majority Islamic community in Dublin for his outspokenness, the 50-year-old preacher says he has received death threats. “I am standing firm in my beliefs,” Satardien says. “The truth is more important than being popular or living a quiet life. Extremism has infected Islam in Ireland. It’s time to get back to the spiritual aspect of my religion and stop it being used as a political weapon.”

The imam from Cape Town fled his native country following death threats, he says, from Islamic extremists in South Africa. His younger brother, Ibrahim, was shot dead in 1998 following a row with Islamic radicals in the city. When Satardien was told he would be next, he travelled to Ireland, the birthplace of his maternal grandmother, and pleaded for asylum.

“I never, ever, expected that Muslims would come under the influence of extremists in Ireland when I arrived here with my family. So I was shocked to find support for Osama bin Laden, to discover the presence of the Muslim Brotherhood and even al-Qaeda here in Dublin.”

Satardien fell out with the main Dublin mosque at Clonskeagh, singling out the influence of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian born sheikh who has spoken openly in support of suicide bombers and issued fatwas on gays.

Observer, 14 January 2007

As an example of the sort of bigotry this sort of “liberal” reporting plays to, a right-wing Canadian Christian blogger writes that the Observer story offers “more reasons to halt Muslim immigration to Canada”.

James Love on Religion and Culture, 14 January 2007

… and another

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“For the first time since the hate-filled creed of Islamic fundamentalism vomited itself onto this earth, Christianity has a chance to stand up for itself. Whatever interpretation you place on the Pope’s controversial address about radical Islam, he was merely expressing what any sane individual thinks about the vile activities of muslim insurgency. The time has now come to form a global Pan Christian Front to defend the Biblical principles of Jesus Christ before everything free and decent about our New Testament faith is eradicated from Western culture.”

John Coulter in The Blanket, 25 September 2006

‘What did we do to deserve your hatred?’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Their head scarves frame faces that are unmistakably Irish and their Dublin accents seem out of place among the strictures of their religious dress. They are unlikely targets of racial abuse, but Patricia Fitzpatrick, 43, and Lesley Carter, 35, have been spat upon, called Pakis, Osama Bin Laden and even ‘Jewish bastards’ on the streets of their native city. As converts to Islam they have joined Ireland’s estimated 26,000-strong Muslim population, which has become the focus of controversy since the discovery of planned terrorist attacks in Britain two weeks ago.”

Sunday Times, 27 August 2006

Incidences of anti-Muslim abuse on the rise in Ireland

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Physical and verbal abuse against Muslims in Ireland is on the rise. According to the Equality Authority, negative portrayals of Muslims in the media are leading to more attacks.

Up to 25,000 Muslims live in Ireland.

A number of famous Muslim writers and actors are speaking about Islamophobia in Dublin tonight in a conference organised by the Equality Authority to raise the profile of the issue.

Chief Executive Neil Crowley said: “Xenophobia is a global phenomenon so we would be foolish to think we were exempt from it.”

“And there are indicators that it is an issue here, indicators in terms of reports of physical and verbal abuse and in terms of some media reporting that does stereotype Muslim people.”

He also claimed there were indicators from the Garda Human Rights Office that highlighted difficulties in relations between the Gardaí and the Muslim community.

Ireland Online, 24 May 2006

The ‘sheikh of death’ must be barred

Posted on by Bob Pitt

islamicawakeningThus the title of a long rant by one Mark Dooley in the Sunday Independent, calling for Yusuf al-Qaradawi (aka “the theologian of terror”) to be banned from the Republic of Ireland, where the European Council of Fatwa and Research has its headquarters.

You have to admire Dooley’s diligence. He’s managed to find almost every false allegation ever made against Qaradawi and put them all in his article.

Qaradawi is apparently “a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood”, has stated that “fighting American civilians in Iraq is a duty for all Muslims” and advocates “the use children as suicide bombers”, while a letter naming Qaradawi as a “Sheikh of death” and accusing him of “providing a religious cover for terrorism” was signed by “over 2,500 Muslim scholars”.

None of which is true.