Category Archives: Left Wing

Right and left Islamophobes – so difficult to tell them apart

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Robert Spencer comments on the Gillian Gibbons case: “Even Muslims in the West who condemned the arrest and sentencing of Gibbons did so in disquieting terms…. Muhammad Abdul Bari of the Muslim Council of Britain said: ‘There was clearly no intention on the part of the teacher to deliberately insult the Islamic faith’. But what if there had been? If Gibbons had named the teddy bear Muhammad in order to mock the Muslim prophet, would Muhammad Abdul Bari have approved of her being arrested, imprisoned, lashed or even executed?”

Jihad Watch, 3 December 2007

Now, where have we heard that stupid argument before? Yes, it was from Maryam Namazie and the self-styled Council of Ex-Muslims. Narrow-minded bigots think alike, eh?

More hysterical nonsense from comrade Namazie

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Maryam Namazie’s so-called Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain offers its take on the Gillian Gibbons case. The MCB, which forthrightly condemned Ms Gibbons’ arrest and stated that it was “appalled at the decision of the Sudanese authorities” to charge her, is falsely quoted as saying it found the situation merely “embarrassing”, and is further accused of favouring the lashing of people who insult Islam, while the adoption of an utterly toothless law against incitement to religious hatred is equated with death threats against apostates:

“The CEMB notes that Islamic organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain find the events in Sudan ’embarrassing’ – as indeed all supporters of the Shariah should. But they do so on the grounds that no insult to Islam was intended by Ms Gibbons. This implies that had an insult been perpetrated, it would have been deemed a crime and punishable according to the Shariah, which could have resulted in 40 lashes or worse. Recent death threats against apostates or the case of the Danish cartoons of Muhammad two years ago are some examples of how any criticism is deemed offensive or insulting. Islamists will not hesitate to use Islamic law where possible or other violent means to stifle such criticism. In line with this, they have been aggressively campaigning for a law on incitement to religious hatred in the UK, which will severely curtail freedom of expression.”

Maryam Namazie’s blog, 2 December 2007

‘Martin Amis is no racist’ (it says here)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

HitchensWell, that the claim made by ex-leftist-turned-Bush-supporter Christopher Hitchens, who rallies to the defence of his friend and fellow writer. Let us remind ourselves what Amis said in his September 2006 interview with Ginny Dougary:

“There’s a definite urge – don’t you have it? – to say, ‘The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order’. What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan. Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community…”

So how does Hitchens justify this appalling rant? He tells us that “the harshness Amis was canvassing was not in the least a recommendation, but rather an experiment in the limits of permissible thought”.

Guardian, 21 November 2007

In a letter in the same issue another friend and author, Ian McEwan, also attempts to defend the indefensible.

For Yusuf Smith’s response to Hitchens, see Indigo Jo Blogs, 21 November 2007

No-Goh policy on mosques and Islamic immigration

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A 10-year ban on Islamic immigration to Australia and on the construction of any Islamic schools or mosques is the main election policy for one of Macarthur’s federal election candidates.

Christian Democratic Party (Fred Nile Group) candidate Godwin Goh said his party, if elected, would also lobby the NSW Government and Federal Government to change any anti-vilification or anti-discrimination laws that could make such a proposal illegal. Mr Goh said he wanted: “No Muslim immigration for 10 years, no setting up schools and mosques, too.”

The Liberal MP for Macarthur, Pat Farmer, rejected Mr Goh’s proposal. “Immigration requests need to be analysed on a case-by-case basis,” he said. “You can’t throw a blanket over the top of everybody and say they’re all terrorists and all incite violence. That’s wrong and that’s not the Australian way.”

When asked to respond to Mr Goh’s proposed 10-year ban on Muslim immigration, schools and mosques, the Labor candidate for Macarthur, Nick Bleasdale, said: “Let me make it clear. I’m totally opposed to the development of the new Islamic school and the community has my full support on the issue. Make no mistake, this issue has nothing to do with race.It’s based on the fact that such a large development will undoubtedly have an impact on our semi-rural way of life….”

Mr Goh is opposed to all Islamic schools because, he claims, they teach extreme versions of Islam. He cited as an example an Islamic school in Victoria. “The teacher asked the students who their hero was and they all said Osama binLaden,” he said. “The teachers are brainwashing. Can’t you see it’s brainwashing? What about Australian heroes? Sport heroes? Such brainwashing, this is when these children have been taught this kind of teaching in their formative years. When they grow up they’re going to idolise the greatest of all terrorists….”

Camden Advertiser, 14 November 2007

Cherie Blair speaks out against the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cherie BlairCherie Blair has criticised Muslim religious dress for women where it fails to acknowledge “the woman’s right to be a person.” The wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair warned against the full-face veil, or niqab, worn by strictly Islamic women worldwide because it could prevent a woman from expressing her personality.

Mrs Blair, a practising Roman Catholic who is to publish her own memoirs in October next year, admitted that she had herself been educated by Catholic nuns who wore veils. She said she had no problem with women covering their heads. But on Islamic veils, she said: “I think however, that if you get to the stage where a woman is not able to express her personality because we cannot see her face, then we do have to ask whether this is something that is actually acknowledging the woman’s right to be a person.”

Mrs Blair’s own Church forbids the ordination of women, forbids women from using condoms even when their husband has been infected by HIV while working away, and denies the sacrament of communion to women who are divorced and remarried without an annulment, even when a woman’s first marriage has broken down because of abandonment for a younger woman by their husband.

She nevertheless focused her criticisms on Islamic countries. She said the laws on divorce and custody of children remained unfair to women in many Islamic countries, such as Egypt. “I think the facts speak for themselves,” she said.

Times, 31 October 2007

Johann Hari and his friends

Posted on by Bob Pitt

johann hari 2Johann Hari has found a new hero: “Ehsan Jami is an intelligent, softly-spoken 22-year-old council member for the Dutch Labour Party. He believes there should be no compromise, ever, on the rights of women and gay people and novelists and cartoonists. He became sick of hearing self-appointed Islamist organisations claiming to speak for him when they called for the banning of books and the ‘right’ to abuse women. So he set up the Dutch Council of Ex-Muslims. Their manifesto called for secularism – and an end to the polite toleration of Islamist intolerance. As he put it: ‘We want people to be free to choose who they want to be and what they want to believe in’.”

Independent, 25 October 2007

That would be this Ehsan Jami, would it – the ally of Dutch far-right racist Geert Wilders?

In the same article Hari happily refers to “my friend Maryam Namazie” – the Iranian sectarian nutter who discredited this year’s International Day Against Homophobia in London by launching into a paranoid rant accusing the Muslim Council of Britain of wanting to execute gay men in Trafalgar Square.

But the main subject of Hari’s piece is Namazie’s fellow member of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran, Mina Ahadi, who has just been awarded the title of Secularist of the Year by the National Secular Society. Ahadi received widespread publicity when she launched her so-called Council of Ex-Muslims in Germany, including an interview in Der Spiegel in which she stated “I know Islam and for me it means death and pain” and defended the display of racist anti-Muslim caricatures at a German carnival.

How long, you wonder, before Namazie and Ahadi join their chum Ehsan Jami in forming an open alliance with the extreme Right? If they do, they’ll evidently be able to count on the support of Johann Hari.

Update:  For Johann’s response, see here

‘Too many mosques’ in UK, says self-styled ‘communist’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Azar Majedi of the Worker Communist Party of Iran is interviewed by the French secularist magaizine Riposte Laïque (translation in Scoop). In response to the question “Que penses-tu du projet de Grande Mosquée du maire de Londres, Ken Livingstone?” Majedi replies: “Je m’y oppose complètement. On n’a pas besoin d’autres mosquées. Il y en a déjà trop.”

Too many mosques? Now where have we heard that before? Ah yes, it was here.

Mirror pays damages for Al Qaeda slur

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A leading Malaysian politician has accepted substantial undisclosed libel damages from the Daily Mirror over his wrongful identification as the third in command of Al Qaeda.

Abdul Hadi Awang, who is currently the president of Malaysian opposition party PAS, was caused great embarrassment and distress by the incorrect use of his photo in the Daily Mirror in May as part of a series concerning a number of terror plots in the UK, his solicitor-advocate, Adam Tudor, told Mr Justice Eady at the High Court on Friday.

Solicitors Carter-Ruck said later that Hadi Awang’s complaint was one of a number it had brought over the past 12 months on behalf of Muslims falsely accused of involvement with terrorism. To date, these had led to the payment of more than £700,000 in damages plus legal costs.

The article stated that Mr Hadi Awang was third in command of Al Qaeda, and was being held in Guantanamo Bay following his capture, he said. Trinity Mirror plc, the newspaper’s publisher, acknowledged that Hadi Awang had no involvement whatsoever in Al Qaeda – on the contrary, he had always been vehemently opposed to its “barbarous acts”.

The newspaper had explained that the photograph, which was published in error, was intended to refer to the suspected Al Qaeda terrorist, Abdul Hadi Al Iraqi, with whom Hadi Awang had no connection. It had published an apology and had agreed to pay Hadi Awang substantial damages and his legal costs.

Press Gazette, 22 October 2007

Dutch Labour Party chair repudiates Ehsan Jami

Posted on by Bob Pitt

AMSTERDAM – Dutch Labour party PvdA chairman, Ruud Koole, says Islam critic and Labour council member Ehsan Jami is distancing himself from party ideology with his statements about Islam.

In an article published in daily newspaper, Volkskrant, Wednesday, Koole is quoted as saying that Labour representatives are “expected not to go against fundamental party principles in his public statements”.

On 27 September, 22-year old Jami and Freedom party (PVV) leader Geert Wilders co-wrote an article in the newspaper in which they stressed the need for strong criticism of Islam. “If we do not act now against the far-reaching Islamisation of the Netherlands,” the two wrote, “then the 1930s will be revived. The only difference is that back then the danger came from Adolf Hitler, while today it comes from Mohammed.”

Koole, in the Volksrant article Wednesday, refers to Jami’s remarks about the Islam as “degrading” and says they also contradict the principles of a democratic constitutional state “which guarantees freedom of religion”.

Jami is a Labour council member in Leidschendam-Voorburg and the chairman of the Committee for former Muslims. He has received little public support from his party following his criticism of Islam.

Expatica, 3 October 2007