Tabloids round on two ‘traitorous Muslim councillors’

ENGAGE has the details.

Update:  A contemptible Lib Dem councillor named Martin Mullaney posted the following disgraceful comment at a online discussion forum:

“I can only assume that if one of the failed 21/7 London suicide bombers had been in the Council Chamber last Tuesday, Cllr Yaqoob would have been demanding the Council applaud the failed suicide bomber for their past ‘heroic actions’.”

In an interview with the BBC, Mullaney said he stood by his comments.

Islamophobia: does Labour measure up?

Labour Briefing masthead

Does Labour measure up?

By Bob Pitt

Labour Briefing, February 2011

“The Islamophobia Myth” – that was the title of an influential article by Kenan Malik published in the February 2005 issue of Prospect magazine. It argued that violence, hatred and discrimination against Muslims were at a very low level and that the threat of Islamophobia had been invented or at least greatly exaggerated, mainly by religious leaders hoping to suppress legitimate criticisms of their beliefs and to enhance their own status as community representatives. Malik’s thesis was welcomed in some quarters at the time, including among sections of the left.

Six years on, far fewer people would buy that argument. Hostility towards Muslims and their faith has reached such a pitch that to deny this represents a major threat is simply untenable. When the racist hooligans of the English Defence League take to the streets in towns and cities across the UK brandishing placards with slogans such as “We will never submit to Islam”, chanting “Burn a mosque down” and on occasion breaking through police lines to rampage through Muslim areas smashing shop windows and assaulting passers-by, who could seriously claim that Islamophobia is a myth?

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Bill Maher stands by anti-Muslim remarks

Bill Maher showed up on CNN to talk about comments he made on Real Time regarding the “alarming” number of “baby Mohammeds” in England. Maher told Wolf Blitzer that he felt no need to “apologize for being a proud Westerner”, or for being worried that “Muslim people in these [Western] societies are having babies” at a faster clip than non-Muslims.

He clarified: “And when I say Westerner, I mean someone who believes in the values that Western people believe in that a lot of the Muslim world does not. Like separation of church and state. Like equality of the sexes. Like respect for minorities, free elections, free speech, freedom to gather. These things are not just different from cultures that don’t have them…. It’s better…. I would like to keep those values here.”

Mediaite, 1 November 2010

See also “Bill Maher’s anti-Muslim fixation”, TPM, 1 November 2010

US TV host fears Western world will taken over by Islam

http://youtu.be/IBAG58aHwOo

Those who accuse the once libertarian Bill Maher of becoming too much of a liberal apologist might want to clean their ears. Maher made a Juan Williams-esque confession on his program when he apprehensively noted that Mohammed has just become the most popular baby name in Britain.

“Am I a racist to feel alarmed by that?” Maher asked his panel. “Because I am. And it’s not because of the race, it’s because of the religion. I don’t have to apologize, do I, for not wanting the Western world to be taken over by Islam in 300 years?”

“If you’re with NPR,” the conservative Margaret Hoover chimed, “You’d be fired.” Hoover further stoked Maher by claiming that the U.K is saddled with a “far bigger problem” than baby names: Sharia law, which she said is creeping into England.

“Then I’m right,” Maher said, taking her for her word. “I should be alarmed. And I don’t apologize for it.”

Mediaite, 29 October 2010

NPR fires Juan Williams over Muslim remarks

Juan WilliamsUS broadcaster National Public Radio has fired news analyst Juan Williams for saying on Fox News that he gets nervous if he sees Muslims on a plane.

Williams, who has written several books on the US civil rights movement, made the remarks last week on chat show The O’Reilly Factor.

NPR said in a statement that Williams’s contract had been ended on Wednesday.

Fox News later signed Williams up as a contributor on a multi-year contract, reportedly worth $2m (£1.3m).

In a discussion on Muslims and 9/11 on the O’Reilly Factor, outspoken conservative presenter Bill O’Reilly said: “The cold truth is that in the world today jihad, aided and abetted by some Muslim nations, is the biggest threat on the planet.”

Williams said he concurred with O’Reilly.

“I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country,” Williams replied. “But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations said before Mr Williams was sacked that such commentary from a journalist about other racial, ethnic or religious minority groups would not be tolerated.

In its statement, NPR said Mr Williams’s comments “were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR”.

Mr Williams has also served as a reporter and columnist for the Washington Post.

Later on Thursday, Fox News chief Roger Ailes offered Williams a deal to appear on Fox programmes and to write for FoxNews.com.

“Juan has been a staunch defender of liberal viewpoints since his tenure began at Fox News in 1997,” Mr Ailes said in a statement, according to the Los Angeles Times, with a reference to National Public Radio. “He’s an honest man whose freedom of speech is protected by Fox News on a daily basis.”

BBC News, 21 October 2010

Fox News ‘liberal’ says America is at war with Muslims

Last week, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly said on ABC’s The View that “Muslims killed us on 9/11,” prompting The View co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar to walk off the set in disgust. “If anybody felt that I meant all Muslims, then I apologize,” he said later in the program.

But now, O’Reilly, with handy assistance from his colleagues at Fox News, is defending his original claim. “There’s no question there is a Muslim problem in the world,” he said last night on his show. “The Muslim threat to the world is not isolated. It’s huge!” he said, adding, “It involves nations and millions of people.”

O’Reilly asked Fox News’ “liberal” Juan Williams if he’s wrong. Surprisingly, Williams joined with the other Fox Newsers in circling the wagons around O’Reilly, citing “political correctness” and seemingly because Muslims scare him:

WILLIAMS: Well, actually, I hate to say this to you because I don’t want to get your ego going. But I think you’re right. I think, look, political correctness can lead to some kind of paralysis where you don’t address reality.

I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.

Williams justified his defense, saying that the would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad “said the war with Muslims, America’s war is just beginning, first drop of blood. I don’t think there’s any way to get away from these facts.”

Think Progress, 19 October 2010

Update:  See “NPR fires Juan Williams over anti-Muslim remarks”, Washington Post, 21 October 2010

Dr Bari replies to Nick Cohen’s smears

In a letter published in today’s Observer the Chairman of the East London Mosque replies to Nick Cohen’s rant in last week’s issue:

The findings of University College London’s thorough inquiry into the Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab affair were presented in a clear, insightful report. Disappointed at the outcome, Nick Cohen chose to attack me personally.

Through the usual tactic of guilt by tenuous association, Nick Cohen brands me, in all but name, an extremist, a label I utterly reject. I abhor extremism of any kind and continue to work tirelessly to bring communities together.

Cohen labours hard to smear the East London Mosque, where I am currently the chairman. In his latest diatribe, he wrongly claims the mosque is dominated by Jamaat-e-Islami. I hold no brief for Jamaat-e-Islami. The East London Mosque is run by British Muslims of diverse backgrounds, with deep roots in the community, who expend time and energy to make it an institution that is welcoming to all faiths and none.

Cohen fails to mention that the “Saudi preacher” he refers to is Sheikh as-Sudais, a leading imam at Islam’s holiest sanctuary in Makkah. The remarks attributed to him have never been uttered at the East London Mosque and I have no hesitation in dissociating myself and our mosque from such views.

Extremism and bigotry of any kind are to be confronted. Nick Cohen would do well to reflect on his own divisive rhetoric.

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari
Chairman, East London Mosque

Nick Cohen on the Caldicott inquiry

Nick_CohenWriting in the Observer, Nick Cohen takes issue with the results of the Caldicott inquiry, commissioned by University College London, which absolved the university and the students’ union Islamic Society of any responsibility for the “Christmas Day bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab turning to violent extremism.

Not that Cohen addresses the actual content of the 37-page report produced by the inquiry. Instead we get this: “I could attack it by emphasising that UCL had chosen to put on the inquiry team Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain. Dr Bari is high up in the Jamaat-e-Islami-dominated East London Mosque.” And Cohen goes on to outline JI’s part in opposing the Bangladesh independence struggle back in 1971.

Leaving aside the question of whether the actions of a political party in East Pakistan four decades ago tell you anything at all about the political role its sympathisers play in the UK in 2010, Cohen ignores the fact that many of the opponents of the ELM leadership within the British Bangladeshi community are themselves linked to a political party in Bangladesh – the Awami League.

This is the organisation that led the 1971 independence struggle but within a few years had lost popular support. Its response was to ban rival political parties and impose a one-party state, while establishing an executive presidency to which the League’s leader appointed himself without bothering to go through the formalities of an election.

Cohen is always ready to denounce “totalitarian Islamism”, but it would appear that he has no problem at all with totalitarianism when it is practised by secular nationalists.

Cohen also finds it significant that one Riyadh ul-Haq was invited to speak at an ISoc charity dinner in November 2005, and quotes an antisemitic statement attributed to him in a Times report. Such statements are of course to be condemned. But nobody has presented any evidence that Riyadh ul-Haq incited hatred against the Jewish community or anyone else when he spoke at the ISoc dinner, or that ISoc was even aware that he held antisemitic views.

The question of whether speakers may use students’ union society meetings as a platform to promote bigotry does need to be addressed. Indeed, a substantial section of the Caldicott inquiry’s report, which Cohen dismisses as a whitewash, is devoted to this very issue. Noting that the UCLU adminstration has brought in new procedures to check the background of external speakers, the report proposes that these procedures should be “further reviewed and strengthened” and recommends that “UCL Union, in consultation with the UCL authorities, review its criteria for defining the acceptability of prospective visiting speakers”.

However, this is hardly an issue restricted to ISocs. Earlier this year there was a controversy when the Israel Society at Cambridge University invited the Israeli historian Benny Morris to speak at one of their meetings. Morris believes that “the phenomenon of the mass Muslim penetration into the West and their settlement there” has had the effect of “creating a dangerous internal threat”. He is also on record as stating that “the Muslims are busy killing people, and killing people for reasons that in the West are regarded as idiotic. There is a problem here with Islam”.

But somehow Cohen didn’t get round to condemning the university Israel Society for promoting political extremism and hatred. In fact, he said nothing about the issue at all.

Cohen also pours scorn on UCL’s awareness of Islamism, accusing them of “ignorance” and saying that he doubts whether “one lecturer in 10 at UCL knows anything about the ideologies of Jamaat and the Muslim Brotherhood”. Presumably that would be as distinct from the deep knowledge of all things Islamic we have come to expect from Nick Cohen – a man who thinks that Muhammad Abdul Bari is still secretary general of the MCB when Dr Bari ceased to occupy that position four months ago.

The reality is that Cohen never showed the slightest interest in Islam or Islamism until the run-up to the invasion of Iraq – of which he was an enthusiastic supporter – when the Muslim Association of Britain became centrally involved in organising a mass movement in opposition to the war. Suddenly Cohen discovered that political Islam represented a major threat to civilisation as we know it. And even then his hostility was hardly based on any actual study of the subject.

This is the man who angrily informed Observer readers in February 2003 that the huge demonstration against the Iraq war that brought London to a standstill was jointly organised by “the reactionary British Association of Muslims”. Cohen knew so little about MAB that he couldn’t even get their name right – but of course he didn’t see his own ignorance as any obstacle to denouncing them as reactionaries.