Category Archives: Right wing

One Nation defends anti-halal stance, denies racism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The One Nation Party has invited opponents and supporters to have their questions about the party answered, when Pauline Hanson speaks on the Sunshine Coast next week.

Jim Savage, the party’s lead Senate candidate for Queensland, said the party had been wrongly labelled racists by Member for Noosa Glen Elmes and Greens candidate for Fairfax David Knobel. The issue arose after One Nation’s Fairfax candidate Mike Holt was last week linked to stickers claiming halal food certification funded terrorism. “I do not accept that 98% of non-Muslim Australians should pay a tax on the food they buy and goes to organisations like the Queensland Islamic Council,” Mr Savage said.

Mr Elmes, the Queensland Multicultural Affairs Minister, compared One Nation’s views to “the White Australia Policy”, which “was discredited” decades ago. “Queensland is home to 37,000 people of the Muslim faith and they should be free to practise their religious and cultural beliefs without attack from idiots like the One Nation candidate for Fairfax,” Mr Elmes said.

Meantime, the Greens said Mr Holt’s “campaign strategy” was designed to “incite unrestrained racial and religious hatred”. “The Greens condemn this behaviour and call on One Nation to take a strong stand against this unwelcome and offensive affront to Australian values of tolerance and freedom,” Mr Knobel said.

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Reza Aslan’s book on Christ under fire from ignorant Islamophobes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Reza Aslan ZealotReza Aslan’s newly published biography of Jesus Christ has been viciously attacked by the Islamophobic right in the US.

See “Reza Aslan’s ‘Zealot’ has Islamophobes/Fox News outraged”, LoonWatch, 27 July 2013

And “Critics ignore content of book about Jesus, attack author for being a Muslim”, Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, 28 July 2013

Also “Reza Aslan to Fox News: Yes I ‘happen to be a Muslim,’ but wrote ‘Zealot’ because I am an expert”, Huffington Post, 27 July 2013

NC Muslims hope Gov. Pat McCrory vetoes anti-Shariah bill

Posted on by Bob Pitt

RNS-NC-SHARIAHNorth Carolina Muslims hope they can persuade Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, to veto a bill that prohibits state judges from considering “foreign law.” “It’s going to be tough,” said Rose Hamid of Charlotte. “But I do believe there is a chance.”

Muslims across the state oppose the bill they think is motivated by intolerance and may potentially infringe on other religious groups. Bills against judicial consideration of “foreign laws” are believed to really be opposing Shariah, or Islamic law.

If McCrory signs the bill, North Carolina would become the seventh state to have an anti-Shariah law, joining Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. In May, Alabama lawmakers approved a like-minded constitutional amendment that state voters will consider in 2014.

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One Nation founder backs anti-Islam candidate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pauline_HansonThe Sunshine Coast One Nation candidate at the centre of a storm about Muslims and halal products has the support of party founder Pauline Hanson.

Mike Holt, the party’s candidate for Fairfax, described halal products, which are prepared in line with strict Muslim requirements, as helping to fund terrorism. He operates a website that sells stickers that read, “Beware! Halal food funds terrorists”, which have been found on Nestle products at a Brisbane supermarket.

“We are the only party standing up against the Muslin threat and this halal is part of that,” Mr Holt said yesterday. “They use these stealth methods to impose their religious culture on us.”

On Facebook, Ms Hanson said, “I support Mike”. “I am not Muslim and do not want to buy halal-prepared and blessed food, with an Islamic tax, in my Christian country,” she said.

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History textbook has ‘Muslim bias’, claims Florida Republican politician

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Brevard County high school history textbook contains too much information about Islam and not enough about other religions, a state lawmaker says.

Rep. Ritch Workman, R-Melbourne, wants the AP textbook “World History” out of Brevard classrooms because of what he calls “Muslim bias.” Workman says important parts written about the history of Muslim civilizations have been left out. “It fails to mention tens of thousands of Jews and nonbelievers were slaughtered at the hands of Mohammed, just like the Crusaders did years prior. It’s a very one sided slant,” Workman said.

The book’s publisher, Pearson, says they adhere to the highest editorial standards and a review of the textbook found that it is balanced.

My Fox Orlando, 25 July 2013

Harry’s Place launches crazed witch-hunt

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Under the heading “Sabin Khan: the Islamist ally in the Home Office” the terrorism-supporting blog Harry’s Place has launched another anti-Muslim witch-hunt.

Their target, Sabin Khan, is a civil servant who they claim “has been busy promoting some rather dubious outfits in the Home Office”. The article appears under the pseudonym of Hafeez Gupta, who seems likely to be some disaffected Home Office employee with an axe to grind.

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Ray Kelly’s dalliance with the Islamophobic fringes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ali Gharib examines the past involvement of New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly, who has been suggested as a possible nominee for secretary of the Homeland Security Department, with the Clarion Project and its notoriously Islamophobic film The Third Jihad.

Daily Beast, 19 July 2013

Update:  See also “Secretary Ray Kelly? Bad for U.S. Muslims “, New York Daily News, 24 July 2013

National Secular Society ‘comedian’ embraces EDL

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pat Condell Godless and FreeI haven’t covered the online activities of the National Secular Society’s favourite “comedian” Pat Condell recently.

Partly that’s because I can’t stand the sight of his smug, sneering face staring out of the screen at me, but also because I get the impression that even the NSS’s enthusiasm for Condell has cooled somewhat in the face of the increasingly vile racist views he has promoted in his YouTube monologues. (Not that this has prevented another prominent fan, Richard Dawkins, from continuing to advertise compilations of Condell’s videos on his website.)

However, Condell’s latest video rant is worthy of note because, having previously announced his backing for the anti-immigration UK Independence Party, he has now gone one step further and come out in support of the English Defence League – to the delirious approval of the EDL itself, needless to say.

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Another Muslim-bashing story from the Mail

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Teachers ‘denied schoolboy, 10, water on the hottest day of the year to avoid upsetting Muslim pupils during Ramadan'” – that’s the headline to a report in yesterday’s Daily Mail. The story, which is of course just the latest episode in the “Islamisation of the West” narrative promoted by the right-wing press, was also taken up by the Daily Express (“Teachers deny water to schoolboy, 10, on the hottest day of the year”).

Coverage was not restricted to right-wing newspapers. The story appeared in the Daily Mirror (“Mum claims son was REFUSED water at school in heatwave as it was ‘unfair’ on fasting Muslim classmates”) and also featured in the National Secular Society‘s daily media round-up (“Schoolboy forced to observe Ramadan fast – even though he isn’t a Muslim”).

It provoked the usual frothing at the mouth from the likes of Pamela Geller (“This speaks to the supremacism of Islam”) and Robert Spencer (“Easy to see which group is in charge in Britain”), along with the British National Party (“What kind of loony left teacher can actually think it is right to deny a child a drink of water on one of the hottest days of the year. She can only face the sack”).

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