Muslim family values produced 7/7 bombers – Muriel Gray

“John Reid telling devout Muslims to watch out in case their children become, oops, even more devout Muslims was bordering on the ridiculous….

“These brainwashed young men threatening us are not coming from liberal, Westernised homes full of moral relativism and then suddenly turning psycho. If they come from observant Muslim families – which the 7/7 bombers all did despite all the nonsense about them being ‘ordinary Westernised boys’ – then the priming started long ago. They would have been brought up to genuinely believe that Allah intended women to have a single purpose in life as subservient wives and mothers; gay people are perverts; freedom of speech does not apply to any kind of criticism of their belief; democracy is a man-made sham; and the values of the West are inferior….

“The leap to ‘radicalism’ from such a narrow background is not exactly over a chasm…. since many devout, law-abiding Muslims have publicly expressed agreement with a great deal of the bombers’ philosophy – except the killing part – what possible help can they be in this war? It would be of more practical help to try and reasonably persuade devout Muslim parents to let their children absorb a far wider cultural agenda….”

Muriel Gray does her Melanie Phillips impression in the Sunday Herald, 24 September 2006

See Osama Saeed’s reply at Rolled Up Trousers, 26 September 2006

Salman Rushdie ‘feels sorry’ for Pope

Salman RushdieControversial novelist Salman Rushdie has said he feels “sorry” for Pope Benedict XVI, whose comments about Islam recently angered the Muslim community across the world.

“I’m in the unusual position of feeling sorry for the Pope. It’s a first for me. I just think people should calm down a bit. This immediate, manufactured outrage that takes place is getting to be excessive,” he said in an interview to The Times newspaper on Tuesday.

“Look at the things that are not being protested about. In Darfur you’ve got a Muslim massacre of other Muslims. Why aren’t there demonstrations about that in the Muslim world? That seems to me to be a much bigger thing than the Pope using a 15th-century quote,” Rushdie, against whom a ‘fatwa’ was issued by the then Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, said.

Asked to comment on the term Islamo-fascist, Rushdie said, “I think there are fascists who use Islamic ideas, so I’ve no problem with the term.”

“Islamophobia is a word that I do disapprove of quite a lot because it seems to me there is no reason why you should not dislike an idea. But if you have ideas that I don’t like, it’s perfectly okay for me to be phobic about them.”

“To use that as a term of criticism is very anti-intellectual. There are people who dislike my ideas who have not been afraid of being phobic about them,” he added.

Press Trust Of India, 26 September 2006

See also the Times, 26 September 2006

Sam Harris on liberals and the threat to western civilisation

Sam Harris writes in the Los Angeles Times:

A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world – for reasons that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are not fighting a “war on terror”. We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise….

The truth is that there is every reason to believe that a terrifying number of the world’s Muslims now view all political and moral questions in terms of their affiliation with Islam. This leads them to rally to the cause of other Muslims no matter how sociopathic their behavior. This benighted religious solidarity may be the greatest problem facing civilization and yet it is regularly misconstrued, ignored or obfuscated by liberals….

In their analyses of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, liberals can be relied on to overlook the most basic moral distinctions. For instance, they ignore the fact that Muslims intentionally murder noncombatants, while we and the Israelis (as a rule) seek to avoid doing so. Muslims routinely use human shields, and this accounts for much of the collateral damage we and the Israelis cause; the political discourse throughout much of the Muslim world, especially with respect to Jews, is explicitly and unabashedly genocidal….

The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists. To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization.

Yes, you did read that correctly. “The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.”

Another case of secular bigotry

wafThere was an interesting programme on Radio 4 last night, broadcast in the “Hecklers” slot, in which Gita Sahgal of Women Against Fundamentalisms (who is an atheist of Hindu origin) debated Tahmina Saleem, Tariq Ramadan, Lord Ahmed, Moazzam Begg and Daud Abdullah.

She was arguing, à la Martin Bright and John Ware, that by consulting with organisations like the MCB the government was merely encouraging “fundamentalism”. As is often the case these days, it was the self-proclaimed secular rationalist Gita Sahgal who came over as the ignorant dogmatic bigot.

MCB defends open letter

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, replies to Polly Toynbee:

“The open letter to the prime minister – which I signed alongside more than 40 Muslim groups, MPs and peers – has been subject to deliberate misinterpretation, suggesting a willingness among Muslim leaders to excuse violence and promote a simplified view of how extremism takes root. Toynbee’s accusation – that the letter sails ‘perilously close to suggesting the government had it coming’ – may be an unintentional misrepresentation but it is a grave one.

“The letter articulated the need to base foreign policy on principle. It condemned attacks on civilians wherever they take place. It also sought acknowledgement that, though the causes and motivations are complex, British foreign policy contributes to the radicalisation of Muslims here and elsewhere. The welcome debate that followed the letter illustrates that this has been widely accepted.”

Guardian, 17 August 2006

Bodi bashes Bright

Faisal Bodi trashes Martin Bright’s recent Channel 4 documentary. He points out that Bright falsely attributes to democratic reformist Islamist organisations like the Muslim Brotherhood “a position at the beginning of a continuum of Islamist terror”.

Guardian, 18 July 2006

Over at the National Secular Society’s website, a link to Bodi’s article has been posted under the heading “We must listen to the murderous Islamic militants”. And there are still people who deny that the NSS is Islamophobic!

For further informed criticism of Bright, see Indigo Jo Blogs, 16 July 2006

‘Karen Armstrong: Islam’s hagiographer’

“Armstrong maintains that Islamic terrorism must not be referred to as such. ‘Jihad’, we were told, ‘is a cherished spiritual value that, for most Muslims, has no connection with violence.’ Well, the word ‘jihad’ has multiple meanings depending on the context, and it’s hard to determine the particulars of what ‘most Muslims’ think in this regard. But it’s safe to say the Qur’an and Sunnah are of great importance to Muslims generally, and most references to jihad found in the Qur’an and Sunnah occur in a military or paramilitary context, and aggressive conceptions of jihad are found in every major school of Islamic jurisprudence, with only minor variations. Mohammed’s own celebration of homicidal ‘martyrdom’ makes for particularly interesting reading. …. Islam’s foremost hagiographer and shill has found an audience among Muslims and those on the left with little appetite for unflattering facts and a preference for being told whatever they wish to hear.”

David Thompson at Butterflies and Wheels, 11 July 2006

Could have been taken straight from Jihad Watch, couldn’t it?

Ontario’s ‘Sharia Law’ controversy: how Muslims were hung out to dry

Arjomand and mediaRichard Fidler provides a useful overview of last year’s hysterical campaign against the “introduction of sharia law” (i.e. faith-based arbitration for Muslims) in Ontario. He writes:

“Among the most vociferous of the ‘anti-Sharia’ opponents was Homa Arjomand, a Toronto-based transitional counselor and refugee from Iran. She is the Coordinator of the ‘International Campaign Against Shari’a Court in Canada’, which claims a membership of 87 organizations from 14 countries with over a thousand activists. Much of the material on its web site is outrageously Islamophobic.

“One such piece, by Elka Enola of the Humanist Association of Toronto, sketches a startling ‘Worst Case (but probable) Scenario’ of the effect of allowing Muslim FBA, starting with ‘Stage One – Using the Arbitration Act, the Shari’a courts appear to get legal sanction’ and ending with ‘Stage Three – Muslims now outnumber Christians and the majority rule of democracy is turned on its head as the majority Muslims make Shari’a the law of the land’. It concludes, ‘We must protect Canada from such a scenario’. Not surprisingly, the Humanist Association of Toronto proclaimed Arjomand its ‘Humanist of the Year’ in 2005.”

MR Zine, 27 May 2006

New Humanist justifies Islamophobia

Yusuf Smith has picked up on an article in the latest issue of New Humanist magazine (a sponsor of the “March for Free Expression”) by one Ben Marshall, which defends Islamophobia as “an entirely reasonable and honourable intellectual position”. According to Marshall, high levels of unemployment among British Muslims are nothing to do with racism but are the result of their religious beliefs. Marshall has a go at Islamophobia Watch, describing it as “a shady confederacy of Islamists, woolly-headed, well-meaning dunces and Marxists” and he goes on to accuse us of condoning anti-semitism.

Indigo Jo Blogs, 28 May 2006