Rolled-up Trousers

Israel gags Al-Aqsa dig opponents

Israeli police have banned a news conference by Muslim and Christian figures opposing recent excavation works near a disputed holy site in Jerusalem.

Police went to the Commodore Hotel in East Jerusalem on Wednesday and delivered an order cancelling the event, because it was organised by the Palestinian group Hamas.

Shmuel Ben-Ruby, a police spokesman, said that the meeting was called off because Hamas-led activities are prohibited in Israel.

The mufti of Jerusalem, Israel's Islamic Movement leader and a Roman Orthodox archbishop were meeting to contest the renovation of a ramp leading to the shrine.

Al-Jazeera

So much for the Israeli openness on the issue. And what has Hamas being banned in Israel got to do with events in East Jerusalem?

British soldiers and Iraqi prisoner abuse

The acquittal of Colonel Jorge Mendonca from war crimes charges in Basra was greeted by the British press with an air of indignation as to how such a smear could be levelled at British soldiers at all. The exercise was dismissed as a waste of time and money, while the Conservatives labelled it with the greatest insult of all – political correctness.

Nevertheless for anyone following the trial court martial, it is clear that there was substance to the grave charges that were pressed against seven British soldiers. They were answering charges regarding incidents surrounding a raid on a hotel in Basra, where detainees were alleged to have been “conditioned” or held in “stress positions”. Some would say tortured. The treatment resulted in the deaths of one of them, Baha Musa.

The proceedings started in Septmeber 2006 with Cpl Donald Payne confessing to being the country’s first war criminal. He pled guilty to the charge of inhumanely treating Iraqi civilians. It was a watershed moment which was also expected to have repercussions on the soldiers that were also with him at the time, and who according to witness testimonies, also took part in the beatings. There was also the question as to how far up the chain of command such procedures went, with British army testimony again indicating that the actions of Payne and others were approved from high up.

Muslim schools are a "security problem" and should close

Apologies that I'm posting on this quite a bit after the event. I could not let this one go totally uncommented on however.

Sir Cyril Taylor, of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, and key government adviser on education has said:

In some parts of the country, for example, where children only speak Bangla at home and do not mix with other communities at school, it has become a real strategic security problem.

They would be much more likely to collaborate with the police and tell them [whether] people within their own community are doing things they shouldn't be doing if they were better integrated.

Where you have two schools, one that is predominantly white and the other that is majority Bangladeshi or Pakistani, the answer is to close them both and put them together in a new academy operating on a multifaith basis.

A number of issues with this analysis:

Mark Steyn's final solution

Mark Steyn apparently advocates wiping out Europe's Muslims while speaking to Christopher Hitchens:

Why did Bosnia collapse into the worst slaughter in Europe since World War Two? In the thirty years before the meltdown, Bosnian Serbs had declined from 43 percent to 31 percent of the population, while Bosnian Muslims had increased from 26 percent to 44 percent. In a democratic age, you can’t buck demography—except through civil war. The Serbs figured that out—as other Continentals will in the years ahead: if you can't outbreed the enemy, cull 'em. The problem that Europe faces is that Bosnia’s demographic profile is now the model for the entire continent.

See the Reality Based Community for more.

Steyn is an author, who has written for newspapers across the world, and used to write for the Daily Telegraph.

Bunch of foreigners tell us how to run our schools

I was psyching myself up for a demolishing of the Daily Express's latest Islamophobic tirade, but found that Five Chinese Crackers has already done it.

Given the abject lack of bloggers who ever put forward a decent view when it comes to Muslim affairs, the find (hat tip to Islamophobia Watch) is a welcome one.

The topic is the MCB's report which contains eminently sensible proposals that would help integrate Muslims better into the state school sector. With all the fussing over faith schools it is forgotten that 97.5% of Muslim kids do not actually attend Islamic schools. The guidance will only help teachers in dealing with issues that inevitably arise. As the report says:

However, other [schools] have not been responsive to legitimate and reasonable requests ... such as collective worship, communal changing, swimming, halal meat and sex education. Unfortunately, Muslim pupils are sometimes placed in situations where they feel pressured into acting contrary to their beliefs and conscience, and also experience Islamophobic sentiments and comments.

This is a sentiment that chimes with me. Despite this, the government has found fit to dismiss it, no doubt to the pleasure of the BNP who don't have to provide commentary when linking to Daily Express articles.

It seems from this episode that the right-wing want to have it both ways. They don't want Islamic schools, and they don't want recognition of Muslim beliefs and practices in other schools either. Contrived dramas like this from the Express again only reinforce the fact that significant elements of this country have moved on from condemning Al-Qaeda to a witch-hunt against the Islamic faith itself.

(Muslim) man kills family

Criminals who happen to be Muslims can't just be criminals today, they have to be "Muslim criminals".

Take the tragic deaths of Caneze Riaz and her four young daughters who were killed by their husband and father Mohammed Riaz. He doused them in petrol and set them ablaze while they slept in Blackburn last year before jumping in the fire and killing himself.

Another non-story from the Daily Mail

A father and two year old daughter went swimming only to find that they couldn't get in because there was a private booking there. It seems that the council were to blame for having the wrong information on their website:

Mr Williams, 34, bitterly criticised Manchester City Council yesterday after it admitted that advertising for the session, on its website and on leaflets, had been misleading. 'I can understand why Muslim women need to have this kind of session, but the council should not be advertising it as parent and toddler,' he said.

The Daily Mail however blames Muslims:

The incident is the latest in a series of rows between local authorities and the public over swimming lessons for ethnic minority groups.

Except no one was actually rowing with the council over hiring the pool out to a third party.

Saudis play both sides

The Makkah Agreement between Hamas and Fatah has once again put the cat among the pigeons. The internal fighting can stop and the business of governing and freeing a nation can once again begin (listen to this week's podcast for more).

Hamas have managed to forge an agreement with the US and Israeli-backed Fatah without caving into their demands. As such it is fascinating to see the silence which has greeted the agreement. The Quartet have thus far not come out and said that sanctions will cease, despite their current favoured son Abu Mazen jumping in bed with Hamas.

The Saudis meanwhile have apparently offered £1bn dollars to the new government, eclipsing the donations from Iran. I've posted before about the complete lack of support from Arab states for the Palestinians, so this is a step change.

Set against the recent US courting of "moderate" Sunni countries (Saudi, Egypt, Jordan) in order to  garner support for an assault on Iran, it will be interesting to see the US's next move. Will they risk upsetting the Saudis by rejecting their brokered agreement? Or will Iran take strategic precedence? Or will the US and Israel be able to have their cake and eat it?

However, the Fanonite cites articles showing the Saudis are now actually investing in Israel.

Tory doormats

The Policy Exchange report into the Muslim community has come in for criticism since its publication. Prominently, Tariq Modood and (perhaps surprisingly and therefore significantly) Ziauddin Sardar wrote a letter to the Guardian.

The same newspaper then published a critique by Marie Breen Smyth and Jeroen Gunning who are respectively director and deputy director of the Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Contemporary Political Violence at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Meanwhile, the Times carried an article by Policy Exchange research director Dean Godson, about the "struggle for the soul of Islam". Justifying the Tory position of sidelining all of Britain's main Muslim organisations, his point was that complaints from Muslims had to stop. Singling out Birmingham Central Mosque's Dr Naseem as an example, he said:

Dr Naseem can denounce 7/7 until el Andalus becomes Muslim again, but the fact remains that he caters to the sense of oppression that fuels jihadi violence.

This was after he said that Dr Naseem wasn't representative, that no one listens to him and that Muslims had had enough (before extolling the virtues of the Sufi Muslim Council of course). But the main point here is that it's not good enough that Muslims condemn Al-Qaeda terrorism anymore. They should also stop talking about Iraq and the erosion in this country's civil liberites. Forget the fact that these aren't just Muslim issues, Muslims uniquely now aren't allowed to bring them up. What the Tories are looking for are not Muslims to work with - they're looking for doormats with "Uncle Tom" written on them.

The headteacher who took the decision to ban a 12-year-old girl from wearing the niqab at school, has said in the resultant court case that she did so to promote equality between men and women:

As a girls' school for over 100 years, we are very conscious of our duty to educate girls to regard themselves as equals to men and to gain the self-confidence to live and work in British and international society on the same level as men.

I've been wary of the politics of this issue, where it should actually be about what the rules are and how they're enforced. Either the niqab is, or is not, part of the uniform. The court needs to decide whether it is legitimate for the school to enforce the ban. It should not be deciding whether or not it promotes equality between men or woman. That kind of subjectivity could open a can of worms on all sorts of articles of clothing.

Nor should it be deciding whether it is an integral part of Islam. Taj Hargey (head of the hugely representative Muslim organisation MECO) has been championed by the Daily Telegraph for saying he will - thanks to international donors (presumably not Saudi) - put up £500,000 to help the school's battle. Given Hargey's clear ideological position on this, I can't see how the school can in all good conscience accept this loaded money.

Foreign Office minister Kim Howells:

"Our experience tells us that a 'war for peace' approach inevitably means more war, rather than peace. And violence comes with too high a price. It is the people who suffer, as human rights are eroded, the humanitarian situation deteriorates and mistrust between communities increases."

He was lecturing Sri Lankans.

For those in and around Glasgow, the debate below may be of interest:

‘This house believes that the legacy of 30 years of 'multiculturalism' is division”

Thursday 15th February, 7pm, Debates Chamber, Glasgow University Union

Proposition: 

Mona Siddiqui – Director of Islamic Studies and the Public Understanding of Islam
David Adams – Ex-Leader of GU Conservative Party & 3 time world debater
Gordon Fraser - Former Conservative parliamentary candidate
George Newlands – Minister of the Church of Scotland and Professor of Divinity at Glasgow University

Opposition:

Osama Saeed – commentator and activist
Graham Campbell – Solidarity Scotland
Peter Neilson – Chairman of UKIP Scotland
Aamer Anwar- human rights lawyer

Should be interesting - we've got UKIP fighting the good fight, and a Church of Scotland minister on the other.

 

The iWitness have some news as to why Yvonne Ridley has been dropped by the Islam Channel.

Rod Liddle on the motoring bomber

Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle weighs into the debate on the angry motorist who is sending letter bombs to the country's driving institutions. Responding to Richard Littlejohn's remarkable plea for someone to examine the root causes of his grievance, Liddle says:

Well, the “root cause”, mate, is a profound psychological imbalance on the part of the bomber, not our road safety legislation.

So it's not the fault of Britain's motoring community then?

Littlejohn ponders root causes of terror

The case of the motoring terrorist and it's parallels with the treatment of Muslims has deliciously ensnared Richard Littlejohn. Here's him in his Daily Mail column today:

Obviously, 49,999,999 of us are mainly content just to seethe and grumble at the systematic, totalitarian destruction of our liberties.

Someone out there, though, has been driven to violence. I can't say I'm surprised, even though I abhor what he's doing.

...

What separates us from the letter bomber is our innate respect for the law and human life. But we can all empathise with what drives him over the edge.

...

Maybe the maniac who is sending out letter bombs was just like the rest of us until he snapped.

I hope they catch him soon. He's a dangerous man, who has already harmed enough innocent people. But will anyone in authority pause to consider the root cause of the grievances which drove him to this madness?

If anyone ever said anything like this about al-Qaeda, the accusations, not least from Littlejohn himself, would be of "justifying" and "excusing" them, along with the chorus that we can't appease and give into this kind of thing.

In the article he also says he'd be happy if someone sent a bomb to Ken Livingstone. Now imagine a Muslim said that about Tony Blair, what would the reaction from Littlejohn...... you get the idea.

Hat tip to Islamophobia Watch. More with Chick Yog who has had exclusive access to the video from the motor bomber, and Lenin's Tomb for more comedy.

What's Islamophobia?

When you're afraid of a piece of meat because it happened to have had God's name pronounced over it in Arabic.

The inhumanity of control orders

I'm someone who likes to think that he's pretty plugged into the ins and outs of the erosion in civil liberites over the last few years. I still couldn't help but be taken aback by the footage garnered by the Channel 4 Dispatches programme on Monday.

Rather than just read about these nameless men who are represented by letters of the alphabet, for the first time we saw their faces, and heard their voices tell their stories. The choice that one had to make in either continuing the sad farce of this government imposed existence indefinitely, or letting his wife and kids get on with their lives by voluntarily sending himself back to Algeria was one that none of us can relate to. Two previous detainees have done precisely this, and no one has heard from them since. As we heard in the programme, the Algerian view on torture is "Of course we do it! What do you think we give them flowers?"

Nick Boles and Policy Exchange

I'm sure everyone has been following Tim Ireland's recent re-explosion back into the blogosphere. Not so much back with a bang but back with several. He's had a go at Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale and now the laser is fixed on Nick Boles of Policy Exchange.

I blogged quite a bit about Policy Exchange last week, so I particularly welcome Tim's expose of the think tank director's use of its resources to help his bid to be next Mayor of London. Even more rich because of fellow Tory and Policy Exchange colleague Iain Dale's scoop last week where he got media coverage for the Smith Institute's close links with Gordon Brown. Think tanks that benefit from charitable status shouldn't be politically partisan you see...

In the light of the events of the past few days, d'you reckon the government will be urging moderate members of organisations representing the nation's motorists to address the actions of the extremists within their midst? Just a thought.

Guardian Diary

HSBC are creaming £660,000 a month in bank charges from the EU's new arrangements for giving aid to Palestine. Oxfam are calling for Europe to go back to the method of money transfer they were using before the Hamas election victory.

Hirsi Ali compares Islam and Catholicism to Nazism

Metro: Do you see any positive sides to Islam?

Hirsi Ali: That’s like asking if I see positive sides to Nazism, communism, Catholicism.

Police blame government for terror leaks - to divert attention from cash-for-honours

Astonishing article in the Guardian suggesting that the government used the anti-terror arrests in Birmingham this week to divert attention away from their own problems, most prominently the cash-for honours affair and the prisons crisis.

One newspaper is said to have known about the arrests the night before they happened.

Police are said to be furious about the situation. As such, on this occasion they've distanced themselves from the leaks. Which kind of does leave the government rather hung out to dry - if only anyone would bother querying the morality of the practice. An MoD spokesperson were less than robust in denial:

"I can only speak for what has been done on the record by the press office."

Nine people have been arrested. None have been charged. The police claims are not a million miles from what Muslims are being demonised in the press for as "paranoid". It seems some people will never learn. We've had Old Trafford Bomb plot that never was, Edinburgh Hogmanay bomb plot that never was, ricin bomb plot that never was, and the Forest Gate chemical vest that never was. All commanded lurid headlines thanks to leaks from yon high. Over 1,100 people have been arrested under the Terrorism Acts, with only 12 Muslims convicted. Yet we're expected to believe this latest chapter with not so much as a single charge, never mind conviction, made.

What goes on in mosques

Must pull up Henry Porter for his article in today's Observer. I don't like doing so, as he is a bane of the Blair administration over civil liberties. Citing the Channel 4 Dispatches investigation Undercover Mosque he begins:

Imagine the Archbishop of Canterbury or any senior Anglican clergyman giving a sermon which suggested that homosexual men should be thrown off a mountain; that they were no better than filthy dogs.

Come on Henry, the people making the offending remarks were in no way comparable to the heads of the CoE. One of the points I didn't make at the time was that those featured making the bigoted comments on the film were nobodies in the Muslim community. I doubt some of them are even famous in the very mosques they were espousing their doctrine. Certainly their audiences seemed to be almost in single figures. As I heard George Galloway put it on his radio show: "If I haven't heard of them, they don't count".

Murray smashes Cohen

No doubt you'll come across the fact that the latter has a book out about how the left are bad. Chief among his criticism of leftists currently is their association with Muslims. Stop the War's Andrew Murray says of this on CiF:

His method is not in the least bit novel. In one passage he suggests that since the Stop the War Coalition organised demonstrations with the Muslim Association of Britain, and the Muslim Association of Britain is associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Muslim Brotherhood looks up to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and Qaradawi has made undoubtedly offensive remarks about gays and women ... then the Stop the War Coalition is sexist and homophobic. Even Senator McCarthy might have collapsed through exhaustion before arriving at Cohen's destination.

It's an easy game to play. Nick Cohen writes for the Evening Standard, which is published by Associated Newspapers, which owns the Daily Mail, which is not just homophobic but Tory so Nick Cohen is ... Conservative? Not yet, not yet.

Actually Cohen's links are a bit easier, as Murray mentions earlier in the article that he has been wined and dined by Paul Wolfowitz in the past.

Yesterday's Channel 4 Insider programme was most illuminating. Zubair Mulla exposed that there is a chemical in this country that is killing 60 people a day - a daily toll equal to the 7/7 bombings. Doctors and ambulance people are complaining that 60-70% of their time is being taken up dealing with the effects of it.

Worse still, the government is afraid to do anything about it because the people contaminating the country with it are such a powerful lobby.

The programme was talking about alcohol.

Mirror images of the BNP

When it comes to identifying mirror images of the BNP, you need to actually examine what the party are saying. Last month they complained that Tony Blair had stolen their clothes after his speech on multiculturalism. It was Blair who parked his tanks in the Tory garden but subsequently they have come to be influenced by the current prime minister in a spell only Margaret Thatcher could previously cast.

Outmanoeuvred on the right, Cameron played the party political game by condemning the ‘clunking’ initiatives from the Labour Party in the last few months, only to adopt a position more extreme than anything Labour have produced yet.

He said he would decouple the issues of terrorism and multiculturalism, despite the fact it was his national security policy review that was making the announcements regarding community cohesion and Britain’s Muslim organisations. In fact, in Monday’s speech he went further than any senior politician to date in fusing the two issues together.