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  • johnpi 2:26 pm on February 27, 2010 | 6 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , UK

    Lucky you…’Brighton Tea Party’: Tea Party movement spreads to Britain.

    Apparently some character named Daniel Hannan is involved:

    In addition to being anti-tax and a vocal Eurospectic, Hannan is also well known for his outspoken criticism of publicly funded health care. Last summer he appeared on Fox News to bash proposals to fix the US health care system as well as rail against Britain’s health services.

    ‘Eurospectic’ – Did they mean ‘Eurocentric’?

    Who knew Brits were pining for a US-style health system…

     

  • plimfix 6:43 am on February 27, 2010 | 5 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: MUQ, , UK

    “Every Salafi and Deobandi is not a terrorist but I have no hesitation in saying that everyone is a well-wisher of terrorists and this has not been appreciated by the Western governments.” Dr. Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri, head of Minhaj ul Qur’an International (MUQ), quoted in an article in This is London by Allegra Mostyn-Owen (herself linked to MUQ) and endorsed by the not very nice Douglas Murray, Director of the Centre for Social Cohesion. For an intelligent response to Qadri’s comments, see Indigo Jo Blogs.

     

  • plimfix 12:37 am on February 24, 2010 | 3 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , UK

    In the long running saga to reform sex education in British schools, the UK government tabled a last minute ammendment to the Children, Schools and Families Bill which will allow sex education to be taught in England in a way that reflects a school’s “religious character”. Secularists have described the ammendment as an ‘opt out’ for faith schools, a charge denied by schools minister Jim Knight. “There’s no other subject that schools would be allowed to teach with their own version of the truth,” claims atheist Mark Steel, who mocks the ammendment as absurd and unworkable. The Head of a Muslim faith school interviewed on Radio 4 was asked how a gay pupil would feel being taught that his sexuality was wrong. “He’d have to think very deeply.” He said. The Bill will come into effect in September 2011. In a letter to The Guardian, Ed Balls, Secretary of state for children, schools and families, has stated all schools must have “a zero-tolerance approach to bully­ing” and “specific guidance on tackling homophobic bullying” will be issued in due course.

     

  • plimfix 2:17 pm on February 17, 2010 | 3 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , liberal rubbish, meco, , , UK,

    MECO (Muslim Educational Centre at Oxford) launches ABNI (anti-Burqa and Niqab Initiative), a “Muslim-led protest” that argues Islam “does not necessitate women to tuck away their faces in public.” MECO is the mouthpiece of ‘Imam’ Taj Hargey (PhD African history), self-proclaimed victim of Muslim McCarthyites, and a man of impeccable character. Dearest Taj is also linked to British Muslims for Secular Democracy, an organization founded by my favourite Muslim columnist, Yasmin Alibi-Brain.

     

  • plimfix 1:07 pm on February 10, 2010 | 7 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , UK,

    Two revelations today. First, unbeknown to me and others, the much criticised Sufi Muslim Council — who claimed to have the support of the ’silent majority’ of British Muslims — were being funded by the UK government, under their anti-terrorism programme Prevent. Not much of surprise really, given the group’s vocal support for New Labour’s anti-terrorism policy. Second, they won’t be getting any funding in 2010. In respect of the latter revelation, as they say in my part of the world, there’ll be more laughers than criers.

     

  • johnpi 10:32 pm on February 5, 2010 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Joel Titus, Matthew Kaplan edl, , , , , UK, ,

    Several days ago I posted a photo from Internet vigilante Charlie Flowers’ Facebook page that i contended showed he had an English Defence League connnection. Richard Bartholomew looked at the same photo and thought I had made an ‘imaginative leap.’

    Flowers’ or one of his ‘Cheerleader’ associates has resolved the issue themselves by posting new photos to Facebook of Flowers meeting with EDL youth division leader Joel Titus, an activist with a history of violence who was recently arrested for assaulting a photojournalist, and Matthew Kaplan, who Bartholomew reports is the paid EDL publications coordinator responsible for leaflets and press releases.

    In comments to Bartholomew’s earlier post, Flowers’ or one of his supporters seems to have been most animated by the accusation that Flowers may be affiliated with or have affinity for racists or white supremacists. This latest photo seems a calculated response meant to subvert that conclusion. An anti-Fascist publication describes the mixed-race Titus as the figure the EDL “parades to the media as proof of their non-racist agenda.” Kaplan is a Jewish American student from Seattle, which supposedly rebuts the EDL’s reputation for Nazi affinities. Kaplan has appeared at several EDL demonstrations waving the Israeli flag. However the presence of minorities and Jews is hardly a defense. Racism and religious persecution are as much about who you exclude as who you let in.

    Flowers and his Internet vigilante friends the ‘Cheerleaders’ claim to be opposed to Islamic extremism, but they are actually against Islam and target Muslims indiscriminately, just as their fellow travelers in the EDL do, and there is no better evidence of that than the intimidation tactics they engaged in here at Talk Islam, publishing several front page contributors’ home addresses and sending mail to one blogger’s home. They have also repeatedly threatened me.

    None of those targeted – Hussein Rashid, Aziz Poonawalla or myself – could be described as anything other than moderate or progressive Muslims who have wrtten against extremism and religious violence.

     

  • plimfix 3:08 am on February 5, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , UK

    Muslim fundamentalists should ‘drink wine to learn tolerance’, says the intellectual visage of the British right, philosopher Roger Scrutton. And what does he recommend as a tipple for fundamentalist Christians? Perhaps his remarks were inspired by Conservative MP Philip Hollobone’s equally hilarious quip comparing life inside a Burka to “going round with a paper bag over your head”. No doubt, both Scrutton and Holobone would deny any link between their inflamatory language and hate crimes against Muslims, as a report recently claimed. Here’s a funnier joke: how do you stop a right wing philosopher from drowning?

     

  • plimfix 4:12 am on February 2, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , UK

    “This is part of the character of Great Britain. Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness.” So says novelist Wole Soyinka, in order to justify his assertion that Britain is a “cesspit of Islamists.” Innate arrogance? Postcolonial piffle!

     

  • plimfix 12:13 pm on January 29, 2010 | 4 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , indoctrination, , , UK,

    The British government’s Prevent anti-terrorism strategy has been educating young Muslims about ‘propaganda’. Only I wouldn’t call it education. I’d call it indoctrination. But perhaps that’s because I subscribe to Terry Pratchett’s ideals on education: build a library, and open the doors.

     

  • plimfix 5:32 am on January 28, 2010 | 5 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , UK

    Dr Jonathan Githens-Mazer of the University of Exeter’s European Muslim research centre and former special branch detective and Scotland Yard counter-terrorism officer Dr Robert Lambert have published a study which “provides prima facie and empirical evidence to demonstrate that…” people in London who commit crimes against Muslims “…are invariably motivated by a negative view of Muslims they have acquired from either mainstream or extremist nationalist reports or commentaries in the media.” An extensive study into the largely negative representations of Muslims in the British media was previously carried out by Elizabeth Poole: Reporting Islam (2002, I B Tauris), which concluded that “…the media as an instrument of public ideology demonizes Islam, portraying it as a threat to Western interests, thus reproducing, producing and sustaining the ideology necessary to subjugate Muslims both internationally and domestically.” (p.17)

    It will be interesting to see how much airtime the British media give to this study, and how it’s represented. My scepticism is coloured by the fact that, several years ago, I was talking to a media studies academic at a major British University who claimed to have taken a special interest in Islamophobia in the media, and was even blogging on it. Despite it being widely cited, he’d never even heard of Poole’s study, or research done by Richardson. However, he was aware of a paper, not based on any empirical research, which argued against the existence of Islamophobia in the media.

     

  • johnpi 12:36 am on January 27, 2010 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Harrath, , Mohamed Ali Harrath, , , , UK

    Chief of UK’s Islam Channel arrested in South Africa, faces deportation to Tunisia.

    Mohamed Ali Harrath, 46, is the force behind the Islam Channel, which is watched by 59 per cent of British Muslims and beamed by satellite to 132 countries.
    ….

    The Islam Channel last night accused Tunisia of using Interpol to harass and intimidate Harrath.

    Before fleeing his homeland, he co-founded the Tunisian Islamic Front, which Tunis accused of seeking to establish a Muslim state by armed revolutionary violence. Harrath insists that the organisation was a non-violent political party set up to oppose what he regarded as Tunisia’s one-party rule.

    At Tunisia’s request, he has been on an Interpol Red Notice, its highest form of alert, since 1992 but was allowed into Britain in 1995 and accepted as a refugee.

    Harrath has been convicted in absentia of numerous criminal and terrorism-related offences by Tunisian courts and sentenced to 56 years in prison.

     

  • johnpi 7:46 pm on January 22, 2010 | 3 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , UK

    UK terror threat raised from ’substantial’ to ’severe.’

     

  • johnpi 8:05 am on January 21, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , UK,

    Muslim police in the UK have attacked the government’s anti-terrorism strategy for triggering an upsurge in Islamophobia and deepening divisions in communities.

    The National Association of Muslim Police (NAMP) warned that the Prevent programme, which aims to combat violent extremism, was “stigmatising” Muslims by focusing on “so-called Islamist extremism.”

    The group said the real threat came from the growing far-right movement.

    “The hatred towards Muslims has grown to a level that defies all logic and is an affront to British values,” said the association in a written submission to a parliamentary commission examining the anti-terror initiative.

    “The climate is such that Muslims are subject to daily abuse in a manner that would be ridiculed by Britain, were this to occur anywhere else.”

    There may be a “connection in the rise of Islamophobia and our Prevent programme as it feeds on the stereotypes that the media and some rightwing parties promote,” the group said.

    These stereotypes were that “all Muslims are evil and non-trustworthy”, added the officers.

     

  • aziz 7:16 pm on January 18, 2010 | 5 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: plagiarism, , , Tahir Abbas, UK

    Noted sociologist Dr Tahir Abbas was accused of plagiarism by his department at the University of Birmingham. But Nafeez Ahmed points out the official story is pretty fishy, and speculates that institutional racism might be at play. It’s a pretty murky affair and I wonder if any UK-based readers or frontpagers here at Talk Islam might be able to lend any insight?

     

  • johnpi 8:09 am on January 12, 2010 | 3 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , UK

    Islam4UK, Islamist group, banned In United Kingdom.

    The group, Islam4UK, will be banned starting Thursday, said Home Secretary Alan Johnson. The move will allow authorities to arrest people who meet in the group’s name and seize its assets.

    Islam4UK reacted with outrage. Omar Bakri Mohamed, a Lebanon-based cleric who serves as the group’s spiritual leader, claimed that the ban could push some of his members to violence.

     

  • johnpi 10:04 pm on January 11, 2010 | 5 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , UK

    Muslim prisoners in the UK ‘refuse to take part in rehabilitation programmes.’

    Previously, Muslim prisoners refused to take part in Sex Offender Treatment Programmes because it involved talking about offences against women, but now some are refusing to take part in all rehabilitation sessions where they have to ‘open up’ in front of other cons.

    A little more explanation:

    One Muslim prisoner, Abu Dira, a maximum security prisoner at HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire, said this week: “Muslims cannot speak about their past crimes in a group setting.

    “It is an established concept within the Sharia that a Muslim must not speak about the Haraam – prohibited things – and certainly should not advertise past mistakes to their peers.”

    He says that it is clear from the words of Islamic prophet Muhammad, called a Hadith, that it was wrong to talk about past crimes.

    He said: “This is clearly supported by Hadith – If you keep your evil away from the people, Allah will record this as a charitable act from yourself for yourself, so corruption is not to be spread amongst Muslims.”

    A religious ward against treatment of psych disorders and violent social dysfunction. Total disaster. Nihilism. This isn’t about Western information vs. Islamic information; these guys need to learn skills and practice using them to make it less likely that they do the crimes again.

     

  • johnpi 8:38 am on January 10, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , UK,

    Majority of English are concerned that the UK is becoming deeply divided by religion.

    Only a quarter of respondents said they ‘feel positive’ toward Muslims.

     

  • johnpi 9:54 am on January 7, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , UK, ,

    Yemen says Abdulmutallab may have met Anwar al-Awlaki, but avers that he was initially recruited into Al Qaeda in Britain.

    The Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a U.S. passenger plane on Christmas met in a remote mountainous area of Yemen with regional al-Qaida leaders, possibly including a radical American cleric who was also in contact with the alleged Fort Hood shooter, Yemen’s deputy prime minister said Thursday.

    However, Rashad al-Alimi insisted that 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was recruited by al-Qaida in Britain, before he arrived in Yemen last summer, and that he obtained the explosives used in the failed attack after he left Yemen.

     

  • johnpi 9:42 am on January 4, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , NEFA foundation, , , , , , , , UK

    Revolution Muslim’s ‘imam and spiritual advisor’ deported from Kenya.

    That would be Abdullah al-Faisal who was deported from the UK in 2007 after serving a prison sentence for preaching racial hatred and calling for the killing of Jews, Christians and other Westerners. He entered Kenya Dec. 24th on a “preaching tour.”

    “The contacts he was maintaining, according to our intelligence, are not the best, are not in our national interests. The contacts were … in some neighbouring countries.”
    ….

    Some Kenyan Muslim clerics demonstrated against Faisal’s arrest on Sunday and said he was going to preach on greater autonomy for Muslims.

    “Of course, he did not come here to appease the Kenyan government or the police, but to do his job,” said Sheikh Yahya Mohamed Atie, a retired army captain and a member of Nairobi’s Jamia Mosque.

    “He was calling Muslims to have more freedom. Of course, he is against democracy.”

    Back in the 1990s, al-Faisal called for the assassination of former Philly Imam Abu Usamah Ath-Thahabi, who more recently was reported to be a liar, swindler and womanizer on Salafi Burnout’s blog.

    The Kenyan authorities are said to be “so annoyed” with him that they won’t even grant him a transit visa back to Jamaica.

    The NEFA Foundation, a US anti-terrorism think tank, published a new backgrounder on him in October in which it says al-Faisal is described by ‘Revolution Muslim’ as its imam and spiritual advisor.

    Abdullah al-Faisal has a loyal following that is dedicated to promoting his ideology to others via the Internet and through in-person delivery of compact disc recordings. Additionally, al-Faisal regularly generates new material by giving public lectures, which are then recorded and distributed electronically and on CDs. Thus, the pervasiveness of his influence is spread quickly and broadly.

     

  • plimfix 2:36 pm on January 3, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , anjem choudray, UK

    A post at A History of the Universe (my renamed blog): Anjem Choudary: Idiot!

     

  • johnpi 10:59 pm on December 29, 2009 | 6 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , UK, UK media

    I would appreciate some of our UK readers and contributors stepping up to help us sort bulls*** from substance in what’s being spit out in the UK press right now.

    For example, is The Times considered mainstream media? Left-wing, right-wing? Reliably objective or not? How should I know. I’m in America.

    But anyway, here’s a little something from the Times today about Abdulmutallab’s participation in organizing a ‘War on Terror’ week protest:

    His role in organising War on Terror Week is the first indication that during his years in London he was heavily involved in radical political activity. Experts believe that this would have put him at risk of being groomed by al-Qaeda recruiters who routinely prey on such radical religious and political gatherings. “Before someone goes off for explosives training they have to be converted to the cause of al-Qaeda,” said Professor Anthony Glees, of the University of Buckingham.

    “I think that happened in London in the case of Abdulmutallab, as has happened to many others. He is one of a considerable number of people who have turned to al-Qaeda after being recruited in the UK. This recruitment often goes on where political events take place. Those who speak at such events are not terrorists, but they are being irresponsible if they do not realise that what they say could contribute to the radicalisation of people who could then be recruited into terror.”

    Anthony Glees, you may recall, was the guy who advocated for internment camps in the UK ‘to be on the table as an option’ for dealing with the ‘Muslim problem.’

    Is the fact that a degenerate like Glees is being quoted in the Times ‘normal’ for that paper, or is this an alarming sign that thinkers from way out in the right-wing universe are being ‘mainstreamed’?

     

  • johnpi 12:10 am on December 28, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , UK, , , Visa Waiver program

    US Islamophobe Debbie Schlussel is really targeting UK Muslims when she calls for the end of the Visa Waiver program.

    Abdulmutallab–from a prominent, wealthy, religious Muslim Nigerian family–was recruited to become a jihadist, not in his native Nigeria, but in Great Britain, where he spent three years as a student at University College London.

    It’s yet another reason why the Visa Waiver program (granting certain designated Western countries an exemption from the usually more stringent visa process to travel to the U.S.) is a huge mistake. We know Muslims come to the U.S. from various assorted Western Visa Waiver countries, and even though Abdulmutallab did not, he was recruited and radicalized in a Visa Waiver Country, Britain, where British nationals are also recruited for Islamic terrorism.

     

  • johnpi 11:49 pm on December 27, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , UK,

    UK Islamophobe ‘Mad Mel’ uses the attempted bombing of a US airliner to pile on UK Muslims.

    …the astounding fact is that Islamic extremist networks are still allowed to flourish in Britain, largely through the obsession of its governing class with multiculturalism and ‘human rights’.

    As usual, the real target is European liberalism.

     

  • johnpi 9:13 pm on December 27, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Omar Saeed, UK,

    Nigerians: ‘Don’t blame Nigerian Islam, the problem is UK Islam.’

    For residents in his home town, it was Umar Abdulmutallab’s foreign education, not his roots in Muslim northern Nigeria, that radicalized him and led him to try to blow up a U.S. passenger plane.
    ….

    If Abdulmutallab was radicalized outside Nigeria as many of his compatriots believe, his case would have precedents.

    Ahmed Saeed Omar Sheikh, or Sheikh Omar, who was sentenced to death in Pakistan in 2002 for the killing of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl and suspected of links to the September 11, 2001 attacks, came from a similarly privileged background.

    Born in Britain in the early 1970s, Omar was the son of a wholesale clothes merchant from Wanstead in northeast London who went to an expensive school but dropped out of one of Britain’s top universities, the London School of Economics.

    Young Muslims who grew up in Funtua insist it was Abdulmutallab’s life overseas, which they view as alien, not Nigerian Islam that gave rise to his extremist views.

    “We the children of the masses in this country, we don’t know anything about terrorism because our parents are poor. They don’t have the money to take us abroad,” said 25-year old student and Funtua resident Usman Mati.

     

  • johnpi 8:49 am on December 24, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , UK,

    UK Muslim group slams Britain’s pledge to change law that threatened Israeli VIPs with arrest.

    Britain’s flagship Muslim organization on Wednesday attacked a government pledge to reform a war crimes law used to try to arrest visiting Israeli dignitaries, saying the move could hurt Britain’s image in the Middle East.

    The Muslim Council of Britain said it was “deeply disappointed” that the country’s foreign minister, David Miliband, promised to change the law so that judges could no longer issue secret arrest warrants against Israeli officials or military officers, saying the move was biased toward Israel.

    “You appear to be committing the government to the path of selective compliance with the enforcement of international law,” the council’s Secretary General Muhammad Abdul Bari wrote in a letter to Miliband. “This is surely not in the best interests of our country as it will add a further dimension to the double standards that our government is seen to have in relation to the politics of the Middle East.”

     

  • johnpi 9:47 am on December 18, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , UK

    ‘The UK is not a banana republic.’

    Comment made in reference to the UK’s apology to Israel for issuing an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli foreign minister.

    Al Jazeera editorial:

    The groveling apology to Israel, after the British ambassador was summoned for a reprimand by the Israeli foreign ministry, is the type of reaction expected from a banana republic, not from Great Britain.

    Should the foreign secretary entertain Lieberman, a Jewish settler himself and a resident of Nokdim, a West Bank settlement considered illegal under international law? What a contradiction.

    The official policy of the UK government is that all settlements in the lands occupied in 1967 are illegal and violate UN Security Council resolutions and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

    Not the kind of thing you’ll be reading in Al Jazeera anymore if Haim Saban gets his hands on Al jazeera.

     

  • plimfix 1:28 pm on December 13, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , UK

     

  • johnpi 11:29 pm on December 10, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , UK

    Pakistanis most likely to be turned down for UK visas.

    Pakistanis are more likely to be turned down for visas to visit the UK than any other nationals, figures show.

    Some 41% of family visitor visa applications from Pakistan were rejected in the last year, according to the Home Office statistics.
    ….

    Sarah Teather, Lib Dem MP for Brent East, blames discrimination by the Home Office. The government denies this.

     

  • johnpi 5:43 pm on December 5, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , UK

    Arrests at anti-Islam protest in UK.

     

  • johnpi 12:11 am on November 12, 2009 | 12 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , UK,

    Anwar al-Awlaki in the UK: Formerly approving Muslim politicians shrink away, tapes and DVDs still widely available on the street.

    An SNP spokesman said last night: “Anwar al-Awlaki formerly expressed moderate views — his more recent comments are disgraceful and have been condemned by all right-thinking people, including Azad Ali and Osama Saeed. Any attempt to smear any individual in the UK over this would be appalling.”

    While some people such as Mr Saeed now distance themselves from Mr Awlaki, his lectures continue to be circulated widely. The Times acquired DVDs of his lectures at two Islamic bookshops in East London, while Jimas, a registered charity based in Ipswich, offers downloads of his sermons on its website.

    It’s been over 7 years since al-Awlaki expressed moderate views. It stretches credulity to think these politicians were checked out all along, especially since he was banned from the country at some point during that time which must have made the news. I don’t believe the pols are ’secret Islamists,’ but I do believe that they may have been pandering to conservative Muslims who admire al-Awlaki.

     

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