China has a long history of Muslim persecution that goes back decades. Will this story be reported by the “revolutionary socialist” blogs which claim to catalogue incidents of Islamophobia? This means either Islamophobia-Watch (“Documenting anti-Muslim bigotry”) or SocialistUnity? Unlikely, neither Islamists nor the far-left, in their efforts to attribute blame to incidents of draconian anti-Muslim bigotry include abuses by the PRC. Why the ideological selectiveness, you may ask? Simple, China isn’t Jewish Israeli enough for the Islamists to get their bilious juices flowing, and the British far-left just can’t bash the bugbears of “Western Imperialism” and “Zionism” when it comes to Chinese Islamophobia, they really are not that concerned about Chinese Muslims.

For years, China has restricted observance of Ramadan for Communist Party members and government cadres. On one website for an agricultural bureau, for instance, employees were reminded “not to practice any religion, not to attend religious events and not to fast.”

This year, the local Communist Party also ordered restaurants to remain open during the day, even though chefs and most of their potential customers were fasting. Failure to keep their doors open made restaurants subject to fines of up to $780, the equivalent of several months’ salary.

So restaurateurs made token gestures, assigning one waiter to sit in the doorway and a chef to make a single dish that would be either eaten cold at night or discarded.

In Kashgar, across from the Id Kah Mosque, the largest in China, travelers described a bored teenage waiter in a Muslim skullcap sitting in the doorway of a darkened restaurant looking out onto the dusty sidewalk as if waiting for the customers he knew wouldn’t come.

Along the entire strip, restaurants were similarly unlit and empty, with none of the usual smells of roasting lamb wafting from the kitchens.

“They just offer what they can to avoid trouble,” said a doctor in his late 20s, who asked not to be quoted by name for fear of retaliation. He described the compromise at one of his favorite restaurants, where the chef made only rice pilaf. “The chefs can’t even taste the food to make sure it is delicious.”

The policy extended deeper into Xinjiang province than just Kashgar. In Aksu, 250 miles to the northeast, the municipal website warned that restaurant owners “who close without reason during the ‘Ramadan period’ will be severely dealt with according to the relevant regulations.”

Residents of Xinjiang province say that Chinese policies regarding Ramadan have become steadily more draconian over the years.

the latest blethering from the egregious dr miller is that the “conservative thinktanks” policy exchange and the centre for social cohesion are soft-pedalling the racism and violence of groups like the bnp and edl because it “might deflect attention” from islamism – defined by him as:

“the catch-all term for politically active muslims”

now i carry no particular brief for either of the thinktanks he mentions, but this is breathtakingly brazen doublespeak: come on, dr miller – everyone knows what is meant by the term “islamist”. are the muslim brotherhood, jamaat-i-islami, tablighi jamaat islamists? of course they bloody are! are the quilliam foundation, of british muslims for secular democracy “islamists”? are the muslims who work for csc or policy exchange, “islamists”? or, for that matter, the muslim authors at the spittoon? of course not. there is no reason muslims shouldn’t be politically active – either as muslims, or as british citizens, but there’s plenty of reason to be rude about people who are pushing extremist, clerical fascist, racist and homophobic agendas – unless you’re a doctrinaire leftie, that is.

it gets worse – dr miller now appears to be attempting to suggest that by attacks on islamists bolster islamophobia, which ultimately results in things like the breivik atrocity in norway. this is an outrageous caricature – the sort of thing we’d normally expect to see coming out of exeter, not strathclyde! as any regular reader will know, we are not exactly fans of the bnp or the edl.

on the other hand, as we know very well here at the spittoon, “spinwatch” is not exactly careful with its analysis:

http://www.spittoon.org/archives/9428

perhaps we should not be surprised that dr miller can’t tell the difference between islamists and liberals; it seems to be a bit of a theme on the left these days.

Following the publication of ‘Enemies Not Allies: The Far-Right’, our new report which investigates his and similar organisations, Stop Islamization of America director Robert Spencer has invited One Law for All to ‘substantiate [our] charges, or withdraw them and issue a public apology.’ One could simply recommend that Mr. Spencer read our report. Indeed, in his ‘rebuttal’, he writes as if he has answered all of these charges before. It’s therefore strange that he felt the need to reply to them at ‘11:53pm’ on a Sunday night, and to attempt to smear his critics as ‘racist anti-Semites’ and ‘supporters of Jihad’. One could be forgiven for thinking that Mr. Spencer hoped to prevent people from reading the report for themselves.

In any event, I’m happy to list our main charges against his group and refer interested readers to the relevant citations in our report:

- Stop Islamisation of Europe is the ‘expansion’ of a Danish anti-Muslim party, Stop Islamiseringen af Danmark (SIAD), which was itself the result of a split within a xenophobic lobby group. (p.36-37) It calls for a boycott of all ‘Islamic countries’, for the Qur’an to be banned, for the mass deportation of immigrants from Europe, and protests against the building of Mosques. (p.37, 44-46) SIOE’s leadership consider all Muslims to be congenital liars who have a ‘culture of deceit’, and never tire of announcing that they ‘do not believe in moderate Muslims’. (p.40-41, and here)

- SIOE’s leaders have collaborated with and defended Julius Borgesen, former spokesperson for the right-wing extremist group Danske Front, which has ‘co-operated’ with Blood & Honour and Combat 18. Borgessen has reportedly participated in a march to celebrate Rudolf Hess, and was imprisoned in 2007 for calling for an arson attack against a Danish minister. SIOE insist that Borgesen is ‘in no way Nazi [or a racist], but is fighting for the democracy and freedom of Denmark’. (p.38-39) Further, there is evidence to suggest that other Danish neo-Nazis, as well as members of the BNP and the National Front, have attended SIOE and SIAD events. (p.38, 47)

- Stop Islamization of America is the U.S. branch of the SIOE umbrella group, and was entrusted by its leadership to Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer in January 2010. Geller and Spencer have praised SIOE, endorsed its political programme, published its statements and expressed admiration for its leaders. (p.48-49)

- SIOA’s leaders have surpassed SIOE’s defence of war criminal Radovan Karadzic, (which included offering justifications for his actions), by defending Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, denying Serbian atrocities including the Srebrenica genocide, publishing the work of professional apologists for the Milosevic project, and in Spencer’s case working on an institutional level with such people to oppose an independent Kosovo. Ms. Geller has gone so far as to say that Bosnian Muslims killed themselves in order to ‘manipulate media coverage’, and refers to the 1995 genocide as a ‘propaganda lie’ which was ‘manufactured [by] the international community’ as part of ‘the ongoing blood libel against the Christian Serbs’. (p.42-43, 53-54 and here)

This is presumably what Mr. Spencer means when he writes of SIOA’s ‘opposition to the jihad in the Balkans and skepticism (sic) about some of the charges made of Serbian war crimes.’

- SIOA’s leadership has supported, defended and praised the English Defence League, (without equivocation until recently), and has promoted their events, published their statements and attacked their critics. (p.55-59) Co-director Pamela Geller’s web log has featured conspiratorial articles regarding the President of America’s religion, his family, his sexual history, and the circumstances of his birth, and has likened his ‘stealth jihad on the White House’ to ‘an SS officer getting elected president during WW II’. (p.52-53) In 2010, Robert Spencer defended his and Geller’s ‘colleague’ Joseph John Jay, who had recommended the ‘wholesale slaughter’ of Muslim civilians, including children, on the grounds that he had been ‘misinterpreted’. Spencer maintains this still, and Ms. Geller has recommended Jay’s writings as recently as July 2011. (p.51-51)

I could go on, but I ought to address Mr. Spencer’s direct challenge regarding a quote of his which we included. Here is the quote, published on his Jihad Watch site in 2005: ‘there is no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists. While Americans prefer to imagine that the vast majority of American Muslims are civic-minded patriots who accept wholeheartedly the parameters of American pluralism, this proposition has actually never been proven.’

Writing today, Spencer claims ‘what [he] meant was there is no institutional distinction, so jihadis move freely in Muslim circles among those who oppose them and claim to do so’. However, when asked by a commenter on the original article in 2005 ‘how distinctions can be made’, Spencer replied: ‘That’s simple. Let American Muslims renounce all attachment to violent Jihad and Sharia, refuse all aid from Sharia states (chiefly Saudi Arabia), and cooperate fully with anti-terror efforts aimed at rooting jihadists out of American mosques.’ (p.52) Having thus identified all Muslims as suspects who are guilty until proven innocent, Spencer does not specify how to treat Muslims who do not ‘cooperate fully’, or who fail to make the prescribed disassociations. But based on his record and the company he keeps, I’m glad we’ll never have to find out what it might entail.

I think this meets Mr. Spencer’s challenge, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to bring all of this to people’s attention. I’m not sure how one squares the above with the claim that SIOA ‘stand[s] for the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and equality of rights for all people’. Perhaps Mr. Spencer will enlighten us.

I find it amusing how you throw “Anti-Semite” at her much like some Muslims throw “Islamophobe” at anyone who dares criticise Islam, simply because she criticised Israel’s tactics during the invasion of Gaza. It seems you have the attitude of anyone criticising Israel’s political and military policies is an anti-semite. Just as some Muslims have the attitude that anyone criticising Islam hates Muslims.

But worse than this your saying that moderates have “no truck” with extremists. I was Muslim most of my life, (I am 52) and my family and friends are Muslim and to imply that I never had – nor Muslims in general have – any problem with people who massacre innocent civilians or behead innocent people is deeply offensive to me. Do you also think the Synagogues and Jews Baruch Goldstein prayed with had “No truck” with him massacring 29 worshippers at a Mosque in Hebron? I suspect not. I guess guilt by association only applies to Muslims – right?

Unlike you, Maryam and CEMB don’t lump all Muslims (or any religious believers) in one boat, nor do we see Islam as a single homogenous entity. We were Muslims and we know about Islam and Muslims very well and have a much better understanding of the issues we face than you. Although we don’t believe in Islam, we have no problem with Muslims who wish to follow their own interpretations of Islam so long as they are peaceful and do not try to impose their beliefs on others. Just as we have no problem with those of other faiths who follow it peacefully.

We are only against the Islamists and harsh, literalist and violent interpretations of Islam and those who seek to impose it on others.

Contrary to what you may think there is no such thing as “True Islam”. There are many different traditions and interpretations and many personal versions of Islam that differ from Muslim to Muslim.

Of course every Muslim will tell you there is a “True Islam” and it just so happens to be the version they follow. But it is obvious they would say that since they are compelled to preserve the integrity of a religion they believe is revealed by God. But those of us who do not believe that Islam was the carefully planned work of an Omniscient and Omnipotent Creator, but the rather less carefully planned work of the human mind, are under no obligation to defend it’s integrity and consistency against all reason, when it is obvious that Muslims have very differing interpretations.

Even when one looks solely at the basic sources – the Qur’an and Hadith – it is clear that what Muhammad himself did and said varied at different points of his lifetime and according to the circumstances and each group is selective in how they interpret them. Nor is Abrogation – that you love to bring as evidence of the harsh verses superseding the peaceful one – as simple and straightforward as you make it out to be.

Anyone with the slightest knowledge of abrogation will know it creates more anomalies than it solves, and today huge numbers of Muslims reject the idea completely – as I did when I was a Muslim.

Regardless of how you or I wish to define Islam – it is not up to us but those who call themselves Muslims. I would no more impose my view that Christianity clearly considers homosexuality a sin, on a Christian who does not regard it as a sin – than I would impose my view that the Qur’an clearly allows a man to hit his wife on a Muslim who interprets; “Hit” as; “Leave her alone” – regardless of how absurd I may think those views to be.

We stand against Political Islam and the Islamists who hold harsh and violent views and who have a political agenda to impose Islam and Islamic Laws on others.

I agree that until the Islamists are defeated, it is extremely difficult for ordinary Muslims to live their lives according to their own ‘personal Islam’, and this is one reason we fight this battle, for all humanity – including Muslims themselves – who are the greatest victims of the Islamists.

I find it perverse that people like you want to convince everyone – including Muslims – that moderate forms of Islam are wrong and that the true version is the terrorists’ version and that Muslims that appear moderate are just practising “Taqiyyah”.

Of course I realise it is because you need to justify your agenda towards Muslims in general. To convince the public that ordinary Muslims are in league with the terrorists, they cannot be trusted and harsh and restrictive measures must be imposed on them all.

Even though you say you are against violence against Muslims it is clear from the sorts of people you attract and quote you, that your words have given great encouragement to those who do want to justify violence and aggression against ordinary Muslims.

You need to look closely at yourself and the the consequences of some of the things you say and the sorts of people supporting you – if you truly care about humanity.

Hassan.

In my view, proponents of this theory are partially responsible for creating an atmosphere of fear and suspicion that is eroding cohesion in European societies and creating animosity towards Muslims. This atmosphere is also fuelling the far-right in Europe and encouraging them to direct their vitriol towards Muslim communities and those who support the existence of multi-faith communities in Europe.

The term ‘Eurabia’ was initially popularised by Bat Ye’or, a pseudonym for Giselle Littman who is a British Egyptian political commentator, in her book ‘Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis’ published in 2005. In this book, Ye’or argued that European states and Arab states had colluded to create a joint foreign policy based on hostility to Israel and competition with the US. However, this term was later co-opted by other prominent anti-Islam critics to refer to the dystopian fantasy that Europe is being systematically ‘Islamified’ by Muslims who harbour a covertly anti-western agenda. Such critics include Robert Spencer, Mark Steyn, Geert Wilders, and Nick Griffin.

Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, has stated ‘Europe is going to become Islamic virtually without a fight’. In a similar vein Mark Steyn argues that ‘On the Continent and elsewhere in the West, native populations are aging and fading and being supplanted remorselessly by a young Muslim demographic’. Other Eurabia theorists have also made such sensationalist claims with some going as far as suggesting that Europe will be 40% Muslim by 2020. So the question arises – to what extent are these claims true, and more importantly, what underpins them.

In early 2009, we at Quilliam published a report entitled ‘In defence of British Muslims: A response to BNP racist propaganda’. In this report, author Lucy James comprehensively debunked the Eurabia myth by showing how the entire thesis rests on manipulated statistics and speculation. The facts are that currently only 4% of Europe is Muslim, this number could rise to 6% by 2020 and possibly to 10% by 2110. Furthermore, studies have shown that whilst birth rates do tend to be higher amongst Muslims and non-Muslim immigrants from developing nations in the first generation, these usually level out by the second and third generation.

Eurabia theorists also assume that Muslims in Europe are a culturally and politically homogeneous bloc, who, when sufficient numbers are achieved, will seek to challenge the secular and democratic framework of the continent. This is far from the truth. Muslims in Europe are culturally, linguistically and politically diverse with the vast majority being law abiding and accepting of the democratic framework. They are, therefore, able to interact in public life as secular democrats who are not seeking to the challenge the values of European society. Moreover, the Muslim presence in Europe is not new. Muslim communities have existed peacefully and positively contributed to European culture for hundreds of years, in places such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania and Bulgaria.

However, in the minds of Eurabia theorists the facts may be irrelevant. What really underpins their paranoia and dystopian fears is a much broader and deep rooted anti-Muslim sentiment which sees Muslims as posing an existential threat to Europe as we know it. This requires taking al-Qaeda propaganda against the west and then generalising it in a way that all Muslims are viewed as being covertly sympathetic to the al-Qaeda political agenda. The increasingly Muslim presence in Europe is therefore, seen as a sinister plot by Muslims to undermine and change the fabric of European society from within.

Breivik also subscribed to Eurabia. He believed that his actions would spark a 60-70 year revolution in which Muslims, and those who tolerate the Muslim presence in Europe, would be fought and defeated, reverting Europe back to a white Christian continent in the process. Furthermore, unlike his non-terrorist counterparts, he decided that change could only come about through direct action. His stance is reminiscent of al-Qaeda leaders such as Anwar al-Awlaki, who gave up on a non-violent struggle to bring about Islamist revolution in favour of terrorism. But just as challenging al-Qaeda requires deconstructing key tenets of the al-Qaeda ideology, challenging the likes of Breivik requires challenging the Eurabia myth and all those who promote it.

The new face of the far-Right Elite

The Guardian runs a more extensive profile of the man after it has surfaced that he wrote an onlne article in which he conducted a wishful thought experiment on torturing and executing UK’s political and religious leaders.

On 23 May 2010, Alan Lake posted on his 4 Freedoms website an article outlining his belief that “in 20 or 30 years the UK will start to fragment into Islamic enclaves”. He went on: “It’s time we decide… who we will force in the Islamic enclaves (and who we will execute if they sneak out.) By forcing these liberal twits into those enclaves, we will be sending them to their death at worst, and at best they and their families will be subjected to all the depredations, persecution and abuse that non-Muslims worldwide currently ‘enjoy’ in countries like Pakistan… It will be great to see them executed or tortured to death.”

Lake urged visitors to the site to contribute the names of people who should be sent to the Islamic enclaves and made three of his own suggestions. He suggested that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, should be a candidate on the grounds that he “approves of the creation and use of sharia courts”. David Cameron, he explained, should be included in the discussion “to help refine our criteria about who deserves to die at the hands of the Muslim overlords”. He also included Nick Clegg on the grounds that he is “such an angelic and pure person that he upholds various ‘human rights’ issues more important than plebeian matters of public safety”.

Soon after his posting, Lake removed the references to execution and torture. “I took it back after one day,” he said. “I said, ‘This doesn’t help.’ I’m not perfect, I will make mistakes. But the fundamental point of that piece is correct. I am holding people responsible for the consequences of their actions.”

Someone else who was big on “holding people responsible for the consequences of their actions” was Anders Breivik who executed teenagers on Utøya island in an act which chimes with Lake’s wishful thinking. Lake has been identified as the probable English “mentor” whom Breivik referred to in his “manifesto”. Lake denies the association just as has all the other ideologues of the “counter-Jihad” movement from Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller etc who have rushed to deny any links. No surprises there.

Last week Lake issued a statement saying he did not know Breivik and had never met him: “I categorically condemn his actions, which have also killed friends of a friend of mine – one in Oslo and two on Utøya island.” But Lake said he would continue his support for the EDL. “England is the only country that has anything like the EDL, a large grassroots movement that is raising issues that you are not supposed to raise,” he said. “They reopen the debate.”

Lake has spoken at far-right rallies in Sweden and on Norwegian television, where he has warned that Europe is in danger of becoming an Islamic state. Responding to a march by Muslims in Britain calling for the imposition of sharia law, Lake told the Norwegian channel 2 Nyhetene: “They are seeking the overthrow of the state. As far as I am concerned, I’ll be happy to execute people like that.”

Be careful what you wish for, Mr Lake.

I’m pretty sure I will pray to God as I’m rushing through my city, guns blazing, with 100 armed system protectors pursuing me with the intention to stop and/or kill. I know there is a 80%+ chance I am going to die during the operation as I have no intention to surrender to them until I have completed all three primary objectives AND the bonus mission. When I initiate (providing I haven’t been apprehended before then), there is a 70% chance that I will complete the first objective, 40% for the second, 20% for the third and less than 5% chance that I will be able to complete the bonus mission. It is likely that I will pray to God for strength at one point during that operation, as I think most people in that situation would….If praying will act as an additional mental boost/soothing it is the pragmatical thing to do. I guess I will find out… If there is a God I will be allowed to enter heaven as all other martyrs for the Church in the past.

Andrew Sullivan identifies this as articulation of what he calls Christianism and, not surprisingly, it reads like the text of a suicide video lovingly prepared by a jihadi terrorist.

Notice the absence of real faith, which would recoil even at the very thought of killing innocents, but the pragmatic, cold-blooded use of faith as a psychological mechanism to enable mass murder. Bin Laden, we should recall, had been a very Westernized rich kid before he became a “believer.” Breivik – who killed a greater proportion of Norwegians than bin Laden did of Americans on 9/11 – has the same internal conflict. It is his fear of his lack of real faith that propels him to pragmatically embrace the psychological structure of religion to murder his cultural enemies, to reify “Europe” or “Christendom” or “the Church” in order to defend them and give some meaning to his life. He also needs to reify Islam into a purely political and cultural entity that exists solely as an existential threat to Western freedom and in which every Muslim is therefore suspect.

My point is this: this was about as far from an act of meaningless violence as you can get. It is an explicitly articulated, carefully argued conclusion from a mishmash of every current far right platitude out there. Breivik does not merely claim influence by someone like Robert Spencer, he quotes him and so many others at great length as part of his manifesto! It’s a pastiche of vast tracts of the far right blogosphere. None of this delegitimizes sane, vital critiques of Islamist intolerance, violence and ideology; none of it makes these cited ideologues and fanatics guilty of murder or in any way being accomplices to murder, or in any way connected to his crime. But it does seem to me to prove beyond any doubt that Christianism is indeed a phenomenon in its own right, and that its evolution into neo-fascist violence, like Islamism’s embrace of neo-fascist violence, is now something that cannot be denied.

And then are Breivik’s links to key members of the EDL:

Scotland Yard was investigating Breivik’s claims that he began his deadly “crusade” after being recruited to a secret society in London, and that he was guided by an English “mentor”. David Cameron, who was being kept updated on developments, said Breivik’s claims were being taken “extremely seriously”.

Breivik wrote of having strong links with the EDL, saying he had met its leaders and had 600 EDL members as Facebook friends.

Mr Hobson said in an online posting that: “He had about 150 EDL on his list … bar one or two doubt the rest of us ever met him, altho [sic] he did come over for one of our demo [sic] in 2010 … but what he did was wrong. RIP to all who died as a result of his actions.”

Whether Breivik acted as a “lone wolf” or as part of an organised group is yet to be uncovered. But more to  the point, Breivik certainly ingested and regurgitated large amounts of writings of right-wing ideologues: Theodore Dalrymple, Robert D. Kaplan, Lee Harris, Ibn Warraq, Geert Wilders, Robert Spencer, Walid Shoebat, Bat Ye’or, Mark Steyn, Melanie Philips, Pamela Geller et al are all quoted and get a name check. Their ideas were the intellectual padding employed to justify his narcissistic journey to Christianist nationalism. His manifeso makes much reference to the “Vienna School of Thought” promulgated online by the ‘Gates of Vienna’ blog and the far-right Norwegian blogger, Fjordman.

This mind-boggling act of mass murder is the ultimate and logical conclusion to the “Eurabia” conspiracy thesis which has been developed into a keystone of European far-right ideology. Sane people of the political centre must debunk this idiotic conspiracy theory once and for all if they are to oppose the rise of the European Far-Right. Opposing far-right fascism can only be achieved with the same principled and well-informed rigour that has been applied to tackling Islamist extremism – by identifying key individuals and groups rather than employing spurious generalisations.

Breivik has been universally condemned, of course, and although it is encouraging to see proponents of the far-left commentators condemn this act it is difficult to ignore the glaring note of hypocrisy. Although the far-left blogs have been robust in their criticism of  the horror in Norway, Islamophobia-Watch used the opportunity to score cheap tribalist points by attacking, once again, moderate Muslims and organisations opposed to Islamic terrorism. There is an irony at play here: the great pity is seeing so many people who are now (correctly) condemning the terrorist atrocity in Norway but who have previously never been able to bring themselves to condemn Islamic terrorism in, say, Pakistan or Afghanistan with the same moral outrage.

“More precision needed. There should be a stamp for that. MPN should be like LOL or TMI.”

i agree. what narks me somewhat (and no doubt there are all sorts of reasons why i am wrong about this) is that this is *precisely* what bothers me about statements about a) religious people and b) the tendentious-as-feck word “judeo-christian”.

“But there again – that’s a matter of fact, not something that can just be declared from the armchair as if it were self-evident. Are Muslims as “diverse” as any other group of people living in the UK? Are all groups living in the UK exactly as diverse as each other, neither more nor less? I don’t see why that would be the case. It’s certainly not impossible that there is something about Islam and/or the history of people who emigrate from majority-Muslim countries that makes Muslims as a group tend to be different from other people as groups, including being less “diverse.” That’s something to find out, not just to announce as a necessary truth. Or a sacred cow…”

i would argue that this is exactly what annoys me about statements about religious people in which jews and judaism are included. jews in the uk are *extremely* diverse – this is an ongoing issue which pops up every time someone decides to say something about how we have a monolithic view, or “the community thinks”. in fact, the community, generally speaking, disagrees on nearly everything. on the other hand, it seems to me that the idea that muslims are somehow less diverse is equally mistaken. on the other hand, i am often attacked for suggesting that there is a “significant minority” (i usually quote 13%, based on a survey done some years back for channel 4) that are problematic particularly if you look at what they think about jews. the *real numbers* that can be attached to this, in this case 260,000 based on 2m muslims (again, if that’s correct) is still a very large number compared to the number of jews in this country. in other words, it is nonetheless possible that a) muslims are not monolithic in their views AND b) there is a significant minority of muslims whose views are problematic – and that one can therefore conclude that this minority is big enough to cause a sizeable problem. please note here that i am not intending to essentialise, demonise or whatever. this is just a numbers game. if 13% of these guys are arseheads, 13% of 2m people adds up to a LOT more arseheads than the corresponding number of jews, especially given that there is no evidence whatsoever that a “significant number of jews” hold views that are problematic for a) the UK b) liberal democracy or c) muslims. on the other hand, there *are*, i would say, a “significant number of jews” whose views on the middle east are problematic for a “significant number of so-called ‘progressives’ and muslims and people in the house of lords or the foreign office”. this, for me, is the source of the false equivalences.

the below the line comments are also quite revealing of the issues that are raised.

After years of publishing arguably the worst examples of bigot-journalism, we have put the popcorn on and we’re enjoying watching the downfall of this toxic tabloid.

Updates:
Royal British Legion Charity
Some very bent coppers

AND IT’S GONE! Good riddance to bad rubbish

Axed!

Yesterday the blonde bigot was acquitted of inciting hatred of Muslims in a court ruling that will strengthen his political influence and exacerbate tensions in Europe.

On the issue of his acquittal and the question of freedom of speech, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has it just right:

As I’ve said from the beginning of Wilders’ trial, it’s wrong to prosecute anyone for free expression, no matter how hateful and deranged that expression is.

But it’s sadly ironic that Wilders was acquitted of exactly the same kind of persecution he wants to impose on all Muslims; he often calls for the Koran to be banned, advocates that Islam should not be considered a religion at all, and explicitly advocates that Muslims be stripped of the rights of free speech and free religion.

This is the correct judgment by the Netherlands court, but Geert Wilders is no hero of free speech — he’s a slimy hate-monger, just like the American bloggers who worship him.

with this in mind, i thought it was worth setting out a few of the principles that i think are fairly basic to pursuing both the more aggressive and the more peace-loving sides without compromising the integrity of either. i believe we can both aspire to a more peaceful future at the same time as defending ourselves against those who threaten our society; i think these might be the things that we hold in common and the things which we believe are not held in common by those we oppose:

1. the belief that muslims have the potential to integrate into british (and other western) society as productively as jews have.
2. the belief that eventually mainstream islam will decisively reject the path of taking practical steps to take over the world and relegate this safely to the realm of the eschatological – at present the islamist movement still actually thinks it can win over this debate.
3. the belief that peaceful coexistence is possible even in the middleeast, given goodwill and a real desire to find a workable solution.
4. the acceptance that, islamism aside, there are a lot of people out there who have an unreasonable prejudice against any and all muslims, not just the fundamentalist sort – and that if we can only get the mainstream communities committed to a pluralistic, polycultural modern world rather than a salafist 7th century cloud-cuckoo-land, a commitment to standing shoulder-to-shoulder with muslims in fighting those islamophobes for their rights to be a part of that future.
5. the acceptance that 1, 3 and 4 also have ethnic dimensions and that we have nothing against arabs, persians, turks, pakistanis, bangladeshis etc qua arabs, persians, turks, pakistanis and bangladeshis etc.

if these can be accepted, without significant reservation, then we can begin to accept and deal with the following challenges that we believe to be real:

• a. that there are some muslims, whether individuals, groups, sects, parties or tendencies, that have the downfall of our society in mind and consequently hold what we consider to be unacceptable points of view – let’s say 13%, for argument’s sake; not even a particularly sizeable minority in relative terms, but in absolute terms, given the number of muslims there actually are, enough to cause problems for both their own communities and wider society.
• b. that some of these groups are busily trying to co-opt and own all the islamic community structures that presently exist, as well as present their narrative as that of “all” muslims.
• c. that these people have, over the years, received large amounts of funding and inspiration (with strings attached) from saudi and other insalubrious middle eastern places, as well as from credulous, starry-eyed orientalists in the guardianista / multiculti camp – without strings attached.
• d. that these people are busily engaged in not only political entryism a la tower hamlets, but in hoodwinking well-meaning liberals into acting as figleaves for their disingenuous political and religious programme and thereby bolstering their own credibility.
• e. that if you take a look into the history of many of these socalled respectable “community leaders”, you don’t have to look very hard before you start finding the bloody trail of the bangladeshi genocide as well as the knuckle-prints of the global islamist movements like the ikhwaan and hizb ut-tahrir, let alone all the dodgy things that get said in arabic, farsi, urdu and so on compared to what gets said in english for the benefit of the western media.

if one can accept all of these things, perhaps dialogue can get beyond the ceremonial and cynical to the meaningful and productive. i myself have to do some serious thinking about where i stand on “platform-sharing” issues in particular. on one hand, i try and follow mandela’s excellent principle of “talking to anyone that will talk to me”, but on the other, my deep distrust of certain people and groups, not to mention 16 years of experience, have led me to conclude that there are some people that it is not worth engaging with, like, say, the al-muhajigoonies of this world, who deserve nothing but merciless lampooning in the most liberal of terms (of late the ahmadis have been added to this list – so i saw with displeasure this morning an advert for them on the side of a bus). similarly, i have to consider the rabin principle – that it is one’s enemies that one makes peace with, not one’s friends and that platforms for dialogue will sooner or later have to address the points that i raise above – but you have to suspend certain questions until trust has been established; you can’t jump straight into a conversation about israel, for instance.

i would be most interested in whether people think i have the basis of the argument down correctly. alternatively, you can all call me an islamophobic racist or something.

It has also exposed The Spittoon, a McCarthyite operation run by members of Centre for Social Cohesion in collaboration, for a while at least, with members of the government funded Quilliam Foundation.[25] This expose was not well-received by the interests behind The Spittoon. The website first tried to intimidate the Powerbase researcher who had made the discovery with threatening emails, followed by a smear campaign, which was coordinated with an allied attack blog, Harry’s Place.[26] Shortly afterwards a similar smear campaign was also directed against the founder of Powerbase. Several neoconservative operators have also tried to use legal threats to shut Powerbase down. In June 2010, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens of the Centre for Social Cohesion, a frequent contributor to The Spittoon, successfully pressured Powerbase’s British domain name registrar to temporarily shut down the website.

A quick run through the baseless lies and accusations made in this text are in order.

1) The Spittoon is a blog which accepts the writing of a group of friends and associates. The Spittoon has never been “run” by “members of Centre for Social Cohesion” nor by members of the “government funded Quilliam Foundation”.

2) No threatening emails have ever been sent to any Powerbase researcher by anyone associated with The Spittoon. If David Miller thinks there are, he is free to publish them and prove their existence.

3) The Spittoon has published a number of pieces on David Miller and the attack sites run by he and his team of “researchers”. It is not known what exactly David Miller’s motivations are for initiating these attacks via his sites: SpinWatch, SpinProfiles and the now defunct NeoCon-Europe; they also includes the blog PulseMedia, run by Miller’s protégé, Idrees Ahmed. They have consistently attacked and smeared specific Muslims (such as Ed Husain, Shiraz Maher and others) seemingly because they are opposed to anti-semitism or are opposed to Hamas and other theocratic genocidal Islamist movements in general. Perhaps Miller considers these attributes to be unacceptable, otherwise why would he employ lies and smears in his character assassinations of them on his numerous websites?

It is worth clarifying what David Miller’s definition of The Spittoon’s “smear campaign” entails. As far as we can tell, it has consisted of a number of articles by Shiraz Maher which reported the fact that someone on his team had cited the prominent neo-Nazi academic Kevin MacDonald, to explain the political behaviour of Jews.

They are worth reading again here and here.

Of course, in the gripes he lists against The Spittoon, Miller is careful to exclude this uncomfortable fact because he obviously knows only too well that this is exactly the sort of inadvertent disclosure that would do his academic reputation no credit. Perhaps Professor Miller’s gripe with The Spittoon has nothing to do with the baseless lies that he has fabricated but more to do with real facts that he has chosen to leave out.

We have already met the salafi jihadi Abu Zubair, who is on record for calling for Usama Hasan’s death both publicly on the premises of Masjid Tawhid and online.

Hitching themselves to this cowardly crusade are two indigenous English converts to Islam, who like to see themselves as white Muslim examples of Malcolm X’s “field Negroes” because these two brave white men “don’t take shit from the Man”, don’t you know.

First off, Dawud [David?] Mannion aka Daw’ud Abu Abdillah Al-Injaliziy, who issued this diatribe called Usama Hasan and his call to Kufr on his blog The Islamic Standard, of which he uses to criticise British troops and praise terrorists. This is his description of the public reaction to Dr Hasan’s lecture on evolution at the Tawhid Mosque:

Dawud Mannion

Usama Hasan then announced a talk where the Taghoot ideology of darwinism was to be taught in the Masjid with the agreement of Suhaib Hasan and the committee.

In this talk, though it only dealt with his belief in evolution, many Muslims walked out, one elderly regular of the Masjid calling Usama a Shaitan, others attempted to refute Usama and were escorted from the premises for attempting to refute this Taghoot ideology in Masjid Tawhid.

He confirmed his belief that Adam (as) was not made by Allah from clay, but instead that Allah used evolution to create Adam (as) and that his parents were not humans, but apes.

Mannion’s implausible recount makes it sound as if those of the congregation who disagreed with Usama Hasan’s thesis on evolution formed an orderly queue, begged to be excused and peacefully walked out of the mosque. Nothing could be further from the truth, by all accounts. Why does he fail to mention the chaos, the tense disrupted atmosphere that Dr Hasan was forced to endure, not to mention the heckling, haranguing or the loud vocal calls for his death?

Since the lecture was delivered, things have come to a head and Dr Hasan has been forced to issue a statement on his blog. Although he has managed to retain his position as imam, it looks very much like a capitulation to the dark forces of Muslim obscurantism. This is depressing indeed but Usama had a parting shot:

This does not excuse the cowardly and fraudulent campaign spreading lies and slander against me over the last two months.

The second of our nasty, befuddled white English converts is Matthew Smith aka Yusuf Smith who runs the popular blogistan site, under the pseudonym Indigo Jo. Smith makes all the same charges of Usama Hasan as Mannion does, but most appalling of all is his dismissal of the reality of the death threats, insinuating that it’s merely a “tactic” employed by Hasan and he has made it all up:

Matthew "Yusuf" Smith

He accuses people of threatening his life; that is the hallmark of the Quilliam group, who are fond of portraying themselves to the mass media as boldly speaking out against extremism when nobody else will (it is a standard tactic of anyone who wants to portray themselves as lone defenders of truth; the death threats do not have to be real). One recalls Hassan Butt, who admitted inflicting stab wounds on himself and attributing it to a “Muslim extremist” who was angry at him for turning against them, when in fact he had made up much of his story about his “adventures” with al-Qa’ida in Pakistan.

Why does the life of another Muslim become so cheap when you have convinced yourself you’re speaking on behalf of Allah?

There is a very strange irony palpable here. If you were to find an instance of white extremists calling for the victimisation of a British Pakistani Muslim and his family, who tacitly defended the veiled threats and agreed with calls for his death – how would it be defined? Anywhere else it would be described as an “overtly Islamophobic” campaign and the outcry by the usual coterie of far-left and Muslim talking heads would be deafening. But in this case there is a stony silence.

The zealotry of these two idiotic converts may be beyond caricature, but by jumping onto the anti-Usama bandwagon, they are playing a very dangerous and irresponsible game

We hope the authorities have been called in to protect Dr Usama Hasan and his family and to also look into the incitement of hatred and violence by these two white extremists.

“Even if there aren’t any weapons of mass destruction, Saddam had previously used such weapons, twice. He is uniquely evil to the region.” I remember stating, rather proudly.

And at that very moment, someone called me a neocon. I didn’t know what a neoconservative was (if I did, I would have perhaps defended the term better). It was clear it was meant to be a negative word.

Though, the intent was clear. By using that very word, the argument was stifled and you were expected to concede your point. It was censorship.

As I grew up, the so-called “liberal” media defined a neocon as some kind evil, cold-hearted, war-crazed monster who worked endlessly for a clash-of-civilisation-esque judgement-day battle against the people of the Islamic and Western world.

In the post-Bush world, the word ‘neo-con’ has lost some of its loaded baggage. The new word on the block is ‘Islamophobe’.

There is no set-definition of what it means to be an Islamophobe. This is one of its great strengths. It can mean anything, at anytime and can be directed at anyone.

The most keen supporters of Islamophobia have decided to turn it to a convenient tool of censorship of even the most delicate criticism of Islam.

Point out the violent verses of the Quran? You’re an Islamophobe. Won’t let hate preachers into university campus? Must be because you’re an Islamophobe. Are you a critic of multiculturalism? You’re definitely an Islamophobe, buddy.

Heck, even Tory’s have got in on it. The absurd Baroness Warsi gave us a guilt-tripped lesson on dinner-table manners on the subject not so long ago.

It’s would be amusing if it weren’t so dangerous. It dilutes real hate speech or actions, say, that of an anti-Muslim bigot. If Muslims continue to cry wolf at the mere criticism of their faith, then who will take them seriously if conditions get worse for Muslims in Europe? Just saying.

I’m really pleased to report that it seems that today has passed off peacefully. The people of Luton have rejected the provocation of the EDL.

One of the main reasons for this was the great work done in the Muslim community to keep their youth off the streets. Hundreds of stewards and dozens of mediation teams were out to reduce tensions and refute the rumours that were circulating. Community elders stood hand in hand to calm youngsters down and encourage people not to rise to the EDL’s bait.

Cross and girdle

Anyone who watched Newsnight tonight (February 1st 2010) saw the piece they had on the English Defence League. The report was interesting but the interview was quite revealing. EDL leader Stephen Lennon aka, Internet pseudonym, Tommy Robinson was, well, just awful.

The interview went along the lines of Paxman asking rather simplistic questions on Islam and then Tommy whipping out the ‘OMG! Sharia Law is here’ card. Sharia by the way, is pronounced “sha-ree-yah”, but informed Tommy gives it the “I-raq” treatment by pronouncing it as if it were to rhyme with the word ‘pariah’. He also mispronounced the word “Imam”, giving it the EDL-kick of “Inam”. But, these are all forgivable shenanigans.

Throughout the meek interview there are times where Paxman tries to hit the nail on the head. There’s a telling part where Tommy goes through a list of grievances that Muslims are responsible for in Briton. Child-rape is one, as is pimping and prostitution, oh, and covering the faces of ‘our beautiful women’. Who he means by ‘our’, I’ll leave that to your imagination but the theme of young girls/women is a purposeful one. It clicks with our emotions. Paxman reminds him that the above crimes can be committed by, oh say, white people? Or Sikh gangs of youths? But Tommy’s not interested. Let’s see what he has to say on Sharia.

“We have over a 100 Sharia law courts operating” he says. Paxman seems to catch him out when it looks as if he didn’t know that the courts are non-binding and cater to specific needs.

Interestingly, not once does he talk about the plight that moderates in the Muslim (oh sorry, Islamic) community have with these alternative jurisdictions. Has it crossed his head that secular Muslims in Britain have a deep distrust for these courts too? No. We’re probably not “English” enough. Paxman gets his act together at this point, Tommy gets a little heated up but sticks to his guns.

The rest of the interview goes the same way. Paxman asks if a Muslim could join the EDL and this question wastes a good thirty seconds of the interview slot. Utterly irrelevant and characteristic of the “Let’s see how ‘inclusive’ you are so I can try to catch you out!” lefty mentality.

Tommy’s discourse and understanding of Islamic fundamentalism could have come from a far-right campaigning leaflet. He leaves little to be debated with. Here is a guy who is so sure that the end of the western world is coming, it’ll be down to Tommy and his drunken pals to act as the ‘vanguard’ of the west.

I’m not calling for the EDL or their leaders to be silenced or censored. Actually, the BBC is to be applauded for today’s piece on the organisation. But the report and interview show the EDL for who they tragically are – bigoted and hateful people.

We can win the fight against Islamism without the drunks and bigots. The EDL are welcome to have their opinion on any issue they’d like for that is their liberty. But anyone who is serious in fighting Islamic fundamentalism couldn’t possibly entertain these fools.

“I’m just a simple person” exclaims Tommy in the interview. Rightly, is he so called.

Warsi is right to speak out against the kind of casual anti-Muslim bigotry which has become increasingly noticeable in the day to day language of Britain. We are now living in a climate where  phraseology invoking ”fucking Muslims” is commonplace – and you don’t have to be Muslim to pick up on it. And this is to say nothing of the heightened levels of Muslim baiting which passes for journalism on the pages of the Daily Express and the Daily Mail. The content on both of these organs are both a barometer and weather vane for gauging society’s prejudice du jour. We know from them that English exceptionalism is fickle when it comes to the fear and loathing of minorities which has passed in the space of a generation from jews to blacks to southasians and now, currently, to muslims.

But Warsi’s points suffer from ambiguity and a failure to discern between overt prejudice and the necessity of isolating extremist and racist elements within the fold of Islam. This suggests a barely disguised political agenda of her own, and most worryingly, a tendency to lean in favour of the goals of organised political Islamists. The kind which organise the GPU – an event she was banned from attending by Cameron himself. Is Warsi’s speech motivated by a need to extract payback from Tory Head Office for reigning her in on the question of political Islam?

Reading the speech, it is not immediately apparent whether Warsi wants to conflate criticism of Islam with Islamic extremism and equate both to anti-Muslim bigotry. Is she suggesting that any criticism of any abuse of the Islamic faith is synonymous to hatred of Muslims? Warsi does herself no favours when she singles out Polly Toynbee an anti-Muslim for this benign quote:

You could even say that Islamophobia has now passed the dinner-table-test.

Take this from Polly Toynbee:

“I am an Islamophobe, and proud of it”.

This quote comes from an article from 1997, and when read in context, is by no means anti-Muslim bigotry, at least no more thant Christo-phobic or anti-semitic for that matter:

I am an Islamophobe. I judge Islam not by its words – the teachings of the Koran as interpreted by those Thought-for-the-Day moderate Islamic theologians. I judge Islam by the religion’s deeds in the societies where it dominates. Does that make me a racist?

For I am also a Christophobe. If Christianity were not such a spent force in this country, if it were powerful and dominant as it once was, it would still be every bit as damaging as Islam is in those theocratic states in its thrall. Christianity remains a lethal weapon in Northern Ireland.

If I lived in Israel, I’d feel the same way about Judaism. Everywhere in the world where religion dominates over the state, that is a bad place to live. Religiophobia is highly rational.

Most revealing of all is the good things she has to say about people she thinks are critical of Islamophobia:

I commend those who understand and condemn the cancer of Islamophobia…

….whether that be John Denham, Seumus Milne, Peter Oborne, or the Metropolitan Police…

Warsi’s uncritical appreciation of Seumas Milne is an eye-opener. Milne is a far-left journalist and ideologue who has championed (on the Guardian!) every single stripe of extremist Islamic radical group, and who praises the forces of al-Qaeda terrorists in Iraq as the “resistance“, in the knowledge that they detonate car bombs in the Shi’a districts of Baghdad with blood-curdling regularity. Warsi’s support for Milne, who criticises “Islamophobia” in Britain but who champions sectarian terrorism in Iraq as a form of liberation politics, needs to be seen for what it is.

Another point Warsi makes which sets off the alarm bells is on the question on what constitutes the plausible difference between the extremist and moderate positions. It seems Warsi only wants Al-Muhajiroun, al-Qaeda terrorists and perhaps, at a push, Hizb-ut-Tahrir to be labelled “extremists”. Every other Muslim, in her world, is moderate. This is worrying because it means she is arguing for excusing the elements of Jamaat-e-Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood which dominate groups such such as the Muslim Council of Britain and its sibling Southasian Muslim Islamist groups from the IFE to iEngage.

It would be difficult to pass a cigarrette paper between Warsi’s line of argument and that of the Islamist pressure group iEngage, so close are they. What exactly is the extent of her sponsorship and support for this Islamist organisation? If Warsi wants to be the Muslim go-to person in the Conservative party for all things British Islamic, then it is imperative that she give full disclosure of the nature of her relationship with this and other British Southasian Islamist outfits.

Sayeeda Warsi has criticised the pervasive culture of anti-Muslim bigotry in some sections of the press and which is now creeping into polite and not-so-polite society – and that is a good thing – for that she must be applauded. However, she has used “Islamophobia” to shut down criticism of extremist Islam by playing on the notion, much beloved of Islamists, that “extremism” is a “confusing” epithet when applied to any Muslim collective. We have heard this line of reasoning many times before, of course. They have been made previously by Islamists and their paid clients and apologists like the putative academic Bob Lambert, amongst others.

This is not the line of reasoning to be expected from the Co-Chairwoman of the Tory Party. She certainly has some explaining to do.

Rahul last year told US Ambassador to India Timothy Roemer that “the growth of radicalised Hindu groups” may be a “bigger threat” to India than support to some Islamic terror groups from the Muslim community, according to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.

Rahul told Roemer that although “there was evidence of some support (for Islamic terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba) among certain elements in India’s indigenous Muslim community, the bigger threat may be the growth of radicalised Hindu groups, which create religious tensions and political confrontations with the Muslim community”, the Guardian reported on Friday.

Modi’s reaction:

“Through the WikiLeaks expose, it has been revealed who has given all the information to the US. Now, it is clear why the US is backing Pakistan,”

Uh huh.

Perhaps what Modi is really concerned about is less about Pakistan and more about the increasing confidence the United States has in the abilities of Gandhi and the failure of the Hindu religious far-right to engage with the US. As the Guardian reports:

However as Gandhi warmed to the US, the US warmed to him. In a meeting with another American official last summer, he explained his strategy of targeting rural populations and small towns, impressing his interlocutor.

“[Gandhi] came off as a practiced politician who knew how to get his message across, was precise and articulate and demonstrated a mastery that belied the image some have of [him] as a dilettante,” the official said.

In November last year, after a meeting with the US ambassador, a cable to Washington described Gandhi as “an elusive contact in the past” but now “clearly interested in reaching out to the USG [United States government]“.

A cable from February this year describes him as “increasingly sure-footed”.

For Roemer, writing after the lunch during which Gandhi had commented on extremism, “the rising profile of young leaders like Rahul Gandhi provides [the USA with] an opening to expand the constituency in support of the strategic partnership with a long term horizon”.

Naturally, the beardier parts of the Hindutva blogosphere have, like their leaders Thackeray and Modi, called for Gandhi to be reigned in and made to shut up. In other parts of India, BJP activists have burnt Rahul’s effigy to show their deep dissatisfaction with being labelled as effigy-burning Hindu fundamentalists.

You can’t please everyone, can you.

"Protect Freedom of Speech - Burn a Quran!"

In early February the Florida-based Pastor Terry Jones intends to travel to the United Kingdom to address an English Defence League rally in Luton. His anti-Muslim views made international news in early autumn when he proposed making the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack an “International Burn a Koran Day”. This brought international condemnation and eventually he was forced to back down.

Now Pastor Jones wants to give a speech attacking Islam at an EDL rally in Luton. The EDL emerged in Luton in May 2009 and its first demonstration ended with 250 people going on the rampage through a predominantly Asian area of the town. Since then it has become a national organisation and is the single biggest threat to social cohesion in this country today.

Pastor Terry Jones’s presence in Luton will be incendiary and highly dangerous. He will attract and encourage thousands of EDL supporters to take to the streets, and cause concern and fear among Muslims across the country. Only extremists will benefit from his visit and, as we know, extremism breeds hatred and hatred breeds violence. For these reasons we are asking you to prevent Pastor Terry Jones from entering the UK.

Yours sincerely

Nick Lowles

HOPE not hate

Firstly, I don’t like the word ‘Islamophobia’. It seems to imply that one is not allowed to dislike a set of beliefs. I would argue that everyone has the right to dislike Islam, just as they have the right to dislike Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Humanism or any other set of beliefs. Anti-Muslim sentiment or hate crime on that other-hand is different since that concerns a group of people who should not be judged solely on their race, religion, gender or any other identifier. This distinction is important because we need to distinguish those who are critical of faiths or faith practises and those who are just bigots and don’t like certain religious and ethnic groups.

Secondly, we must bear in mind that Islamists are political animals in nature and hence they wouldn’t invest time, energy and resources into an initiative that didn’t have their political interests at heart. So what are their political interests?

Islamists, since setting up in the west, have been trying very hard to achieve two goals. Firstly, to mainstream their Islamist outlook amongst Muslim communities. Secondly, to become the representatives of Muslims in the west and thus gatekeepers for Muslim communities. This latter objective allows them to monopolise engagement with government officials and access public funds to further their Islamist goals. That is why prior to the obsession with Islamophobia, they were focused on trying to set up so-called ‘umbrella’ groups that in turn sought to present a unified ‘Muslim’ perspective on political and social issues to government. This would almost always be nothing more than the Islamist perspective.

Their attempts to monopolise the ‘Muslim voice’ have now failed spectacularly. Especially, since they tried to make the bizarre claim that they were best placed to deal with Islamist extremism, a claim that is now almost universally ridiculed by those who work in counter-terrorism. So by creating a campaign to highlight ‘Islamophobia’, Islamists hope to create a counter-Islamophobia industry that would attract resources and governmental support. This would also allow them to present themselves as ‘defenders of the faith’ to Muslims and important partners in the Muslim community to government, thereby re-establishing their name and re-gaining the prestige they lost.

What makes this even more problematic is their definition of ‘Islamophobia’. They apply this label to anyone who criticises Islamism and Islamist groups. Hence, this serves yet another purpose, i.e. silencing of criticism of what is nothing more than an Islamist political lobby group.

Anti-Muslim hate crime is no doubt a real issue and needs to be tackled, just as other forms of hate-crime do. But do we really need Islamists and their lackeys doing that for us? Individuals that are full of homophobia, anti-Semitism and hatred for moderate Muslims. One could argue that Islamists themselves are largely responsible for the rise in tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims in the UK. They have been promoting hate literature since the 80s, encouraging rebellious identity politics amongst young Muslims and seeking to defend the actions of extremist groups abroad.

So this isn’t really about defending the rights of Muslims or helping victims of hate crime, it is merely the latest cynical political ploy by Islamist to establish themselves in the hearts and minds of Muslims in the west and promote their message of hate, division and eternal conflict.