Category Archives: UK Politics

Lord Ahmed, the All-Party Parliamentary Friends of Islam Group and the Cordoba Foundation

By Effendi | Published: October 27, 2009

Tonight, the All Party Parliamentary Group Friends of Islam (FOI) is hosting a discussion at the House of Lords about Preventing Violent Extremism with Arun Kundnani (of the Institute for Race Relations), Bob Lambert and Dr Abdul Bari of the Muslim Council of Britain, an organisation that is currently in the doghouse after its deputy director-general signed a declaration “advocating attacks on the Royal Navy if it tries to stop arms for Hamas being smuggled into Gaza” and “in support of Hamas and military action”. Those invited initially thought this was simply an event hosted by Lord Ahmed and FOI, a group he founded in 2001 and of which he is currently an advisor. Interestingly, according to her Facebook page, Yvonne Ridley, who quite likes Hamas, was a founder member.

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Also posted in Islamism | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

Baroness Warsi – Good on immigration, Crap on religion

By Guest | Published: October 26, 2009

This is a cross-post of an article by Edmund Standing

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I admired Baroness Warsi’s performance on Question Time. She spoke reasonably and rationally on the question of immigration and got some very good points in. I had a look at her website as a result and read her Conservative Party Conference speech. In a way, I wish I hadn’t, as it contains some really pathetic self-pitying material on ‘faith’:

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Also posted in Secularism | 9 Comments

Terrorist? What Terrorist?

By Faisal | Published: October 22, 2009

The Times reports on a rally organised by United Against Fascism (UAF) at BBC Headquarters tonight to protest Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time.

Speakers at the rally will include Ken Livingstone and Peter Hain. Mr Livingstone is to be applauded for employing his stentorian voice to rouse the 1,000 protestors expected. The UAF website interview with Mr Livingstone contained this nugget from Ken:

The BBC should withdraw its invitation to Nick Griffin to appear on Question Time. A court ruled this week that the fascist BNP’s membership rules illegally discriminate on grounds of race. This is only part of the picture. When the BNP is given a major media platform for its message of bigotry, race and religious hatred, hate attacks by thugs on the streets increase.

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Also posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 27 Comments

Tories will ban Hizb ut-Tahrir

By Guest | Published: October 8, 2009

This is an extract from the speech delivered by Chris Grayling, shadow Home Secretary, at the Tory party conference in Manchester yesterday.

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The Home Office has another key responsibility.

The security of our people and of our nation.

To take the lead in the battle against terrorism.

And the fight against an ideology of hate and violence.

An ideology that damages the reputation of decent, law abiding British Muslims as well as threatening life and limb.

And let’s be clear. That ideology wants to destroy the civil liberties that make this country what it is. No Government should allow them to do so, and the way this Government has eroded those liberties is shameful and must be reversed.

Our police and security services have done a magnificent job in protecting us against the terrorist threat.

We owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

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Also posted in Feature, Your View | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Times Exposes Jack Straw Links With Blackburn Radicals

By Guest | Published: October 5, 2009

This is cross-post from the Standpoint blog Focus on Islamism by Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens

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Jack Straw is well known to be a fan of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), and today the Times has revealed the extent of his dealings with them.

According to today’s report:

A secret MI5 report on Islamic extremism in Blackburn has raised “potential concerns” about some radical Muslim factions known to Jack Straw, the local MP and justice secretary.

A senior security figure who has seen the report said it underlined concern among cabinet colleagues that Straw could be “too close” to the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), a prominent Muslim umbrella group. The government formally severed links with the group after a blazing row over extremism earlier this year.

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Also posted in Islamism | Tagged , | 17 Comments

Anti-Muslim Bigotry, Plain and Nasty

By Yossarian | Published: September 11, 2009

This summer has been a bad one for people proud of Britain’s multiethnic, multifaith identity. Especially if you have any attachment to Birmingham where the actions of some anti-fascists have proved a propaganda boon for the far right anti-Muslim bigots of the English Defence League, BNP and Stop Islamisation Of Europe (SIOE).

Today there is a major risk of serious disturbances in Harrow and all, these organisations say, because they hate “Islamist extremism”.

A common criticism made of people who oppose Islamist extremism is that they blur the lines between Islam and Islamism so as to attack all Muslims. The Spittoon has often been accused of this, an accusation which we entirely reject. But the EDL and its anti-Muslim fellow travellers of the BNP and SIOE do not just blur the line, they ignore that such a line exists and trample it into the dust.

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Also posted in Anti Fascism, Anti Muslim bigotry | Tagged , | 24 Comments

Bob Pitt: One rule for Islamists, one rule for everyone else

By Guest | Published: September 10, 2009

This is a guest post by Al-Qanaas Al-Masri

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Bob Pitt, a low-level civil servant who works for Labour’s Murad Qureshi in the London Assembly, has yet again exposed himself on his ‘Islamophobia Watch’ website as an illiterate, ideologically-blinkered buffoon.

In his latest blog posting he attacks, for a change,  the secularist Muslims of the Quilliam Foundation.

This time he is calling on the government to “withdraw all state funding from the loathed and despised Quilliam Foundation and redirect it towards organisations that actually have roots in the Muslim communities.”

So from this one should presumably conclude that Bob Pitt thinks that only Muslim organisations that are popular should receive government money?

Apparently not.

When the Muslim Brotherhood wannabes of the Scottish Islamic Foundation (SIF) were busted last month for what have been described as “financial irregularities”, this is what Pitt had to say in their defence:

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Also posted in Islamism, Your View | Tagged | 17 Comments

Keeping the Pressure on the BNP

By Guest | Published: September 4, 2009

This is a guest post by Lucy James, a research fellow at Quilliam

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bnpflyerLast month, on the back of a paper entitled In Defence of British Muslims: A response to BNP racist propaganda (pdf), I called for Muslim communities, and the British public as a whole, to take a more united ideological stand against the BNP; one that systematically undermines their arguments in the British mainstream.

Last week we heard about Noor Ramjanally, a Muslim community leader in Loughton, who was allegedly kidnapped from his home late at night and taken to Epping Forest at knifepoint, where he was ordered to stop holding prayer meetings. A BNP campaign which distributed leaflets saying ‘No mosques in Loughton’ was held responsible for creating the tensions that led to the crime.

The local BNP councillor Pat Richardson bizarrely defended allegations of BNP violence saying ‘’Firebombing is not a British method. A brick through the window is a British method but firebombing is not a way of showing displeasure”.

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Also posted in Anti Fascism, Your View | Tagged , | 2 Comments

A Question of Priorities and a Question for Inayat

By Yossarian | Published: September 2, 2009

Bob Pitt of Islamophobia Watch and Inayat Bunglawala of iEngage are two peas in a pod. But where Bob is obsessed with defending Islamists, Bungle’s obsession is the Quilliam Foundation.

Progress Online carries details of a fringe meeting to be organised by the Quilliam Foundation at the Labour Party conference next month on ‘How should the Left engage with British Muslims’.

The speaker line up includes: Rt Hon John Denham MP, Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government; Ed Husain, Co-director, Quilliam Foundation; Martin Bright, Tahir Abbas, Birkbeck, University of London.

The choice of Martin Bright (pictured) is a very notable one. Martin Bright is, of course, an enthusiastic supporter of the Quilliam Foundation.

ENGAGE readers will be aware that Bright also happens to be the notorious author of the very ill-informed, highly offensive and deeply mischievous 2001 New Statesman cover story ‘The Great Koran Con Trick’. Bright’s arguments were openly ridiculed and debunked by the very scholars – including his own former SOAS tutor, Professor Gerald Hawting – whose work he drew upon to support his crude hatchet job on the Qur’an.

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Also posted in Islamism | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Bob and Bungle – Forget the BNP, let’s attack Quilliam

By Yossarian | Published: August 20, 2009

This morning I turned on my computer and was immediately confronted by a bizarre article from Bob Pitt of Islamophobia Watch. Quilliam accuses anti-BNP protestors of ‘thuggery and hooliganism’ is an amateurish bit of slime aimed at Lucy James (who has kindly written one guest post for the Spittoon in the past) for comments she made about anti-fascist protesters in a piece for Progress Magazine.

She wrote,

Last weekend the BNP’s annual shindig ‘Red, White and Blue’ took place in a small town in Derbyshire. Reports said that the number of attendees was only marginally more than the number of anti-fascist protesters who congregated outside the gate. Unfortunately, these anti-BNP protesters soon became violent – leading to a total of 19 protesters being arrested. Although it is good to see ordinary people protesting against the BNP, such protests become ineffective when they descend into thuggery and hooliganism. Just a week earlier, for example, violent clashes erupted between the English Defence League and Unite Against Fascism in Birmingham, leading to bottles, sticks and banners thrown, and brought police in riot gear onto the streets.

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Also posted in Anti Fascism, Blogosphere, Defamation, The Far Left | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

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