Muslim anger rises in Britain: A portrait of extremism from a prominent “moderate”
"Bravado"
Consider the following remarks from one of Britain’s leading “moderate” Muslim journalists, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, writing about Israeli actions in Gaza:
“First systematically starved, the [Palestinian] population was denied escape and more than 1,200 were slaughtered like animals in an abattoir… On the letters pages Zionists say the violence – including phosphorus burns on children – are “regrettable” but necessary. A nation that asks the world not to forget what was done to its people by Hitler, has advocates who believe brutal ethnic cleansing is “regrettable”. How many Palestinian Anne Franks did the Israelis murder, maim or turn mad?”
That was in January 2009. Here she is again, writing today in the Independent. This time she takes matters a stage further, emulating the Jew-baiting president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, following the visit to Britain last week of Geert Wilders, the anti-Islamist politician currently on trial for offending Muslims in the Netherlands.
“…the crypto-fascist, Aryan Geert Wilders, is invited into the Lords by [the United Kingdom Independence Party] UKIP and crossbench peers to show his vile anti-Islam film in the name of freedom of expression. Freedom my arse. It is just another entertaining episode of Muslim-baiting. I dare the same peers to now invite David Irving, the Holocaust denier, to share his thoughts freely in the Lords…”
These vile and appalling sentiments echo precisely the attitudes and strategy of Ahmadinejad who after the publication in Denmark in 2005 of a set of political cartoons deemed offensive to Muslims immediately set about organising a conference aimed at questioning the reality of the Holocaust.
Alibhai-Brown, like Ahmadinejad, adopts the following strategy: Offend us Muslims and we’ll show you a thing or two about offending people. First up, we’ll stick it to your friends, the Jews.
Quite why the invitation of Wilders — who has much less a claim on being a “crypto-fascist” than Alibhai-Brown herself — should immediately lead someone to think about calling in a Holocaust denier to even up the score, as it were, is perhaps something that only a “moderate” like Alibhai-Brown could explain.
But the most telling aspect of Alibhai-Brown’s writing is that amid all the self-pity about how “We are on trial, always, and always must expect to lose” she provides ample illustration of precisely why there is so much to worry about from the leading lights in the Muslim community.
It is not just the Jews and Israel who attract her ire. Here is what she has to say about Prime Minister Gordon Brown talking last week to a public inquiry about the war in Iraq:
“But, like his predecessor, he [Brown] is shockingly indifferent to the agony of the people most affected by the Iraq war, a war Brown still says was “the right” thing to do for the “right reasons”. His only regret? They should have thought a bit more about what to do next after they had defeated Saddam and pulled down his statues. Not a word about the countless Iraqis killed when we bombed indiscriminately in civilian areas…”
Note the incendiary vocabulary: “bombed indiscriminately in civilian areas”, which is a bare faced falsehood as she must know. The only indiscriminate attacks in Iraq have been conducted by Muslim extremist groups slaughtering fellow Muslims. This, of course, she never mentions. But note above all, that the prime minister of a sovereign democracy is expected to apologise, to express his contrition for having participated in a foreign policy venture of which Muslims do not approve. On behalf of fellow British Muslims (in whose name she speaks in this article), she expects the right of veto on how Britain conducts its affairs abroad.
But the veto extends further than foreign policy. She also turns her sights on recent court cases which have seen the jailing of some of the most violent, Hamas-supporting demonstrators outside the Israeli embassy in London last year during Operation Cast Lead.
“Meanwhile, ” she says “…Judge John Denniss is industriously sentencing demonstrators who gathered near the Israeli embassy to rail against that state’s attack on Gaza, one of the worst acts of state terrorism in recent history… Protesters came from all backgrounds but the vast majority of those arrested were young Muslim men. Dozens are being sent down for insignificant acts of bravado… To deter us from what? Having the temerity to believe we live in a democracy and are free to march?”
I stood outside some of those demonstrations outside the Israeli embassy. I saw the screaming, hysterical hatred in the demonstrators’ faces. I saw them scratching and flailing and punching at the police — desperate to get through the cordon to run riot in the embassy of the hated Jewish state.
For Alibhai-Brown, this is just “bravado”. To take legal action against such horrendous acts of violence and intimidation is to discriminate against Muslims. Muslims should have a free pass whenever they feel offended. The law, she suggests, should not apply to them.
But let me repeat the most important point. Alibhai-Brown is one of the most prominent “moderate” Muslims in Britain. She is feted by the national press and the broadcast media. Neither her editor at the Independent nor pretty well anyone else in the mainstream opinion forming establishment in Britain will have thought twice about her remarks.
Welcome to “normality” in modern Britain.
March 8th, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Robin – I came across this matter in, of course, the Guardian, in an article by, of course, the resident ultra nut-job, Seamus Milne –
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/feb/25/anti-muslim-hatred-threat-to-all
“This tide of anti-Muslim hatred is a threat to us all”
What I found utterly incredible, as you remark, is that the police were under actual physical attack by the mob – yet, BECAUSE THE ARE MOSLEMS they should, in his view, and that of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown not be brought to trial for their violence. As you say, he and she expect them to get a “free pass” – simply because of their religion and ethnicity.
Amazing, and I hope the fact that they did NOT get a free pass indicates that they are a minority – a violent, hate-filled, vocal minority to be sure, but not representative of the greater British community.
Moreover, you are right on the mark drawing attention to her comparison of Geert Wilder’s documentary film about the contemporary situation in Holland, which has nothing to do with Jews, Judaism, or Israel and the holocaust denying Irving. It indicates both how deep her hatred runs, and how comparisons between the Holocaust and the Palestinians have become endemic – her article is replete with the usual lies – genocide, ethnic cleansing, etc. for a group of people who are increasing in numbers at unsustainable rates, who are living supported by the world in money, food, goods, and, sadly, weaponry in some cases.
March 8th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
Alibhai-Brown’s article is a tasteless mix of whining self-pity and barefaced lies. The anti-Zionist demonstration, for which many Muslims have been given gaol sentences was violent, aggressive and anti-semitic. Policemen were injured. Starbucks was trashed because the CEO, Howard Schultz is Jewish. In effect this was a mini-KrystalNacht.
And Alibhai-Brown cheerfully dismisses the demonstrators’ activities as ‘innocent acts of bravado’.
Revolting.
March 8th, 2010 at 8:22 pm
Robin, if Alibhai Brown is a moderate then I am next in line to the UK throne.
If I remember correctly Alibhai Brown wrote immediately after 7/7 that she had been hoping that the carnage was done by the IRA rather than Islamists – this typifies her attitude to Islamist terror. She is a lamentably ignorant and silly woman, who, typical of many Muslims who claim to be open-minded and yet when scratched resort to type, believes that Muslims are special and should be above the laws of the countries in which they find themselves.
Wilders is no fascist. He is the only man brave enough to go public with the fears that others may share have not dared to air.
March 8th, 2010 at 8:51 pm
Imagine the reaction if you were to allege that opponents to the invasion of Iraq of being indifferent to the suffering of Iraqi Kurds, Shias, Christians and Sunni opponents to Saddam’s regime. (Many of them appear to be just that — indifferent.)
March 8th, 2010 at 11:55 pm
AKUS: ” a violent, hate-filled, vocal minority to be sure, but not representative of the greater British community”. Sorry but what you say is unclear. Who do you mean “greater British communiy”? If the general British public, then I certainly agree. If the rest of the British Muslim community, I have my serious reservations about this latter vesion, because I think that the overwhelming majority of them even if they don’t subscribe to actual violence and intimidation, support or aid the radicals’/extremists’ broader aims, if not necessarily their way of reaching those aims. So please be specific so that I know who you wanted to refer to.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:20 am
Thank you for a fine analysis, Robin. Please keep them coming.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
Her crudely false analogies and sometimes flagrant dishonesty make the coverage and column inches she receives quite extraordinary. Another symptom of dumbed-down Britain.
March 9th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Pollard, Geras and Phillips on Alibhai-Brown:
Stephen Pollard
1) Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is a disgrace
“Long standing readers will be aware of my contempt for the Yazzmonster. I haven’t mentioned her witterings of late because I have grown bored by her monstrous ego and jaw dropping stupdity. Shooting fish in a barrel can grow dull.
But her piece today is so utterly vile that I feel I have to give her what was once called the oxygen of publicity, if only so that those of you who see and hear her when she pops up on the airwaves are aware of the sort of person she is.
Her piece is one long tirade of bigotry”
N.B. Link now gone but she was accused of racism in the piece.
2) Takes one to know one II
http://www.stephenpollard.net/003241.html
“As for lunch with her… Wouldn’t you simply have to spend the entire time staring at your Crackberry, to ward off the horror of having to engage with the Yazzmonster sitting opposite you?”
3) Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s deceitful slurs
http://www.stephenpollard.net/002258.html
4) They can’t give them away!
http://www.stephenpollard.net/002522.html
Norman Geras
And here’s Professor Norman Geras on the “moral disgrace” that has “infected wide sections of the Western media and left-liberal opinion”:
Yasmin rides again
http://tinyurl.com/aoqac
Melanie Phillips
Here we go again
“Even after this ludicrous theory had run into the sand, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the Independent fearlessly risked what she described as ‘the wrath of Moses’ to suggest that LFI headed a Jewish conspiracy to manipulate the British government into support for Israel.
The ‘wrath of Moses’, eh? Yasmin’s got the Goebbeldegook for Jews off pat. But we can’t call this poison by its proper name, because that would only prove her claim that the all-powerful Jews use such labels to suppress the evidence of their perfidy.”
http://tinyurl.com/yby25gs
March 9th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown writes:
“I dare the same peers to now invite David Irving, the Holocaust denier, to share his thoughts freely in the Lords.”
But Lord Ahmed (the first Muslim peer) has done something just as bad. Stephen Pollard writes:
1) “On February 23 [2005], Lord Ahmed hosted a book launch in the House of Lords for a man going by the name of Israel Shamir. “Israel Shamir” is, in fact, a Swedish-domiciled anti-Semite also known as Jöran Jermas.
The gist of Shamir/Jermas’s speech at the meeting can be gleaned from its title, “Jews and the Empire”. It included observations such as: “All the [political] parties are Zionist-infiltrated.” “Your newspapers belong to Zionists . . . Jews indeed own, control and edit a big share of mass media, this mainstay of Imperial thinking.” “In the Middle East we have just one reason for wars, terror and trouble — and that is Jewish supremacy drive . . . in Iraq, the US and its British dependency continue the same old fight for ensuring Jewish supremacy in the Middle East.” “The Jews like an Empire . . . This love of Empire explains the easiness Jews change their allegiance . . . Simple minds call it ‘treacherous behaviour’, but it is actually love of Empire per se.” “Now, there is a large and thriving Muslim community in England . . . they are now on the side of freedom, against the Empire, and they are not afraid of enforcers of Judaic values, Jewish or Gentile. This community is very important in order to turn the tide.” ”
2) “Yesterday, I phoned him. When I told him that I planned to write a piece drawing attention to his actions in hosting Shamir/Jermas and that I wanted to give him every opportunity to respond, he replied: “I am not even going to speak with you.” He then put the phone down.
Lord Ahmed’s refusal to condemn the remarks seems to indicate that he sees nothing wrong with inviting such a man to speak, or with the words Shamir/Jermas used.”
Source: Lord Ahmed’s unwelcome guest
http://tinyurl.com/2a2e59
March 11th, 2010 at 4:07 pm
“Offend us Muslims and we’ll show you a thing or two about offending people.” This is the tactic. Being “offended” is the trick to make westerners feel sorry so that they comply with something more fundamental later.
One suburban Philadelphia woman “desperate to do something” to help suffering Muslims already decided to kill the Swedish cartoonist
Free speech is sometimes offending. So What!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/09/jihad-jane-colleen-larose_n_492586.html