More Mosque Trouble

Councillor Alan Craig is running for Mayor of London for the Christian People's Alliance. One of his main policies is to ensure that the "mega-mosque" planned for East London does not get built. There are genuine concerns with regards to this mosque. It is being built with Saudi money by Tablighi Jamaat, a group described by French Intelligence as "an antechamber of fundamentalism". They have also declared that this mosque, which will be bigger than St Paul's, is designed specifically to encourage visitors to the Olympics to convert to Islam through Dawah.

Well, the UKIP candidate, Gerard Batten, has taken on this policy and gone one stage further, a stage too far. Writing to The Times today he says:

But I go further than Alan Craig in that as London mayor I would oppose planning permission for any new mosques in London until there are places of non-Muslim worship allowed in Mecca and Medina.

Moderate Muslims should support such a policy so that a message can be sent loud and clear to the extremists. Muslims must apply the same degree of tolerance to other religions in their heartland that they expect to be applied to them in non-Islamic countries.

Of course this is a ridiculous notion and if Mr Batten thinks any Muslims would support such a policy he is deluded. It seems that he is under the impression that all Muslims are one homogeneous group and they all take collective decisions. How else can he explain trying to hold London Muslims accountable for the actions of the Saudi Royal Family. Isn't this as bad as the BNP?

Difficult to see who is worse out of Mr Batten and Ms Ruoff. Which do you vote for?

Mosques and agreeing with the MCB

A member of the Synod of the Church of England said that no more mosques should be built in Britain. Alison Ruoff declared:

You build a mosque and then what happens?

You have Muslim people moving into that area, all the shops will then become Islamic, all the housing will then become Islamic and as the Bishop of Rochester has so wisely pointed out, that will be a no-go area for anyone else. They will bring in Islamic law. We cannot allow that to happen. We are still a Christian country – we need to hold on to that.

One wonders what Ms Ruoff is thinking. Does she believe that Mosques are incubators for Muslims? That somehow by virtue of there being a new mosque there are suddenly more Muslims in Britain than there were before? It's probably a safe bet that mosques are built in areas or close to areas where Muslims already live. And if some Muslims move into an area to be closer to their place of worship it's probably also a safe bet that they're not living in both places at the same time.

On this one I have to agree with Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain:

These are unfortunately very bigoted and, frankly, xenophobic remarks. There must be freedom for all communities and not just for some. I think heads of the Church will be disgusted with the comments.

Quite right, Inayat, for a change.

Positive News From Venice

Two stories have emerged from a meeting in Venice of the six largest EU members. The first is that security officials have backed a plan to profile mosques across Europe to try and prevent Islamist clerics from radicalising young Muslims. The increasing threat from home-grown Islamists has shown that more needs to be done. Just one example would be the Finsbury Park Mosque where Abu Hamza was allowed to preach hatred for years before anything was done.

The second piece of good news is that John Reid has called for a changing in the Human Rights Laws to reflect the nature of the war with Islamists. He said:

We need to work to modernise the law - still protecting human rights and still providing equity and justice - but reflecting the reality of the conflicts and struggles we now face.

...

The right to security, to the protection of life and liberty, is and should be the basic right on which all others are based. Now, more than ever, it should be the fundamental starting point of all our principles and practices across Europe.

With John Reid stepping down next month, let's hope his successor will act on his words and reform the Human Rights Laws so that our rights to safety and security are treated with at least as much importance as the "right" of criminals and terrorists.

Naturally, Human Rights groups are not happy. Shami Chakrabarti, from Liberty, is quoted by the BBC News as saying:

In this struggle, we have to work with allies around the world to make sure they up their game on human rights because terrorism is being bred in countries which have the worst human rights records.

Obviously, Ms Chakrabarti doesn't watch the news and has failed to spot that many Islamists are being bred right here in Britain. Unless, of course, Liberty think Britain have the worst human rights records.

And here's something for all the BBC bias watchers. Note how early the BBC chooses to quote Ms Chakrabarti's comments. Even before quoting what John Reid had said (which is what the article is actually about) three paragraphs are devoted to Liberty's response. Why place the response before the actual statement? Surely it isn't to ensure that people read Liberty's point of view before that of John Reid? Surely it isn't to ensure that Chakrabarti is above the fold?