Harron Siddiqui analyses the contradictions in the Bouchard-Taylor commission’s report.
Yearly Archives: 2008
Couldn’t Sky Arts find a Muslim?
“Three films on the three great Abrahamic faiths; three speeches by experts on those faiths. It sounds like the making of an admirably inclusive season of programming on Sky Arts, arranged by the channel’s chairman, Lord St John of Fawsley. A problem, however, looms. For while the lecture on Judaism is to be delivered by the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, and the talk on Christianity is to be given by the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the contribution on Islam is to be provided by Hans Küng, who isn’t a Muslim, but another Catholic. Questions are being asked why nobody who actually practises Islam is deemed suitable….
“The Muslim Council of Britain, while saying it wants to see the lecture before criticising it, comments: ‘Hans Küng is a respected advocate of interfaith dialogue and it may well be that he will do a splendid job of explaining about Islam and Islamic architecture. It is somewhat regrettable that, unlike for the other faiths … the programme makers seem to have been unable to procure the services of someone who was actually a believer in the religion to present the programme’.”
Oliver Marre in the Observer, 25 May 2008
‘Britain’s phoney war on terror’
“After spending time recently with senior Pentagon officials and other Americans involved in counter-terrorism, I was struck by the global scope of their concerns. Above all I was reminded how different their attitudes are from those of their British counterparts, still obsessed with ‘community cohesion’ and the ‘radicalisation’ of young Muslims. In Britain the views of the non-Muslim majority are largely ignored – or lead to them being branded as potential ‘Islamophobes’. In the United States the unthinkable and unsayable are debated openly….
“Europe can be weak in combating terrorism at a political level, largely because of the effects of officially decreed multiculturalism and a failure to do much about the impact of population movements on the host culture and economy. Not surprisingly, the failure of European governments to get a grip on what are still relatively small Muslim minorities provokes exasperation in America.
“Many of the 1.6m Muslims living in Britain, for example, still do not seem fully to appreciate the outrage that a finger-jabbing minority causes at home and abroad with each escalating demand for Islamist enclaves. Like a perennial student, new Labour favours debate and dialogue. But in dealing with the Muslim Council of Britain, the government has unwittingly accepted as ‘community’ interlocutors men who have blamed Islamist terrorism primarily on British foreign policy, while failing to condemn suicide bombing outside the UK….
“The one British politician who grasps the need to be as frank as our American cousins about the threat from terrorists who are actively plotting indiscriminate slaughter is not the prime minister, who appears to be locked into the globalising vapidities that thrill Davos seminars, but David Cameron. The leader of the opposition understands the existential threat from jihadism and has comprehensive ideas about how to combat it…. He is fully conscious of the need to balance ancient liberties with the right to stay alive.”
Michael Burleigh in the Sunday Times, 25 May 2008
Update: See Yusuf Smith’s comments at Indigo Jo Blogs, 27 May 2008
Nazir-Ali backs initiative to convert Muslims to Christianity
The Church of England was accused by one of its most senior bishops yesterday of failing in its duty to convert British Muslims to Christianity.
The Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, said Church leaders had rightly shown sensitivity towards Muslims as part of efforts to welcome minority faiths. But he said: “I think it may have gone too far and what we need now is to recover our nerve.” “Our nation is rooted in the Christian faith, and that is the basis for welcoming people of other faiths,” he said.
The Pakistani-born bishop, who in 2002 was tipped to become Archbishop of Canterbury before Dr Rowan Williams took over from Dr George Carey, was echoing concerns that many Church leaders are abandoning attempts to spread Christianity among Muslims out of fear of a backlash.
Members of the Church’s “parliament” have now forced the highly sensitive issue on to the agenda of this summer’s General Synod – despite the efforts of liberal bishops to warn them off. A private members’ motion calling on the bishops to clarify their strategy has gathered so many signatures of support from Synod members that it has leapt over others in the queue for the July meeting in York.
Synod member Paul Eddy, who tabled the motion, said that the active recruitment of non-believers and adherents of other faiths had always been a Biblical injunction on Christians, commanded by Christ himself. But he claimed that many bishops were downplaying the missionary role of the Church and official documents often glossed over the requirement to convert Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs or followers of other religions. He warned that the central role of Christianity in Britain was being eroded, and by “allowing the rise of another religion in our country, all that Britain stands for is up for grabs”.
Update: See “Church of England row over Muslim conversion”, Daily Telegraph, 26 May 2008
Further update: See also Sunny Hundal’s comments at Pickled Politics, 28 May 2008
Japan says Muslim offense at cartoon ‘regrettable’
TOKYO — The government said in a statement Friday that it is “regrettable” that a section of a Japanese cartoon has sparked an outcry in the Muslim world and stressed the need to foster understanding to prevent similar incidents in the future.
“While it resulted from carelessness, the Japanese government considers it regrettable that Muslims’ feelings were hurt by the content of some of the cartoon,” Foreign Ministry Press Secretary Kazuo Kodama said. “In any case, we think it is important to prevent a recurrence by fostering understanding and respect for other religions and cultures.”
The statement came a day after Japanese publisher Shueisha Inc and Another Push Pin Planning Co, which created the animated images, apologized for offending Muslims but insisted the detail had simply been overlooked and there was no intention of showing any disrespect for the Quran.
At issue is a 90-second segment from “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure”, which depicts Dio Brando, a villain, picking up a Quran from a bookshelf and apparently examining it as he orders the execution of the hero and his friends.
Italy rightists raze Verona mosque
Italy’s far-right, anti-immigrant Northern League party has started its mission in the new government with bringing down a mosque in the northern city of Verona.
“[The mosque destruction] reinforces Muslim fears of seeing the League in the ruling coalition,” Ali Abu Shwaima, the head of Milan-based Islamic Centre, told IslamOnline.net on Saturday, May 24.
Bulldozers brought down last week a building housing a Muslim prayer room in the city. “I never felt at ease with this mosque,” Elisonder Antonneli, the head of Verona city council, said. “This place will be turned into a park and a car parking space and will be named after (Italian writer) Oriana Fallaci.”
Fallaci, who died in 2006, was notorious for anti-Islam stances. Following the 9/11 attacks, the far-right writer published a book entitled “Rage and Pride” in which she ridiculed the Noble Qur’an. She has also authored another book “The Force of Reason” in which she warned that Europe was turning into “an Islamic province, an Islamic colony” and that “to believe that a good Islam and a bad Islam exist goes against all reason.”
The Northern League has four ministers in Silovio Berlusconi’s government, including the portfolio of the Interior. The League grabbed 8 percent of the vote in last month’s general elections, securing Berlusconi’s right-wing coalition a comfortable majority in the parliament. The party has nearly doubled its parliamentary strength from 4.5 percent two years ago.
The Northern League is widely accused of racism with many critics calling it the BNP of Italy, a reference to the British right-wing party. Its election campaign played on issues such as immigration crime and economic and cultural fears from immigration.
Abu Shwaima, the Muslim leader, said Italian Muslims will face hard times under the far-right league. He said Muslims in the city of Verona used to find spiritual comfort at the razed mosque. “The mosque destruction is sign of spiraling Islamophobia in many European countries,” he said.
Muslim cleared of murdering BNP man
A Muslim elder who stabbed his neighbour in the back was dramatically cleared of murder yesterday after a court was told that he had endured a living hell of racism, threats and violence.
Habib Khan, 50, of Stoke-on-Trent, was found guilty of the manslaughter of Keith Brown, 52, a BNP activist and an alleged friend of the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, who attended his funeral. Khan killed Mr Brown last July after finding him in a struggle with his 24-year-old son, Azir. He said he thought that Mr Brown was going to kill Azir and claimed that Mr Brown fell on to a knife he was holding at his back.
Stafford Crown Court was told that Mr Brown, an unemployed father of seven with a long criminal record, began a frightening campaign of intimidation, violence and racial abuse against the Khan family after objecting to his neighbour building a grand house next to his own modest home. A few months before the stabbing, Mr Brown’s son, Ashley Barker, 20, was convicted of assaulting Khan. He hit him repeatedly on the head with a metal object on his wrist.
The court was told that Mr Brown had been jailed in his youth for wounding with intent and that his most recent conviction was in 2000 for assault. Khan, on the other hand, was a pillar of his local mosque.
Prosecuting authorities were accused in court of repeatedly failing to sustain convictions against Mr Brown and Mr Barker, both BNP activists, described by the defence as “the neighbours from hell”.
During the construction of Khan’s house, Mr Brown and Mr Barker took sledgehammers to the walls. Mr Brown was convicted of criminal damage but appealed. When the prosecution failed to warn any witnesses about the appeal hearing, a judge overturned the conviction.
After the Khan house was built, Mr Brown and Mr Barker kept up with their persecution of the family, once shouting “Paki b******s” at Khan and his wife in their garden and threatening to kill them. The police were called but Khan withdrew his complaint in the hope of seeking mediation.
Next Mr Brown smashed the windows of the Khans’ conservatory. Khan complained to the police. Mr Brown and Mr Barker were charged with racially aggravated harassment but the prosecution dropped the case.
After Mr Barker was arrested and bailed for his attack on Khan last year, he returned immediately to Khan’s home and threw a stone at the bedroom window. He then shouted: “You are dead.” Mr Barker was charged with witness intimidation but that accusation was dropped after he pleaded guilty to assault.
The racism behind integration
“In most European countries, integration is simply a euphemism for assimilation, the report says. The driving force is the notion of a national culture. In Germany this expresses itself through blood-based citizenship and a Leitkultur(dominant culture) and in France through citizenship by birth and earth and by laïcité (secularism). Norway has the idea of likhet (sameness); the Netherlands has verzuiling (religious/cultural blocs).
“One expects the extreme right to embrace such notions, but the report finds centre-left parties also using these racist sentiments to strategise. They may be liberal about immigration but, when it comes to Muslims, they fall prey to an Islamophobia that is ‘nourished by a mixture of feminism and secularism’.”
Ziauddin Sardar reviews Liz Fekete’s Integration, Islamophobia and civil rights in Europe, a new report published by the Institute of Race Relations.
Building churches allowed: Qaradawi
DOHA — Prominent scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi approves building churches for Christian citizens of or residents in Muslim countries to meet their needs just as Muslims are being allowed to build mosques in the West. The fatwa came in response to a question regarding the building of the first-ever church in the Gulf emirate of Qatar.
Qaradawi, the president of the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS), said the presence of a Christian minority, whether it was of a local community or of expatriates, justifies this. “It is completely permissible that they should be allowed to have churches.” Qaradawi based his view on the Muslim principle of equal treatment. “Just like they allow Muslims in their countries to build mosques for prayers.”
Perhaps Patrick Sookhdeo of the Barnabas Fund, who has made a speciality of condemning the persecution of Christians in Muslim-majority countries, will now acclaim Qaradawi’s intervention on this issue? Don’t hold your breath.
‘No place for the hijab in civic life’ says Irish journalist
“If Muslim men are so keen on seeing their headscarf introduced into Irish society, they should wear it as well as their women. Let them cover up, too. Otherwise there must be no place for the hijab in civic life here. Not in banks, hospitals or libraries, not in the guards or civil service and most definitely not in schools.
“You hear a constant stream of hooey about why we can’t ban the headscarf. But this is not about Islamophobia. It’s not about prejudice on race or religion grounds. It’s not about equating the Muslim scarf with terrorism. It’s not about denial of civil rights. Here’s what banning the headscarf is about: the State demonstrating our belief in gender equality. It’s about removing a symbol of repression and submission.
“… it is not discriminatory to ban the hijab in a country that is culturally Christian…. Of course, some nuns wear veils but that’s of their own volition as adult women – not a custom they are railroaded into as children….
“I don’t regard the hijab as a harmless expression of religious and cultural diversity. A veiled woman carries regressive connotations. If we accept it in schools, we open the door to other practices in the Muslim world even more repressive to women, among them arranged marriages and female circumcision.”
Martina Devlin in the Irish Independent, 22 May 2008
Update: See Yusuf Smith’s comments at Indigo Jo Blogs, 23 May 2008