“Six imams removed from a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix are calling on Muslims to boycott the airline. If only we could get Muslims to boycott all airlines, we could dispense with airport security altogether.”
Ann Coulter at Front Page Magazine, 23 November 2006
“Since the London bombings of July 7, 2005, which killed 53 people, the police have been obliged to keep thousands of Muslims under surveillance while investigating up to a hundred separate conspiracies to commit terror. But rather than expressing shame that such unprecedented measures have been necessary, ‘moderate’ Muslim leaders like Muhammad Abdul Bari have responded with thinly veiled blackmail. As often as not, British support for Israel is invoked as high on the list of Muslim grievances. The message is simple: unless Britain withdraws that support, every Muslim will become a potential suicide bomber.”
Daniel Johnson in Commentary, November 2006
The emerging pan-European Islamophobic hysteria: how should Muslims respond?
An EMN Conference with:
Victoria Brittain, Journalist and co-author with Moazzam Begg of his book Enemy Combatant
Gwen Griffith Dickson, Director of Lokahi Foundation
Fouad Imrraine, Collectif des Musulmans de France (France)
Lee Jasper (Chair), Senior Advisor to the Mayor of London on Race and Policing
Redmond O’Neil, Director of Transport and Public Affairs, Greater London Authority Mayor’s Office
Arzu Merali, Head of Research Section, Islamic Human Rights Commission
Tariq Ramadan, President of the European Muslim Network, senior research fellow St Antony’s College (Oxford) and at the Lokahi Foundation (London)
Date/Time: Friday 8th December from 7 to 10 pm.
Venue: City Hall, The Queen’s Walk, London SE1 2AA
Present efforts to challenge the gross misrepresentations of Muslims and Islam in the media and across the political spectrum are not working. As media scare stories increase in both number and ferocity, fuelled by the calculated pronouncements of politicians and intelligence services, the gap between Muslim and non-Muslim citizens in Europe escalating to dangerous levels. It is now essential that European Muslims become politically engaged in the societies they live in.
This Conference will explore the European-wide phenomenon and discuss strategies, tactics and practical actions that need to be adopted to counter attacks on Muslims and bring communities together in the fight for social justice for all.
This event is organised by the European Muslim Network and supported by the Greater London Authority and the 1990 Trust.
Booking: To reserve a place to attend this FREE event, please email your name to ruhul@blink.org.uk
A man who carried out a religiously aggravated attack in Leicester has been given a suspended jail sentence. Alan Young, 55, from Bourne Crescent, Northampton admitted common assault, religiously aggravated assault and harassment on 7 July.
Leicester magistrates heard he had made remarks about Muslims and hit a Muslim man at a health centre on the first anniversary of the London bombings. Young was given a four-month jail sentence suspended for two years. He was also ordered to pay £200 compensation to the man he attacked.
The court heard Young, who had consumed three quarters of a bottle of whiskey, went into the surgery on Evington Road and shouted it was “kill a Muslim day”. He made remarks about the London bombings and punched a Muslim man five or six times in the face. Young then went on to shout further remarks about Muslims from a nearby property and hit an Asian man after making comments about Iraq.
In court the 55-year-old accepted he had behaved very badly.
“In many European countries, Islamists are staging demonstrations against legislators’ actions to ban veils hiding the faces of Muslim women. While the legislators seek to increase public security, the Islamists protest that the ban violates their ‘religious freedom’…. The petrodollar-backed Islamists are on a fast track to subvert democracies from within. With the best PR money can buy, they use media and communication outlets to popularize and legitimize the Islamist agenda, while deceiving the public as to its very nature. Under the guise of personal freedom, so cherished in the West, they introduce conservative Muslim restrictions on private and public life.”
More right-wing paranoia about the “Islamicisation” of the West, from Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen, in the Washington Times, 22 November 2006
Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain replies to Sunny Hundal’s pompously-titled New Generation Network manifesto.
Guardian’s Comment is Free, 21 November 2006
One silver lining to the assault on our freedoms
By Jeremy Corbyn
Morning Star, 22 November 2006
LAST weekend, the Stop the War coalition organised an enormous assembly linking the war and the defence of minorities and freedom of expression. Two days later, the British Muslim Initiative and Liberty came together to host a rally in Westminster’s Central Hall on the theme of Islamophobia.
Intolerance is not new in Britain. The Jews were thrown out in the 13th century and they were not allowed back until Oliver Cromwell allowed them in the 17th century. However, they suffered persecution for centuries more to come, with hysterical campaigns in the 19th and 20th centuries run by the popular media which enabled the far-right to gain ground.
Black migrants suffered racist abuse and stereotyping in the 1950s and, later, Asian and other groups suffered in the same way.
The Irish were singled out for special vilification and, after the 1974 Prevention of Terrorism Act, they had the unwelcome attention of the state itself forced upon them. The PTA was finally replaced by the Terrorism Act 2000 and subsequent acts, all of which have been designed to give excessive and unaccountable power to the security services.
The US may operate a blot on human existence in Guantanamo Bay, but Britain has Belmarsh and is holding dozens of foreign nationals indefinitely without trial, appeal or action date.
Ever since 2001, the vocal campaign against Islam has gained momentum. It has been given occasional puffs of credibility by public statements.
Anindya Bhattacharyya reports on last Saturday’s People’s Assembly on Islamophobia and the “war on terror”, called by the Stop the War Coalition.
Inayat Bunglawala of the MCB has written to MPACUK expressing support for them in response to the Observer‘s smear against Asghar Bukhari:
“This story has mysteriously surfaced at this time in a clear attempt to try and discredit Asghar Bukhari and MPACUK. Asghar’s donation of sixty pounds to David Irving over six years ago may be regarded as perhaps overly idealistic and indeed naive. However, it is disgraceful – though not unexpected, of course – that the usual suspects have tried to use this incident in an attempt to portray Asghar as an anti-semite. I know that Asghar is a staunch critic – and rightly so – of Zionism and the bloody and repressive policies of the Israeli government, but also that he has absolutely no truck whatsoever with anti-semitism or any other form of racial prejudice. I hope MPAC will not be deterred by this episode and continue to focus on encouraging British Muslims to play their full role in the mainstream of British society and not allow themselves to be marginalised through inaction and passivity.”
Leading anti-racist groups are withdrawing support for a Commission for Racial Equality conference.
The CRE’s Race Convention is being criticised for being over-priced and for having “inflammatory” titles for workshops. The 1990 Trust and other organisations are also concerned about the CRE’s event being sponsored by a bank with links to the slave trade.
The campaigning body has joined forces with many other BME groups to organise an alternative race conference, called the Race & Faith Leadership Summit. This event will have free entry and will discuss the real concerns of Black communities and will run on the same day as the CRE’s Race Convention.
The Race & Faith Leadership Summit will take place next Monday (27th November 2006) at London’s City Hall, SE1.
This event is supported by dozens of organisations including the Muslim Council of Britain, the National Black Police Association, and the public sector union UNISON.
For more details, and to register, log on to: http://www.blink.org.uk/docs/rsflyer.htm