Muslim women players fight to wear hijab on the pitch

FootballA national five-a-side Muslim women’s football team is fighting for the right to play in their religious headscarf. Team captain and chairwoman of the Muslim Women’s Sport Foundation Rimla Akhtar is leading the campaign.

Under rules of the International Football Association Board, scarves such as the hijab cannot officially be worn. Individual referees can decide whether to let women flout the regulations or send them off. Miss Akhtar, from north London, said the attitude towards the hijab was causing resentment and is demanding legislation be altered to allow it.

The IFAB is yet to make an official decision but Miss Akhtar said that if football bosses continued to drag their feet, sides such as Iran could lose their best players. “I wear the hijab and it is kept on very securely, so it is not a safety problem”, she said. “There is as much chance of a player pulling on your shirt as there is of them pulling on your hijab.”

IFAB guidelines state a player must not “use equipment or wear anything that is dangerous to himself/herself or another player”.

Liverpool supporter Miss Akhtar, who was the only Muslim girl in her school team, belongs to the British Muslim Women’s Futsal Team. Futsal is a form of football first developed from street football in South America.

Miss Akhtar said five years since Bend It Like Beckham was released, in which a young Sikh player fights against prejudice, discrimination has not been stamped out. “We should be clear that wearing the hijab is not an issue.”

Evening Standard, 31 May 2007

MCB commends UCU stand on spying

The Muslim Council of Britain welcomes the decision taken by the University and College Union (UCU) to reject government guidelines on how to supposedly tackle extremism on British campuses.

“Of course, if people come to know of violent acts being plotted then they have a clear civic duty to share that information with the police without delay. However, our universities must remain institutions which facilitate and encourage rigorous intellectual inquiry and discourse. The role of lecturers must be to facilitate and encourage critical thinking, not to stifle it or abort the process,” said Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, Secretary-General of the MCB.

It is ironic that some of the politicians who now recommend these measures were themselves victims of intelligence spying because of their political views when they were students in the 1970s. Just as intellectual freedom was priceless then, it should remain so today.

The MCB fully supports the UCU’s stand that there is no corroborative evidence of British universities being used as ‘hotbeds of Islamic extremism.’ Hence the directive to target Muslim students would only give rise to greater discontent, alienation and discord.

“Whatever the challenges that beset our society we should not resort to the dangerous ways of intellectual censure and religious witch-hunt,” added Dr Abdul Bari.

MCB press release, 31 May 2007

Who’s afraid of Tariq Ramadan?

Tariq Ramadan New RepublicPaul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism, which has become the bible of ex-leftist supporters of the “War on Terror” like Nick Cohen, has a major article in The New Republic devoted to attacking Tariq Ramadan.

Mad Melanie Phillips hails Berman’s “magisterial piece of writing” which she claims “not only manages to disinter the extremism that Ramadan goes to such lengths to conceal but he also comprehensively shreds the various useful idiots who have sanitised Ramadan’s thinking for public consumption”.

Mel expresses her outrage that “despite the fact that Ramadan was excluded from the US because of his suspected links with extremism, Oxford university has given him an academic berth – and the British government appointed him as one of its advisers on how to deal with … Islamist extremism. Berman’s article shows just how deeply the west’s collective brain has been put to sleep.”

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 30 May 2007

Petition against Muslim girls’ school in Belgium

BRUSSELS – A petition has been started in protest of plans to set up a secondary school in Molenbeek exclusively for Muslim girls. Many people are opposed to the idea, citing the separation of church and state in Belgium as grounds to block the plans.

The petition calls for a ban on “any ostensible sign of philosophical or religious membership in the context of a school, for students and especially for teachers.” They want this ban in effect for all schools that receive state subsidies.

“I don’t think that setting up an Islamic school is a fantastic idea, but that is what happens when people feel shut out by a traditional school,” was the response from Francophone antiracism foundation Mrax.

Expatica, 30 May 2007

‘I took a picture of Tower Bridge and was arrested for terrorism’

Socialist Worker Tower BridgeGovernment ministers and police chiefs are demanding new powers to allow the police to stop and search people in the streets if they suspect them of terrorism. These powers echo the notorious “sus laws” of the 1970s.

Then the laws created an atmosphere of fear as police targeted young black men. Those laws were abandoned after widespread rioting in the early 1980s.

A glimpse of what these new laws would mean was shown last week when two foreign students were arrested for “terrorism” after taking snapshots of Tower Bridge.

Socialist Worker, 2 June 2007

Academics refuse to spy on Muslim students

Academics refuse to spyAcademics refuse to spy on Muslim students

By Daniel Coysh

Morning Star, 31 May 2007

UCU delegates unanimously rejected government demands yesterday that university staff snoop on students suspected of “extremism.”

The repressive plans were universally condemned by the UCU inaugural congress in Bournemouth, which enthusiastically backed a motion calling on members to “resist attempts by government to engage colleges and universities in activities which amount to increased surveillance of Muslim or other minority students and to the use of members of staff for such witch-hunts.”

The massive vote endorsed the position initially adopted by the union at the end of 2006, when the plans were first mooted.

UCU general secretary Sally Hunt commented: “Delegates have made it clear that they will oppose government attempts to restrict academic freedom or free speech on campus. Lecturers want to teach students. If they wanted to police them they would have joined the force.”

In November, the government warned of what it described as the serious threat posed by radical Muslims and issued guidance to colleges and universities calling on them to monitor student activity.

But Ms Hunt added: “Lecturers have a pivotal role in building trust. These proposals, if implemented, would make that all but impossible. Universities must remain safe spaces for lecturers and students to discuss and debate all sorts of ideas, including those that some people may consider challenging, offensive and even extreme. The last thing we need is people too frightened to discuss an issue because they fear some quasi-secret service will turn them in.”

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Fox News uses Al Qaeda tape to whip up fear and hatred of American Muslims

Rather than analyze the seriousness of the threat or the effectiveness of the US war on terror, FOX News used a recently-released video tape from an American Al Qaeda member to foment hatred toward Muslims, particularly American Muslims.

On last night’s (5/30/07) Hannity & Colmes, Sean Hannity, in his scripted introduction to the discussion about the tape made by Adam Yehiye Gadahn, read, “(Gadahn’s) involvement with Al Qaeda may no longer come as a surprise to many Americans. Remember, a poll released last week revealed that 25% of young Muslims in America say that they would condone suicide bombings in defense of religion.”

News Hounds, 31 May 2007

Students protest headscarf ban

BRUSSELS – Hundreds of students of the Koninklijk Atheneum Andrée Thomas demonstrated in front of their school this morning against the planned ban on headscarves at the institution.

The administration of the school, which has a great many Muslim students, has decided to ban all outward signs of religious convictions, including the headscarf.

The pupils were protesting because they regard the ban as a violation of free expression and freedom of religion. A number of protestors carried banners that stated that they would leave the school if not allowed to wear a headscarf.

The school administration defends its decision claiming it will contribute to social integration and encourage respect for different ways of life.

Expatica, 30 May 2007

BNP wastes police time with complaint about Muslim demo

Lancaster UAF suggests that West Midlands BNP should be charged with wasting police time over their complaint about propaganda for the “Muslims rise against British oppression” demonstration planned for 15 June outside Downing Street, which the fascists claim constitutes “an incitement to violence”. Well, they’d know all about that, wouldn’t they?

(It might be added that the posters announcing the protest have already been condemned by Adam Yosef of the Saltley Gate Peace Group as an attempt to “disrupt the harmonious relations between people of various faiths”, though like Lancaster UAF he points out that the material “doesn’t glorify or promote terrorism”. Hizb ut-Tahrir have also spoken out against the posters, arguing that “the posting of such material damages community relations and does nothing to create harmony between the city’s residents”.)