Yearly Archives: 2008

Underlying prejudices against Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The degree of open prejudice is frightening. Web sites and the radical right at times are almost hysterical in the conspiracy theories they concoct around the presidential race and specifically around Barack Obama. But it isn’t just the bigotry of the fringe groups that is disturbing. It’s also the way prejudicial assumptions have slipped into the mainstream. Alarmists fantasize that Obama is a Muslim, and in discussing the outlandish rumor, we all refer to it more or less as a charge: Obama denied the charge that he is a Muslim.

“That choice of words suggests there would be something wrong with it if he was. And that’s the real problem. Good people are failing to recognize and correct their own prejudices. Even Obama falls short on this. Asked about the rumors, he merely denies them: ‘I’m not and never have been of the Muslim faith.’ That denial, spoken that way, reaffirms the prejudice.

“We concede that yes, in America in 2008, being identified as a Muslim is a political handicap, and so there’s only so much we can expect from Obama, who is after all a politician. But he is someone who wants to lead us and who professes an interest in bringing us all together. It is not too much to ask that he add a few words to his denial: ‘But keep in mind, being a Muslim is not something anyone should need to hide. Muslims are our neighbors. They are people who live in our communities, too, and we need to fight prejudice of all kinds’.”

Editorial in the Chicago Daily Herald, 22 May 2008

Brussels: another school bans headscarf

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Brussels school Institut des Ursulines will ban the headscarf starting next year, according to Le Soir. The principal of the school says that his school is one of the few in Brussels that still allows the headscarf and therefore attracted more and more students.

Several petitions have already been started against the management decision, which was made without consultation with the students, teachers and educational staff.

According to the principal of the school, whose students body is 85% students of North African origin, the school attracted more and more students because they allowed the headscarf. Many students have already announced they will leave the school as a result of the decision.

Islam in Europe, 21 May 2008

Quebec’s culture clash

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Is it likely that Hérouxville, set in Quebec’s overwhelmingly white and francophone heartland, will ever witness the stoning of a Muslim woman? Not really, mused Gérard Bouchard, the co-chair of a provincial commission looking into the reasonable accommodation of minorities at an October 2007 public hearing in Trois-Rivières, 30 minutes from the town. “We’re pretty far from stoning here,” he said.

Bouchard was speaking to Andre Drouin, a member of the Hérouxville town council which, in January 2007, created a national firestorm by adopting a code of conduct that banned the stoning of women and covering of faces, among other practices. Yet Drouin held his ground in the face of Bouchard’s skepticism. “Stoning takes place, and some of those people will want to come here. It’s important to be preventive.”

Exchanges like these have consumed the province since Premier Jean Charest formed the Bouchard-Taylor commission in February 2007, largely in response to the public firestorm over the Hérouxville news.

CBC News, 21 May 2008

Mosque plan gets go-ahead amid ‘racist’ row

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Controversial plans for a new mosque in Fulwood have finally been given the green light. But at a heated planning meeting, some members were accused of being “bigots” and “racists” for opposing the scheme. Work on the new mosque at the Masjid-E-Salaam site on Watling Street Road in Fulwood will now begin within six months, after a planning saga lasting two years.

An angry Coun John Browne, who backed the plans, said: “The thing should have gone ahead last time, but a number of us differed and we are in the same situation. It was to differ for political reasons – it’s a misuse of the planning application process. They’re bigots, racists – that’s a terrible thing.”

Others spoke in favour of the mosque, such as Coun Terry Cartwright, who described the new mosque as a “beautiful building”. And Coun Alan Hackett said: “We want to recognise the patience of a large number of people who have put forward this application.”

Lancashire Evening Post, 20 May 2008

Quebec report upholds right to wear hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Muslim hijab. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s no real threat to Quebec values. And most women here wear it by choice, not because of coercion. That’s what the Bouchard-Taylor commission has concluded after a year of study costing $5 million.

In the final draft of their report – which was submitted to the provincial government yesterday and is to be made public at a press conference Thursday – scholars Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor say Quebec society will have a lot to lose if it restricts the wearing of the Muslim head scarf strictly to the home and outdoors.

Devout Muslim women suffer intimidation and discrimination in the Quebec job market for wearing the hijab the commissioners say, recounting testimony from several Muslims in public hearings last fall. For example: A young hijab-wearing woman studying to be a pharmacist “saw her job applications rejected by 50 pharmacies before she was finally able to land a job with an Arab pharmacist.”

Bouchard and Taylor talk of some Quebecers’ “often irrational” opposition to the hijab. They quote from a brief submitted to them in November by a woman in Longueuil, when their 17-city tour of the province swung through town: “In 2007, in Quebec, when a Muslim women wears the veil, I tremble,” the woman wrote.

It’s wrong to think that all veiled Muslim women are somehow under a man’s thumb, the commissioners also say. “There’s a strong feminist current among Muslim women. It follows an original path and is a model that differs from Quebec feminism. It goes along with the wearing of the head scarf.”

Montreal Gazette, 20 May 2008

Mosque plan gets go-ahead amid ‘racist’ row

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Controversial plans for a new mosque in Fulwood have finally been given the green light. But at a heated planning meeting, some members were accused of being “bigots” and “racists” for opposing the scheme. Work on the new mosque at the Masjid-E-Salaam site on Watling Street Road in Fulwood will now begin within six months, after a planning saga lasting two years.

An angry Coun John Browne, who backed the plans, said: “The thing should have gone ahead last time, but a number of us differed and we are in the same situation. It was to differ for political reasons – it’s a misuse of the planning application process. They’re bigots, racists – that’s a terrible thing.”

Others spoke in favour of the mosque, such as Coun Terry Cartwright, who described the new mosque as a “beautiful building”. And Coun Alan Hackett said: “We want to recognise the patience of a large number of people who have put forward this application.”

Lancashire Evening Post, 20 May 2008

Pat Condell’s fascist friends

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pat CondellIslamophobia Watch has regularly covered the obnoxious anti-Muslim videos produced by Pat Condell.

The National Secularist Society’s favourite “comedian”, Condell has also been embraced by racists on the far right, who have enthusiastically promoted his Islamophobic rants.

Even though it clearly provides many of his admirers, Condell has formally dissociated himself from the fascist British National Party. Or has he? It turns out that many of Condell’s YouTube friends are in fact open supporters of the BNP.

See Why Pat Condell Isn’t Funny, 19 May 2008

‘The closer you get to Islam, the more hateful a personality you develop’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In an article based on the Channel 4 documentary In God’s Name, which examines the influence of right-wing evangelical Christianity, David Modell exposes the role of Andrea Williams and the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship in inciting hatred of Islam:

“Andrea Williams has organised a conference called Understanding Islam. The key speaker is Sam Solomon, whom she describes as an ‘authority on Islam’. She introduces him by explaining how influential he has been to her understanding of the religion. The room is the kind of place you might expect to hear a dry academic seminar, but Mr Solomon delivers nothing of the sort. He’s suddenly saying that Islam is based only on hatred. ‘The closer you get to Islam, the more hateful a personality you develop.’ He goes on to say: ‘You may think I know my [Muslim] neighbours and they are the most loving hospitable people. [But] so they were in Nigeria until the day of jihad came and they slaughtered their neighbours.’ He says Muslims are practising deception and are ‘brainwashed into accepting that we are the enemies and must be liquidated and eradicated’.”

Sunday Telegraph, 18 May 2008

Update:  Watch video here. The whole programme can be viewed here. See also the end of part 4 which covers the protest organised by Christian Voice last year against the proposed so-called mega-mosque at Abbey Mills in East London.