Lisa Abdelsalam said she feels “like she swallowed poison” in the days since the threat of parental protests caused the Muslim mother and author to cancel a talk with students at A.M. Kulp Elementary School in Hatfield. “I have a such a sick feeling in my stomach,” said Abdelsalam, 48, who lives in Colmar with her husband and children, all of whom were or are North Penn students.
Monthly Archives: December 2011
Henry Jackson Society opposes ‘hate speakers’ – except when they’re leading members of the Henry Jackson Society, of course
Students’ unions should introduce tougher rules to keep “hate speakers” off campuses and stop the spread of Islamist extremism, MPs have heard.
Hannah Stuart, co-author of Islam on Campus: A Survey of UK Student Opinions and Islamist Terrorism: The British Connections, made the suggestion in evidence to the Home Affairs Committee’s inquiry into the roots of violent radicalisation.
The committee held a day-long session at De Montfort University last week, including a workshop titled “How can we best counter radicalisation in universities?”
Nabil Ahmed, president of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, rejected many of Ms Stuart’s arguments, countering from the audience that it was “upsetting and hurtful for Muslim students to be caricatured as potential extremists, potential radicals, when none of this is applicable to 99.9 per cent of not just Muslim students, but all students”.
Far right loses court case over Marseille mosque
The association in charge of the construction of the Grand Mosque in Marseille is relieved. On Wednesday 21 December the Marseille administrative appeal court rejected two appeals filed by elected representatives of the National Front and MNR (National Republican Movement) to overturn a decision by the municipal council in July 2007 authorising the establishment of a large mosque in the city with a long lease of 50 years on a plot of 8,600 square metres.
The court noted that “the constitutional principle of secularism, which involves the neutrality of the state and local authorities of the Republic and the legal treatment of different faiths, does not, in itself, prohibit the granting (…) of a long-term administrative lease in order to build a place of worship open to the public.”
It also took the view that the decision does not violate the 1905 law on separation of church and state and rejected the argument that the rent is too low (€24,000 per year).
In Islamic law, Gingrich sees a mortal threat to U.S.
Long before he announced his presidential run this year, Newt Gingrich had become the most prominent American politician to embrace an alarming premise: that Shariah, or Islamic law, poses a threat to the United States as grave as or graver than terrorism.
“I believe Shariah is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it,” Mr. Gingrich said in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute in Washington in July 2010 devoted to what he suggested were the hidden dangers of Islamic radicalism. “I think it’s that straightforward and that real.”
CAIR: new Army policy will allow JROTC hijabs, turbans
In October, the Washington-based Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization wrote to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta after a 14-year-old Muslim student at Ravenwood High School in Brentwood, Tenn., was forced to transfer out of a JROTC class when her commanding officers told her she could not wear hijab while marching in the September homecoming parade.
Luton: Drill Hall ‘no longer for sale’ to Muslims
The controversial sale of the Drill Hall site in High Town to a Muslim group has been axed, with Luton Borough Council announcing yesterday (Dec 21) that homes will be built there instead.
At a secret meeting last week, members of the council’s executive decided that the site should be used for housing, rather than be sold to the Shia Muslim Masjid-e-Ali group for £1.5 million.
A spokesman for the group said its members were “extremely disappointed” by the decision.
Hate mail sent to Detroit mosques
Dearborn — The local office of a national Muslim civil rights group says they have met with postal investigators about several anti-Muslim hate mailings that were sent recently to area mosques, Islamic centers and Muslim organizations.
Officials for the Michigan office of Council on American-Islamic Relations, located in Southfield, say they were investigating mail received by a local mosque that contained pornographic references to Islam.
Lena Masri, the staff attorney for CAIR-MI, said the organization has turned over several pieces of obscene mailings. Masri said the correspondence they received from a local mosque was pornographic material making reference to Islamic religious symbols.
“Unfortunately, given the rise in Islamaphobia, we’ve seen a rise in hate mail mailed to mosques as well as to our offices,” said Masri on Monday.
Masri said she was informed by local officials with the U.S. Postal Inspector’s Office that a Dearborn mosque was mailed a letter containing a page from the Quran that was smeared with feces.
Masri said CAIR has issued an advisory for local mosques and Islamic organizations and others to be cautious when opening their mail. She urged people not to open mail without a return address and to report suspicious letters and packages to the U.S. postal inspector or to CAIR’s office.
Quebec government denounced by opposition for allowing Muslim prison workers to wear headscarf
The Quebec government, which said Tuesday it will allow Muslim women working in provincial jails to wear a head scarf, has been accused by the Opposition of caving in to an “excessive” demand.
The Quebec Public Security Department passed the new rule after reaching a deal with Quebec’s human rights commission, following a complaint made four years ago. The ministry chose to enforce what it calls an “accommodation” rather than take the matter to the provincial human rights tribunal.
The Parti Québécois lambasted the government Tuesday for caving in to this “excessive” demand. “This is completely unacceptable,” said PQ critic for secularism issues Carole Poirier. “The guards are state employees and should not wear any conspicuous religious symbols, especially not in a jail where the neutrality of the state should be obvious.”
Resist a burglary and you’re a hero to the Mail – unless you’re a Muslim, that is
The Daily Mail reports: “A courageous housewife stabbed a machete-wielding burglar when he threatened to cut off her son’s finger, a court was told yesterday. Gillian Wilson, 55, was praised by a judge after she rushed at violent burglar Nigel Greenwood, 29, and plunged a knife into his arm, causing him and his accomplices to flee.”
What a sharp contrast this report presents to the Mail‘s coverage of Inayat Bunglawala’s resistance to a violent intruder at his own home in 2009 (see here and here), for which the paper was subsequently obliged to issue an apology and pay damages.
Former UKIP parliamentary candidate criticises Farage over proposal to ditch veil ban policy
Yesterday’s Guardian interview with UKIP leader Nigel Farage, in which he stated that he intended to re-examine his party’s manifesto commitment to “tackle extremist Islam by banning the burqa or veiled niqab in public buildings and certain private buildings”, and didn’t personally support such a ban, hasn’t gone down too well with some people.
Over at the Mail‘s Right Minds blog (edited by Simon Heffer) we find former prominent UKIP member Abhijit Pandya upholding the view that a ban is justified because the veil is “a deliberate political statement whose meanings any free democratic society, least of all one that pretends to believe in women’s freedom, should consistently and unapologetically challenge”. Pandya continues:
That the one time UKIP leader Lord Pearson had the courage to recognise the political necessity of confronting this political issue, was a break from the normal political apathy towards protecting our culture. That Nigel Farage is considering abandoning this commitment ought to force us to ask whether there is any courage left amongst our politicians to fight for our cultural heritage and gender equality.
This criticism of Farage as having gone “soft on Islam” echoes recent comments by another ex-UKIP member, Paul Weston of the British Freedom Party.