The Dutch prime minister says the government has drawn up legislation to ban face-covering veils such as the burqa worn by some Muslim women.
Mark Rutte says the proposed ban will be sent to the government’s legal advisory body, the Council of State, before lawmakers vote on it, a process likely to take months.
The government said in a statement Friday that the ban aims at “protecting the character and customs of public life in the Netherlands.”
Baroness Flather of Windsor and Maidenhead became a heroine of the right-wing press earlier this week as a result of her speech to the House of Lords in support of the Welfare Reform Bill, where she accused some communities of migrant origin of exploiting the welfare state. She even argued that larger familes should be penalised by reducing child benefit payments for third and fourth children.
Shreela Flather told the assembled peers: “The minority communities in this country, particularly the Pakistanis and the Bangladeshis have a very large number of children and the attraction is the large number of benefits that follow the child. Nobody likes to accept that, nobody likes to talk about it because it is supposed to be very politically incorrect.” She went on to say that “Indians … do not have large families because they are like the Jews of old. They want their children to be educated. This is the other problem – there is no emphasis on education in the Pakistani and Bangladeshi families.”
That there was an Islamophobic undercurrent to Flather’s baseless claims about migrant welfare spongers, which are of course common currency on the racist right, was strongly suggested by the fact that she specifically exempted migrants from Hindu-majority India and attacked communities originating in two Muslim-majority countries.
In a comment piece published in the Daily Mail (where else?) Flather makes this accusation quite explicit, asserting that it is “some Muslims from these two regions” who “produce ever larger families in order to claim extra payments and publicly-subsidised housing”. She goes on to criticise the fact that a couple who have contracted an Islamic marriage abroad can claim benefits for their children, and adds: “But the state handouts do not end there, for under Islamic Sharia law, polygamy is permissible. So a man can return to Pakistan, take another bride and then, in a repetition of the process, bring her to England where they also have children together – obtaining yet more money from the state.”
An honorary associate of the National Secular Society, Flather regards herself as a cultural Hindu in much the same way that Richard Dawkins says he is a cultural Christian, though the term Flather prefers is “Hindu atheist”. Interestingly, this is the very same term that Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, founder of the (Hindu-supremacist, anti-Muslim) Hindutva movement, used to describe himself.
Only a few weeks ago we saw another NSS honorary associate, David Starkey, declaring that Enoch Powell was right. And now we have Shreela Flather ranting about about immigrants milking the benefits system. Will the NSS take any action against Flather over this? Don’t bet on it. The NSS president, Terry Sanderson, is on record as stating that “immigrants are importing their own brands of religion into Britain” which are “primitive, hysterical, fanatical and alien”. And he dismissed criticisms of Starkey on the grounds that there was nothing wrong with “voicing a well-intentioned but off-beat opinion in an important debate”.
A civil liberties group in Los Angeles has amended its lawsuit alleging the FBI spied in mosques to include new claims the bureau used anti-Muslim training materials.
Peter Bibring, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California said Thursday that FBI training materials included quotes from Islamic texts that were taken out of context to show the religion preaches violence.
The FBI has acknowledged a lecture at its training academy was critical of Islam but this was discontinued. In a statement, the FBI said policy changes were under way to ensure all training was consistent with FBI standards.
The amended lawsuit, filed Tuesday, claims the FBI paid an informant to infiltrate Southern California mosques, violating Muslims’ freedom of religion by conducting indiscriminate surveillance because of their faith.
A teenager shouted racial abuse as he kicked and stamped on a 71-year-old grandfather’s head for 10 minutes. And he later sent a sickening text boasting about his horrifying actions.
At Kilmarnock Sheriff Court on Monday, the 16-year-old – who cannot be named for legal reasons – pleaded guilty to carrying out the vicious attack outside the Ayrshire Central Mosque in July.
His victim, who had already suffered a stroke, sustained severe facial injuries in the unprovoked attack which took place in the early hours of the morning.
Nancy Beresford, prosecuting, said that the former Crosshouse shopkeeper had gone to the mosque, in Hill Street, Kilmarnock, to prepare for Friday prayers at around 1.40am. As he approached the door, clad in white robes, he noticed a male and two females, along with young children, standing in the street, with another group of females nearby.
The 16-year-old then came towards him shouting abuse, including “Paki bastard”. He punched the pensioner in the chest, causing him to fall to the ground. The teenager continued the assault, while still shouting abuse.
Interviewed, he denied the assault and racial abuse. The 16-year-old told police that he couldn’t understand “why somebody was praying at that time in the morning”.
An airline that reported suspicious behavior by two men aboard a flight from Denver on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks said authorities in Detroit removed them – and a female passenger who is half Middle Eastern and claims she was later strip-searched – without consulting the pilots or crew.
However, airport police and the Transportation Safety Administration said authorities responded after getting an in-flight alert from Frontier that three passengers were engaged in suspicious activity.
Gulf News profiles Rashid Gannoushi. See also “Tunisia’s Islamist party unveils manifesto” in the Financial Times.
Women wearing the Islamic burqa (full body cloak) or niqab (face veil) in public will soon be subject to a maximum fine of 380 euros. The planned measure is to be discussed by the Dutch cabinet on Friday.
A “burqa ban” formed part of the minority Dutch government’s programme agreed with the populist Freedom Party (PVV) on whose parliamentary support the cabinet relies.
The senior partner in the coalition, the conservative VVD, is in favour of a general ban on people wearing clothes that cover the face including not only burqas but also balaclavas and helmets with opaque visors. On the VVD website, it is argued that people can find such clothing threatening.
The Christian Democrats are the smaller party in the coalition and say: “Clothing covering the face makes it harder to indentify people, hinders communication and makes people feel less safe.”
From 2007, the PVV has called for a “burqa ban” punishable by higher fines and even imprisonment. It describes the garment as “an expression of the rejection of the West’s core values”.
It is estimated that about 150 women in the Netherlands always wear the burqa or niqab when they go out in public. A maximum of a few hundred women wear the garments occasionally.
The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that “main stream” [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult leader”; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a “funding mechanism for combat.”
At the Bureau’s training ground in Quantico, Virginia, agents are shown a chart contending that the more “devout” a Muslim, the more likely he is to be “violent.” Those destructive tendencies cannot be reversed, an FBI instructional presentation adds: “Any war against non-believers is justified” under Muslim law; a “moderating process cannot happen if the Koran continues to be regarded as the unalterable word of Allah.”
These are excerpts from dozens of pages of recent FBI training material on Islam that Danger Room has acquired. In them, the Constitutionally protected religious faith of millions of Americans is portrayed as an indicator of terrorist activity.
“There may not be a ‘radical’ threat as much as it is simply a normal assertion of the orthodox ideology,” one FBI presentation notes. “The strategic themes animating these Islamic values are not fringe; they are main stream.”
The new leader of the English Defence League’s Jewish division has encouraged British Jews to back the extreme right-wing group and “defend liberal democracy”. James Cohen, 52, who is based in Ottawa, Canada, said his dealings with EDL leaders had led him to believe they were “affable, intelligent, right-minded people” who had been “wrongly maligned” by the British media.
Mr Cohen, a writer and activist who previously lived in Israel, admitted he had “done some soul-searching” after being asked to lead the division following July’s departure of Roberta Moore. He said he hoped British Jews would join EDL members at protests and in campaigning.
But the Board of Deputies said it condemned the EDL “unreservedly”. A spokesman said: “It is clear for all to see that the EDL are solely intent on causing divisions and mistrust between different groups in British society. When they wave Israeli flags at a rally or demonstration, they do so only to goad the Muslim community and to stir communal tensions. This, and everything that the EDL stands for, is utterly abhorrent. All right-thinking people should be repulsed by extremism from any quarter.”
Foreign affairs minister Uri Rosenthal has formally distanced himself from comments by PVV MP Raymond de Roon, who described the Turkish prime minister as an “Islamic monkey”.
The remark was made in the context of the Dutch saying daar komt de aap uit de mouw (here comes the monkey out of the sleeve) which means to reveal your true colours or intentions.
“Once again the Islamic monkey has shown himself,” De Roon said during parliamentary questions. “This time he is in Ankara and his name is Erdogan.” De Roon was refering to what he called Turkey’s anti-Israel rhetoric.
Alexander Pechtold, leader of the Liberal democrats D66, challenged Rosenthal to refute the statement. Rosenthal said De Roon had used a “misplaced metaphor”. MPs from the ruling VVD and CDA also condemned the statement.