A financial adviser who aimed grossly offensive tweets at Muslims and Pakistanis was told he had “thinking deficiencies and old racist views”.
Ricky Lee Davies of St Thomas, Swansea, committed the Twitter offence after watching a television documentary about Muslim extremism.
That’s the headline to a report in the Daily Mail.
Speaking at an Index On Censorship conference, playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti has complained that she was asked by BBC editors to remove a single line from a radio play she has written on the subject of an honour killing in a Muslim family. The reason given was that “we don’t want to suggest the entire Muslim community condones honour killings”, which sounds like a perfectly reasonable concern in the present climate. (See also the Independent, the Telegraph and Jihad Watch.)
Parts of the media like to whip up fear about Islamisation. Their arguments are rooted in prejudice, David Shariatmadari argues.
Not content with upsetting the Jewish religion, Professor Richard Dawkins, the celebrated atheist, has now annoyed some Muslims.
Speaking about the damage caused to the library in Timbuktu, in Mali, he described those who burnt it down as Islamic Barbarians.
His comments have been interpreted as being derogatory to Islam and insulting to followers of the religion by some on the social networking site Twitter.
The best selling author of The God Delusion and Oxford Professor, Tweeted that “Like Alexandria, like Bamiyan, Timbuktu’s priceless manuscript heritage destroyed by Islamic barbarians”.
His comments were met with a backlash with many people condemning him of unfairly attacking Islam and ignoring the many acts of vandalism carried out by Christians.
But he hit back saying: “Some people (perhaps 1st language not English) think I was calling ALL Muslims barbarians. No. I was calling Islamic BARBARIANS barbarians.”
Daily Telegraph, 30 January 2013
Perhaps Dawkins should try describing an act of Israeli state terrorism as the work of “Jewish barbarians” and then attempt to justify this comment on the basis that he was “calling Jewish BARBARIANS barbarians”. The objections to his remark about the God of the Old Testament would pale into insignificance.
MINNEAPOLIS — An advocacy group for Muslims in Minnesota has asked the FBI to investigate claims that some of its agents repeatedly tried to intimidate a Somali man.
Lori Saroya, executive director of the Minnesota chapter for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the Somali accuser alleges that two FBI agents tried several times to enlist him as an undercover informant. When the man refused their offers, the agents allegedly threatened the man, Saroya said.
“They told him if he didn’t work for them, if he did not become an informant, that the agents would delay his immigration – his immigration papers,” Saroya said. “They told him they would spread a picture of him all over the community. And after they did that, everyone in the community would be scared to talk to him.”
An FBI spokesman said the agency’s Minneapolis branch is investigating the claim.
Minnesota Public Radio, 30 January 2013
See also “CAIR-MN welcomes FBI probe of alleged abuses by agents”, CAIR press release, 30 January 2013
A Muslim family say they have been forced to move from their home after offensive graffiti and a cross wrapped in ham were left outside their house. Murad Alam, 39, said his wife and two sons, aged eight and 10, had moved out of their home in Bingham, Nottinghamshire, to a “safe” place.
Mr Alam said he had found his son plotting escape routes on his computer after the “horrific” attacks last year. “My wife and children also had names called at them in the street,” he said. “The first incident was when the big, wooden cross, wrapped in ham, fell into the house after a knock at the door,” said Mr Alam.
He said they had names such as “Paki” and “tramp” shouted at them in the street. “The kids have been abused a number of times; the eldest had smoke blown in his face by an elderly local gentleman.” Offensive graffiti was also painted on the path outside the family home.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Worcester rescinded an invitation Wednesday to Robert Spencer, a Catholic whose work depicts Islam as an inherently violent religion, to speak at its annual Catholic Men’s Conference in March.
The invitation was withdrawn after Muslims in Massachusetts expressed concerns to the diocese about the appearance of Spencer, scheduled to be a featured speaker at the DCU Center on March 16.
An interesting feature of the recent controversy over the so-called “Muslim patrol” in Tower Hamlets was that some of those you might have expected to seize on the case as an excuse for a bit of anti-Muslim scaremongering balked at resuming their campaign against the Islamist menace on the basis of such flimsy evidence.
“I think I can safely speak for the majority of the community when I say that the government is guilty of double standards and an inability to tackle the issue appropriately. On the one hand we have politicians frequently scapegoating Muslims when they need to distract the public from their own failures, and on the other they think we should be grateful for the fact that they have provided us with a helpline to monitor the consequences of their actions.”
Sofia Ahmed responds to Sayeeda Warsi’s speech at the Tell MAMA dinner last week.
Just three days into 2013, Annika Rydh, a Swedish government official from the town of Almhult, issued a shrill call to both her colleagues and neighbors. Worried about the perceived growth of the Muslim population in her homeland and beyond, she urged the European Union “to act by having some kind of restriction, like the one-child policy in China.” If Muslims don’t like the proposed rule, she continued, they can go back where they came from.
Rydh’s appeal comes on the heels of a decade-long campaign to curtail Muslim immigration into western countries and reduce the number of babies born to Muslim families. International in scope, the anti-Islam movement relies on scare tactics that, more often than not, imply that the Judeo-Christian traditions are in danger of being trampled by Sharia law.
Eleanor J. Bader examines the demographic myths promoted by Islamophobes. She notes:
Surprising as it seems, a host of anti-choicers have demonstrated a clear tilt toward population control when it comes to Muslims. Indeed, it seems apparent that, for them, racism and Islamophobia trump unbridled procreation for Mohammed’s adherents.