Lib Dem MP dismisses ‘Trojan Horse’ extremism claims

David Ward MPA Bradford MP has called for a debate on what should be allowed in secular schools following the Trojan Horse row.

David Ward said that it was wrong to link events at schools in Birmingham and Bradford to issues of extremism and that the debate over promoting British values had become a distraction. He said that the problems which has surfaced were actually about governors wanting to pursue a more religious approach at non faith schools.

The controversy started with a “Trojan Horse letter,” now thought to have been a hoax, claiming Muslim governors were plotting take overs at some schools in Birmingham. It resulted in investigations being launched by the local council and the Department for Education and targeted Ofsted inspections which led to five schools being placed in special measures.

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Burqa ban isn’t enough says Strache

The leader of the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) says that a burqa ban as proposed by his party isn’t enough, and that he’d like to ban the chador as well, according to a report in the news daily Heute.

After last week’s decision by the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) which supported France’s ban on religious headgear, the Freedom Party announced that they would be introducing a similar measure into Austria’s parliament.

The rule is intended to target the burqa, a traditional garment from the Middle East which completely covers the wearer, including the hair and face.

Now Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of the Austrian Freedom Party, has stated that the proposed ban doesn’t go far enough, and should be extended to include the chador, a traditional Persian head scarf which leaves the face uncovered.

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Reports and comment from Islamophobia Watch 30 June‑6 July

Reports and comment from Islamophobia Watch 30 June-6 July 2014

Gove defends ‘liberal values’

Thatcher legacy Policy Exchange event 16/04/2013Michael Gove has called for a “robust” defence of liberal values in the face of the challenge from Islamist extremists. The education secretary said it was essential that extremists were denied a platform in schools and other public institutions to push their agenda.

Speaking on BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show, Gove defended his decision to appoint the former Scotland Yard head of counter-terrorism to lead the investigation into the so-called “Trojan horse” plot by Islamists to take over schools in Birmingham.

“Islamism is a perversion of Islam in the same way that communism was a perversion of socialism and fascism is a perversion of nationalism,” he said. “If liberalism is to survive – and I believe liberalism is the way in which we approach these issues, liberal values are our best protector – we need to be robust.

“We need to challenge those views and we need to make sure that people who have views that are inimical to liberal values and wish to use institutions to push an agenda which is inimical to liberal values are not in a position where they can use public money or the public square in order to push their views.”

Gove acknowledged that his decision to appoint Peter Clarke, formerly the country’s top counter-terrorism officer, to head the Trojan horse inquiry had been controversial, but said he believed it was correct. “The view that I took was that if you have a police officer of unimpeachable integrity to do these investigations, if people at the end of this process are cleared, given a clean bill of health, that is the most effective way of ensuring that public confidence can be restored,” he said.

He said the inquiry had raised important questions – including for both the Department for Education and the local authority in Birmingham. “There are broader questions about the extent to which these activities were coordinated and the extent to which those responsible for those activities may have had a broader agenda,” he said.

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Aryan blondes too beautiful for niqab, says FPÖ

FPÖ zu schön für einen schleierAs part of his party’s plan to introduce a bill banning full-face veils, Austrian politician Heinz-Christian Strache posted on a social network an image of a young blonde woman with the phrase “Too beautiful for a veil.”

The campaign was launched by the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) leader and Member of Parliament Heinz-Christian Strache on his Facebook page. According to the politician, the poster is aimed “against the Islamization of Europe.”

The image refers to the party’s recent call for a ban on wearing the Muslim burqa in public. Based on the judgement by the European Court of Human Rights, who didn’t oppose the legality of the French burqa ban of 2011, FPÖ plans to introduce the same bill into the Austrian parliament next week.

“In many conservative circles of Islamic immigration society there is a prevailing view that women are second-class citizens,” party spokeswoman Carmen Gartelgruber commented, adding that “one of the many tools of oppression is the burqa.”

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Did Daily Mail incite ‘war against the corrupt west’?

Ummah.com caliphate post

Two days ago BBC News reported an interview broadcast on Radio 5 Live with an individual who gave his name as Abu Osama and claimed to be a British Muslim fighting in Syria. Describing Britain as “pure evil”, Abu Osama said:

“If and when I come back to Britain it will be when this Khilafah, the Islamic state, comes to conquer Britain, and I come to raise the black flag of Islam over Downing Street, over Buckingham Palace, over Tower Bridge and over Big Ben.”

The claim was widely publicised in the British media, not least by the Daily Mail.

Yesterday a new thread was opened at the Ummah.com discussion forum under the heading “i am pledging allegiance to the caliphate”, with the following comment:

“salam my sisters and brothers we should get out of this evil country and pledge our allegiance to the muslim sharia law and get out of evil west. who wants to join me so we can wage war and jihad against the corrupt west.”

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UK report: Anti-Muslim hate crime rising

Anti-Muslim OverviewThe number of reported instances of anti-Muslim hate crime in the UK has risen sharply since the murder of a British soldier in London last year, with women wearing traditional Islamic dress most likely to be the victims of abuse and street attacks, according to a new study.

But researchers believe that a widespread lack of trust in the police in Muslim communities and endemic under-reporting of hate crime masks the true scale of the problem, with most Islamophobic incidents, ranging from online trolling to verbal abuse and extreme violence, going unlogged and unpunished.

The publication of the report also comes amid concerns expressed by some Muslims about their safety on British streets following the murder of a female Saudi Arabian student in Colchester last month. Police say the attack may have been religiously motivated because the victim was wearing an abaya.

The study, conducted by researchers at Teesside University, is based on analysis of 734 incidents reported to and verified by case workers at Tell MAMA, an organisation monitoring anti-Muslim attacks, over 10 months from May 2013 to the end of February.

They included 23 cases of assault, 13 cases involving extreme violence, 56 attacks on mosques and hundreds of instances of online abuse, with an average of more than two confirmed cases a day.

Matthew Feldman, the co-author of the report, told Al Jazeera that while official figures showed a decline in hate crime generally, anti-Muslim abuse appeared to be bucking that trend.

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European Court of Human Rights ‘fails to protect religious freedom’

By upholding a French ban on wearing full-face veils, a common Muslim practice, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has failed to protect the religious freedom of Islamic women who choose the veil as an expression of their faith, according to the Forum for Religious Freedom-Europe (FOREF), an independent non-governmental monitoring group.

EU Reporter, 5 July 2014

Times columnist thinks veil encourages terrorism

The true “black flag of Islam” is not the banner that Isis would raise over Buckingham Palace but the cloth shrouding women — the first edict of any Islamist revolution….

The veil is not only radicalising women but their brothers and sons. When they see female relatives stared at for covering their faces, it only confirms the messages from the mosques that Muslims are a separate and beleaguered people, justifying a righteous anger whose logical conclusion is jihad.

The veil is so much more than a garment or even a symbol of faith like the cross, yarmulke, turban or headscarf, whose British wearers live largely free from abuse. It is a Trojan horse for an extreme form of Wahhabi Islam that provokes western Muslims to rage against their non-Muslim compatriots rather than to co-exist in peace with them.

The veil is both a means to banish women from public life and a tool for provoking social unrest. It is horrifying that Shami Chakrabarti, of Liberty, argued against the European Court’s ruling.

Janice Turner offers her thoughts on the niqab.

The Times, 5 July 2014