The much-publicised repentance of two former Muslim extremists tells us little about the roots of militancy in Britain, argues Inayat Bunglawala.
Author Archives: Bob Pitt
Torygraph columnist applauds Kelly’s commission
“The message from the Commission on Integration and Cohesion is loud and clear. Multiculturalism has not worked…. For too long, local authorities have had a free hand to promote a multiculturalist agenda, wreaking untold harm on race relations…. The commission also recommends the withdrawal of funding for groups that represent only one particular ethnic group, religion or race, unless there are compelling reasons to do so…. The Government must now catch up with what many of us have been arguing for years; that many of Britain’s ethnic minorities are adrift in ghettoes and that some are proving to be incubators of radicalist tendencies and havens for criminals.”
Zia Haider Rahman in the Daily Telegraph, 15 June 2007
Cf. Lee Jasper’s comment on the CIC report: “This report fails to identify gross racist stereotypes and whipped up fear now targeted at Muslims and asylum seekers as a source of social conflict. Instead, without any basis in fact, it dangerously turns the blame onto the victims.”
Blink news report, 14 June 2007
And on the Matthew Bannister programme on Radio 5 yesterday morning, the featured speaker on the issue of integration arising from the CIC report was the BNP’s Nick Griffin. Listen here.
US Muslim civil rights cases jumped 25 percent last year – CAIR
A report released today by a prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group indicates a 25 percent increase in the total number of complaints of anti-Muslim bias from 2005 to 2006, with citizenship delays being the major issue.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) report – the only annual study of its kind – outlines 2,467 incidents and experiences of anti-Muslim violence, discrimination and harassment in 2006, the highest number of civil rights cases ever recorded in the Washington-based group’s report. (Hundreds of anti-Muslim incidents reported immediately following the 9/11 attacks were detailed in a separate report.)
According to the study, called “Presumption of Guilt,” that total is a 25.1 percent increase over the preceding year’s total of 1,972 cases. One of the most significant increases is in the category dealing with government agencies, which rose sharply from 19.22 percent of total reports in 2005 to 36.32 percent in 2006. This increase was due primarily to the number of cases related to immigration issues such as citizenship and naturalization delays. CAIR also received 167 reports of anti-Muslim hate crime complaints, a 9.2 percent increase from the 153 complaints received in 2005.
Wearing a headscarf in Detroit
“You have nuns totally covered … and no one questions it. But when a Muslim does it, we’re from outer space.” The Detroit Free Press interviews Muslim women who wear the hijab.
One reader is not impressed: “There is no comparison between a covered nun and Islamic hijab. No one living in a Christian community has to worry about armed gangs breaking into a family home to threaten, beat or kill them because their daughters haven’t become nuns. Islamic women have to worry about that daily in the Islamic world, and even in European countries Islamic women are subject to ‘honor killings’.”
Catholic bigots denounce composer
“John Tavener is a gentle sort of chap … but his latest choral work, to be premiered at Westminster Cathedral on Tuesday, seems to have stirred up a hornets’ nest of angry Catholics.
“The work, The Beautiful Names, is a reflection on the 99 names for Allah and its production at the cathedral – a venue suggested by Prince Charles, who commissioned the work – has caused outrage among those of the faithful who think the building is being taken over by Islamists. One letter writer, Daphne McLeod, has spluttered about the cathedral being desecrated and honouring a false god.”
Indeed, in her letter to the Catholic Herald Ms McLeod demands: “Can we be told what arrangements have been made to reconsecrate our Cathedral to the Precious Blood of Our Blessed Lord after this defilement?”
See also Daily Telegraph, 15 June 2007 and Sunday Telegraph, 9 June 2007
Alien nation?
“On Thursday the Commission on Integration and Cohesion is finally expected to publish its findings, but the project is based on some big misunderstandings. There is a widespread anxiety that we are ‘sleepwalking into segregation’, as Trevor Phillips put it in 2005 when he was chair of the Commission for Racial Equality….
“The whole debate about race in this country has shifted from multiculturalism, tolerance and anti-racism to integration and this sticky notion of cohesion. The onus of responsibility has shifted from tackling the white community’s racism to assessing the ethnic minority community’s state of integration. The latter is supposed to indicate the likelihood of extremism – the most dubious connection of all in this debate riddled with misconceptions – after all, Mohammed Siddique Khan, one of the 7/7 bombers appeared to be ‘integrated’ with a job in a primary school, a wife and child.
“This anxious, nervy debate has little connection to the evidence being turned up by UK demographers. Academics like Ludi Simpson, Danny Dorling and Ceri Peach say that the UK is going through a process of desegregation as established ethnic minorities move out of inner-city neighbourhoods into surrounding suburbs.”
Madeleine Bunting at Comment is Free, 13 June 2007
Read Commission on Integration and Cohesion report Our Shared Future here.
For the controversy surrounding one member of Ruth Kelly’s commission, Ramesh Kallidai, see Andrew Gilligan’s article in the Evening Standard (reprinted here). The issue is not so much Kallidai’s alleged association with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh but rather that he has deployed Hindutva myths about Muslims forcing young Hindu women to convert to Islam in the UK. It seems that while Kelly excludes representatives of the Muslim community on the basis of links with Jamaat-e-Islami or the Muslim Brotherhood, even though these links have no adverse impact on community relations in this country, she has no problems working with a Hindu admirer of the fascist RSS.
Muslim in final appeal to stop extradition to US
Lawyers acting for Babar Ahmad are making a final appeal to the European Court of Human Rights to prevent the computer expert from London’s prestigious Imperial College being extradited to the US for allegedly running terrorist websites.
A decision on the case is expected to be made Thursday after Britain’s highest judicial authorities, the House of Lords, refused permission to appeal at the weekend.
“After three years of imprisonment without charge, Babar is being sent to face a flawed justice system in the United States,” said his family, who live in Tooting, south London. They said that his supporters from all over the UK will “hold the British Government responsible if he is subjected to any physical or psychological abuse.”
Law Lords rejected Babar’s appeal on Sunday when concluding that two points of law presented to them were not matters of “public importance”. But his family said that the refusal was a “complete travesty of justice”. The Attorney General and the Crown Prosecution Service had confirmed in writing several times that there is “insufficient evidence to charge Babar with any crime,” they said.
In the name of the law
The popular perception of sharia law is one of brutal punishments carried out by hardline states. But, as Dan Bell discovers, the backstreets of Britain are full of Islamic courts ruling on everything from banking and alcopops to forced marriage and divorce.
US judge: Police can ban religious Muslim garb
A Philadelphia police officer has no right to wear a head covering as required by her Muslim faith when she is in uniform, a federal judge ruled yesterday.
The Police Department’s uniform code “has a compelling public purpose,” Judge Harvey Bartle III wrote in deciding against Kimberlie Webb, an officer since 1995. The uniform code “recognizes that the Police Department, to be effective, must subordinate individuality to its paramount group mission of protecting the lives and property of the people living, working and visiting the city of Philadelphia,” Bartle wrote. Furthermore, the department’s uniform code, known as Directive 78, maintains “religious neutrality,” the judge said.
The ruling countered a finding by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2003 that the department had violated Webb’s rights in barring her from wearing a hijab, also known as a khimar, over the top and back of her head.
The case began in February 2003, when Webb, a mother of six, filed an EEOC complaint after being denied a request to wear a hijab. In August 2003, Webb was sent home three times after showing up at roll call wearing the hijab despite being told not to do so. She also was later suspended for 13 days.
Police officials initially defended their actions by saying, in part, that Webb could have been hurt or restrained by somebody grabbing the hijab. In subsequent statements and legal arguments, the department, which was represented by law firm Cozen O’Connor, said its sole reason was fostering “obedience, unity, commitment and esprit de corps” with a uniform dress policy. Detracting from that policy would cause the department “undue hardship,” it said.
US to let toddler reunite with family
WASHINGTON — After two years of inaction, U.S. immigration authorities approved a request Thursday for the 3-year-old son of a U.S. citizen to emigrate from Morocco and join his family in Virginia.
Abdeloihab Boujrad, 38, of Alexandria, and his wife, Leila, have been trying since June 2005 to get authorities to allow their son, Ahmedyassine, to join them. The toddler has been living with an aunt in Morocco. The application languished without any action by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. An Islamic civil rights group that took up Boujrad’s cause suspected the delay was caused by a similarity in Ahmedyassine’s name to the founder of the Palestinian Islamic militant group Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who was assassinated by Israel in 2004.
The decision to approve the application came a day after The Associated Press and other media detailed the Boujrads’ plight. “The matter has been resolved favorably,” USCIS spokesman Dan Kane said. “Once the issue was brought to our attention, we worked expeditiously to resolve it.” Kane would not comment on what caused the delay.
“The matter has been resolved favorably,” USCIS spokesman Dan Kane said. “Once the issue was brought to our attention, we worked expeditiously to resolve it.” Kane would not comment on what caused the delay.
Boujrad said he did not receive an explanation for the delay when he was told Thursday morning the application had finally been approved. But he was so ecstatic he did not care. “I was shocked,” Boujrad said of being informed about the good news. “They said, ‘We apologize for the delay.’”
Morris Days, a legal director with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he appreciates how quickly the issue was resolved once Boujrad’s case was publicized. But he said he’d like more information on what caused the delay, so that similar incidents can be avoided. “If they’ve looked into this, they must have been able to research, ‘How did this happen?’” Days said.
Days said he has nearly a dozen cases in the last few months involving Muslims in the D.C. region who are facing unexplained delays on various immigration applications.
Boujrad was living in Morocco in 1997 and engaged to Leila when he won an immigration lottery that allowed him to come to the United States. He married his wife in 1999 but was unable to bring her to the U.S. until 2005. She is now a legal permanent resident.
In the interim, Ahmedyassine was born in May 2004 in Morocco. Leila reluctantly left the boy in the care of her sister in the fall of 2005 when her visa allowing her to emigrate to the U.S. was about to expire. Neither Abdeloihab nor Leila Boujrad have seen their son in person since then.