The father of runaway schoolgirl Misbah Rana has denied reports that she is to study Islam at a controversial religious school in Islamabad. He said: “It’s totally untrue. She is not enrolled in any madrasa. She made a statement saying she was interested in doing some Islamic studies and was looking at different schools. There are plenty of schools in Lahore – why would she go to Islamabad? She only went there to meet friends.”
Author Archives: Bob Pitt
German politician lectures Muslims on Enlightenment values
The German interior minister came out strongly against the burka Thursday, saying the body-covering garment worn by some religious Muslims impeded communication and obstructed integration. Calling on German and European Muslims to embrace European laws and norms, the minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, said he generally accepted the rights of Muslims to wear the head covering of their choice but that the burka was a step too far.
“Politicians should not deal with headgear of men and women. But the burka is different,” he said in outlining Germany’s agenda for its European Union presidency. “You can’t see the eyes of someone, and that is the opposite of what we believe communication should be like. Integration requires communication, and we don’t want to isolate each other.”
Schäuble, a leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center right Christian Democratic Union, added that he wanted to make Muslim integration a key issue of the six-month EU presidency, which began this month. Alluding to the recent terrorist plots in Britain, Denmark and Germany – which are alleged to have been perpetrated by second-generation home-grown radicals – he said it was essential to prevent the entrenchment of “parallel communities” where Muslims lived on the fringes of European society.
Pointing to a values gap apparent in some elements of Islam, he noted that Christianity had undergone an Enlightenment after the excesses of the Crusades, while parts of the Islamic world had not experienced it. He added that Muslims in Germany needed to accept universal human rights, including the equal treatment of men and women.
New York Times, 11 January 2007
See also “Islam urged to accept Enlightenment”, Boston Globe, 12 January 2007
Muslim Council of Britain responds to Dispatches documentary
From the latest transcript it is clear that Monday’s heavily hyped ‘Dispatches’ is an attempt to forment sectarian divisions among British Muslims and misrepresent some leading UK Muslim institutions, including the Markazi Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith, the London Islamic Cultural Centre and the UK Islamic Mission.
“Islam commands Muslims to deal positively and peacefully with those around us. These transcripts show that the programme makers have mischievously tried to prove that key Muslim institutions are teaching the exact opposite by resorting to the dishonest tactic of selectively quoting from some recorded speeches for the purpose of misrepresentation. Their aim is to attach guilt by association. This continuing demonisation of British Muslims and the risible attempt at promoting sectarianism among British Muslims will be firmly rejected,” said Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain.
At the same time, the Muslim Council of Britain urges all Muslim institutions to be vigilant and ensure that their premises are not allowed to be abused by those who are intent on pursuing divisive agendas. Unacceptable and inflammatory language can never be accepted from Muslim speakers either during talks or on recorded DVDs. It is vital that the sanctity of mosques and Islamic centres is maintained at all times and an Islamic code of conduct upheld.
MCB press release, 12 January 2007
LINKS
MCB letter to affiliates & press release, 15th January 2007 (2MB pdf file, 15th Jan 2007)
Response from the UK Islamic Mission
Response from the Islamic Cultural Centre, London
Response from the Markazi Jamiat Ahl-e-hadith UK
‘Molly Campell’ joins Taliban
Having had to abandon their initial lies about Misbah Rana – that she had been kidnapped by her Pakistani father, that she was being subjected to a forced marriage – the media have now come up with a new angle. Mishbah (or Molly Campbell, as they still insist on calling her) has been recruited by a group of al-Qaida sympathisers. She has joined a madrassah in Islamabad where one of the teachers even holds the outrageous view that when Muslim countries are attacked by the US they should resist.
Times, 11 January 2007 and Daily Mail, 11 January 2007
See also Abdiel, 12 January 2007
Update: See “Misbah’s father denies school bid”, BBC News, 13 January 2007
Guantánamo protest at US embassy
A British boy whose father has been detained at the Guantanamo Bay camp delivered a letter to Downing St, ahead of a protest outside the US Embassy.
Anas el-Banna, 10, handed in his fourth letter to Tony Blair, reflecting the years his father had been held. He was accompanied by MP Sarah Teather, as campaigners marked the fifth anniversary of the camp’s opening.
The demonstration was one of a number organised around the world by human rights group Amnesty International. A petition was also handed in.
More than 300 protesters gathered outside the US embassy for the hour-long demonstration. They were dressed in orange boiler-suits, as worn by prisoners in the early stages of the camp, as well as blindfolds, goggles and face-masks.
‘Britain’s new preachers of hate’
Yet another plug for next Monday’s Dispatches documentary, this one by Bobby Pathak, a journalist directly involved in the programme.
“Read it all”, urges Robert Spencer: Jihad Watch, 11 January 2007
Boy charged over fire bomb attack
A teenager has been charged with arson in connection with a fire bomb attack on a dairy owned by a Muslim family.
The Medina Dairy in Dedworth, Berkshire, was the scene of several nights of violence in October last year. Police arrested at least eight over the disorder and put a dispersal order in place around the dairy.
The 16-year-old boy from Windsor, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was charged over an incident on 4 October. A police spokesman said: “The charge relates to an incident at the dairy in Vale Road on the evening of 4 October 2006, where a bottle containing accelerant was allegedly thrown at the property’s front door.”
The boy has been bailed to attend Maidenhead Youth Court on Tuesday 16 January.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad supports restoration of caliphate shock
More nonsense from Mad Melanie Phillips. She writes: “Hizb ut Tahrir, which has been banned in the Middle East, the United Kingdom and Germany, was going to host a Sydney conference this month to promote the takeover of Australia as part of an Islamic caliphate.”
And she quotes a Herald Sun report describing the HT video advertising the event: “In what appears to be a call to arms, the video features slogans attacking the United States and capitalism, and features militant anti-Western Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shaking his fist, before the slogan ’embrace the revival’.”
Mel welcomes the news that Bankstown City Council whose town hall was to be used for this event has cancelled it. She concludes: “Let’s hear it for Bankstown, which understands the difference between a liberal principle and being played for suckers in the attempt to destroy it. But the incident also dramatises the extent to which Australia is squarely in the global Islamisation frame.”
Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 11 January 2007
It’s difficult to know where to begin. HT has not been banned in the UK, nor does it aim to take over Australia – its objective of restoring the caliphate is restricted to majority-Muslim countries. But perhaps the most bizarre claim is that the HT video included a clip of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Does Phillips really think that a video promoting the re-establishment of the caliphate would feature a prominent Shia politician? Or perhaps she should make the effort to view the HT video on YouTube. Does the individual concerned even look like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
Read HT’s own response here.
Regent’s Park Mosque is accused of extremist links
Mosque ‘promotes fundamentalists preaching hatred’
By Amar Singh
Evening Standard, 10 January 2007
LONDON’S busiest mosque has been accused of promoting Islamic fundamentalists who vilify Jews, call for Sharia law in Britain, blame Christians for deliberately spreading Aids in Africa and preach intolerance towards all non-Muslims.
The allegations against London Central Mosque in Regent’s Park follow a 12-month investigation by the Channel 4 Dispatches programme. It found the mosque’s official bookshop sells DVDs containing the speeches of two radical preachers, Sheikh Feiz and Sheikh Khalid Yasin.
In one, Sheikh Feiz is seen imitating the snorting noises of a pig when referring to Jewish people, whom he says will be killed when the day of judgment arrives. He says: “This creature will say, ‘Oh Muslim’ behind me is the Jew. Come and kill him. They will be [makes snorting noises] all of them, every single one of them.”
Sheikh Yasin, a charismatic American convert, has said the koran calls for men to “beat women lightly” and told Muslims they should never regard non-Muslims as a friend. The controversial cleric is vaunted on the mosque’s official website alongside other “famous visitors” such as ministers Jack Straw and Mike O’Brien. In DVD footage, Sheikh Yasin says: “The whole delusion of equality of women is foolishness… there is no such thing.”
He also claims Western powers are behind the Aids epidemic in Africa. He says: “Missionaries from the World Health Organisation and Christian groups went into Africa and inoculated people for diphtheria, malaria, yellow fever and they put in the medicine the Aids virus, which is a conspiracy.”
Both men are linked to the Wahhabi brand of Islam, which is dominant in Saudi Arabia and well-funded. Wahhabis are some of the most radical and fundamentalist Muslims, believing in Sharia law and interpreting the koran literally. Moderate Muslims are deeply concerned about its spread to the UK.
With friends like these …
An Israeli writer warns against accepting the support of anti-Muslim bigots in Europe who declare their support for the state of Israel. She argues:
“… many of these new friends are Muslim-bashers first and Israel-backers second. Their blanket condemnation of Muslim communities on their continent rings eerily familiar. Their sweeping verdict against a whole civilization has that strange déjà vu feel…. I, for one Israeli, would be grateful to my newfound buddies if their sympathy for me did not rely on the trashing of another religion. Unlike them, I’m touched by the sight of young Muslim women in European university campuses. They remind my of my own grandmother, a student in Prague who had to flee after the Nazi rise to power, and of all the other young and hopeful Jews whose dreams and lives were shattered by the European culture they so admired. I will therefore not solicit support based on unqualified dislike of other human groups…. Beware of Islamophobes bearing gifts.”
Wall Street Journal, 7 January 2007
Mad Mel is not happy.