“The Sun today launches a campaign to close the veil loophole making a mockery of Britain’s airport security. We told yesterday how a member of the gang which killed WPC Sharon Beshenivsky sneaked out of Heathrow by donning a Muslim niqab, with just a slit for eyes. Now we are calling on Home Secretary John Reid to turn passport control at every airport in the country into a veil-free zone.“
Author Archives: Bob Pitt
Murder suspect may have fled in pantomime horse outfit
Detectives said on Wednesday that a man wanted for questioning over the murder of a female police officer could have fled the country disguised as a Muslim woman wearing a full veil.
Mustaf Jama, 26, is thought by police to have escaped to his native Somalia at the end of last year after passing through security checks at Heathrow Airport wearing a niqab and using his sister’s passport, according to newspaper reports.
Muslim groups accused the media of Islamophobia by raising the controversial subject of the veil without any real evidence.
Asked whether Mustaf Jama had used a full Muslim veil to evade checks, a spokesman for West Yorkshire police said: “It’s a possibility. He could have been wearing a pantomime horse outfit as well. But until we get him, we won’t know for sure.”
Osama Saeed replies to Sunday Times
Osama Saeed replies to the Sunday Times article claiming that he had “compared the treatment of Asians in Britain with that of Jews in Nazi Germany”.
A people under siege
Five years after the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, “Islamophobia” – intensified by the war in Iraq and government actions – has left millions of Muslims here and in other Western countries fearful of harassment, discrimination and questionable prosecutions, and confused about their place in society.
Recent polls indicate that almost half of U.S. citizens have a negative perception of Islam and that one in four of those surveyed have “extreme” anti-Muslim views. A survey by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) found that a quarter of people here consistently believe stereotypes such as: “Muslims value life less than other people” and “The Muslim religion teaches violence and hatred.”
In 2005, CAIR received 1,972 civil rights complaints, compared to 1,522 in 2004. This constitutes a 29.6 percent increase in the total number of complaints of anti-Muslim harassment, violence and discriminatory treatment from 2004. It is the highest number of Muslim civil rights complaints ever reported to CAIR.
‘Muslim Council of Britain – Tony Blair’s extremists’
Having completed a hatchet job on the Muslim Association of Britain, Adrian Morgan of the Western Resistance blog moves on to attacking the MCB.
Scarf race rap
A drunk repeatedly ordered a Muslim woman to remove her hijab headscarf, a court heard yesterday. When frightened Majida Oweti – on a bus with her husband and baby – refused, Gavin Bowers threatened to rip it off. He was thrown off by the driver but made throat-slitting gestures to the woman.
Bowers, 28, earlier admitted religiously aggravated harassment. He got a 28-week suspended sentence and two years supervision at Southampton Crown Court.
The Sun, 19 December 2006
Mad Mel on multiculturalism
“One of the lethal confusions generated by the multicultural paralysis is the reluctance to acknowledge ideological weapons being deployed against the free world which masquerade as religious piety”, Melanie Phillips tells us.
And yes, she does mean the veil. She refers us to an interview with Chahdortt Djavann which “explains how the veil is an Islamist symbol which plays a role analogous to the use of the swastika by Nazism”.
US congressman asked to apologize for anti-Muslim remarks
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) tonight called on Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) to apologize for anti-Muslim remarks he made in a recent letter to a constituent.
Goode’s letter to the head of the local Sierra Club chapter slammed the planned use of a Quran for the ceremonial swearing-in of Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress. (No religious texts of any kind are used for the official swearing-in ceremony.)
“I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way,” wrote Goode. “The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran.”
Goode also decried the growth of the American Muslim community. He wrote, “I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America.” (Keith Ellison has traced his family’s roots in America to the year 1742.)
“Representative Goode’s Islamophobic remarks send a message of intolerance that is unworthy of anyone elected to public office,” said CAIR National Legislative Director Corey Saylor. “There can be no reasonable defense for such bigotry.”
‘Muslim dinners for church kids’
“Pupils at a Church of England school are only able to eat Muslim meals because of a council ruling. The only meat on the menu at the primary school is halal – where animals are controversially bled to death. Children have been eating the meat for up to SEVENTEEN years at FOUR schools in Reading, Berkshire, without parents’ knowledge, the council admitted yesterday. The fact emerged after pupils were given letters from canteen managers to take home. Islamic law insists on halal meat, produced by slashing an animal’s neck with a single cut. Animals are not stunned beforehand. Parents are furious at the revelation.”
Update: See also Christian Today, 19 December 2006
Stand by for the BNP to pick up on this story as an example of the so-called “Islamicisation of Britain”.
For Osama Saeed’s comments, see Rolled Up Trousers, 18 December 2006
Islamophobia takes a grip across Europe
Muslims are suffering physical attacks, verbal taunts and widespread discrimination as a climate of Islamophobia takes a grip across Europe.
A new report lists a host of examples of crime and intimidation from arson and suspected racist murder in Germany and Spain to pork fat being smeared on a mosque in Italy.
Thugs in Ireland beat up one man after calling him “bin Laden” while a bogus email in Denmark outlined fake primary school reforms to help migrant children. A maths question read: “Jamal has an AK47 with a 30-shot magazine. If he misses 6 out of 10 shots and he wants to hit each cup 13 times, how many cups can he shoot before he needs to reload?”
The report from the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia called on leaders to strengthen policies on integration, and on Muslims to “engage more actively in public life.” It also highlights the lack of reliable data, pointing out that only one country – the United Kingdom – publishes criminal justice data which specifically identify Muslims as victims of hate crime incidents.
The Muslim population of the EU is estimated to run to around 13m, around 3.5 per cent of the total. Since September 11 many feel “they have been put under a general suspicion of terrorism,” according to Beate Winkler, director of the centre.
The report says that Muslims “experience various levels of discrimination and marginalisation in employment, education and housing” and are “vulnerable to manifestations of prejudice and hatred in the form of anything from verbal threats through to physical attacks on people and property.”