Teachers have been warned that bullying prompted by Islamophobia is on the rise in schools across the country.
See also “Prayers at school ‘lead to abuse'”, BBC News, 13 November 2006.
Author Archives: Bob Pitt
Stop the War Coalition holds conference on Islamophobia
People’s Assembly: Islamophobia and the War on Terror
Saturday 18 November 10.00am – 5.30pm
Camden Centre Judd Street London WC1H
How are the attacks on Muslims linked to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? How can the anti-war movement counter those attacks in its continuing campaign to end the Bush/Blair wars?
The People’s Assembly will bring together peace and anti-war groups, trade unions, faith groups and organisations, community groups, political parties and any other representative organisations wishing to discuss these important issues. Individuals are also welcome as observers.
More details on Stop the War Coalition website.
Another defence of the right to incite religious hatred
“If it is left to the Nick Griffins among us to acknowledge what is clearly quite widespread concern about Islam, we will never be able to have the serious, substantial debate that we need about the role of Muslim practice in Britain. How is a liberal democracy to deal with an illiberal orthodoxy in its midst? How can a faith whose own laws often contravene those of its host society make its peace with the secular state? These are questions that need urgently to be addressed. They cannot be fudged by banning ‘religious hatred’, or by insisting that anyone who alludes to them (or who resents the problems that they raise for our society) is a bigot fit only to be fodder for the neo-fascist fringe.”
Janet Daley in the Daily Telegraph, 13 November 2006
Inciting hatred against Muslims is OK by Mad Mel
Melanie Phillips joins the chorus of condemnation provoked by Gordon Brown’s suggestion that the racial hatred laws need tightening up to prevent the fascist BNP inciting hatred against Muslim communities:
“… racial hatred is entirely different from being offensive about a religion. Unlike racial hatred, which targets people, religious hatred is directed at an idea. And in a free society, there should be no place for criminalising the clash of ideas, however much upset this may cause…. Mr Brown is doubtless keen to burnish his credentials as a Prime Minister-in-waiting by displaying his toughness against all extremism…. But he doesn’t seem to realise that outlawing hatred of religion would undermine this fight, by shutting down crucial debate about Islam and its role in global terror…. Mr Brown’s view plays directly into the hands of those Muslims who try to stifle debate about Islamic terrorism on the grounds of ‘Islamophobia’….
“What makes people vulnerable to the BNP is the enormous gulf between ministerial rhetoric and action. It is staggering, for example, that in deprived Newham, the Government is allowing the largest mosque in Europe to be built on the site of the Olympic village – a piece of Islamist triumphalism to be funded by the Tablighi Jamaat, a group described by intelligence sources as an ‘ante-chamber’ to al Qaeda…. The BNP is exploiting a deep weakness in our culture. Only if British society and its values are defended with the utmost vigour and their attackers given no quarter will the poisonous boil of the BNP finally be lanced, and bigotry of every kind shown the door.”
If we need help in “showing bigotry the door” Melanie Phillips will of course be the first person we turn to.
‘Instead of confronting extremism, Muslim leaders bleat about Islamophobia’
“The widespread refusal to face up to the reality of Muslim extremism is one of the most dispiriting and dangerous traits of modern Britain…. Instead of confronting extremism, the majority of Muslim leaders prefer to bleat about so-called Islamophobia, parading their grievances over everything from the veil to British foreign policy. Any reference to the terror threat is airily dismissed as the work of a tiny criminal element divorced from the moderate mainstream. But this will not wash, for there is mounting evidence that a singifican number of Britain’s 1.7 million Muslims are sympathetic to violent jihadism.”
Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express, 13 November 2006
Muslim women shouldn’t wear veils in public, says Archbishop
One of the Church of England’s most senior figures today risks a row with the Muslim community by suggesting that Islamic women should not wear veils in public.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Daily Mail, Dr John Sentamu warns that “no minority” should impose its beliefs on the rest of society and that the veil causes Muslim women to “stick out”.
The Archbishop of York – who ranks second in the Church’s hierarchy – also says the BBC is biased against Christians because Anglicans don’t threaten to “bomb” the corporation.
See also “Archbishop questions role of veil”, Evening Standard, 13 November 2006
Scrap the Human Rights Act and ban Hizb ut-Tahrir, says Cameron
Responding to Eliza Manningham-Buller’s speech, Tory leader David Cameron makes his recommendations for countering the threat of terrorism: “… we need to change our attitude to human rights. The Human Rights Act was a new Labour flagship but its totemic status has made ministers unwilling to acknowledge how much it is hampering the fight against terrorism.”
Cameron also advocates “a much more rigorous approach to combating Islamic fundamentalism. The government seems confused as to what fundamentalism actually is. On the one hand ministers – perfectly reasonably – express concern about women who wear the veil while teaching. On the other hand they pay for extremist preachers of hate such as Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who supports suicide bombings, to attend conferences. We need to embrace genuinely moderate Muslims…. Those who distance themselves from terrorism while seeking to radicalise young Muslims into despising the West are part of the problem. Groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir should be banned.”
Sunday Times, 12 November 2006
As Osama Saeed points out, here Cameron rejects one of Manningham-Buller’s own points – that it is a mistake to “confuse fundamentalism with terrorism”.
Peer doubts race hate law resolve
The will of ministers to tighten laws on racial hatred has been questioned by Muslim Labour peer Lord Ahmed.
Several ministers called for a review of the legislation after the BNP’s leader was cleared of stirring up racial hatred in remarks about Islam. But Lord Ahmed said the government had not delivered on previous promises to the Muslim community on race hate laws. It was time for the government to start treating Muslims equally and not like “subjects of a colony”, he said.
Lord Ahmed told the BBC that the government had made unfulfilled promises to the Muslim community earlier this year when a new law on religious and racial hatred was watered down as a result of a Commons defeat. The peer said ministers should have shown more determination to push their measures through.
He said: “What I have seen is that the government has been treating the Muslim community like subjects of a colony rather than equal citizens in the UK.”
Double think on incitement
In the wake of BNP leader Nick Griffin’s acquittal on a charge of inciting racial hatred against Muslims, editorials in both the Sunday Telegraph and the Observer come out against tightening the law.
Their arguments are ignorant – the Torygraph is evidently labouring under the impression that Mizanur Rahman was convicted of incitement to murder, when he was of course convicted of inciting racial hatred – and also incoherent. The Observer argues that Griffin’s case was different because his speech was made “in private” – though what that has to do with the issue of incitement is unclear. Does the Observer think it would have been OK for Griffin to incite people to go out and murder Muslims, as long as his speech was made at a BNP internal meeting?
Both the Telegraph and the Observer argue that words which fall short of actually inciting violence should not be criminalised – which is in fact an argument for abolishing most of the existing legislation against inciting racial hatred. No doubt the Telegraph would welcome such a step. We can only assume that the Observer agrees.
Muslims – ‘a community which is the source of such a great menace’
“If there are, indeed, 100,000 Muslims who cannot see the wrong of 7 July, then we are in trouble. The only people who can change this are Muslims, but there is no obvious effort to address the problem from within. The Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, couldn’t have been more bald about the Muslim community last week. ‘Their complaint often boils down to the position that it is always right to intervene when Muslims are victims … and always wrong when Muslims are the oppressors or terrorists.’
“If the perpetrators of these outrages are Muslim – sometimes rather well-to-do Muslims, it seems – and the members of the 200-odd cells that MI5 is investigating are Muslim, it is not good enough for Muslims to fall back on bristling victimhood. To the rest of us, it simply seems nonsensical that a community which is the source of such a great menace, and which has offered support to it, can at the same time claim persecution. We need leadership from British Muslims and a contract between their community and the vast majority, in which the same ideals of peace, law and order are agreed upon without reference to religious needs. For this is not a religious matter; it is about law and order in a secular society.
“Is this illiberal? No, and nor is the concern that Islamic faith schools are being used to distance a generation of young people from the values of the surrounding society…. These schools are undesirable in the extreme and steps should be taken to end the separate development that they posit. But the government would rather reduce all liberties than be seen to target a minority.”
Henry Porter in the Observer, 12 November 2006