IHRC’s fourth report in the “British Muslims’ Expectations of the Government” is published 26 January 2006. The report focuses on Hijab – commonly referred to as the Veil.
IHRC press release, 26 January 2006
Author Archives: Bob Pitt
‘Homophobia isn’t the exclusive preserve of any religion’
Review of the Channel 4 documentary “Gay Muslims” by Marc Vallée, convenor of the Socialist Party’s LGBT group. Some useful points, rather undermined by the bizarre claim that accusations of Islamophobia against Peter Tatchell are “unfounded”.
There’s also an interesting interview with Ubaid of the Muslim LGBT group Imaan in the current issue of Socialist Resistance. The article is on page 8 and the whole issue is available in pdf format here.
Muslim group asks radio host to apologize
A Muslim civil liberties group demanded an apology Thursday from the host of a Los Angeles-area radio show for making fun of a stampede that killed hundreds of Muslims during an annual pilgrimage. The Council on American-Islamic Relations asked for an apology from KFI-AM 640 host Bill Handel, who allegedly made fun of the deaths the same day they happened during a segment he called the “Annual Stampede Report.”
According to the civil liberties group, Handel imitated the people screaming and then joked that the Muslims at the pilgrimage should use a helicopter to monitor pilgrimage traffic, as is done in Los Angeles with the freeways. The group quoted Handel as saying: “This is Mahmoud Nolan. Hajj in the Sky. There is an accident…. Ali lost his sandal on the on-ramp to the Martin Luther King Jr. freeway.”
In March 2004, KFI issued an on-air apology after the group filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission following a skit that claimed Muslims have sex with animals, don’t bathe and hate Jews.
Associated Press, 27 January 2006
For Little Green Footballs, this is yet another example of “whining” by “thin-skinned Muslim advocacy groups” who are trying to “shut down free speech in the US”.
Muslims on campus in Britain
A briefing from the human rights group Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) has challenged the current thinking on extremism on campus. Entitled: ‘You ONLY Have the Right to Silence: Muslims on Campus in Britain’, the report has criticised the stance proposed by Education Ministers and the Glees/Pope report on the connection between extremism and universities.
IHRC has said that proposals such as the interviewing of all foreign students in conjunction with MI5 upon their application to university, banning of all faith societies, Education Secretary Ruth Kelly’s encouragement of fellow students to spy upon each other, the undermining of academic freedom and the implementation of racism as policy would not lead towards the intended enhancement of Britain’s security.
The briefing rebutted the claim of a terrorist threat on campus as “wholly exaggerated” devoid of any substantial evidence or research, and cited the report conducted by the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS), which found that following the July terrorist bombings, only 4% of Muslim students surveyed did not condemn the atrocity.
It continued by stating that the events of 9-11 and 7-7 were “being exploited and capitalized upon to silence any form of dissent or political activism on campus, specifically when Muslim students are involved and where the issue concerned is Palestine”. It further added that the term ‘political activism’ was being tarnished with the label of “extremism” which it said was a “concerted effort to silence Muslim dissent”.
Latest from BNP trial
The jury at Leeds Crown Court was given copies of extracts from the Koran which BNP leader Nick Griffin discussed in detail. Mr Griffin said he wanted the jury to read sections of the Koran as he claimed Islam was incompatible with British democracy.
After quoting from chapters of the text, Griffin said the verses justified “the epidemic of anti-white racist attacks and also attacks on Sikhs, Hindus and black people in every city in this land where there is a significant Muslim population”. Mr Griffin quoted further sections, claiming the verses justified Islam treating women as “sexual playthings of very little value beyond that” and also violence, including the 9/11 attacks in the US.
He told the jury he had spent a lot of time studying the Koran and believed it was often misquoted by politicians, including Prime Minister Tony Blair, as they tried to claim Islam was a peaceful faith. “Islam and our democracy are totally incompatible,” he said.
AWL explains the veil
Over at the Workers’ Liberty website, Mark Sandell tells us that the veil is just “the public expression of women and girls being oppressed and owned by ‘their’ men”.
Opposition to the headscarf ban in French schools, according to Sandell, was restricted to a “motley crew of cultural relativists, numskull ‘anti-imperialists’, and assorted religious bigots”.
Banning Hizb ut-Tahrir
Osama Saeed and Yusuf Smith comment on leaked official emails from August 2005, relating to the government’s anti-terror measures, that have been published by the New Statesman. The material provides some useful insights into the proposal to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir.
One of the emails (from Foreign Office official Robert Tinline, head of the multilateral and terrorist financing section of the counter-terrorism department) points out that “there is no apparent case to proscribe HuT” and notes that “much of their literature explicitly rejects the use of violence”.
But home secretary Charles Clarke did not reject a ban. Rather, he is reported as arguing that “he would prefer putting off proscription of HuT until after the proposed amendments to the current legislation: it would, for example, be much easier to argue that HuT met the criteria of ‘justifying and glorifying violence’. Clarke said that his fear was that the Government would lose the case for proscription and so wanted to act cautiously”.
There could hardly be a better illustration of the way the “glorification” clause in the Terrorism Bill (rejected by the Lords) would be used to ban organisations that pose no terrorist threat at all.
The leaked emails can be downloaded (in pdf format) here.
New religious hate plans unveiled
Compromise plans to create a new offence of incitement to religious hatred while protecting free speech have been unveiled by ministers.
The government’s original plans for the new offence were heavily defeated in the House of Lords last year. Critics said the proposed legislation was drawn too widely and could outlaw criticisms of beliefs.
Ministers have now published their revised plans, which have been welcomed by some opposition peers.
They have bowed to the critics’ demand that incitement to religious hatred be covered by separate legislation rather than be joined to race hate laws.
Somebody could only be convicted of the new offence if they intended or were reckless about inciting hatred. And there is a new clause in the legislation declaring that a person is not guilty of an offence if they debate issues, insult or ridicule a religion – unless they intend to stir up religious hatred.
The Home Office says the original plans would not have stopped comedians telling religious jokes but the new plans give an “absolute guarantee”.
Home Office Minister Paul Goggins said the amendments would mean it would be an offence to incite hatred against Muslims, Hindus and Christians. It is already an offence to stir up hatred against Sikhs and Jews through race hate laws.
Lib Dem peer Lord Lester, a leading critic of the original plans, said the new amendments had sprung from talks with the government. “They are a great step forward for free speech,” he said.
The deal the government has done with the opposition is mainly unobjectionable. They have conceded Lord Lester’s demand that a separate Part 3A should be added to the Public Order Act which will deal exclusively with religious hatred, but that’s not a problem in itself. Where Lord Lester’s amendment, adopted by the Lords last October, restricted the offence of inciting religious hatred to words and actions that were “threatening”, the compromise deal changes this back to “threatening, abusive or insulting”. And where the Lester amendment required proof of intent, the new version criminalises the incitement of hatred by means of “reckless” behaviour.
So far, not so bad. But here’s the spoonful of tar. The new version includes a passage which states that “a person is not guilty of an offence … of intending to stir up religious hatred if he intends to stir up hatred against a religion, religious belief or religious practice but does not also intend to stir up hatred against a group of persons”. This looks to me like a major loophole in the legislation which will work to the advantage of the far Right.
The BNP’s anti-Muslim hate propaganda is always carefully crafted so it is formally directed against Islam as a religion rather than against Muslims as people. The defence that BNP führer Nick Griffin used at Leeds Crown Court this week was that, while he stood by the speech in which he denounced Islam as a “vicious, wicked faith”, he denied that his views were an attack on the adherents of that faith. “There’s a huge difference”, he stated piously, “between criticising a religion and saying this is an attack on the people who follow it. When I criticise Islam, I criticise that religion and the culture it sets up, certainly not Muslims as a group and most definitely not Asians.” (Guardian, 26 January 2006.)
The argument that you can incite hatred against a particular faith without also inciting hatred against the people who practise it is of course entirely bogus (see for example Osama Saeed’s comments), but the government is proposing to insert a clause into the Bill that gives credibility to Griffin’s position. Someone needs to get onto this quick. The Commons debate is scheduled for next Tuesday.
Yet another right-wing attack on multiculturalism
“Thanks to an epidemic of similar law and order problems in other Western democracies with Muslim immigrant populations, even left-wing liberals are beginning to join the dots, and question multiculturalism. It is not the ‘culturally diverse community, united by an overriding and unifying commitment to Australia’ as the Prime Minister, John Howard, put it in his Australia Day address, which is being questioned, but a welfare-driven ideology, corrupted by politicians chasing the ethnic vote, which has encouraged separate identities.”
Lawsuit filed in support of Muslim scholar barred from US
Citing the case of a prominent Muslim scholar who has been barred from the United States, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit yesterday seeking to strike down a clause of the USA Patriot Act that bars foreigners who endorse terrorism from entering to this country.
The suit was filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan on behalf of the scholar, Tariq Ramadan, and three national organizations of academics or writers who have invited him to speak to their members. The groups, including the American Academy of Religion, the leading American organization of scholars of religion, say Mr. Ramadan has never expressed support for terrorism. They also argue that the Patriot Act clause has been applied to stifle academic debate in the United States.