The media has misrepresented the Muslim faith and aggravated the “Islamaphobic” backlash to the July bombings, members of Birmingham’s Muslim community have claimed. The accusations were made during the visit of Home Office Minister Paul Goggins to the Victoria Street Mosque in Aston yesterday. Members of the mosque said they felt let down by the negative and extreme image of Muslims portrayed in television and newspapers.
Author Archives: Bob Pitt
Round-up of racial violence
Eight weeks after the London bombings racial violence is still on the rise, the Institute of Race Relations reports..
Mad Mel and Tariq Ramadan
“The government’s desperation to engage with ‘moderate’ Islam appears to mean that it is keen to embrace even those who believe in Islamicising the west, as long as they make ritual noises denouncing the terror that flows from such an agenda. At the root of this is its determination to avoid at all costs being thought to have a problem with the current state of Islam itself as opposed to a few ‘unrepresentative’ terrorists, whose motivation will therefore be ascribed to everything but. Such myopia spells cultural suicide.”
Mad Mel condemns the government’s decision to appoint Tariq Ramadan to a Home Office task force.
Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 31 August 2005
As you might anticipate, she parrots accusations from Daniel Pipes’ attack on Professor Ramadan (the same one that provided the basis for the Sun’s recent witch-hunt). For Ramadan’s demolition of Pipes’ slanders, see here
Muslim students lay the blame on No.10
Muslim anger over British foreign policy, particularly the war against Iraq, resurfaced yesterday in a survey of Muslim students.
Almost all of the students who took part in the research said that they were unhappy with Tony Blair’s policy in the Middle East and two thirds said that they felt it had contributed to the London bombings. Half of the respondents in the poll, which was organised by the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, said they had experienced Islamophobia and nine out of 10 objected to the way they were portrayed in the media.
The preliminary results of the survey were revealed at a conference in London’s City Hall addressed by a panel including Ken Livingstone, the London Mayor, Government ministers and commentators.
Wakkas Khan, the president of the federation, which represents 90,000 Muslim students, said: “The Prime Minister’s continuing refusal to accept that his decisions could have led to such extreme consequences does nothing to appease the Muslim community, and on the contrary, seems to be causing more resentment amongst young Muslims. It is important now for Mr Blair to accept that foreign policy is a serious concern and to start to do something about it rather than being seen to brush it aside.”
Mr Livingstone said: “Anti-terrorist measures must be directed against those carrying out, planning or supporting such terrorist attacks and not against those who are our allies in dealing with the terrorists. Attempts to criminalise legitimate political views, for example on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, would destroy the trust, which is essential to isolate and deal with real terrorists.” He told Muslim students that it was their duty to challenge a “rising tide of Islamaphobia” in the media.
UK Muslims reject Al-Qaeda justification for attacks
The Muslim minority in Britain condemned Al-Qaeda claiming responsibility for the London attacks, rejecting its justification for carrying out the terrorist attacks by linking them to the atrocities committed in Iraq and the occupied Palestinian territories.
“Nothing can ever justify committing acts of terrorism against innocent civilians,” Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, told the BBC News Online Friday, September 2. “Holding all British people responsible for the Iraq war is just plain wrong – this country was bitterly divided and many millions, perhaps the majority, clearly opposed the war.”
In a footage aired on the Doha-based Al-Jazeera Thursday, Mohamed Sidique Khan, one of the alleged four bombers of the London attacks, said atrocities committed by the western countries against Muslims around the world drove him to bomb the London transport system.
“Your democratically elected governments continue to commit atrocities against my people over the world,” Khan, 30, said in English, Agence France Presse (AFP) said.
“Their support makes you directly responsible just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim bothers and sisters. Until we feel security you will be our targets. Until you stop the bombing the gassing, the imprisonment and torture of my people we will not stop this fight.”
The video, accompanied by a separate message by Al-Qaeda’s number two Ayman Al-Zawahiri, was the first time the one of the bombers has been heard explaining the rationale for Britain’s worst terrorist atrocity.
Islam Online, 2 September 2005
See also BBC News, 2 September 2005 and IHRC press release, 1 September 2005
Pope meets racist
Pope Benedict XVI held a meeting at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo with Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, a strident critic of Islam, Vatican sources confirmed. The 76-year-old writer, who describes herself as an atheist Christian and was sued in Italy for insulting the Muslim faith in one of her books, asked to meet the pope, a source said. The meeting on Saturday between Benedict XVI and the former war correspondent became public only after Fallaci’s associates let slip that the meeting took place.
Based in the United States where she is being treated for cancer, Fallaci once said in a newspaper interview that she was comforted by the writings of German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before he became pope after the death of John Paul II. “Europe is no longer Europe, it is ‘Eurabia,’ a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense,” Fallaci told The Wall Street Journal on June 23. “Servility to the invaders has poisoned democracy, with obvious consequences for the freedom of thought, and for the concept itself of liberty,” she said. “I feel less alone when I read Ratzinger’s books,” the journalist added.
But writing in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera three weeks later, she said integrating Muslims in Western society was a “nightmare” and criticised the pope’s call for dialogue with Muslim leaders after the July 7 London suicide bombings.
Muslim students ‘speak on terror’
A conference in London is hoping to forge bonds between Muslim students, police and other public authorities, organisers say. The event has been organised in response to last month’s terror attacks.
Student Wakkas Khan said it was a chance for the UK’s 90,000 Muslim students to be heard. “We want to hear what they believe needs changing and where the solutions lie,” he said.
“Following the attacks in London we have seen Muslim youth thrust into the spotlight. Through this conference we ask them directly about their concerns and give them an opportunity to state openly and frankly their views,” added Mr Khan, president of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (Fosis).
Blair backs banned Muslim scholar
A Muslim scholar accused by critics of sympathising with violence has been appointed to a government taskforce attempting to root out Islamic extremism in Britain, the Guardian has learned.
Professor Tariq Ramadan has been banned from entering the United States and France because of his alleged views supporting violence, allegations he strongly denies. He faced a campaign of vilification from rightwing British newspapers, and last night some saw his inclusion on the group as evidence of the government’s willingness to stand up to the tabloids.
See also Islam Online, 31 August 2005
Mike Whine, spokesman for the Jewish Community Security Trust which monitors alleged Muslim extremists, said: “It’s a strange choice given his past statements which some have viewed as being anti-Jewish. Some of our community view him as extreme. He speaks with two voices, one for his European audience which appears moderate, and one for his Arab hinterland where he voices many of the demands of Islamists. He is at the soft end of the Islamist extreme spectrum.”
That would be the same Mike Whine who signed up to the anti-Qaradawi “Community Coalition”, would it?
German state plans hijab ban for teachers
Female Muslim teachers in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia will be banned from wearing hijab at schools from next summer, according to a German press report. Officials in the State told Wednesday’s edition of the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung that the hijab ban would take effect from August 2006, Reuters reported.
“Female and male teachers are not allowed to express any world views or any religious beliefs, which could disturb or endanger the peace at school,” North Rhine-Westphalia schools minister Barbara Sommer said. “That’s why we want to forbid (female) Muslim teachers at state schools from wearing headscarves.”
The type of cover-up freedom lovers need not fear
“Whenever the spotlight turns on the Muslim community, it is usually in relation to a negative act: terrorism, local crime or accusations of Islamic demagogy. Muslims seem to find themselves at the centre of every problem – the obscure or negative is magnified and, like in some grotesque circus show, Muslims become the ‘other’. Once again, Muslim women’s dress, and in particular the hijab, is under attack. Bronwyn Bishop labelled it an act of defiance, and then in the same breath opined that women who wear the hijab are as free as slaves.”
Amal Awad in the Sydney Morning Herald, 31 August 2005