Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Home secretary bans EDL march in Bradford

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL in BirminghamHome Secretary Theresa May has authorised a blanket ban on marches in Bradford on August 28 – the day the English Defence League (EDL) was planning a protest.

The far-right group had intended to march down Manchester Road, one of the biggest Asian areas in the city, and Unite Against Fascism (UAF) had planned a protest in the city on the same day.

A Home Office spokesman said: “Having carefully balanced rights to protest against the need to ensure local communities and property are protected, the Home Secretary gave her consent to a Bradford Council order banning any marches in the city over the bank holiday weekend.”

The city council sought a marching ban following an 11,000-strong public petition and a formal request by West Yorkshire Chief Constable Norman Bettison. Mr Bettison said he was taking the action after considering the “understandable concerns of the community.”

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Sweden: aide moved over ‘Islam is like Nazism’ comment

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A civil servant working under Integration Minister Nyamko Sabuni will be assigned new duties after writing a blog saying that there are no good adherents of Islam and comparing the religion to Communism or Nazism.

The man, a non-political appointee, shared his opinion on Islam on his blog in September 2008 when he commented on an article by writer Lena Andersson in which she warned against the “religious terrorism” directed at artists, writers and journalists. The civil servant’s own commentary on the article was that “Islam is like Communism or Nazism. There are no good practitioners – just confused or evil.”

Sabuni told the Expressen daily on Wednesday, “I strongly disagree with these views and there is of course no truth in them.” However, neither she nor her state secretary, Christer Hallerby, commented on Wednesday on whether they consider the man man fit to work with immigration issues.

“I cannot conduct personnel policy in the media since this is something we deal with internally,” Hallerby told news agency TT. “This is something he has done outside of his duties and as I understand it also before he was hired here. For the non-political parts of government offices, the same rules apply as for those in the rest of the labour market in terms of freedom of expression, job security and professional negotiations during a transfer.”

Sabuni also stressed that the man is an non-political civil servant and that she cannot keep track of what all the civil servants in the government offices think. She declined to comment on whether the man is suited to work as a researcher in her department.

However, a written statement from Hallerby on Wednesday evening confirmed that he and the staff member had agreed that as the discussion had arisen it was made clear that the man could no longer represent the department “in the same way as before.” The man will “change job duties within the department in the future.” A discussion of what these will entail is currently ongoing.

The man later apologised on his blog for the comments and offered a clarification of his statement.

The Local, 19 August 2010

Germany: FDP politician calls for ban on veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The liberal parliamentarian Serkan Toeren has demanded a ban on the burqa in Germany. Toeren, who represents the Free Democratic Party (FDP) in the Bundestag, says it was time to have an open debate on the issue. Toeren, whose constituency is in Lower Saxony, said the full body covering worn by some Muslim women, obscuring the face, posed a threat to public security, and undermined the individuals.

“Wearing a full-body veil like the burqa is a breach of human dignity.” Toeren told the German daily Leipziger Volkszeitung. Women who choose to wear the burqa voluntarily cannot be accepted either, because individuals cannot control human dignity.”

According to Toeren, the burqa robs women of their dignity and freedom: “It is supposed to make women more or less invisible, and not present. The burqa is a mobile women’s prison.”

The FDP spokesman for integration, who is of Turkish origin, does not accept religious reasons as justification for wearing the full-body veil. “The burqa is not a religious, but rather a political symbol against our state order and a means of suppressing women,” said Toeren.

Deutsche Welle, 20 August 2010

Florence, Kentucky: attempt to launch another campaign against plan for new mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Florence mosque flier3

FLORENCE — The announcement that a mosque is being planned near Mall Road in Florence has drawn a strong reaction from some in the community. Florence city officials say they have gotten several calls about the proposed worship center and a flier is being distributed in the city’s neighborhoods.

There is also a website run by a Boone County resident that posts anti-Islamic messages and encourages people to “Stop the Mosque“.

The flier encourages residents to take action to halt construction of the facility. “Cayton Road is in your neighborhood,” the flier states. “Everyone needs to contact Florence City Council to have this stopped. Americans need to stop the takeover of our country.”

Joseph Dabdoub, a spokesman for the center, said he is troubled by the reaction. “The flier was very disappointing,” Dabdoub said. “These are average, hard-working people from the community, looking for a place to worship.”

NKY.com, 16 August 2010

See also WLWT.com and Fox News.

Racially motivated attack on Muslim man in Heckmondwike

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim man was attacked by a gang of white youths on his way to a Kirklees mosque. Now police are appealing for witnesses to the racially motivated attack on the 51-year old man.

It happened on Thursday, August 12, at around 6:45pm, as the man was walking down an alleyway on Goose Hill, in Heckmondwike. He was approached by a group of between six and ten young white men all in their mid to late teens, who shouted racial abuse at the man who was then punched in the face by one of the youths before they all ran away towards High Street.

Huddersfield Examiner, 18 August 2010

MP pleased that women who wore niqab have gone

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MP Philip Hollobone says he is pleased that the only two women in Kettering who wear burkas have left.

Inam Khan, chairman of Kettering Muslim Association, said the two women, whose husbands were doctors at Kettering General Hospital, left the town shortly after Mr Hollobone first criticised the burka in February.

The Kettering MP, who is trying to change the law to ban the burka, which some Muslim women wear to cover their face, said: “I’m pleased to hear that. Wearing the full face veil is inappropriate. To hear that no-one in the town is wearing one is a sign of an integrated society.”

Despite having no constituents who wear one, Mr Hollobone has tabled a private members bill in the House of Commons calling for the burka to be banned.

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Bethpage, New York: officials say mosque closure was politically motivated

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Officials at a mosque on Long Island that was shut down on the eve of Ramadan say they are the victims of fallout from the recent Ground Zero mosque controversy.

The Masjid Al-Baqi has occupied a building at 320 Central Avenue in Bethpage for the past 12 years but last week, it was forced to close after inspectors from the Town of Oyster Bay appeared to do a surprise inspection.

“First and foremost there was no certificate of occupancy,” said Deputy Town Supervisor Leonard Genova. “Then there were plumbing issues and a gas leak. It’s our responsibility as a town to make sure people are protected from such hazardous conditions.”

Genova said they inspected the mosque after receiving more than a hundred emails and letters from Bethpage residents voicing their concerns about a second proposed mosque at 600 Broadway, the site of a former Jewish community center. Some of those residents also asked the town to inspect the Masjid Al-Baqi.

“With all that’s going on the world there’s a heightened sensitivity to this issue,” said Genova. “Once we found the violations though, we had to make sure they were adequately addressed.”

Town officials said this is not a question of “politics” but the need to protect congregants from unsafe conditions.

Mosque officials though question the timing. They showed News 4 New York documents that indicate they had been working with the town since April 2008 to change their certificate of occupancy. The building has a CO but from the days when it was a pizza restaurant, not a place of worship.

“There is no question this is a political issue,” said Syed Quadri, secretary of the mosque. “If the conditions are so poor, why did they not close it down twelve years ago?”

“Unfortunately, the controversy over the Ground Zero mosque has affected my client,” said Steven Morelli, an attorney for the mosque. “They are members of our community they have the same right to pray as we all do. That is a basic Constitutional right.”

Morelli is prepared to file a discrimination suit against the Town of Oyster Bay if the mosque is not re-opened soon. Meanwhile, during the holiest month in Islam, congregants of this Bethpage mosque are without a spiritual home.

“We just go there stand in the parking lot and stare at the building,” said Quadri. “We hope we can re-open and hope we’ll be able to pray.”

NBC, 18 August 2010

Australia: judge orders witness to remove niqab in court

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An Australian judge has ruled that a Muslim woman must remove her full veil while giving evidence before a jury in a fraud case. The judge in Perth said she did not consider it appropriate that the witness appear with her face covered.

The prosecution said the woman – identified only as Tasneem – would feel uncomfortable without her niqab, which would affect her evidence. But the defence said the jury should be able to watch her facial expressions. The 36-year-old woman’s wish to wear the veil was a “preference”, said defence lawyer Mark Trowell QC and was “not an essential part of the Islamic faith”.

The woman is a witness in a case against the head of an Islamic school accused of gaining work funding by inflating student numbers. She has lived in Australia for seven years and has worn the niqab since the age of 17, only removing it in front of her family and male blood relatives.

BBC News, 19 August 2010

US poll reveals majority opposition to ‘Ground Zero mosque’, widespread animosity towards Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Opponents of the planned Islamic community center and mosque near Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan have public opinion firmly in their corner. According to a new TIME poll, 61% of respondents oppose the construction of the Park51/Cordoba House project, compared to 26% who support it. More than 70% concur with the premise that proceeding with the plan would be an insult to the victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center.

The survey also revealed that many Americans harbor lingering animosity toward Muslims. Twenty-eight percent of voters do not believe Muslims should be eligible to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Nearly one third of the country thinks adherents of Islam should be barred from running for President – slightly higher than the 24% who mistakenly believe that the current occupant of the Oval Office is himself a Muslim.

And while more Americans are open to the idea of having a mosque built in their neighborhoods than near Ground Zero, it’s still not an overwhelming majority; 55% of respondents say they would favor the construction of an Islamic community center and mosque two blocks from their own homes, and an equal number say they believe most Muslims are “Patriotic Americans.

While the poll revealed that prejudice toward Muslims is widespread, respect for other religions traditions remains sturdy. Respondents held the Jewish faith in the highest regard, with 75% professing to hold a favorable impression – just slightly higher than attitudes toward Protestants and Catholics. Fifty-seven percent say they have a favorable view of the Mormon faith, compared to 44% for Muslims. Despite (or perhaps because of) this widespread antipathy, 62% of respondents say they don’t personally know a Muslim American.

Time, 19 August 2010

See also the Financial Times, which reports on another poll, conducted by the Siena Research Institute. This poll (it can be consulted here) found that New Yorkers opposed the contruction of the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” by a margin of 63 to 27 per cent, but it also found that 64 per cent agreed that the developers of the Cordoba House have a constitutional right to build it, as against 28 percent who disagreed.

Gallup has posted the results of a 17 August poll which found that 37% of Americans disapproved of Obama’s comments on the “Ground Zero mosque”, while 20% approved and 43% expressed no view on the matter. Of those who disapproved, 32% held that view “strongly”.

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