A ban on the wearing of the burka in France would help stem the spread of the “cancer” of radical Islam, one of its female Muslim ministers has said.
Urban Regeneration Minister Fadela Amara told the Financial Times that a veil covering everything but the eyes represented “the oppression of women”. Ms Amara said she was “in favour of the burka not existing in my country”.
The comments come as French MPs hold hearings on whether to ban the garment, which covers the body from head to toe.
Europe is at risk of being “colonised” by its Muslim populations, argue a number of bestselling new books, acclaimed across the political spectrum. How has such hysteria gone unchallenged? Pankaj Mishra on the “Eurabia-mongers”.
The Daily Telegraph reports that London Labour MP Jim Fitzpatrick, a third of whose constituents are Muslim, has condemned the Muslim tradition of separating men and women at weddings.
Fitzpatrick and his wife walked out of the marriage ceremony of a constituent after discovering they would have to sit in separate rooms. He claimed the gender segregation was a sign of increasing radicalisation and was damaging to social cohesion.
The normally sleepy Swiss country town of Langenthal has become the focus of a virulent right-wing campaign to ban minarets from all mosques in the Alpine republic on the grounds that they symbolise ideological opposition to the country’s constitution.
Switzerland’s “stop minaret” movement is backed by the influential ultra-conservative Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which was re-elected in 2007 with its largest ever share of the vote after mounting an anti-foreigner campaign that was denounced by the United Nations as racist.
Ulrich Schüler, an SVP parliamentarian and leading member of the anti-minaret movement, says the edifices are political rather than religious. “They are symbols of a desire for power, of an Islam which wants to establish a legal and social order fundamentally contrary to the liberties guaranteed in our constitution,” he said.
Thomas Rufener, the town’s mayor, said about eight per cent of Langenthal’s residents were Muslims. “All the main parties have given their approval for the mosque,” he said. The regional canton of Bern has given approval in addition for the construction of a domed mosque. That will stand alongside the planned minaret which will be little more than 30 feet high.
An anti-minaret campaign has now lodged a formal complaint with the canton, claiming that the planned mosque amounts to an “ideological intrusion”. Daniel Zigg, a campaign spokesman, said the building would attract more than 100 Muslim believers a day during the Ramadan fast because it was the only one of its kind in the canton.
The anti-minaret campaigners are hoping to force Bern to rescind its approval for the minaret and score an important victory in the run-up to the November referendum. “There may be different laws governing this kind of thing in certain part of Paris or Berlin, but we don’t want them in Switzerland,” Mr Schüler said.
Two years ago his party fought a general election with famously xenophobic campaign posters depicting a flock of white sheep kicking a black sheep out of Switzerland.
Opposition members in the Rotterdam city council are once again calling for the resignation of integration consultant Tariq Ramadan, this time because he is hosting a talk show on an Iranian TV station.
Ramadan, a Swiss Muslim academic of Egyptian descent, was hired by the city of Rotterdam in 2007 to help bridge the divide between the Muslim and non-Muslim communities. He also lectures at Rotterdam’s Erasmus university.
In April, the right-wing liberal party VVD resigned from the city executive because of its refusal to sack Ramadan following a controversy concerning homophobic statements Ramadan allegedly made. An investigation by the city executive concluded at the time there were no grounds for the accusations.
Now, three opposition parties in the city council – Leefbaar Rotterdam, the Socialist Party and the VVD – are once again calling for Ramadan’s resignation because of his collaboration with the Iranian state TV station Press TV.
Ramadan has been hosting a weekly talk show on the English-language Press TV titled “Islam & Life”. The ruling Labour party has also said that Ramadan’s work for Press TV affects his credibility, and has asked the city executive for clarification.
Leefbaar Rotterdam councilwoman Anita Fähmel said Ramadan’s “Iranian hat” proves once more that he has a “double agenda”. She said it was “unacceptable” that Ramadan is “on the payroll of the dictatorial regime of Ahmadinejad, while at the same time he preaches tolerance here in Rotterdam”.
A white supremacist friend of Nick Griffin, the British National Party leader, was banned from entering Britain yesterday as he headed to speak at the BNP’s Red White and Blue festival this weekend.
Preston Wiginton, one of the world’s most active nazis and antisemites, was refused entry by immigration officers at Heathrow airport under laws to keep out “undesirables”. He was to have been the star overseas guest at the BNP’s tenth RWB festival, which opens today in Derbyshire.
It was Wiginton, 44, who organised Griffin’s anti-Islam tour of three US universities at the end of October 2007. As well as financing the trip, Wiginton appealed to users of the Stormfront nazi internet forum to donate money to Griffin while he was in America.
They see themselves as the vanguard in a battle for the soul of Britain against extremist Islamist forces – the “enemy within” bent on imposing Sharia. Casuals United announced their arrival on Saturday when a small army of shirt-sleeved, middle-aged men with beer bellies clashed in a flurry of punches and kicks with young Asians in Birmingham city centre.
The group, which is closely affiliated with the far-right English Defence League, insists that it is a peaceful movement representing ordinary working people angered by the sight of Muslims hurling insults at British soldiers on homecoming parades. But if the chants of “England, England” and the aggressive posturing appear familiar, it is because they are.
The members of Casuals United are largely former football hooligans drawn from the terraces and, according to their critics, are essentially the BNP and National Front repackaged. The groupings have attracted the support of BNP activists including Chris Renton, who created the English Defence League website.
Saturday 8 August 2009: The English Defence League (EDL) and Casuals United attempted to march through Birmingham. Both groups claim they are not racist and are only concerned with peaceful protest against militant Muslims. Some scenes in this video rush clearly show racist abuse from those in these groups.
Unite Against Fascism held a counter demonstration, to oppose these groups, both being involved in clashes with police and residents earlier in the year in Birmingham and Luton.
This time, as the video shows, the EDL members that avoided being “kettled” by police went straight for the anti-fascist protest, goaded the Birmingham youth, then got beaten and chased out of town.
By Jason N. Parkinson, via Sunny Hundal, who comments:
“The video is shot really well and much better than anything on YouTube. Shows to me there wasn’t a big brawl really, just mostly some EDL twats looking for a fight running away as soon as they got chased. One runs off shouting ‘dirty pakis’ in the video. This kind of raw journalism is way better than even the national broadcasters.”
See also Sunny’s piece at Comment is Free, 12 August 2009
Police have held a series of meetings in a bid to prevent possible clashes in Harrow after protests against the borough’s new mosque were scheduled for the end of August.
It is thought thousands will flood to Harrow to demonstrate outside The Harrow Central Mosque, in Station Road, on August 29, in opposition to a Sharia Law court building within the new site.
The demo has been endorsed by The English Defence League (EDL), a group against “militant Islam”, who were involved in clashes in Birmingham over the weekend, which led to 35 arrests and injuries to three people.
It is thought that members have been recruited though various internet sites and one social network group already has as many as 3,000 people backing plans to protest in Harrow.
A 35-year-old French convert to Islam has threatened legal action after she was evicted from a public pool for wearing a “burkini” – a veil, trouser and tunic covering that she said allowed her to swim while preserving her modesty. The case revolving around the pool east of Paris has reopened France’s bitter row about how Muslim women can dress.
Carole, who would not give her surname, bought the suit while on holiday in Dubai and wore it swimming with her children once at a local pool in Emerainville. The second time she wore it, she was banned. “What annoys me is that I have been made to believe this is a political problem,” she told Le Parisien. Carole, who converted to Islam at the age of 17, said she would seek advice from anti-discrimination groups.