Author Archives: Bob Pitt

The racism behind integration

Posted on by Bob Pitt

IRR report cover“In most European countries, integration is simply a euphemism for assimilation, the report says. The driving force is the notion of a national culture. In Germany this expresses itself through blood-based citizenship and a Leitkultur(dominant culture) and in France through citizenship by birth and earth and by laïcité (secularism). Norway has the idea of likhet (sameness); the Netherlands has verzuiling (religious/cultural blocs).

“One expects the extreme right to embrace such notions, but the report finds centre-left parties also using these racist sentiments to strategise. They may be liberal about immigration but, when it comes to Muslims, they fall prey to an Islamophobia that is ‘nourished by a mixture of feminism and secularism’.”

Ziauddin Sardar reviews Liz Fekete’s Integration, Islamophobia and civil rights in Europe, a new report published by the Institute of Race Relations.

New Statesman, 22 May 2008

Building churches allowed: Qaradawi

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Qaradawi 5DOHA — Prominent scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi approves building churches for Christian citizens of or residents in Muslim countries to meet their needs just as Muslims are being allowed to build mosques in the West. The fatwa came in response to a question regarding the building of the first-ever church in the Gulf emirate of Qatar.

Qaradawi, the president of the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS), said the presence of a Christian minority, whether it was of a local community or of expatriates, justifies this. “It is completely permissible that they should be allowed to have churches.” Qaradawi based his view on the Muslim principle of equal treatment. “Just like they allow Muslims in their countries to build mosques for prayers.”

Islam Online, 21 May 2008

Perhaps Patrick Sookhdeo of the Barnabas Fund, who has made a speciality of condemning the persecution of Christians in Muslim-majority countries, will now acclaim Qaradawi’s intervention on this issue? Don’t hold your breath.

‘No place for the hijab in civic life’ says Irish journalist

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“If Muslim men are so keen on seeing their headscarf introduced into Irish society, they should wear it as well as their women. Let them cover up, too. Otherwise there must be no place for the hijab in civic life here. Not in banks, hospitals or libraries, not in the guards or civil service and most definitely not in schools.

“You hear a constant stream of hooey about why we can’t ban the headscarf. But this is not about Islamophobia. It’s not about prejudice on race or religion grounds. It’s not about equating the Muslim scarf with terrorism. It’s not about denial of civil rights. Here’s what banning the headscarf is about: the State demonstrating our belief in gender equality. It’s about removing a symbol of repression and submission.

“… it is not discriminatory to ban the hijab in a country that is culturally Christian…. Of course, some nuns wear veils but that’s of their own volition as adult women – not a custom they are railroaded into as children….

“I don’t regard the hijab as a harmless expression of religious and cultural diversity. A veiled woman carries regressive connotations. If we accept it in schools, we open the door to other practices in the Muslim world even more repressive to women, among them arranged marriages and female circumcision.”

Martina Devlin in the Irish Independent, 22 May 2008

Update:  See Yusuf Smith’s comments at Indigo Jo Blogs, 23 May 2008

Underlying prejudices against Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The degree of open prejudice is frightening. Web sites and the radical right at times are almost hysterical in the conspiracy theories they concoct around the presidential race and specifically around Barack Obama. But it isn’t just the bigotry of the fringe groups that is disturbing. It’s also the way prejudicial assumptions have slipped into the mainstream. Alarmists fantasize that Obama is a Muslim, and in discussing the outlandish rumor, we all refer to it more or less as a charge: Obama denied the charge that he is a Muslim.

“That choice of words suggests there would be something wrong with it if he was. And that’s the real problem. Good people are failing to recognize and correct their own prejudices. Even Obama falls short on this. Asked about the rumors, he merely denies them: ‘I’m not and never have been of the Muslim faith.’ That denial, spoken that way, reaffirms the prejudice.

“We concede that yes, in America in 2008, being identified as a Muslim is a political handicap, and so there’s only so much we can expect from Obama, who is after all a politician. But he is someone who wants to lead us and who professes an interest in bringing us all together. It is not too much to ask that he add a few words to his denial: ‘But keep in mind, being a Muslim is not something anyone should need to hide. Muslims are our neighbors. They are people who live in our communities, too, and we need to fight prejudice of all kinds’.”

Editorial in the Chicago Daily Herald, 22 May 2008

Brussels: another school bans headscarf

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Brussels school Institut des Ursulines will ban the headscarf starting next year, according to Le Soir. The principal of the school says that his school is one of the few in Brussels that still allows the headscarf and therefore attracted more and more students.

Several petitions have already been started against the management decision, which was made without consultation with the students, teachers and educational staff.

According to the principal of the school, whose students body is 85% students of North African origin, the school attracted more and more students because they allowed the headscarf. Many students have already announced they will leave the school as a result of the decision.

Islam in Europe, 21 May 2008

Quebec’s culture clash

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Is it likely that Hérouxville, set in Quebec’s overwhelmingly white and francophone heartland, will ever witness the stoning of a Muslim woman? Not really, mused Gérard Bouchard, the co-chair of a provincial commission looking into the reasonable accommodation of minorities at an October 2007 public hearing in Trois-Rivières, 30 minutes from the town. “We’re pretty far from stoning here,” he said.

Bouchard was speaking to Andre Drouin, a member of the Hérouxville town council which, in January 2007, created a national firestorm by adopting a code of conduct that banned the stoning of women and covering of faces, among other practices. Yet Drouin held his ground in the face of Bouchard’s skepticism. “Stoning takes place, and some of those people will want to come here. It’s important to be preventive.”

Exchanges like these have consumed the province since Premier Jean Charest formed the Bouchard-Taylor commission in February 2007, largely in response to the public firestorm over the Hérouxville news.

CBC News, 21 May 2008

Mosque plan gets go-ahead amid ‘racist’ row

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Controversial plans for a new mosque in Fulwood have finally been given the green light. But at a heated planning meeting, some members were accused of being “bigots” and “racists” for opposing the scheme. Work on the new mosque at the Masjid-E-Salaam site on Watling Street Road in Fulwood will now begin within six months, after a planning saga lasting two years.

An angry Coun John Browne, who backed the plans, said: “The thing should have gone ahead last time, but a number of us differed and we are in the same situation. It was to differ for political reasons – it’s a misuse of the planning application process. They’re bigots, racists – that’s a terrible thing.”

Others spoke in favour of the mosque, such as Coun Terry Cartwright, who described the new mosque as a “beautiful building”. And Coun Alan Hackett said: “We want to recognise the patience of a large number of people who have put forward this application.”

Lancashire Evening Post, 20 May 2008

Quebec report upholds right to wear hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Muslim hijab. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s no real threat to Quebec values. And most women here wear it by choice, not because of coercion. That’s what the Bouchard-Taylor commission has concluded after a year of study costing $5 million.

In the final draft of their report – which was submitted to the provincial government yesterday and is to be made public at a press conference Thursday – scholars Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor say Quebec society will have a lot to lose if it restricts the wearing of the Muslim head scarf strictly to the home and outdoors.

Devout Muslim women suffer intimidation and discrimination in the Quebec job market for wearing the hijab the commissioners say, recounting testimony from several Muslims in public hearings last fall. For example: A young hijab-wearing woman studying to be a pharmacist “saw her job applications rejected by 50 pharmacies before she was finally able to land a job with an Arab pharmacist.”

Bouchard and Taylor talk of some Quebecers’ “often irrational” opposition to the hijab. They quote from a brief submitted to them in November by a woman in Longueuil, when their 17-city tour of the province swung through town: “In 2007, in Quebec, when a Muslim women wears the veil, I tremble,” the woman wrote.

It’s wrong to think that all veiled Muslim women are somehow under a man’s thumb, the commissioners also say. “There’s a strong feminist current among Muslim women. It follows an original path and is a model that differs from Quebec feminism. It goes along with the wearing of the head scarf.”

Montreal Gazette, 20 May 2008

Mosque plan gets go-ahead amid ‘racist’ row

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Controversial plans for a new mosque in Fulwood have finally been given the green light. But at a heated planning meeting, some members were accused of being “bigots” and “racists” for opposing the scheme. Work on the new mosque at the Masjid-E-Salaam site on Watling Street Road in Fulwood will now begin within six months, after a planning saga lasting two years.

An angry Coun John Browne, who backed the plans, said: “The thing should have gone ahead last time, but a number of us differed and we are in the same situation. It was to differ for political reasons – it’s a misuse of the planning application process. They’re bigots, racists – that’s a terrible thing.”

Others spoke in favour of the mosque, such as Coun Terry Cartwright, who described the new mosque as a “beautiful building”. And Coun Alan Hackett said: “We want to recognise the patience of a large number of people who have put forward this application.”

Lancashire Evening Post, 20 May 2008

Pat Condell’s fascist friends

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pat CondellIslamophobia Watch has regularly covered the obnoxious anti-Muslim videos produced by Pat Condell.

The National Secularist Society’s favourite “comedian”, Condell has also been embraced by racists on the far right, who have enthusiastically promoted his Islamophobic rants.

Even though it clearly provides many of his admirers, Condell has formally dissociated himself from the fascist British National Party. Or has he? It turns out that many of Condell’s YouTube friends are in fact open supporters of the BNP.

See Why Pat Condell Isn’t Funny, 19 May 2008