Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Potterrow mosque in terror row

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim student leaders have condemned a report published last week which insinuated links between an Edinburgh mosque and hate-literature. The Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) branded the report by the right of centre think tank The Policy Exchange as a “PR stunt” which could undermine ongoing efforts to advance interfaith dialogue and community cohesion across Edinburgh.

The report was published after a culmination of a year-long project in which researchers visited 100 mosques across Britain. It claimed that a pamphlet found at the Islamic Centre of Edinburgh, which is linked to the Edinburgh Central Mosque on Potterrow, advocated the killing of Muslims who have turned their back on their religion.

Faisal Hanjra, spokesman for FOSIS condemned the think tank’s report stating: “The Policy Exchange document does nothing more than present single sentences, from often large documents, out of context. The report also fails to adequately define the term ‘extremist literature’ instead applying this label to anything outside of the authors’ own personal realm of social acceptability. Finally, the report arrives at the illogical conclusion that this literature is in part responsible for terrorism, something not supported by the actual contents of the report.”

The Islamic Centre of Edinburgh refused to comment on the allegations but a senior source branded the report as a “smear campaign” which damaged the reputation of the Edinburgh Mosque, widely renowned as being at the forefront of building bridges between the Muslim community and the wider British society. Secular schemes run at the Centre such as the Mosque Kitchen are particularly popular with students.

Student, 8 November 2007

Hairdresser sued over Muslim headscarf ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bushra NoahA hair salon owner is being sued for religious discrimination after refusing a Muslim teenager a job as a stylist because she wore a headscarf.

Sarah Desrosiers said she refused 19-year-old Bushra Noah the position because it was an “absolutely basic” requirement that customers could see their stylist’s hair. The 32-year-old, whose “alternative” salon in London specialises in “urban, funky punky” cuts, has already spent £1,000 fighting the case. Miss Noah wants £15,000 for injury to her feelings plus an unspecified amount for lost earnings. She maintains that her headscarf is an integral part of her religious beliefs.

Miss Desrosiers, who denies any discrimination, said: “The essence of my line of work is the display of hair. To me, it’s absolutely basic that people should be able to see the stylist’s hair. It has nothing to do with religion. It is just unfortunate that for her covering her hair symbolises religion.”

Daily Telegraph, 9 November 2007

See also Evening Standard, 8 November 2007

Defend Aamer Anwar – public meeting

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Aamer Anwar and Asif Siddique (brother of Mohammed Atif Siddique) will be speaking at a public meeting on Tuesday 13 November

7.30 pm, Mitchell Theatre, Granville Street, Glasgow

Other speakers include Alasdair Gray (author), Doug Jewell (CAMPACC), Carlo Morelli (UCU), Noman Tahir (IWitness), Jonathan Shafi (Glasgow Stop The War Coalition)

Admission Free – All welcome. Doors open 7pm

Sponsored by SACC and Glasgow Stop The War Coalition

LAPD to build data on Muslim areas

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An extensive mapping program launched by the LAPD’s anti-terrorism bureau to identify Muslim enclaves across the city sparked outrage Thursday from some Islamic groups and civil libertarians, who denounced the effort as an exercise in racial and religious profiling.

Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Michael P. Downing, who heads the bureau, defended the undertaking as a way to help Muslim communities avoid the influence of those who would radicalize Islamic residents and advocate “violent, ideologically-based extremism.”

“We certainly reject this idea completely,” said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California. “This stems basically from this presumption that there is homogenized Muslim terrorism that exists among us.” Syed said he is a member of Police Chief William J. Bratton’s forum of religious advisors, but had not been told of the community mapping program. “This came as a jolt to me,” Syed said.

Hussam Ayloush, who leads the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the mapping “basically turns the LAPD officers into religious political analysts, while their role is to fight crime and enforce the laws.”

Los Angeles Times, 9 November 2007

See also Associated Press, 9 November 2007

Terror detention ‘a kind of modern torture’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Terror DetentionTerror detention ‘a kind of modern torture’

By Tom Mellen

Morning Star, 8 November 2007

TWO innocent brothers who were locked up for a week under anti-terror laws urged MPs to resist the attack on civil liberties on Wednesday. In a passionate appeal to backbenchers, they described government plans to double the amount of time suspects can be detained as amounting to “modernised torture.”

Mohammed Abdul Kahar, who was shot in the chest during the infamous Forest Gate raid in June last year, urged MPs not to back plans to extend the maximum amount of time that terror suspects can be held from 28 to 58 days. Giving evidence to the home affairs select committee, Mr Kahar told them: “If you give the police more time, they do everything slower. It is just prolonging the time, it’s more modernised torture,” he warned.

His brother Abul Koyair said of his seven days of questioning in Paddington Green high-security police station in west London: “It makes you want to admit to anything they want to hear.”

Mr Kahar said that he did not regard Britain differently after his experiences but he had lost faith in the police. “The police have a difficult job, but they are putting innocent people’s lives at risk. It’s not only Muslims,” Mr Kahar said, noting that Jean Charles de Menezes wasn’t a Muslim. The threat is not only to Muslims – it’s a threat to the whole public.”

Mr Kahar warned that, “if I wasn’t as strong as I was, I could have been turned against this country. I have so much hatred towards the system, someone else could have used it in a bad way.”

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What today’s Islamists want

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ibrahim El Houdaiby of IkhwanWeb.com, the Muslim Brotherhood’s official English language website, writes:

“I find it very difficult to understand what makes Western governments, unlike civil society organisations, sceptical about engaging in healthy dialogue with moderate Islamists. I find it very difficult to understand their awkward silence in the face of ongoing violations of such activists’ human rights by their authoritarian regimes – banning them from political participation, and sending them to prisons by the hundreds. I find it even more difficult to comprehend the clear bias and lack of even-handedness illustrated by the Western silence regarding the ongoing military tribunals for moderate Islamists acquitted by civilian courts in Egypt.

“Western government officials should respond positively to the positive steps taken by moderate Islamists. By shunning dialogue with the moderate voices of political Islam, Western governments are gradually handing victory to the radicals both they and moderate Islamic politicians are keen to undermine.”

Common Ground News Service, 6 November 2007

The lyrical non-terrorist

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Samina Malik“Pity Samina Malik, the young woman who will live for the rest of her life with the consequences of a terrorism conviction simply for being a suburban shopgirl who expressed her fantasies on the internet.

“Scribbling doggerel in praise of al Qa’eda on the back of WH Smith receipts will do no more to bring about the universal caliphate then a smartarse politics student with a Che Guevara poster in his bedroom does to further guerrilla struggle in South America.

“Malik is just one of many millions of kids in every country around the world wrapped up in a flirtation with any variety of anti-establishment symbolism that comes immediately to hand. Mostly it stops at posting message on online talk boards, as it did in her case….

“Let’s keep a sense of proportion here. Yes, I am in favour of intelligence service surveillance against violent Jihadists. But what is needed is action against real terrorists, not lyrical ones. Just imagine how counter-productive Malik’s conviction is going to prove in the struggle for the hearts and minds of alienated Muslim youth.”

Dave Osler at Dave’s Part, 8 November 2007

City high-flyer sues firm over ‘Guantanamo detainee’ jibes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A City high-flyer who worked on an innovative Islamic policy for a leading British insurer has brought a claim for racism against the company after he was welcomed to the office as “Guantanamo detainee 948”.

Anwar Khan, 24, who shares his name with a Afghan man held by the Americans at the Cuban naval base since 2002, says that he was greeted on 18 September by a colleague with the words: “So they have released you from Guantanamo Bay.” When Mr Khan logged on to his computer, he opened an email with a link to the Wikipedia page for detainee 948.

Mr Khan, from central London, has now begun grievance proceedings against the Royal & Sun Alliance (R&SA) insurance company after what he describes as one of the most distressing episodes in his life. The case is the latest to involve allegations of racism at work in which Asian men and women have complained that they have been racially victimised since Britain and America launched the “war on terror”.

Independent, 7 November 2007