Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Hijab ban driving women away from soccer

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Iranian women's soccer team
Iranian women’s team after being excluded from Olympic qualifying match against Jordan

Muslim women are being driven away from soccer by FIFA’s ban of the hijab, with more likely to follow if rulemakers fail to reverse the decision at a meeting next month, Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein of Jordan told Reuters.

While physical Olympic sports such as rugby and taekwondo allow Muslim women to wear the headscarf in competition, soccer, the world’s most popular sport, remains against its use, citing safety concerns.

Last year the Iranian women’s soccer team were prevented from playing their 2012 Olympic second round qualifying match against Jordan because they refused to remove their hijabs before kick-off.

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French cabinet walks out of parliament over Nazi claim

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The French prime minister and his cabinet have stormed out of parliament after an opposition MP accused the rightwing interior minister of flirting with Nazi ideology.

The Socialist Serge Letchimy, from Martinique, questioned the interior minister and close Sarkozy ally, Claude Guéant, over his controversial comments this weekend that “not all civilisations are of equal value”, and his assertion that some civilisations, namely France’s, are worth more than others.

Letchimy said Guéant was “day by day leading us back to these European ideologies that gave birth to concentration camps”. After a loud interruption of protests, he added: “Mr Guéant, the Nazi regime, which was so concerned about purity, was that a civilization?”

In a rare move, the entire French government stormed out of the question-time session.

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CAIR asks Justice Department to probe Oregon FBI’s ‘coercion’ of Muslim citizens

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim civil rights group wants the Justice Department to investigate the tactics of FBI agents in Portland, Oregon, after two Libyan-Americans from the area recently were barred from returning to the United States.

The two men – Jamal Tarhuni, 55, and Mustafa Elogbi, 60 – traveled separately to Libya after the overthrow of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Tarhuni delivered humanitarian supplies with the group Medical Teams International, while Elogbi went to visit family.

Last month, though, both Libyan-born U.S. citizens were barred from return flights to the U.S. and told the FBI wanted to question them.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations said that it has now received three reports of Portland FBI agents’ involvement in travel restrictions for Muslim U.S. citizens in the last six months. The other case involved a man who made headlines last year when he was detained in Britain as he tried to travel to Italy.

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Leicester Mercury reports Saturday’s EDL and UAF protests

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Leicester march 2012Hundreds of people with very different political viewpoints took to the streets of Leicester city centre during Saturday’s rival marches. Both the English Defence League and Unite Against Fascism claimed success for their protests.

Despite a police warning for groups to stick to their agreed march routes, Unite Against Fascism encouraged its supporters to gather at the Clock Tower at 11am and to remain there until the EDL passed by.

A group of at least 50 who congregated at the Clock Tower were then warned by police to move on or face arrest. They included former city council leader Ross Willmott, who told officers he had a legal right to be at the scene of the EDL protest.

Councillor Willmott had earlier criticised city mayor Sir Peter Soulsby and police for allowing the EDL to march through the city centre and for allocating march routes which kept the groups apart. Coun Willmott said: “The police have a difficult job to do, but we are peaceful people who want to hold a vigil and demonstrate against the EDL.”

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Women want the chance to bend it like Beckham, headscarves and all

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lakembaroos footballers

Muslim Lakembaroos are free to wear the hijab when they take to the soccer field in club competitions in Sydney every week.

The only thing they need to watch is that their headscarves match their uniforms, just as their male counterparts must wear an undershirt the same colour as their jerseys.

But any young Muslim Lakembaroo with aspirations of making the Matildas and going to an Olympics knows her career may never get off the ground under FIFA laws banning the hijab in international competition.

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Richard Peppiatt on tabloid misrepresentation of Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Richard Peppiatt at Leveson inquiryA former Daily Star journalist has repeated accusations that a number of British daily newspapers put pressure on journalists to fabricate anti-Muslim stories.

Richard Peppiatt, who worked as a full-time freelance journalist at the Daily Star for two years, claimed that editors forced journalists to fabricate news that suggested Muslims and immigrants were threatening national security.

He said the fabricated stories were mainly related to Muslims, depicting them as a threat to British society. The defamatory stories became more widespread after the bombings in London on June 7, 2005 – often referred to as 7/7 – and the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the United States.

“Especially since 7/7 and, to a degree, since 9/11, Muslims have certainly been painted as the ‘cartoon baddy’. Definitely in the tabloids. Someone always has to be blamed, you can’t just leave it up in the air when something happens; somebody always needs to take the blame. Sadly it’s the Muslims that have been chosen to be portrayed as the ‘baddies’,” he told Today’s Zaman in a phone interview.

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Islamophobia – the latest right-wing conspiracy theory

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Goldwag New HateExtremist political conspiracies such as “birthers” and “truthers” may be a dominant theme of post-9/11 America, but in a new book by Arthur Goldwag, he argues that modern conservative groups may be a product of history repeating itself.

In Goldwag’s book, “The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right,” due out on February 7, the author traced the historical origins of rhetoric and ideologies associated with birtherism, Islamophobia, anti-immigration sentiment and other touchstones of modern conservative factions such as the Tea Party movement.

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New York protest against police targeting of Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

About 150 demonstrators gathered in Foley Square on Friday afternoon to give voice to a growing list of complaints against the NYPD and police commissioner Ray Kelly for targeted surveillance of New York Muslims.

The Friday protest was coordinated by nonprofit Muslim advocacy organization Majilis Ash-Shura of Metropolitan New York and Desis Rising Up and Moving, a Jackson Heights-based organization which advocates for the civil rights of South Asian immigrants. Among the demonstrators were also Occupy protesters and interfaith leaders, as well as some local elected officials. Some speakers called for more accountability by the police; others called for Kelly and Browne to step down.

It was the second rally to protest the department’s Muslim-specific policies in as many weeks. The day before, the Associated Press had written about an internal department document suggesting the department targeted Shi’ite mosques for surveillance. That countered Kelly’s previous assertion that Muslim communities weren’t targeted by religion.

There was also unresolved tension about the commissioner’s appearance in anti-Muslim film The Third Jihad, which was eventually revealed to have been shown to over a thousand officers, contrary to the initial claims of a department spokesman.

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