Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Vet comments on Dutch ritual slaughter ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yesterday’s vote in the Dutch parliament to ban the no-stun slaughter of livestock could halt production of kosher and halal meat in the Netherlands, and is likely to inspire similar campaigns in other European countries.

The argument seems straightforward: if we have scientifically proven standards for animal welfare that we believe in, we should stick to those standards. And indeed, it would be a simple argument if the people affected by the ban were a random mix of a wide variety of the population.

The problem with the outright ban is that the only people affected are religious minorities: in the Dutch case, one million Dutch Muslims and 40,000 Jews. This makes it easy to claim that anti-minority sentiments are the hidden reason for the legislation. When far right anti-Islamic parties like Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party strongly support the ban, it’s easy to believe that the motivation may not always be just to protect animal welfare.

Our society is becoming increasingly secular, with the mainstream regarding religious faith as unproven and therefore unsupportable: the atheistic viewpoint dominates. How far do we want this to continue? Do we want to live in a state where people are jailed for their religious beliefs?

Qualified vet Pete Wedderburn writes in the Daily Telegraph, 29 June 2011

East London Mosque replies to Andrew Gilligan’s latest smears

Posted on by Bob Pitt

East London Mosque Statement Concerning Homophobia Stories

Following on from the recent corrections that The Telegraph newspaper had to issue over its London editor’s erroneous reporting of the Ashraf Miah paedophile story, we once again note that Andrew Gilligan is twisting facts and editing context in order to attack our institution. Considering his London-wide brief, his fanatical interest in us seems to border on obsession.

In his blog of 27 June ‘East London Mosque breaks its promise on homophobic speakers after just eight days‘ and follow-up report of 28 June ‘The lies go on‘ Mr Gilligan disingenuously tries to link a local parental campaign over sex education with our institution ‘apparently’ campaigning for active homophobia.

The story Mr Gilligan presented was that of an extremist sect coming to our mosque, with our blessing, to campaign against homosexuality and promote homophobia in ‘clear breach’ of undertakings he claims we have made.

If Mr Gilligan bothers to read the local newspaper, he can see a rather more mundane (and accurate) version of events, with no attempt to hijack the story.

The facts are these:

  • A set of local Muslim parents have been concerned about aspects of sex education in their children’s primary schools.
  • Specifically, they have objected to animated scenes of (heterosexual) intercourse being shown to their children as part of science education lessons. They want to exercise their right to excuse their children from those particular lessons and feel their concerns have not been listened to.

Mr Gilligan did not present these facts. Instead, he attempted to turn a small local story into a national story, by editing the facts to whip up the gay community’s fears over apparent rampant homophobia in Tower Hamlets. (As has been pointed out elsewhere, the number of homophobic incidents has actually risen higher in areas such as Islington and Westminster than in Tower Hamlets.)

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US Muslim woman sues Abercrombie over hijab ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Abercrombie__FitchA US Muslim woman sued Abercrombie & Fitch, accusing the clothing retailer of firing her for refusing to remove her religious head scarf, a Muslim advocacy group said.

Hani Khan of San Mateo, California, alleged that store managers had told her to remove her hijab as part of the clothing chain’s “Look Policy,” the Council of American-Islamic Relation (CAIR) said in a statement. Khan was fired from her job at an Abercrombie & Fitch store in California in February 2010, after working there for four months, when she refused to comply with the managers’ request, according to CAIR.

“When I was asked to remove my scarf after being hired with it on, I was demoralized and felt unwanted,” Khan said. “Growing up in this country where the Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of religion, I have felt let down.”

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Fourth OIC Annual Report on Islamophobia released

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The OIC Observatory on Islamophobia released its Fourth Annual Report covering the period from May 2010 to April 2011 today at the commencement of the 38th Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers in Kazakhstan. The Report has dwelt extensively on the worrying trend of Islamophobia as a clear and present danger to global peace and security.

OIC press release, 29 June 2011

Download the report here.

Young Muslims in Lucerne demonstrate against Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

AJIS demonstration in LucerneThe Swiss news agency ATS reports that the Islamic Youth Association of Switzerland (AJIS) demonstrated on Sunday in Lucerne against the Islamophobia to which they had been subjected.

After being refused premises for a planned seminar in Lucerne and Emmen, the AJIS booked a room above the Lucerne station buffet. But when they arrived there they were told that the room was unavailable because it was being set up for an event the next day.

So between 100 and 150 participants went down to the floor below and occupied the station buffet, where they unfurled banners reading “No to Islamophobia” or “We won’t be silenced”.

The president of the Central Islamic Council of Switzerland (CCIS), Nicolas Blancho Abdullah, complained of growing restrictions on the rights of Muslims. The planned seminar in Lucerne was a gathering of mainstream Islam, he said.

Muslim woman accuses Air France of discrimination

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Air France logoA Virginia woman accused Air France of getting her terminated from the job she held briefly at Dulles International Airport because of her religion. “The hijab, to me, it’s empowerment,” 19-year-old Riham Osman said. “When people, men and women, talk to me, they’re looking at my personality, they’re listening to what I’m saying, they know that I stand for something.”

Osman is a proud Muslim from Herndon who wears a head scarf, or hijab, as a sign of her faith – a sign of her faith that she says got her fired from Air France. According to the copy of her contract she was hired by the staffing agency Aerotek to be a passenger service agent for Air France at Dulles. “I think the fact that I was hired at first with my scarf on shows that Aerotek hired me according to my [qualifications],” Osman said.

On June 2, Osman’s first day of work, an Air France supervisor pulled her from her training session demanding she speak with the person who hired her at Aerotek, Osman said. “He said that apparently Air France has an issue with the scarf that they will not allow me to work  because it violates their uniform policy,” Osman said.

Refusing to take it off, Osman left the airport in tears. Soon after, she contacted the Council on American-Islamic Relations for help. Noting the ongoing controversy in France about the legality of wearing a hijab, CAIR filed a complaint and sent a letter to Air France saying in part, “It is clear that a discriminatory dress code implemented in France would not supersede American laws protecting the religious rights of employees. Air France must follow American law and grant reasonable religious accommodations for its employees.”

A spokesperson for Air France acknowledged the company received a letter from CAIR but would say only that Air France is investigating.

After being notified about the situation, Aerotek said it asked Air France to make an exception to the dress code policy for Osman. “Air France declined to make this accommodation and instructed us to end her assignment at Air France,”read a statement from Aerotek.

Osman hopes travelers will boycott Air France until she gets an apology.

NBC Washington, 23 June 2011

Sayeeda Warsi on Melanie Phillips

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Baroness_WarsiSayeeda Warsi rolls back in her chair and bursts out laughing. “I don’t read her, actually. I call her Mad Mel,” Lady Warsi says of Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips, who has denounced her as “stupid”.

Warsi, a proud Yorkshirewoman, rarely pulls her punches. As the first Muslim to sit as a full member of the British cabinet, she fell foul of Phillips in January after she declared in the Sternberg lecture that Islamophobia had “crossed the threshold of middle-class respectability”.

Phillips’ barbed response was to describe Warsi, the Tory co-chair, on her Spectator blog as “at best a stupid mouthpiece of those who are bamboozling Britain into Islamisation, and at worst a supporter of that process”.

Guardian, 24 June 2011

New CAIR, UC Berkeley report documents growing Islamophobia in U.S.

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Same Hate New TargetThe Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender today released a report based on available data and interviews with experts that documents growing Islamophobia in the United States and offers recommendations about how to challenge the troubling phenomenon.

The groundbreaking report – titled “Same Hate, New Target: Islamophobia and Its Impact in the United States 2009-2010” – offers a definition of Islamophobia as a “close-minded prejudice against or hatred of Islam and Muslims” and an overview of its growing negative impact in the United States. After defining the term, the report states: “It is not appropriate to label all, or even the majority of those, who question Islam and Muslims as Islamophobes.”

Special sections in the report focus on the manufactured controversy over the Park 51 Islamic community center in Manhattan, the 2010 Oklahoma ballot initiative targeting Islamic principles (Sharia) and Islamophobia in the 2010 elections.

“This report shows that Americans who embrace pluralism must act together to prevent Islamophobia from being accepted in mainstream society,” said CAIR National Legislative Director Corey Saylor, one of the report’s co-authors. “Islamophobia is the new face of an old hate that has targeted minorities throughout our nation’s history.”

CAIR press release, 23 June 2011

Download the report here.

More information on the Center for Race and Gender’s Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project here.

Update:  Or, for an alternative view, see Robert Spencer, “Hamas-linked CAIR teams up with UC Berkeley prof who called for ‘intifada’ in U.S. for defamatory ‘Islamophobia’ report”, Jihad Watch, 23 June 2011

That’s the same Robert Spencer who is described in the report as promoting “an intellectualized Islamophobia through ‘selectively ignoring’ Islamic texts and principles that do not fit his view of Islam as the enemy”.

The report also notes: “In 2006, Spencer participated in a conference honoring anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, who sought to legalize government discrimination in the Netherlands. Spencer proudly highlights his participation in this conference among his ‘Notable Speaking Engagements’. Fortuyn’s anti-Muslim views and the resulting backlash against Muslims living in the Netherlands are noted in the Department of State’s International Religious Freedom Reports for 2002 and 2005.”

Discrimination against Muslims at all-time high in Belgium

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A total of 166 out of 1,466 cases launched in connection with discrimination and racism-related offenses involve faith, according to the 2010 report prepared by Belgium’s Center for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (CEOOR).

Eighty-four percent of these cases are connected to Islam while only 2 percent concern Christianity and Judaism. The high number of cases of discrimination against Muslims is likely to bring more debates on Islamophobia back to the agenda. Eighty percent of the complaints filed with the CEOOR involve racism.

About two-thirds of the cases involving Islam stem from Islamophobia, the report says. These incidents of Islamophobia are mostly characterized by propaganda being disseminated through email and pressure in the workplace. The workplace-related cases of discrimination include exclusion and verbal provocation of Muslims. The report notes these instances are a result of workplace administrations believing that “religion has no place in the workplace”. The tension arising from Islamophobic attitudes in the workplace is mostly eliminated “by transferring the Muslim employee involved to another department or laying her/him off”.

Furthermore, 50 percent of cases of discrimination involving faith are linked to media organizations that publish or air unfair accusations or generalizations about members of a specific religion. Twenty-five percent of these cases concern recruitment or promotion while 8 percent involve services provided. The cases of discrimination in the latter category are mostly visible in real estate purchases or rentals. Some real estate agents and home owners are not inclined to rent out their properties to people who they believe are of a different faith.

Additionally, the number of cases of discrimination reported to the CEOOR in 2010 increased by 25 percent compared to the previous year. A list of companies allegedly reluctant to employ foreign employees was recently posted on the Internet.

Today’s Zaman, 23 June 2011