Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

‘City closes schools for extra day a year so Muslims can celebrate religious holiday’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Schools in the city of Cambridge, in Massachusetts, will close for one Muslim holiday a year, local officials have announced. Authorities in the U.S. city said the new scheme, which will be introduced from 2011-2012, is the first of its kind in the state. The schools will close for either Eid al-Fitr or Eid al-Adha, also known as the Festival of Sacrifice, depending on which falls within the school year.

Cambridge School Committee member Marc McGovern said schools in the city currently close for Christian and Jewish holidays and Muslims should be treated no different. Officials voted unanimously in favour of the idea back in December and it was officially announced on Sunday that the change would be introduced from next year.

“At a time when I think the Muslim population is being characterised with a broad brush in a negative way, I think it’s important for us to say we’re not going to do that here,” Mr McGovern said. “The issue that sort of came up was should we celebrate any religious holidays, but there was not the will to take away Good Friday or one of the Jewish holidays. So I said, if that is the case, I think we have an obligation to celebrate one of the Muslim holidays, as well.”

Daily Mail, 12 October 2010

Update:  You’ll note the provocative headline to the story, which is obviously intended to appeal to the anti-Muslim prejudices of Daily Mail readers. It did so only too successfully, and further online comments on the article have now been blocked and existing comments removed.

German politician calls for ban on immigration for Turks and Arabs

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Horst SeehoferOutraged Turkish groups and German politicians on Monday demanded an apology from Horst Seehofer after the conservative Bavarian state premier suggested over the weekend Germany put a stop to immigration for Turks and Arabs.

Seehofer, who belongs to the CSU, the Bavarian sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, told news magazine Focus that “immigrants from other cultures, such as those from Turkey and Arab countries have more difficulties” integrating into German culture. Therefore he had drawn the “conclusion that we need no additional immigration from other cultural areas”.

On Monday chairman of the Turkish Community in Germany (TGD), Kenan Kolat, demanded an apology. “The latest comments by Seehofer are defamatory and unacceptable”, he told daily Berliner Zeitung, speaking of an attempt to stigmatise certain ethnic groups and trump former Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin’s inflammatory assertions about Muslim immigrants. Meanwhile politicians from across the spectrum expressed their dismay over Seehofer’s suggestion.

The Local, 11 October 2010

Leicester antiracist demo says: ‘EDL not welcome here’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

People from across Leicester’s diverse community staged a peaceful demonstration against the violent racists of the English Defence League today.

The EDL have tried to stir up hatred and division by demonstrating in the multiracial, multi-faith city, particularly targeting Muslims. Their “protest” ended in violence and attacks on the police, journalists and local black and Asian people.

In contrast, over 800 people came to the antiracist protest called by UAF in the city centre today – they included black, white and Asian people, with Muslims joined by Sikhs, Hindus, Christians and people of no religion in an impressive display of unity.

UAF report, 10 October 2010

Former BNP councillor calls Islam ‘vile, archaic and barbaric’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims have criticised a Colwyn Bay councillor who has branded Islam as “barbaric, archaic and vile”.

Former BNP member John Oddy quit the controversial party shortly after becoming a Bay of Colwyn town councillor for Rhos-on-Sea in May 2008, claiming the BNP was racist. He was uncontested in the ballot.

While Cllr Oddy says he is not racist, he admits he is anti-Islam, and on his internet blog slated the faith, insisting that his personal views don’t conflict with his obligations as an elected member of the town council.

Muslims have criticised the Rhos-on-Sea councillor as “unknowledgeable” and questioned whether a man holding such views should be representing the community.

North Wales Weekly New, 7 October 2010

When Oddy resigned from the BNP in May 2008, Lancaster Unity pointed out that there was a “question mark” over his claim that he had never been a racist. Another former BNP councillor had claimed that “Oddy verbally attacked him for having the temerity to help an Asian family as part of his own duties as a town councillor, stating that the party wasn’t happy with him because he’d been ‘helping fucking Pakis’ and that ‘they’re Muslim scum anyway’.”

Muslim school denies forcing girls to wear the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jamea Al KautharLancaster school Jamea Al Kauthar is denying national newspaper claims that it forces pupils to wear the veil.

The £2,500-a-year all-girls Muslim boarding school was one of just three institutions to be named in a Sunday Telegraph report on compulsory veil policies in schools in the UK.

The article claimed Jamea Al Kauthar had introduced rules which forced girls to wear the burka or a full headscarf and veil known as the niqab when they were walking to or from school. It said the school’s uniform policy had been heavily criticised by mainstream Muslims who believed enforcement of the veil was a “dangerous precedent” and that children attending such schools were being “brainwashed”.

Jamea Al Kauthar declined to comment directly to the Lancaster Guardian but posted a statement on its website refuting the claims. The school said: “In response to the articles appearing in several newspapers regarding the enforcement of the veil upon our students, we would like to clarify that Jamea Al-Kauthar does not force any student to wear the veil. However, we do encourage students to dress modestly.”

Lancaster Guardian, 8 October 2010

Clearly we misreported this issue. Rather than identifying a mere three schools in the UK that require pupils to wear the niqab, theSunday Telegraph found at most two.

So what happened to the ‘sacred ground’ argument?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“A new survey from the Democratic-affiliated firm Public Policy Polling finds that more Republicans support constructing a strip club than a mosque near Ground Zero. Just four percent of Republican respondents said they support building a mosque two blocks from the site, whereas 21 percent said they would be fine with a strip club. ”

Huffington Post, 9 October 2010

The PPP poll can be consulted here.

Abdulmutallab ‘not radicalised at UCL’, inquiry finds

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A former student at a London university charged with attempting to blow up a plane over the US on Christmas Day was unlikely to have been radicalised on campus, an independent inquiry ruled yesterday.

The inquiry found no evidence that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab adopted extremist views while studying engineering at University College London. It also said there was no evidence that conditions at the university were “conducive to the radicalisation of students”.

Continue reading →

Germany: Social Democrats and Greens demand equality for Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Leading members of the opposition Social Democrats and Greens called on Thursday for Islam to be recognised by the state as a religious community, similar to Christianity and Judaism.

The calls came as the peak Jewish body in Germany blasted recent conservative criticism of President Christian Wulff’s reunification speech, in which Wullf acknowledged that Islam was now part of Germany alongside the faiths of Christians and Jews.

In the wake of Wulff’s speech, the centre-left parties hit back against conservatives who had previously attacked Wulff’s remarks as undermining the core values and traditions of Germany.

“Islam needs a fair chance in Germany,” Dieter Wiefelspütz, interior affairs spokesman for the Social Democrats’ (SPD) parliamentary group, told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung. “It would be an important signal to the four million Muslims in Germany if the state recognised Islam as a religious community.”

At present, Christianity and Judaism are recognised by German law as statutory bodies, meaning they can be taught in state schools and have tithing fees collected by the German Finance Ministry as church tax.

Integration policy spokesman for the Greens, Memet Kilic, told the paper: “The recognition of Islam as an equal religious community before the law would convey to Muslims the feeling of being welcome in Germany. The (conservative Christian Democrats) must end their neurotic navel gazing immediately.”

In his speech last Sunday, Wulff said: “Christianity is of course part of Germany. Judaism is of course part of Germany. This is our Judeo-Christian history … But now Islam is also part of Germany,” he said in his speech. “When German Muslims write to me to say ‘you are our president’, I reply with all my heart ‘yes, of course I am your president’.”

Secretary general of the German Jewish Council, Stephan Kramer, also slammed the conservative response to Wulff’s speech as “close to hysterical” and said it showed “that apparently many politicians even today are shutting themselves off to the reality of an immigrant community.”

He added: “The Muslims living here are part of our society. So of course their religion also belongs in this country.” Ultimately the right to exercise freely one’s religious beliefs was anchored in the constitution, he said.

The Local, 7 October 2010