The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today distributed an editorial, entitled “Islamophobia Machine Targets American Muslims,” outlining what the Washington-based Muslim civil rights group says is a campaign by “extremists of all stripes who coordinate and cooperate in a relentless effort to demonize Islam and deprive American Muslims of their civil rights.”
Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
Mayor’s office defends Mohamed Ali Harrath
ConservativeHome carries a piece by Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens (“Boris fails to tackle Islamic extremism“) revealing that it was the Centre for Social Cohesion who were behind the recent Sunday Express article (“Boris’s terror link“), which attacked the mayor of London for organising Eid in the Square in co-operation with the Islam Channel and allowing its CEO, Mohamed Ali Harrath, to address the event.
Meleagrou-Hitchens tells us that the CSC wrote to Boris Johnson complaining about his association with Mohamed Ali Harrath. They received the following response from the mayor’s office:
“The Islam Channel Chief Executive Mohamed Ali Harrath is not regarded as a threat by the British Government. He accompanied Robert Lambert, the former Head of the Met Police Muslim Contact [Unit] to a meeting last year with the Statutory Deputy Mayor. The Mayor’s office is proud to support Eid in the Square and this year’s celebrations were enjoyed by thousands of Londoners. The Islam Channel played a major factor in this success by broadcasting to millions of viewers in 132 countries.”
‘Flying while Muslim’ is no reason to detain or remove passengers
“The recent settlement in the case of the six imams, or Islamic religious leaders, who said their rights were violated in 2006 when they were removed from a US Airways flight in Minnesota should not prevent anyone from acting on legitimate security concerns. But reports based solely on anti-Muslim or anti-Arab bias and hysteria should not be used as the basis for a ‘flying while Muslim’ incident.
“Absent actual suspicious behavior, merely offering one of the five-daily Islamic prayers in a terminal, speaking Arabic to a fellow passenger, wearing a head scarf, or ‘looking Muslim’ is insufficient justification to detain passengers or remove them from a flight.”
Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR at USA Today, 26 October 2009
See also “Flying imams in the rear-view mirror: What was the evidence against them?”, MinnPost, 26 October 2009
Islam is biggest threat to Sweden since World War II says far-right leader
With their party conference just barely over, the ultra right wing Sweden Democrats are creating headlines in Sweden again. In an article in Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet Jimmie Åkesson, party leader, writes that Islam is the greatest threat against Sweden since WWII.
According to Åkesson “today’s multicultural Swedish power elite is completely blind to the dangers of Islam”. He goes on to say that there are 10 Muslim terror organisations established in Sweden today, that Sweden has the highest number of rapes in Europe and that Muslim men are highly represented among the offenders. He concluded his article by saying that if the party is elected into parliament in 2010, he will do everything in his powers to “change the trend”.
Per Hultengård, lawyer for the Swedish Newspaper Publishers’ Association, told Aftonbladet that the article can be read as a warning to Swedish Muslims, not in the least due to Åkesson’s promise at the end. “I would take that as a threat,” said Per Hultengård to Aftonbladet. According to Jan Hjärpe, Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Lund, the rhetoric used by Åkesson has clear racist undertones. “This is the same kind of propaganda that was used by Nazi anti-Semites,” Hjärpe told Aftonbladet.
Aftonbladet‘s Jan Helin decided to print the article against the advice of legal experts. “I have decided to take that risk. Åkesson’s text is important because it shows clearly on what values a party, on its way into Parliament, rests on. You may think that he is right or wrong in his views. But through reading this article you get a chance to consider what the Sweden Democrats actually believe,” Helin writes in Aftonbladet.
In the latest opinion polls the Sweden Democrats received 4.7% of votes. This means that if elections were held today the party would get in to Parliament.
See also the response by Anna Waara, chairperson of Swedish Muslims for Peace and Justice, “What do the Sweden Democrats want to do with us Muslims?”, The Local, 21 October 2009
You can watch Alan Lake, the businessman who bankrolls the English Defence League, speaking at a Sweden Democrats meeting here and here.
EDL fails to spread its poison in Wales
Newport anti-fascists scored a major victory this weekend when an impressive show of local unity stopped the English Defence League’s (EDL) attempt to spread its racist poison in Wales.
The EDL had planned a rally in the city’s John Frost Square on Saturday to launch the Welsh Defence League, but a 500-strong counterprotest and a complete lack of local support forced it to cancel.
This followed the fascists’ disastrous visit to Swansea last weekend, where they were driven off by a larger counterdemonstration.
“Newport is a multicultural city with an industrial background,” explained Ian Titherington of Searchlight Cymru, “and today’s fantastic turnout shows that racists are not welcome here.”
Campaigners, joined by local politicians and faith groups, occupied the square to celebrate multicultural Newport with live music, including a drum band and an impressive performance from the Cor Cochion Caerdydd (Cardiff Red Choir).
Unite Against Fascism marched through the city centre before joining the rally, which also heard speeches from Welsh Assembly Minister John Griffiths and local Labour MP Paul Flynn.
See also “Racists day off” on Paul Flynn’s blog, 24 October 2009
Muslims4UK launched
A new website Muslims4UK (“United against al-Muhajiroun, EDL and the Daily Express”) has been launched by Inayat Bunglawala.
It contains details of their demonstration in Piccadilly Circus on Saturday 31 October.
See also Inayat’s article at Comment is Free.
Muslim women wearing headscarves subjected to daily abuse in Malmö
Shoving, spitting, and ethnic slurs are a daily fact of life facing women bearing headscarves in Malmö, according to a new report.
The study, entitled Hemma och främmande i staden – kvinnor med slöja berättar (“At home and estranged in the city: tales of women with headscarves”) and published by the University of Malmö, examines the lives of 19 Malmö women who choose to wear headscarves.
The report is a compilation of stories detailing harassment and offensive remarks, such as a female cyclist in her fifties who slowed down and screamed “Muslim cunt” before pedaling off.
But the tales also relate how veiled women often try to avoid confrontation. They women included in the study remain stoic in the face of critical stares, avoid certain parts of the city, try to be overly friendly, or strike up conversations in which they attempt to explain the significance of their headscarves.
“Some see it as a sort of learning process. Almost like ‘if I tell you how it works then you don’t need to be afraid of me’,” said Carina Listerborn, a researcher with the Institute for Sustainable Urban Development, told the TT news agency.
The report is part of a larger project about urban violence being carried out in cooperation with Lund and Stockholm universities.
Listerborn said that the stories of the veiled women can help broaden the definition of violence, and that it doesn’t have to be restricted to fighting, kicking, and stabbings on city streets and public squares.
“There are other kinds of violence which also deserve to be highlighted,” she said.
Download the study here.
‘Jack Straw started all this’
“Three years ago this month Jack Straw argued his case for urging Muslim women who attend his MP’s surgery to remove their niqab. He said that he wanted to start a debate. In this, at least, he was successful.
“The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy said ‘the veil is an invitation to rape’; the Daily Mail columnist Allison Pearson said women who wear ‘nose bags on their faces … have no place on British streets’; the then shadow home secretary David Davis argued that Muslims were encouraging voluntary apartheid.
“And 16-year-old Daniel Coine insisted he felt threatened: ‘I’d go further than Jack Straw and say they should all take off their veils. You need to see people face to face. It’s weird not knowing who it is you’re passing in the street, specially late at night when someone might jump you.’
“And so Muslim women passed, in the public imagination, from being actually among the group most likely to be racially attacked to ostensibly being a primary cause of social strife – roaming the land in search of white teenagers to physically harass.”
Gary Younge in the Guardian, 22 October 2009
Philadelphia university allows Wilders to preach hate
Amid tight security and a large turnout of protesters, Dutch right-wing lawmaker Geert Wilders told an assembly of Temple University students that Europe and America must fight an ongoing “stealth jihad” that threatens democracy and free speech.
“Where Islam sets roots, freedom dies,” Geert Wilders told the students during his 30-minute address organized by a new student group called Temple University Purpose and funded by the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
If the spread of Islam continues unabated in the Western world, “you might at the end of the day lose your Constitution,” he told the assembly. “Wake up, defend your freedom.” He also touched on common themes in his speeches, including calling for an end to Muslim immigration and referring to the Muslim holy book, the Quran, as “an evil book” that promotes violence and intolerance.
A question-and-answer session was cut short after the tone of the event began to turn nasty, when some in the crowd of several hundred students began shouting jeers. Wilders’ security detail quickly ushered him from the room.
Before his remarks at Temple, a public university serving about 34,000 students, Wilders showed his 15-minute anti-Islam film, “Fitna,” which juxtaposes passages from the suras, or chapters, of the Quran with images of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, beheadings, shootings and speeches from clerics advocating violence against non-Muslims.
Temple officials issued a statement saying the university “is a community of scholars in which freedom of inquiry and freedom of expression are valued. We respect the right of our student organizations to invite people who express a wide variety of views and ideas.”
See also the Philadelphia Daily News which reports:
Before the speech, held in Anderson Hall, more than 50 protesters had denounced the appearance of Wilders at the school. Members of All Sides, an organization that seeks to promote peace between Israel and Palestinians, held pink pom-poms and shouted, “Hey Hey, HO, HO, this racist bull—-‘s got to go.” Standing next to them with signs decrying Wilders’ views were members of the Student Senate, Democratic Socialists and the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance.
“Wilders speaks out about free speech while at the same time banning the Quran,” said Megan Chialastri, vice president of All Sides. “Banned books are not free speech and there is no way around that,” Chialastri said. “This is hate speech at its core,” said Monira Gamal-Eldin, president of the Muslim Students Association.
And over at Jihad Watch Robert Spencer reports the protest under the headline “Heavily indoctrinated student thugs shout down Wilders at Temple University”.
US Airways pays damages to ‘flying imams’
US Airways has agreed to pay “undisclosed damages” to six imams it kicked off a flight in 2006 because of alleged suspicious activity, a prominent rights group said Tuesday.
The men were removed from a Minneapolis to Phoenix flight on November 20 and questioned for five hours, sparking a protracted legal battle between the six and the airline, airport authority, US Airways, the crew and several passengers.
Four of the religious leaders prayed in the airport before boarding the flight, apparently prompting suspicions on the part of staff and passengers. In a statement, the imams said they were guilty only of performing “normal evening prayers.” After questioning US Airways refused to allow them to take another flight home.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) hailed the settlement as “victory for justice and civil rights.”
See also CAIR press release, 20 October 2009