Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Muslim twins win discrimination claim against City bosses

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Fariad sistersMuslim twin sisters have won a record multi-million pound payout on the eve of a sensational tribunal involving claims of racism and drug abuse in the City.

Moroccan-born Samira and Hanan Fariad, 31, made more than 200 allegations against brokers Tradition Securities and Futures in a 150-page dossier due to be unveiled out at the Central London Employment Tribunal this week.

They included claims the French company stood by as top brokers used cocaine and subjected them to race and religious discrimination. In one case, the firm allegedly transferred the sisters’ Jewish clients to non-Muslim colleagues.

The pair – who were on six-figure salaries – worked as brokers in the company’s London office for two years until they resigned in 2006. They were due to begin giving evidence this week. But last night the case was halted when the twins agreed to accept an out-of-court settlement believed to total £10m. A spokesman for the sisters said: “The parties are pleased to confirm that the matter has now been settled on confidential terms.”

The London Paper, 12 November 2008

Media Workers Against the War conference

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Under Siege

Half-day conference
November 15th 2008
2.00-6.30pm
London School of Economics

With Peter Oborne, Inayat Bunglawala, Nick Davies and others

Hosted by Media Workers Against the War (www.mwaw.net)

We are living in dramatic times. The first black president of the United States has raised expectations of genuine change.

Yet the “war on terror”, now in its eighth year, continues to be waged in the name of the same free-market ideas that lie behind the current economic crisis.

In Iraq, bloodshed, fear and a shocking standard of living remain the norm for most civilians, but too often the situation is spun as a “good news story” for Western audiences.

In Afghanistan the commander of British troops, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, has said: “We’re not going to win this war”. In the last 6 months Carleton-Smith has lost 32 soldiers and had 170 more injured.

The US and European governments are seeking to create a “coalition of the willing” that would bypass the United Nations and impose sanctions on Iran – while a military attack remains on the agenda.

Meanwhile a proxy war is currently going on, largely unreported, in Somalia.

The war continues to have a damaging effect on the mainstream British media:

•  Journalists struggle to access and convey genuine information from Afghanistan and Iraq owing to strict military control and censorship;

•  At home, the war has led to vilification of Islam and scapegoating of Muslims. Journalists who investigate extremism have been targeted by the courts, while the police have used “terror” laws to harass photographers;

•  Without critical media we can stumble blindly into new wars, such as that in the Caucasus in August;

•  Iran is routinely demonised, while war is already spreading – almost unmentioned – into nuclear-armed Pakistan.

This conference comes at a crucial time – never has the need to keep an open mind and an open media been greater.

Lord Bingham: ‘no reason’ to exclude Sharia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim communities should have the right to decide their own disputes provided they are subject to our laws, one of Britain’s most senior legal figures has said.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill, who has recently stepped down as senior law lord, said he could see “no reason” why a devout Muslim, provided he or she was “acting voluntarily and without coercion”, should not choose to submit a family dispute to a Muslim cleric.

That would be no different from a Jewish family submitting their dispute to be decided by a Rabbi or a Christian to a Church of England to an Anglican priest or marriage counsellor, he said.

Times, 3 November 2008

Social Affairs Unit removes Douglas Murray’s Feb 2006 anti-Muslim rant from website

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Engage reveals that a speech delivered by notorious Islamophobe Douglas Murray at the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference in The Hague in February 2006, entitled “What are we to do about Islam?“, has been removed from the website of Murray’s former employers, the Social Affairs Unit, who presumably now find it embarrassing to be associated with such an extremist rant.

The Times, Ramadan and the London Olympics

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dave Crouch of Media Workers Against the War replies to an article in the Times which seems to suggest that Muslims might be inclined to engage in terrorist actions during the 2012 Olympics because they will be hungry due to fasting over Ramadan. He concludes: “It is because of reporting of this kind that MWAW is holding its conference this year on Islamophobia.”

Police are warned of Ramadan tensions during Games

Richard Kerbaj and Ruth Gledhill

Times, 27 October 2008

Specialist advice is being given to Scotland Yard on how to reduce tensions between police and Muslims during the London Olympics because of growing concerns about the Games clashing with the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast during the day, The Times has learnt.

Experts will also warn the Metropolitan Police to ensure that the planned commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the massacre of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the Munich Games does not offend local and travelling Muslims.

The recommendations have been made by inter-faith advisers to Scotland Yard, where antiterrorism police are preparing to combat any possible Islamic terrorist threat to the Games.

Community tensions in the lead-up to the games have already been raised by a controversial Muslim movement, Tablighi Jamaat, which plans to build Britain’s largest mosque and Islamic complex near the 2012 Olympic stadium site.

Michael Mumisa, an Islamic scholar, and one of four experts hired by Scotland Yard who began training the police this week on inter-faith issues, said that the commemoration of the 11 Israeli athletes, killed by Palestinian militants from the Black September Organisation at the 1972 Munich Games, could become a national security threat if it was not managed properly and was perceived by Muslims to be “hijacking” the Games.

Edward Kessler, executive director of the Woolfe Institute, which deals with inter-faith dialogue, teaching and research, said that police needed to have a “minimum level of faith literacy” to help them deal with religious issues during the London Games. Dr Kessler said: “During Ramadan you’re going to have a lot of tired, hungry, less evenly tempered people because they haven’t eaten for 18 hours.”

Reading Muslims criticise PVE strategy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A group of Muslims in Reading feel victimised by a Government initiative designed to tackle violent extremism and feel it could cause more harm than good. A crisis group has been set up with the support of more than 1,000 Muslims in Reading who object to the local steps being taken under the Government’s Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) strategy launched this year.

Reading Borough Council was picked as a pilot area for the Department for Communities and local Government’s counter-terrorism strategy which aims to challenge violent extremist ideology, support vulnerable individuals being targeted and recruited to extreme causes and increase the resilience of the community towards violent extremism.

But Reading Muslim Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) Crisis Group said since it started, Muslim groups in the town have become disillusioned with the project which started off as a collaborative effort between organisations and community groups in Reading. It is concerned about a new PVE toolkit which will be provided to school teachers to look out for signs of “radicalisation” in pupils – a move which the group labels “absurd and disturbing”.

A statement from the group to Michael Coughlin, chief executive of Reading Borough Council, and Superintendent Steve Kirk said: “The PVE work relies on a number of volatile terms such as ‘extremism’, ‘violent extremism’ and ‘radicalisation’. These terms are undefined but have been used by members of the Government to demonise the Muslim community by equating Islamic values such as the desire for Muslim unity and adherence to Sharia law with ‘extremism’ or ‘violent extremism’.

“Communities don’t commit crimes, individuals do. However, the Government narrative on the causes of the cycle of violence we see occurring in the context of PVE blames an ‘ideology’ as the overriding cause for people’s radicalisation. This is in stark contrast to the way that the political troubles in Northern Ireland, South Africa and Sri Lanka was identified. This narrative firmly puts the blame for the cycle of violence at the door of Islam and the Muslim community.”

Reading Evening Post, 31 October 2008

Two Muslim women accuse City firm of religious discrimination

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Two Muslim women who worked as brokers in the City of London have accused their former employer of religious discrimination by transferring Jewish clients to non-Muslim colleagues. Lawyers for the co-workers will outline a series of allegations, including racial, sexual and religious discrimination, against broker Tradition Securities & Futures at the opening of the employment tribunal on Wednesday.

The women, Muslims of North African descent in their thirties, joined Tradition – a French company – in Paris six years ago. They moved with the trading desk to London in 2004 and quit two years later after deciding they could no longer work in the environment. Documents allege they suffered “complex and multi-faceted” discrimination while working for Tradition.

Daily Telegraph, 29 October 2008

Obama and ‘the Jihadist vote’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“… the threat Obama poses is being taken very seriously. The right here is all of a tizz, in part because of the writings in the US of figures such as Frank Gaffney – a former senior official under US President Reagan – who says that Obama ‘hopes to win the White House by relying, in part, on the Jihadist vote’ funded by ‘between $30m and $100m from the Mideast, Africa and other places Islamists are active’. Obama has promised change but writing in the Washington Times, Gaffney tells us that his election will in fact lead to ‘global theocratic rule under shariah, and the end of our constitutional, democratic government’. Unless James Bond intervenes. And Doctor Who. And Austin Powers.”

Hugh Muir in the Guardian, 28 October 2008