Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Let Muslim women speak

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The last few weeks have been particularly eventful for Muslim women on Comment is Free. We would have felt extremely exhausted by all the excitement, were it not for the fact that – with the notable exception of Samia Rahman and Reefat Drabu – we were spared the ignominy of having to participate in the debate ourselves.

“AC Grayling started us off by equating the headscarf with an iron shackle and stating that Muslim women are complicit in their own oppression. In the process of attacking the abhorrent denial of freedom that Muslim women can wrongly suffer, Grayling (in)advertently takes away the very same freedom of choice to decide to wear the hijab if we choose.

“Julie Burchill bigged up Christianity, and in the process scathingly dismissed Islam and Muslim women. The only “Muslim” women she suggested as role models – Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji – were those she claimed had rejected Islam and were no longer Muslim….

“Islamic theology has a strong framework for a blueprint of gender equality…. we may say, believe and do things which don’t fit in with the caricature of a Muslim woman who would be desperate to be ‘liberated’ from Islam if only she knew it.

“You may find our voices reverberating with the view that we like being Muslim women, we just want to make our lives better and in line with true Islamic principles. It would be nice if those who debate vociferously about Muslim women would therefore move over and give us the seat at the table that we’re demanding.”

Shelina Zahra Janmohamed at Comment is Free, 2 September 2008

Muslim wrongly accused of being a terrorist wins £14,000 compensation

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim police worker who was “maliciously” reported to the anti-terrorist squad by colleagues after the July 7 bombings has been awarded almost £14,000 compensation.

Mohammed Hussain, 30, was investigated by the Met’s specialist counter-terrorism command after false accusations from co-workers that he was an Islamic extremist.

He told an employment tribunal that he was made to feel “isolated and lonely” when colleagues “conspired” against him, especially after the July 7 attacks on London. Mr Hussain, a researcher in the Metropolitan Police’s forensic analysis unit, said he was made to feel like “a pariah”.

Daily Telegraph, 3 September 2008

See also the Daily Mail, 3 September 2008

BNP church fire comment ‘despicable’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Fat fascistA top Lincoln Tory has branded the words of BNP leader Nick Griffin as “despicable” after he commented on a fire at a church in the city which was about to be converted into a mosque.

The leader of the far-right party sent a statement to the Echo in the wake of a blaze at St Matthew’s Church. Griffin, who lives in Wales, said: “Perhaps a local householder was driven mad by the thought of being engulfed by a miniature version of Lahore.”

Lincolnshire Echo, 3 September 2008

Update:  Meanwhile, over at the BNP website, Voice of Freedom editor Martin Wingfield advances the bizarre theory that the Muslim community itself is responsible for the fire! “It’s a scorched earth policy which starts with the destruction of the places of worship of non-Muslims and it is happening in towns and cities across Britain where Islam is on the offensive.”

Mind you, Wingfield’s grip on reality is a bit weak generally when it comes to Islam. He goes on to warn his readers:

“The growing influence of Islam within Britain continues apace and the silence that greets this colonisation by stealth is deafening…. In those areas where Muslims are now the majority, they have moved from claiming ‘equal rights’ with the host population, to imposing their demands on the non-Muslim population….

“In many areas of Britain, it is we, the British, who are now the minority! From London boroughs such as Tower Hamlets and next door Newham (where over 75% of births are of babies not of British origin) to towns and cities such as Peterborough, Luton, Leicester, Bradford, and Birmingham, entire districts have been Balkanised by the ever increasing Muslim population creating within Great Britain, ‘Greater Pakistan’, ‘Greater Bangladesh’, and even ‘Greater Somalia’!

“Within these semi-autonomous areas there is no ‘host community’ for the colonists to integrate with – the ‘host’ British have been ethnically cleansed. Hence the new ‘majority community’, these very colonists, are now re-engineering local society to replicate the Muslim societies they ostensibly left behind in Pakistan, or wherever, when they came to Britain.”

The 2001 census puts the Muslim population in Tower Hamlets at 36.40% and in Newham at 24.31%. Further east, in Barking & Dagenham – where the BNP has been gaining ground by appealing to paranoid fantasies about Christian civilisation succumbing to the spread of “Muslim majority” areas – the figure falls to 4.36%, compared with a Christian population of 68.99%.

Fascists blame Muslims for heroin trade

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP heroin leaflet

North-West of England, primarily around Lancashire, are being treated to a BNP-produced leaflet that seems to have been penned by the ever-despicable Tony Bamber, the former fundholder for the now defunct Lancaster and Preston branch of the far-right party and a former candidate for the Tulketh ward in Preston in 2006. The leaflet campaign appears to be part of an attempt to get the branch up and running again in time for the Euro-elections.

Bamber, in keeping with the BNP’s long-established tradition of jumping on any available bandwagon, formed a fictitious group a couple of years back, which he called the “Preston Pals”, a reference to the company of volunteers from Preston who were eventually formed into “D” company, 7th Battalion, the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, to fight in World War I.

The Royal British Legion (RBL) has roundly condemned this misappropriation of the name by the BNP, with its spokesman Patrick Leavey saying; “[The Preston Pals] sacrifice should not be besmirched by people engaged in political campaigning for such an ugly cause. We condemn this leaflet, its contents, and those who are disseminating it”.

This is not the only reason for condemning this filth. The leaflet is headed “the heroin trade – a crime against humanity” and goes on at great length about how Muslims are responsible for the “heroin trade” in Britain, stating: “Before the Islamic invasion, it was almost impossible to find heroin in our land.”

The art of the sweeping statement is not lost on Tony Bamber. His current leaflet states: “For all intents and purposes, Muslims are exclusively responsible for the heroin trade.”

In its desperation to have a go at Muslims, the BNP – as it always has – ignores the facts or only produces half-facts to support its racism, its hatred of Islam, its lies and its fraudulent claims to being a real political party. It is not. It is nothing more than a rabid band of racist buffoons led by a con-man. The likes of Tony Bamber fit right in.

Our advice to anyone who receives one of these leaflets is to report it to the police as incitement to religious hatred. If we all do it, we can eventually get the vermin who deliver this rubbish off our streets.

Lancaster Unity, 29 August 2008

Czech TV station fined for Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Czech TV Nova was fined 100,000 korunas by the Council for Radio and Television for broadcasting xenophobic and Islamophobic content.

The station broadcast a report about Syrian Mohamed Fahed, who had killed his Czech common-law wife in Zelesice, near Brno. Fahed had said that where he came from, the Kurdish areas of Syria, a man was allowed to kill his wife. The reporter said that in Syria there’s Sharia law, which allows a husband to kill an unfaithful wife.

The Brno Muslim community complained to the Council, which decided that the report was xenophobic and Islamophobic, misleading regarding Islamic law. According to the council Syria is not run by Sharia law, and in any case Sharia law does not allow a husband to take justice into his own hands.

Nova denies the allegations and will go to court.

Islam in Europe, 29 August 2008

Cologne mosque gets go-ahead

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Moschee-Neubau in KölnAfter much controversy, Cologne City Council finally voted in favor of building Germany’s largest mosque in the city.

All parties except the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and the extreme right anti-mosque initiative Pro Cologne voted in favor of building the mosque, which will be Germany’s largest. Cologne Mayor Schramma, who has gone back and forth on the issue, in the end voted against his own CDU party in favor of the mosque’s construction Thursday.

The new mosque will now be built on a site in Ehrenfeld, an industrial section of Cologne where there is currently a working mosque operating out of an old factory.

“They can start tearing down the old factory building tomorrow,” Josef Wirges, the local council member for Ehrenfeld and member of the Social Democrats (SPD) told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “I think the new mosque will be such an architectural masterpiece that tour buses will take people to see it after they visit the Cologne Cathedral,” enthused Wirges.

But far-rightists have made a racket about this particular mosque since plans to build it were announced last year. The extreme-right Pro Cologne has held 5 of the 90 seats in the city council since 2004. They launched a vociferous campaign against the mosque – drumming up support from as far away as Austria and Belgium. Jörg Haider, head of the right-wing Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ) supports the Cologne protesters and has launched an attempt to ban mosques in his native Austria.

The anti-mosque campaign has been under observation by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, because of its “sweeping defamation of foreigners is suspected of violating human dignity.”

Although mosque supporters have won this battle, the war over integration in Cologne is not finished. Pro Cologne has planned a controversial “Anti-Islamization Congress” for Sept. 19. The city expects an influx of prominent far-rightists from around Europe – and 40,000 counter-protesters.

Spiegel Online, 29 August 2008

Muslim woman wearing veil ousted from Italy museum

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The head of one of Venice’s most prestigious museums on Wednesday apologized to an Islamic woman who was asked to leave by a guard because she was wearing a head veil.

The episode, which sparked controversy in the Italian media and rows between centre-left and centre-right politicians, occurred last Sunday in Venice’s Ca’ Rezzonico museum, which houses 18th century Venetian art.

“I’m sorry for what happened and if she ever wants to return to our museum, she will be more than welcome,” director Filippo Pedrocco told Reuters by telephone from Venice. “She will be most welcome among all women,” he said.

The woman, who was visiting the famed museum with her husband and children, had already cleared security when she entered the building and had begun her visit. When she reached the second floor, a room guard told her she had to take off her “niqab”, a veil which leaves only the eyes visible, or leave.

“The room guard was over-zealous. He should not have done it. She already passed security and his only duty was to guarantee the safety of the artwork in his room,” Pedrocco said.

The woman was believed to have been part of a well-off family visiting Venice, one of Italy’s most expensive cities, from Saudi Arabia or a Gulf state.

She refused to take off her veil and left the building, which faces Venice’s Grand Canal and houses works by such 18th century Venetian masters as Giandomenico Tiepolo.

Reuters, 27 August 2008