Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Muslims take police to task over stop-and-search procedures

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Scottish Islamic FoundationScottish Muslims will today quiz police about “growing disquiet” over the use of anti-terrorist stop-and-search procedures in Scotland.

The Scottish-Islamic Foundation has set up a Question Time forum with the police to allow members of the Muslim community to express their feelings about heavy-handed questioning a year after stop- and-search powers were introduced across the UK in the wake of the Glasgow Airport car bomb attack.

There is concern that in some cases “suspects” are visited at home and questioned about internet sites they have viewed, fuelling fears that they are under surveillance. The foundation says that stop-and-search procedures should be strictly intelligence-led.

Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, at the Home Secretary’s discretion, allows police to stop and search any individual acting suspiciously.

Although Scottish police have been using the power sparingly, it is claimed the approach has not been adopted by the London-controlled British Transport Police.

Herald, 22 July 2008

See also BBC News, 22 July 2008

 

Update: Over at the laughably misnamed Centre for Social Cohesion, Douglas Murray writes:

“On the BBC’s website yesterday, headlined ‘Muslim concern at stop and search‘ the site leads with the news that: ‘Muslims in Scotland have expressed unease about the use of “stop and search” procedures at Glasgow Airport.’ In any season this is a story likely to spread irritation among the British public….

“But on reading through it emerges that the ‘Muslims’ expressing ‘unease’ at being searched at Glasgow airport are actually the Scottish Islamic Foundation (SIF). Readers might remember that this group was exposed last month, prior to its launch, as a Muslim Brotherhood-linked organisation….

“The iniquity of this is that the founders of the SIF can truthfully claim to represent almost nobody. But Salmond has been (to put it at its kindest) duped, public money has come rolling in, and next thing the BBC is willing to portray such an unrepresentative group as representative of ‘Muslims’ in Scotland.”

And in the comments section a supporter of Murray states: “Absolutely shocking. All part of the stealth jihad of course. The BBC has been infiltrated by muslim extremists right up to the highest level.”

Murray’s piece is crossposted at ConservativeHome.

The only ‘proper’ Muslim is a non-political one

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The government has stated that it is doing its best to tackle Islamists who are the source of extremism. According to the government, Islamists are all without exception terribly violent and bloodthirsty…. The only good Islamist is an ex-Islamist…. But the problem is that the term ‘Islamism’ has now been stretched to mean any Muslim who is political.

“Blears insinuates that Muslims who are not politically active are the preferred kind of Muslim. She said in a speech to the Policy Exchange: ‘The fact remains that most British Muslims, like the wider community, are not politically active, do not sit on committees, and do not attend seminars and meetings. They are working hard, bringing up families, planning their holidays, and going about their business.’ …

“The recent refusal of ministers to attend IslamExpo is a case in point. Irrespective of their opinion of the organisers, it was a chance to engage with forty thousand Muslims who want to create and settle into a comfortable peaceful British Islam. It smacks of an increasing confusion on the part of the government who are now not only failing to engage with Muslims, but are actively disengaging with those Muslims who are working to a positive peaceful agenda….

“Blears said that ‘You can’t win political arguments with the leaders of groups… who believe in the destruction of the very democratic process of debate and deliberation’. By excluding the Muslim opinions that the government doesn’t want to engage with through the devious method of saying that being a political Muslim is unpalatable, it is the government itself who is destroying the democratic process of debate.”

Spirit21, 22 July 2008

UK MPs urge probe into Muslims torture

Posted on by Bob Pitt

British lawmakers called on Sunday, July 20, for a thorough investigation into charges that British intelligence turned British Muslim citizens to Pakistan for torture.

“We conclude that it is extremely important that the veracity of allegations that the Government has ‘outsourced’ interrogation techniques involving the torture of British nationals by Pakistani authorities should be investigated,” the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said in its annual human rights report.The call followed charges that British Muslims have been turned over to the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) so they can be tortured during interrogation.

A number of British Muslims complained that they were arrested and tortured with the full knowledge of British diplomats and intelligence officers.

In one of the cases, a medical student was abducted at gunpoint in August 2005 and held for two months in the offices of Pakistan’s intelligence bureau in Karachi. He says he was tortured by Pakistani agents and later questioned over the 7/7 2005 attacks on the London transport network. Five other men have made similar allegations.

The parliamentary report said it is “extremely important” the claims of the so-called “outsourcing” of torture are cleared up.”We also recommend that the Government should further tell us whether it was aware of all six individuals at the time of their detention, and whether intelligence or evidence gained by the Pakistani authorities in its interrogation of any of these men led in whole, or in part, to further investigations or charges in the UK.”

Islam Online, 20 July 2008

See also Guardian, 21 July 2008

Canadian PM accused of double standards over Omar Khadr

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Omar KhadrThe leader of one of Canada’s largest Islamic groups accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Monday of being indifferent to Omar Khadr’s plight because he’s “brown-skinned” and a Muslim.

In an opinion piece released to the media, Mohamed Elmasry, national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, wrote that Harper is “callously” unconcerned about the 21-year-old Khadr, who faces trial before a U.S. military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in October.

“In this case, Mr. Harper is playing politics because of the backdrop of Islamophobia in this country,” Elmasry said. “This is where a leader comes in, to say this is really wrong and I have to correct that wrong by bringing this person [back to Canada] even if I lose some political points with Islamophobes.”

Khadr’s lawyers and others want Ottawa to repatriate Khadr – who was 15 in 2002 when he was accused of killing a U.S. army medic in Afghanistan – from the U.S. detention centre.

The prime minister repeated his vow to leave the case in U.S. hands following the release of a videotape showing a Canadian official interrogating a crying and despondent Khadr at Guantanamo Bay in 2004. The official was told the U.S. military had deprived the then 17-year-old of sleep for weeks to make him “more amenable and willing to talk,” according to a recently released internal report from the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Elmasry contrasted Khadr’s case with that of dual Canadian-British citizen William Sampson, who was freed from a death sentence in Saudi Arabia in 2003. Prior to his release, Ottawa had said it had made pleas on Sampson’s behalf to the highest levels of the Saudi government.

“Why is Stephen Harper so callously indifferent to Omar Khadr’s case?” Elmasry wrote. “It’s painfully obvious: William Sampson is a white westerner while his fellow Canadian citizen, Omar Khadr, is brown-skinned and a Muslim.”

CBC News, 21 July 2008

A veil closes France’s door to citizenship

Posted on by Bob Pitt

When Faiza Silmi applied for French citizenship, she worried that her French was not quite good enough or that her Moroccan upbringing would pose a problem.

“I would never have imagined that they would turn me down because of what I choose to wear,” Ms. Silmi said, her hazel eyes looking out of the narrow slit in her niqab, an Islamic facial veil that is among three flowing layers of turquoise, blue and black that cover her body from head to toe.

But last month, France’s highest administrative court upheld a decision to deny citizenship to Ms. Silmi, 32, on the ground that her “radical” practice of Islam was incompatible with French values like equality of the sexes.

In an interview at her home in a public housing complex southwest of Paris, the first she has given since her citizenship was denied, Ms. Silmi told of her shock and embarrassment when she found herself unexpectedly in the public eye. Since July 12, when Le Monde first reported the court decision, her story has been endlessly dissected on newspaper front pages and in late-night television talk shows.

“They say I am under my husband’s command and that I am a recluse,” Ms. Silmi said during an hourlong conversation in her apartment in La Verrière, a small town 30 minutes by train from Paris. At home, when no men are present, she lifts her facial veil and exposes a smiling, heart-shaped face.

“They say I wear the niqab because my husband told me so,” she said. “I want to tell them: It is my choice. I take care of my children, and I leave the house when I please. I have my own car. I do the shopping on my own. Yes, I am a practicing Muslim, I am orthodox. But is that not my right?”

The Silmis say they live by a literalist interpretation of the Koran. They do not like the term Salafism, although they say literally it means following the way of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions.

“But today ‘Salafist’ has come to mean political Islam; people who don’t like the government and who approve of violence call themselves Salafists,” said her husband, a soft-spoken man who bears two physical signs of devotion in Islam: a beard and a light bruising on his forehead caused by bows in prayer. “We have nothing to do with them.”

Ms. Silmi’s husband, a former bus driver who says he is finding it hard to get work because of his beard, dreams of moving his family to Morocco or Saudi Arabia. “We don’t feel welcome here,” he said. “I am French, but I can’t really say that I am proud of it right now.”

New York Times, 19 July 2008

Jewish example shows there is plenty of room for sharia in English law

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The experience of British Jewry demonstrates that there is plenty of room for aspects of Sharia to be incorporated within English law without in any way compromising the cardinal principle that all British citizens must be “equal under the law”. This is the major theme of an address to be given by Professor Geoffrey Alderman to the Islamic Shari’a Council on Sunday 20 July 2008.

Professor Alderman, who teaches politics and history at the University of Buckingham, is the author of The Jewish Community in British Politics and Modern British Jewry (both published by Oxford University Press); he writes a weekly column for theJewish Chronicle. He and his family are practising Orthodox Jews.

Supporting controversial remarks made earlier this year by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Professor Alderman, in his address, traces the history of the interface between Jews, Judaism and the English legal system. “The Jewish religion has – to some extent – been successfully incorporated with the English legal system,” Professor Alderman said: “this has damaged neither the status of British Jews nor the fabric of English law.”

Geoffrey Alderman press release, 18 July 2008

Well, that’s really going to piss off Melanie Phillips, isn’t it? Stand by for fireworks in the JC.

Evicted Milan Muslims pray at stadium ‘mosque’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

SantancheItalian police were out in force Friday at a Milan stadium converted into a makeshift mosque by Muslims who were forced to abandon their previous place of worship. Organizers of the Friday prayers said they expected some 5,000 Muslims at the Vigorelli velodrome which also contains a disused cycling track.

The decision by Milan’s town hall to allow Muslims to use the facility on a temporary basis has triggered protests from local residents, raising concern of possible attempts to disrupt the prayer session. On Friday, several dozen protesters, including far-right political leader, Daniela Santanche, gathered near the stadium. “We are here to prevent a symbol of Milanese sport from being transformed into a mosque,” Santanche, who leads the opposition party, The Right, said.

Earlier this month, Italy’s centre-right government ordered the closure of the so-called Jenner mosque – the converted garage where for over 20 years, thousands of Muslims in Italy’s financial capital attended prayer sessions. Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said the decision was based on public order and health concerns – worshippers often spilled out on the street – and complaints from local residents. Maroni, a member of the anti-immigration Northern League, drew sharp criticism for the move, with one prominent Catholic cleric, Monsignor Gianfranco Bottoni, who deals with inter-faith issues in Milan, describing it as “fascist”.

Earth Times, 18 July 2008

Agency pays damages to Yusuf Islam over sexism slur

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yusuf IslamFormer hit writer and chart topper Cat Stevens, now known as Yusuf Islam, today accepted “substantial” but undisclosed libel damages and a public apology at London’s High Court over an entertainment news agency slur.

Adam Tudor, the singer’s solicitor told top libel judge, Mr Justice David Eady, the piece at the centre of the complaint was published by World Entertainment News Network’s and was later used on Contactmusic.com, a website published by Contactmusic.com Ltd which is said to have 2.2 million page views a month. Contactmusic also apologised today and will pay part of the damages.

Tudor said the item appeared on 26 March last year under the headline: “Yusuf Islam Ignors Bare-Headed Women” and was reproduced on a number of websites including that of Contactmusic.

“The article suggested that Mr Islam, who is a Muslim, was so sexist and bigoted that he refused at an awards ceremony to speak to or even acknowledge any women who were not wearing a veil,” said Tudor. “It went on to suggest that Mr Islam’s manager had stated ‘Mr Islam doesn’t speak with women except his wife. Least of all if they don’t wear a headscarf. Things like that only happen via an intermediary’.”

Tudor continued: “As the defendants now accept, these allegations were entirely false. Mr Islam has never had any difficulties working with women, whether for religious or any other reasons. In his normal life, women feature among some of the most influential people in Mr Islam’s team. Furthermore, the statement attributed in the article to Mr Islam’s manager was simply never made.”

He said that the article had caused the pop star considerable embarrassment and distress particularly given that it had the effect not only of creating an utterly false impression of his attitude to women, but because it also cast serious aspersions, quite wrongly, on his religious faith.

The compensation he is to be paid be donated to charity, Small Kindness. He is also to receive his legal costs. For World Entertainment News and Contactmusic solicitor Marvin Simons said they apologised for the distress and embarrassment that had been caused as a result of the “false allegations.”

Press Gazette, 18 July 2008

Archbishop ‘has lost the plot’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rowan Williams (2)The Archbishop of Canterbury was under fire last night after declaring that Christian doctrine is offensive to Muslims. Dr Rowan Williams also criticised Christianity’s history for its violence, harsh punishments and betrayal of peaceful principles. His comments were condemned by MPs and religious commentators.

Tory MP Philip Davies said: “The archbishop has lost the plot. He is supposed to be leading the Church, not apologising for it. What kind of leadership is this? People are sick to death of this handwringing about things from long ago. Dr Williams should be proud of his Christian beliefs.”

Mike Judge, spokesman for the Christian Institute think-tank, said: “It’s radical Muslims who are the biggest threat to liberty. Why apologise for things that happened hundreds of years ago? You can hardly compare what happened under the Inquisition with problems in the modern world.”

Dr Williams caused controversy earlier this year when he said aspects of Islamic sharia law had a place in our legal system.

Daily Express, 17 July 2008

See also “Archbishop of Canterbury ‘should be trying to convert Muslims’” in the Daily Telegraph.

The same paper also has “Archbishop bridges Muslim divide” by George Pitcher, who writes: “Christians who attack Dr Williams for trying to reach a mutual understanding with Muslims might dwell on how they would react if Muslims condemned their leaders for trying to engage in dialogue.”

Promotion of clients and stooges will get us nowhere

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Seumas Milne discusses the questions arising from the government’s stupid boycott of Islam Expo, which he argues is part of a wider problem involving a refusal to engage with representative Muslim organisations:

“The issue is the government’s growing hostility to dealing with anyone connected with the highly diverse movement that is Islamism. This is a political trend that has violent and non-violent, theocratic and democratic, reactionary and progressive strands, stretching from Turkey’s pro-western ruling Justice and Development party through to the wildest shores of takfiri jihadism. But it’s largely on the basis of this blinkered opposition that the government is now funding Husain’s Quilliam Foundation, promoting other marginal groups such as the Sufi Muslim Council and turning its back on more representative bodies such as the Muslim Council of Britain.

“This is a dangerous game, whether from the point of view of reducing the threat of terror attacks on the streets of London or narrowing the gulf between Muslims and non-Muslims in the country as a whole. As opinion polls show, most Muslims around the world are broadly sympathetic to Hamas as a movement resisting occupation of Palestinian land – and British Muslims are no exception. If such attitudes become a block on engagement with official Britain, or are ignorantly branded ‘Islamofascist’, then the government and Tory opposition are going to end up talking to a very small minority indeed.

“It’s a risk well-recognised by some inside government. As one minister argues: ‘This cannot continue, it’s completely counterproductive. You have to engage with those with influence over those you want to influence.’ Some Muslim activists trying to work with government blame Blears’ Sufi Muslim advisers, Azhar Ali and Maqsood Ahmed; one senior local authority specialist despairs that by refusing to deal with Muslim organisations the advisers crudely brand Islamist, ministers are ‘isolating themselves from the majority’….

“The groups currently regarded as beyond the pale – such as the organisers of IslamExpo – are those keenest to promote Muslim involvement in British society and politics. But they are also the most actively opposed to western policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine – an important point of common ground, incidentally, with most non-Muslim Britons. The organisations the government backs, on the other hand, are those who keep quiet about the wars the US and Britain are fighting in the Muslim world. If the priority is really community integration and prevention of terror attacks, this sponsorship of clients and stooges is going to have to stop.”

Guardian, 17 July 2008