“I have a rule of thumb: if the Sun newspaper is running a campaign for something, it is generally a bad idea. It’s worked beautifully so far and its latest campaign to ‘Bash the Bishop’ is no exception.” Critical backing from Sunny Hundal for Rowan Williams.
Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
Five students win terror appeal
The convictions of five young Muslim men jailed over extremist literature have been quashed by the Appeal Court.
Freeing the men, the Lord Chief Justice said there was no proof of terrorist intent. The lawyer for one said they had been jailed for a “thought crime”.
A jury convicted them in 2007 after hearing the men, of Bradford University and Ilford, London, became obsessed with jihadi websites and literature.
Irfan Raja, Awaab Iqbal, Aitzaz Zafar, Usman Malik and Akbar Butt were jailed for between two and three years each by the Old Bailey for downloading and sharing extremist terrorism-related material, in what was one of the first cases of its kind.
But at the Court of Appeal, Lord Phillips said that while the men had downloaded such material, he doubted if there was evidence this was in relation to planning terrorist acts. He said the prosecution had attempted to use the law for a purpose for which it was not intended.
Lawyers for the men say the decision to restrict how the law on extremist literature works has huge implications for counter terrorism prosecutions.
Critics inside the Muslim community and civil liberty campaigners say section 57 of the 2000 Terrorism Act has been used as a blunt instrument to prosecute young Muslim men where there is no proof of genuine links to terrorism.
The BBC understands there have been three other convictions under this legislation – more cases are expected before the courts this year.
Imran Khan, solicitor for Mr Zafar, said the five had been prosecuted for “thought crime” and that the ruling would have an significant impact.
He told BBC News: “Young Muslim men before this judgement could have been prosecuted simply for simply looking at any material on the basis that it might be connected in some way to terrorist purposes.”
He said section 57 of the 2000 Terrorism Act had been written in such wide terms that “effectively, anybody could have been caught in it” but prosecutors would now have to prove such material was intended for terrorist purposes.
Waltham Forest Muslims welcome Williams’ lecture
Members of mosques across the borough have condemned the way people reacted to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s comments on Sharia law. The Waltham Forest Council of Mosques said its members welcomed the Archbishop’s thoughtful lecture and wanted to thank him for stimulating a debate that would be beneficial for long-term community cohesion. And they said the fall-out from some quarters was a “hysterical, knee-jerk reaction”.
The council, representing eight local mosques, said Muslims in the borough wanted to live in harmony with the wider community and did not seek to impose their beliefs on anyone else. But they want to have the option to apply Sharia judgements in issues like marriage, divorce, inheritance and financial agreements and abide by the tenets of their faith.
A Sharia court in Francis Road, Leyton, has been doing just that for Muslims across London and the south east since the 1980s. An advisor at the council, Usama Hasan, who is also a Leyton Imam, said the Islamic Sharia Council gets between 50 and 100 new enquiries a week, mainly from British-born Muslims wanting advice about divorce.
He added that the council exists primarily to help Muslim women trapped in marriage. Although they can apply to divorce legally under English law, under Islam they cannot remarry unless the man agrees to a divorce under Sharia, or a Sharia court rules them divorced. Dr Hasan highlighted that a similar condition in Jewish law has already been incorporated into English law and that far from increasing repression as some critics have claimed, they were doing the opposite.
Christian Right’s emerging deadly worldview
“Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani are the three stooges of the Christian right. These self-described former Muslim terrorists are regularly trotted out at Christian colleges – a few days ago they were at the Air Force Academy – to spew racist filth about Islam…. These men are frauds, but this is not the point. They are part of a dark and frightening war by the Christian right against tolerance that, in the moment of another catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil, would make it acceptable to target and persecute all Muslims, including the some 6 million Muslims who live in the United States. These men stoke these irrational fears….
“The public denigration of Islam, and by implication all religious belief systems outside Christianity, is part of the triumphalism that has distorted the country since the 9/11 attacks. It makes dialogue with those outside our ‘Christian’ culture impossible. It implicitly condemns all who do not think as we think and believe as we believe as, at best, inferior and usually morally depraved. It blinds us to our own failings. It makes self-reflection and self-criticism a form of treason. It reduces the world to a cartoonish vision of us and them, good and evil. It turns us into children with bombs.”
Chris Hedges at AlterNet, 12 February 2008
For protests over the Air Force Academy meeting, see Military.com, 8 February 2008
The presumption of Melanie Phillips
Yusuf Smith replies to Mad Mel.
Dutch MPs call for Islamophobia debate
MPs from the left-wing green party GroenLinks on Tuesday called for an emergency debate with integration minister Ella Vogelaar after an EU watchdog said Muslim minorities in the Netherlands are facing increasing violence and intolerance.
The new report from the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance said Islamophobia in the Netherlands has “increased dramatically” since 2000. “The criminal justice system, and notably the police, still needs to enhance its role in monitoring and countering racially-motivated offences,” the report said.
The tone of Dutch political and public debate around integration and other issues relevant to ethnic minorities has experienced “dramatic deterioration,” the report say and goes on to warn of a “worrying polarisation between majority and minority communities”. It criticises the official approach to integration for focusing too much on the “perceived deficiencies” among the minority population.
The Netherlands Muslims – around 6% of the population – face “stereotyping, stigmatising, outright racist political discourse and biased media portrayal,” the report continues. Anti-semitism is also on the rise.
The report calls on the Dutch authorities to take the lead in promoting a public debate on integration that avoids “polarisation, antagonism, and hostility”. It calls on ministers to take steps to counter the use of “racist and xenophobic discourse in politics” and review a number of policies which it says result in direct and indirect racial discrimination.
In particular, the report singles out anti-immigration MP Geert Wilder’s PVV party which it says has been “particularly vocal in proposing controversial policies and in resorting to racist or xenophobic discourse, targeting above all Muslim communities”. However, the report notes: “members of mainstream political parties rarely take a stand against this type of discourse.”
Read the ECRI report here.
At a glance: sharia law in Britain
Media Workers Against the War answers the press hysteria over Rowan Williams and “sharia law”.
See also Chris Bambery in Socialist Worker, 16 February 2008 and Richard Seymour in the same issue.
Siddique lawyer faces contempt charge
Aamer Anwar, the lawyer represesenting Mohammed Atif Siddique, is to face contempt of court charges following remarks he made after the case.
It is the first time in UK legal history that a solicitor has faced a contempt of court allegation in respect of remarks made outside of court.
BBC News report, 12 February 2008
For our previous coverage of this case see here, here and here.
Williams and Shariah
Osama Saeed responds to the anti-sharia hysteria provoked by Rowan Williams’ speech.
Rolled Up Trousers, 11 February 2008
See also Yusuf Smith’s comments at Indigo Jo blogs, 9 February 2008
Sharia sensibilities
Ayesha Khan, reporter on the Channel 4 documentary “Divorce: Sharia Style”, offers a balanced view of the operation of sharia courts in the UK.
For a rather less balanced view, see Johann Hari in the Independent, 11 February 2008