Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Essential misreading

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“It is a neocon myth that the left in Britain has compromised its principles in its opposition to the war on terror. On the contrary, for the left or genuine liberals not to have made common cause with Muslims in opposition to military aggression and lawlessness, or defended the Muslim community against racism and Islamophobic attacks, would have been the real betrayal of progressive principles, including that of solidarity with the powerless.”

Seumas Milne replies to Andrew Anthony: Comment is Free, 20 August 2007

Leyton mosque welcomes decision over ‘Undercover Mosque’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Masjid al-Tawhid 2A documentary featuring a mosque in Leyton has been criticised by police for giving a distorted picture of Islamic teaching. Channel 4’s Undercover Mosque documentary, broadcast in January, featured Masjid al-Tawhid, in Leyton High Road, alongside other mosques and imams around Britain.

Speeches by Shaykh Suhaib Hassan, senior imam at Masjid-al-Tawhid, were among those used in the programme, which claimed to have uncovered extremist preachers encouraging violence against women, homosexuals and non-Muslims.

But West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) have criticised the documentary’s makers Hardcash Productions for editing speeches to make them appear more inflammatory.

Shaykh Hassan’s son, Dr Usama Hassan, who is vice-chairman and one of the imams at Masjid al-Tawhid, described the police’s assessment as entirely accurate. He said:

“We have given thousands of hours of positive, wholesome, sensible teaching, teaching people to be good citizens as well as good Muslims. It’s egg on their faces for Dispatches and Hardcash. It was a very poor documentary cobbled together in a great hurry, and hopefully they’ll learn from it and be more balanced and professional.

“We should be able to have honest dialogue and that includes criticism. People should be able to politely make their point. Journalists have to have a sense of responsibility. Things like this can be as dangerous as religious fanatics causing problems.”

Waltham Forest Guardian, 18 August 2007

2007 hate crime survey published

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hate crime“In 2006, discrimination and violence against Muslims persisted throughout much of Europe. Though the number of registered incidents decreased from a peak level in 2005, after the subway bombings in London, the number of violent incidents remains high.

“In Belgium, in May, an anti-immigrant fanatic murdered a pregnant Malian au pair, and the two-year-old Belgian infant in her charge. Shortly before, he had shot and seriously wounded a woman of Turkish origin wearing a Muslim headscarf, as she sat on a bench reading. In Poland, in July, at least four men attacked a Moroccan actor at an antiracism festival in the northern city of Olsztyn, hitting him over the head with a bottle and stabbing him repeatedly, leaving him in critical condition. Both cases illustrate the double discrimination of racism and religious intolerance so frequently evident in attacks against Muslims.

“Other recent incidents have included bombings and arson attacks on mosques and Muslim institutions in many countries, including Austria, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Russia, and the United Kingdom, with attacks on Muslim cemeteries also widely reported. Assaults on individuals ranged from spitting, shoving, or the snatching of women’s headscarves, to punches and kicks and lethal bludgeoning, stabbings, and shootings. Personal assaults were often accompanied by shouted insults alluding to religion and ethnic or national origin – sometimes expressing both racism and religious hatred….

“The perpetrators included members of organized extremist movements, racist youth cultures, and ordinary people acting in a climate of xenophobia and nationalist chauvinism. In western Europe, anti-Muslim violence was driven by fears of Islamist terrorism and newly mainstream trends to present immigration and Muslim minorities as a threat to national identity.”

Human Rights First, Islamophobia: 2007 Hate Crime Survey

Islamic convert found guilty on terror conspiracy charge

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jose Padilla (2)Jose Padilla, a young American convert to Islam, who was jailed without charge in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks and allegedly tortured, was convicted on terrorism conspiracy charges yesterday.

Mr Padilla achieved notoriety when the former US Attorney General John Ashcroft announced on television from Moscow that he was part of an “unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive dirty bomb” with the intention of causing “mass death and injury.” Despite the hysteria whipped up by Mr Ashcroft, no evidence was ever presented linking Mr Padilla to such a plot.

Yesterday’s verdict was a rare legal victory for the Bush Administration however. It has seen charges thrown out against virtually all those swept up after the al-Qai’da attacks on America. A federal jury took little more than a day to reach its verdict and Mr Padilla, 36, can now expect to spend the rest of his life in jail.

Anthony Natale, one of Mr Padilla’s lawyers said he was never connected to al-Qai’da and had no intention to support terrorism. “In this case, you will see how in the absence of hard evidence, a suspicion can be fuelled by fear, nourished by prejudice and directed by politics into a criminal prosecution,” Mr Natale said.

Independent, 17 August 2007

CAIR calls for hate-crime investigation in California mosque arson

Posted on by Bob Pitt

ANTIOCH, Calif. — An Islamic group called on authorities Monday to launch a hate-crime investigation into a fire that caused $200,000 in damage to an Antioch mosque.

Investigators with the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District said they are treating the fire that broke out early Sunday morning at the Islamic Center of the East Bay as possible arson, but have found no evidence it was motivated by religion.

Safaa Ibrahim, executive director of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the fire was part of an ongoing campaign to “terrorize” members of the local Muslim community. The mosque had been vandalized several times in recent months – including multiple shots being fired through the windows and walls one night, graffiti scrawled on the walls and a break-in Friday.

Ibrahim said the blaze was apparently started by the burning of religious texts and is the latest attempt to frighten local Muslims. “It’s an act of terror, it’s an act of violence against this community and this mosque,” she said. “They targeted this as an Islamic mosque. They didn’t go to just any other building.”

Emily Hopkins, spokeswoman for the fire protection district, said investigators believe the one-alarm fire was intentionally set and have leads on a possible suspect. However, Hopkins said, there was no evidence that it was a targeted attack against Muslims.

Associated Press, 13 August 2007

‘Preachers of hate’ must be exposed – by fiddling the evidence, apparently

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Joan SmithPredictably, Joan Smith joins in the defence of Channel 4’s discredited “Undercover Mosque” documentary:

“The Channel’s real offence, I suspect, lies in drawing attention to the idiocy of government ministers who have a history of accepting self-appointed ‘community leaders’ as representatives of millions of law-abiding Muslims who do not go to mosques; even worse, they have failed to inquire closely enough into the kind of Islam which is being preached and promoted there.”

Independent, 14 August 2007

See also Steve Hewlett in the Guardian, 13 August 2007 and the Organ Grinder, 13 August 2007

The West Midlands Police and Crown Prosecution Service, who accused the programme makers of distorting the evidence, did so on the basis of having examined 56 hours of film footage, so you might have thought they’d be rather better placed to make a judgement on the issue of distortion than the above commentators, who of course have seen only the carefully edited snippets included in the original programme. But never let an objective evaluation of the evidence get in the way of a bit of anti-Muslim bigotry, eh? So much for “Enlightenment values”.

For an alternative view, see Media Workers Against the War, 10 August 2007

Olivier Roy on laïcité vs Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Secularism Confronts IslamThe Economist reviews Olivier Roy’s book Secularism Confronts Islam:

“Mr Roy argues that the ‘Islam’ depicted as incompatible with (indeed threatening to) modern Western secular society is a one-dimensional construct wholly at odds with the diversity of life experienced by real flesh-and-blood Muslims, including those living in the West. The defenders of laicité, in their alarm at a largely mythical Islam, sense danger at every bus stop.

“The wearing of the veil (seen, in the face of the facts, as involuntary) becomes an emblem of a deeply-laid plan of Islamic subversion. All arranged marriages are seen as forced marriages and therefore repressive. The ultimate aim of the well-known Muslim intellectual, Tariq Ramadan, is deemed to be to turn France into an Islamic state. The periodic riots in the Paris banlieues are seen as signs of Islamic revolt rather than social protest.

“Mr Roy rejects all of these contentions and, along the way, has some fun at the expense of those who have created an Islamic exception. Why attack only Islam as discriminatory? Should we not stigmatise the Catholic Church for not allowing women to be priests? Why not ask Jews to give up the notion of the ‘chosen people’? More seriously, he suggests it might be honest, though hardly honourable, to admit that Islam is singled out because it is the religion of immigrants….

“The relevance of all this goes well beyond France. Many in Europe, believing that multiculturalism in Britain and the Netherlands has failed, are wondering whether the stricter French were right after all. Olivier Roy’s cogent little book may give them pause.”

Bus company reaches a fare solution to veil row

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lothian Buses (2)Edinburgh’s bus drivers have been told they will not have to ask Muslim women to remove their veils after all.

A row broke out earlier this year in the wake of new guidelines issued to Lothian Buses staff as part of a crackdown on fare cheats. Drivers said they had been told to tell women to lift their veils or produce photo ID if they wanted to use a bus pass. The move sparked anger in some sections of the Muslim community, with at least one woman said to have walked off a bus.

But bus chiefs today insisted the new rules had been misunderstood and have issued fresh guidelines insisting that drivers should never ask for a veil to be removed. The firm has also worked with some of the city’s faith groups to produce a multilingual guide that explains the different options open to Edinburgh’s veiled women who want to use a bus pass. Unions and faith groups today welcomed the leaflet explaining the new rules.

Edinburgh Evening News, 13 August 2007