Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Magistrate walks out over Muslim woman’s veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A magistrate is facing an inquiry after refusing to deal with a defendant wearing a full Muslim veil, the Judiciary of England and Wales said yesterday.

Ian Murray walked out of the case at Manchester magistrates’ court yesterday because Zoobia Hussain, 32, of Crumpsall, Manchester, was covered by a hijab. Hussain’s lawyer, Judith Hawkins, said her client was “shocked and distressed” and found Mr Murray’s treatment of her “insensitive and unacceptable”.

Miss Hawkins said she would submit a formal written complaint to the court on Monday. When the complaint is received, the judiciary will launch an internal investigation into Mr Murray’s behaviour, a spokesman said.

A spokesman for the Ramadhan Foundation said: “It is despicable that the judiciary is ignoring the guidelines about the wearing of the hijab set out only in February by the Judicial Studies Board. They require that magistrates and judges be ‘sensitive’ to a woman’s religious requirement to wear the hijab and work around it when possible.”

Daily Telegraph, 29 June 2007

Mr Murray does however receive the support of the BNP who opine: “Those pushy Muslims never let up trying to change the way we have done things in this country for centuries.”

Update:  See “Veil row magistrate reprimanded”, BBC News, 8 January 2008

Anti-Muslim attacks on the rise in the West

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The level of hate crimes targeted towards Muslims and those who are thought to look like Muslims within Europe and North America is dramatically high according to a new survey released June 6 by a human rights organisation. It was revealed at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Bucharest, Romania, by Human Rights First, a leading human rights group based in America, and was part of their annual hate crime survey.

Executive Director of Human Rights First, Maureen Byrnes, claimed that violence against Muslims was extremely high in 2006. In criticising governments for lack of actions, she said, “Efforts to combat these crimes are greatly hampered by the fact that majority of governments in Europe still fail to collect date on these attacks.”

The annual report looked at the level of crimes committed against Muslims during 2006 and the growing trend of Islamophobia around the world since the attacks of September 11 and 7/7 bombings.

The report found that the violence towards Muslims was aggravated after September 11, fuelled by “the perpetuation of stereotypes and generalizations about Muslims,” and that terrorism acts done in the name of Islam caused “random reprisals against those identified rightly or wrongly as co-religionists of the perpetrators.” It described horrific incidents towards Muslims, from verbal and physical assaults including fatal incident at individuals to arsenic attacks at mosques and desecration of the Islamic books including the Qur’an.

The Muslim News, 29 June 2007

Tutu calls for better media reporting of religion

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Desmond TutuLONDON – Archbishop Desmond Tutu called on the media on Wednesday to be more careful in their choice of words when reporting on religious conflict.

“I would hope that you in the media would be passionate about letting people judge for themselves, that you would be careful about some of the language that you do actually use,” he said. “‘Muslim terrorism’ – have you ever read anywhere ‘Christian terrorism’? – as if Islam propagates violence, but you have never spoken about what happened in Northern Ireland as Christian terrorism,” he said.

Tutu added that understanding different religions required peoples of all faiths to understand different perspectives. “We Christians ought to get off our high horse and learn to be a great deal more humble, when you look at our history, the bloody things that we did in the name of religion,” he said.

Reuters, 27 June 2007

SANE Works for US: coming to a Masjid near you!

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“So you’re at prayers at your local mosque, and a pasty white guy in a pantomime Arab costume and fake beard comes up to you. He says, ‘Asalaamun alaykum, dear brother! You can speak freely in front of me. Would you like to discuss violent jihad against the kaafirs?’ You look around. Is your cousin Mustafa setting you up? Is there a hidden camera in the mihrab? Because when anything this patently ridiculous happens, there’s got to be an angle. And there is. Congrats! You’ve just been selected by the Mapping Shari’a Project for inclusion in their latest study.”

Abdalhayy takes on Dave Glaubatz and SANE.

MCB speaks out on ‘honour’ killings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MCB logoThe Muslim Council of Britain insisted yesterday that “honour” violence was a cultural practice and nothing to do with faith. The council spoke out after a BBC investigation claimed that there were links between some cases of honour violence in Britain and islamist extremist groups abroad. Victims of such attacks are alleged by their families to have disgraced them.

The Crown Prosecution Service pointed to the death five years ago of Heshu Yones, 16, who was stabbed to death by her father, and claimed that Islamist terror groups were behind it. Crown Prosecution Service national lead on honour crime Nazir Afzal told Radio 4 that the threats to kill another woman, who is known as Miss B, came from her family but originated from an Egyptian terrorist group. He said: “They told her husband that, if he didn’t put his wife in her place, then they would do it themselves.”

However, Muslim Council of Britain spokeswoman Reefat Drabu disagreed with Mr Afzal’s comments. “First and foremost, there has to be clarity that this is nothing to do with any faith, in particular Islam,” she said. “It is a cultural practice and there is nothing in any faith that would condone it or say that it is the right thing do it. This is to do with misguided notions of family honour. It has nothing to do with radicalism or terrorism.”

Morning Star, 27 June 2007

Over at Butterflies and Wheels Ophelia Benson expresses indignation that the MCB should even be asked their opinion on the issue. After all, they’re only the most representative Muslim organisation in the UK, with some 500 affiliates. Who cares what they think? Ms Benson would no doubt regard it as much more appropriate for the BBC to ask Maryam Namazie and the “Council of Ex-Muslims” for a quote instead.

And David T of Harry’s Place comments: “The Muslim Council of Britain’s eccentric stance on this issue illustrates why it is no longer invited to the Home Office to participate in the process of public policy formation.” Whereas some of us might have thought that the government’s cold-shouldering of the MCB was perhaps rather more closely connected with their refusal to keep quiet about the role of UK foreign policy in fuelling terrorism.

The Muslims are coming!

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Johann Hari has always been one of our favourite Islamophobes. Unlike many self-styled defenders of Enlightenment values he is in fact capable of rational thought, plus he has an understanding that there is such a thing as imperialism, which always helps. And, to be fair, he does take a stand against the more egregious examples of anti-Muslim bigotry.

His piece in the next issue of The New Republic about a cruise sponsored by the right-wing magazine National Review gives an entertaining – if rather scary – insight into the Islamophobic hysteria that has gripped US conservatives:

“I am standing waist-deep in the Pacific Ocean, indulging in the polite chit-chat beloved by vacationing Americans. A sweet elderly lady from Los Angeles is sitting on the rocks nearby, telling me dreamily about her son. ‘Is he your only child?’ I ask. ‘Yes’, she answers. ‘Do you have a child back in England?’ she asks me. No, I say. Her face darkens. ‘You’d better start’, she says. ‘The Muslims are breeding. Soon, they’ll have the whole of Europe.’

“… So, you’re a European, one of the Park Avenue ladies says, before offering witty commentaries on the cities she’s visited. Her companion adds, ‘I went to Paris, and it was so lovely.’ Her face darkens: ‘But then you think – it’s surrounded by Muslims.’ The first lady nods: ‘They’re out there, and they’re coming.’ Emboldened, the bearded Floridian wags a finger and says, ‘Down the line, we’re not going to bail out the French again.’ He mimes picking up a phone and shouts into it, ‘I can’t hear you, Jacques! What’s that? The Muslims are doing what to you? I can’t hear you!’

“… The idea that Europe is being ‘taken over’ is the unifying theme of this cruise. Some people go on singles’ cruises, some on ballroom-dancing cruises. This is the Muslims Are Coming cruise. Everyone thinks it. Everyone knows it. And the man most responsible for this insight is sitting only a few tables down: Mark Steyn. He is wearing sunglasses on top of his head and a bright shirt. Steyn’s thesis in his new book, America Alone, is simple: The ‘European races’ – i.e., white people – ‘are too self-absorbed to breed’, but the Muslims are multiplying quickly. The inevitable result will be ‘large-scale evacuation operations circa 2015’ as Europe is ceded to Al Qaeda and ‘Greater France remorselessly evolve[s] into Greater Bosnia’. He offers a light smearing of dubious demographic figures – he needs to turn 20 million European Muslims into more than 150 million in nine years, which is a lot of humping – to ‘prove’ his case.

“But facts, figures, and doubt are not on the itinerary of this cruise. With one or two exceptions, the passengers discuss ‘the Muslims’ as a homogenous, sharia-seeking block – already with near-total control of Europe. Over the week, I am asked nine times – I counted – when I am fleeing Europe’s encroaching Muslim population for the safety of the United States.”

Muslim leaders deplore Rushdie knighthood

Posted on by Bob Pitt

We strongly deplore the recent conferring of a knighthood to Salman Rushdie (Letters, June 21). We see this as a deliberate provocation and insult to the 1.5 billion Muslims around the world. The “honouring” of Rushdie at a time when the British government claims to be trying to build bridges with the Muslim community can only be seen as duplicitous. We regard this as a conscious effort not only to offend Muslim sensibilities but also to sow seeds of division. In honouring Rushdie, the prime minister has demonstrated how little regard he has for Islam.

Ali al-Hadithi Federation Of Student Islamic Societies, Bashir Mann Muslim Council of Scotland, Dr Abdul Wahid Hizb ut-Tahrir, Dr Ahmad ar-Rawi Muslim Association of Britain, Dr Mamoun Mobayad Northern Ireland Muslim Family Association, Dr Muhammad Abdul-Bari Muslim Council of Britain, Massoud Shadjareh Islamic Human Rights Commission, Maulana Faiz Siddiqui Muslim Action Committee, Muhammad Sawalha British Muslim Initiative, Saleem Qidwai Muslim Council of Wales, Sheikh Abdulhossein Moezi Islamic Centre of England, Sheikh Shafiq-ur-Rahman United Kingdom Islamic Mission

Letter in Guardian, 26 June 2007

See also the Times, 26 June 2007

What are the Quasi Muslims really selling?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Every day newspapers, TV shows, radio programs, new books and lectures revolve around the topic of the ‘threat’ of Islam and its relation to the West. Islam has become a commodity, a business to be exploited. The list of super stars and ‘experts’ that are part of this Hollywood-esque movement of cashing in on Islam has become quite long; at the head of the list are Quasi Muslims such as Brigiette Gabriel, Walid Shoebat, Nonie Darwish, and Ibn Warraq….

“Quasi Muslims are not only united in a deep distrust of Islam and Muslims but also in a program of vile hatemongering thinly disguised as intellectual criticism and absolute truth. In a lecture at the University of Memphis, Brigiette Gabriel called Arabs ‘Barbaric’. Walid Shoebat and Ibn Warraq have consistently claimed that Islam is the new totalitarian threat to the world, the new ‘fascism’, the new ‘Nazism’ even though these concepts are uniquely Western products. In any other circumstance or in reference to any other religion this rhetoric would be dismissed for what it is: hate speech….

“A grave consequence of legitimizing these polarizing and obscurantist personalities is that it takes away from the scholars, academics, and lay people that are engaged in real reform and criticism. Voices such as those of Tariq Ramadan, Khaled Abu Fadl, Heba Ezzat, Suhaib Webb and others are voices that have a pulse on the Muslim community and are much more deserving of a hearing from the wider public.”

M.T. Akbar at Media Monitors Network, 23 June 2007

German cardinal against ‘equal’ Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cardinal Karl LehmannBERLIN — In statements endorsed by the ruling Christian Democratic Union party and harshly criticized by MPs, Germany’s top cardinal has warned against “uncritical tolerance” which could lead to Islam enjoying equal standing with Christianity in the country, Deutsche Welle reported Friday, June 22.

“The neutrality of the state regarding individual religions must not be confused with indifference and uncritical tolerance toward the impact of religions on society,” the German news network quoted Cardinal Karl Lehmann as saying. Lehmann, the head of the German conference of bishops, expressed concern about religious freedom leading to all faiths being treated equally regardless of the size of their flock and their history. He pointed to Christianity’s role in shaping European history and even its legal culture.

Ronald Pofalla, the general secretary of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union party, said Lehmann was right to say Islam could not be afforded the same legal standing in Germany as Christianity. “Unlike Christianity, Islam is not in Europe’s cultural centre and is not reflected in everyday life in the same way,” Pofalla said in a statement.

The leader of the Green party’s parliamentary group, Volker Beck, said Germany’s constitution required Islam be treated the same as Christianity. “The Cardinal is wrong if he concludes that Europe’s or Germany’s undoubtedly Christian character infers a legal discrimination of other religious communities,” Deutsche Welle quoted him as saying.

Lale Akgün, a Social Democratic parliamentarian in charge of Islam issues, said Lehmann’s statements were unrealistic and explosive. “Whoever says that Islam cannot be put on an equal legal footing (as other religions) is stoking social unrest,” she said.

Islam Online, 22 June 2007