Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Claims against Muslim PC ‘laughable’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Friends of a Muslim firearms officer removed from a high-profile armed police protection squad described suspicions against him as “laughable” yesterday. PC Amjad Farooq was moved from the protection group, whose duties include guarding Downing St and the US embassy, after a background check.

It was alleged that two of his sons, aged nine and 11, attended a mosque associated with a cleric linked to a suspected terrorist group. The Guardian has learned that the decision to sideline PC Farooq was also based on his travelling history: like many Britons, he has Pakistani heritage. Some of the intelligence that caused concern during his vetting procedure came from the domestic security service, MI5.

PC Farooq was also allegedly told that if he was posted to the US embassy his presence might upset the American secret service. The officer, 39, is taking the Metropolitan police to an employment tribunal, claiming he was the victim of racial and religious discrimination.

The Muslim Council of Britain criticised the police for accepting “smear and innuendo” in the place of hard evidence.

Guardian, 8 November 2006

See also Independent, 8 November 2006

French unions resist after Muslims are sacked

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamophobia isn’t just taking place in Britain. Authorities in France have withdrawn the security clearances for 40 mainly Muslim workers at the Paris airport of Roissy-Charles de Gaulle, one of Europe’s busiest airports. The police prefecture of Seine-Saint-Denis, linked to the interior ministry, withdrew the clearances, claiming that the workers could become involved in terrorist activity.

Serge Nybelene, the general secretary of the airport CGT union branch, spoke to Socialist Worker about the cases. He said, “The prefecture says that there is a direct or indirect connection with radical Islamic groups. But in their letters the employees concerned received no reason for their security clearances being taken away.

“We are used to having security clearances withdrawn for meaningless reasons. But in this case the prefect doesn’t even have to justify his decision. He says that the interviewee didn’t prove that he wouldn’t be susceptible to becoming dangerous in the future. So it is for the accused to prove his innocence and not the accuser to prove the person is guilty! The focus is on Muslim workers because we are coming up to an election.”

As Socialist Worker went to press, workers at the airport were meeting to discuss a proposed strike over the withdrawal of security passes. Serge said, “The CGT has brought two cases to court in order to stop what’s happening. We are talking to a group of MPs to call for a debate on the question. We have also called on our members at the airport to debate mass action.”

Socialist Worker, 11 November 2006

First Muslim congressman elected

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Keith Ellison, a Democrat, has become the first Muslim to be elected to the US Congress by winning a Minnesota seat in the House of Representatives. He has called for the immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. On the campaign trail, he also urged a greater reliance on renewable fuels and the establishment of a government-funded universal healthcare system.

BBC News, 8 November 2006

Charles Johnson comments: “They’ll be celebrating in Gaza tomorrow.”

Little Green Footballs, 7 November 2006

‘Wear a Hijab Day’ – US Muslims’ response to killing

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Despite attempts by the foreign media to send a message that hate crimes against Muslims are on the decrease worldwide. Evidence shows that the problem is only worsening.

The hijab has been the subject of much attention last month after mother-of-six Alia Ansari, from Fremont in California, was shot dead at pointblank in a Glenmoor neighborhood. Ansari was wearing hijab when she was slain in front of her three-year-old daughter near her home on Oct. 19. She was on her way to collect her children from elementary school.

Some family members and Muslim leaders have speculated that the only motive anyone would have for killing her was the garment of her faith – her hijab – and that the crime was none other but a hate crime against Muslims and Islam. “Whoever did this did not see Alia Ansari as a mother of six children,” said Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, a well known and respected local Muslim scholar and leader. “The gunman saw a symbol of what people are taught to hate,” he told the media standing outside Ansari’s home.

In response to the tragedy, US Muslim community leaders and the Foundation of Self Reliance are organizing a “Wear a Hijab Day” on Nov. 13 as a symbolic gesture of solidarity in support of Ansari.

Arab News, 8 November 2006

Campaign against Munich mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The New York Times reports on opposition to the building of a new mosque in Munich:

“… a vocal minority of residents has resisted, holding protest meetings, collecting signatures, and filing a petition with the Bavarian Parliament. ‘Bavarian life’, the petition declares, ‘is marked by the drinking of beer and the eating of pork. In Muslim faith, both are unclean and forbidden.’ With the support of Bavaria’s conservative state government, the residents have been able to tie up the project in court…. ‘Whenever Muslims in Germany come out of their closets or hidden places, the controversy starts’, said Claus Leggewie, a political scientist at the University of Giessen who has written about mosques in Germany. ‘The protests begin on technical issues, like parking problems and noise’, he said. ‘But it has a cultural bias. There is a nationalist minority, which opposes immigration and especially Muslim immigration’.”

Is Islam a threat to the West?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In a YouGov survey in August 2006 53% of those questioned felt that Islam and Muslims posed a threat to Western liberal democracy.

Why do such a large number feel this is so? Has the frequently negative media attention upon Islam and Muslims been a cause of creating this fear and mistrust in society? Or have sensitivities raised about reporting controversial issues meant the free criticism and debate has been curtailed? Does talking about these issues in the emotive press headlines generated by such a poll increase alienation or help understand it?

To discuss this and other issues Dialogue with Islam have invited the following distinguished panel:

Charles Moore, former Editor of Daily Telegraph
James O’Brien, LBC Radio Presenter
Humera Khan, An Nisa Society
Abdul-Raheem Green, Regents Park Mosque
Chair: Mark Urban, Diplomatic Editor of BBC Newsnight

Wednesday 15th November 2006
Time: 6.15pm
Venue: Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1
Tube: Holborn
Tickets £3 reservation (by email or phone) or £5 at the door.

Phone: 07983749252
Email: dialogue_with_islam@yahoo.co.uk
http://www.dialoguewithislam.org

Muslim officer sacked from guarding Blair

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim officer sackedAn experienced Muslim firearms officer has begun race and religious discrimination proceedings against the Metropolitan Police after he was removed from a close-protection unit guarding senior dignitaries, including Tony Blair.

Amjad Farooq, 39, a father of five, was told he was a threat to national security because his children had attended a mosque associated with a Muslim cleric linked to a suspected terrorist group. The officer was also told that his presence might upset the American secret service which worked closely with the Met’s close-protection group.

PC Farooq’s solicitor, Lawrence Davies, of the law firm Equal Justice, said last night he was unable to comment in detail about the case, but did say:

“We live in a society where it is possible to point a finger at a Muslim abroad and say that they have WMD and are a threat to national security and no questions are asked. Now those who ‘protect’ us feel emboldened to point the same finger at British Muslims. Muslims are labelled guilty by association. Doubt is insufficient to save them. They are assumed guilty before being proven innocent. We are very close to living in the days of Salem. If the head of counter-terrorism becomes a Witch-Finder General then any Muslim or Muslim-looking person or sympathiser best take cover.”

Independent, 7 November 2006

Update:  The fascists claim that the case “highlights the difficulties facing our security services as they wrestle with the need to maintain national security against a threat of global Islamic jihad, while at the same time having to play ball with the multiculturalists who have scant regard for Britain’s national security. The multiculturalists demand that ethnic and religious minorities need to be more ‘represented’ in the Police, security agencies and the military, yet a dilemma arises when it is clear to the very same security and intelligence agencies that a sizeable fifth column of dangerous extremists lurks within the 1.8 million strong Muslim community who want to wage about a jihad (holy war) against the non-Muslim population.”

BNP news article, 7 November 2006

Melanie Phillips on the threat of global jihad (again)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mad Mel has just seen the Islamophobic “documentary” Obsession: Radical Islam’s War With the West and cannot restrain her enthusiasm:

“It should be made compulsory viewing for every politician and pundit who clings to the misguided belief that all we face is terrorism rooted in various grievances around the world. It is the single most powerful and terrifying public exposition of the fact that a global Islamic jihad is now being waged from Bali to Istanbul, from Chechnya to Madrid, from Morocco to Manhattan, from Thailand to Bloomsbury – and that the world that is under attack is deeply in denial about what it is facing. More than that, this film shows in graphic and undeniable detail that this jihad is a direct descendant of Nazism…. Some of the footage in this film leaves you speechless.”

Ah, if only that were true.

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 7 November 2006

For an alternative view, by Sheila Musaji of The American Muslim, see here.

The left must defend freedom of expression

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The left must defend freedom of expression

By Ken Livingstone

Socialist Campaign Group News, November 2006

The outpouring of negativity towards all things Muslim in the media following Jack Straw’s statement that he asks constituents who seek his help to take off their veils was predictable.

Far from a disinterested ‘debate’, much media coverage more closely resembled the kind of systematic, drip, drip, drip demonisation of Jewish people in the first half of this century.

Muslims have been condemned for their religion, their dress, their schools, their ‘sense of grievance’, their difference, their separation and virtually every other aspect of their religion and culture. And those lambasting them have been variously praised for their ‘courage’, ‘bravery’ and ‘willingness to break taboos’.

The biggest beneficiaries of this outpouring of prejudice has been the extreme right. In the 1930s, the Blackshirts targeted the Jews. Today the BNP puts a so-called Islamic threat at the centre of its election campaigns.

This is directly legitimised by tabloids like the Daily Express with its front page ‘Ban the Veil’ campaign. That is also why this so-called ‘discussion’ has, in reality, been accompanied by a surge in physical and verbal attacks on Muslims, with women abused for wearing veils, mosques attacked.

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