“The Mail on Sunday has once again proved that old habits die hard. As if it were not enough to witch hunt asylum seekers, or tarnish the reputation of many Muslim leaders, the Mail has again surpassed itself by bizarrely claiming that FOSIS and the Mayor’s office ‘plotted to nail Euan’s girlfriend’.”
FOSIS press release, 18 April 2005
For a response by FOSIS to allegations of anti-semitism in the NUS see FOSIS press release, 13 April 2005
A deadly poison said to be at the heart of a terrorist conspiracy against Britain led to a dire warning of another al-Qa’ida attack in the West. The Government was swift to act on the fear that such a find generated. But far from being a major threat, the real danger existed only in the mind of a misguided individual living in a dingy north London bedsit.
Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations points out that there are Christian terrorists too.
After Kamel Bourgass was convicted for his part in an alleged Al-Qaida poison plot, while four other men were acquitted and charges were dropped against a further four, questions were raised as to whether there was in fact any plot at all.
Azad Ali of the Muslim Safety Forum, where top police officers and Muslim leaders discuss terrorism and other issues, said: “The ricin plot was part of government thinking and public justification in bringing in control orders. This will confirm the feeling in the Muslim community that it is being victimised on the basis of intelligence that was not tested in anything like a court, and when it is, it is thrown out.”
Gareth Peirce, the solicitor for three of those found not guilty, called on the government to justify its claims about an Islamist terror plot: “There was never any ricin, there were no poisons made. There seems to be a pathetic, clumsy, amateurish attempt to make some by a man who was conceded, I think by all, to be a difficult, anti-social loner.”
Richard Norton-Taylor points out: “The ricin claims were seized on most strikingly by Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, in his dramatic but now discredited speech on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction programme to the UN security council on February 5 2003, five weeks before the invasion. Insisting ‘every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources’, Mr Powell spoke of a ‘sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network’.”
The Islamic Human Rights Commission noted: “Over 90 arrests were made in the anti-terror sweep that netted the men with 9 charges and only a single conviction. Yet, sensational reporting by the media coupled with almost daily prejudicial statements by the government and security services create an environment of fear which fuels racism and Islamophobia.”
IHRC press release, 13 April 2005
The Telegraph, though, remains convinced there was an Islamist terrorist conspiracy, assisted by lax immigration controls: “An illegal immigrant trained by al-Qa’eda to be one of its top poisoners was jailed for 17 years yesterday for leading a plot to terrorise Britain with ricin and cyanide.”
European governments have been accused of complacency and of failing to confront the scale of racist violence after a report by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia said only a handful of nations collected proper information. There was clear evidence “that attacks on Muslim communities increased in the months following 11 September” and some victims were wrongly identified as Muslims.
The Independent, 13 April 2005
See also Islam Online, 14 April 2005
For the EUMC report, see here.
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted on Tuesday, April 12, a resolution calling for combating defamation campaigns against Islam and Muslims in the West.
The measure, put forward by Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), was voted for by 31 countries and 16 against, with five abstentions and one delegation absent, Reuters reported.
“There was a growing trend of defamation of Islam and discrimination faced by Muslims and the people of Arab descent in many parts of the world,” Pakistan’s UN envoy, Masood Khan, said in a speech.
Khan cited a series of attacks against mosques in different parts of the world. “Stereotyping of any religion as propagating violence or its association with terrorism constitutes defamation of religion. It unfortunately breeds a culture of hatred, disharmony and discrimination,” he stressed.
The French Organization against Islamophobia (CCIF) said earlier this year that during the period from October 2003 to August 2004, 26 cases of verbal and physical assaults on Muslims, 28 cases of vandalism and attempted arson targeting mosques, and 11 cases of desecration of Muslim graves have been registered. The CCIF also listed a considerable number of internet sites spreading anti-Muslim propaganda.
Cuba’s delegate Rodolfo Reyes Rodriguez said Islam has been the subject of “very deep campaign of defamation.” “All you have to do is look at the films which have come out of Hollywood the last few years,” he said.
The resolution, however, was rejected by the United States and the European Union as “unbalanced” for what they termed failure to address problems suffered by other religious groups. “This resolution is incomplete inasmuch as it fails to address the situation of all religions,” Leonard Leo, a member of the US delegation, said in a speech.
The Netherlands, speaking for the EU, also said it regretted that the 25-nation bloc EU had been unable to agree on a “more balanced” joint text with the pan-Muslim organization. “Discrimination based on religion or belief is not confined to any one religion nor to any one part of the world,” said Dutch ambassador Ian de Jong.
The arrest of a 16-year-old Muslim schoolgirl in the United States on charges of planning to be a suicide bomber drew fire from her teachers and classmates, reported a leading American daily on Saturday, April 9.
“She is, yes, an orthodox Muslim, but completely integrated into this school,” Jessica Siegel, an English teacher at Heritage High School in East Harlem, told The New York Times. “She’s a wonderful, wonderful girl.”
The Guinean tenth-grader has been described by the FBI as “an imminent threat to the security of the United States” on allegation of planning to be a suicide bomber, according to a government document provided to the daily by a federal official.
She is being held in an immigration detention center in Pennsylvania and her father is now in immigration jail facing deportation.
“She’s about the last person anyone could imagine being a suicide bomber,” said Ms. Siegel, who was profiled in Samuel G. Freedman’s book Small Victories as an unsentimental but fiercely committed teacher who provoked and delighted her students.
Ms. Carr, a speech pathologist, was no less furious. “They have painted this picture of her as this person that is trying to destroy our way of life, and I know in my heart of hearts that this is bogus,” she said.
“I feel like, how dare they? She’s a minor, and even if she’s not a citizen, she has rights as a human being,” said Ms. Carr, who welcomed the girl to her house daily and knows her family well.
The Muslim Council of Britain is deeply disappointed by yesterday’s announcement that the Government was dropping the Incitement to Religious Hatred section from the Serious and Organised Crime Bill due to opposition from the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party.
“Sadly, British Muslims will now continue to remain second-class citizens and denied the legal protection that is given to some racial and religious groups such as Jews and Sikhs under existing racial incitement laws. We deplore the position of the Liberal Democrats – who had proposed an amendment backed by the Tory Party – that would have regarded Muslims as a racial group, notwithstanding the fact that Muslims transcend racial boundaries. We regarded this as a vital piece of equality legislation that would have accorded Muslims and other faith groups protection from those who are deliberately inciting hatred against them,” said Iqbal Sacranie, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain.
MCB press release, 8 April 2005
For MAB’s response, see MAB news report, 6 April 2005 and Islam Online, 6 April 2005
The Muslim Council of Britain rejected MPs’ claims yesterday that Asians were not being targeted by draconian police stop and search powers.
After an inquiry lasting five months, the home affairs select committee declared that “we do not believe that the Asian community is being unreasonably targeted by the police in their application of the Terrorism Act or of the other legislation enabling stops and searches”. However, it accepted that “there is a clear perception among all our Muslim witnesses that Muslims are being stigmatised” and called for “special efforts” by police and government to ensure that they are not singled out.
MCB secretary-general Iqbal Sacranie said that there was clear evidence that there was a disproportionate tendency to stop and search Muslims. “We believe that the problem is more than that of mere perception”, he said, accusing the committee’s report of being flawed because it only identified Muslims by race. Mr Sacranie said that a true picture could only be obtained if the statistics took account of non-Asian Muslims.
Morning Star, 7 April 2005
See also BLINK news report, 6 April 2005
Two 16-year-old girls from New York City were arrested last month and charged with immigration violations after the FBI asserted that they intended to become suicide bombers, according to a government document. A spokesman for one of their families, however, said the accusation was false and said the government had probably misinterpreted a school essay written by one of the girls.