Construction of a controversial mosque in Murfreesboro can continue. Earlier this week a judge said county commissioners did not give proper notice before approving the new Islamic Center of Murfreesboro. But a new court order out today says it does not mean work has to stop on the new mosque.
The proposed “burkha ban” in the Netherlands could go ahead before September’s election after MPs declared the proposal was not politically controversial.
It had been thought that any legislation would be delayed following the collapse of Mark Rutte’s cabinet last month. Since then the country has been run by a “demissionary” or caretaker government. Interim governments are limited by law to policy areas that are deemed non-controversial by a majority of members of Parliament.
Hundreds of Afghan schoolchildren have been admitted to hospital in the past six weeks after falling victim to what appears to be six separate major poison attacks. Three alleged attacks have occurred in northern Takhar province in the past week alone, affecting more than 300 girls.
Some government and police officials have blamed the poison attacks on the Taliban, whose hostility to girls’ education during its hardline rule in the 1990s is well documented. Others have blamed the “enemies of Afghanistan” and hinted at the involvement of Pakistan and Iran.
Tests by the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) and government, however, have not found any toxic substances. One international expert has said the scares have all the hallmarks of mass hysteria.
Shariah law is religious law, but because it is the law of a demonized religion associated with terrorism and anti-Americanism, Brandon can label it political, depriving it of First Amendment protections. I don’t assume this is a cynical ploy. Blinded by bigotry and their notions of “true” and “false” religions, Islamaphobes may be sincere in the counter-factual belief that Islam is purely political.
That belief is essential to the claim that Shariah law can’t be tolerated because it conflicts with the Constitution. Once you acknowledge that Islam is a religion and Shariah law is religious, its conflicts with secular law become arguments for, not against, religious liberty. Of course, Shariah law is inconsistent with the Constitution. So are the tenets of Catholicism, Judaism (especially orthodox Judaism), and most if not all other faiths….
Religious and secular laws often conflict; that’s precisely why we have a First Amendment. It provides a legal framework for ensuring that religion and government can “co-exist.” If religious law were categorically subordinate to the Constitution (as Joe Brandon imagines Shariah law should be), then the Catholic Church would be required to ordain women, Orthodox Jews would have to sit together in shul, and religious groups that oppose gay marriages would be required to perform them.
It’s not hard to imagine the uproar that would greet the slightest hint of official interest in violating such basic guarantees of religious liberty, especially if directed against majority or respectable, minority religious practices.
Wendy Kaminer demolishes the arguments of Joe Brandon, attorney for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the Murfreesboro Islamic Center
A judge in Tennessee ruled Tuesday that the public wasn’t properly notified about a meeting where local officials approved the plan for a proposed mosque, meaning construction of the disputed project will be stopped.
The new facility for the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro was one of several Muslim projects in the U.S. that hit a swell of conservative opposition around the same time as the controversy over a plan to build a Muslim community center near New York’s ground zero.
Chancellor Robert Corlew noted that his ruling doesn’t stop the Rutherford County Planning Commission from reconsidering the issue and again approving the site plan in the booming city of about 100,000 people southeast of Nashville.
Saleh Sbenaty, a spokesman for leaders of the mosque, said the ruling was disappointing but his group remains committed to building the Islamic center. They have been worshipping for many years at a smaller site in the community.
Nadiya Takolia defends the hijab.
Or, as CiF Watch would have it: “iEngage’s Nadiya Takolia demonstrates again how proponents of, or at least apologists for, the most reactionary movements within Islam continue, under the veneer of human rights, to attempt to avoid being held responsible for an adherence to reactionary, racist, and violent political agendas.”
The government is facing renewed calls to curb the slaughtering of animals that have not first been rendered unconscious – a debate that pits religious sensitivities against the convictions of animal welfare campaigners.
Senior Conservative backbencher Greg Knight has told MPs that the practice of slaughtering cattle, lambs and chickens in this way is “rife”.
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback has signed a law aimed at keeping the state’s courts or government agencies from basing decisions on Islamic or other foreign legal codes, and a national Muslim group’s spokesman said Friday that a court challenge is likely.
News of the World tried to smear Tom Watson with an untrue story that he was having an affair with a devout Muslim woman, the campaigning MP has claimed.
Journalist Mazher Mahmood, the so-called “fake sheikh” who dressed up as an Arab prince to pursue stories, had Mr Watson placed under surveillance by a private detective for a week. Mr Mahmood was the News of the World‘s star reporter, although far from royalty, he was actually the son of an ordinary couple from Small Heath, Birmingham.
Increasing anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. has shown enormous growth in the past two years, leading the Southern Poverty Law Center to mention three notorious Islamophobes on their list of “30 new activists heading up the radical right.”
The SPLC finds that “[a]n anti-Muslim movement, almost entirely ginned up by political opportunists and hard-line Islamophobes, has grown enormously since taking off in 2010, when reported anti-Muslim hate crimes went up by 50%.”