Category Archives: Right wing

‘City closes schools for extra day a year so Muslims can celebrate religious holiday’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Schools in the city of Cambridge, in Massachusetts, will close for one Muslim holiday a year, local officials have announced. Authorities in the U.S. city said the new scheme, which will be introduced from 2011-2012, is the first of its kind in the state. The schools will close for either Eid al-Fitr or Eid al-Adha, also known as the Festival of Sacrifice, depending on which falls within the school year.

Cambridge School Committee member Marc McGovern said schools in the city currently close for Christian and Jewish holidays and Muslims should be treated no different. Officials voted unanimously in favour of the idea back in December and it was officially announced on Sunday that the change would be introduced from next year.

“At a time when I think the Muslim population is being characterised with a broad brush in a negative way, I think it’s important for us to say we’re not going to do that here,” Mr McGovern said. “The issue that sort of came up was should we celebrate any religious holidays, but there was not the will to take away Good Friday or one of the Jewish holidays. So I said, if that is the case, I think we have an obligation to celebrate one of the Muslim holidays, as well.”

Daily Mail, 12 October 2010

Update:  You’ll note the provocative headline to the story, which is obviously intended to appeal to the anti-Muslim prejudices of Daily Mail readers. It did so only too successfully, and further online comments on the article have now been blocked and existing comments removed.

German politician calls for ban on immigration for Turks and Arabs

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Horst SeehoferOutraged Turkish groups and German politicians on Monday demanded an apology from Horst Seehofer after the conservative Bavarian state premier suggested over the weekend Germany put a stop to immigration for Turks and Arabs.

Seehofer, who belongs to the CSU, the Bavarian sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, told news magazine Focus that “immigrants from other cultures, such as those from Turkey and Arab countries have more difficulties” integrating into German culture. Therefore he had drawn the “conclusion that we need no additional immigration from other cultural areas”.

On Monday chairman of the Turkish Community in Germany (TGD), Kenan Kolat, demanded an apology. “The latest comments by Seehofer are defamatory and unacceptable”, he told daily Berliner Zeitung, speaking of an attempt to stigmatise certain ethnic groups and trump former Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin’s inflammatory assertions about Muslim immigrants. Meanwhile politicians from across the spectrum expressed their dismay over Seehofer’s suggestion.

The Local, 11 October 2010

Christian minister launches High Court case to keep Zakir Naik out of UK

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Christian minister is bringing a legal test case to try to prevent a radical Islamic preacher coming to Britain.

The Reverend Mahboob Masih will lodge papers in the High Court this week alleging that Dr Zakir Naik, an Indian-based television preacher, is “extremely dangerous to community cohesion, religious tolerance and race relations”. He will claim that the courts should give greater respect to Christian values and declares in High Court papers that Britain’s judges have adopted an “over sensitivity to Islamic sensibilities due to the threat of violence”.

Dr Naik had been due to lecture at a series of major venues including Wembley Arena and the Birmingham NEC in the summer but was banned from entering the UK by Theresa May, the Home Secretary, just two days before his arrival. Dr Naik is now taking the Home Secretary to court for a judicial review of that decision.

The Rev Masih’s highly unusual intervention is intended to bolster the Government’s case to keep Dr Naik out of the UK. The Church of Scotland minister will argue he has the right to make his legal protest because he previously lost his job as presenter of a community radio station after a disccusion about Dr Naik’s preachings.

Sunday Telegraph, 10 October 2010

Update:  Christian Concern For Our Nation reports that Masih’s case is being brought by the Christian Legal Centre whose director, Andrea Minichiello Williams, has been advising Masih.

Douglas Murray stands by Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference speech, accuses Tory leadership of ‘befriending and appeasing Islamists’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Over at the Spectator Douglas Murray complains that he’s been ostracised by the Tory leadership over his notorious speech at the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference in 2006 (“It is late in the day, but Europe still has time to turn around the demographic time-bomb which will soon see a number of our largest cities fall to Muslim majorities. It has to. All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop…. Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board”).

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Muslim school denies forcing girls to wear the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jamea Al KautharLancaster school Jamea Al Kauthar is denying national newspaper claims that it forces pupils to wear the veil.

The £2,500-a-year all-girls Muslim boarding school was one of just three institutions to be named in a Sunday Telegraph report on compulsory veil policies in schools in the UK.

The article claimed Jamea Al Kauthar had introduced rules which forced girls to wear the burka or a full headscarf and veil known as the niqab when they were walking to or from school. It said the school’s uniform policy had been heavily criticised by mainstream Muslims who believed enforcement of the veil was a “dangerous precedent” and that children attending such schools were being “brainwashed”.

Jamea Al Kauthar declined to comment directly to the Lancaster Guardian but posted a statement on its website refuting the claims. The school said: “In response to the articles appearing in several newspapers regarding the enforcement of the veil upon our students, we would like to clarify that Jamea Al-Kauthar does not force any student to wear the veil. However, we do encourage students to dress modestly.”

Lancaster Guardian, 8 October 2010

Clearly we misreported this issue. Rather than identifying a mere three schools in the UK that require pupils to wear the niqab, theSunday Telegraph found at most two.

So what happened to the ‘sacred ground’ argument?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“A new survey from the Democratic-affiliated firm Public Policy Polling finds that more Republicans support constructing a strip club than a mosque near Ground Zero. Just four percent of Republican respondents said they support building a mosque two blocks from the site, whereas 21 percent said they would be fine with a strip club. ”

Huffington Post, 9 October 2010

The PPP poll can be consulted here.

Leicester magistrates ordered victim of domestic violence to remove veil before they would hear her evidence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim woman was asked to take off her veil in court to give evidence against her former partner in an assault case.

Georgina Richards agreed to remove it after Leicester magistrates warned they might not be able to accept her evidence if she did not. The 36-year-old was a witness at the trial of her former partner Ismail Mangera, later found guilty of punching her in the face and scrawling abuse on her front door.

During the hearing, chairman of the bench Lawrence Faulkner told Miss Richards: “We need to see a person’s facial expressions to assess the evidence they are giving. If you refuse to remove your veil we may not be able to accept your evidence.”

Miss Richards, who is pregnant, told the court her religion states she should not remove her veil in front of men in public. She agreed to remove it when she was allowed to give evidence from behind a screen in the courtroom. Only the male chairman of the bench and two female magistrates could see her.

However, speaking after the case, Miss Richards said it had still made her feel uncomfortable. She said:

“I was a bit unhappy that he told me to take my veil off. They put screens up next to me but I didn’t really want to do it. But I thought the case would be dropped if I didn’t take it off. It just made me feel uncomfortable. They wanted to see the expression on my face but I don’t think it really matters, I think I could have done it with my veil on.”

Miss Richards told the court that Mangera (30) had punched her in the mouth and knocked a tooth out.

Leicester Mercury, 8 October 2010

Update:  The Daily Express also covers the story, complete with a quote from Tory MP Philip Hollobone, the go-to guy for the right-wing press when they run a piece on Muslims:

“It seems to me entirely inappropriate for anyone to appear in court with their face covered, be they judge, witness or suspect. Everyone should be able to see everyone else’s face. There is no justification for her being allowed to give evidence from behind a screen, either. Would they have let a man in a motorcycle helmet give evidence in court? I doubt it.”

‘Defence leagues’ plan Amsterdam show of support for Geert Wilders

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Bradford4Far right groups modelled on the English Defence League have been set up across Europe and are planning to demonstrate in Amsterdam in support of the Dutch politician Geert Wilders.

French and Dutch “defence leagues” will join the EDL and several other anti-Islamic organisations on 30 October to coincide with the end of Wilders’s trial for hate speech and inciting racism.

Critics say the demonstration in Amsterdam is a sign of the EDL’s growing influence among far right and anti-Islamic groups in Europe and the US, and part of its self-proclaimed “international outreach work and networking”.

The EDL refused to answer the Guardian‘s questions today but its leader, who uses the pseudonym Tommy Robinson, wrote on the group’s website that the Amsterdam demonstration would “take the English Defence League global”.

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Abdulmutallab ‘not radicalised at UCL’, inquiry finds

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A former student at a London university charged with attempting to blow up a plane over the US on Christmas Day was unlikely to have been radicalised on campus, an independent inquiry ruled yesterday.

The inquiry found no evidence that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab adopted extremist views while studying engineering at University College London. It also said there was no evidence that conditions at the university were “conducive to the radicalisation of students”.

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