The Caldicott inquiry has now cleared University College London and the students’ union Islamic Society of playing any part in converting the “Christmas Day bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to violent extremism. But UCL is not the only institution to have been falsely accused of involvement in Abdulmutallab’s “radicalisation”. The North London Central Mosque (NLCM) in Finsbury Park has also come under attack, on the grounds that it supposedly hosted a lecture by Anwar al-Awlaki that was attended by Abdulmutallab.
Category Archives: Right wing
‘Should Muslims be treated on an equal footing?’
The recent statement by German President Christian Wulff that “Islam belongs in Germany” has provoked something of a conservative backlash. The German press is divided on whether the presence of Muslims in Germany is self-evident or cause for concern.
When German President Christian Wulff said that “Islam also belongs in Germany” during his speech to mark the 20th anniversary of German reunification on Sunday, he was initially showered with praise for recognizing the reality that around 4 million Muslims now live in Germany. Yet just a few days later, it is clear than many on the conservative side of German politics and society are still deeply uncomfortable with such a statement.
The ongoing unease in some quarters about the country’s Muslim population was revealed by a poll published by the influential mass circulation newspaper Bild on Tuesday which showed that 66 percent of those polled disagreed with Wulff’s assertion and only 24 percent agreed with it.
Should Americans fear Islam? (And should US TV programmes stereotype Muslims?)
“Imagine a respected TV show or news magazine article with the title, ‘Should Americans Fear Black People?'”
Congressman Keith Ellison takes issue with a recent ABC television discussion programme titled “Should Americans Fear Islam?”
The five most anti-Muslim ads of the year (so far)
Over at Salon Justin Elliott provides a select list of Islamophobic campaign ads.
Germany: Social Democrats and Greens demand equality for Islam
Leading members of the opposition Social Democrats and Greens called on Thursday for Islam to be recognised by the state as a religious community, similar to Christianity and Judaism.
The calls came as the peak Jewish body in Germany blasted recent conservative criticism of President Christian Wulff’s reunification speech, in which Wullf acknowledged that Islam was now part of Germany alongside the faiths of Christians and Jews.
In the wake of Wulff’s speech, the centre-left parties hit back against conservatives who had previously attacked Wulff’s remarks as undermining the core values and traditions of Germany.
“Islam needs a fair chance in Germany,” Dieter Wiefelspütz, interior affairs spokesman for the Social Democrats’ (SPD) parliamentary group, told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung. “It would be an important signal to the four million Muslims in Germany if the state recognised Islam as a religious community.”
At present, Christianity and Judaism are recognised by German law as statutory bodies, meaning they can be taught in state schools and have tithing fees collected by the German Finance Ministry as church tax.
Integration policy spokesman for the Greens, Memet Kilic, told the paper: “The recognition of Islam as an equal religious community before the law would convey to Muslims the feeling of being welcome in Germany. The (conservative Christian Democrats) must end their neurotic navel gazing immediately.”
In his speech last Sunday, Wulff said: “Christianity is of course part of Germany. Judaism is of course part of Germany. This is our Judeo-Christian history … But now Islam is also part of Germany,” he said in his speech. “When German Muslims write to me to say ‘you are our president’, I reply with all my heart ‘yes, of course I am your president’.”
Secretary general of the German Jewish Council, Stephan Kramer, also slammed the conservative response to Wulff’s speech as “close to hysterical” and said it showed “that apparently many politicians even today are shutting themselves off to the reality of an immigrant community.”
He added: “The Muslims living here are part of our society. So of course their religion also belongs in this country.” Ultimately the right to exercise freely one’s religious beliefs was anchored in the constitution, he said.
US Senate candidate says ‘militant terrorists’ are imposing Sharia law on US cities
U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle told a crowd of supporters that the country needs to address a “militant terrorist situation” that has allowed Islamic religious law to take hold in some American cities.
Her comments came at a rally of tea party supporters in the Nevada resort town of Mesquite last week after the candidate was asked about Muslims angling to take over the country, and marked the latest of several controversial remarks by the Nevada Republican.
In a recording of the rally provided to The Associated Press by the Mesquite Local News, a man is heard asking Angle : “I keep hearing about Muslims wanting to take over the United States … on a TV program just last night, I saw that they are taking over a city in Michigan and the residents of the city, they want them out. They want them out. So, I want to hear your thoughts about that.”
Angle responds that “we’re talking about a militant terrorist situation, which I believe it isn’t a widespread thing, but it is enough that we need to address, and we have been addressing it.”
“My thoughts are these, first of all, Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas are on American soil, and under constitutional law. Not Sharia law. And I don’t know how that happened in the United States,” she said. “It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States.”
Dearborn, Mich., has a thriving Muslim community. It was not immediately clear why Angle singled out Frankford, Texas, a former town that was annexed into Dallas around 1975.
Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly called Angle’s comments “shameful.” He said tea party groups inaccurately spread the word that his Detroit suburb was ruled by Islamic law after members of an anti-Islam group were arrested at an Arab cultural festival in June because a Christian volunteer complained of harassment.
Angle is in a dead-heat race against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. A recent poll showed Reid and Angle tied in the high-profile campaign.
Reid’s campaign said Angle’s comments advances its ongoing campaign to portray her as outside mainstream America. “The fact that Sharron Angle believes American cities have been taken over by militant terrorist organizations that are ruling our citizens under Sharia law shows a terrifying lack of connection with reality and a willingness to subscribe to conspiracy theories that demonstrates she’s far too extreme and dangerous to represent Nevada in the U.S. Senate,” spokesman Kelly Steele said.
Do Muslim countries ban churches and synagogues?
Last Sunday ABC’s This Week programme organised a television debate under the title “Holy War: Should Americans Fear Islam?”. One of the guests was right-wing Christian evangelist Franklin Graham, who said of US Muslims:
“They want to build as many mosques and cultural centers as they possibly can so they can convert as many Americans as they can to Islam…. I just don’t have the freedom to do this in most Muslim countries. We can’t have a church. We’re not able to build synagogues. It’s forbidden.”
Do most Muslim countries really ban the construction of churches and synagogues? PolitiFact.com subjects Graham’s claim to its Truth-O-Meter.
Imam Zijad Delic’s speech
Zijad Delic, national executive director of the Canadian Islamic Congress, was to deliver a speech earlier this week at a National Defence headquarters event marking Islamic History Month. But his invitation was withdrawn by Defence Minister Peter MacKay who accused the CIC of inciting hatred and said that Imam Delic had no place at an event honouring Muslim contributions to Canada.
The CIC has now posted the text of the speech that Delic would have made at the Islamic History Month event on their website, so the public can make up their own minds about the accuracy of MacKay’s charge that Delic and the CIC are guilty of promoting “extremist views”.
The campaign that resulted in the ban on Imam Delic appears to have been led by right-wing bloggers, but MacKay’s decision to cancel the speech was also warmly welcomed by an outfit calling itself the Muslim Canadian Congress.
Muslims must accept that German culture is ‘based on Christian and Jewish values’ says Merkel
Merkel presenting an award to anti-Muslim cartoonist Kurt Westergaard
Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday Muslims must obey the constitution and not sharia law if they want to live in Germany, which is debating the integration of its 4 million-strong Muslim population.
In the furor following a German central banker’s blunt comments about Muslims failing to integrate, moderate leaders including President Christian Wulff have urged Germans to accept that “Islam also belongs in Germany.”
But whereas the media stressed Wulff’s comments about Islam, Merkel – the daughter of a Protestant pastor brought up in East Germany, who leads a predominantly Catholic party – said Wulff had emphasized Germany’s “Christian roots and its Jewish roots.”
“Now we obviously also have Muslims in Germany. But it’s important in regard to Islam that the values represented by Islam must correspond with our constitution,” said Merkel. “What applies here is the constitution, not sharia.”
Merkel said Germany needed imams “educated in Germany and who have their social roots here” and concluded: “Our culture is based on Christian and Jewish values and has been for hundreds of years, not to say thousands.”
Merkel instructs Muslims to adopt ‘fundamental German values’
German Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded Monday that Muslims living in Germany conform to “fundamental German values,” saying there was no leeway on the issue.
The Christian Democrat chancellor, in remarks promoting a fiercely conservative book by one of her supporters, said Muslims in Germany must orient themselves without reservation to Germany’s fundamental values and constitution. “There is no leeway on this,” she said, adding that Germans’ perceptions of Islam were dominated by Sharia (Islamic law), the lack of equality between men and women and honour killings.
The book by Roland Koch, a former premier of the state of Hesse who retired this year to go into business, is titled “Conservative. No State Can Be Built Without Values and Principles”.
Germany’s president, Christian Wulff, had spoken more embracingly the previous day, saying, “Christianity belongs in Germany. Judaism belongs in Germany. And by now, Islam also belongs in Germany.” It was in Germany’s national interest to prevent prejudice from festering and people being excluded, he said.