Fox & Friends baselessly suggested that Muslim scholars Tariq Ramadan and Adam Habib – who were both denied entry into the United States under the Bush administration but had the ban lifted by the Obama administration – are “terrorists.” However, both have denied engaging in terrorist activity, neither was ever charged with any crime, and media accounts have noted that they “were denied admittance after making statements counter to U.S. foreign policy.”
Category Archives: Right wing
Christian nurse ‘ordered to remove crucifix… at hospital where Muslims were allowed to wear headscarves’
A Christian nurse was “forced to choose between her job and her faith” after being ordered to remove her crucifix at a hospital where Muslim staff wore headscarves unchallenged, a tribunal heard yesterday.
Shirley Chaplin, 54, said she had been wearing the religious symbol around her neck without complaint for 31 years before she was ordered to hide it away. But the grandmother claims that after refusing to comply and then pointing out that two women doctors were allowed to wear headscarves, she was moved to a desk job.
Her case has caused uproar among Christian support groups, who feel their beliefs are not being given the same respect as other faiths. At the weekend her case against the NHS was backed by seven senior Anglican bishops who issued a national letter of support.
Yesterday, on the first day of an employment tribunal, Mrs Chaplin, from Kenn, near Exeter, Devon, told of her fight to be allowed to carry on wearing the crucifix. She is claiming religious discrimination in a case backed by the Christian Legal Centre, which says her treatment is a symptom of increasing discrimination against Christians.
Update: See also “Christian nurse says NHS ‘persecuted’ her faith and favours Muslims employees”, Daily Telegraph, 31 March 2010
French PM advised against total Islamic veil ban
France’s top administrative body has advised the government that any total ban on face-covering Islamic veils could be unconstitutional. The State Council also said a ban could be justified in some public places.
Prime Minster Francois Fillon had asked the council for a legal opinion before drawing up a law on the subject. However, an MP from President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party was quoted as saying that those drafting the legislation might ignore Tuesday’s ruling.
In the ruling, the council said any law could be in violation of the French constitution as well as the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. “It appears to the State Council that a general and absolute ban on the full veil as such can have no incontestable judicial basis,” it said.
See also Associated Press, 30 March 2010
Mohamed Ali Harrath vindicated in ‘Interpol Red Notice Charge’ trial in South Africa
Islam Channel CEO – Mohamed Ali Harrath appeared this morning in Kempton Park Magistrates Court in Pretoria, in what was regarded as a formality following his arrest at the end of January this year, in connection with an Interpol Red Notice posted by the Tunisian authorities.
Mohamed Ali was bound over to re-attend the court to allow the Tunisian authorities time to put forward a case for his extradition in connection with convictions imposed in his absentia relating to his opposition 20 years ago to the one party state in Tunisia.
In January this year following Mr Harrath’s arrest at the Oliver Tambo airport, lawyers representing Mr Harrath challenged the lawfulness of the arrest and demanded that evidence be produced to confirm Mr Harrath’s guilt or complicity in alleged crimes.
In the absence of such evidence or indeed any submission from the Tunisian authorities, the Magistrate at the court in Kempton Park today notified Mr Harrath that there are no grounds on which he should be held either now or in the future in relation to the notice.
On the basis of Tunisia’s lack of response, its decision not to present evidence in this trial and the Magistrate’s dismissal of the case, the lawyers representing Mr Harrath will today be making an application to have the notice removed from Interpol’s records. Lawyers are also intending to pursue the South African authorities for damages in respect of wrongful arrest – on the basis that the notice was issued against him over 20 years ago by Interpol, on a misleading instruction by the government of Tunisia and that Interpol’s website states that “An Interpol Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant” and “the person should be considered innocent until proven guilty.”
Following the trial, Mr Harrath proclaimed: “This trial has been a significant legal test both in terms of the lack of sincerity and integrity of the allegations against me and of the unjustness of the Interpol Red Notice system – which has been used to intimidate and harass political opponents by states such as Tunisia. This result is a complete vindication of the allegations against me and I shall be pressing for a complete and urgent review of the misuse and abuse of the Interpol Red Notice system.”
Islam Channel press release, 29 March 2010
Cf. Douglas Murray, “I had dinner with a wanted terrorist”, Telegraph blog, 17 March 2010
ENGAGE replies to Quilliam’s attack on Islam Channel
“Like much of the QF’s steady output of drivel, the report is poorly researched with causal relationships established on the flimsiest of empirical data.”
ENGAGE provides a critique of the Quilliam Foundation’s reportRe-programming British Muslims: A study of the Islam Channel.
See also ENGAGE’s letter to Charles Farr, Director-General of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism. They write:
“What the OSCT and the Foreign Office, who fund the QF, surely need to now ask themselves in response to this latest smear campaign is whether their association with a body that British Muslims find abhorrent for its half-baked analysis and laughable policy prescriptions, and which derails the other benign efforts by government departments to fully engage British Muslims in debates on integration and belonging, is a price worth paying?”
While he’s at it, Charles Farr might also like to consider whether it is an appropriate use of taxpayers’ money for the Quilliam Foundation to hire expensive libel lawyers in an attempt to intimidate their critics.
Gilligan returns to witch-hunt of Muslim Aid
Hamas link of charity praised by Brown
By Andrew Gilligan
Sunday Telegraph, 28 March 2010
A charity praised last week by Gordon Brown and the Prince of Wales has channelled hundreds of thousands of pounds to groups linked to Hamas, the banned terrorist organisation, according to security sources.
The Prime Minister and the heir to the throne personally praised Muslim Aid, whose own accounts show it has paid at least £325,000 to the Islamic University of Gaza, where leading Hamas figures teach, and £13,998 to the al-Ihsan Charitable Society, designated by the US government as a “sponsor of terrorism” and a front for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group.
Security sources also claim that Muslim Aid has helped channel a further Pounds 210,600 to six other organisations in the Gaza Strip since July 2009, all of which they say are linked to Hamas.
Muslim Aid is banned from the West Bank by the Israeli government, which says it is a member of the Union of Good, an alliance of charities that raise money for Hamas. Hamas is banned throughout the EU as a designated terrorist organisation.
In a video address to Muslim Aid’s 25th anniversary dinner on Wednesday, Mr Brown praised the charity’s “valuable work” and said: “I wish Muslim Aid and its passionate and committed staff and supporters the very best for another 25 years of achievement.”
According to invitations sent out by Muslim Aid, Mr Brown had been due to speak in person at the dinner, but cancelled at the last minute. However, another member of the Cabinet, Shaun Woodward, the Northern Ireland Secretary, did speak, as did a member of the Conservative front bench, Andrew Mitchell MP. Two other ministers, Sadiq Khan and Gareth Thomas, attended the dinner.
The Prince sent a message saying that “our country is incredibly fortunate to be able to count on organisations like Muslim Aid, who bring not only help, but hope to those most in need”.
Update: See “Muslim Aid rejects false allegations printed in theSunday Telegraph“, Muslim Aid press release, 29 March 2010
Bin Laden threatens America, NYC welcomes Tariq Ramadan
Thus Phyllis Chesler’s response to the news that Tariq Ramadan will be speaking at New York’s Cooper Union on 8 April, following the lifting of the ban on his entering the US. Chesler herself probably won’t be turning up:
“I do not know if I’ll have the stomach to attend. Ramadan is not my problem, I know him for the snake he is. Rather, it would be the sight of so many Americans who’ve glamorized him, who are fooled by him, who have come to worship Death at his feet.”
Tory government would end relations with MCB says Cameron
A Conservative government would cut ties with the leading representative of the Muslim Council of Britain. David Cameron said that his party “won’t do formal things” with the Muslim Council of Britain unless the organisation distanced itself from Daud Abdullah, its deputy secretary-general.
The Labour Government cut ties with the council in March last year after Mr Abdullah signed the Istanbul Declaration in “solidarity” with the Palestinians after the Israeli bombing of Gaza. Relations were however restored in January this year.
In an interview with Ahmed Versi, editor of Muslim News, Mr Cameron said: “We should have a very positive relationship with the Muslim community and representatives of the Muslim community. There are other representative bodies. We would be fully engaged with them.”
Update: See also ENGAGE, 26 March 2010
Islam Channel promotes hatred and extremism, claims Quilliam
Britain’s leading Islamic TV channel has regularly broadcast demeaning material about women and promoted extremist groups, it was alleged yesterday.
Programmes on the Islam Channel have told women they should not refuse to have sex with their husbands or leave home without their permission, an inquiry by the Islamic think-tank the Quilliam Foundation found. Women who wear perfume in public have been labelled prostitutes.
The channel has regularly acted as a propaganda platform for Hizb ut-Tahrir, the fundamentalist organisation that Tony Blair wanted to ban after the 2005 London bombings. It has also promoted hate preachers, a report said.
And, the inquiry by the Islamic think tank the Quilliam Foundation found, its broadcasts are also trying to sow hatred between different Muslim groups by promoting a single strand of hardline theology.
US Baptist church buys anti-Islam ad
Granite City Baptist Church raised some eyebrows this weekend when it bought an ad (pdf) in the St. Cloud Times that questioned whether Muslims are a “threat” to America.
“How do Moslems seek to take control of a nation?” the ad, which features a photo of Pastor Dennis Campbell, asks. “Moslems seek to influence a nation by immigration, reproduction, education, the government, illegal drugs and by supporting the gay agenda.”
The ad is part of a string of incidents in St. Cloud that troubles human rights advocates. Within the last year, pornographic posters depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammed were put up on St. Cloud telephone polls, and Muslim students in St. Cloud area high schools have reported religious harassment.
Last week, MPR reported on several racist Facebook groups that were created by St. Cloud high school students. “I hate the Somalians at Tech High,” was one such group. Kyle Adams, a former student at St. Cloud Technical High School (he was kicked out for repeatedly using racial slurs) told MPR, “I was raised in believing that this country was founded upon a white Christian nation and the belief of racial separation.”
The Granite City Baptist Church ad seems to mirror some of that anti-Muslim sentiment. “What happens when Moslems take over a nation?” asks Campbell in the ad. “They will destroy the constitution and force the Moslem religion on the society, take freedom of religion away, and they will persecute all other religions.”
Minnesota Independent, 25 March 2010
Via LoonWatch