The head of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party said on Sunday he wants a law to ensure that Muslim women who wear face-covering veils do not acquire French nationality. Xavier Bertrand, head of the conservative UMP party, said the full veil “is simply a prison for women who wear it” and “will make no one believe” a woman wearing it wants to integrate.
Category Archives: Right wing
Reza Pankhurst condemns McCarthyite witch-hunt
A postgraduate teacher accused of Islamist “infiltration” of the London School of Economics has dismissed the allegations as a “McCarthyite witch-hunt”.
Reza Pankhurst, who spent four years in Egyptian prisons for membership of Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), had anticipated criticism when he began studying for a PhD and delivering lectures to students. HT, which advocates the creation of a Muslim caliphate in the Arab world, is outlawed in Egypt but legal in Britain.
In an interview with the Guardian, Pankhurst, 34, said individuals were being “hounded because of their views”, and that dissent from Muslims was being silenced. The LSE has defended his right to “freedom of expression within the law”.
Pankhurst insists he is opposed to terrorist violence. He recently spoke about Abdulmutallab, saying he had not been radicalised in London. “What [my accusers] forgot to say was that I spent 10 minutes stressing that any action that targets innocents is prohibited and that there’s no justification for it in Islam. [Abdulmutallab] was radicalised by a sense of injustice … by what he saw on the news about Afghanistan and Iraq.”
Pankhurst also refuted claims that he helped “groom” another ex-student, Omar Sharif, who blew himself up in Tel Aviv in 2003. “This guy must have been on the course at the same time as me at King’s College in 1996. I was president of the Islamic Society,” Pankhurst said. “Does that mean I was responsible for what he did seven years later? It’s neocon nonsense. It’s crime by association.”
Pankhurst is taking legal advice over “this false allegation”, he says.
Such slurs, he said, are a “form of McCarthyism directed against Muslims who speak out” against UK foreign policy. “Do they want Muslims to be engaged in professional fields or would they prefer us to be on benefits? The innuendo, blacklisting and McCarthyite witch-hunts are very counter-productive. I have not said anything which is illegal, or anything that incites violence.”
Banning veil is oppressive, says Salma Yaqoob
Plans to ban Muslim women from covering their faces in public areas are oppressive, the leader of the Respect party said yesterday.
Salma Yaqoob’s comments came as the UK Independence Party (UKIP) announced a formal policy that would make the wearing of garments such as the burka or the niqab – both of which conceal most of the face – to be illegal.
Nigel Farage, the former UKIP leader and MEP, said: “In a liberal democracy we want to tolerate different religions and cultures and not have a small section of society impose their world view on the rest of us.”
Ms Yaqoob said: “We do not need a man or a woman telling people what to wear.”
‘Delight’ as London super-mosque near Olympic site is blocked
Campaigners opposed to a “super-mosque” being built next to the 2012 Olympic site today told of their delight after the scheme was blocked.
The Abbey Mills mosque and Islamic centre on a 7.3 hectare site in Stratford was to house 12,000 worshippers and would have been the biggest in Europe. But Newham council announced it will issue an eviction notice against the Islamist group behind it, Tablighi Jamaat, which has 80 million followers worldwide.
Alan Craig, a Christian Peoples’ Alliance councillor, said: “I’m delighted that the council has finally seen the light on this. It’s a key site for the local community that would have been lost if the mega-mosque had been built. It is a big step forward, but a lot could still happen.
“The authorities use planning terms, but they’ve come to see the misogynist nature of the group themselves and don’t want to give them that platform.”
‘Mega-mosque’ succumbs to Islamophobic campaign
Controversial plans to build Europe’s biggest mosque close to the London Olympics site have been halted, The Times has learnt.
Tablighi Jamaat, the Islamic sect behind the proposal, is to be evicted this week from the East London site, where it has been operating illegally a temporary mosque and had planned a complex that would accommodate 12,000 worshippers.
The Muslim Council of Britain said that the group had fallen victim to “unfounded hostility and hysteria”.
However, another Muslim organisation last night welcomed the move. Minhaj-ul-Quran, which advises the Government on how to combat youth radicalisation, said that a mosque should be a “community effort” and not the initiative of one group with extremist links.
Elsewhere in the online version of Times, Ruth Gledhill devotes a puff piece to Minhaj-ul-Quran.
MuQ, for those who are unfamiliar with it, is a much smaller, more liberal rival to Tablighi Jamaat. They run a mosque in Forest Gate where they have some local influence. When all the hysteria kicked off about the Tablighi so-called “mega-mosque”, MuQ set up a front organisation, Sunni Friends of Newham, and joined the campaign against it. They were cited by right-wing opponents of the Tablighi plan to show that Muslims were hostile to it too. Admittedly, after a while MuQ appeared to have thought better of forming an anti-Tablighi bloc with racists, and it looked like they had dropped their public opposition. But evidently not.
The reason why the Times is boosting MuQ, in my opinion, is that it’s part of the right-wing agenda of promoting Sufism as some sort of fluffy, harmless alternative to political Islam. In the case of MuQ this is particularly bizarre, as in Pakistan almost all tendencies within Islam (apart from the Tablighis, ironically enough) engage in party politics. MuQ have their own political party there, the Pakistan Awami Tehreek.
Ed Balls accused of ‘double standards’ over mosque schools
Schools Secretary Ed Balls has been accused of refusing to ban Islamic schools from smacking children for fear of upsetting Muslim “sensitivities”.
Mr Balls was last week urged to close a legal loophole which gives teachers in Britain’s estimated 1,600 schools associated with mosques the right to smack children – even though it is banned in other schools. He refused, prompting claims that he is allowing an alleged “culture of physical abuse” in some of the mosque schools – or madrasahs – go unchecked.
Smacking is banned in all State and private schools. However, it does not apply to madrasahs, where pupils usually study in the evenings or at weekends, because the ban exempts schools where children attend for less than 12.5 hours per week.
Lib Dem schools spokesman David Laws, who is spearheading the campaign to close the smacking loophole, said: “The Government needs to legislate to protect children – not leave an opt-out simply because it fears some ethnic or religious backlash.”
He was supported by Labour MP Ann Cryer, who said it would be “bonkers” if the Government did not act. She said: “I suspect people are frightened of upsetting the sensitivities of certain members of the Muslim faith.” She denied she was biased against Islamic schools and said classes run by “strange Christian sects” should also be covered by the smacking ban.
A spokesman for Mr Balls’ department denied that his refusal to change the law was based on fears of upsetting Muslim opinion. “We have no evidence the law is being abused or that children are being abused in these circumstances,” he said.
Mail on Sunday, 17 January 2010
If there are any double standards here, they are on the part of Ann Cryer, who is not proposing that the law should be extended to cover Sunday schools run by the Church of England, for example – only to classes run by mosques and “strange Christian sects”, which she evidently regards at the religious equivalent of Islam.
As you might expect, the Mail article has been approvingly reproduced over at Jihad Watch.
UKIP chief Nigel Farage calls for burka ban
The burka and other face-covering veils worn by Muslim women should be banned, the UK Independence Party says.
Ex-UKIP leader Nigel Farage, who leads UKIP’s 13 MEPs in Brussels, told the BBC’s Politics Show they were a symbol of an “increasingly divided Britain”. He also said they “oppressed” women and were a potential security threat. But Schools Secretary Ed Balls said it was “not British” to tell people what to wear in the street, and accused UKIP of indulging in “unpleasant politics”.
UKIP is the first British party to call for a total ban, after the BNP called for it to be banned in Britain’s schools.
Mr Farage said: “I can’t go into a bank with a motorcycle helmet on. I can’t wear a balaclava going round the District and Circle line. What we are saying is, this is a symbol. It’s a symbol of something that is used to oppress women. It is a symbol of an increasingly divided Britain.
“And the real worry – and it isn’t just about what people wear – the real worry is that we are heading towards a situation where many of our cities are ghettoised and there is even talk about Sharia law becoming part of British culture.”
A “different” culture was “being forced on parts of Britain and nobody wants that”, added Mr Farage, but he denied the policy was an attempt to grab votes from the BNP, insisting it had “nothing to do with the BNP”. “There is nothing extreme or radical or ridiculous about this, but we can’t go on living in a divided society,” he told The Politics Show.
See also UKIP news report, 17 January 2010
UKIP calls for ban on veil
The UK Independence Party is to call for a ban on the burka and the niqab – the Islamic cloak that covers women from head to toe and the mask that conceals most of the face – claiming they affront British values.
The policy, which a number of European countries are also debating, is an attempt by UKIP to broaden its appeal and address the concerns of disaffected white working-class voters.
UKIP would be the first national party to call for a total ban on burkas, though the far-Right BNP believes they should be banned from schools.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch, the leader of UKIP, said yesterday: “We are taking expert advice on how we could do it. It makes sense to ban the burka – or anything which conceals a woman’s face – in public buildings. But we want to make it possible to ban them in private buildings. It isn’t right that you can’t see someone’s face in an airport.”
Nigel Farage, the former UKIP party leader, will announce tomorrow that the party believes the fabric of the country is under threat from Sharia and that forcing women to conceal their identity in public is not consistent with traditional Britishness.
UKIP believes that the burka and the niqab have no basis in Islam, are a threat to gender equality, marginalise women and endanger the public safety because terrorists could use them to hide their identity.
See also the Times editorial, “Veil of ignorance”, which condemns UKIP’s proposal as “deeply cynical and wrong”:
“They claim that the burka marginalises women. This is a new concern for UKIP. It is, after all, the party of Godfrey Bloom, the MEP who says that ‘any small businessman or woman who employs a woman of child-bearing age needs their head examined’. Perhaps Mr Bloom, who thinks that women do not clean behind the fridge enough, worries that their burkas are getting in the way.
“UKIP argues further that the burka has no place in Islam and that the religion does not require it. The Times had not hitherto realised that Nigel Farage was an authority on such matters, or that the party leader Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who was visited by God when on the operating table in 1977, thereby gained not only his Christian faith but also a mastery of the Koran. This newly acquired scholarship notwithstanding, the religious insights of politicians are entirely irrelevant when judging the right of British citizens to dress as they wish.”
Update: The fascists aren’t happy. See “Phony UKIP steals BNP burka policy”, BNP news report, 17 January 2010
Government restores links with MCB
Ministers have restored official ties with the Muslim Council of Britain despite its refusal to remove a deputy leader accused of supporting attacks on British soldiers
Tory MP Paul Goodman said: “It is a surrender to extremism by a bunch of politicians who are scared witless over losing their seat and are prepared to compromise real cohesion and real integration in order to appease an organisation that remains tainted.”
The Spectator reports this as “The government caves in to the Muslim Council of Britain”.
Toube makes a pillock of himself
Via ENGAGE