David T denounces Liberty for jointly promoting today’s rally against Islamophobia at Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, with the British Muslim Initiative.
Harry’s Place, 20 November 2006
Further proof, if such were needed, of the progressive character of this evening’s meeting. But hurry! It starts at 6.30pm!
Muslim leaders in the Netherlands have condemned a proposed ban on burqas, describing the eve-of-election pledge as an opportunistic overreaction and a populist attempt to win the anti-immigration vote.
The announcement on the burqa from the outgoing government took many politicians by surprise because the twin issues of Islam and immigration had barely featured in the campaign up to that point.
But the integration of Muslims in the country remains a sensitive issue two years after the murder of the film-maker Theo van Gogh, whose film Submission criticised Islam.
On Friday, the hardline, outgoing, immigration minister, Rita Verdonk, said the cabinet had decided it was “undesirable that face-covering clothing – including the burqa – is worn in public places for reasons of public order, security and protection of citizens.”
She added: “From a security standpoint, people should always be recognisable and, from the standpoint of integration, we think people should be able to communicate with one another.”
The Welsh-based former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord George Carey says Muslim women, particularly teachers, should not be permitted to wear the veil in the workplace. The 70-year-old former head of the Church of England who now has a home in Llanrhidian, Gower, was speaking ahead of a lecture he will give at Swansea University next week.
“The face is an important medium of communication,” he said. “We all need to see a full face, to see the smile and hear the voice clearly. Obviously, wearing of the veil is not central to Islam otherwise every Muslim woman would be compelled to adopt that kind of dress.”
“They are both British and in their 50s. One is a City financier, the other an ex-member of the Armed Forces. And 18 months ago they became the unlikely financiers of a secretive organisation that, alongside BBC journalists, last week revealed how a cleric banned from Britain is using pseudonyms to broadcast his support for terrorism into the UK. The two ‘patriots’ who set up Vigil keep their identities secret, but others from the organisation agreed to talk to The Sunday Telegraph.”
The idiots responsible for Newsnight’s ludicrous “exposé” of Hizb ut-Tahrir are given credibility by the Torygraph.
“One of Britain’s most prominent speakers on Muslim issues is today exposed as a supporter of David Irving, the controversial historian who for years denied the Holocaust took place. Asghar Bukhari, a founder member of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), which describes itself as Britain’s largest Muslim civil rights group, sent money to Irving and urged Islamic websites to ask visitors to make donations to his fighting fund.”
Jamie Doward in the Observer, 19 November 2006
Except that, if you read the article, you find that all this took place back in 2000. Bukhari says that at that time he didn’t realise who Irving was and now describes his actions as “gravely mistaken”. So, in other words, he clearly isn’t “a supporter of David Irving”.
Another boost for Anthony Glees’s hysterical nonsense, in the Daily Telegraph, 18 November 2006
Melanie Phillips applauds the contribution of Paul Goodman, Tory MP for Wycombe, to the debate on the Queen’s Speech. It is easy to see why, because Goodman accepts the equation of “Islamism” with “Islamist extremism” and even “Islamist terrorism” which is common currency among Islamophobes like Mad Mel and Martin Bright, whose Policy Research pamphlet When Progressives Treat With Reactionaries Goodman recommends in his speech.
Goodman states: “Islamism divides not on the basis of class or of race, but on the basis of religion. To this politician, it has three significant features. First, it separates the inhabitants of the dar-al-Islam – the house of Islam – and the dar-al-Harb – the house of war – and, according to Islamist ideology, those two houses are necessarily in conflict. Secondly, it proclaims to Muslims that their political loyalty lies not with the country that they live in, but with the umma – that is, the worldwide community of Muslims. Thirdly, it aims to bring the dar-al-Islam under sharia law.”
Perhaps Goodman should check out some rather more informed and balanced studies of Islamism – for example, The Future of Political Islam by Graham E. Fuller, who writes:
“In my view an Islamist is one who believes that Islam as a body of faith has something important to say about how politics and society should be ordered in the contemporary Muslim World and who seeks to implement this idea in some fashion. The term ‘political Islam’ should be neutral in character, neither pejorative nor judgmental in itself; only upon further definition of the specific views, means and goals of an Islamist movement in each case can we be critical of the process. I prefer this definition because it is broad enough to capture the full spectum of Islamist expression that runs the gamut from radical to moderate, violent to peaceful, democratic to authoritarian, traditionalist to modernist.”
“Islamist groups first identified Britain’s universities as a fertile recruiting ground more almost two decades ago. They followed the example set by the far-left, which had been hugely successful in the 1980s in attracting young people with impressionable minds to simplistic utopian ideologies….
“Student unions and vice-chancellors have made various attempts to tackle the problem but have always held back from really dealing with it because they fear being accused of Islamophobia. The radical groups have continued to organise and indoctrinate, often under false names, and have found the process increasingly easy in the climate of anger surrounding the Iraq war.
“Jewish students at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London have complained of fears for their personal safety because of the pronouncements of some fellow students. Members of student Islamic societies have been among those arrested and charged in recent counter-terrorist operations. Campus radicalism persists and is spreading. Mere ‘guidance’ from mandarins in the DfES is unlikely to stop it spreading.”
Sean O’Neill in the Times, 17 November 2006
The Dutch government said Friday it plans to draw up legislation “as soon as possible” banning full-length veils known as burqas and other clothing that covers a person’s entire face in public places.
“The Cabinet finds it undesirable that face-covering clothing – including the burqa – is worn in public places for reasons of public order, security and protection of citizens,” Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk said in a statement.
Basing the order on security concerns apparently was intended to respond to warnings that outlawing clothing like the all-enveloping burqa, worn by some Muslim women, could violate the constitutional guarantee against religious discrimination.
The main Dutch Muslim organization CMO has been critical of any possible ban. The idea was “an overreaction to a very marginal problem” because hardly any Dutch women wear burqas anyway, said Ayhan Tonca of the CMO. “It’s just ridiculous.”
In the past, a majority of the Dutch parliament has said it would approve a ban on burqas, but opinion polls ahead of national elections Nov. 22 suggest a shift away from that position, and it is unclear if a majority in the new parliament would still back the government-proposed ban.
Associated Press, 17 November 2006
See also “Dutch government backs burqa ban”, BBC News, 17 November 2006
The ban would of course mainly affect the niqab rather than the rarely-worn burqa. But why should Verdonk (or the BBC) bother about the technicalities of Muslims’ funny foreign clothing?
A security expert has refuted claims there is no evidence of radicalism in universities, arguing 21 are directly linked to the extremism which has led to terrorism. Students “have been recruited to terror” on campuses, said professor Anthony Glees after today’s government guidance on preventing extremism. Professor Glees condemned Universities UK for its “counter-productive” approach after he “presented them with the evidence for this a year ago”. “Now it seems that the government is determined to make sure Universities UK take this problem as seriously as it should be taken,” he told Today.
Politics.co.uk, 17 November 2006
Listen to the Today interview with Glees here. Even Bill Rammell dismisses Glees as a provocative extremist.