Category Archives: State Oppression

The latest from Taj Hargey and friends

Posted on by Bob Pitt

You might have thought that any Muslim organisation would welcome as a victory for civil rights the decision to lift a ban on veiled women voting in elections in Quebec.

Not the so-called Muslim Canadian Congress. In a press release headed “Allowing masked voters a rude joke, says MCC President” the MCC complains that “enabling voters to conceal their identity represent a compromise of the democratic process”, warns that “such allowances will embolden Islamists and their supporters to seek even greater concessions in the future” and expresses concern that “the current trend to appease fundamentalist forces may be symptomatic of a larger problem forcing governments to capitulate to the bullying tactics of Islamists”.

Mind you, this is the outfit that denounced fellow Muslims who demonstrated against Israel’s attack on Lebanon as “Canadian supporters of Hezbollah”.

The MCC, you may also recall, is the group who gave financial assistance to Taj Hargey in his campaign against the right of British school pupils to wear the niqab. And in today’s Times we find Mr Hargey himself, congratulating the paper on its scaremongering campaign against Deobandi influence in UK mosques: “Your Deobandi exposé is welcomed by progressive Muslims. Sadly, most British Muslims, through ignorance or fear, cannot resist the insidious designs and dogmas of this secretive and reactionary sect and its many dangerous offshoots in this country.”

Canada PM opposes Muslim veil decision

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Harper and friendCanadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Sunday he disagrees with a decision to allow Muslim women to wear veils covering their faces when they vote.

Elections Canada – an independent body that oversees national elections – said last week that Muslim women will be allowed to wear veils when they vote in by-elections later this month in Quebec, where the issue of the traditional covering has been hotly contested.

The decision means women who wear niqabs – which cover the entire face except for the eyes – or a burqa, an all-covering body veil, can bring a photo ID or another document proving their identity when they vote in the Quebec elections.

Harper said he “profoundly disagrees” with the decision and noted all four parties in Parliament this past spring voted to bring in a new law requiring visual identification of voters. “That’s the purpose of the law,” said Harper, speaking to reporters following an international summit in Sydney, Australia. ‘That was a law adopted virtually unanimously by Parliament. I think this decision goes in an entirely different direction,’ he said.

Harper said he hopes Elections Canada reconsiders, “but in the meantime, if that doesn’t happen, Parliament will have to consider what actions it’s going to take to make sure that its intentions are put into place.”

The decision comes after the Quebec’s chief election officer required Muslim women to show their faces in order to be allowed to vote in a provincial election. The decision was condemned by Muslim groups who said it forced women to decide whether to adhere to their religious beliefs or violate their faith and vote.

The by-elections – which typically occur when a Parliament members leaves their seat early – will be held on Sept. 17 in three different districts in Quebec.

The issue of the Muslim veil has repeatedly come up in the province, which is predominantly Catholic. In February, an 11-year-old Muslim girl participating in a soccer tournament in Quebec was pulled off the field after she refused to remove her headscarf.

Associated Press, 9 September 2007

Standard columnist hails repression of Muslims in Germany

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anne McelvoyIn the London Evening Standard (5 September 2007) Anne McElvoy expresses her admiration for the repressive methods pursued by Angela Merkel’s government in response to the threat of terrorism:

“Germany has a different approach to its Muslim immigrants than Britain. There is less emphasis on a ‘hearts and minds’ campaign; her hardline interior minister Wolfgang Schauble ended up in constitutional hot water for suggesting that if a suspected terrorist was wrongly killed, it was preferable to risking the wider loss of innocent life….

“What is striking is the difference in tone. The vast efforts of the Government in Britain since the first bomb attacks have gone into improving community relations, attempting to find Muslim leaders who can separate potential extremists from the mainstream. Mr Brown has reversed some of the more confrontational Blairite policies, like the ostracism of the Muslim Council of Britain. Borderline organisations like Hizb ut-Tahrir remain unbanned.

“In Germany and France, facing increasingly agitated Muslim populations, this would be unthinkable. Vast numbers of suspects are kept under the equivalent of control orders, deportations of troublemakers are more swift and frequent…. Germany, as one senior minister told me recently, does not believe in a ‘softly softly’ solution. ‘Look where that got you’, he said.”

US Muslim sues over right to wear head scarf

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim whose religious practice requires that she cover her head in public sued the Orange County Sheriff’s Department on Tuesday, alleging her rights were violated when jail officials forced her to remove a head scarf while locked up for about eight hours.

Souhair Khatib filed suit in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, alleging that her right to practice her religion had been violated, causing her “extreme mental and emotional distress.” Named in the complaint, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California, were Sheriff Michael S. Carona, the captain in charge of courtroom deputies and Orange County. Khatib, 32, of Anaheim, said she filed the lawsuit to make other Muslim women in the U.S. aware of their right to religious freedom.

ACLU attorney Hector Villagra said jail officials ordered Khatib’s hijab removed because they said it could be used to choke someone. But Villagra said a woman in the holding cell with Khatib was wearing fishnet stockings that were not confiscated and could have also been used as a weapon. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and requests that Orange County Jail officials allow the use of religious head coverings.

Los Angeles Times, 5 September 2007

Kenya Muslims say US backed torture and detention

Posted on by Bob Pitt

NAIROBI – Kenyan Muslims marched on police headquarters in Nairobi on Thursday in protest against what they called the illegal detention and torture of fellow Muslims in an anti-terrorist drive urged on by the United States. The protest involving a few dozen people followed months of simmering tensions between the east African nation’s Muslim community and authorities they accuse of persecuting and arresting them on U.S. government orders.

Reuters, 30 August 2007

Haider calls for ban on mosque building

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jorg HaiderAustrian right-wing firebrand Joerg Haider said on Monday he plans to change building laws to prevent mosques and minarets being erected in his home province of Carinthia.

Haider, Carinthia’s governor, said he would ask its parliament to amend the building code to would require towns and villages to consider “religious and cultural tradition” when dealing with construction requests.

“We don’t want a clash of cultures and we don’t want institutions which are alien to our culture being erected in Western Europe,” Haider said in a statement. “Muslims have of course the right to practise their religion, but I oppose erecting mosques and minarets as centres to advertise the power of Islam.”

His spokesman, Stefan Petzner, said that there were no plans to restrict Muslim prayer rooms, as this would violate Muslims’ human rights, and the planned change applied only to dedicated mosques and minarets.

Muslims in Europe are meeting increasing resistance to plans for mosques that befit Islam’s status as the continent’s second religion after Christianity, with petitions in London, protests in Cologne, a court case in Marseille and violence in Berlin.

However, while all those places have significant Muslim minorities, Haider’s Carinthia has the second lowest share of Muslim citizens of all Austrian provinces – 11,000 out of a population of around 400,000, a Muslim spokesman said.

“It’s a ridiculous statement to say he fears a clash of civilisations (in Carinthia),” said Omar al-Rawi, a centre-left lawmaker who is spokesman for the Austrian Muslims’ Initiative. “We don’t know of any mosque plans there. His move is meaningless, populist, racist and anti-Islamic,” he added.

Reuters, 27 August 2007

Seven-year-old Muslim boy stopped in US on suspicion of being a terrorist

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Javaid IqbalFor seven-year-old Javaid Iqbal, the holiday to Florida was a dream trip to reward him for doing well at school. But he was left in tears after he was stopped repeatedly at airports on suspicion of being a terrorist.

The security alerts were triggered because Javaid shares his name with a Pakistani man deported from the US, prompting staff at three airports to question his family about his identity. The family even missed their flight home from the U.S. after officials cancelled their tickets in the confusion. And Javaid’s passport now contains a sticker saying he has undergone high-level security checks.

Salim Mulla, secretary of the Lancashire Council of Mosques, said: “It is ridiculous, I’m shocked. They really should have known he was only a seven-year-old child. I do understand the reasons but this was over the top. I can understand the safety aspect but it doesn’t help relationships with different faiths.”

Daily Mail, 20 August 2007

Islamic convert found guilty on terror conspiracy charge

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jose Padilla (2)Jose Padilla, a young American convert to Islam, who was jailed without charge in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks and allegedly tortured, was convicted on terrorism conspiracy charges yesterday.

Mr Padilla achieved notoriety when the former US Attorney General John Ashcroft announced on television from Moscow that he was part of an “unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive dirty bomb” with the intention of causing “mass death and injury.” Despite the hysteria whipped up by Mr Ashcroft, no evidence was ever presented linking Mr Padilla to such a plot.

Yesterday’s verdict was a rare legal victory for the Bush Administration however. It has seen charges thrown out against virtually all those swept up after the al-Qai’da attacks on America. A federal jury took little more than a day to reach its verdict and Mr Padilla, 36, can now expect to spend the rest of his life in jail.

Anthony Natale, one of Mr Padilla’s lawyers said he was never connected to al-Qai’da and had no intention to support terrorism. “In this case, you will see how in the absence of hard evidence, a suspicion can be fuelled by fear, nourished by prejudice and directed by politics into a criminal prosecution,” Mr Natale said.

Independent, 17 August 2007

NYPD warns – watch out for Muslims with beards

Posted on by Bob Pitt

They preferred bookstores or hookah bars to mosques. They stopped listening to pop music and instead surfed Web sites promoting radical Islam. They threw away their baseball caps and grew beards. New York Police Department intelligence analysts have concluded those were some of the telltale signs of homegrown terrorists in the making – a mounting threat as grave as that from established terrorist groups like al-Qaida.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations accused the NYPD analysts of distorting the innocent behavior of observant Muslims. “Is Islamic attire or giving up bad habits … now to be regarded as suspicious behavior?” asked the group’s chairman, Parvez Ahmed.

Kareem Shora, legal adviser for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, called the findings faulty and inflammatory. “The report is at odds with federal law enforcement findings, including those of the recently released National Intelligence Estimate, and uses unfortunate stereotyping of entire communities,” Shora said in a statement. “The use of such language by the NYPD is un-American and goes against everything for which we stand.”

Associated Press, 16 August 2007