Ban It! says the Express

Posted on October 21, 2006 by Bob Pitt

Ban It Pressure was mounting last night for veils to be banned in Britain – just as they are in some Muslim countries. And rebels plotting fresh court protests were given a blunt warning by lawmakers: “Carry on, and we will bar you.”

The threat came amid a public outcry over the costs being racked up by teaching assistant Aishah Azmi as her lawyers, funded by taxpayers, continued their fight for her right to wear a veil in class. Daily Express readers responded in massive numbers to a poll on the crisis, with 99 per cent calling for the veil to be banned in schools, increasing pressure on the Government to act.

A ban would see Britain following many of its European neighbours, along with predominantly Muslim countries like Turkey and Tunisia in outlawing traditional Islamic headscarves in public schools and buildings.

Tory MP David Davies urged the Government to examine what other countries had done to discourage or outlaw the wearing of the full veil in public. “We should give it serious consideration too. It’s been banned in many countries, including Muslim. The time may have come for us to consider the same thing,” said the MP for Monmouth. “Tony Blair was right to say that it is a mark of separation. And what worries me is that it’s a way of subjugating women.”

Labour MP Ann Cryer, whose constituency in Keighley, West Yorkshire, has a large Muslim population, said she feared the high-profile Azmi case could spark a welter of copycat legal action by militants. And if that happened, she warned, legislation may be needed to enshrine in law a ban on veils being worn in classrooms and other civic buildings – which could mean on-the-spot fines and the withdrawal of state benefits.

Mrs Cryer said it was “totally unacceptable” to wear a full veil in front of young children and said an outright ban would be needed if people kept “pushing the boundaries” over the issue.

Daily Express, 21 October 2006

Ruth Kelly’s lies about ‘extremist Muslim hotspots’

Posted on October 21, 2006 by Bob Pitt

Rania_Khan Ruth Kelly, New Labour’s communities secretary, told a meeting of council leaders and police chiefs last week that she wants them to target Muslim “hotspots” – schools, universities, mosques and colleges which are supposedly centres of extremism.

This followed her recent comments that there needs to be a “fundamental rebalancing” of relationships with Muslim organisations which, she argues, are not doing enough to tackle extremism.

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) wrote to Kelly to complain that there had been a “drip-feed of ministerial statements stigmatising an entire community”. Kelly responded with an open letter to the MCB suggesting that they are “passive in tackling extremism and yet expect government support”.

Rania Khan [pictured], a Respect councillor in Tower Hamlets, told Socialist Worker, “Ruth Kelly’s comments about ‘Muslim hotspots’ are ridiculous and divisive. This is the latest stage in an increasing witch-hunt of Muslims. This scapegoating by the government is increasing racism. Speaking as a Muslim, I find it frightening.

“This is not how to tackle terrorism. Talking about targeting mosques and colleges is an appalling attack on our civil liberties. Just about every report into terrorism show that it is Britain’s foreign policy that is the main cause of terrorism. The only way to solve this would be to bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Socialist Worker, 21 October 2006

United States stops entry of British Muslim leader

Posted on October 20, 2006 by Bob Pitt

Kamal Helbawy The United States barred a British Muslim leader from flying to New York from London on Thursday morning, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said.

The department’s Customs and Border Protection section would not elaborate on why Kamal Helbawy, 67, a founding member of the Muslim Association of Britain, was told by airline staff to get off his flight shortly before it was due to leave London.

“The individual was inadmissible to enter the U.S.,” said spokeswoman Kelly Klundt. “I can’t speak specifically to this case as to why he was inadmissible.”

Helbawy was due to speak on a panel on the Muslim Brotherhood, organized by the Center on Law and Security, an independent think tank based at New York University.

Karen Greenberg, the executive director of the center, said Helbawy did not know why he had been stopped from traveling to the United States. ”According to him they didn’t tell him,” she said. ”What they told him was that basically he would have to go to the American Embassy first before he could come here.”

Reuters, 19 October 2006

Muslim student arrested for doing university project

Posted on October 20, 2006 by Bob Pitt

A 20 year old Muslim student was arrested under Britain’s terrorism law for taking photographs in east London for his university project before being released without charge. Kamran Tariq said he was detained last week while wandering amongst other tourists, hoping to gain inspiration to complete an assignment for his architecture course.

“I was singled out for being a young Pakistani Muslim and I was humiliated,” said Tariq, who is in his final year at the capital’s Greenwich University. He said he was arrested by a troop of nine officers, bungled into a police car, strip-searched and questioned for hours on suspicion of terrorism. He said he was also fingerprinted and required to provide a DNA sample.

“I cannot put into words what I felt. I was confused, angry, upset and astounded that this was happening to me. I’ve never so much as had a parking ticket, let alone had any other dealings with criminal activity or the police,” the student said. “I was made to feel small and treated like a criminal – all for a piece of university coursework,” he said in a statement obtained by IRNA. Tariq believes he was victimised because he was a Muslim. “Other students have been taking photographs of the area and they have not had any problems,” he said.

The local police confirmed that he was arrested on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack and was released without charge the same day without further action to be taken. “This was an isolated incident and our officers took the action they deemed to be appropriate,” a police spokesman was quoted saying by PA News.

IRNA, 18 October 2006

Muslim staff banned from Paris airport

Posted on October 20, 2006 by Bob Pitt

Four Muslim baggage handlers are appealing against a decision to bar them from working at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.

They say that the local government’s decision to revoke their security passes is evidence of anti-Muslim discrimination. A local government spokesman says the decision was based on an assessment of the terrorist risk. He denied the move was linked to the men’s religion.

Lawyers acting for the four men say that dozens of other Muslims who work at the airport have also been stripped of their security passes, leaving them unable to work.

The four men, who are of North African origin, say they were summoned by security officials for interviews concerning their employment in August. A few days later they were told that their airport passes, which gave them access to the area near runways, were being withdrawn.

A lawyer acting for the men said the baggage handlers were told they had been barred because they had “not shown that their behaviour was unlikely to violate airport security”.

As well as appealing against the local authority’s decision, the baggage handlers’ lawyers have submitted a criminal complaint for alleged discrimination against the men on the grounds that they are Muslims.

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Complaints of anti-terror police harassing Muslim communities

Posted on October 20, 2006 by Bob Pitt

Intelligence gathering operations by police in Tayside, aimed at preventing a future terrorist attack, have led to a deterioration in relations with Islamic communities, a leading Muslim organisation has warned.

The Muslim Association of Britain (Mab) said it had received numerous complaints over moves by Special Branch officers to contact university associations, businesses and members of the Islamic community, claiming that members of the public were being subjected to harassment.

It has now written to Tayside Police to lodge a formal complaint over the Special Branch Community Contact Unit (SBCCU), which was established in the wake of last year’s terrorist bombings in London to provide information on potential extremism.

The force has defended the measures, claiming they have led to closer community links and are likely to be taken up by other forces in Scotland.

Osama Saeed, Mab’s Scottish spokesman, said young Muslims had been approached by members of the unit and quizzed about their political views at their homes, workplaces and Islamic society meetings at Dundee and Abertay universities.

Plain-clothed officers had spoken to Muslim students at freshers stalls during the first week of university, asking them questions about their views on the conflict in Lebanon, he said: “Obviously, if people are talking about bombings or killing infidels, they would be reported to police. But it’s not clear what sort of other activities are supposed to be reported. Parents are concerned that their children are coming under the eye of the police.”

The Herald, 20 October 2006

Via Rolled Up Trousers

Anthony Glees: Internment should be a policy option

Posted on October 19, 2006 by Bob Pitt

“Academics should think the unthinkable. We should not be blinkered by political correctness. People need to speak up. They shouldn’t be made to be afraid. Increasingly universities are becoming mental corsets because of over-regulation. I’ve had universities threatening legal action, vice-chancellors calling for me to be prevented from doing research. And it’s these people who claim to be for freedom of speech.

“The legal profession has taken the European Convention far too far in a way that is inappropriate in a country that’s at war. The convention is deeply flawed. It was set up in 1948 and it is not right for now. At the moment we are at war, the fact that it is being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan conceals that fact. The law has been used to favour the perpetrator, not the persecuted. We need to think about how we should behave to people who consider us enemies, whether they are British citizens or people who are in Britain seeking asylum.

“Internment in the second world war is called MI5’s darkest hour, but internment was a very effective way of keeping the country safe from Nazi subversion. People say that the vast majority of those interned were Jews, and they would be the last people to act in a subversive way. In fact research shows that there were some Jews in Britain as agents of the Third Reich. Their families were in the hands of the Gestapo and they were blackmailed. And some say that internment in Northern Ireland made the situation better. Internment needs to be talked about. There shouldn’t be things that shouldn’t be considered – if they can help.

“The German equivalent of MI5 is called the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Liberal democracy will be easily destroyed if we do not act against extremism. We give our enemies the weapons they need to destroy us. We need to be more mindful that there is a threshold that should not be crossed. Not everything is permissible. Wearing the niqab is saying we don’t want to be British. Forty per cent of British Muslims say they want to live under sharia law. That is unacceptable. They should go to a country with sharia law.”

Anthony Glees in the Independent, 19 October 2008

State snoopers turn on Muslim students

Posted on October 17, 2006 by Bob Pitt

State snoopers turn on Muslim students

By Daniel Coysh

Morning Star, 17 October 2006

ACADEMICS and students vowed to fight “McCarthyite” government proposals for university staff to spy on Muslim and “Asian-looking” students yesterday. Lecturers’ union UCU and the National Union of Students both insisted that the proposals were unacceptable and would be vigorously opposed.

Reports said that The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) is drawing up plans to ask universities and colleges to inform on students to Special Branch. As the hysteria surrounding Islamist “extremism” threatens to completely engulf British political discourse, a leaked 18-page consultation document raised fears that Britain’s universities have become “fertile recruiting grounds” for radical groups.

But UCU joint general secretary Paul Mackney pointed out that “radicalisation is not the same as violent extremism or terrorism.”

He said: “The government’s premise is wrong. Radicalisation is not the result of Islamist segregation but government policy, especially in Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq. UCU has expressed its concern to the minister that our members may be sucked into an anti-Muslim McCarthyism, which has serious consequences for civil liberties by blurring the boundaries of what is illegal and what is possibly undesirable.”

The document calls for university authorities to closely monitor campus Islamic societies, particularly if they invite “radical speakers” to address their meetings. It suggests that checks should be made on guest speakers at such meetings.

Fellow UCU joint general secretary Sally Hunt insisted: “We will not accept further government attempts to restrict academic freedom or free speech on campus. There is little point in having these nominal freedoms if they can be removed when certain people don’t like what they hear.”

NUS national president Gemma Tumelty warned that creating a snooping culture on Britain’s campuses could prove counterproductive to anti-terrorism measures. “Demonising and stigmatising student communities is no way to defeat terror,” insisted Ms Tumelty. “Indiscriminate monitoring of groups on campus assumes collective guilt. This will only fuel the racism and Islamophobia that our society should be trying so hard to stamp out.”

University vice-chancellors also rejected the proposals. Universities UK president Professor Drummond Bone said: “Not only is this unreasonable but, crucially, it could be counter-productive. The key to this is balance and discussion and we have made this point repeatedly to ministers.”

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Labour accused of aiding extremists by its focus on Muslim issues

Posted on October 17, 2006 by Bob Pitt

Ministers were accused of playing into the hands of the far right and of Islamic extremists as a Labour backlash grew against the Government’s continuing focus on Muslim issues. Senior MPs and peers signalled their alarm at the furore triggered 10 days ago by Jack Straw’s call for women to reconsider wearing face veils. They said the Muslim community felt under siege following a succession of recent headlines generated by the Government.

Mr Straw’s comments were followed by another minister calling for the dismissal of a teacher who refused to take off her veil and an attack by Ruth Kelly, the Secretary of State for Communities, on moderate Muslims who “sit on the sidelines” in the fight against terrorism. It has also emerged that the Department for Education wanted lecturers to monitor “Asian-looking” and Muslim students suspected of involvement in terrorism. Several ministers believe the recent controversies show the Government is in tune with widespread concerns in the country.

But Khalid Mahmood, MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, warned: “There’s been a huge hype over a small number of people and the only thing this has led to is Muslim-bashing. The only people this will benefit are the far-right BNP. It will also encourage extremists from the Muslim community who will say: ‘We told you so.”‘

The Labour peer Baroness Uddin pleaded with the Government to work to help women lead the fight against extremism. She said: “We have attacked those who would be our greatest allies in meeting the current challenges of terrorism and radicalisation.” She warned that the row over veils had caused “havoc” in the Muslim community and created “a feeling of vulnerability and demonisation of Muslim women”.

Lord Ahmed, another Labour peer, said members of the Muslim community were considering leaving Britain because of the row. “People are asking: ‘What is our future here, do you think we should be taking our money and going somewhere else because this country has so much Islamophobia?'”

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