Category Archives: State Oppression

Veil should be banned say 98% (of Express readers)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Veil Should Be Banned (say Express readers)“Britons gave overwhelming backing last night to a call for a ban on full-face Muslim veils. Ninety-eight per cent of Daily Express readers agreed that a restriction would help to safeguard racial harmony and improve communication. Our exclusive poll came as ministers stepped up the pressure on Muslim leaders to demonstrate ‘real leadership’ in the fight against extremism….

“Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly dismissed claims that the Government was ‘demonising’ Muslims, insisting everybody had a part to play in responding to the extremist threat…. Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell said women who covered their faces were failing to take their full place in society. ‘The veil is a symbol of women’s subjugation to men,’ she said. ‘Women who are heavily veiled, whose identity is obscured to the world apart from their husbands, cannot take their full place in society’.”

Daily Express, 17 October 2006

Universities urged to spy on Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lecturers and university staff across Britain are to be asked to spy on “Asian-looking” and Muslim students they suspect of involvement in Islamic extremism and supporting terrorist violence, the Guardian has learned.

They will be told to inform on students to special branch because the government believes campuses have become “fertile recruiting grounds” for extremists.

The Department for Education has drawn up a series of proposals which are to be sent to universities and other centres of higher education before the end of the year. The 18-page document acknowledges that universities will be anxious about passing information to special branch, for fear it amounts to “collaborating with the ‘secret police'”. It says there will be “concerns about police targeting certain sections of the student population (eg Muslims)”.

Wakkas Khan, president of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, said: “It sounds to me to be potentially the widest infringement of the rights of Muslim students that there ever has been in this country. It is clearly targeting Muslim students and treating them to a higher level of suspicion and scrutiny. It sounds like you’re guilty until you’re proven innocent.”

Gemma Tumelty, president of the National Union of Students, said: “They are going to treat everyone Muslim with suspicion on the basis of their faith. It’s bearing on the side of McCarthyism.”

Guardian, 16 October 2006

‘We’ll target Muslim hotspots’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The government will today unveil plans for a map of Britain’s Islamic extremist “hotspots” – so they can be targeted and broken up.

Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly will reveal the campaign at a Whitehall summit with police and town hall chiefs. She will order them to identify the universities, schools and mosques where young Muslims are brainwashed – and then take the battle to the fanatics by aggressively countering their hate-filled propaganda.

But the hotspot map risks further infuriating Muslim groups who already claim they are being persecuted by a new anti-Islamic mood within the government. Many are angry after a series of ministers criticised veils worn by Muslim women and warned of the dangers of Islamic schools.

Ms Kelly, below, will tell 20 council bosses and senior police officers that Britain must confront Islamic extremists such as preacher Omar Bakri head-on. She will warn:

“The new extremism we are facing is the single biggest security issue facing local communities. The world has changed since September 11 and 7/7. The government has to change and respond to that and we appeal to local authorities to do the same. We need to work closer together in partnership with the police and local communities to face down this threat.”

Ms Kelly will stress that identifying the hotspots is merely the first step to neutralising the radicals. A source close to Ms Kelly said they wanted town hall bosses and the police to study key questions today, adding:

“Do they understand which sections of their communities might be vulnerable to extremism? Have they mapped likely hotspots? Are they alert to the threat of extremism in universities, colleges and schools? Is there a vacuum of information that can be exploited by extremists?”

Daily Mirror, 16 October 2006

Government seeks to reinvent Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Government seeks to reinvent Islam

by Louise Nousratpour

Morning Star, 12 October 2006

MUSLIM organisations accused the government on Wednesday of using its financial muscle to “socially engineer” Islamic groups with no objections to Britain’s bloody foreign policy.

Their warning followed a speech by Community Secretary Ruth Kelly, who warned that there would be a “significant shift” in state funding and engagement in favour of organisations which spoke out clearly against extremism. Speaking to a Muslim audience in London, she said: “I do not come here to say that tackling extremists is your problem as Muslims alone. This is a shared problem.”

But Ms Kelly’s words were greeted with disdain by the Muslim community, which said that the minister was trying to hide the fact that the government has long blamed British Muslims for a rise in terror threats by talking of a “shared problem.”

Islamic Human Rights Commission chairman Massoud Shadjareh accused the government of “using its financial muscle to socially engineer a new brand of Islam which will be subservient to its foreign policy.”

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More anti-Muslim propaganda from the Express

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims pledge to ruin StrawAnother characteristically stupid and provocative headline from the Sunday Express. The accompanying article asserts that “an unholy alliance of Muslims and far-Right extremists was last night threatening Jack Straw’s future as an MP”. Needless to say, no such alliance exists and the Express offers no evidence that it does.

The Blackburn Muslims interviewed are divided over expressing regret at Straw’s comments, asking for a discussion with him, calling for an apology and demanding his resignation. Only two of those interviewed adopt the latter position.

As for the BNP, it aims to take advantage of the anti-Muslim sentiments provoked by Straw’s comments by standing against him in the next general election. The fascists’ spokesman Phil Edwards is quoted as saying that Straw has played a “subtle” version of the race card in order to boost his standing with white voters. (The BNP, of course, will do the same thing but dispense with the subtlety.) Edwards adds: “We have been saying this about Muslim dress for some time. It’s all part of the problems of a multi-cultural Britain that he and the Labour Party helped to create.”

The article also quotes Tory defence minister Gerald Howarth as saying that parliament may be forced to change the law to ban the veil. “I don’t think we need to legislate today but the time may come – if this fashion grows – where we need to. It’s time we stood up for our Christian heritage.”

Sunday Express, 8 October 2006

Why I’m banned in the USA – Tariq Ramadan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

tariq-ramdan3Tariq Ramadan answers the US government’s claim that he has been banned from the US because he gave money to two Palestinian charities:

“In its letter, the U.S. Embassy claims that I ‘reasonably should have known’ that the charities in question provided money to Hamas. But my donations were made between December 1998 and July 2002, and the United States did not blacklist the charities until 2003. How should I reasonably have known of their activities before the U.S. government itself knew? I donated to these organizations for the same reason that countless Europeans – and Americans, for that matter – donate to Palestinian causes: not to help fund terrorism, but because I wanted to provide humanitarian aid to people who desperately need it. Yet after two years of investigation, this was the only explanation offered for the denial of my visa. I still find it hard to believe.”

The American Muslim, 2 October 2006

‘A closed door’ – US government continues to deny Tariq Ramadan a visa

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tariq Ramadan 5Tariq Ramadan outlines the latest developments in his appeal against the US government’s 2004 decision to deny him a visa:

“On September 21, 2006, after two years of waiting, an explanation at last arrived. The letter I received from the American embassy, though it refuses my visa application, puts an end to the rumours and baseless allegations that have circulated since my original visa was revoked. After two years of investigation, the State Department cites no evidence of ‘suspicious relationships’, of meetings with terrorists, of encouraging or advocating terrorism, or of so-called ‘doublespeak’. Instead, the State Department cites my having donated about 600 Euros to two humanitarian organizations (in fact a French organisation and its Swiss chapter) serving the Palestinian people.

“I should note that this was not something that the State Department’s investigation revealed. To the contrary, as the State Department acknowledges, it was I myself who brought these donations to the State Department’s attention. The U.S. government apparently believes that the organizations to which I gave small amounts of money have in turn given money to Hamas. But the organizations to which I donated are not deemed suspect in Europe, where I live. I donated to these organizations for the same reason that countless Europeans – and Americans, for that matter – donate to Palestinian causes: not to provide funding for terrorism, but because I wanted to provide humanitarian aid to people who are desperately in need of it.

“After two years of intense investigation, this is the explanation offered for the denial of my visa. I am of course disappointed in the government’s decision. At the same, time, however, I am glad that the State Department has abandoned its allegation that I endorse terrorism. While the State Department has found a new reason to deny my visa application, I think it clear from the history of this case that the U.S. government’s real fear is of my ideas. I am excluded not because the government truly believes me to be a national security threat but because of my criticisms of American foreign policies in the Middle East; because of my opposition to the invasion of Iraq; and because of my criticism of some of the Bush administration’s policies with respect to civil liberties. I am saddened to be excluded from the United States. I am saddened, too, however, that the United States government has become afraid of ideas and that it reacts to its critics not by engaging them but by suppressing, stigmatizing, and excluding them.”

Tariq Ramadan’s website, 25 September 2006

Disgraceful though it is, the US government’s decision does at least demolish Daniel Pipes’ slanders against Professor Ramadan.

For a recent interview with Tariq Ramadan, see Islam Online, 12 September 2006

How to deal with Muslims – Martin Amis offers some advice

Posted on by Bob Pitt

martin amisGinny Dougary has posted the text of her Times magazine interview with Martin Amis, who opines:

“… the only thing the Islamists like about modernity is modern weapons. And they’re going to get better and better at that. They’re also gaining on us demographically at a huge rate. A quarter of humanity now and by 2025 they’ll be a third. Italy’s down to 1.1 child per woman. We’re just going to be outnumbered….

“There’s a definite urge – don’t you have it? – to say, ‘The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order’. What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan. Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children. They hate us for letting our children have sex and take drugs – well, they’ve got to stop their children killing people.”

Ginny Dougary website, 17 September 2006