Category Archives: State Oppression

German state bans hijab-clad teachers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The western state of North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany’s most populous, has banned teachers in public schools from wearing hijab.

The state’s regional parliament, where the conservative Christian Democrats hold a majority, adopted a law banning hijab on Wednesday, May 31. The law was voted against by the Greens and the Social Democrats. North-Rhine Westphalia became the eighth of Germany’s 16 federal states to ban hijab in public schools.

The Muslim minority blasted the hijab school ban as unconstitutional. The Central Council of Muslims in Germany said the new law does not treat all religions as equal, banning only the hijab and not the Christian cross or other religious symbols.

The constitutional court, Germany’s highest tribunal, ruled in July 2003 against a decision by the Baden-Wuerttemberg state to forbid a Muslim teacher from wearing hijab in the classroom. But it said Germany’s 16 states could issue new legislations to ban the Muslim headscarf if they believe it would influence children.

A number of states, including Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, still allow hijab at schools. Others, including Baden-Wurttemberg, Saarland and Lower Saxony, ban teaching staff in state schools from wearing symbols that express religious, political, or ideological affiliation, including hijab.

Islam Online, 1 June 2006

Plot to frame Hani Ramadan?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A martial arts expert who converted to Islam while working as an undercover agent claims Swiss security officers tried to get him to frame a Muslim scholar.

Claude Covassi says that his handlers wanted him to smear Hani Ramadan, brother of Tariq Ramadan. Covassi told the Los Angeles Times that in two years of mingling with members of Geneva’s Muslim community he found no evidence that Ramadan has links to terrorist groups in Iraq.

UPI, 22 May 2006

See also Los Angeles Times, 22 May 2006

Islamophobia, double standards and discrimination in British legal system

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A new report by the  Islamic Human Rights Commission examines Islamophobia, double standards and discrimination in the British legal system.

“The results show that whilst an overwhelming 91% of respondents respect British law, most of those who were questioned in detail stated that they believed the law is unfair and furthermore only a handful feel protected by the law. Respondents mainly cite the police to be the greatest cause of conflict. There was an overwhelming response that the law neither recognised nor protected Muslims and that it was hostile to Muslims as a result of their faith.”

IHRC press release, 18 May 2006

Criminalising dissent in the ‘war on terror’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“In practice, the introduction of the new offence of glorification is likely to widen the net beyond incitement but in an entirely arbitrary way. Noticeably, the whole debate on the glorification clause has been conducted on the tacit assumption that only Muslims will be prosecuted. Charles Clarke makes much of the idea that juries know instinctively what glorification means and will take notice of the context in assessing whether glorification has occurred. In fact, given the arbitrary nature of terms like ‘glorification’, juries will be forced to make entirely subjective decisions and, in the current context of Islamophobia, it is likely that they will be much readier to convict someone who has already been labelled a Muslim extremist by the press.”

Arun Kundnani argues that the new crime of “glorifying” terrorism, recently introduced under the Terrorism Act 2006, will lead to the suppression of legitimate debate on the causes of terror.

IRR news, 2 May 2006

Scotland: Harassment of the Siddique family

Posted on by Eddie Truman

Asif SiddiqueOn April 12th Mohammed Atif Siddique and his uncle were prevented from boarding a flight to Pakistan from Glasgow airport (see more on situation at Glasgow airport here). They were briefly detained and allowed to return to the family home in Alva, Scotland. The next morning the house was raided by dozens of MI5, Special Branch and uniformed police officers using the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2000.

Two uncles of Atif arrested at the same time were released from Govan top security police station at 2.30am in the morning without charge after 13 days in custody. Atif’s brother Asif was held for a further period but then released without charge.

Mohammed Rafiq, a farmer from the Punjab and the paternal uncle of Atif and Asif Siddique, said he was “deeply upset” at what had happened. “My wife and five children are both utterly shocked at this as well,” he said. “I had never heard of the word terrorism until I came to this country. I came to visit my family and all I want to do now is to go home. I will never come back to Scotland.”  (The Herald)

Asif later revealed that police had questioned him about postcards found in the Siddique house from New York: “They found postcards I had got from friends who went on holiday to New York a few years ago. They asked me about who they were from and why I had them, which I found ridiculous because it was a holiday postcard. They also kept asking me what I thought about September 11 and I kept telling them that I condemned the attacks. We were shocked innocent lives should be taken like this.”  (Sunday Mail)

On Thursday 27th April Atif Siddique was charged with offences under Section 58(1b) of the Terrorism Act at a specially convened court in Falkirk. The offences relate to the possession of documents or records containing information “likely to be useful” to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism. Atif was remanded in custody and will appear in court again this week.

Concerns raised as innocent Muslims detained

Posted on by Eddie Truman

Senior members of Scotland’s Pakistani community last night revealed that they had approached the chief constable of Strathclyde Police to complain about the number of innocent Muslims being detained at Glasgow Airport. Ashraf Anjum, president of the Glasgow Central Mosque, the largest in Scotland, said he had personally raised the issue with Sir Willie Rae last month in response to a growing number of incidents being reported to him.

Sunday Herald, 30 April 2006

Muslim ‘must pay for visa checks’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mohammed Umar Haleem KhanA Muslim student had to pay extra for security checks when applying for a visa to visit the United States, because his name was Mohammed. Mohammed Umar Haleem Khan, 22, was told by US Embassy officials that “a lot of bad people” shared his name. The Manchester Metropolitan University student had to pay an extra $80 (£45) to have his fingerprints checked against a US terror suspect database.

Mr Khan was planning to work for the Camp America project in Philadelphia. He said: “She asked me all the usual questions like what was my purpose for visiting and what was the nature of my job and then she said there was a problem with my name. She said there were a lot of bad people in the world with that name, meaning terrorists…. I’m sure that if some white candidate came along there would have been no problem.”

Mr Khan added that he had never visited Afghanistan or any other trouble hotspots and could think of no reason why his name would cause a problem.

A spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain Inayat Bunglawala said: “This is a worrying incident and seems to fit a recent pattern whereby the USA appears to be treating all Muslims as potential terrorists just because of their religion. Although Muslim parents name their children from a wide variety of names – just like other parents – many of them, especially those from the Indian subcontinent, will often give their male children the name of Muhammad as a kind of respectful prefix in honour of the Prophet, even though the actual name by which these children are known will be something else.

“US Embassy officials ought really to have had the training to cope with basic elements of Muslim culture which would help prevent these kinds of unfortunate situations.”

BBC News, 24 April 2006

Army report accuses Rumsfeld

Posted on by Bob Pitt

RumsfeldDonald Rumsfeld was directly linked to prisoner abuse for the first time yesterday, when it emerged he had been “personally involved” in a Guantánamo Bay interrogation found by military investigators to have been “degrading and abusive”.

Human Rights Watch last night called for a special prosecutor to be appointed to investigate whether the defence secretary could be criminally liable for the treatment of Mohamed al-Qahtani, a Saudi al-Qaida suspect forced to wear women’s underwear, stand naked in front of a woman interrogator, and to perform “dog tricks” on a leash, in late 2002 and early 2003. The US rights group said it had obtained a copy of the interrogation log, which showed he was also subjected to sleep deprivation and forced to maintain “stress” positions; it concluded that the treatment “amounted to torture”.

Guardian, 15 April 2006

See also Human Rights Watch news release, 14 April 2006

US barring of Muslim is still a puzzle

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tariq_RamadanUS government lawyers clarified some mysteries and deepened others in the case of Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss Muslim scholar and leading European theologian of Islam who has been barred by the Bush administration from traveling to the United States since July 2004.

Papers the government presented at a hearing in a US court Thursday in New York revealed that, contrary to officials’ statements, a clause in the USA Patriot Act that bans any foreigner who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity” was not the reason Ramadan’s US visa was revoked. The government said it did not intend to bar Ramadan in the future based on that clause, sometimes called the ideological exclusion provision.

But the government also said Ramadan’s case had been and remained a national security matter, and that statements he made in recent interviews with US consular officials in Switzerland had raised new “serious questions” about whether he should be allowed to come to the United States. Neither the government’s documents nor its lawyer, David Jones, an assistant US attorney, explained why Ramadan was banned or provided any detail about the administration’s new concerns in his case.

The hearing, before Judge Paul Crotty in US District Court in New York, came in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of three academic and writers’ organizations who had invited Ramadan to speak at conferences. The groups claim their constitutional rights have been violated because they cannot meet with Ramadan in the United States.

New York Times, 14 April 2006

See also Islam Online, 14 April 2006