Category Archives: State Oppression

Alabama ‘bans’ Sharia law amid fears it could violate American rights

Posted on by Bob Pitt

New York anti-Sharia protest
Sharia hysteria in New York, August 2010

Sharia law has been “banned” by Alabama in the US – even though it has never been part of the state’s legal system.

Under the “American and Alabama Laws for Alabama Courts Amendment”, it is now illegal for judges to apply any foreign law if it violates citizens’ existing rights.

Voters passed Amendment One on Tuesday, which despite being worded to encompass any foreign law, sprang from a specifically anti-Sharia bill first proposed almost four years ago.

Senator Gerald Allen’s original attempt, the “Sharia Law Amendment”, targeted Islamic laws but was dropped after a similar move was blocked in Oklahoma because it was found to unconstitutionally limit religious freedoms.

In a 2011 interview with the Anniston Star, Mr Allen claimed the measure as necessary to “protect” the current legal system but seemed unable to define Sharia. “I don’t have my file in front of me,” he said. “I wish I could answer you better.”

The paper found that the bill’s definition of Sharia – “a form of religious law derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the divine revelations set forth in the Koran and the example set by the Islamic Prophet Muhammad” – was almost identical to the current Wikipedia entry on the subject.

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Local democracy under attack in Tower Hamlets

Posted on by Bob Pitt

We deplore the proposal of the secretary of state Eric Pickles to “take over” the democratically elected council in Tower Hamlets (Report, 5 November). The inspection he ordered found no evidence of fraud or corruption, contrary to the Tory allegations made against the local administration. A takeover would be a flagrant violation of the democratic will of the population who re-elected a popular and well-regarded local mayor just a few months ago. A key reason Lutfur Rahman was endorsed again by local voters in east London is because he opposes the government’s efforts to force austerity policies on the council. He also shows how an administration can be managed with meagre resources so that key services are protected.

The administration in Tower Hamlets is vilified because it stands up against the government’s failing policies. It is a concerted effort to smear the local politician who has demonstrated that this stance is popular at the ballot box. That is why a string of wild and unfounded allegations has been made against the mayor and a series of investigations, including by the police, called for by the Tories. Scotland Yard has already this year cleared the council of any wrongdoing. The latest allegations from the Tories are simply more of the same. The imposition of unelected officials to overrule an elected mayor should send a chill down the spine of every democrat. It is not necessary to agree with every strand of policy adopted by Lutfur Rahman to see that this a blatant attack on local democracy. The mayor of Tower Hamlets, who has committed no legal or criminal offence, should be accountable to local voters, not to the will of a Tory secretary of state. We call on all those who support local democracy to oppose this manoeuvre.

Ken Livingstone Former mayor of London, Christine Shawcroft Labour party National Executive Committee, Kate Hudson National secretary, Left Unity, Billy Hayes General secretary, CWU, George Galloway MP, Malia Bouattia NUS Black Students’ officer, Steve Turner Assistant general secretary, Unite

Letter in the Guardian, 6 November 2014

Ken Livingstone launches bitter attack on Labour councillors in defence of Lutfur Rahman

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lutfur Rahman and Ken LivingstoneKen Livingstone has launched a bitter attack on fellow Labour party members in defence of the controversial mayor of Tower Hamlets.

Lutfur Rahman is facing a series of government sanctions against his administration at the East End borough after a report by auditors. Communities Secretary Eric Pickles is appointing commissioners to take over key powers from Rahman after the report accused his council of a lack of transparency. He was ordered to halt all property deals, stop handing out council grants to community organisations and freeze the recruitment of senior executives.

Rahman was dumped as Labour’s mayoral candidate in Tower Hamlets in 2010 but went on to win as an independent. He was relected for a second term in May. Livingstone had a similar experience when he defied the Labour party to run for Mayor of London in 2000.

He described Rahman’s treatment as “like something out of East Germany”.

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Austria’s Muslims fear changes to historic Islam law

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sebastian Kurz (2)A row has broken out in Austria over government plans to overhaul the country’s century-old law on Islam. The new draft, which is partly aimed at tackling Islamist radicalism, forbids any foreign funding. But Austria’s official Islamic Community says it reflects a widespread mistrust of Muslims and fails to treat them equally.

Islam has been an official religion in Austria since 1912. The Islam law, the “Islamgesetz”, was brought in by the Habsburg Emperor Franz Joseph, after Austria’s annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Under the law, Muslims, like Catholics, Jews and Protestants, are guaranteed wide-ranging rights, including religious education in state schools.

Carla Amina Baghajati from the Islamic Community says the old law has served as “a kind of a model in Europe” and done much to integrate and anchor Muslims into Austrian society. It shows how recognition of Islam makes Muslims feel accepted, she says. “Their loyalty towards the state comes automatically.”

Roughly half a million Muslims live in Austria today, around 6% of the population. Many of them have Turkish or Bosnian roots.

After more than 100 years, most agree that the Islam law needs to be updated to reflect the realities of modern Austria. But some parts of the government’s draft legislation have caused controversy, in particular a proposed ban on any foreign funding for mosques or imams. The Islamic Community says that does not fit with the principle of equality.

But Austria’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Integration Sebastian Kurz told Austrian Radio (ORF) that the ban was a necessary step. “With other religions, there is not the challenge that we have to fear influences from abroad and therefore have to be stricter with financing,” he said. “We want an Austrian form of Islam. Every Muslim in Austria should be able to practise his religion properly, but we don’t want influence and control from abroad.”

Relations between Muslims and Austria’s Catholic majority have been relatively calm, compared with many other European countries. But there are tensions.

The far-right Freedom Party, which has seen a surge of support, has taken to warning against what it calls “Islamisation”. At a Freedom Party Oktoberfest, Vienna district councillor Helwig Leibinger said many Muslims in Vienna were too foreign. “They cannot be integrated very well, because the women wear the burka or something like that and they don’t want to be real Austrians. They try to be Turkish.”

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FBI to keep visiting mosques despite Muslim complaints

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hassan Shibly CAIRTAMPA — With the Islamic State making vague threats of an attack on the American homeland, FBI agents are visiting and questioning leaders in the U.S. Muslim community to gather information they say might help head off any danger to the American public.

And those visits will continue despite complaints from an organization that works to protect Muslims’ civil rights. The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, is advising Muslims not to talk to FBI agents without a lawyer present.

Agents have called on the imams of several major Florida mosques, including some in the Tampa area, CAIR leaders said in an advisory to Muslims issued in the past week. Similar complaints have come from Muslims across the nation, the statement said.

“CAIR has documented how these interviews have been used to coerce law-abiding American Muslims to become agent provocateurs,” the advisory said. “Therefore it is highly advisable never to meet with the FBI without a lawyer present.

“If the FBI truly has a legitimate reason to speak to you,” the advisory said, “they will have no problem doing so through your lawyer as the American legal system establishes.”

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Shawcross steps up assault on Islamic charities

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Charity CommissionThe government’s charity watchdog has launched a series of formal investigations into British aid organisations, amid concerns that they are at risk of being hijacked by terrorists in Syria and Iraq.

The head of the Charity Commission told The Telegraph he fears that groups distributing money and supplies donated by the public in Britain could be exploited by Islamists to smuggle cash, equipment and fighters to terrorists on the front line.

The regulator has begun scrutinising 86 British charities which it believes could be at risk from extremism, including 37 working to help victims of the Syria crisis, according to new figures released today.

It has launched full-scale investigations into four charities operating in the region, including the group that employed the murdered hostage Alan Henning when he was kidnapped, and another organisation allegedly infiltrated by a suicide bomber.

The number of terrorism-related cases that the regulator is examining has almost doubled since February, amid growing concerns that charities working in the region are potential targets for the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil, also known as Islamic State, and Isis).

William Shawcross, the chair of the Commission, said there was “a risk” that money donated by the British public had already been sent to Isil fighters, who have beheaded two British hostages, among many other victims, and are holding a third.

“It is absolutely terrifying to see these young British men going out to be trained in Syria and coming back here,” Mr Shawcross said. “Most of them are not going out under the auspices of charities but, when that happens, it is absolutely our duty to come down on it.

“Even if extremist and terrorist abuse is rare, which it is, when it happens it does huge damage to public trust in charities. That’s why I take it very seriously.”

Speaking to The Telegraph, Mr Shawcross said the regulator was stepping up its assault on the abuse of charitable funds by terrorists, as well as other kinds of malpractice including fraud, mismanagement, and mistreatment of vulnerable adults and children.

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Europe’s Muslims feel under siege

Posted on by Bob Pitt

On a continent where Muslim leaders are decrying a surge in discrimination and aggression, Alisiv Ceran is the terrorist who wasn’t.

The 21-year-old student at the University of Copenhagen recently hopped on a commuter train to this stately Scandinavian city, his bag bulging with a computer printer. Feeling jittery about a morning exam, he anxiously buried his nose in a textbook: “The United States After 9/11.”

A fellow passenger who reported him to police, however, saw only a bearded Muslim toting a mysterious bag and a how-to book on terror. Frantic Danish authorities launched a citywide manhunt after getting the tip. Ceran’s face – captured by closed-circuit cameras – was flashed across the Internet and national television, terrifying family and friends who feared he might be arrested or shot on sight.

“It was the first time I ever saw my father cry, he was so worried about me,” said Ceran, who called police when he saw himself in the news, then hid in a university bathroom until they arrived. “I think what happened to me shows that fear of Islam is growing here. Everybody thinks we’re all terrorists.”

Ceran’s ordeal is a sign of the times in Europe, where Muslims are facing what some community leaders are comparing to the atmosphere in the United States following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Then, fears were linked to al-Qaeda. Today, they are tied to the Islamic State – and, more specifically, to the hundreds of Muslim youths from Europe who have streamed into Syria and Iraq to fight. Though dozens of Americans are believed to have signed up, far more – at least 3,000 – are estimated to have come from Europe, according to the Soufan Group, a New York-based intelligence firm.

One French returnee staged a lethal attack in Belgium last year. After more alleged terror plots were recently disrupted in Norway and Britain, concern over the very real risk posed by homegrown militants is now building to a crescendo among European politicians, the media and the public.

“It’s a clash of civilizations,” said Marie Krarup, a prominent lawmaker from the Danish People’s Party, the nation’s third-largest political force. “Islam is violence. Moderate Muslims are not the problem, but even they can become extreme over time. In Islam, it is okay to beat your wife. It is okay to kill those who are not Muslims. This is the problem we have.”

Muslim leaders point to a string of high-profile incidents and a renewed push for laws restricting Islamic practices such as circumcision that suggest those fears are crossing the line into intolerance.

In Germany, a protest against Islamic fundamentalism in Cologne last Sunday turned violent when thousands of demonstrators yelling “foreigners out” clashed with police, leaving dozens injured.

Muslim leaders also cite a string of recent incidents in Germany, ranging from insults of veiled women on the streets to a Molotov cocktail thrown at a mosque in late August.

In Britain, Mayor Boris Johnson was recently quoted as saying “thousands” of Londoners are now under surveillance as possible terror suspects. In Paris last week, a woman in Islamic garb that obscured her face was unceremoniously ejected from a performance of La Traviata at the Opéra Bastille. Although France passed a ban on the wearing of full Muslim veils in public in 2010, the incident involved a rare enforcement of the law by private management who did not take the necessary legal step of calling police first.

Even moderate Muslims say they are increasingly coming under fire, particularly in the European media. A recent commentary in Germany’s Bild tabloid, for instance, condemned the “disproportionate crime rate among adolescents with Muslim backgrounds” as well as the faith’s “homicidal contempt for women and homosexuals.”

“This is the hour when critics of Islam are engaging in unchecked Muslim-bashing,” said Ali Kizilkaya, chairman of the Islamic Council of Germany. The current mood, Muslim leaders say, is less a sudden shift than a worsening of a climate that had already been eroding for years.

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No radicalisation or violent extremism in Birmingham schools, says Education Secretary, but she defends Gove’s witch-hunt

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Birmingham Mail jihadist plotSecretary of State for Education, Nicky Morgan, has watered down the findings of former national head of counter terrorism’s investigation into extremism at Birmingham schools as a “spectrum of behaviours.”

For the first time Morgan clarified that there was “no evidence of radicalisation or terrorism or violent extremism” despite five schools with mainly Muslim pupils in the city were placed in special measures following media and politicians campaign against these schools.

In an exclusive interview with The Muslim News Editor, Ahmed J Versi, she said she was not aware there would be other investigations on the scale of Birmingham and acceded that she would also consider including Islamophobia as part Key Stages 2, 3 & 4 Personal, Social, Health & Citizenship Education.

The controversial investigation into what was dubbed a Trojan Horse conspiracy began with claims led by former Education Secretary, Michael Gove, of on an organised takeover of state schools by “jihadists” before the debate moved onto “extremists” then directed against “conservative” Muslims and a now focus is on a need to promote fundamental British values.

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