Category Archives: State Oppression

Australia: Muslims warn anti-terror laws could prevent teaching from Qur’an

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lydia Shelly Ertunc Yasar Ozen and Moustafa KheirA Muslim cleric who preaches from certain passages of the Koran could be caught in the “broad” net of the government’s new anti-terror law, Islamic leaders have warned.

Grand Mufti of Australia Ibrahim Abu Mohammad and the Australian National Imams Council have called for the offence of “advocating terrorism” to be removed from the so-called Foreign Fighters Bill, currently before Parliament.

They went public with their opposition on the same day Prime Minister Tony Abbott backed the draft legislation as essential to reining in “preachers of hate”, including the radical Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir. The organisation is hosting a lecture in Lakemba on Friday to denounce “the politics and plots of the American-led intervention in Iraq and Syria” and Mr Abbott has conceded that the current legal framework is not sufficient to shut the event down.

The imams council said a cleric could fall foul of the new law even if he simply “advocated the duty of a Muslim to defend his land”.

“We are therefore concerned that the proposal has serious implications on free speech and will have a chilling effect on legitimate religious and political debate,” the council – representing 250 imams – said in a submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.

Appearing in front of the committee on Wednesday, members of the Muslim Legal Network said the laws, introduced by Attorney-General George Brandis, should target the extreme fringe, not mainstream Muslims. They said any religious community could face being charged with a terror-related offence “if they refer back to stories in the Quran, Bible and Torah in their sermons”.

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Ofsted says no extremism in Tower Hamlets primary school

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Tower Hamlets school suspected of Islamic extremism has been cleared of concerns in a no-notice Ofsted inspection on Tuesday.

Marner Primary School has passed the recent inspection by Ofsted who said in today’s report: “The school’s safeguarding arrangements meet requirements.”

The snap inspection occurred after government suggestions that schools in the borough were falling under the influence of Islamic extremists.

Despite fears that children at Marner Primary were being exposed to unsuitable views, the Ofsted report states that: “The curriculum is broad, balanced and successful in promoting pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, including British values.”

Tower Hamlets has recently been in the spotlight due to a Sunday Times investigation of a second ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal, following events in Birmingham earlier this year. The Midlands scandal suggested that radical Muslims were controlling several school governing bodies, subjecting pupils to extreme views.

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The Moazzam Begg case shows how Muslims are criminalised

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Letter in the Guardian

On 1 October, Moazzam Begg was released after seven months in detention because of allegations arising from his time in Syria which included charitable and investigative work (Report, 2 October). Days before a much-delayed court hearing, all charges have been dropped. Begg has been a role-model and mentor to many, young and not so young, and this new period of detention has caused great distress among those who look to him for inspiration. The manner in which he has been targeted and detained – with, ultimately, no evidence being brought against him in an open court – will confirm the view that this is a concerted campaign of intimidation, designed to scare Muslim communities away from active engagement in public life. While we celebrate his release, we remain concerned that he has spent another lengthy period in detention because of laws that are fundamentally unjust.

We write to express our extreme concern about the use of allegations of terrorism and the arrest and detention of charity workers to slur and curtail the work of Muslim charities and organisations such as Cage, Interpal, Ummah Trust and HHUGS, including through closing bank accounts, lengthy investigations into charitable status and, at the extreme, the arrest and detention of high-profile campaigners.

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Austria unveils new law on Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sebastian KurzAustria called on Thursday for standardized German-language translations of the Koran and moved to prohibit foreign funding of Muslim organizations on its soil in a draft law aimed in part at tackling Islamic extremism.

The bill will overhaul a 1912 law governing the status of Austrian Muslims, prompting concern from a major local Islamic body, which saw it mirroring widespread mistrust of Muslims.

The initiative comes at a time of robust support for the far-right in Austria and also alarm over reports of Muslims from the small, neutral country joining Islamist militant forces fighting in the Middle East.

“The clear message should be that there is no contradiction between being a faithful Muslim and a proud Austrian,” said Foreign Affairs and Integration Minister Sebastian Kurz, a member of the conservative People’s Party.

“If you don’t have orderly legal regulation … this can always bring dangers (of extremism). In this sense, if you like this is maybe a part of prevention,” he told reporters.

He added that Sharia, or Islamic law, had “no place here”.

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Moazzam Begg released after terror charges dropped

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg has walked free from Belmarsh prison after seven terrorism-related charges against him were dropped.

The charges – which were connected to the conflict in Syria – were dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service after “new material” emerged.

Leaving prison, Mr Begg, 46, said he had “wanted his day in court” and claimed his detention was “unlawful”.

The Muslim Council of Britain called for an “urgent investigation”.

Mr Begg, from Birmingham, was arrested with three others in February.

Speaking from outside prison after his release, he said: “Not once but twice in my case this government has been involved either in directly detaining me or indirectly detaining me and on both occasions it’s been unlawful.”

Mr Begg also said handling of his case “shows a knee jerk reaction”, adding: “It shows little has changed since the beginning of the early days in the war on terror. There isn’t an appetite, there isn’t a desire to try to really understand what’s taking place.”

BBC News, 1 October 2014

Update:  See “Moazzam Begg was in contact with MI5 about his Syria visits, papers show”, Guardian, 2 October 2014

Muslim woman thrown off moving train in Australia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A 26-year-old Muslim woman suffered injuries after being racially abused, assaulted and thrown off a moving train in Australia’s Melbourne last week, in an alarming Islamophobic attack.

Detective Senior Constable Michael Potter was quoted by 9News on Monday saying the attack had a “massive effect” on the victim, calling it “totally unacceptable.”

The victim had her head bashed into the wall of the train a number times by an unknown woman who was shouting abuse before being pushed off the train, a Victorian police spokesperson told the Daily Mail.

Prominent Australian Muslims say their community is being unfairly targeted by law enforcement and threatened by right-wing groups, as the government’s tough new policies aimed at combating ‘radicals’ threaten to create a backlash.

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Australia: Liberal MP backs call for ban on veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

George Christensen and tweet

The federal MP for the Queensland seat of Dawson, George Christensen, echoed contentious statements by Palmer United Party senator Jacqui Lambie. “We shouldn’t tolerate sharia law in Aust and the burqa/niqab shouldn’t be worn in public,” Mr Christensen posted on Twitter this afternoon.

In an interview with ABC Online, Mr Christensen said people had a “right to be safe”.

“People get worried when someone walks in and they can’t see exactly who it is,” he said. “And just like you can’t wear a helmet into a bank or a post office and other public places well you shouldn’t be able to wear this thing that covers your face under the guise that it’s some requirement of your religion. Because quite clearly it’s not – there are many Muslim scholars and many Muslims in predominantly Muslim countries that do not wear this.”

He said his concerns were shared “across the nation”.

“Many people hold this view, not just me, my constituents regularly raise the issue with me and it’s a legitimate concern,” he said. “It’s not something that’s just to be sneered at as something that’s not politically correct and we shouldn’t be talking about it. The entire nation of France has a ban on the burka – I mean, is the entire nation of France a nation of racists?”

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Gove’s former Spad reveals thinking behind ‘Trojan Horse’ witch-hunt

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Birmingham Mail jihadist plotFor anyone interested in the Islamophobic mind-set that inspired the “Trojan Horse” hysteria about an “Islamist takeover” of Birmingham schools, today’s Sunday Times is worth reading. It features a frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Islamist rant by one Jamie Martin, who worked as a special advisor to former education secretary Michael Gove during the period of the Birmingham witch-hunt.

Martin hails Gove’s “rare moral courage” in responding to the alleged Islamist threat there: “we acted to remove the individuals responsible from any involvement in education. We then moved to make sure Ofsted inspections took place without notice, and strengthened our powers to rapidly close schools that did not promote British values”. But then, it’s hardly surprising that Martin should take such a positive view of Gove’s actions – because, as he boastfully reveals, “it was my job to co-ordinate this response”.

Claiming that the UK is under threat from “an aggressive, anti-western belief system”, Martin enthusiastically endorses Tony Blair’s bonkers assertion that “the same ideology that drove the ‘Trojan Horse’ takeover of Birmingham’s schools, leaving children at risk of radicalisation, motivates Islamic extremists from Spain to Syria”. This ideology, Martin declares, “is Islamism, which rejects every tenet of our pluralistic society and will not compromise on its belief in a totalitarian theocracy”.

According to Martin, there has been an abject failure to confront this totalitarian Islamist threat: “Our governing elite, hamstrung by political correctness, has failed to understand or tackle it. Our Muslim communities have failed to confront it. Britain has been left as a weak link in the fight against global terror.”

As is usual in such diatribes, Martin makes no attempt to define Islamism, still less to analyse the very different tendencies that can be grouped under this broad heading. Organisations ranging from terrorists like ISIS to mass reformist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood – along with non-political groupings who adopt culturally conservative interpretations of Islam – are depicted as manifestations of a single ideology which aims at the imposition of a “totalitarian theocracy”.

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GOP congressman: Spy on U.S. mosques to stop ISIS recruitment

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Steve KingIowa Republican Rep. Steve King is calling for the U.S. government to begin spying on American mosques to stop ISIS’ recruitment efforts, charging the militant organization is actively operating in mosques across the country.

Although there is no evidence that ISIS is running a nationwide recruitment effort or using mosques as centers to target would be jihadis, King insisted the Obama administration must target mosques for domestic surveillance activities.

“Here’s a thought that occurred to me,” King said speaking to the Deace Show Thursday. “I didn’t look at the population of Germany at the beginning of the Third Reich but it’s probably in the area of 70-80 million is my guess. And out of that Hitler in a few years build something that cost the lives of roughly 60 million people. The radical islamists have 1.3 or more billion muslims to work with. Now they aren’t all supporters. Daniel (inaudible) says 10-15% of them, but that is a huge population to draw from.”

King said ISIS recruiters were “certainly in the United States,” citing mosques in Virginia and Minneapolis to say mosques were the “communications centers” for ISIS.

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Spain opens door to ban on burqas

Posted on by Bob Pitt

LA RED DESARTICULADA EN CEUTA PUDO ENVIAR 50 YIHADISTAS A SIRIA, SEGÚN DÍAZSpain’s interior minister Jorge Fernández Díaz on Wednesday said the Spanish government would consider including a ban on burqas as part of a packet of planned new security reforms.

Speaking at a press conference, Díaz said that a ban on burqas could be included in the final version of Spain’s draft Citizen Security Law, Spain’s 20 minutos newspaper reported.

The draft bill, yet to be passed in the country’s parliament, already includes provisions banning people from hiding their faces in demonstrations, Díaz noted.

Now could be a “good moment” to look to obtain “a level of consensus” on this issue, the interior minister noted.

Díaz stressed his department had no powers when it came to issues affecting the dignity of women, but could rule against the wearing of burqas and other full face veils on the grounds they made identification of people difficult.

“I don’t want to say a ban is necessary, ” the minister said, but repeated this could be “a good moment” to consider such a prohibition.

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