Category Archives: State Oppression

Tower Hamlets Council Labour Group votes for ban on Hizb ut-Tahrir

Posted on by Bob Pitt

HizbMoves have begun to try and get the radical Hizb ut-Tahrir Islamist group banned in Britain after the ruling group on one local authority in East London voted to get it proscribed. The Labour members on Tower Hamlets Council agreed last night (Monday) by a casting vote to get the controversial organisation outlawed.

Council cabinet members abstained from the vote, while the rest of the Labour members were split on the issue, inside sources have told the East London Advertiser tonight. Half voted to get Hizb ut-Tahrir formally banned, the rest voted against. Labour Group chairman Carli Harper-Penman used her casting vote, the sources said.

The resolution was part of a policy discussion which could go before the next full council meeting on February 9 to be adopted. If it is voted through, Tower Hamlets could be the first local authority in the country to call on the Home Secretary to put the organisation on the “proscribed” list – a move that was resisted at the Home Office two years ago.

East London Advertiser, 27 January 2009

Italy to ban Muslim demos

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rome prayersItaly is to introduce far-reaching restrictions on where demonstrations can be held after a row over recent protests by Muslims outside cathedrals in Rome, Milan and Bologna, Italian newspaper reported Thursday.

The ministerial directive will ban demonstrations in front of all places of worship, barracks, commercial or cultural centers, highly populated areas and other “sensitive zones,” the Italian daily La Repubblica reported.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni will send a circular to all regional governors to ensure that “events like those that took place in front of Milan Cathedral do not happen again,” the daily Corriere della Sera reported. A ministerial directive on the issue will be ready by February, an interior ministry spokesman told AFP, without saying anything about its contents.

On Jan. 3, several hundred Muslims protesting the Israeli war in the Gaza Strip knelt down for prayers led by an imam for several minutes in front of cathedrals in Milan and Bolgna, provoking outrage among the Italian right. A similar prayer protest took place in Rome on Jan. 18 when Muslims participating in a demonstration passed the Colosseum and bent in prayer facing the Qibla, which is towards the ancient monument.

Maroni is a member of the anti-immigration Northern League, which is part of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing coalition government. Just a month earlier Maroni’s party had proposed to freeze the building of new mosques, a move that outraged Italy’s Muslim leaders and opposition groups because it essentially criminalized being a Muslim.

Al Arabiya, 22 January 2009

How to really prevent violent extremism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

George and Salma“The government is always looking for some Islamic organisation to proscribe or some Muslim cleric – preferably with a steel claw – to ban. All in the name of community cohesion and preventing violent extremism.

“But how many Muslims does the government think have been radicalised by the horrific scenes coming out of Gaza and the complacent hypocrisy of the British foreign office?

“The appeal for a policy that breaks with slavish support for Israel’s actions operates on a number of different levels. I’ve long since stopped addressing the great lacuna which passes for an ethical sense at King Charles Street. An argument based on naked self-interest stands a better chance. And from that point of view the efforts by various branches of government not only to justify the unjustifiable in Palestine, but to delegitimise protests over it are extremely difficult to fathom….

“In Tower Hamlets young people organised a 100-strong car cavalcade in protest at the massacres in Gaza and advertising a national demonstration in central London. The following day the police were handing out fliers at Brick Lane mosque telling people that such activities were illegal. Of all the problems we face in Tower Hamlets – including illegal activities – not one of them is young men cooperating with one another and using their cars to form peaceful convoys with a socially engaged message. I’m sure the same is true elsewhere in the capital.

“If the authorities in London and across Britain thought this through they would welcome this efflorescence of political protests over Gaza. How better to marginalise the violent extremists than by creating the space for radical but democratic political engagement?”

George Galloway at Comment is Free, 23 January 2009

Police to get training after head-scarf wearer’s arrest

Posted on by Bob Pitt

DOUGLASVILLE, Georgia — The Douglasville Police Department said Monday its officers will undergo “sensitivity and cultural diversity training” after a Muslim woman who refused to remove her head scarf at a courthouse was jailed. “We never want this to happen again. It’s not our intent to embarrass anybody,” Police Chief Joe Whisenant said at a news conference. The judge who had the woman jailed briefly for contempt of court will also take part in the training, Whisenant said.

CNN, 23 December 2008

US Muslims jailed for failing to remove hijab in court

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lisa ValentineA Douglasville woman was jailed Tuesday after a judge found her in contempt of court for refusing to remove her hijab, the head covering worn by Muslim women.

Lisa Valentine, also known by her Islamic name, Miedah, 40, was arrested at the Douglasville Municipal Court for violating a court policy of no headgear, said Chris Womack, deputy chief of operations for the Douglasville police. Judge Keith Rollins ordered her held in jail for 10 days, but she was released Tuesday evening. The reason for the early release wasn’t immediately clear. “It was very humiliating, degrading,” Valentine said from her home Tuesday evening. “I wear my hijab faithfully and for no reason I was asked to take it off. It was unreal.”

Other Muslim women said the same judge has ordered them to remove their hijabs. Sabreen Abdul Rahman, 55, said she was asked to take off her scarf when she went to the municipal court last week with her son. “I can’t. I’m Muslim,” she mouthed silently to the bailiff, who then removed her from the courtroom, Rahman said. “This is a religious right,” she said. Halimah Abdullah, 43, said she spent 24 hours in jail in November 2007 after Rollins held her in contempt of court for refusing to remove her head covering. Rollins could not be reached for comment.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 17 December 2008

See also CAIR press release, 16 December 2008

Update:  See Selene Kaye’s post on the ACLU blog, “A call to action for women of all beliefs“.

Local authorities should deny premises to non-violent organisations like HT

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Police are to tell councils of the local terror threat they face and identify extremists and preachers of hate operating in their midst, the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has announced.

The new measures were outlined at a conference for police, council leaders and Muslim groups in central London to relaunch the Government’s “Prevent” strategy for targeting the origins of extremism.

Ms Smith also warned council leaders not to give platforms to radical groups even if their views stopped short of directly advocating violence. She said radical groups were careful to “cynically skirt the fringes of laws that rightly defend free speech to promote hate-filled ideologies”.

“They may not explicitly promote violence, but they can create a climate of fear and distrust where violence becomes more likely,” she said.

Groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir were careful to avoid advocating violent attacks within Britain while spreading extreme views.

Daily Telegraph, 11 December 2008

No doubt all those individuals and organisations who opposed the law against incitement to religious hatred or defended the publication of the Danish cartoons will be vociferous in their denunciations of this attack on the right to free speech.

No end to nightmare for ‘terror’ detainees

Posted on by Bob Pitt

No End to NightmareNo end to nightmare for ‘terror’ detainees

By Tom Mellen

Morning Star, 10 December 2007

CIVIL rights campaigners and the British Muslim Initiative slammed the Home Office on Sunday after reports that three innocent British residents who have languished in Guantanamo Bay for five years may be hit with control orders when they return.

The Home Office has confirmed that it may impose the repressive orders on Jamil el-Banna, Omar Deghayes and Abdenour Samuer, who are expected to be home by the end of the year.

It has also been reported that MI5 will spy on them as part of a deal negotiated with the US.

Lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who represents the detainees, said: “I am sure they will be briefly questioned on arrival but equally sure they will be released. There is no reason to detain them.”

Human rights group Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti deplored the fact that former Guantanamo detainees returned to Britain had been held in Paddington Green high-security prison in London.

She insisted that “these people should be treated as kidnap victims, given trauma counselling and helped with resettlement.”

“They have been held for years. If you can’t come up with anything to charge them with by now, the basis for making a control order is poor, to say the least.”

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ECHR backs French headscarf ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Europe’s top rights court ruled Thursday that a French school ban on headscarves was not a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.

In a case involving two French Muslim girls who had been expelled from school after refusing to remove their scarves during sports classes, the European Court of Human Rights held unanimously that the decision did not discriminate.

The applicants, Belgin Dogru and Esma-Nur Kervanci, are French nationals who were born in 1987 and 1986 respectively and live in the northwestern town of Flers.

Dogru, then aged 11, and Kervanci, aged 12, went to physical education and sports classes wearing their headscarves on numerous occasions in January 1999 and refused to take them off despite repeated requests to do so by their teacher. The teacher had said that wearing a headscarf was incompatible with physical education classes.

A month later the school’s discipline committee decided to expel the two from the school for failing to participate actively in physical education and sports classes.

The court observed that the purpose of the restriction on the applicants’ right to manifest their religious convictions was to adhere to the requirements of secularism in French state schools. The court also said that the penalty of expulsion did not appear disproportionate, and noted that the applicants had been able to continue their schooling by correspondence classes.

“It was clear that the applicants’ religious convictions were fully taken into account in relation to the requirements of protecting the rights and freedoms of others and public order,” the court said in a press release. It was also clear that the decision was based on those requirements and not on any objections to the applicants’ religious beliefs.

AFP, 5 December 2008

See also ECHR press release, 4 December 2008

Muslim physicist leaves U.S. after losing security clearance

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Abdel-Moniem El-Ganayni (3)Making good on his promise to leave his adopted country after 28 years rather than stay and feel like a second-class citizen, Abdul Moniem El-Ganayni and his wife caught a flight out of Pittsburgh on Wednesday en route to Cairo.

Preceding them were all their belongings, including a treasure trove of books that the scientist, Muslim cleric and Islamic scholar has collected over the years. Left behind were a vacated apartment overlooking Highland Park, his wife’s large Italian family, scores of friends and supporters and a legal fight on its way to appeal.

The Egyptian-born physicist, a U.S. citizen since 1988, lost his security clearance late last year, along with his job at the Bettis nuclear propulsion lab in West Mifflin, where he’d worked since 1990.

The clearance was revoked by order of Jeffrey Kupfer, acting deputy energy secretary. He said he had “reliable information” that Dr. El-Ganayni was a security risk but refused to let him see any evidence or defend himself.

The scientist filed a federal lawsuit seeking an independent review, charging retaliation for statements he made opposing the war in Iraq and the Bush administration’s post-9/11 treatment of Muslims. He said the government invoked national security as a smokescreen to hide its lack of evidence.

On Tuesday, the last remaining count of his lawsuit was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Terrence McVerry, who had already ruled that the court lacked jurisdiction on two other counts. His lawyers say they will appeal to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in their client’s absence.

So instead of enjoying a Thanksgiving turkey as he has each year since arriving in the United States, Dr. El-Ganayni spent yesterday reuniting with Egyptian relatives he hasn’t seen in a quarter-century.

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Al-Qaeda has support ‘in large parts of the country’ says Tory MP

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Secret enclaves of al-Qaeda extremists based in London, Birmingham and Luton are planning mass-casualty attacks in Britain, according to a leaked Government intelligence report. The document, which was drawn up by the intelligence branch of the Ministry of Defence, MI5 and Special Branch, states that “some thousands” of extremists are active in the UK.

Patrick Mercer, the Tory MP for Newark, said al-Qaeda now had support in large parts of the country, especially around Luton which was the spot where the 7/7 terrorists assembled before travelling to London to mount the Tube bombings. He added: “We know that subversion and support for al-Qaeda is taking place in campuses and prisons all over the UK.”

Sunday Telegraph, 9 November 2008