Category Archives: UK

Hollobone introduces veil ban bill

Posted on by Bob Pitt

One Conservative MP, Philip Hollobone, is hoping that Britain will follow Belgium and introduce a repressive ban on the niqab and the burqa. He will present his Private Members Face Coverings (Regulation) Bill in the House of Commons today. The Parliament website describes it as:

A Bill to regulate the wearing of certain face coverings; and for connected purposes.

The bill appears to stop short of calling for a full ban, although it would restrict the wearing of the full-face veil in public places such as banks, post offices and school entrances.

But Hollobone clearly views it as a first step and has previously made his support for a full ban clear. During a Commons debate on International Women’s Day he said:

The phrase that has been given to me time and again is, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” This is Britain; we are not a Muslim country. Covering one’s face in public is strange, and to many people it is intimidating and offensive. I seriously think that a ban on wearing the niqab or the burka in public should be considered.

Like other supporters of an illiberal ban, Hollobone has yet to provide a convincing answer to the point that those who complain that Islamist men tell women how to dress are doing precisely this by calling for a ban. On matters of sexual equality, Muslim women would be better served by the enforcement of existing laws against domestic violence than by the enactment of new laws restricting their dress.

The Staggers, 30 June 2010

See also “Tory MP launches first legal bid to ban burkha in Britain”, Daily Mail, 30 June 2010

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Inside the violent world of the EDL

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL placards Dudley

MPs expressed concern last night after it emerged that far-right activists are planning to step up their provocative street campaignby targeting some of the UK’s highest-profile Muslim communities, raising fears of widespread unrest this summer.

Undercover footage shot by the Guardian reveals the English Defence League, which has staged a number of violent protests in towns and cities across the country this year, is planning to “hit” Bradford and the London borough of Tower Hamlets as it intensifies its street protests.

MPs said the group’s decision to target some of the UK’s most prominent Muslim communities was a blatant attempt to provoke mayhem and disorder. “This group has no positive agenda,” said the Bradford South MP, Gerry Sutcliffe. “It is an agenda of hate that is designed to divide people and communities. We support legitimate protest but this is not legitimate, it is designed to stir up trouble. The people of Bradford will want no part of it.”

The English Defence League, which started in Luton last year, has become the most significant far-right street movement in the UK since the National Front in the 1970s. A Guardian investigation has identified a number of known rightwing extremists who are taking an interest in the movement – from convicted football hooligans to members of violent rightwing splinter groups.

Thousands of people have attended its protests – many of which have descended into violence and racist and Islamophobic chanting. Supporters are split into “divisions” spread across the UK and as many as 3,000 people are attracted to its protests.

The group also appears to be drawing support from the armed forces. Its online armed forces division has 842 members and the EDL says many serving soldiers have attended its demonstrations.

In undercover footage shot by Guardian Films, EDL spokesman Guramit Singh says its Bradford demonstration “will be huge”. He adds: “The problem with Bradford is the security threat, it is a highly populated Muslim area. They are very militant as well. Bradford is a place that has got to be hit.” Singh, who was speaking during an EDL demonstration in Dudley in April, said the organisation would also be targeting Tower Hamlets.

A spokesman for the EDL confirmed it would hold a demonstration in Bradford on 28 August because the city was “on course to be one of the first places to become a no-go area for non-Muslims”. The EDL has already announced demonstrations in Cardiff and Dudley.

The EDL claims it is a peaceful and non-racist organisation only concerned with protesting against “militant Islam”. However, over the last four months the Guardian has attended its demonstrations and witnessed racism, violence and virulent Islamophobia.

Guardian, 29 May 2010

Sunday Mercury witch-hunts Islamic Dawah Centre International, assisted by Roger Godsiff

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Qutb MilestonesAn MP has called for an inquiry into a Midland charity which invited a radical Muslim preacher to speak to crowds in Birmingham. A Sunday Mercuryinvestigation has also revealed that Islamic Dawah Centre International (IDCI), is selling books by Muslim extremists through its website.

The Alum Rock-based group had invited Dr Zakir Naik to speak to 13,000 people at the LG Arena this weekend – despite him publicly backing Osama Bin Laden in the past. But Home Secretary Theresa May denied the Indian-born cleric a visa to enter the UK after it emerged that he had branded the US a “terrorist state” and said that “every Muslim should be a terrorist”.

Now, the Sunday Mercury has learned that IDCI is selling books by Dr Naik, as well as Islamic texts by other controversial clerics. The books also include works by Sayyid Qutb, a fundamentalist Egyptian Imam who is is said to have inspired Osama Bin Laden to establish Al Qaeda. An extract from his seminal work, Milestones, is available from IDCI for less than £1.

An edition of the book is understood to have had an influence on the Saudi terror chief who plotted the 9/11 terror attacks on New York’s Twin Towers. Bin Laden’s second in command, Ayman Al Zawahiri, also studied under Qutb’s brother at university in Egypt and has vowed to put the radical cleric’s vision of an Islmaic army fighting for a global Muslim state into action. One Islamic expert told the Sunday Mercury: “Sayyid Qutb is one of the key ideological ancestors of Al Qaeda. The theme of his work is the use of violence to create a ‘proper’ Islamic state.”

The IDCI website also stocks Dr Naik’s Islam and Terrorism? and Towards Understanding Islam by Sayyid Abul Ala Mawdudi, a founder of extremist Islamist faction Jamaat-e-Islami. The Pakistani fundamentalist group aims to replace the government of the sub-continental state with a radical Muslim ruling party and impose strict Sharia law. Mawdudi writes: “Islam requires the Earth – not just a portion, but the whole planet.”

Birmingham MP Roger Godsiff said: “If this registered charity has invited this man to speak, and if there is also concern about them selling this sort of literature then the Charity Commission is duty-bound to investigate, and I hope they do so.”

A spokeswoman for the Charity Commission said: “Concerns have been raised with the Charity Commission regarding the Islamic Dawah Centre International. We are currently assessing these concerns in order to establish what, if any, regulatory role the Commission may have.”

Sunday Mercury, 27 June 2010

Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones is of course readily available from a number of mainstream outlets including this one. Does that mean Godsiff and the Sunday Mercury will be calling for an investigation into Amazon on the grounds that it is promoting the ideology of Al Qaeda? Admittedly, Mawdudi’s Towards Understanding Islam is currently listed as “out of stock” at Amazon. So I suppose it would be unreasonable to accuse Amazon of supporting a fundamentalist takeover of the whole planet.

BBC boss told Muslim head of religious broadcasting not to discuss his faith

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mark Thompson, the director-general of the BBC, told Aaqil Ahmed, the head of religious broadcasting, to “stop talking about this Muslim thing”.

When Aaqil Ahmed became the first Muslim to be the BBC’s head of religious broadcasting, he probably anticipated the controversy that it would cause among some Christians. What he did not expect, however, was that his faith would be an issue with the director-general of the corporation, Mark Thompson.

Ahmed has, though, let it be known that he was told not to discuss his religion by his boss. “Mark Thompson said to me, ‘you must stop talking about this Muslim thing’,” Ahmed disclosed. “I said: ‘You may have noticed, Mark, I’ve never raised it; everybody else raises it.”

Sunday Telegraph, 27 June 2010

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Youth supporter of EDL and BNP manufactured gunpowder and nail bomb

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A boy with an “unhealthy interest” in explosives and right wing politics made gunpowder and nailbombs with chemicals bought from his mother’s eBay account.

Police found a pipe packed with nails and screws and charged with powder in the 16 year old’s bedroom, and a pipe with a firework inside hidden under a waste oil tank at a nearby petrol station.

The youngster also had literature from the right wing groups the British National Party and the English Defence League, together with Nazi emblems.

Officers were tipped off by the eBay seller who was concerned about the commodities being bought. The family’s house in Tamworth, Staffs, was immediately evacuated while explosives and firearms experts searched the property for three days.

Daily Telegraph, 28 June 2010

Update:  See also Tamworth Herald, 1 July 2010

Muslim schoolgirl suffers brutal attack

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sureyya OzkayaThese are the shocking injuries inflicted upon schoolgirl Sureyya Ozkaya during a brutal daylight assault near her Thornton Heath home.

The 14-year-old’s hair was set on fire and her hands and feet were cut with glass during the attack in Grangewood Park, before her attackers smashed her head against a tree and left her bleeding in a bush.

She was stumbled upon by a woman walking her dog and carried home to nearby Kitchener Road following the attack, at about 7.30pm on June 9.

Sureyya’s mother Pemdegul Kale, 39, said three girls taunted her daughter about her Muslim faith as they carried out the assault, before burning her hair with a lighter and stealing her trainers.

Croydon Guardian, 24 June 2010

Tory MP to present Private Members Bill against veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Philip HolloboneA Kettering MP who has led calls to ban Muslim women from wearing the burka in Britain is to ask Parliament to restrict its use.

Philip Hollobone, Conservative MP for Kettering, will present his Private Members Face Coverings (Regulation) Bill in the House of Commons on Wednesday in the wake of a Council of Europe ruling saying no bans should be imposed. MPs from 47 countries voted that outlawing the hijab would deny women the right to cover their faces even if they genuinely want to.

Mr Hollobone, who previously likened wearing the garment to “going around with a paper bag over your head“, said: “The ruling clearly demonstrates that members of the council of the EU are out of touch with popular opinion.

“What they said does leave open the possibility of restrictions on the wearing of burkas for security and other reasons – it doesn’t forbid any measure. If motorcyclists have to take their helmet off when they go into shops and banks the same rules should apply to people wearing the burka.”

A private member’s bill is a proposed law introduced by a backbench MP for the House of Commons to debate but does not automatically become law if MPs vote in its favour.

Inam Khan, chairman of the Kettering Muslim Association, said: “This has never been an issue in Kettering. There are only two females in the entire population of 35,000 here who wear the hijab. I don’t understand why it has become an issue, especially when there are such serious other issues affecting the country.

“You will never, ever speak to anybody who works in a bank or a shop or a newsagent in Kettering who has had an issue with this.”

Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph, 25 June 2010

Religious hatred law once again shown to be useless

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A local Dewsbury columnist who wrote that had the Cumbria mass-murderer been carrying the Qur’an he would have been celebrated by “so-called British Muslims” will not face prosecution, Dewsbury police announced.

Almost 300 demonstrators gathered outside Dewsbury Police Station on June 6 in protest at alleged inflammatory Islamophobic comments made in the The Press the previous Friday.

Writing just three days after Derrick Bird murdered 12 people in Cumbria and before the victims’ burials, the local paper’s columnist, Danny Lockwood, wrote that had Bird been carrying a copy of the Qur’an, “he would have been celebrated as a hero by tens of thousands, possibly more, of so-called ‘British’ Muslims.”

A CPS spokesman told The Muslim News: “According the legal guidance evidence would have had to be obtained revealing that Lockwood used ‘threatening’ language ‘to stir up religious hatred’. Threatening is the operative word, not abusive or insulting.

“So using abusive or insulting behaviour intended to stir up religious hatred does not constitute an offence, nor does using threatening words likely to stir up religious hatred.”

The Muslim News, 25 June 2010

The Muslims who support the ban on Zakir Naik

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Inayat Bunglawala has the details.

A similar situation obtains in Canada, where the ban on Dr Naik was not only supported but actively promoted by Tarek Fatah and his so-called Muslim Canadian Congress. The National Post reports Fatah as boasting that he “sent a mass email to federal MPs last week, warning them of Dr. Naik’s views”. “We are very happy that government agencies, having been made aware of his statements, have taken this decision,” Fatah is quoted as saying. “We certainly don’t want hate-mongers to come here.”