Category Archives: UK

Jack Straw rejects veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Banning women from wearing the burka on the streets of Britain would be a waste of police time, Justice Secretary Jack Straw said today.

He told MPs he did not think police should be instructed to remove the garments from women who wore them for “religious or cultural reasons”. Mr Straw, who has in the past raised concerns about Muslim women wearing the veil, said he would “strongly recommend against a change in the law”.

At Commons question time he said: “All of us may have views about the wearing of the burka, but I do not believe that this is a matter which should be the subject of the criminal law in which we were expecting the police to remove these items of apparel from women who choose for religious or cultural reasons to wear them. That should have no part of the system of law in the United Kingdom.”

Asian Image, 9 February 2010

Anti-Muslim racists arrested in Wales

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Five men have been arrested after a Facebook site was set up declaring “all Muslims should be thrown out of Wales”.

Around 150 people joined the group on the social networking site claiming they would march through the Rhondda Valleys to make their feelings known. But South Wales Police have now stepped in and arrested five men for religiously aggravated public order offences.

It is one of the first occasions people have been arrested over comments posted on Facebook. The group has also been removed from the site. Police now believe the march will not go ahead, but they will be on standby in case anyone turns up.

Members of the group, which was entitled Rhondda March, said they would walk from Treherbert down to Pontypridd on February 28. And the organisers declared: “We Dont Want Musslims in our country move them out they are takeing over.”

The group’s message board was inundated with comments including “ai im in, gona put sum nails in a stick 4 the f******” and “Got my steel toe caps ready, wot a craking idea”. Another reads: “send the f****** bk. Join us u now u want 2 stand up tall”. A further message said: “Move these musslims back home”. And another read: “yeah support our local buissnes not forgin ones. Im in”.

Wales Online, 7 February 2010

Update:  See “Hundreds join Facebook protest against Valleys anti-Muslim march”, Wales Online, 18 February 2010

Police chief blames Muslim community for failure to identify terrorists

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims in Britain must do more to inform police of potential terrorists, one of the country’s top officers will warn tonight.

Sir Norman Bettison, Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police, is to call for greater help from Islamic communities to identify suspects at home. He says: “I’m looking for the community to work much more closely with the police in identifying young people they have concerns about in terms of people they’re mixing with, the sort of websites they’re going on and the material they’re reading. That information can only come from the community itself.”

The police chief speaks out in a three-part BBC documentary, Generation Jihad, which begins tonight. It ­examines the threat posed by young ­Muslims who have been radicalised on the ­internet.

Ratna Lachman, director of JUST West Yorkshire, a project aiming to promote racial equality, said she was concerned that Sir Norman might be tarring “an entire community with a brush of non co-operation”.

But a spokesman for the Quilliam Foundation, a think-tank which aims to combat extremism, said: “Terrorism cannot be defeated by the police alone. It is important that all communities are alert to the dangers of extremism and help the police wherever ­possible.”

Daily Express, 8 February 2010

Attacks on City University Muslim students will not result in prosecutions

Posted on by Bob Pitt

City UniversityThe three men arrested last November after attacks on City University Muslim students will not face court proceedings. According to a police spokesperson, charges have been dropped “due to insufficient evidence and a lack of witnesses coming forward.”

The three men, aged 17, 18 and 19, were arrested and released on bail until 4 January. The conditions of bail, stating the men were not to go within 100 metres of the university or to contact any City students or prosecution witnesses, are no longer enforceable as they have expired.

At the time the police said that they were treating the attacks against members of the university’s Islamic Society as racially aggravated.

It remains unclear whether the police continue to carry out extra patrols around campus. The incident on 5 November started near the university’s Gloucester Building which houses the Muslim prayer room. Fighting then continued on St John Street where the students were attacked with sticks and poles by a group of 30 white and black males.

Although the security services at the university were unaware of this development, Richard Mansfield, Security Services Manager, said that “there is no intelligence to suggest” that whoever was responsible for the attack would try to seek revenge. He added that he did not believe there was added threat to students.

The Inquirer, 7 February 2010

For details of the November attacks, see Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: a London Case Study by Jonathan Githens-Mazer and Bob Lambert.

EDL cancels Bolton demonstration

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Oldham Division

The English Defence League has announced that it has postponed its planned demonstration in Bolton on 6 March, supposedly because it would clash with a Hindu festival. According to the EDL:

“We have received information that far-left groups were planning to attack Hindus whilst dressed in EDL clothing, which may be purchased freely from our internet shop. This cowardly attack, had it taken place, was to be blamed on our organisation with the intent of discrediting our stated aim of peacefully protesting against radical Islam. Due to the respect we have for the peace loving Hindu community, we deemed it only right and proper that we cancel our own plans to ensure their safety.”

Yeah, sure. A more likely explanation for the cancellation of the Bolton protest is that the EDL leaders recognise that the gangs of thick racists who are drawn to their intimidatory demonstrations would be unable or unwilling to make a distinction between Muslims and other brown-skinned minority communities. And the suggestion that “far-left groups” were intending to disguise themselves as EDL supporters is laughable. The left has little need to discredit the EDL’s “stated aim of peacefully protesting” when the EDL’s violent hooligans are quite capable of doing that for themselves.

Update:  See Stephen Hall’s comments at Socialist Unity, 8 February 2010

And the UAF statement here.

Sunday Times witch-hunts Moazzam Begg, tries to discredit Amnesty International

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Moazzam_BeggA senior official at Amnesty International has accused the charity of putting the human rights of Al-Qaeda terror suspects above those of their victims.

Gita Sahgal, head of the gender unit at Amnesty’s international secretariat, believes that collaborating with Moazzam Begg, a former British inmate at Guantanamo Bay, “fundamentally damages” the organisation’s reputation.

In an email sent to Amnesty’s top bosses, she suggests the charity has mistakenly allied itself with Begg and his “jihadi” group, Cageprisoners, out of fear of being branded racist and Islamophobic.

Sahgal describes Begg as “Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban”. He has championed the rights of jailed Al-Qaeda members and hate preachers, including Anwar al-Awlaki, the alleged spiritual mentor of the Christmas Day Detroit plane bomber.

Sunday Times, 7 February 2010

Read Amnesty’s response here.

Gita Sahgal is a member of a nutty group called Women Against Fundamentalisms. In a 2006 radio programme she defended the view that by consulting the Muslim Council of Britain the government was encouraging fundamentalism. In the same radio programme she also accused Tariq Ramadan of being a fundamentalist. Had she actually read any of his books, Professor Ramadan politely inquired. It was quite clear that she hadn’t. In fact she was completely unfamiliar with his writings. However, she did know that he was a fundamentalist.

It appears that Sahgal has now been suspended by Amnesty. Their mistake was in ever employing a crank like that in the first place.

Update:  Read Moazzam Begg’s letter to Richard Kerbaj, the author of the Sunday Times report, here.

Further update:  Read Andy Newman’s comments at Socialist Unity.

Muslim women ‘radicalised’ in UK

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“On Monday a female suicide bomber killed 54 people in north-east Baghdad. The attack may have happened on another continent, but there are increasing concerns that violent extremism among women may now also be increasing in the UK. It is believed that the process of radicalisation often takes place at universities. One Islamist group linked with this practice is Hizb ut-Tahrir.”

BBC News, 4 February 2010

The suicide bombing not only happened on another continent, it had no connection with Hizb ut-Tahrir whatsoever. The article goes on to say that HT is “not itself connected to any terrorist acts”. So what possible relevance does the attack in Iraq have to HT? This is the kind of scurrilous journalistic amalgam that you’d expect from the likes of the Daily Mail or the Sun.

The effect of the article is to portray Muslim women in the UK as some sort of terrorist threat. Unsurprisingly, this gets the support of the Centre for Social Cohesion, on whose behalf Houriya Ahmed explains:

“You do see women being radicalised in the UK. You also have terrorist organisations like al-Qaeda which state that it is an obligation for women to take part in jihad. For example, the wife of al-Qaeda’s second-in-command issued a letter to Muslim women worldwide. You have also seen suicide bomb attacks by women in Iraq supported by the al-Qaeda narrative, so there is a strong possibility that this could occur in Britain and this needs to be taken seriously.”

Predictably, the article has been seized on by Robert Spencer over at Jihad Watch.

Time for a Parliamentary Committee to investigate Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Manchester5“Bigotry, hatred and attacks against British Muslims are nothing new. But its unchallenged growth in our country can no longer be ignored.

“The half-hearted response by the government to this growing phenomenon has been far from adequate to date. The phase for window dressing is over. Now is the time to act.

“What is urgently needed is clear leadership from both our police and the government in policy directions in dealing with Islamophobia in all its forms.

“In 2005, in response to growing levels of anti-Semitism, a Parliamentary Committee was established to combat the threat. Likewise, at a time when British Muslims are now the new target for hatred and attacks, it is high time a dedicated committee is now set up to investigate Islamophobia in our country.”

Kawsar Zaman at Left Foot Forward, 1 February 2010

Is your professor an Islamophobe?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Satoshi Kanazawa is an evolutionary psychologist and professor at the London School of Economics. Although his research as a scientist has ruffled some feathers in the past, his attempts as a “public intellectual” are indisputably inflammatory. In a recent article entitled, “What’s Wrong with Muslims” published in his blog hosted by Psychology Today, Kanazawa wrote:

Major Nidal Malik Hasan is a native-born American citizen, trained military officer, and educated MD and psychiatrist. Yet none of these things matters for him; first and foremost, he is a Muslim…They are all united in their values and goals by their singular identity of being Muslims. It’s tempting to dismiss these observations by saying that [he and others implicated in terrorism plots] are all ‘extremists’ or ‘Jihadists.’ That would be politically correct and comforting, but factually inaccurate.

In his very next article he boasts:

No, not all Muslims are terrorists, but…half of Muslims worldwide are terrorists and active supporters of terrorism, who would encourage their sons, brothers, and nephews to blow themselves up in an airplane or in a crowded market.

Kanazawa is just one in a growing number of academics using his intellectual identity to promote intolerance and xenophobia against Islam and Muslims.

Abdulrahman El-Sayed in the Huffington Post, 2 February 2010