Category Archives: UK

March today over Qaradawi visa

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Qaradawi 5DOHA — While supporters of Qatar-based Islamic scholar Dr Yousuf Al Qaradawi have announced to protest in front of the British embassy this afternoon, a senior official of the embassy said here yesterday that the mission is welcoming any “peaceful protest”.

The protest plan follows the recent denial of entry visa for Qaradawi to the UK. “We recognize people’s right to protest peacefully and we have no problem about that,” Roddy Drummond, Head of Mission told the press yesterday.

Asked why Qaradawi was denied the visa, he said, “It was a decision by the British government and the reason was conveyed to Qaradawi.”

“We will inform our government about the demonstration but we can’t say whether it would make any change in their decision,” he added.

The official said the embassy had no security concerns arising from the demonstration plan. “We believe it will be a peaceful protest and we have full trust on the Qatari law enforcing authorities,” said Drummond, adding that the mission had not requested any special security arrangements.

The Peninsula, 20 February 2008

JP back on bench after veil uproar

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The magistrate reprimanded for refusing to deal with a Muslim woman because she was wearing a veil says he is delighted to have returned to sit on the bench.

Ian Murray, of Bath Crescent, Cheadle Hulme, was back at Manchester Crown Court last week following an absence of more than six months. But he says the furore surrounding his decision to walk out when faced with niqab-wearing Zoobia Hussain – who subsequently complained – has not diminished his appetite to be part of the judicial process.

He is currently awaiting the outcome of his own complaint over the treatment he received during a probe into his actions, which resulted in a formal reprimand and training on “appropriate judicial guidelines”.

Stockport Express, 20 February 2008

Qataris slam British denial of visa to Qaradawi

Posted on by Bob Pitt

YusufalQaradawiDOHA – Supporters of Qatar-based Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi staged a sit-in outside the British embassy in Doha on Wednesday to protest at London’s denial of a visa to the controversial cleric.

“Mr Brown: Why are you rejecting tolerance and dialogue?” read one of the banners raised by the protesters, who numbered around 400, referring to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Lawyer Najib al-Nuaimi, a former Qatari justice minister acting as Qaradawi’s representative in the affair, handed the deputy head of the British mission, Claire Evans, a letter of protest. The letter demands that the British government reconsider its “unfair and illegal” decision to deny Qaradawi a visa, Nuaimi said.

Qatari Muslim preacher Sheikh Mohieddin al-Qaradaghi told reporters that Britain had taken an “unfair decision” against a “symbol of centrism in Islam,” and this would “benefit extremists from both sides”.

Middle East Online, 20 February 2008

Protest to the BBC over coverage of the Williams row

Posted on by Bob Pitt

As the furore over Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ remarks about religious and civil law subsides into a more considered debate beyond the headlines, the Anglican leader is receiving backing from what might be considered some unexpected quarters.

Well-known media commentator Sunny Hundal, who is from a Sikh background but is not religious, has written a letter of protest to the BBC about its coverage of Dr Williams’ speech on Islam and the law – and in particular his Radio 4 World at One interview.

Hundal, a left-of-centre journalist who was voted the Guardian newspaper’s blogger of the year in 2007, runs Asians in Media, and has launched two of the most successful UK-based group current affairs blogs, Pickled Politics and Liberal Conspiracy, finds himself in the same camp of concern as right-of-centre commentator Matt Wardman, of The Wardman Wire.

Mr Hundal’s letter to the BBC says: “[My] complaint refers principally to coverage on BBC News 24 and news bulletins on BBC television and radio on Friday 8 February and the weekend of 9 & 10th February 2008. I found BBC News coverage sensationalist and biased against the Archbishop, muddying the waters over what he said in the speech and with no attempt at giving it context – that is, who it was aimed at, what the current law is on civil arbitration, etc.”

Hundal stresses: “[T]his does not mean I endorse sharia or want it to be fully introduced in the UK. I believe in one civil law for all citizens. However, BBC News bulletins did not make any attempts to offer any context to its own coverage.”

Commentator Matt Wardman goes further, accusing the BBC of instigating the political firestorm with a misleading headline trailing its interview with him. Of the headline, “The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that the adoption of Sharia Law in some parts of Britain is inevitable”, Wardman remarks: “No he didn’t, or not in the way that your headline was inevitably going to make people think.”

Ekklesia, 19 February 2008

Group set up to fight mosque bid

Posted on by Bob Pitt

No mosque here 4Campaigners have set up a crisis group to plan a fresh attack on proposals to build an £18 million mosque in Dudley.

Malcolm Davis, former councillor for St James’ ward, says his phone has been ringing off the hook with residents complaining about the planning inspector’s decision to overturn the council’s rejection of the scheme. The authority had thrown out the plans to create a mosque and community centre on derelict land in Hall Street. The matter will now go to a public inquiry in June.

Mr Davis said public feeling against the mosque was just as strong as when the proposals originally emerged. Some 70 petitions containing more than 22,000 signatures were handed to the council from people protesting against the plans. “We have set up a working party and I will be asking everybody who wants to object to the mosque plan to turn up that night for the hearing, even if it brings the town to a complete standstill.”

Mr Davis has blasted the inspectorate’s decision to refer the plan to a public inquiry as “a coward’s way out”. He said: “I’m adamant the people of Dudley don’t want that thing there…. It will destroy the concept of a lovely medieval market town.”

Express and Star, 19 February 2008

PM urged to intervene over Stoke mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Campaigners are calling on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to intervene in controversial plans to build a new mosque and community centre. Residents angered by Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s decision to rent a plot of land in Shelton to Muslim developers for just £1 a year, amid suggestions it could be sold to them for £72,000, have launched an online petition.

They want the Prime Minister to order a full public inquiry into the handling of the mosque development, in Regent Road, Shelton, which they claim does not make financial sense. The concerns have already been exploited by BNP councillors in the city, who are distributing thousands of leaflets criticising the council’s handling of the issue.

Stoke Sentinel, 18 February 2008

East London Advertiser wins ban on Hizb ut-Tahrir

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cordoba FoundationFury has erupted after it emerged that Tower Hamlets council was proposing to fund a debate involving the British chairman of an Islamist organisation banned throughout much of the world.

The East London Advertiser discovered that Town Hall chiefs were planning to subsidise up to £19,000 for a public meeting with Dr Abdul Wahid, the head of the radical Hizb ut-Tahrir organisation, which wants to create a worldwide Islamic state. He was due to share a platform with prominent community leaders, including Labour peer Lord Ahmed, at the London Muslim centre in Whitechapel later this month.

The event is one of a series of debates being organised by the Cordoba Foundation and funded by Tower Hamlets council as part of its efforts to tackle extremism.

East London Advertiser, 18 February 2008

The meeting in question, at the London Muslim Centre on 26 February, is a debate on the subject “Has Political Participation Failed British Muslims?” (pdf here) and poses the question: “Should Muslims become more politically active or should they shun politics altogether?” So by their stupid witch-hunt of Hizb ut-Tahrir the East London Advertiser has in fact removed the opportunity for Osama Saeed to publicly take on and defeat HT’s abstentionist arguments. And who precisely will gain from that?

Update:  It now appears that Dr Abdul Wahid, the HT speaker, has been reinstated.

Sharia law at the Treasury and a drift to Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“It is strangely shocking to find that Her Majesty’s Treasury, that very matter-of-fact department, should be issuing bonds that comply with the ancient rules of sharia law. It is as if your bank manager were suddenly to break off from warning you about your overdraft, fetch out a prayer mat and start offering devotions in the direction of Mecca….

“… there is still something slightly unsettling about the news. Is it coincidental that ours is the first major Western country to offer this facility? Official Britain has a startling enthusiasm for adjusting itself to make Muslims comfortable. The Home Secretary has weirdly described terrorist activity as ‘Anti-Islamic’. The Foreign Office was recently revealed by a whistleblower to be giving undue status to militant strands of Islam.

“… it coincides with an increasing tendency to reduce the privileges of the Christian religion in Britain. Christian worship in State schools has been deliberately allowed to fade into nonexistence. Recent legislation on adoption, stem-cell research and the employment rights of homosexuals has directly challenged Christian practice and belief.

“Yet multicultural liberals, many of whom profess themselves Godless and despise Christianity, are strangely ready to suck up to Islam, whose views on such topics are far fiercer than those of the most militant Christian moralist.

“It sometimes seems as if we are slowly drifting, without really thinking about it, or meaning to, towards the Islamic world. It is time we did think about it, or who knows what may rush in to fill the religious vacuum left at the heart of our State by the slow death of the Church of England?”

Editorial in the Mail on Sunday, 17 February 2008

Predictably, the fascists of the BNP seize on this latest example of western-civilisation-succumbs-to-Islam scaremongering.