Category Archives: UK

Hijab ban red-cards Muslim team

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Scotland hijab banScotland’s first female Muslim football team has been prevented from playing competitive matches after soccer chiefs imposed a worldwide ban on wearing religious headdress during games.

Ansar Women’s FC, from the east end of Glasgow, were looking forward to their first league games this summer, until it became clear they could not play while wearing their hijab headscarves.

The decision was taken by the International Football Association Board (IFAB), the game’s ultimate decision-making body, and part of FIFA. Law 4 of the sport’s regulations restricts a player’s kit to a shirt or jersey, shorts, socks and footwear.

Zuby Malik, a Glasgow-based sports worker and coach of the team, said it appeared to end hopes of Ansar Women’s FC being admitted to the Scottish Women’s Football Association league. Malik said:

“It is ridiculous that I will have to tell the girls that they won’t be able to join the league because of this nonsensical ruling. The majority of the girls in our team wear the hijab and it is completely unfair to ask people to choose between their faith and sport. Quite rightly their religion will always come first.”

Malik said London giants Arsenal had already expressed an interest in one of their players. “There is so much talent in the Asian community in Scotland, but this sends out the signal that football is not for them. Asians are already woefully under-represented in Scottish sport and this is another huge blow.”

The 27-year-old coach said there was no justification for banning headscarves and turbans. “There appears to be no logic at all behind this ruling. I don’t see how anyone could be injured through wearing a hijab or a turban or how it affects their game in any way.”

Scotland on Sunday, 24 June 2007

Another boost for the ‘Council of Ex-Muslims’ fraud

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A new group of secular-minded former Muslims in the UK has urged the government to cut all state funding to religious groups and to stop pandering to political Islam.

The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, launched yesterday in London, opposes the interference of religion in public life. Its spokeswoman, Maryam Namazie, said the group provided an alternative voice to the “regressive, parasitical and self-appointed leaders” from organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain and the “oxymoronic” Islamic Human Rights Commission.

“We want to challenge the Islamic movement,” she said. “It does not surprise me people are afraid to criticise Islam. There has been too much appeasement from the government. There are specific policies and initiatives aimed at Muslims and this approach divides society.”

The council’s manifesto calls for the freedom to criticise all religions and the separation of religion from the state and legal system. Another aim is to break the taboos that come with renouncing Islam.

Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “We’re not taking them seriously. I don’t think Muslims will have time for this.”

The launch of a Central Council of Ex-Muslims in Berlin has inspired similar groups in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. The British branch has 25 members who are prepared to have their names and photographs published.

Guardian, 22 June 2007

As we’ve already pointed out, the Council of Ex-Muslims is a complete fraud. It’s a front organisation for the Worker Communist Party of Iran, an ultra-left sect most of whose leaders were never Muslims in the first place. It’s just an excuse for the WPI to indulge in their obsessive and destructive propaganda against Islam.

Unfortunately the Council of Ex-Muslims has been given credibility by having its launch at the House of Commons yesterday (I suspect Lib Dem MP Evan Harris was involved in this) and has been treated seriously by the media, who have shown no interest in investigating the origins of the organisation.

Update:  Read the National Secular Society’s report of the event here. Note that the so-called ex-Muslims referred to in the NSS piece – Maryam Namazie, Mina Ahadi and Mahin Alipour – are all leading figures in the WPI.

Ignore Islam, ‘ex-Muslims’ urge

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BBC News gives favourable publicity to the launch of the Worker Communist Party of Iran’s fraudulent front organisation, the so-called Council of Ex-Muslims (which claims that it “represents the views of a majority of secular-minded Muslims in Europe”), as does the Washington Post and the Daily Telegraph. See also A.C. Grayling’s ridiculous remarks (“a torch of hope in a dark quadrant of the world’s affairs”) at Comment is Free. Meanwhile, frothing-at-the-mouth right-wing US Islamophobe Michelle Malkin has hailed Maryam Namazie and her comrades as “the bravest of the brave“, who are “putting their necks on the line for Western civilization”. Malkin urges her readers: “Find a way to show your support.”

Gay rights, Islamophobia and double standards

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pride flagOver at the neocon blog Harry’s Place, Brett Lock of gay rights group OutRage! finally gets round to addressing the disgraceful campaign in Israel to ban the Jerusalem Pride march, which takes place tomorrow.

Brett omits any condemnation of, or indeed reference to, the threats of violence from Orthodox Jews or the appeal by the Mayor of Jerusalem to Israel’s High Court to stop the march, and it is now fully two weeks since the anti-Pride bills successfully passed their first reading in the Knesset.

This tardy and rather half-hearted response by Brett – and the failure of OutRage! or the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association to make any statement at all on the issue – stands in sharp contrast to the energy with which they all laid into Russia’s grand mufti last year over Moscow Pride. Somehow, OutRage! and GALHA seem to find homophobia so much more worthy of denunciation when it’s Muslims who are responsible for it.

In fact one might suspect that Brett’s belated post at Harry’s Place is little more than an attempt to cover OutRage! against criticisms by the Lesbian and Gay Coalition Against Racism, who issued a statement last weekend accusing Brett and his chums of hypocrisy. We can only endorse those criticisms.

Continue reading →

Blair ‘contemptuous’ giving Rushdie honour, say UK Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rushdie and VeilPrime Minister Tony Blair was accused Tuesday of rekindling the 18-year old controversy over Salman Rushdie by his government’s decision to give the notorious author a knighthood.

“Many will interpret the knighthood as a final contemptuous parting gift from Tony Blair to the Muslim world,” said secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, Abdul Bari.

Bari said that the Indian-born author earned “notoriety among Muslims for the highly insulting and blasphemous manner in which he portrayed early Islamic figures much-loved and honoured by them.” “The insensitive decision to grant Rushdie a knighthood can therefore only do harm to the image of our country in the eyes of hundreds of millions of Muslims across the world,” he warned.

Labour peer Lord Ahmed described Blair’s decision to approve the honor just before his steps down from power next week as double standards. “It’s hypocrisy by Tony Blair who two weeks ago was talking about building bridges to mainstream Muslims, and then he’s honouring a man who has insulted the British public and been divisive in community relations,” Ahmed said.

Bradford Council for Mosques in northern England also criticized the knighthood as an insult to Muslim religious sensibilities and as an endorsement of the author’s views. “The British government has acted extremely irresponsibly in knighting Rushdie at a time when it should be seeking to restore and strengthen the confidence of its Muslim subjects that it has their best interests at heart,” said council spokesman Ishtiaq Ahmed.

IRNA, 19 June 2007

See also Inayat Bunglawala at Comment is Free, 19 June 2007

Schools where children don’t speak English

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The interesting thing about this story is the use of a picture of some Muslims to illustrate a negative immigration story. Again. Sod Godwin’s Law – this sort of thing works on the same level as ‘Der Ewige Jude’, the Nazi propaganda film that intercut a documentary about the migration of Jews with shots of teaming rats to create a connection between the two. Here we have negative stories about immigration and ethnicity mostly illustrated with pictures of Muslims to create hamfisted links between the two. How many of the girls in the picture are actually British? How many speak English? Doesn’t matter for the Express.”

Five Chinese Crackers on another scaremongering piece in the Daily Express.