British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith writes:
“The United States has explicitly misled the public about kids being in Guantánamo Bay…. There are apparently at least six juveniles in Guantánamo Bay … and we know that some are being held in Camp V, which is the most onerous of the camps, with treatment that is shameful for adults, let alone children.”
Cageprisoners.com, 15 June 2005
See also here.
“Oriana Fallaci is 75 years old. The renowned Italian journalist lives in hiding because of death threats she received after the publication in 2001 of her book The Rage and the Pride. She is dying of cancer. And now she is going to go on trial for ‘defaming Islam’.”
Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch joins Nick Cohen in rallying to the defence of an Italian racist who wrote (in that very same book) that Muslim immigrants had “multiplied like rats“. How could anyone consider taking legal action against such a sweet old lady?
Front Page Magazine, 14 June 2005
Predictably, Melanie Phillips lines up with Robert Spencer in condemning such attempts to “silence necessary criticism of Islam”. By allowing similar legal action under the proposed new anti-incitement law, the British state will “become the tool of clerical fascism”.
Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 14 June 2005
During an earlier attempt to bring a race hatred case against Fallaci in France, one of her supporters opined that “it should be the rats suing Fallaci for comparing them to Muslims” (see here).
Carol Devine-Molin joins the chorus of right-wingers who applaud the role of former US radical David Horowitz in exposing “the collaboration that exists between Islamo-fascists and Leftists”.
Shamefully, these Leftists have opposed “a righteous war to liberate the Iraqi people from tyranny, enforce UN resolutions, stabilize a region, and oust a dictator that was clearly funding and harboring terrorists”. By contrast, “the Bush administration and its supporters believe that democratization of the Middle East and concomitant free markets will provide Muslims with greater opportunities and improvement in their overall quality of life. And the majority of Iraqis are clearly on the same wavelength and conducive to the Bush plan”.
Yeah, sure. That must be why the majority of those Iraqis who voted did so for parties calling for an end to the US occupation and opposing the handover of Iraq’s assets to foreign corporations.
But the “Hitler-Stalin pact” business – that rings a bell. Where have we heard that one before? Oh yes, I remember. It was our friend Nick Cohen, berating the Left for engaging with the leaders of faith communities that are under attack: “You have to go back to the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939 to find a similar accommodation with the dictatorial right.”
So Cohen finds himself in a bloc with the most viciously pro-imperialist, neo-conservative, Islamophobic right-wingers … in accusing the Left of forming a bloc with the Right!
The proposed incitement law won’t stop criticism of religion says Sher Khan of the MCB.
“So why is the government going to these extraordinary lengths? The answer is that it is trying to appease the Muslim community which has been pressing for such a law for years. Ministers are desperate to win back votes by Britain’s 1.8 million Muslims which were lost over the Iraq war, and also because they think that if they give the most extremist Muslims whatever they want this will quell Islamist rage against Britain and the west.
“That is why, in a grovelling article in Muslim News before the last election, the then energy minister Mike O’Brien boasted of all the measures the government had introduced at Muslim request, including the religious hatred law. That is why, in a pre-election letter to all mosques Home Secretary Charles Clarke apologised for the failure to get this law through Parliament and blamed it on the opposition parties. If it is now passed, it will shut down legitimate and vital debate about Islam.”
Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail, 13 June 2005
You can just imagine Phillips’ response if someone published an article which accused the government of “appeasing the Jewish community”, or of giving a “grovelling” interview to the Jewish Chronicle, or of giving “the most extremist Jews whatever they want” by taking a stand against anti-semitism, and which argued for the right of racists to promote anti-Jewish propaganda on the grounds that it was necessary to encourage “legitimate and vital debate about Judaism”.
A federal judge yesterday ordered the D.C. fire department to allow three bearded Muslim firefighters to serve on full duty until Aug. 1, when he expects to decide whether the safety issues outweigh the men’s claims that shaving would violate their religious rights.
U.S. District Judge James Robertson told an attorney for the city and an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union that he would decide the case after a one-day hearing Aug. 1 that will examine whether facial hair puts firefighters at risk. The case was first filed in 2001.
“This is definitely a victory, even though it is temporary,” said plaintiff Hassan A. Umrani, a city firefighter who has worn a full beard since his first day on the job 16 years ago.
Arthur Spitzer, an attorney for the D.C. chapter of the ACLU, said the order violated a preliminary injunction issued in a 2001 case in which six firefighters challenged the department on the point the policy violated their religious freedom.
The case was never settled, and the preliminary injunction remains in place.
“One day in November 2001 a large group of protesters from the British National Party dressed as Crusaders and paraded outside the Houses of Parliament with placards reading ‘Get Islam Out Of Britain’. Had they been overtly targeting a racial group, they would have been breaking the law – incitement to racial hatred has been a crime since 1986. To get round the law, groups on the far Right have been cunningly reformulating their noxious rants. Instead of targeting racial groups, they target unprotected religious groups.”
Inayat Bunglawala of the MCB defends the proposed law against inciting religious hatred.
“More than stopping sharia, we need to stop the hysteria surrounding it. So misleading and dishonest has the debate been that it reveals more about our political and media prejudices than the minority in question. A request by a small Ontario Muslim group to start faith-based family mediation or arbitration between two consenting adults – a practice long used by Christians (Mennonites and Catholics in particular), Jews (especially the Orthodox) and one sect of Muslims, the Ismailis – has been blown up into the spectre of Taliban-like justice coming to Canada.”
Haroon Siddiqui in the Toronto Star, 12 June 2005
Everyone has the right to live free from harassment and hatred. The bill to ban incitement to religious hatred should be supported.
Polly Toynbee confuses the rights to freedom of speech and artistic expression – which will remain – with a right to whip up hatred against people because of their religion, which will be made unlawful. Currently, only some religious groups, such as Jews and Sikhs, are legally protected from incitement to hatred, while Muslims are not. It is this inconsistency that the extreme right exploits.
The bill is proposing legislation similar to that which criminalised incitement to racial hatred in 1986, which has not curtailed any of the freedoms to tackle controversial issues Ms Toynbee implies. Islamophobia is not a nonsense. Recent Crown Prosecution Service figures show 50% of religiously aggravated offences were directed against Muslims. This hatred needs to be combated by the law.
Milena Buyum
National Assembly Against Racism
“Sacranie has been one of the most important advocates of radical Islam in the United Kingdom…. Among Sacranie’s actions: calling for censorship of religious speech, trying to change the plot of the action series 24, boycotting Holocaust Remembrance ceremonies, denying the existence of Islamic terrorists, interpreting the Bush administration’s true agenda as the ‘recolonization and the re-mapping of the Middle East’, and accusing Israel of genocide.”
Daniel Pipes takes exception to Iqbal Sacranie of the MCB being included in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.
Among the authorities Pipes cites for evidence of Sacranie’s extremism is Militant Islam Monitor. Well, you can’t find a much more reliable source than that, can you? And to think there are sceptics who question Pipes’ standing as an expert in Islamic studies.