Category Archives: UK

Muslim grave vandals spared jail

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Three boys who desecrated dozens of Muslim graves have each been given 12-month rehabilitation orders. The trio, aged 14, 16, and 17, carried out the attacks in a cemetery in Charlton, south-east London, on 17 March last year. They were found guilty of conspiracy to commit religiously aggravated criminal damage at an earlier hearing.

A judge at Inner London Crown Court ordered them to wear electronic tags and be under curfew for three months. Judge Lindsay Burn at Inner London Crown Court said: “You agreed to go together into that cemetery and deliberately damage graves.

“The jury were convinced, and I am satisfied, that at least one of your motivations was hostility to the religious beliefs of those buried in that section of the cemetery, namely those of the Muslim faith. That in itself is extremely serious conduct.”

He told them their behaviour had caused great distress to the relatives of the deceased, and the public. Some of the graves vandalised belonged to children.

BBC News, 1 April 2005

Muslims fear Labour will again drop anti-religious hatred law

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims leaders Friday expressed fears that Prime Minister, Tony Blair, will renege on his pledge to outlaw the incitement of religious hatred by sacrificing the clause to rush through the rest of the Serious Organised Crime Agency Bill ahead of the general election.

The Prime Minister had assured the Muslim community in an exclusive interview with Editor of The Muslim News, Ahmed J Versi, last month, that he would not drop the incitement to religious part of the Bill as the Government had done in December 2001, when they dropped incitement section (which was part of the anti-terror legislation) after opposition from the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

Chair of the Muslim Council of Britain Media Committee, Inayat Bunglawala, warned that there could be serious implications for Labour at the election if the new law was dropped for a second time for the sake of political expediency.

“Many Muslims find it inexplicable that the Government can quite easily pass laws that has a negative impact on the Muslim community but drop a vital piece of legislation to put faith groups on a par with race groups,” Bunglawala told The Muslim News.

“Muslim voters would feel deeply disappointed after receiving several assurances to put the incitement of religious hatred on the statute books,” he said, warning it would be a “regrettable move” by Labour, who had used its support for the legislation to distinguish the Party from the opposition voiced by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

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Fear and hatred of Muslims on increase in young generation

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Children as young as 13 are displaying signs of Islamophobia and are voicing their support for the British National Party, researchers have found.

Young teenagers are increasingly saying they have negative views towards Muslims and do not want Islamic culture expressed in the classroom. The study of 1,500 students aged 13 to 24 was presented at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society in Manchester yesterday.

Researchers asked students from 14 secondary schools and one further education college in York for their views on Islam since 11 September 2001. Three of the schools were from the independent sector and the others came from a wide geographical and socio-economic area.

Nathalie Noret, the lead researcher, from York St John’s College, said: “The younger pupils were more likely to exhibit extreme views and Islamophobia than older students, and there were no differences between schools.” She added that Islamophobia was a “double whammy” as it discriminated against people not just on the basis of religion but also the colour of their skin.

Overall, 43 per cent of the participants said their attitudes towards Muslims had got worse or much worse since the attacks. A quarter said they had worsened still further since the invasion of Iraq.

Ten per cent of girls and 23 per cent of the boys said they would object to female Muslim school pupils wearing a hijab in the classroom.

When asked about the British National Party, almost 10 per cent said they either agreed or agreed strongly with the views of its far-right politicians, with 15 per cent saying they were neutral.

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‘Are you Islamophobic? Web witch-hunt in full swing’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“A new website has been set up solely to monitor the rather vague concept of ‘Islamophobia’. Considering upstanding New Humanist contributors and allies such as Nick Cohen, Polly Toynbee and Peter Tatchell have already fallen foul of these self-appointed watchers, chances are you, as an NH reader, are probably on the verge of being accused of being an Islamophobe. Any. Minute. Now.”

Panic breaks out among liberal secularists:

New Humanist, 29 March 2005

And we’ve attracted the attention of Jihad Watch, too. One contributor who couldn’t get the link to Islamophobia Watch to work asks: “Is it possible it has been shut down as a jihadist hate site already?” Sorry, ‘fraid not.

Jihad Watch, 27 March 2005

Government is ‘pandering to homophobic Muslims’ – Outrage

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Protection from discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation has been excluded from five key provisions of the government’s new Equality Bill, the gay rights group Outrage! complains. According to Outrage! spokesperson Brett Lock, the government is “pandering to homophobic Muslims by excluding gay rights”.

Outrage! press release, 31 March 2005

So, nothing to do with pandering to anti-gay prejudice in Christianity or any other religion then, Brett – just Muslims?

For the Sunday Times article on which the Outrage! allegations are based, see here.

For Daniel Pipes’ response, see here.

Call for an international moratorium on hudud punishments

Posted on by Bob Pitt

ramadanLast year the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and their allies on the executive of the National Union of Students called for Tariq Ramadan to be banned from speaking at the European Social Forum in London. (See here.)

One of the arguments used against Professor Ramadan was that he didn’t call for the immediate repudiation of the hudud punishments in the sharia but merely advocated a moratorium pending a full discussion among Muslim scholars.

He explains his position here: Guardian, 30 March 2005

The full text of Tariq Ramadan’s appeal can be found at tariqramadan.com

See also “Tariq Ramadan calls for Hudud freeze”, Islam Online, 30 March 2005

‘Wrong from head to toe: a ridiculous and ominous decision in Britain’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“In the long annals of judicial stupidity, there can rarely have been a more idiotic judgment than that recently given by Lord Justice Brooke of the British Court of Appeal. It reads like the suicide note not of a country alone, but of an entire civilization.”

Theodore Dalrymple expresses outrage over the Shabina Begum case. “No expressed desire by a child or young woman to wear traditional clothing such as the jilbab can be taken as arising from free choice – even if, in any given instance, it is the result of such a choice – because of the oppressive nature of the subculture.”

National Review, 28 March 2005

Harry has another go

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Harry has another go at Islamophobia Watch.

Harry’s Place, 26 March 2005

I particularly like Harry’s account of the Algerian civil war: “In Algeria between 1992 and 1998 an estimated 150,000 people were killed as a result of a campaign launched by the Armed Islamic Group….” Of course, this does rather overlook the fact that many of these deaths were caused by the Algerian state forces’ ferocious repression of suspected Islamists, and that the civil war itself was the result of the secularist FLN regime having suppressed the 1992 parliamentary elections on the grounds that the Islamist FIS were about to form a democratically elected government.

Equally impressive is Harry’s staunch defence of oppressed Iraqis against their oppressors. Did he issue a forthright condemnation of the continuing violent occupation of Iraq by foreign armies, I hear you ask. Did his anger boil over at the estimated 100,000 deaths that have resulted from the US invasion? Did he express his fury at the destruction of Fallujah?

Er … no. What he had in mind was the defence of a group of students in Basra whose picnic was reportedly attacked by members of Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia.

And we still haven’t been told who precisely the moderate Muslims are that Harry supports. But apparently to qualify as moderates it is not enough for them to support democracy, human rights and freedom of organisation for other faiths – they also have to support a separation of religion and state along the lines proposed by western secularists. Which of course excludes even the most democratic, reformist tendencies within Islamism.