“A girl was unlawfully excluded from school for wearing a traditional Muslim gown, Appeal Court judges have ruled. Lord Justice Brooke said Denbigh High School in Luton, Beds, denied Shabina Begum, 16 – now at another school – the right to manifest her religion.”
Category Archives: UK
What if all Muslims weren’t terrorists?
“Each time there is an atrocity or outrage, Muslims are expected to apologise as if each and every one is somehow complicit. Given this it is not surprising that Muslims are lumped together in the public consciousness with illegal immigrants and asylum seekers to create one blurry unwelcome mass of people whose values are antithetical to mainstream liberal democracy. What I find most curious is that it is only Islam which tends to be criticised and condemned for being outdated and incompatible with modern society.”
Sarfraz Manzoor in the Guardian, 2 March 2005
Statement from Yasmin Qureshi on the school dress ruling
Commenting on the ruling by the Court of Appeal over the right of a Muslim student to wear the jilbab to her school,Yasmin Qureshi, the Mayor of London’s Human Rights Advisor, said:
“This is a landmark ruling for Muslims and people of all faiths. It is a basic issue of human rights that individuals can observe their religion. As a city with such a diverse multicultural population, London has an interest in seeing such basic human rights upheld everywhere, not just in this ruling today but also in the rest of Europe. It is essential institutions including schools respect the right of people to wear religious and traditional dress. I hope that schools throughout the country will take note of this case and ensure that their policies reflect this judgement.”
Muslims face increased stop and search
Hazel Blears, the minister responsible for counter-terrorism, said yesterday that Muslims will have to accept as a “reality” that they will be stopped and searched by the police more often than the rest of the public.
Ms Blears told MPs that “there was no getting away from it”, because the terrorist threat came from people “falsely hiding behind Islam”.
Her comments, on the day when leading British Muslim groups met to hammer out a strategy on maximising the Islamic vote for the election, provoked immediate condemnation from Islamic leaders.
Massoud Shadjareh, chair of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, said: “She is demonising and alienating our community. It is a legitimisation for a backlash and for racists to have an onslaught on our community.”
See also “Muslim police stops ‘more likely'”, BBC News, 2 March 2005
IHRC condemns Hazel Blears’ Islamophobic politics of fear
“IHRC condemns in the strongest terms the dangerous comments made by Home Office minister Hazel Blears that Muslims should be ready to be disproportionately targeted by anti-terror laws. Ms Blears stated that since the terror threat facing Britain is coming from ‘people associated with Islam’, it was only right that Muslims should become disproportionate victims of stop and search and other anti-terror powers.”
Discrimination bill snubs gays to save Muslim vote
“Gay rights campaigners have been snubbed by the government for fear of upsetting Muslim voters who are regarded as more important to Labour’s election campaign. This week a new bill giving Muslims protection against religious discrimination will be published, but there will be no equivalent right for gays, as had been planned by ministers. Downing Street fears that Muslims, whose votes could be the key to saving the seats of many Labour MPs, might feel offended if they were ‘lumped together’ with homosexuals.”
More anti Qaradawi propaganda from the Sunday Times
“In favouring Muslim voters at the risk of upsetting gays, Labour is following in the footsteps of Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London. Livingstone has assiduously courted the Muslim vote, even at the expense of goodwill among the gay community. He invited the Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi to London despite the sheikh’s views. Al-Qaradawi condemns homosexuality, advocates wife-beating and describes suicide bombers as ‘martyrs’. ”
The BNP and Islam
“It is not a question of race for us now, but of radical Islam and terrorism.”
British National Party leader Nick Griffin, in an interview with the London listings magazine Time Out, expounding the BNP’s new tactic of promoting their racist propaganda in the form of Islamophobia.
They do not vilify our ideas, they vilify us
The right to blasphemy is not the right to religious hate. Shakira Hussein draws on her own multi-religious background to challenge her childhood hero, Salman Rushdie. (Contains a useful comment on the Australian religious vilification case.)
Open Democracy, 22 February 2005
For Rushdie’s article see here.
MAB: No to Clarke’s house arrest plans
The Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) strongly opposes the plans Home Secretary Charles Clarke intends to announce today to place certain individuals suspected of terrorism under house arrest. The measures are aimed at saving the face of the government and delivering it out of a predicament caused by illegally detaining suspects without trial for prolonged periods of time.
MAB believes that those suspected of offences should be brought before a court of law. If the eleven suspects held at Belmarsh prison cannot be tried in a court of law for lack of evidence then they are innocent until proven otherwise and should not be punished by incarcerating them in any way.
Ahmed Al-Shiekh, President of MAB commented today: “The idea of putting suspects under house arrest while no evidence has been brought against them is simply a violation of a basic value of democracy and a serious encroachment on their human rights. “If adopted, these measures will constitute a dangerous precedent. They will grant powers to the executive at the expense of the judiciary and will therefore compromise the carriage of justice. “MAB calls for the immediate release of every detainee suspected of terrorism so long as the government has no sufficient evidence to try him before a court of law”.
As the election is approaching MAB intends to call on the public to consider this issue, which is an issue of civil liberties and human rights, to be a priority according to which candidates are assessed for eligibility. Therefore, sitting members of parliament are urged to oppose the proposed plans and deny the government the opportunity to undermine the rule of law and the role of the judiciary.