“Well it seems that the ‘fundamentalist threat’ to British state education has been averted yet again. Last week’s ruling against Shabina Begum’s fight to wear the jilbab to school has brought shrieks of joy from all the usual suspects – liberal pundits and right-wing columnists alike …”
Fareena Alam in the Times Educational Supplement, 25 June 2004.
Reproduced in Q News.
“In addition to terrorism and other forms of violence, the current war also involves a battle of ideas, with Islamist totalitarians on one side and their opponents on the other. To convince the undecided, each side tries to discredit the other. This is a battle I am intensely engaged in to show the true nature of the Islamist organizations.”
Daniel Pipes’ response to receiving one of the Islamic Human Rights Commission’s annual Islamophobia awards.
Islamic Human Rights Commission chairman Massoud Shadjareh said today: “It is with great sadness that we reveal this year’s winners. Sadly the competition was extremely tough and we see no signs of this abating in the year to come.”
IHRC press release, 26 June 2004
Unfortunately for Daniel Pipes, although shortlisted for the Most Islamophobic Media Personality award he lost out to Polly Toynbee.
A 15-year-old Muslim girl yesterday lost her high court battle for the right to wear strict Islamic dress to school.
Shabina Begum has not attended Denbigh high school in Luton since September 2002 when she was sent home for turning up in a jilbab – the full-length gown worn by many Muslim women that covers all of the body except the face and hands.
Shabina’s claim that she had been “constructively excluded” from her school was dismissed by Mr Justice Bennett. He said the school’s refusal to let her wear the jilbab did not breach her right to education and freedom of religion as laid down in the European convention on human rights.
Muslim women have launched a Europe-wide campaign to protect their right to wear the hijab headscarf.
The international network Assembly for the Protection of Hijab, or Pro-Hijab, was formed in response to headscarf bans in France and parts of Germany. Pro-Hijab aims to reverse bans already brought in and prevent more “abuses of democracy” being imposed.
“As Muslims we are proud of the hijab, we are not oppressed,” said co-ordinator Abeer Pharaon.
The group, launched in London on Monday, wants to banish the “negative sterotypical image of the hijab which lies at the root of this discrimination” and to offer Muslim women a platform from which they can speak out.
The group has the support of a number of prominent groups such as the Muslim Association of Britain, National Assembly Against Racism, the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe and human rights group Liberty.
MEP Caroline Lucas, Fiona McTaggart MP, and George Galloway MP and London Mayor Ken Livingstone have also supported the founding of the campaign.
“Qaradawi, as I’ve written many times, is probably the leading moderate Islamist, and the most popular Islamist public intellectual, in the Arab world today…. Qaradawi, for all his Muslim Brotherhood roots, has spent the last few decades preaching a moderate, tolerant form of Islamism which places dialogue, toleration, and democracy at the center of Islamic political theory.”
US political scientist Abu Aardvark defends Yusuf al-Qaradawi against the outbreak of Islamophobic hysteria in the British press prompted by Dr al-Qaradawi’s visit to London.
“Will the phenomenon of a gay man successfully popularizing the rhetoric that pits ‘Islam’ (misrepresented as inherently and monolithically homophobic and misogynistic) against the ‘Western Civilization’ (made out to be inherently and monolithically feminist and pro-gay) remain unique to the Netherlands? Or will the Netherlands be a harbinger, as more white gay men, now integrated in the militaries and soon to gain the equal right to marriage in most rich industrialized nations, lose the ability to identify with other outcasts …? Take Peter Tatchell, perhaps the most famous queer activist in Britain, for example. Unlike Fortuyn, Tatchell is still capable of gesturing toward the existence of tolerant Muslims, but a number of his writings suggest a paranoid fear of political powers of Muslims.”
US radical activist Yoshie Furuhashi draws parallels between the late Dutch racist Pim Fortuyn and Peter Tatchell of Outrage! on her Critical Montages blog.
On Friday 28th May 2004 the British National Party exercised their right to make a party political broadcast. Against a backdrop of Muslim women in hijab, the image of Abu Hamza and also Muslims praying on St Thomas’s Road outside Finsbury Park Mosque, BNP leader Nick Griffin delivered a threatening Islamophobic message:
“…the real danger of Islamic fundamentalist terror does not come from distant Iraq. It comes from the growing threat from Muslim extremists living here in Britain. The former Archbishop of Canterbury has pointed out that only a few Muslim leaders have condemned the evil of terrorism… Tony Blair, Michael Howard, Charles Kennedy – all claim that Islam is a religion of peace – there are many peaceful and tolerant verses in the Qur’an, but there are also some, like Chapter 9, v. 123… of course Christianity used to be like that but our forebears reformed it and made it compatible with the modern world, with democracy and our Western tradition, tolerance and intellectual freedom. Now moderate Muslims who want to live here in the West must do the same with their faith…we insist that Islamic fundamentalists stop Islamifying Britain….In 1968 Enoch Powell spoke about his forebodings for he future [at this point there is an image of Powell with a quote ‘I see the River Tiber foaming much blood’] and Enoch was right. Unless urgent action is taken to defuse the crisis by shutting Britain’s doors to any further immigration and deport bogus asylum seekers and radical Islamists…unless these things are done then Powell’s warnings will come true and we will find ourselves in the middle of a bloody civil war….”
The Muslim Council of Britain has responded by urging the community to turn out and vote against the BNP:
“The rise of Far Right parties poses a dangerous threat to our communities. Many of you will have seen the threatening and virulently anti-Muslim party political broadcast by the BNP shown on our TV screens last Friday. They make no secret of their extreme hatred of Islam and Muslims. Under the electoral rules, this fascist leaning party needs only five percent of the votes to win seats in the Greater London Assembly elections and around 9% of the votes to gain delegates to the European Parliament. If this happens, may God forbid, the BNP would have access to much more than just television and radio. By right, they would be given funding with which to promote their racist agenda in Britain. Therefore, it is important to make sure that all members of our community, men and women, young and old, cast their vote on Thursday 10 June. Irrespective of whom they vote for, their participation will help reduce the percentage of votes cast for the BNP, making it more difficult for them to succeed with their divisive and menacing plans. This is the time to make a difference.”
For full text of MCB letter to Imams, 2nd June 2004, click here.
“‘A Woman’s Right To Choose.’ This slogan, made famous by pro-abortion activists in the United States, now has a new meaning, as in ‘Hijab: A Woman’s Right To Choose’.
“That is the slogan for a conference coming up on July 12 in London, hosted by none other than the extreme left-wing mayor of that city, Ken Livingstone. The gradual takeover of the left by Islamists is something truly amazing to behold.”
On 19 April 2004, over 400 police officers conducted dawn ‘anti-terror’ raids across the UK and arrested ten people on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. Within hours, the arrests were connected to an Al-Qaida plot to blow up Old Trafford – the home of Manchester United Football Club. Police sources were quoted in newspapers as saying “the plot involved several individual bombers in separate parts of the stadium”.
Six men and a woman were arrested in Manchester and three men were arrested in Staffordshire, South Yorkshire and the West Midlands. They were identified as North Africans and Iraqi Kurds. They were all held for eight days and then released without charge.
Rebaz Ali and Shadman Sofi, both Iraqi Kurds, were two of those arrested and detained. Their ‘connection’ to an alleged plot to blow up Old Trafford came from ‘evidence’ found at their home – a Manchester United match fixture list, t-shirts, posters and old ticket stubs. The reason the men had these items in their possession is that both men were simply life-long supporters of Manchester United.