America yesterday expressed fury that the Home Office has not handed over Dr Bashir Nafi, the British academic charged with racketeering and conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism for a Palestinian group. An official in the US Department of Justice said: “I thought the Brits were on our side in the war against terrorism. But when something like this happens, you wonder.”
Daily Telegraph, 23 February 2003
See also Daniel Pipes on the “terrorist profs”, New York Post, 24 February 2003
An academic accused by the US of playing a leading role in an Islamic terror group says he will “fight to the bitter end” to clear his name. Basheer Musa Mohammed Nafi, 50, was one of eight men indicted by US Attorney General John Ashcroft this week. He is accused of being the British head of Islamic Jihad – designated a terrorist organisation in the US.
The BBC visited Kingston Blount, the village in rural Oxfordshire where Dr Nafi has his home: “Little seemed to be happening in Kingston Blount itself, save for the quiz night coming up in the village hall. There weren’t any notices about the next meeting of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”
The British academic accused by the US of being the UK leader of the Palestinian terror group Islamic Jihad was today described as a “highly respected and valuable” academic.
Egyptian born Bashir Musa Mohammed Nafi, 50, who lives in Oxfordshire, was one of eight men named in an indictment announced by US attorney general John Ashcroft yesterday.
The US authorities want to extradite Mr Nafi because of his alleged involvement in Islamic Jihad, which is held responsible by Israeli authorities for killing more than 100 people. The Home Office said that no formal request had been made by the US authorities.
Mr Nafi was this morning reported as saying the allegations were “absurd” and “fabricated”.
Mr Nafi is a part-time lecturer at Birkbeck college, part of the University of London, where he teaches on the postgraduate diploma course in Islamic studies and for the certificate/diploma programme. The two courses are run jointly by Birkbeck’s faculty of continuing education and the independent Muslim College – where he teaches full-time.
Dr Gwen Griffith-Dickson, director of Islamic studies at Birkbeck, said: “Mr Nafi is a highly respected, valuable member of the academic team. He is a specialist in the Islamic history of ideas, covering a broad range of thinkers from all traditions in Islam. His work on Palestinian issues is part of a much wider scholarly research on the issues of state and society in Islam.”
Defending her colleague against accusations of fundamentalism, she added: “Mr Nafi has always taken an analytical and scholarly approach to the study of Islam. He has also sought, with energy and commitment, to encourage critical thinking about religious issues and academic balance in his students, and thus to encourage social responsibility.”
A man who slashed a Muslim taxi driver across the neck after calling him a terrorist has been jailed for four years. Steven Jack was found guilty at the High Court in Glasgow of permanently disfiguring Mohammed Yusuf in a racially aggravated attack.
Jack and two companions were travelling in Mr Yusuf’s private hire taxi in Glasgow city centre in November 2001. During the journey 27-year-old Jack called Mr Yusuf a Taleban terrorist and said “you want to bomb our country”.
Mr Yusuf said he asked the passengers to leave the car. But Jack was carrying a knife and he slashed the driver across the neck, inflicting a wound which needed 11 stitches.
Mr Yusuf said that he was a practising Muslim and he became a target because of his beard and Afghan hat.
“Now the ideas and assumptions behind anti-communism are being revived to fight another ideology. Just as many believe communism was the biggest threat to western democracy in the last half of the 20th century, so many see radical Islam as the gravest threat today.”
John Lloyd on US ideologists behind the war on Islam.
“What happened here was that a 62 year old in Leeds, Dick Warrington, put one of these ‘Islam out of Britain’ posters in the window of his house. The police came one day and asked him to remove it and took it away. The next day, of course, he put another one in the window. The police come and they arrest him under incitement to racial hatred. Of course, what happened was that once they got to the police station they found out that there is no legislation to cover his arrest, because Muslims are excluded from existing racial hatred laws. The BNP are fully aware of this. I will just read a quote from them. They say ‘The snag for the police, however, is that Islam is not covered by the anti-free speech race law… it’s legal to say anything you want about Islam, even far more extreme things than the very moderate message on the poster’. I think that is the first point I would like to make, that the BNP and the National Front and other far right groups are fully aware of the legislation and they do work entirely within those constraints.”
Chris Allen of FAIR explains to the House of Lords Select Committee on Religious Offences how fascists are able to circumvent the law against inciting racial hatred.
Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, has asked the Commission for Racial Equality to investigate the London Evening Standard’s website which Mr Livingstone says has been “pouring out religious intolerance and hatred”.
In a letter to Beverley Bernard, the Acting Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, the Mayor wrote:
“As Mayor it is my responsibility to encourage good community relations and religious and racial tolerance. It is counterproductive and unacceptable that immediately following the terrorist outrage in Bali, the Standard’s website has been pouring out religious intolerance and hatred for days, under the guise of discussion.”
The Evening Standard’s website carried a lengthy debate following the Bali bombings. In his letter, the Mayor drew the CRE’s attention to particular comments on the website made during this debate, posted between 13th and 16th October, and still prominent on 17th October. Comments the mayor highlighted included:
“Hands up who would like to see, or would agree with, the rounding up of Muslims?”
“Who’d want to live next door to Muslims now?”
“I’m sorry, but I just don’t want any more Muslims in my country…. Vote them out of your country. Don’t do business with them.”
The mayor has copied his letter to the CRE to the Press Complaints Commission asking the PCC to investigate whether the Standard’s website breaches the PCC code of conduct.
“There is currently an iniquitous anomaly in the law producing a hierarchy of protected faith communities. Mono-ethnic faith communities, like the Sikh and Jewish communities, are protected from discrimination, benefit from a positive duty on public authorities to promote equality, and protected from the aggravated offences of harassment, violence and criminal damage motivated by racial hatred, as well as the incitement of such hatred. Non-ethnic or multi-ethnic minority religious groups, like Muslims, do not on the whole benefit from such protection or provisions, unless it could be shown that the treatment, behaviour or circumstance was indirectly racial. And finally, non-ethnic or multi-ethnic majority religious groups, like Christians, are not covered at all.”
FAIR briefing on incitement to religious hatred, October 2002. Fascist anti-Muslim posters and leaflets are appended.
Muslims in one of the UK’s most ethnically diverse cities have suffered an increase in racist abuse and attacks since 11 September, according to research. An academic survey of racist incidents in Leicester supports fears that the UK is witnessing a rise in Islamophobia – fear or intolerance of Muslims because of their religion.
Earlier in the year, a European Union anti-racism research agency warned there was anecdotal evidence of a rise in Islamophobia. The research by the University of Leicester is the first detailed study into the actual effects of 11 September on a Muslim community.
Racist and religious attacks in Leicester rose dramatically after 11 September, the university’s research found, before dropping back during 2002.
Attacks included abuse hurled at children on their way to school or women shopping, to one reported incident where a baby was tipped out of a pram. One man reported that he had eggs thrown at him outside a supermarket and then had to run as a car was driven at him. Another victim reported that he had had to get off a bus after another passenger screamed accusations that he was a bomber.
The research also found that Hindus and Sikhs also suffered increased abuse after 11 September, although not to the same degree.
Dr Lorraine Sheridan who conducted the research for the university, said that she had been shocked by what she had found.
“The attacks are being carried out by people who don’t like Islam, the abuse is more about the religion than the race. They think that it victimises women and that Muslims refuse to integrate. The people behind the attacks think that Muslims are outside of society and they are different.
“What is of most concern is that this is happening in Leicester, a leading multi-ethnic city which is supposed to be a model for the rest of the UK.”
The inquiry report into the causes of the Bradford riots failed to address the problems or concerns of the city’s Muslim communities, it is claimed.
Humera Khan, a government adviser on Muslim Affairs, says the investigation into riots in Bradford – which happened exactly a year ago – was a missed opportunity to look into Islamophobia. She told the BBC there should have been stronger recommendations in the final report urging national debate on Islamophobia.
Ms Khan also believes Muslims are discriminated against and cannot access services or money to set up projects. She says this was one of the main reasons the riots took place.