In today’s Daily Express, Mark Palmer warns of the threat from “Muslim ghettos”. He makes a comparison with “… the Chinese community, whose members do tend to live in various Chinatown areas of big cities but who, by virtue of their businesses and their appreciation of what this country has to offer, readily feel integrated…. The new Muslim ghettos by contrast are ideal breeding grounds for fanatics and unless we cut off the supply then we might as well admit defeat to the terrorists…. And it is no good Cabinet Minister Ruth Kelly saying that Muslim women wearing hijab, or headscarves, should be employed in front-line roles in the public eye. She thinks hijab-wearing Muslims presenting the news on TV will encourage more Muslim women to apply for jobs in the media. It might – but it will also encourage the likes of Izzadeen to push on with their relentless battle to ‘implement’ Islam. Rather than making Muslims feel more a part of British society, it could just as easily provide them with a further incentive to separate themselves.”
Category Archives: Women
TV roles urged for women wearing hijab
Muslim women wearing hijab, or headscarves, should be employed in front-line roles in the media, said a report published yesterday by Ruth Kelly, the minister for women. More women wearing hijab needed to be seen in the public eye, particularly on television, to encourage more Muslim women to put themselves forward, it said. Miss Kelly said the Government was giving priority to helping ethnic minority women to overcome discrimination at work and play a more prominent role in public life.
Daily Telegraph, 21 September 2006
Well, at least Ruth Kelly can get something right. Stand by for a spate of denunciations in the Torygraph’s letters column.
Our friend Giraldus Cambrensis provides an example of what to expect: “Ruth Kelly wants more hijabs on TV? Is she is an executive of a TV company? When Muslims comprise only 3% of the population, what do the other 97% of the population want on their telly? Hopefully her words will be treated as the vacuous inanities that they really are. What about the stamp-collectors in Britain? Why are they not represented on the television?”
‘Our failure to confront radical Islam is there for all to see’
“At long last, the debate on Islamism as politics, not Islam as religion, is out in the open. Two weeks ago, Jack Straw might have felt he was taking a risk when publishing his now notorious article on the Muslim veil. However, he was pushing at an open door. From across the political spectrum there is now common consent that the old multicultural emperor, before whom generation of politicians have made obeisance, is now a pitiful, naked sight.”
Daily Telegraph, 17 October 2006
Melanie Phillips, perhaps? No, the appalling Denis MacShane – the man who chaired the All-Party Parliamentary Committee on Anti-Semitism that issued the ludicrous report claiming that Islamists in Britain are in an alliance with the BNP.
In 2003 MacShane delivered a speech in which he said: “It is time for the elected and community leaders of the British Muslims to make a choice – the British way, based on political dialogue and non-violent protests, or the way of the terrorists, against which the whole democratic world is uniting.” In response, his constituency party passed a resolution stating: “Denis MacShane is inciting racial and religious hatred, by publicly implying in the press that the Muslim community elected members and leaders are in favour of terrorism and being anti-British.”
Stares, whispers take toll on Detroit Muslims
“Chami, who wears an Islamic headscarf, visited a Downriver fair last year where someone barked at her: ‘Go back to your own country!’ She’s never visited the Middle East, let alone lived there.”
5 years on, US Muslims decry prejudice
Five years after the terrorist 9/11 attacks, many American Muslims complain they continue to face discrimination and stereotyping because of their Islamic attires or identities, while others blame the problem on the misconception of Islam and urge fellow Muslims to work hard to reflect the right picture of their faith.
“The prejudice against Muslims is widespread since 9/11,” Dr. Siraj Islam Mufti, a retired faculty from the University of Arizona and a retired chaplain from the US Department of Justice told IslamOnline.net. “Some advocate profiling based on ethnicity, religion and even identification cards. As a result, there is an increase in a variety of hate crimes committed against Muslims,” added Mufti, now a Contractor to the Federal Correctional Institutions as Imam and a contract Imam with the Corrections Corporation of America in Arizona.
“I experienced some difficult moments of racial profiles,” insists hijab-clad Iman Hadi, remembering she faced her worst experience at the JFK airport in her way back from Egypt. “We were singled out and were detained for about 6 hours for no reason,” she complained. “They took us to a room where I found tens of Arabs and Muslims, even Egypt Air’s pilots were waiting there. They asked us several questions and treated us in a very aggressive way. And the officer was very rude and was trying to humiliate us.”
For Hadi, this was the moment when she felt stranger and unsafe in her own country where she lived for more than 20 years.
‘Most Brits don’t trust Muslims’
The Daily Star reports an opinion poll revealing that 79% of respondents said they’d feel uncomfortable living next to a Muslim. The Star has no doubt where the blame for this lies. In addition to the effects of 7/7:
“Many moderate Muslims seem intent on leading separate lives. They send their children to faith schools, clad their women in burqas and talk of bringing Sharia law to Britain.”
The incitement of anti-Muslim bigotry by right-wing rags like the Star of course plays no role at all.
‘Burka’ is the mark of female oppression – Express columnist
A burka is the mark of female oppression
By Virginia Blackburn
Daily Express, 7 September 2006
I LIVE in a nice part of London known as Little Tehran. The place has a pleasant atmosphere – the Iranians who live here arrived after the 1979 revolution and are sympathetic to the West.
They brought much that is good with them, including a couple of excellent Persian restaurants, shops where you can buy caviar at about a tenth the price of elsewhere and a work ethic that means they are determined to succeed in their new life.
But, just occasionally, I see something that chills me as much now as it ever did: a woman wearing the full burka.
Even the most politically correct of people know in their hearts that the burka is possibly the strongest visual indication of female oppression in the world.
In countries where it is commonplace, and in some cases mandatory, women are not allowed to vote, drive or leave the house unaccompanied by a male relative.
Adultery, like homosexuality, is punishable by death. Forced marriage, an event better classed as rape, is common – as is female circumcision. Rape itself is almost impossible to prove and shames the victim, not the criminal.
The burka is the sign of a medieval society – although even in the Middle Ages in this country, women were treated better than they are now in certain countries in the Middle East.
But no one has been allowed to say any of this for fear of being labelled racist, dismissive of another culture, or a Little Englander. Only a very few who saw what was really going on looked on and despaired.
Young Muslim women face ‘brick wall of discrimination’
Muslim girls are forging ahead at school but hit a brick wall of discrimination when they enter the workplace, the Equal Opportunities Commission says today in a report on its two-year investigation of the experiences of women from ethnic minority communities across Britain.
See also Laura Smith’s article in the same issue:
Mandy, 29 and from a Bangladeshi Muslim background, spent five years at a media company but left when it became obvious there was no career progression for her there. “Because I am a short, brown woman, my supervisor told me the clients wouldn’t take me seriously,” she says. “I would prepare the presentations but I would never give them. I was the back-office person unless it was convenient for them to use me.” After trying for several years to get a job in the cultural sector, she won a position at an arts organisation. But there the situation was even worse. “In the first week I was wearing my shalwar kameez with a shawl,” she says. “The manager said, ‘You look like a Taliban terrorist.’ I asked him why he said that and he told me we Muslims were too sensitive and needed to lighten up. I was the only Muslim woman. There was a culture of ignoring it so everyone became complicit in the treatment.”
Ban the ‘burka’ – Daily Express
“The Daily Express revealed yesterday that a burka-style garment is being introduced in hospitals to allow Muslim women to wear the dress of the oppressed. The readership of this newspaper was horrified: in a poll, 96 per cent said that there should not be an exception for any ethnic group. And how do hospitals across the country respond to this? By extending the scheme.
“There can be no fudge about this: it is absolutely clear that the majority of the British people do not want this offensive apparel to appear on our hospital wards. It is also clear that, just as they have done so often in the past, the powers that be are going to ignore the people and press on with plans designed to keep Muslim culture apart from ours. This wicked policy has already resulted in homegrown British suicide bombers. We must not let this nonsense go ahead.”
Editorial in Daily Express, 6 September 2006
Another Standard poll
The Evening Standard reveals the results of a new YouGov poll, commissioned as part of its “great Muslim debate”:
“People were split over whether Muslim girls should be allowed to wear a veil, such as the hijab, in schools, with 44 per cent supporting a ban and 37 per cent opposing such a restriction…. Nearly 11 per cent said Britain should keep the religious schools it has but not allow any new Muslim, Hindu or Sikh schools…. Seven per cent said Christian and Jewish schools should be allowed but not Muslim, Hindu or Sikh ones….. Overall, three quarters of people believe Muslim leaders could do significantly more to prevent the growth of extremism in their own community, with only 14 per cent saying they are doing all they reasonably can.”