Canada’s chief electoral officer stands firm on veiled voters

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Canada’s chief electoral officer said he will not use his discretionary powers to change the rules and force veiled women to show their faces in upcoming elections, saying it’s not his job to “juggle” fundamental rights. Marc Mayrand made the comments as he was questioned by members of Parliament before the procedure and house affairs committee Thursday morning.

Mayrand said those powers are only to be used in exceptional circumstances, and he does not consider veiled voting an exceptional circumstance. Asked whether he would use those powers if directed to do so by the committee, Mayrand said he wouldn’t, because it would require him to “offend the act and not uphold the law.”

CBC News, 13 September 2007

Cartoons aid US lynch mob mentality

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cockroach cartoon“Here is a clue why, despite billions spent by Washington on its global public relations campaign, the image of ‘ugly Americans’ still persists in many part of the world, particularly the Muslim world.

“Just look at the vicious demonization of Iran and everything Iranian in Hollywood, the US media and, of course, the political rhetoric of American politicians.

“A distasteful odor of hate ideology, repelling rational thought, is discernible everywhere, with Iran-bashing in vogue and evincing the darker side of US political culture, ie, the imperialist, xenophobic, intolerant and repressive sentiment of politicians and media pundits toward Iran.

“… other than several Iran-bashing motion pictures by the Hollywood ‘culture industry’, perhaps the most flagrant, and ugliest, manifestation of this phenomenon in US politics and media has appeared in that vital compartment of opinion-making we call political cartoons.

“Notwithstanding the recent controversies swirling about European cartoons denigrating Islam’s Prophet, or a German cartoon showing the Iranian soccer team dressed as suicide bombers, the right-wing American cartoonists have been making their own contribution – by depicting Iranians variously as dogs, beasts and, in the case of one published last week, by Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez, as cockroaches.”

Kaveh L Afrasiabi in the Asia Times, 11 September 2007

Petition against the “cockroaches” cartoon here

Three cheers for Canada’s chief electoral officer

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Don Macpherson applauds the decision by Marc Mayrand, Canada’s chief electoral officer, to uphold the legal right of veiled Muslim women to vote in next week’s federal by-elections in Quebec, and condemns Mayrand’s Quebec counterpart Marcel Blanchet for capitulating to right-wing threats to disrupt the electoral process.

Montreal Gazette, 11 September 2007

Straw words ‘sparked veil attack’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A leading Muslim has blamed Jack Straw’s comments for an attack in which a woman’s veil was torn from her face. The woman was attacked in Liverpool by a man shouting racist abuse, the day after the former foreign secretary criticised veils that cover the face. Mohammed Akbar Ali, ex-chairman of the Liverpool Islamic Institute, said Mr Straw should have known better.

Merseyside Police, who say the attack was a hate crime, met Muslim leaders on Saturday to hear their concerns.

Mr Akbar Ali, who was involved in the campaign to free Liverpool hostage Ken Bigley in Iraq, said the attack was no coincidence. “I put the blame squarely and without any hesitation on Jack Straw,” he said. “He’s a responsible member of the government and is in a constituency with a large number of Muslims – he should have known better than make such a statement.”

Mr Straw, Labour MP for Blackburn and leader of the House of Commons, said he believed covering faces could make community relations more difficult. He said watching facial expressions was an important part of contact between people. Mr Straw said he asked Muslim women meeting him at his constituency surgeries to remove their veils.

BBC News, 12 October 2006

Fear of fundamentalism hinders attempts to set up faith schools

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Public opposition is hampering plans to expand the number of state-funded Muslim schools, a leading Muslim headteacher said yesterday, as the Government confirmed plans to encourage the growth of faith schools.

Mohamed Mukadam, the chairman of the Association of Muslim Schools, said that while there was a “huge demand” in the Muslim community for more state schools, local Muslim organisations encountered “a lot of negativity” when proposing to set up new schools. The perception that Muslim schools could be a breeding ground for fundamentalists could make negotiations with local authorities “quite difficult”, he said.

Times, 11 September 2007

Posted in UK

The Talibanization of Britain

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The Labour Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, supports Tablighi Jamaat’s intentions to build a ‘mega-mosque’ in east London, adjoining the site of the 2012 London Olympics, even though a quarter of a million people have signed a protest petition on the government’s website…. Multiculturalism, by its very nature, is a policy of segregation, where multiple ghettoes sit beside each other in urban communities, but not integrating. Labour has promoted this divisive policy, encouraging it by continually swamping Britain with new waves of uncontrolled immigration….

“It is the Labour party and its leftist cronies in the media who are the ones who are slowly turning parts of Britain into Talibanized ghettoes. All too eager to please the ‘sensitivities’ of new arrivals on Britain’s shores with its policies of multiculturalism, the government has neglected the sensitivities of those already here. The Islamists only do as they please because Britain’s weak-kneed authority figures have allowed them to.”

A characteristic rant from Adrian Morgan at Family Security Matters, 11 September 2007

The Godson approach to political warfare

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dean GodsonTom Griffin identifies parallels between the psychological warfare employed during the Cold War and the methods used by right-wing propagandists against Islam today, and draws attention to the role played by Dean Godson of Policy Exchange.

“‘During the Cold War, organisations such as the Information Research Department of the Foreign Office would assert the superiority of the West over its totalitarian rivals. And magazines such as Encounter did hand-to-hand combat with Soviet fellow travellers’, Godson wrote in The Times last year. ‘For any kind of truly moderate Islam to flourish, we need first to recapture our own self-confidence. At the moment, the extremists largely have the field to themselves.’

“In fact there is reason to believe that Cold War methods of psychological warfare are already shaping the debate about Islam and the war on terror in Britain. Dean Godson himself may be one the most successful practitioners….

“He is better known in Britain as the former chief leader writer of the Daily Telegraph, and as a research director for the Conservative think-tank Policy Exchange. In the latter capacity, he has been at the forefront of the debate about the British Government’s engagement with the Muslim community. He has been particularly critical of Government contacts with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which he describes as an ‘Islamist front group’.

“In July 2006, Godson sponsored the publication of When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries, in which New Statesman editor Martin Bright denounced the Foreign Office’s attempts to engage with political Islam, notably the Muslim Brotherhood. The pamphlet featured copies of twelve high-level Whitehall documents leaked to Bright by a Foreign Office official.

“The individual responsible has reportedly been arrested under the Official Secrets Act, but Policy Exchange can nevertheless claim some success in influencing Government policy. In October last year, Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly called for a ‘fundamental rebalancing’ of the Government’s relations with Muslim organizations, a move that was widely seen as a repudiation to the MCB.

“There are good reasons to be concerned about Dean Godson’s role in bringing about this change in policy. He has made no secret of his own advocacy of ‘political warfare’.”

Spinwatch, 4 September 2007

Police arrest two far-right Belgian leaders at anti-Islam 9/11 protest

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Stop IslamisationBRUSSELS, Belgium: Police arrested two leaders of a Belgian far-right party Tuesday for staging an illegal protest against the “Islamization of Europe,” six years to the day after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

Police scuffled with some of the 200 people who converged on two squares in the EU district of Brussels to protest against what they perceived as the rise of Islam as a significant political force across Europe. Officers handcuffed two leaders of the far-right Flemish Interest Party, which is very critical of Muslim immigrants, and took them away in police vans.

The Italian Foreign Ministry said it was protesting the detention of an Italian member of the European Parliament, Mario Borghezio, who attended the demonstration. Borghezio is from the Northern League, an Italian regional party with an anti-immigrant stance. Italian state TV showed footage of Borghezio yelling as police were taking him away that he is a member of the European Parliament. He was later released.

Protesters sought to use the Sept. 11 anniversary to point out that Islam threatens democracy and the rule of law in Europe. The demonstration was initially planned by Stop Islamization of Europe, a loose alliance with roots in Germany, Britain and Denmark, which had predicted that 20,000 people would come to Brussels from all over Europe. Brussels Mayor Freddy Thielemans banned the protest last month, calling SIOE an inflammatory group and its proposed demonstration a threat to public order. An appeals court upheld the ban Aug. 29.

Only 200 or so protesters showed up Tuesday for a protest lasting only 30 minutes. The demonstrators faced more than 100 police, backed up by water cannons and helicopters, who closed off streets around the EU headquarters.

“We support the goals of the demonstration to protest against the lack of freedom of expression in this country,” said Frank Vanhecke, the head of the Flemish Interest Party, before he was bundled off to the police station. “And we also we fully agree that the rise of Islam in Europe poses a risk to our values.”

Associated Press, 11 September 2007

The British National Party declares its solidarity with its far-right co-thinkers in Brussels, and warns: “Europe looks set for more of these kinds of protests as decent European patriots become more and more frustrated and angered by the endless appeasement by liberal-leftists in positions of power and influence.”

BNP news article, 11 September 2007