PCSO wears headscarf – shock revelation in Daily Mail

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nadia Naeem“A Muslim teenager has been named as one of the ‘babies on the beat’ as police community support officers. The Daily Mail revealed on Monday how Thames Valley police were employing two 16-year-old school-leavers as PCSOs. Yesterday it emerged that the force also recruited three 17-year-olds, including Nadia Naeem, now 18, who wears the hijab. All now have the power to detain and question suspects.”

Daily Mail, 16 August 2007

Quite how wearing a headscarf is relevant to a PCSO’s ability to detain and question suspects is not explained.

Tories protest HT’s use of Alexandra Palace

Posted on by Bob Pitt

HizbA controversial Islamic group accused of being anti-Semitic hate mongers and condoning the murder of gay people recently held a conference at Alexandra Palace in north London, to the disgust of local Conservatives. Thousands of Hizb ut-Tahrir supporters gathered for the conference on how to realise the Khilafah – a global Islamic state.

Last month, Conservative leader David Cameron asked Prime Minister Gordon Brown why the group was not proscribed in the UK. Mr Cameron said: “People simply won’t understand why an organisation urging people to kill all Jews hasn’t been banned.”

Justin Hinchcliffe, of Haringey Conservatives, told the Muswell Hill Times: “Hizb ut-Tahrir is a fascist-Islamic organisation. Jihad (holy war), anti-Semitism, homophobia and misogyny are what it stands for. If Labour wants to be tough on terrorism it should ban such hateful groups instead of eroding the civil liberties of the law-abiding majority. Meanwhile, the bosses at Alexandra Palace should be ashamed of themselves. Clearly, they have placed profit above ethics, community relations, security and common sense. We don’t want these hate-mongers in Haringey.”

Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary general of The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), told the Muswell Hill Times he did not believe banning the group was the answer but that the MCB strongly disagree with the group’s position of non-participation in the UK electoral process. “The best way is surely to challenge some of their ideas and show clearly why integration and greater participation in the mainstream political process is a more fruitful path for all concerned.”

Pink News, 14 August 2007

Australian racist politician targets Muslim immigration

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pauline Hanson (2)Pauline Hanson, a former right-wing lawmaker who shot to popularity in the 1990s on a policy of curbing Asian migration to Australia, announced Wednesday she is registering a new political party that adds Muslims and refugees to her list of unwanted residents.

The 53-year-old firebrand plans to run for the Senate as a candidate of the new party, Pauline’s United Australia Party, in elections due around October. “I think we need to have a look at our immigration levels and I’d like to put a moratorium on any more Muslims coming into Australia,” Hanson told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio Wednesday.

She said Australia also needs to change its international humanitarian commitments so it can reject “refugees in this country that bring in diseases, who are incompatible with our lifestyle”. Hanson said she still stood by her first speech to Parliament in 1996 when she famously warned that Australia was “in danger of being swamped by Asians”.

Associated Press, 15 August 2007

‘Immigrants must earn respect’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In an article headed “Immigrants must earn respect” John Lloyd adds his ten cents to the “Undercover Mosque” controversy.

He writes: “poor ethnic groups bring their own forms of crime. Sometimes this crime echoes down through the third and fourth generations of immigrants – as with the spate of black-on-black shootings in London and Manchester and the embrace of violent Islamism by some Muslim youths…. There is no longer any place for a view that pardons minorities for crimes and behaviour not tolerated in the majority. Bafflingly, such a view seemed to be in evidence when the UK’s West Midlands police and the Crown Prosecution Service chided a Channel 4 programme, broadcast in January, that showed violent prejudice against non-Muslims being preached in a mosque.”

Financial Times, 14 August 2007

Posted in UK

Iranian women barred from karate games

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Eleven Iranian women have been banned from the Konishi Cup karate competition in Kalmar, Sweden, after they refused to remove their hijab. The women ended up watching the competition from the stands at the beginning of August when head referee Javier Escalante declined to give them a special dispensation, a Swedish-based English-language online newspaper The Local said quoting the Sveriges Radio. It added that the Iranian women had traveled to Sweden solely to take part in the championship.

Press TV, 15 August 2007

‘Minarets are a sign of sharia law’ – backlash against Cologne mosque project

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pro Koln demoCOLOGNE, Germany – Never mind that a local brothel claiming to be Europe’s largest calls itself the Pasha and sports an ersatz arabesque theme. Some residents of this ancient city on the banks of the Rhine see the brothel as a shining example of their tolerance. But what irks them is that some Muslims want to build a mosque, complete with a dome and minarets.

The residents complain that the minarets would clash with the towering spires of the city’s celebrated 13th-Century cathedral. But as the debate heats up, it has revealed a cultural schism that goes much deeper than any disagreement over architectural aesthetics.

Cardinal Joachim Meisner, spiritual leader of the city’s Catholics and a close friend of Pope Benedict XVI, has said that the proposed mosque leaves him with an “uneasy feeling.” Monsignor Rainer Fischer, another Catholic clergyman in the city, said: “The idea of building the mosque has brought up a number of issues that have always been there but were submerged. Now they are out in the open.”

These issues include Germany’s fears about the rising tide of Muslim immigration across Europe, frustrations over the failure to integrate Germany’s 2.7 million Turkish immigrants and gnawing doubts about whether the Turks and other Muslim immigrants truly want to integrate into a Western society.

“The mosque is not a symbol of integration, it’s a symbol of isolation, the symbol of an isolated enclave of Oriental culture,” said Joerg Uckermann, deputy mayor of the Ehrenfeld district and a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. “I think the minarets are a sign of sharia” – Islamic law – “and I do not want that here. This is a Christian city,” Uckermann said, openly expressing what many residents would say only in private.

The ferocity of the opposition has come as a shock to members of the Turkish community. It also angers them. “They are saying that this is a Christian nation, and there is no space for any other religion? This is against all the principles of freedom and democracy,” said Yildirim.

Chicago Tribune, 14 August 2007

CAIR calls for hate-crime investigation in California mosque arson

Posted on by Bob Pitt

ANTIOCH, Calif. — An Islamic group called on authorities Monday to launch a hate-crime investigation into a fire that caused $200,000 in damage to an Antioch mosque.

Investigators with the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District said they are treating the fire that broke out early Sunday morning at the Islamic Center of the East Bay as possible arson, but have found no evidence it was motivated by religion.

Safaa Ibrahim, executive director of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the fire was part of an ongoing campaign to “terrorize” members of the local Muslim community. The mosque had been vandalized several times in recent months – including multiple shots being fired through the windows and walls one night, graffiti scrawled on the walls and a break-in Friday.

Ibrahim said the blaze was apparently started by the burning of religious texts and is the latest attempt to frighten local Muslims. “It’s an act of terror, it’s an act of violence against this community and this mosque,” she said. “They targeted this as an Islamic mosque. They didn’t go to just any other building.”

Emily Hopkins, spokeswoman for the fire protection district, said investigators believe the one-alarm fire was intentionally set and have leads on a possible suspect. However, Hopkins said, there was no evidence that it was a targeted attack against Muslims.

Associated Press, 13 August 2007

‘Preachers of hate’ must be exposed – by fiddling the evidence, apparently

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Joan SmithPredictably, Joan Smith joins in the defence of Channel 4’s discredited “Undercover Mosque” documentary:

“The Channel’s real offence, I suspect, lies in drawing attention to the idiocy of government ministers who have a history of accepting self-appointed ‘community leaders’ as representatives of millions of law-abiding Muslims who do not go to mosques; even worse, they have failed to inquire closely enough into the kind of Islam which is being preached and promoted there.”

Independent, 14 August 2007

See also Steve Hewlett in the Guardian, 13 August 2007 and the Organ Grinder, 13 August 2007

The West Midlands Police and Crown Prosecution Service, who accused the programme makers of distorting the evidence, did so on the basis of having examined 56 hours of film footage, so you might have thought they’d be rather better placed to make a judgement on the issue of distortion than the above commentators, who of course have seen only the carefully edited snippets included in the original programme. But never let an objective evaluation of the evidence get in the way of a bit of anti-Muslim bigotry, eh? So much for “Enlightenment values”.

For an alternative view, see Media Workers Against the War, 10 August 2007

German court upholds hijab ban for female Muslim teachers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An administrative court in the western city of Duesseldorf upheld a hijab ban for female Muslim teachers, news reports said Tuesday.

The court dismissed the complaint of a 52-year-old Muslim teacher and thus confirmed the hijab ban which came into effect in June 2006. The judges argued that wearing the hijab was a religious avowal and violated state neutrality rules in schools. The plaintiff is to appeal the verdict.

Several German states have enacted tough anti-hijab laws which many Muslims view as a violation of their constitutional right to exercise religious freedom. There is no formal hijab ban in Germany, although German federal states are allowed to ban Muslim state employees with headscarves, provided the states have the required legislation on the books, according to a ruling by the nation`s highest court.

IRNA, 14 August 2007

See also Reuters, 14 August 2007