Osama Saeed replies to Tom Gallagher’s article at Open Democracy.
Tatchell’s Russian ally
A correspondent questions the relationship between Peter Tatchell of the gay rights group OutRage! and the right-wing Russian politician Alexey Mitrofanov.
Who ought to be Mayor?
“Who ought to be Mayor? The man with the vision who says: ‘I am proud of London’s reputation as the most diverse city in the world where the contribution all communities is celebrated and people’s freedom of religious expression is respected as it is one of the most essential of our civil liberties. Attacks on the rights of Muslim people to express their faith as they choose are ultimately a threat to everybody’s rights to freedom of religious and cultural expression. It should be the right of every individual to be able live their life as they wish, so long as it does not do harm to any other individual. This ability to be who you are and live as you choose is what has made London a magnet for people bringing their ideas and energy to make this the successful and dynamic city that it is’ (Ken Livingstone, June 2007).
“Or the right wing toff who believes, ‘The disaster is that we no longer make any real demands of loyalty upon those who are immigrants or the children of immigrants…. So we have drifted … and created a multi-cultural society that has many beauties and attractions, but in which too many Britons have absolutely no sense of allegiance to this country or its institutions. It is a cultural calamity that will take decades to reverse, and we must begin now with what I call in this morning’s Spectator the re-Britannification of Britain. That means insisting, in a way that is cheery and polite, on certain values that we identify as British. If that means the end of spouting hate in mosques, and treating women as second-class citizens, then so be it. We need to acculturate the second-generation Muslim communities to our way of life, and end the obvious alienation that they feel. That means the imams will have to change their tune, and it is no use the Muslim Council of Great Britain endlessly saying that “the problem is not Islam”, when it is blindingly obvious that in far too many mosques you can find sermons of hate, and literature glorifying 9/11 and vilifying Jews’ (Boris Johnson, July 2005).”
Dr Jamil Sherif at Salaam blogs, 16 July 2007
See also earlier comments by Yusuf Smith. And see here for an example of the sort of bigoted anti-Muslim article that the Spectator featured during Johnson’s stint as editor.
‘Time to take stand and say we don’t want Muslim immigrants’
“Let me ask you something. Is it a rational decision for a secular-Christian society to admit thousands of Muslims into its midst? … The question is especially apposite, because we now know the consequences for every single European society which has admitted large numbers of Muslims: social alienation, religious antagonism and outright terrorism. We know this. We all know it. And yet we continue to allow Muslim immigration. Why? What do we gain from it?”
Kevin Myers in the Irish Independent, 17 July 2007
Bringing back the caliphate
A poll shows that people in Muslim countries support the idea of a caliphate – but even more of them want democracy. Inayat Bunglawala argues that the one does not necessarily contradict the other.
Police call for ‘Guantanamo-style’ powers
Police call for ‘Guantanamo-style’ powers
By Louise Nousratpour
Morning Star, 16 July 2007
CONCERNS about overt political campaigning by police bosses mounted on Sunday, after chief constables demanded the power to lock up “terror suspects” indefinitely.
Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) president Ken Jones inflamed the debate over detention without trial when he called for more police powers to hold suspects for “as long as it takes.”
He complained that police were “up against the buffers on the 28-day limit,” which is already the longest period of pre-charge detention in any Western country, including the United States.
The matter was reportedly discussed in meetings between Prime Minister Gordon Brown and senior police officers.
The new Premier, who has already signalled his desire to extend the draconian 28-day limit, is believed to be supportive of the ACPO proposals.
His predecessor Tony Blair was defeated in the Commons two years ago when he tried to introduce a 90-day detention period, which was also floated by notorious Metropolitan Police chief Ian Blair.
The ongoing politicisation of senior police officers in recent years has alarmed politicians and civil rights groups alike, who told the force on Sunday to “stay out of politics” and “remember your place” in a democratic society.
They warned that the latest police proposals would amount to Northern Ireland-style internment of the 1970s and would lead to the creation of a Guantanamo Bay-type prison on British soil.
Within 48 hours of the introduction of internment for IRA members in August 1971, mass protests broke out which left 17 dead. Violence and protests continued throughout that year and peaked on January 30 1972 – known as Bloody Sunday, recalled campaigners.
Britain last used internment during the first Gulf war to harass Iraqi exiles accused of links with Saddam Hussein’s state apparatus.
Jews help Muslims fight for right to build mosque in Missouri
When Rick Isserman found out last month that St. Louis County wouldn’t allow a group of Muslims to build a new mosque in south St. Louis County, the story sounded too familiar.
Forty-eight years earlier, Isserman’s grandfather, Rabbi Ferdinand Isserman, fought to move his congregation, Temple Israel, from the city to the county, where the Jewish population had been relocating for some years. The city of Creve Coeur cited zoning problems and tried to block the move, but the rabbi and his flock took the case to the Missouri Supreme Court and prevailed.
The case, Congregation Temple Israel v. City of Creve Coeur, produced what is considered a landmark religious-freedom decision that says Missouri municipalities can invoke only health or safety issues in denying a religious group the zoning required to build houses of worship.
In the spring, the St. Louis County Council refused the Islamic Community Center’s request to rezone a 4.7-acre parcel it bought a year before for $1.25 million. The Muslims – mostly Bosnian immigrants – planned to build a second mosque and community center in addition to the current mosque and center off South Kingshighway in St. Louis.
When Khalid Shah, a member of the mosque and a friend of Isserman’s, told him about the council’s decision, the 53-year-old Department of Agriculture employee began making the connection to his family’s legal legacy. “I’m fighting the same battle as my grandfather 50 years ago,” Isserman said. “It’s a different community and a different place, but it’s the same issue.”
Hijab ‘special’ given warm beat welcome
A special constable who is the first officer in Cambridgeshire to wear a Muslim hijab on duty is receiving a warm welcome on the beat. Rukshana Begum, 23, who was featured in the News after deciding to wear the headscarf, said the reaction from the public has been “confidence-boosting”.
She said: “I have had so many members of the general public saying it’s really good to see someone doing this and representing their group. People are also saying good luck and I hope it goes well. When I went on duty without the hijab I got ordinary looks, but now people recognise me from the newspaper and have congratulated me. When they say ‘all the best’ and ‘good luck’ it boosts your confidence.”
She said: “I never thought I would get any negative response. Even if I was to think hard, I could not think of why the general public would want to be negative. As I expected, people have been really welcoming and have accepted it. Britain is a multi-racial and multi-religious society now.”
‘Fears grow over mega mosque’
“Gordon Brown is under pressure to block a £75 million ‘mega mosque’, amid claims one of the suspected Glasgow Airport bombers belongs to the radical Islamic group behind it. More than 200,000 people have signed a Downing Street petition calling on the Prime Minister to intervene over plans for the mosque near the Olympics site in east London. It is being funded by the fundamentalist Tablighi Jamaat sect. One member of the sect is said to be Kafeel Ahmed, who was engulfed in flames when a Jeep laden with gas canisters crashed into a Glasgow Airport building two weeks ago.”
In an accompanying editorial (“Probe this mega-mosque”) the Express insists that “the Government must call a halt to plans to build a mega-mosque in East London” and calls for a judicial inquiry to assess the “potential security issues”.
Of course, the Express fails to mention that the petition against the mosque was initiated by a BNP supporter named Jill Barham who blogs under the name of “English Rose”.
‘Keep extremists out of college’, urges JC columnist
In the current issue of the Jewish Chronicle, Geoffrey Alderman devotes his weekly column to a – rather belated – scaremongering piece on the Islam at Universities in England report by Dr Ataullah Siddiqui (pdf here). Alderman writes:
“The report calls for the employment of Muslim scholars to teach Islamic theology. What sort of scholars? Scholars who will approach Islamic texts critically and with an eye to their historical context, and not be afraid to condemn – for instance – the so-called ‘sword verses’ of the Koran, which glorify offensive war against ‘unbelievers’, who are deemed explicitly to include Jews and Christians?
“I don’t think so, because what the report actually says is that ‘students should be given the opportunity to learn from competent traditionally trained Islamic scholars’.
“The sub-text here is inescapable: Islamic theology at our universities should be taught by Islamist faculty steeped in a violent, triumphalist view of Islam in the modern world. This view would – indeed, must – be anti-Western, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli, anti-democratic, anti-gay and anti-feminist.”
Jewish Chronicle, 13 July 2007
What makes Geoffrey Alderman (hitherto not widely known as an expert on Quranic exegesis) think he has the right to lecture Islamic scholars on how to interpret their holy book? Furthermore, why should they be required to “condemn” rather than historically contextualise the sword verses? What Alderman presents is just an ignorant caricature of Islamic scholarship.
And before he starts accusing other people of being “anti-gay”, Alderman might perhaps consider setting his own house in order first. This is the man who, in his 2 February column in the JC, entitled “Gay adoption undermines us”, complained that “the children so fostered will grow up believing that the homosexual lifestyle is an alternative norm”. He told his readers that the shift in attitudes towards homosexuality exemplified by the acceptance of gay adoption “may not offend your credo as a Jew. But it offends mine”, and he went on to draw a parallel between gay men and paedophiles.