Tutu calls for better media reporting of religion

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Desmond TutuLONDON – Archbishop Desmond Tutu called on the media on Wednesday to be more careful in their choice of words when reporting on religious conflict.

“I would hope that you in the media would be passionate about letting people judge for themselves, that you would be careful about some of the language that you do actually use,” he said. “‘Muslim terrorism’ – have you ever read anywhere ‘Christian terrorism’? – as if Islam propagates violence, but you have never spoken about what happened in Northern Ireland as Christian terrorism,” he said.

Tutu added that understanding different religions required peoples of all faiths to understand different perspectives. “We Christians ought to get off our high horse and learn to be a great deal more humble, when you look at our history, the bloody things that we did in the name of religion,” he said.

Reuters, 27 June 2007

SANE Works for US: coming to a Masjid near you!

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“So you’re at prayers at your local mosque, and a pasty white guy in a pantomime Arab costume and fake beard comes up to you. He says, ‘Asalaamun alaykum, dear brother! You can speak freely in front of me. Would you like to discuss violent jihad against the kaafirs?’ You look around. Is your cousin Mustafa setting you up? Is there a hidden camera in the mihrab? Because when anything this patently ridiculous happens, there’s got to be an angle. And there is. Congrats! You’ve just been selected by the Mapping Shari’a Project for inclusion in their latest study.”

Abdalhayy takes on Dave Glaubatz and SANE.

US border guards deport Canadian Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Milgo Noor had an appointment at 3:30 p.m. this past Sunday to look at bridesmaid dresses in a Buffalo bridal shop. She never arrived. When the young bride-to-be tried crossing the border with her three bridesmaids – two sisters and a cousin – the women were detained for more than eight hours and two of them were escorted back into Canada in handcuffs.

Shortly after Noor, 26, showed her citizenship to a U.S. border guard at the Peace Bridge, more than a dozen customs officers “charged” at her vehicle, starting an ordeal that she said stripped her of her dignity. For three of the eight hours, Noor and her eldest sister Rukia, 32, were held in solitary holding cells. After asking repeatedly why they had been detained, they were laughed at by U.S. border officials. “You have no rights here,” they were told. “You came to us.”

Their rooms had a chair bolted to the floor, a wall-mounted surveillance camera and an alarm that sounded every 30 minutes. They were searched by border officials wearing gloves, the women said, as well as being fingerprinted and photographed. Noor said they were held without food or water. They sat while border officials ate pizza in front of them. “We asked for water and no one would even look at us. They told us to ‘Shut up and sit down’,” Noor said.

Mohamed Elmasry, national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, said the incident does not surprise him. He says his organization receives about five complaints per week from Canadian Muslims who feel they have been treated unfairly at a U.S. entry point. “They’re brown and they have a Muslim name. There’s two strikes against them,” Elmasry said, adding that had the women been wearing the hijab it would have been three.

His organization advises Canadian Muslims to avoid travelling to the United States, and issues alerts before the annual Hajj pilgrimage urging Muslims to ensure their flights do not have U.S. stopovers.

Toronto Star, 28 June 2007

MCB speaks out on ‘honour’ killings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MCB logoThe Muslim Council of Britain insisted yesterday that “honour” violence was a cultural practice and nothing to do with faith. The council spoke out after a BBC investigation claimed that there were links between some cases of honour violence in Britain and islamist extremist groups abroad. Victims of such attacks are alleged by their families to have disgraced them.

The Crown Prosecution Service pointed to the death five years ago of Heshu Yones, 16, who was stabbed to death by her father, and claimed that Islamist terror groups were behind it. Crown Prosecution Service national lead on honour crime Nazir Afzal told Radio 4 that the threats to kill another woman, who is known as Miss B, came from her family but originated from an Egyptian terrorist group. He said: “They told her husband that, if he didn’t put his wife in her place, then they would do it themselves.”

However, Muslim Council of Britain spokeswoman Reefat Drabu disagreed with Mr Afzal’s comments. “First and foremost, there has to be clarity that this is nothing to do with any faith, in particular Islam,” she said. “It is a cultural practice and there is nothing in any faith that would condone it or say that it is the right thing do it. This is to do with misguided notions of family honour. It has nothing to do with radicalism or terrorism.”

Morning Star, 27 June 2007

Over at Butterflies and Wheels Ophelia Benson expresses indignation that the MCB should even be asked their opinion on the issue. After all, they’re only the most representative Muslim organisation in the UK, with some 500 affiliates. Who cares what they think? Ms Benson would no doubt regard it as much more appropriate for the BBC to ask Maryam Namazie and the “Council of Ex-Muslims” for a quote instead.

And David T of Harry’s Place comments: “The Muslim Council of Britain’s eccentric stance on this issue illustrates why it is no longer invited to the Home Office to participate in the process of public policy formation.” Whereas some of us might have thought that the government’s cold-shouldering of the MCB was perhaps rather more closely connected with their refusal to keep quiet about the role of UK foreign policy in fuelling terrorism.

The Muslims are coming!

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Johann Hari has always been one of our favourite Islamophobes. Unlike many self-styled defenders of Enlightenment values he is in fact capable of rational thought, plus he has an understanding that there is such a thing as imperialism, which always helps. And, to be fair, he does take a stand against the more egregious examples of anti-Muslim bigotry.

His piece in the next issue of The New Republic about a cruise sponsored by the right-wing magazine National Review gives an entertaining – if rather scary – insight into the Islamophobic hysteria that has gripped US conservatives:

“I am standing waist-deep in the Pacific Ocean, indulging in the polite chit-chat beloved by vacationing Americans. A sweet elderly lady from Los Angeles is sitting on the rocks nearby, telling me dreamily about her son. ‘Is he your only child?’ I ask. ‘Yes’, she answers. ‘Do you have a child back in England?’ she asks me. No, I say. Her face darkens. ‘You’d better start’, she says. ‘The Muslims are breeding. Soon, they’ll have the whole of Europe.’

“… So, you’re a European, one of the Park Avenue ladies says, before offering witty commentaries on the cities she’s visited. Her companion adds, ‘I went to Paris, and it was so lovely.’ Her face darkens: ‘But then you think – it’s surrounded by Muslims.’ The first lady nods: ‘They’re out there, and they’re coming.’ Emboldened, the bearded Floridian wags a finger and says, ‘Down the line, we’re not going to bail out the French again.’ He mimes picking up a phone and shouts into it, ‘I can’t hear you, Jacques! What’s that? The Muslims are doing what to you? I can’t hear you!’

“… The idea that Europe is being ‘taken over’ is the unifying theme of this cruise. Some people go on singles’ cruises, some on ballroom-dancing cruises. This is the Muslims Are Coming cruise. Everyone thinks it. Everyone knows it. And the man most responsible for this insight is sitting only a few tables down: Mark Steyn. He is wearing sunglasses on top of his head and a bright shirt. Steyn’s thesis in his new book, America Alone, is simple: The ‘European races’ – i.e., white people – ‘are too self-absorbed to breed’, but the Muslims are multiplying quickly. The inevitable result will be ‘large-scale evacuation operations circa 2015’ as Europe is ceded to Al Qaeda and ‘Greater France remorselessly evolve[s] into Greater Bosnia’. He offers a light smearing of dubious demographic figures – he needs to turn 20 million European Muslims into more than 150 million in nine years, which is a lot of humping – to ‘prove’ his case.

“But facts, figures, and doubt are not on the itinerary of this cruise. With one or two exceptions, the passengers discuss ‘the Muslims’ as a homogenous, sharia-seeking block – already with near-total control of Europe. Over the week, I am asked nine times – I counted – when I am fleeing Europe’s encroaching Muslim population for the safety of the United States.”

Muslim leaders deplore Rushdie knighthood

Posted on by Bob Pitt

We strongly deplore the recent conferring of a knighthood to Salman Rushdie (Letters, June 21). We see this as a deliberate provocation and insult to the 1.5 billion Muslims around the world. The “honouring” of Rushdie at a time when the British government claims to be trying to build bridges with the Muslim community can only be seen as duplicitous. We regard this as a conscious effort not only to offend Muslim sensibilities but also to sow seeds of division. In honouring Rushdie, the prime minister has demonstrated how little regard he has for Islam.

Ali al-Hadithi Federation Of Student Islamic Societies, Bashir Mann Muslim Council of Scotland, Dr Abdul Wahid Hizb ut-Tahrir, Dr Ahmad ar-Rawi Muslim Association of Britain, Dr Mamoun Mobayad Northern Ireland Muslim Family Association, Dr Muhammad Abdul-Bari Muslim Council of Britain, Massoud Shadjareh Islamic Human Rights Commission, Maulana Faiz Siddiqui Muslim Action Committee, Muhammad Sawalha British Muslim Initiative, Saleem Qidwai Muslim Council of Wales, Sheikh Abdulhossein Moezi Islamic Centre of England, Sheikh Shafiq-ur-Rahman United Kingdom Islamic Mission

Letter in Guardian, 26 June 2007

See also the Times, 26 June 2007

Evening Standard feeds fascist propaganda

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Muslims called for the Queen to ‘Go to Hell’ as they burnt the flag of St George on the streets of London on Friday”, the British National Party reports. They refer their supporters to this article from Friday’s This Is London (the Evening Standard ‘s website) which, typically, gave completely disproportionate coverage to the provocative activities of a tiny and completely unrepresentative group of nutters around Omar Bakri’s former lieutenant Anjem Choudary.

In a caption accompanying a picture of Choudary’s supporters demonstrating against the decision to give a knighthood to Salman Rushdie, This Is London informed its readers that “the protest has drawn hundreds of angry British muslims to Regents Park Mosque in North London”. The Guardian, by contrast, put the figure at “about 20” while the Telegraph estimated “two dozen“.

Needless to say, This Is London didn’t see fit to quote this letter from Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain. They prefer to falsely associate British Muslims with a self-publicising idiot like Anjem Choudary and feed the racist propaganda of the BNP.

Hijab ban red-cards Muslim team

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Scotland hijab banScotland’s first female Muslim football team has been prevented from playing competitive matches after soccer chiefs imposed a worldwide ban on wearing religious headdress during games.

Ansar Women’s FC, from the east end of Glasgow, were looking forward to their first league games this summer, until it became clear they could not play while wearing their hijab headscarves.

The decision was taken by the International Football Association Board (IFAB), the game’s ultimate decision-making body, and part of FIFA. Law 4 of the sport’s regulations restricts a player’s kit to a shirt or jersey, shorts, socks and footwear.

Zuby Malik, a Glasgow-based sports worker and coach of the team, said it appeared to end hopes of Ansar Women’s FC being admitted to the Scottish Women’s Football Association league. Malik said:

“It is ridiculous that I will have to tell the girls that they won’t be able to join the league because of this nonsensical ruling. The majority of the girls in our team wear the hijab and it is completely unfair to ask people to choose between their faith and sport. Quite rightly their religion will always come first.”

Malik said London giants Arsenal had already expressed an interest in one of their players. “There is so much talent in the Asian community in Scotland, but this sends out the signal that football is not for them. Asians are already woefully under-represented in Scottish sport and this is another huge blow.”

The 27-year-old coach said there was no justification for banning headscarves and turbans. “There appears to be no logic at all behind this ruling. I don’t see how anyone could be injured through wearing a hijab or a turban or how it affects their game in any way.”

Scotland on Sunday, 24 June 2007

Last days of Europe?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Walter Laqueur’s ‘The Last Days of Europe’ writes the ‘Epitaph for an Old Continent’. European churches are empty, mosques are jammed, and the blind liberal belief in multiculturalism is a leaky lifeboat in the realpolitik ocean. Islamist extremists, spurning multicultural stratagems for integration, were allowed to proselytize their violent creed with impunity under freedom of speech laws…. Coupled with an aging native European population and an exploding Muslim influx (Mohammed is the second most popular name for newborn baby boys in Dutch cities), the continent’s 20 million Muslims will become majorities in several European cities by mid-century.”

Another outing for the paranoid “Eurabia” fantasy, this one courtesy of UPI.