Karin Friedemann on the controversy over the Boston mosque.
Blair in moderate Muslims appeal
Tony Blair says he wants the “voice of moderation” among Muslims to be heard, as £1m funding was announced to boost Islamic studies at UK universities. Ministers hope the money, announced as a report criticised teaching quality, will help train more imams in the UK. At a conference on Islam, Mr Blair also called for closer links between Islamic schools and mainstream state schools.
Muslim News editor Ahmed Versi was among those at the conference, he told BBC News that overall, the language used by Mr Blair was “quite welcoming”. But he said he did not properly address the most important issue to Muslims – what he called the “double standards” of foreign policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. “These are the issues which are radicalising young people and he did not talk about that,” he said.
Labour peer Lord Ahmed of Rotherham, a critic of the government’s foreign policy, told the BBC the conference was “fronted” by Cambridge University, but had been organised by the government which had “deliberately chosen to exclude those Muslims who disagree with government policy.” He accused Mr Blair of using “divide and rule” tactics.
See also the Independent, which reports that “Islamic studies will be designated ‘strategically important’ to Britain’s national interests, allowing tighter official scrutiny of university courses”.
The Islamic Human Rights Commission has characterised this as “social engineering designed to highlight Islam as a problem rather than a solution to extremism”.
Blair can no longer deny a link exists between terrorism and foreign policy
“Let us look closely at recent developments in government policy toward Muslims. The British Muslim reaction to the July 7 attacks was exemplary, as Ken Livingstone pointed out, and this was a proof that they were well integrated into society. A policy of constructive engagement would have spared no effort to make the best of these tragic events.
“Instead, the British government has adopted an attitude of double denial, at home and abroad. Obsession with the ‘terrorist threat’ rapidly colonised debate and drove the government headlong into an approach restricted to the ‘fight against radicalisation and extremism’…. Further, this policy was accompanied by a demeaning – and frequently paternalistic – argument on the necessity of ‘integration’. Muslims, so it went, must accept those British values (liberty, tolerance, democracy, etc) that make up the essence of ‘Britishness’….
“The problem today is not one of ‘essential values’, but of the gap between these values and everyday social and political practice. Justice is applied variably depending on whether one is black, Asian or Muslim. Equal opportunity is often a myth. Young citizens from cultural and religious ‘minorities’ run up against the wall of institutionalised racism. Rather than insisting that Muslims yield to a ‘duty to integrate’, society must shoulder its ‘duty of consistency’….
“Tony Blair will make his last gesture toward the Muslims of Britain today at an international conference on Islam and Muslims in the World…. While I have been invited to participate in the conference, not a single representative of the leading British Muslim associations has been invited to speak, not a single sensitive subject has been touched upon. It is as though these associations and their leaders were part of the problem, and could not become an active part of the solution.”
Tariq Ramadan writes in the Guardian, 4 June 2007
Blair engages with ‘moderate Muslims’ – but excludes MCB
Tony Blair will address a high-level conference on Islam in London today as part of the Government’s strategy to engage with moderate Muslims and isolate religious extremists.
Politicians and religious leaders from more than 30 Muslim countries will attend the event. It will be addressed by Islamic scholars from Britain and overseas. In a sign of the importance attached to the event, it will open with a video message from the Prince of Wales, and this evening Gordon Brown will host a reception.
David Cameron will speak at the conference tomorrow, having been asked to do so by Mr Blair, as will the Bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres.
There has been some criticism because the programme includes no speakers from the Muslim Council of Britain.
$287,000 awarded in Ramadan scarf suit
A federal jury has ordered Alamo Rent A Car to pay a Muslim woman $287,640 for firing her because she refused to remove a head scarf she was wearing during the holy month of Ramadan. The firing of Bilan Nur, then 22, came just four months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the company for what it termed a “post 9/11 backlash,” alleging that Nur was fired because of her religious beliefs in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
U.S. District Judge Roslyn O. Silver ruled last year that the government had proven religious discrimination and Alamo had shown no proof that it had taken reasonable steps to allow Nur to follow her beliefs before firing her. That left the jury in the trial that ended Friday with only the question of how much damages to award, said Mary Jo O’Neill, the regional attorney for the EEOC. The jury in the three-day trial awarded Nur $21,640 in back wages, $16,000 in compensatory damages and $250,000 in punitive damages.
Swiss Muslims denied landmark center
Swiss Muslims expressed deep disappointment Saturday, June 2, at government rejection of plans to build Europe’s largest Islamic cultural and economic center in the capital city of Bern. The Umma group, which proposed the construction of the giant Islamic center, said it hoped that authorities would have a closer examination of the proposal and compared notes with Muslim leaders before turning down the project.
Muslims voiced fears that the Swiss authorities may have been influenced by the recent ferocious right-wing anti-Islam campaigns. The right-wing Swiss People’s Party and the Federal Democratic Union lunched a nationwide campaign to collect signatures to ban the construction of mosques with minarets.
US media ignore ‘Christian terrorists’
“Mark Uhl, a student at Liberty University, was in possession of homemade bombs when he was arrested at [Jerry] Falwell’s funeral. He reportedly planned to use them against any protesters who might disrupt the festivities.
“Uhl had this to say on the social networking website My Space. ‘Christians, fear of death, fear of death. The fear of death shows you don’t believe.’ He added this eye opening statement as well. ‘God needs soldiers to fight so his children may live free. Are you afraid??? I’m not. SEND ME!!!’ Uhl sounds an awful lot like Osama bin Laden, who exhorts Muslims not to fear death when fighting in the name of their religion.
“While Americans have been told to fear Islam and all things Muslim, Christians are riding around with home made bombs. The Uhl story was mentioned by the media for only a day or two. The threat from Christians who publicly express a willingness to die for their faith goes unreported.”
Margaret Kimberley at Black Agenda Report, 30 May 2007
The Islamist – ‘a PR job for the Blair government’
“Young Muslims are no more likely to join Hizb ut-Tahrir than young Christians are to join the Moonies. You have to be of a certain bent to come under the influence of a cult and join as a fully paid-up member. Fortunately, in my experience, the vast majority of young British Muslims have more sense and critical acumen than Husain.
“The suggestion that the radicalisation of Muslim youth can be laid firmly on the door of Hizb is also hard to swallow. The anger of young Muslims against the West has a much broader context. There was a great deal going on during the 1990s that agitated young Muslims and brought anti-Western sentiment to the fore – from the first Gulf War to the genocide of Muslims in Chechnya. But Husain sees the world in reductive, one-dimensional terms.
“When he finally realises his folly, and bids farewell to Hizb, Husain continues to be a reductive extremist. Now, the entire blame for the radicalisation of Muslim youth is placed on multiculturalism – the very idea that gave Husain all the opportunities he had in life! Terrorists, he tells us, are a product of sexual frustration. So we ought to provide them with generous doses of sex to usher them towards peaceful directions.
“Hizb ut-Tahir should be banned so that they can take their nefarious activities underground and become even more difficult to tackle. Muslim organisations are secret terrorist sympathisers. Husain doesn’t tell us what we should do with them. But I suspect he wants everyone locked up, leaving the terrain open for his brand of neocons to run amok….
“The occasional insight of Husain’s memoir notwithstanding, The Islamist seems to have been drafted by a Whitehall mandarin as a PR job for the Blair government.”
Ziauddin Sardar reviews The Islamist in the Independent, 1 June 2007
Muslim women players fight to wear hijab on the pitch
A national five-a-side Muslim women’s football team is fighting for the right to play in their religious headscarf. Team captain and chairwoman of the Muslim Women’s Sport Foundation Rimla Akhtar is leading the campaign.
Under rules of the International Football Association Board, scarves such as the hijab cannot officially be worn. Individual referees can decide whether to let women flout the regulations or send them off. Miss Akhtar, from north London, said the attitude towards the hijab was causing resentment and is demanding legislation be altered to allow it.
The IFAB is yet to make an official decision but Miss Akhtar said that if football bosses continued to drag their feet, sides such as Iran could lose their best players. “I wear the hijab and it is kept on very securely, so it is not a safety problem”, she said. “There is as much chance of a player pulling on your shirt as there is of them pulling on your hijab.”
IFAB guidelines state a player must not “use equipment or wear anything that is dangerous to himself/herself or another player”.
Liverpool supporter Miss Akhtar, who was the only Muslim girl in her school team, belongs to the British Muslim Women’s Futsal Team. Futsal is a form of football first developed from street football in South America.
Miss Akhtar said five years since Bend It Like Beckham was released, in which a young Sikh player fights against prejudice, discrimination has not been stamped out. “We should be clear that wearing the hijab is not an issue.”
Evening Standard, 31 May 2007
MCB commends UCU stand on spying
The Muslim Council of Britain welcomes the decision taken by the University and College Union (UCU) to reject government guidelines on how to supposedly tackle extremism on British campuses.
“Of course, if people come to know of violent acts being plotted then they have a clear civic duty to share that information with the police without delay. However, our universities must remain institutions which facilitate and encourage rigorous intellectual inquiry and discourse. The role of lecturers must be to facilitate and encourage critical thinking, not to stifle it or abort the process,” said Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, Secretary-General of the MCB.
It is ironic that some of the politicians who now recommend these measures were themselves victims of intelligence spying because of their political views when they were students in the 1970s. Just as intellectual freedom was priceless then, it should remain so today.
The MCB fully supports the UCU’s stand that there is no corroborative evidence of British universities being used as ‘hotbeds of Islamic extremism.’ Hence the directive to target Muslim students would only give rise to greater discontent, alienation and discord.
“Whatever the challenges that beset our society we should not resort to the dangerous ways of intellectual censure and religious witch-hunt,” added Dr Abdul Bari.