Hewitt criticised for casting doubt on Muslim GPs’ ethics

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Patricia HewittThe health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, has been criticised for suggesting that some Muslim GPs fail to respect the confidentiality of Muslim women who visit them.

Ms Hewitt said women feared talking about issues such as domestic violence and sexual health problems in case their details were shared among “close-knit” communities. A report in GPs’ magazine Pulse said Ms Hewitt had first raised the issue in a lecture to the Fabian Society in London.

In an interview with Pulse, she expanded on her comments, saying: “I have had Muslim women give me chapter and verse on very distressing breaches of confidentiality by Muslim GPs. Some women patients feel they cannot trust their own GP, who knows the patient’s extended families. If they go and talk to him about a very difficult situation concerning domestic violence or sexual health problems, they fear that he will share that with other members of the community. They are very close-knit communities.”

Jo Haynes, editor of Pulse, said: “These are serious accusations – failing to respect a patient’s confidentiality is a severe breach of a doctor’s code of conduct. It is generally something that happens very rarely. You would hope Patricia Hewitt has some firm evidence to back up her decision to single out Muslim doctors in this way. It’s worth bearing in mind that Muslims are hardly alone in living in close-knit communities, and doctors are generally very good at separating their personal and professional lives.”

Press Association, 28 March 2007

18 racist crimes every 24 hours in Scotland

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Shocking figures have revealed a rising tide of racist crime in Scotland. Police recorded 6439 racist crimes last year – that’s 18 a day. The figure was up sharply from 5732 the previous year and 4556 in 2004. More than half of all the victims were of Asian origin. Offences ranged from “racially aggravated conduct” – usually verbal abuse – to vandalism, fire-raising and serious assault. The figures were set out in the first Scotland-wide report into racist crime, published by the Executive.

Bashir Mann, president of the Muslim Council in Scotland, said: “I think racism is on the increase in this country and in the UK as a whole. There has been a rise in Islamophobia and this has been aggravated by the anti-terrorism legislation introduced by the Government.”

Daily Record, 28 March 2007

Film on ‘radical Islam’ tied to pro-Israel groups

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A controversial documentary on the threat of radical Islam, promoted by the two most-watched U.S. cable news networks, was marketed and supported in part by self-described “pro-Israel” groups, according to an IPS investigation. Abbreviated versions and segments of “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” ran on FOX News and CNN, but neither station disclosed the film’s connection to HonestReporting, a watchdog group that monitors the media for allegedly negative portrayals of Israel.

While watching the film, it becomes clear that the controversy surrounding “Obsession” has less to with what it says about the threat of radical Islam, than how it presents the information. While the film contains disclaimers stating that “it’s important to remember most Muslims are peaceful and do not support terror,” critics argue that it makes little distinction between the religion of Islam and the political realities that inform terrorism. “It’s all part of that industry of Muslim bashers,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“The sentiment is there, you can see in the [1995] Oklahoma City bombing that it was originally seen as an act of Islamic terrorism,” said Peter Hart of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. “It’s almost a default position for the media, so you’re going to have work like this received uncritically.” The Oklahoma City bombing, initially attributed by the mainstream media to Islamic terrorists, was actually perpetrated by right-wing extremists from the U.S. midwest.

IPS, 26 March 2007

German judge and legal Orientalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The Friday New York Times reported that a German judge denied a Moroccan woman’s request for an expedited divorce from her Moroccan husband – despite the apparently undisputed evidence that the husband had repeatedly abused her – on the grounds that such conduct is ‘common’ in Morocco and that the ‘Koran … sanctions such physical abuse’.

“While the condemnations of this decision have been swift, some of the criticism has been for the wrong reasons. Of course, there is the pious outrage of the German politician Ronald Pofalla, general secretary of the Christian Democratic Union, who somewhat hyperbolically took the verdict as (further?) evidence that Islam threatens the German body politic. The New York Times quoted this far-sighted politician as saying ‘When the Koran is put above the German Constitution, I can only say, “Good night, Germany”.’

“Not much has been made of the utter casualness with which this judge could make gross generalizations about Moroccans, the Quran and, implicitly, Islamic law.”

Mohammad Fadel at Eteraz.org, 26 March 2007

See also New York Times, 23 March 2007

Ban the veil, says ultra-left sectarian

Posted on by Bob Pitt

namazie and racist placards 2Maryam Namazie of the Worker Communist Party of Iran – who was the National Secular Society’s “secularist of the year” in 2005 – once again explains why, in the interests of “progress”, the right of Muslim women to dress as they choose must be suppressed:

“There are innumerable women and girls in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa to right here in the heart of Europe who know from personal experience what it means to be female under Islam – hidden from view, bound, gagged, mutilated, murdered, without rights, and threatened and intimidated day in and day out for transgressing Islamic mores. The veil, more than anything else, symbolises this bleak reality….

“I know our opponents often argue that there are many more pressing matters with regards to women’s status. Why all the fuss they ask? To me, it is like asking what all the fuss was about racial apartheid – or segregation of the races – in apartheid South Africa.

“… some of these apologists will concede that compulsory veiling must be opposed … but if it is a choice freely made than one must defend the ‘right’ to veil. I wholeheartedly disagree…. There may be women who ‘freely choose’ to genitally mutilate their daughters or immolate themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre but that does not mean that we must then defend the right of women to do so or defend the practice of Suttee or FGM….

“The veil is not a piece of cloth or clothing, though it is often compared to miniskirts or other ‘lewd’ forms of clothing the rest of us unveiled women seem to wear. Just as the straight jacket or body bag are not pieces of clothing. Just as the chastity belt was not a piece of clothing. Just as the Star of David pinned on Jews during the holocaust was not just a bit of cloth….

“And this is why the chador, burqa and neqab must be banned – to defend women’s rights…. Because it is unacceptable for women to be segregated in the 21st century; and for women to walk around in a mobile prison or body bag because religion deems that they be kept invisible…. The hijab or any conspicuous religious symbol must be banned from the state and education and relegated to the private sphere. This helps to ensure that government offices and officials from judges, to clerks, to doctors and nurses are not promoting their religious beliefs and are instead doing their jobs….

“Throughout history, progress and change have come about not by appeasing, apologizing or excusing reaction, but by standing up to it firmly and unequivocally. This is what has to be against Islam, political Islam and the veil. We have to state loud and clear that sexual apartheid has no place in the 21st century; enough is enough.”

Scoop, 26 March 2007

‘Quebec’s Le Pen’ likely to make major election gain

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A young conservative populist sometimes described as Quebec’s Jean-Marie Le Pen is likely in today’s election to throw a spanner into the separatist versus federalist competition that has dominated Quebec politics for decades.

Polls indicate Mario Dumont’s Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ), a small fringe party for the past three elections, is about to seize the balance of power in the first minority parliament in 129 years. The ADQ has side-swiped the separatist Parti Quebecois and the ruling federalist Liberals, led by Jean Charest, by exploiting a backlash against multiculturism, especially Muslims.

A debate has developed throughout the province about what constitutes reasonable accommodation to the cultural and social practices of expanding ethnic communities. It was fuelled when, for example, a conservative Hasidic synagogue forced a sports centre to paint the windows of its swimming pool so students would not see people in swimming costumes.

Muslim headscarves and niqabs have also become a subject of controversy, especially when an 11-year-old girl was thrown out of a football match for wearing one. Quebec’s chief electoral officer has ordered that Muslim women must bare their faces if they want to vote, after an outcry over his original ruling that face coverings were acceptable.

M. Dumont, who describes himself as an autonomist wanting more power for Quebec, will probably tonight be in a position to implement many of the rightist, inward-looking policies on which he has campaigned. Both M. Charest and the Parti Quebecois leader, Andre Boisclair, seemed oblivious to the issue until polls showed M. Dumont was surging ahead.

Independent, 26 March 2007

Use violence against Muslims, says Van Gogh’s former mentor

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hans JansenDutch politicians and media are downplaying excesses of multicultural society and thereby increasing these, in the view of Islam expert Hans Jansen. “The Netherlands should resist, using non-peaceful means”, he argues in weekly magazine Opinio.

Jansen, Professor of Modern Islamic Ideology at Utrecht University, characterizes the Dutch as inhabitants of “a peaceful enclave” who have, however, “forgotten that peace sometimes needs to be defended through violence”. A peaceful society that wishes to remain existent and stay peaceful “will have to find a way to defend itself through non-peaceful means from people who are not peaceful”, as the Arabist writes.

As Jansen sees it, the Netherlands is too indulgent to violence of fundamentalist Muslims. But he also suggests that moderate Muslims, too, strive after an Islamic society in the Netherlands. They intentionally make use of the radicals to enforce their wishes, according to the Arabist.

“We do not realise that the threat of violence, and violence itself, can only be stopped through the controlled and cunning use of violence”. The Dutch secret service (AIVD) should get a special department “that gets its hands dirty, if need be”.

Jansen is an authority on the Arabic language and the Koran. Theo van Gogh, who was murdered by a Muslim terrorist in 2004, employed him as his tutor on Islam.

NIS News Bulletin, 24 March 2007

‘A veiled threat by fanatics’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Paul Ross“Common sense seems to have prevailed in the High Court ruling giving schools the right to ban Muslim girls from wearing the full face niqab.

“Judge Stephen Silber rejected a 12-year-old grammar school pupil’s demand to wear one at school. She said it was her human right to turn up looking like a Muslim version of Bat Girl. He disagreed….

“This may seem like a small case but more and more it seems that extreme – and extremely vocal – Muslims are pushing away at our laws and customs in the name of religion when in fact it’s fanaticism.

“The judge agreed with the school’s view that wearing the niqab could lead to peer pressure on other Muslim girls to follow suit. Where’s the freedom of choice in that? But the bullying, bleating extremists never seem to be put off by a set-back. They also appear to have no sense of shame.

“On the same day the niqab decision was announced Britain’s most prominent Islamic organisaion, the Muslim Council of Britain, said that Muslim kids should have separate changing rooms for swimming and sport with individual cubicles – even for primary school kids – prayer rooms and single sex classes for biology lessons, which should stress ‘Islamic morals’. Oh, and they also want different uniform rules, a plea which has already been booted out.

“Of course these demands are not just unreasonable – they are downright impossible. And the Muslim Council of Britain must know that if they read even the occasional infidel’s newspaper or have an ounce of sense in their bearded bonces…. But it’s not really about getting what they want – it’s about making a lot of noise and nuisance and promoting a sense of grievance among Muslims – to keep the anger and resentment simmering.

“That’s why Mr Justice Silber’s verdict is so important. Respect and tolerance for other religions, yes – and a little tolerance by some Muslim leaders of Judaism and Christianity would make a real change.”

Paul Ross in the Daily Star, 25 February 2007

Muslim face veil banned in Quebec vote

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MONTREAL – Muslim women will have to remove their face coverings if they want to vote in upcoming elections in Quebec, a government official said Friday, reversing his earlier decision to allow the veils.

Marcel Blanchet, the French-speaking province’s election chief, had been criticized by Quebec’s three main political leaders for allowing voters to wear the niqab, which covers the entire face except for the eyes, if they signed a sworn statement and showed identification when they vote.

But Blanchet reversed his earlier decision Friday, saying it was necessary to avoid disruptions when residents go to the polls. “Relevant articles to electoral laws were modified to add the following: any person showing up at a polling station must be uncovered to exercise the right to vote,” he said.

Blanchet had to get two bodyguards after the Quebec elections office received threatening phone calls and e-mails following his initial decision to allow niqabs.

The reversal was condemned by Muslims groups who said it could turn their members away from the polls. “I am so saddened, I doubt many of these women will show up at the polls on Monday after all this mockery,” said Sarah Elgazzar of the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Last week in Quebec, a young Muslim woman was forced to quit her job at a prison after she refused to remove her headscarf. The public security department supported the decision, citing security concerns, but Muslim groups pointed out that the Canadian Armed Forces allow women to wear headscarves on active duty.

Last month, an 11-year-old Muslim girl from Ontario participating in a soccer tournament in Quebec was pulled from the field after she refused the referee’s request to remove her headscarf.

Associated Press, 23 March 2007