Accused ‘fled London wearing burka’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bombing suspect fled in a burkaOne of the alleged July 21 bombers fled London after the attempted attacks disguised as a woman wearing a burka, their trial heard.

Yassin Omar was captured on CCTV at Golders Green coach station in north London and at Birmingham coach station disguised in the traditional Muslim women’s dress. He was picked up on the CCTV just a day after the attempted attacks, Woolwich Crown Court was told.

Prosecuting counsel Nigel Sweeney said: “CCTV shows him and his fiancee at Golders Green coach station and him at Birmingham coach station that evening disguised in the burka.”

Daily Mail, 16 January 2007

But if he was wearing a burka, how did they know it was him? Or am I missing something here? Still, any excuse to associate veiled Muslim women with terrorism, eh?

German court upholds ban on head scarves

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A court on Monday upheld a ban on Muslim teachers wearing head scarves in the schools of a German state under a law that says teachers’ attire must be in line with “western Christian” values.

A Berlin-based Islamic association had complained about the law, which authorities in the conservative-run state of Bavaria have used to ban head scarves while allowing Roman Catholic nuns to continue to wear their head-covering habits in schools.

The Bavarian Constitutional Court ruled on Monday that the application of the law in the state neither violated religious freedom nor was discriminatory.

However, a lawyer for the Islamic Religious Community said some of its members were considering taking their case to the Federal Constitutional Court, Germany’s highest court.

Authorities in several states, including Baden-Wuerttemberg and Hesse, have introduced similar head scarf bans.

Judge Karl Huber insisted the Bavarian law did not favor the Christian faith. But because teachers must transmit the values of the constitution, the religious feelings of students and parents must be considered, the court said.

Associated Press, 15 January 2007

See also “Bavaria bans teacher headscarves”, BBC News, 12 November 2004

Channel 4 accused of creating mischief over portrayal of Black Muslim

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim mosque in Birmingham which features in Dispatches at 8pm tonight has accused Channel 4 of “creating mischief” and “engaging in sensationalism” for claiming that it harbours extremists. The documentary shows secretly-filmed footage of an African American preacher, Imam Abu Usaamah, from Queens in New York, who studied in Saudi Arabia and who preached at the Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham. The programme accuses the preacher of promoting an extreme view of Islam.

The Saltley Gate Peace Group (SGPG), a multi-faith community organisation based in Birmingham is made up of representatives from the Muslim and Christian community. It issued a press statement on Friday giving its “undiminished support” for the Green Lane Mosque. SGPG said that Imam Abu Usaamah “is accepted by much of his congregation and the wider interfaith community to be a peaceful man and is known to promote peace to his congregation”.

Black Britain, 15 January 2007

How Australia confronts ‘militant Islam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Gerard Henderson recommends the hostile attitude to “radical Islam” adopted by John Howard’s right-wing government in Australia:

“… the approach advocated for Britain by Martin Bright in his important Policy Exchange pamphlet When Progressives Treat With Reactionaries is consistent with what has occurred Down Under over the past five years. Put briefly, the Australian system takes Islamist ideology seriously. It does not deal with radical Islamists. It confronts extremists’ views, rather than seeking to co-opt ‘pragmatic’ radicals who happen not to be in favour of the use of violence in the here and now for purely tactical reasons.”

Times, 15 January 2007

Freedom of expression for the BNP … but not Hizb ut-Tahrir

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Simone Clarke protestSunny Hundal is back from his hols and immediately launches into an attack on last week’s UAF demonstration: “A mis-guided group of people held a protest on Friday against the ballerina Simone Clarke and her continued employment by the English National Ballet.”

Sunny assures us that “there is no evidence that Simone Clarke was ‘using her position as a platform for the far-right party’.” Well, apart from a double-page spread in the Mail on Sunday headlined “The BNP Ballerina”, of course, in which Clarke states:

“Sometimes it feels as though the BNP are the only ones willing to take a stand. I have been labelled a racist and a fascist because I have a view on immigration – and I mean mass immigration … Britain isn’t really very big. And it’s an island. I really cannot see the logic of allowing so many people in…. I don’t regret anything. I will stay a member…. I’ve never been clearer in my head that I’m moving in the right direction and at the right time.”

Sunny takes an uncompromising stand in defence of freedom of expression: “I’m opposed to people getting persecuted for being members of organisations that are universally disliked but not illegal”.

So, a clear commitment to opposing people being sacked from their jobs on the basis of their political affiliation, then? No, apparently not: “I did earlier support the Guardian firing HuT’s Dilpazier Aslam because he was clearly trying to influence others with his views without declaring his membership and because they were incompatible with the Guardian‘s own liberal leanings”!

Pickled Politics, 14 January 2007

See also Karen Chouhan’s open letter to David Lammy: BLINK website, 15 January 2007

Complain about Richard Littlejohn’s Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Osama Saeed draws attention to an Arab Media Watch alert urging supporters to complain to the Daily Mail about a Richard Littlejohn column in which he wrote: “… here is a simple cut-out-and-keep guide to the two dominant branches of Islam: Sunnis are the peace-loving, Saudi-backed wing who brought you Al Qaeda. Shias are the peace-loving, Iranian-backed strain behind Hamas and Hezbollah. I hope that helps.”

See Rolled Up Trousers and Arab Media Watch.

The sick mindset that breeds Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

From Pope’s anti-Islam comments to Church signs saying, “You must remember, Islam is the enemy”, and “The Koran needs to be flushed”, a Church in west Windsor, Canada, came out in its true colors with publicly promoting anti-Islam hatred.

On January 11, 2007, Campbell Baptist Church organized a lecture of a purported former Muslim terrorist, Zachariah Anani, to warn the public that Islam is a religion of war being brought to Canadian soil.

Donald McKay, senior pastor at the church, said the event was organized simply to propagate what the church believes to be “absolute truth”. So the “absolute truth” which the Church decided to propagate through Anani’s lecture, entitled The Deadly Threat of Islam, is that Islam teaches nothing less than the “ambushing, seizing and slaying” of non-believers – especially Jews and Christians.

According to Donald McKay, “We have no desire to be offensive. We have no desire to polarize people unnecessarily”. It is, in his words, the Islamic faith that is “oppressive” and “vicious”.

Media Monitors Network, 14 January 2007

See “Rage over anti-Islam rally”, Windsor Star, 12 January 2007

‘Islamists use raid to stir up UK Somalis’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Islamic extremists are exploiting American air strikes in Somalia to try to recruit British Somalis to their cause. Hizb ut-Tahrir, a global Islamic group whose activities are currently proscribed in Germany, Russia and Pakistan, was last week circulating leaflets in London, accusing the US of state-sponsored terrorism…. In August 2005, Tony Blair said he would ban Hizb ut-Tahrir, but the plans were reportedly shelved last year after officials said there was insufficient evidence to support a ban and that action might inflame Islamic extremism.”

Sunday Telegraph, 14 January 2007

And what is the extreme action that HT is accused of? The Sunday Telegraph reports that “the organisation plans to demonstrate outside the US embassy next Saturday”! It would appear that, as far as the Torygraph is concerned, peaceful protest is to be condemned, whereas killing over a hundred Somali civilians in what can only be described as acts of state terrorism doesn’t merit a word of criticism.

Read HT’s statement on the US airstrikes in Somalia here.

No caliphate in Catford, declares Michael Gove

Posted on by Bob Pitt

pillock (1)“Gove’s contention is that a small but determined brigade of Muslims has developed ‘transnational’ loyalties superseding any attachment to Britain…. Understandably the extremist dream of ensnaring everywhere from Catford to California in a caliphate makes this politest of men bristle in his Savile Row suit.”

Observer, 14 January 2007

It’s good to know that the citizens of London SE6 can sleep safely in their beds, secure in the knowledge that Michael Gove is defending them against the threat of Sharia law.

‘Dublin imam takes on the fanatics’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Observer finds a Muslim it likes (i.e. who denounces mainstream Muslims as extremists):

Beneath a basketball net in a freezing sports hall, a Muslim cleric is waging war on Islamic extremism.

Imam Shaheed Satardien is taking a stand against those Muslims in Ireland whom he claims are too sympathetic to Osama bin Laden and the cult of the suicide bomber. At Friday prayers in the sports hall in north-west Dublin, the South African-born former anti-apartheid activist warns his multinational congregation against blaming other religions and the West in general for all Muslims’ ills.

Cast out by the majority Islamic community in Dublin for his outspokenness, the 50-year-old preacher says he has received death threats. “I am standing firm in my beliefs,” Satardien says. “The truth is more important than being popular or living a quiet life. Extremism has infected Islam in Ireland. It’s time to get back to the spiritual aspect of my religion and stop it being used as a political weapon.”

The imam from Cape Town fled his native country following death threats, he says, from Islamic extremists in South Africa. His younger brother, Ibrahim, was shot dead in 1998 following a row with Islamic radicals in the city. When Satardien was told he would be next, he travelled to Ireland, the birthplace of his maternal grandmother, and pleaded for asylum.

“I never, ever, expected that Muslims would come under the influence of extremists in Ireland when I arrived here with my family. So I was shocked to find support for Osama bin Laden, to discover the presence of the Muslim Brotherhood and even al-Qaeda here in Dublin.”

Satardien fell out with the main Dublin mosque at Clonskeagh, singling out the influence of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian born sheikh who has spoken openly in support of suicide bombers and issued fatwas on gays.

Observer, 14 January 2007

As an example of the sort of bigotry this sort of “liberal” reporting plays to, a right-wing Canadian Christian blogger writes that the Observer story offers “more reasons to halt Muslim immigration to Canada”.

James Love on Religion and Culture, 14 January 2007