Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) gets in on the scaremongering campaign over the proposed Islamic Centre at Abbey Mills in London. The CBN piece features an interview with Irfan al-Alawi of Stephen Schwartz’s Center for Islamic Pluralism (co-author with Schwartz of last week’s Spectator article) who states that the Abbey Mills mosque will become a threat to security “once the youth have been brainwashed, and been captured by the satanic ideology of the Tablighis”. Al-Alawi adds: “The person who is really behind it is Ken Livingstone.”
Local councils to ‘spy’ on British Muslims
The British government is launching a controversial multi-million-pound package to help local authorities spy on Muslims to tackle so-called “extremism”, a British daily reported Saturday. Council staff will be asked to “establish systems to share potential risks or concerns at the local level with councils and staff acting as the eyes and ears for police in countering threats”, the Daily Mirror said.
The government’s tactics in tackling extremism has been criticized by Muslim leaders as misguided, counterproductive and a virtual “witch-hunt”. Some of its policies and comments by ministers have been blamed for provoking Islamophobia and alienating the country’s 1.8 million Muslim community, at a time when the government refuses to accept the damaging effects of its foreign policy, including the Iraq war.
See also Daily Mirror, 6 January 2007
Protection from press racism never looked gaunter
“Newspapers were a green light to discriminate against black communities after the press watchdog ruled that rules banning ‘prejudiced’ articles were meant only to protect individuals. The bizarre decision came as a result of complaints to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) about an article in The Sun newspaper written by columnist and broadcaster Jon Gaunt.
“This website, and many of our readers, took issue with a column on 24th October last year, which claimed human rights were ‘just for foreigners, fanatics, freeloaders and perverts’…. It accused a Muslim schoolteacher Aishah Azmi of wanting to ‘stitch up our way of life’ by contesting an employment courts’ decision to ban her wearing the full veil in class even when adult male colleagues are present….
“But in a ruling received today by Blink, the PCC noted that their code of conduct (Clause 12) was ‘designed to protect the individual and is not generally applicable to groups of people. As such, the complaint that the article discrimiated against Muslims in general could not raise a breach of the Code. In this instance the Commission noted that the only individual who might have been the subject of prejudicial or pejorative reference was Ms Aishah Azmi, who had not raised a compliant about the matter’.”
Lester Holloway reports, BLINK website, 8 January 2007
Fascists campaign against ‘mega-mosque’
Complaining that the proposed Abbey Mills Islamic Centre “will change the face of the landscape and will be a defiant symbol of the extent of this alien religion in our capital city”, the BNP urges its supporters to vote in an Evening Standard online poll which poses the question “Are you in favour of the £100m mosque?”
BNP news article, 7 January 2007
The online poll is here.
Religious leaders push back against Rep. Goode
More than 20 prominent religious leaders have launched an on-line petition demanding that Rep. Vigil Goode (R-Va) reexamine his opposition to newly-elected Rep. Keith Ellison, a Muslim from Minnesota, taking his unofficial oath of office using the Qur’an, and to apologize for his statement that, without punitive immigration reform, “there will be many more Muslims elected to office demanding the use of the Qur’an.”
The petition warns, “An attack against one religion is an attack against them all. Next week, it could be Jews. Next month, it could be Christian fundamentalists or evangelicals. Right now, it is Muslims. It is they who feel targeted by repression and abuse, and they who live among us in a growing climate of fear…. We hold it to be self-evident that all Americans have the right to practice their faith, whatever it may be, and that any Americans – regardless of race, color or creed – may be elected and sworn into office holding whatever book they consider sacred…. We would point out that there are some five million Muslims in the US. Many have been here for generations. They are every bit as American as Rep. Goode. Some Americans have also converted to Islam, including Rep. Ellison. We call for a renewed unity among people of conscience and of faith.”
The petition adds, “In a spirit of reconciliation and peace, we invite Rep. Goode to join with us in an inter-religious delegation to visit a mosque in his district, in order that the healing may begin.”
Atlantic Free Press, 7 January 2007
The online petition is here.
Report links lawyer’s religion to FBI’s zeal
FBI fingerprint examiners were reluctant to admit that they had mistakenly linked an Oregon lawyer to the 2004 Madrid train bombings in part because he was a Muslim convert and had represented a terrorism defendant in court, according to a report released yesterday by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
The 20-page summary report by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said that Brandon Mayfield’s religion “was not the sole or primary cause” of the FBI Laboratory’s mistaken identification of him, but it contributed to the bureau’s reluctance to reexamine conclusions in the case. Several FBI and Justice Department officials acknowledged that “Mayfield’s religion was a factor in the investigation,” the report said, in part because officials expected that any suspect in the bombings was likely to be Muslim.
Swindon mosque bomber is jailed
A racist thug who tried to firebomb a mosque and daubed sick graffiti on its walls was jailed yesterday.
Mark Bulman, 22, got five years for the attack in which he wrote “Go to Auschwitz” and “Allah is a pervert” on the building.
He also painted a Nazi swastika on its walls after smashing a window and lobbing in a petrol bomb. But it failed to explode in the empty building.
See also “Racist jailed for arson attack on mosque”, Swindon Advertiser, 6 January 2007
Another article from the Advertiser sheds a revealing light on the British National Party’s new “respectable” image. A couple of months earlier, when a teenager was convicted of an arson attack on the same mosque, a spokesman for the Swindon branch of the BNP had stated: “We just want to say that justice has been done and he deserves to be locked up for this attack on the Muslim community.” And who was this BNP spokesman? None other than Mark Bulman.
French judge bars far-right group’s pork soup plan
A top French judge ruled that an extreme-right group cannot serve pork soup to the needy, saying the charitable handouts aim to discriminate against Muslims and Jews who don’t eat pork because of their faith.
Judge Christian Vigouroux of the Council of State, the country’s highest administrative body, said late Friday that such giveaways by the far-right group Solidarity of the French threaten public order. His ruling approved a decision by Paris police to refuse permits to the group on the grounds that such handouts could spark angry reactions.
France is home to more than 5 million Muslims and some 600,000 Jews. Both Islam and Judaism prohibit eating pork, and Vigouroux said the group had shown “a clearly discriminatory goal” with its charity.
Solidarity of the French was just one of several far-right groups that began distributing pork soup across France over the last four years. Critics contend the giveaway of pork soup is a far-right ploy to draw support for their efforts to defend against perceived threats to European culture.
Far-right groups defend the soup as nothing more than an age-old staple of the rural heartland from which all the French, at least in the national imagination, are said to spring. “Pork-fat soup is traditionally the soup of the poor because it provides complete nourishment,” said Bruno Le Griel, a lawyer for the group.
Le Griel argued that no one was forced to consume the pork soup. But the judge said the group’s Web site indicated it was a policy to refuse dessert to anyone who did not eat some soup first.
Associated Press, 6 January 2007
See also Libération, 6 January 2007
‘Revealed: preachers’ messages of hate’
“Muslim worshippers are being urged by radical clerics to ignore British law.” Jamie Doward plugs a forthcoming documentary in the Channel 4 Dispatches slot.
MPs don’t know Sunnis from Shias
When you are chairman of your party’s international office and its human rights commission and a member of the all-party parliamentary Friends of Islam group, it might be advisable to swot up on what is happening in the Middle East. However, constituents of Gary Streeter, the Tory MP for South West Devon, must hope that he knows more about Dartmoor than he does about the Muslim world.
Streeter confessed last week he did not know the difference between a Sunni and a Shi’ite. He was one of 30 Middle East “experts” from the world of politics put on the rack over Iraq, Iran and other countries in the region by The Sunday Times. Streeter, once private secretary to John Major, the former prime minister, also failed to identify Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran.
He was not alone. Many of those quizzed did not know their Hamas from their Hezbollah. Both Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat MP for Brent East, and Sally Keeble, Labour member for Northampton North, thought Hezbollah was an organisation based in Palestine.
Anne Milton, the Tory MP for Guildford, wears the dunce’s cap after getting 13 out of 14 questions wrong. It even slipped her mind that she was a member of the Friends of Islam group. “Ooh, am I?” she said. “Oh yes, I suppose so. I forgot. I don’t think I’ve sat on it yet.”