‘Clash of Civilisations – what’s that about then?’ asks Vanessa Feltz

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Today’s Vanessa Feltz show on Radio London (listen here) featured a discussion of the forthcoming Clash of Civilisations conference in London. Perhaps not the ideal subject for that particular presenter, given that she expresses total ignorance of what the “Clash of Civilisations” is about. Oliver Kamm is featured on the programme. For his take on the issue see here and here.

Kamm places an attack on Yusuf al-Qaradawi at the centre of his critique of the Clash of Civilisations event. Not only is it difficult to see the relevance of this – Qaradawi isn’t speaking at the conference – but Kamm gets his facts wrong. Qaradawi doesn’t support suicide bombings directed against Israeli civilians and he didn’t visit London “three weeks after the 7/7 bombings” but a year earlier, in July 2004.

Pork soup for homeless is not racist ploy, says French judge

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bloc IdentitairePork soup is back on the menu for homeless people in Paris after a judge ruled it could not be deemed racist.

Organisers of soup kitchens linked to extreme rightwing groups overturned a ban imposed by the city authorities over fears that its handouts discriminated against Jews and Muslims. Police had shut down food distributions by the organisation SDF (Solidarité des Français) – the same initials as given to the homeless group Sans Domicile Fixe – because of alleged xenophobia and fears of protests.

Groups across the country associated with a rightwing organisation called Bloc Identitaire have been handing out “soupe au cochon” since 2004. Last winter Fabienne Keller, the mayor of Strasbourg, justified banning the soup kitchens saying: “Schemes with racial subtexts must be denounced.” The groups insist that they are only serving traditional Gallic fare to “our own”. Pork soup is a staple of the French pastoral heartland from which, nationalists say, all true French spring.

Guardian, 3 January 2007

Inciting racial hatred and murder – double standards?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A British Muslim called for American and Danish people to be murdered, at a protest against cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, a court has heard. Umran Javed, 27, of Washwood Heath Road, Birmingham, took part in the event on 3 February last year after the cartoons were published in Denmark. Prosecutor David Perry QC told the Old Bailey Mr Javed “encouraged killing and incited racial hatred”. Mr Javed denies charges of soliciting murder and stirring up racial hatred.

BBC News, 3 January 2007

Of course, if Javed is guilty of these charges there can be no objection to convicting him. However, there do appear to be some double standards at work here, when websites like this are able to consistently stir up racial hatred and even solicit the murder of their political opponents without any action being taken against them. (It’s not as though the police would have any difficulty identifying who is behind this loathsome website – see here and here.)

German Muslim held, denied US entry

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A German businessman of Syrian descent who wanted to surprise his daughter with a holiday visit was detained for four days in a Las Vegas holding cell before being sent back home without explanation. A civil rights group called authorities’ treatment of Majed Shehadeh a case of anti-Muslim discrimination.

Shehadeh touched down Thursday afternoon on a direct Condor Airlines flight to McCarran International Airport, where his American wife was waiting to pick him up. The couple had planned to visit family in the Las Vegas area, before surprising their daughter for the New Year and celebrating her wedding anniversary in Central California.

“I gave them my German passport, and he looked to see which countries I visited. He found I had stamps that looked like Arabic and asked if they were fake,” Shehadeh said Tuesday in a phone interview from his home in Alzenau, a small Bavarian village. “Nobody ever informed me why I was being questioned,” he said. “All that was ever told to me was this had to do with Washington.”

After being interrogated by Border Protection and FBI agents for more than 12 hours at the airport, Shehadeh said he was handcuffed and transported in the back of police car to a North Las Vegas jail. Once in the holding facility, Shehadeh said he was stripped of his shoes, jacket and prescribed heart medicine and locked in a cell with about 25 other detainees. There was one toilet in the middle of the room, and access to a telephone was extremely limited, he said. On Sunday, he was released and sent back to Frankfurt on the same charter airline.

Associated Press, 2 January 2007

See also CAIR news brief, 2 January 2007

Local protests greet East Berlin’s first mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Heinersdorf mosque protestorScattered protests Tuesday accompanied a ground-breaking ceremony for the first-ever mosque in what used to be Communist East Berlin.

The two-story building with a 12-meter-tall minaret is being built for the Ahmadiyya Muslim community on the site of an old sauerkraut factory in the east Berlin suburb of Pankow-Heinersdorf.

The mosque, which will be able to accommodate 500 worshippers, is expected to be completed by the end of next year or in early 2008, said the chairman of the sect’s Berlin branch, Abdul Basit Tariq.

Scattered protests Tuesday accompanied a ground-breaking ceremony for the first-ever mosque in what used to be Communist East Berlin.

The two-story building with a 12-meter-tall minaret is being built for the Ahmadiyya Muslim community on the site of an old sauerkraut factory in the east Berlin suburb of Pankow-Heinersdorf.

The mosque, which will be able to accommodate 500 worshippers, is expected to be completed by the end of next year or in early 2008, said the chairman of the sect’s Berlin branch, Abdul Basit Tariq.

In Berlin, the first mosque was constructed in 1924. Now there are some 30 Muslim places of worship in the German capital. But most of them are in Neukölln and Kreuzberg, in the western part of the city.

These are the neighborhoods in which guest workers, mainly from Turkey, moved to when they first arrived in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. Today the multi-ethnic districts are still home to Berlin’s largest Turkish community as well as to large numbers of Arab and east European immigrants.

In the former Communist and, at the time, internationally insular East Berlin, there were no mosques which might explain the protests, Tariq says.

“These are unfounded fears,” Tariq says. “People listen to the news, see scenes on television and that’s why they’re scared of Muslims. They think Muslims are terrorists and suicide bombers. Their heads are full of these things.”

Opposition to the planned mosque has underlined Germany’s problems in integrating its 3.2-million strong Muslim community. The problem is especially acute in formerly communist-ruled east Germany where few Muslims and other immigrants have settled.

Deutsche Welle, 2 January 2007

Muslims in South Australia subjected to unfair treatment, report finds

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims in South Australia are being racially abused “like never before”, a Government report has found. The trend has prompted the Equal Opportunity Commission to launch a new project to work with the SA Muslim community, described in the commission’s latest annual report as being “under pressure”.

SA Equal Opportunity Commissioner Linda Matthews said in the annual report that a “small minority are behaving in an unacceptable way” towards newly arrived Muslims. “For generations, South Australian Muslims have been an integral part of our community,” she said. “But in the last five years, the heightened global attention on Islam has seen local Muslims singled out for unfair treatment like never before.”

Roman Catholic Church Vicar-General Monsignor David Cappo, who also heads the State Government’s Social Exclusion Unit and is a member of the executive committee of Cabinet, told The Advertiser‘s Rex Jory racism was widespread among young Adelaide people. “They are very harsh to Asian communities. Now the Muslims are going to get it as well,” he said.

The Australian, 31 December 2006

Muslims victimised over mosque plan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Forza Nuova flagOne of Tuscany’s oldest and most idyllic hill-top towns is in turmoil over the building of a large mosque, with a golden dome and an illuminated glass minaret.

For 20 years, the 14,000 residents of Colle di Val d’Elsa have had a community of around 300 Muslims living among them. A small Islamic cultural centre was established years ago, but the atmosphere of peaceful cohabitation has turned sour after proposals for a much bigger centre incorporating a mosque.

A severed pig’s head was left outside the gates of the site, where work has begun. Anti-Muslim graffiti has appeared on walls and local Muslims have been pelted with sausages. Last weekend, 500 people, many of them fascists from a group called Forza Nuova (New Force), staged a protest.

“The things that have been happening are very wrong, and out of character for the town,” said Paolo Brogioni, the mayor of Colle, whose Muslim community now does not venture out on to the cobbled streets.

Daily Telegraph, 1 January 2007

Americans oppose Dutch Islamic veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Many adults in the United States are against a proposal developed by the Dutch government that seeks to ban Islamic veils, according to a six-country poll by Harris Interactive published in the Financial Times.

59 per cent of Americans believe Islamic women should have the right to wear the garments if they wish to do so.

Support is significantly lower in the five European nations surveyed, with Spain at 39 per cent, Italy at 34 per cent, Germany at 33 per cent, Britain at 23 per cent, and France at 23 per cent.

Angus Reid Global Monitor, 31 December 2006

Dutch veil ban poll