“The rhetoric about ‘Islamic fascism’ is a pack of lies – another attempt to repackage the increasingly unpopular ‘war on terror’ by identifying a current enemy of the US government with something that everyone can be counted on to oppose.”
Alan Maass writes in Socialist Worker (US), 8 September 2006
Projects to build minarets in several communities in German-speaking Switzerland have come up against strong opposition from local residents.
On Monday the Zurich cantonal parliament said it would look into banning the construction of minarets across the canton. The decision came after parliament accepted an initiative from the rightwing Swiss People’s Party calling for the canton’s planning laws to be altered to forbid minarets.
The move has been condemned by centre-left and centre-right parties as well as by a leading Muslim organisation in the canton.
The Swiss Federal Commission against Racism last week called for more tolerance towards Muslims. It called on local authorities to show greater flexibility over building and zoning restrictions to allow the construction of religious buildings and to “reduce populist pressures”.
“The West needs strategies conveying to the vast majority of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims that acquiescence to jihadists and their ideologies means a rupture with Western civilization. The consequences for this should be spelled out by withholding Western commerce, the Internet, arms, machinery, and know-how – all of which still represent the bulk of progress as we define it in today’s world…. In the West itself, the last vestiges of tolerance toward Islamic fundamentalism must be removed. Laws targeting extremist speech, Islamic dress, storefront unregulated mosques, and the traffic of immigrant Muslims who do not speak the language nor share the values of freedom must surface in the legal codes of America, Europe, and Australia. The West must clearly process the fact that it is facing an existential threat to its core values, and it cannot be shy about installing tools of war in its democratic practices.”
Mad Mel enthusiasticallly welcomes these proposals: “Exactly. Anything less misses the main point – that it’s ideas that kill, and that it’s these murderous ideas, not just the bomb cells, that must be destroyed.”
“Against the background of shame and anger at what’s being done in our name in Iraq, and the consequent reprisals, many of those who hoped against hope that the degree of difference in the Scots’ attitude to Islam, and Muslims who’ve chosen to live in Scotland, would withstand the pressures dividing communities in England. But the reaction to the story of Misbah Iram Ahmed Rana, or Molly Campbell to us, sweeps away much of our proud claim to be more tolerant and understanding than is often the case in many English cities. Probably quite unwittingly, a 12-year-old Asian Scot has shown many of us to be suspicious and mistrustful of Muslims.”
Margo MacDonald in the Scotsman, 6 September 2006
“What have you learned since the Sept. 11 attacks five years ago? The mass murder of 2,996 innocent people on American soil forced open my eyes to the Islamic holy war against the West, freedom and modernity. The battle has raged not for years or decades, but for centuries – well before the Crusades began.
“The indelible sight of workers plunging from the Twin Towers – head first, feet first, solo, hand-in-hand – roused me from slumber. The photos of children who were incinerated on United Airlines Flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 77 compelled me to start paying attention to the beliefs, goals, language and lies of those who would gladly kill my children the same way. The United Airlines Flight 93 hijackers’ final exclamation as they drove the plane into the ground is a Muslim warrior leitmotif I will never again ignore: ‘Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!'”
Michelle Malkin at Townhall.com, 6 September 2006
The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) has completed a tour of the UK, during which it found a further rise in Islamophobia among the country’s Muslim communities. “One concern that was voiced repeatedly throughout the cities visited was the specter of a still virulent Islamophobia which was raising its head still higher in the wake of the alleged plane plot of recent weeks,” the MCB reported Wednesday.
The five-week tour covered 22 cities, traveling from Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland to Batley, Bradford, Burnley, Dewsbury, Leeds, Blackburn, Wakefield, Manchester and Newcastle in northern England. It also visited Muslim communities in Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester, Walsall and Wolverhampton in the Midlands, Bristol, Gloucester in the southwest, Cardiff in Wales and Brighton, Luton and London in the southeast.
“The Muslim community fully shares the need to deal firmly with any plot against national security but as partner-citizens and not as a ‘generic suspect’ to be administered mass medication or collective punishment,” said MCB Secretary General Abdul Bari.
Bari said the tour was a welcome opportunity to listen to British Muslims from many different backgrounds all across the country speaking about their aspirations and concerns. He said that he was also delighted that following discussions many additional organizations have now agreed to affiliate to the MCB, which already embraces over 400 national and local Muslim organizations, charities, mosques and schools.
The MCB, which has been under criticizing from both politicians and the media to help the government counter-terrorism concerns, said that it would be producing a report about the tour to its Central Working Committee this month to consider recommendations.
“The Daily Express revealed yesterday that a burka-style garment is being introduced in hospitals to allow Muslim women to wear the dress of the oppressed. The readership of this newspaper was horrified: in a poll, 96 per cent said that there should not be an exception for any ethnic group. And how do hospitals across the country respond to this? By extending the scheme.
“There can be no fudge about this: it is absolutely clear that the majority of the British people do not want this offensive apparel to appear on our hospital wards. It is also clear that, just as they have done so often in the past, the powers that be are going to ignore the people and press on with plans designed to keep Muslim culture apart from ours. This wicked policy has already resulted in homegrown British suicide bombers. We must not let this nonsense go ahead.”
Editorial in Daily Express, 6 September 2006
The Evening Standard reveals the results of a new YouGov poll, commissioned as part of its “great Muslim debate”:
“People were split over whether Muslim girls should be allowed to wear a veil, such as the hijab, in schools, with 44 per cent supporting a ban and 37 per cent opposing such a restriction…. Nearly 11 per cent said Britain should keep the religious schools it has but not allow any new Muslim, Hindu or Sikh schools…. Seven per cent said Christian and Jewish schools should be allowed but not Muslim, Hindu or Sikh ones….. Overall, three quarters of people believe Muslim leaders could do significantly more to prevent the growth of extremism in their own community, with only 14 per cent saying they are doing all they reasonably can.”
LEWISTON, Me. — On a hot July night, a few dozen Somali men were kneeling shoulder to shoulder in prayer at a storefront mosque here when the door opened and the frozen head of a pig, an animal considered unclean in Islam, rolled across the floor.
Men fled in fear. A child fainted. Some called the police and ran after the person who had rolled the head in. A suspect, Brent Matthews, was quickly apprehended and charged with desecrating a place of worship. Mr. Matthews, 33, said that the incident was a prank and that he did not know the significance of a pig’s head.
Now, weeks later, Somali leaders say the incident has left a scar on their community of about 3,000 immigrants.
While they admit the act was the work of one man, it has heightened simmering tensions in this overwhelmingly white, working-class city of 35,000, where Somali refugees started flocking about five years ago, after first settling in more urban areas of the United States. Many said they came here because housing was inexpensive and Lewiston seemed a safe place to raise their families.
While much of Lewiston has been welcoming, some Somalis here believe the head incident reveals an undercurrent of suspicion and lack of understanding about their culture. According to the Census Bureau, Maine is 96 percent white.
Imran Khan, lawyer for Stephen Lawrence’s family, speaks to the Independent Lawyer journal:
“The police and the Government are saying that all Muslims – and this generality is clear in some quarters – are all complicit in acts of terrorism either by not condemning or not revealing those who do it, or you’re planning it. In some way, you’re all complicit…. Senior government ministers simply don’t accept when I tell them what’s happening in Bradford, Leeds and elsewhere. When they talk about Muslims and terrorism, they don’t understand what impact that has. As one minister said, it is those communities committing those acts, so they’ve got to expect to be stopped and searched disproportionately. That sort of statement produces a self-defence mechanism. At meetings in Bradford, two or three hundred people are absolutely petrified. They don’t know what they can speak about, what they can publish, what sermons they can give at mosques. It gives comfort to white racists who want to attack them. I draw a parallel with Lawrence. Those who killed him did so in an environment where they knew they could get away with it. That’s what happening in the Muslim community.”