Religious hatred bill: ‘censorship by stealth’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Condemning the religious hatred bill, Mike McNair claims that “the chilling effect of the new act will be considerable. Behzti and Jerry Springer, the Opera would not be staged; Monty Python’s Life of Brian might be filmed in the US, since the first amendment is robust, but would not be shown by British cinemas, and a great deal of the television series would not be broadcast; Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses might well be de facto banned by English law”.

Weekly Worker, 29 September 2005

This is not only hysterical nonsense, it’s also unbelievably ignorant. The staging of Behzti was already covered by the provisions in the 1986 Public Order Act dealing with incitement to racial hatred, as Sikhs are held (on the basis of case law) to be members of a mono-ethnic faith. The extension of those provisions to cover religious hatred, as is proposed in the present bill, would make zero difference to whether or not Behzti could be prosecuted for inciting hatred. The effect of the bill is simply to extend to other faiths (notably Muslims) the defence already available to Sikhs and Jews under existing law.

In another article in the same issue Jack Conrad approvingly quotes Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews: “… there is a profound difference between hatred based on race, sex or age – all of which are thrust upon us; we have no choice – and on religion, which is not thrust upon us. Religion is a matter of choice.”

This argument was demolished by Sadiq Khan MP in the same House of Commons debate: “The idea that one cannot choose one’s race but can choose one’s religion so that the former but not the latter should get protection is absurd. Some people talk about religion as a lifestyle choice, but what is being suggested – that Britain’s 1.6 million Muslims should convert to Christianity or become atheists?”

NUS response to ‘When Students Turn to Terror’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Commenting on the Glees report into extremist groups operating on university campuses, When Students Turn to Terror, NUS National President Kat Fletcher and NUS Black Students’ Officer Pav Akhtar said:

“The paper offers nothing to the serious debate about how to address terrorism in society.

“No evidence is presented to support the view that campus life contributes to students becoming involved in terrorism, other than that some individuals who have been, or are alleged to have been, involved in terrorist activity also attended a UK college at some point.

“The report proposes imposing quotas on the number of ethnic minority students attending any individual university; abolishing the ‘clearing’ system that allows students to find an alternative university if they have not achieved the grades needed for their first choice; forcing all student societies to include dons on their committees; and restricting academic discussion on certain topics.

“NUS fears that the report’s unsubstantiated claims have the potential to endanger Muslim students by inflaming a climate of racism, fear and hostility, and place a cloud over perfectly legitimate student Islamic societies.

“NUS is calling on its members to work together to engage all students and defend the rights of faith and cultural groups to self-organise as societies. Unions are encouraged to support minority student groups including the Islamic society, against any backlash or exclusion. We encourage student officers to meet with their Black and minority ethnic groups on campus at the beginning of term to ensure access to welfare and support provisions is clear and that students report any incidents of hate crime.”

Posted on educationet, 28 September 2005

Aussie Muslims say targeted by new terror laws

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Australia is to impose draconian counter-terrorism laws after Prime Minister John Howard won unanimous support from state premiers Tuesday, September 27, for the laws dubbed unfair by Muslims.

Trying to justify the new laws, Queensland state premier Peter Beattie told a news conference, “In many sense the laws that we have agreed to today are draconian laws, but they are necessary laws to protect Australians,” Reuters reported.

Describing the legislation as “unusual laws because we live in unusual circumstances”, Howard said the London bombings in July had brought home the “chilling reality” that “terrorist attacks” could be staged by a country’s own citizens, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“We are worried there are people in our country who might just do this,” Howard told a news conference after a meeting with the Council of Australian Governments.

The laws include tighter checks on citizenship applicants, jail terms for inciting violence, detention of suspects without charge for up to two weeks, and curtailing suspects’ movements and contacts for up to a year.

They also will provide police with greater stop, search and question powers. But they will be reviewed after five years and include a 10-year “sunset clause”, after which they would have to be dropped, altered or renewed, Howard said.

A prominent moderate Islamic leader, Keyser Trad of the Islamic Friendship Association, immediately condemned the laws and said they targeted Muslims. “They have the potential of creating a fascist state and have the potential to divide society dramatically,” he told AFP.

“I am quite frightened by these laws,” he said, suggesting that they could be used against people who criticized government policy such as the deployment of troops to Iraq.

Islam Online, 27 September 2005 

Mad Mel discovers the barbarism of the slave trade

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“From the early seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, thousands of British men women and children were kidnapped by Arab corsairs and sold into slavery in Morocco where they were kept in conditions of unspeakable barbarism.” Melanie Phillips discovers “a seaborne Islamic jihad against Britain which lasted for no less than two centuries”.

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 27 September 2005

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that around that time Christian Britain was itself not immune to the barbaric practice of trading slaves. But then, I was forgetting, that was entirely different – the victims were not white people.

No to ‘Islamofascist’ Turkey

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“On Oct. 3, representatives of the European Union and the Turkish government of Islamist Recep Erdogan will meet to determine if Muslim Turkey will be allowed to seek full membership in the EU. It will be best for Turkey, to say nothing of Europe and the West more generally, if the EU answer under present circumstances is: ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ The reason Europe should politely, but firmly, reject Turkey’s bid should be clear: Prime Minister Erdogan is systematically turning his country from a Muslim secular democracy into an Islamofascist state governed by an ideology anathema to European values and freedoms.”

Frank J. Gaffney in the Washington Times, 27 September 2005

Bush’s ‘Muslim outreach’ fails to reach Egyptian students

Posted on by Bob Pitt

US Under Secretary of State Karen P. Hughes, tasked with improving a badly bruised US image abroad, was faced with a flurry of angry reasons why Washington was disliked in the Arab and Muslim worlds during her meeting with Egyptian students.

The meeting took place Sunday, September 25, at the American University in Cairo (AUC), where Hughes got a taste of the difficult job ahead when she found herself faced with angry queries over the US war on terror, Iraq, aggressive stance on Syria and Iran, in addition to meddling in the affairs of developing countries.

Islam Online, 26 September 2005 

Posted in USA

‘Have we the stomach to defeat radical Islam?’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Thousands of anti-war protesters (and pro-war counter protesters) marched in Washington, D.C., this past weekend, and emotions ran high. They filled the air with angry questions about everything from how soon we’ll withdraw from Iraq to how many more ‘children’ we’re ‘willing to sacrifice’, as Cindy Sheehan asked the crowd. Good luck finding anyone ready to face the real choice before America and Europe: Namely, will the West decisively confront the threat posed by radical Islam? Or will it ride its fabled ‘tolerance’ into oblivion?”

Rebecca Hagelin at World Net Daily, 27 September 2005

Fears over Christians attending Muslim schools

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Two senior Church leaders have risked reigniting the controversy over faith schools by voicing their reservations about Christian children going to Muslim faith schools.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, welcomed that fact that Jewish and Muslim parents sent their children to Catholic schools because they like the “ethos”. But he said that he would not want large numbers of Catholic children attending Muslim schools because he would not want them to be brought up “in that atmosphere”.

The Cardinal added that, while he welcomed dialogue between the faiths, “fundamentally the creed of Islam is totally diverse from the creed of Christianity.”

His remarks were echoed by the Rt Rev Tom Butler, the Church of England Bishop of Southwark, who said he would not have sent his children to a Muslim school. “Although religion is taken seriously in a Muslim school, I think the particular insight of Islam is… is not mine,” he said.

Both clerics were speaking on the BBC2 programme God and the Politicians, due to be broadcast tomorrow night.

The comments of the Churchmen was greeted with disappointment by Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, who said that he had received his secondary education in a Catholic school.

Reacting to remarks by his fellow faith leaders, he told the programme: “I think this is the difficulty which we have – that what is good for myself and my children should also be seen to be good for others as well. And as much as we are all professing that we have to have that understanding of each other, it is important this should be also put into practice.”

Daily Telegraph, 27 September 2005