Mad Mel mauls Met

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Now There’s a Surprise Department. Melanie Phillips joins the attack on Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair for his stand against Islamophobia:

“… this case had nothing to do with understanding or respecting diversity. It reflected instead the neurotic hypersensitivity which inflates minor error into the hanging offence of racial insult – our modern witch-hunt, in which the slightest deviation from permitted speech is regarded as a heresy to be punished by excommunication and banishment.”

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 5 July 2005

You can just imagine what Phillips’s response would be if the officers concerned had made anti-semitic remarks. Muslims, however, are apparently fair game when it comes to backward jibes against minority communities.

Attack on Ian Blair continues

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A letter in the Sun (4 July 2005) reads: “Arrogant Sir Ian Blair is unrepentant about the racism case, saying the Met can’t expect to win the confidence of the Muslim community if they ignored issues like this. Doesn’t he care about losing the confidence of the white community if he is blatantly pro-Muslim and anti-white?”

In a letter to the Guardian, Glen Smyth of the Metropolitan Police Federation complains that: “The commissioner continues to assert that the comments of one of the officers involved in the recent high-profile employment-tribunal race-discrimination case taken against the service by three white officers were ‘Islamophobic’: ‘That language was gratuitous, offensive and deliberate’.”

Which of course is exactly what it was. Smyth’s claim that he and his colleagues in the Police Federation “understand and endorse the need to understand and respect all of London’s communities” rings a little hollow.

More nonsense about the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

Posted on by Bob Pitt

behzti“Picture this scenario. A new play opens in London that centres around taboo issues relating to religion. For argument’s sake, a rape in a Sikh Gurdwara. Protests follow, ‘community leaders’ demand it be shut down and some threaten legal action. Six months ago, when the Behzti play controversy blew up, those threats of legal action amounted to hot air.

“However if the government’s bill to outlaw religious hatred passes through its third reading next week, those empty threats would suddenly become very real. In essence Labour aims to reward the MCB (Muslim Council of Britain) with a piece of legislation in return for the Muslim vote during the election.”

So Sunny Hundal claims: Asians in Media, 4 July 2005

The level of ignorance displayed by opponents of the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill never ceases to amaze. It seems to have escaped Sunny’s attention that Sikhs, as members of a mono-ethnic faith, are already covered by the ban on incitement to racial hatred in the 1986 Public Order Act. If it could be reasonably argued that “Behzti” incited hatred against Sikhs, then a prosecution could have been brought under Section 20(1) of that Act, which states:

“If a public performance of a play is given which involves the use of threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, any person who presents or directs the performance is guilty of an offence if –
(a) he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or
(b) having regard to all the circumstances (and, in particular, taking the performance as a whole) racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.”

The Racial and Religious Hatred Bill merely seeks to amend that section of the 1986 Act by substituting “racial or religious hatred” for “racial hatred”. This would have the effect of extending its provisions to cover members of multi-ethnic faiths, such as Muslims or Hindus. If the Bill becomes law, the opportunities for Sikhs to persuade the Attorney-General to prosecute a play like “Behzti” will be … precisely the same as they are at present.

Post-9/11 workplace discrimination continues in USA

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nearly four years after the terrorist attacks, Muslim, South Asian and Arab-American employees continue to report discrimination on the job.

Compared with the first two years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the number of employees saying they’ve been discriminated against as a form of backlash because of the attacks has declined. But charges continue to come in, indicating that Arab-American and other workers still feel discriminated against.

“People are being called ‘terrorist’ at work, things of that sort,” says Arsalan Iftikhar, national legal director at Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). “A lot of cases continue to go on. People have been called Osama bin Laden, told they are going to mosque to learn how to build a bomb.”

Nearly 280 claims of discrimination in the workplace were received by CAIR in 2004, and the workplace was the second-most-common location for an alleged incident. The first was government agencies.

At the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, about 980 charges alleging post-9/11 backlash discrimination have been filed through June 11 since the 2001 attacks. Most involved firing and alleged harassment; the EEOC specifically tracks “backlash” cases, where employees claim discrimination relating to 9/11.

Likewise, religious bias charges are higher today than before 9/11. From Sept. 11, 2001, through June 11, the EEOC received 2,168 charges of discrimination based on an employee’s Muslim religion. That compares with 1,104 such charges in the same time span before the attacks.

The agency has obtained more than $4.2 million on behalf of employees alleging post-9/11 backlash. The EEOC has filed lawsuits against employers such as MBNA America Bank, the Plaza hotel in New York, Alamo Rent A Car and construction giant Bechtel.

USA Today, 5 July 2005

Hamza and hatred

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri has appeared in court at the start of his trial on terrorism charges. The 47-year-old, who denies any involvement in terrorism, has been held at Belmarsh prison since May 2004…. He faces 10 charges alleging he solicited people at meetings to murder non-Muslims, including Jews. A further four charges allege he used ‘threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with the intention of stirring up racial hatred’.”

BBC News, 5 July 2005

Though the question of Abu Hamza’s guilt remains open, of course, it might be noted that the latter four charges are under Section 18(1) of the 1986 Public Order Act, which states:

“A person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, is guilty of an offence if –
(a) he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or
(b) having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred by thereby.”

The current Racial and Religious Hatred Bill proposes to amend this so that “racial hatred” becomes “racial or religious hatred”. At the risk of repetition, the purpose is to extend to Muslims and Hindus the right to protection from hatred presently enjoyed by Jews and Sikhs under the Act.

If, as its critics allege, the Bill represents a terrible attack on the right to free speech, it is difficult to see how they can in all consistency refuse to condemn the suppression of free speech under the existing racial hatred sections of the 1986 Act.

We look forward to Nick Cohen, Melanie Phillips, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Harry’s Place et al publishing indignant articles defending Abu Hamza’s democratic right to incite hatred against Jews without action being taken against him under the Public Order Act.

Lawrence isn’t over yet

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“They went to law and won their case, but as symbols of a policing service focused on diverse communities, former Detective Constable Tom Hassell, Detective Sergeant Colin Lockwood and Detective Inspector Paul Whatmore leave something to be desired. During a training course, Hassell erroneously referred to “Shi’ites” as “Shitties”. He likened the headwear worn by Muslims to tea cosies – surely a lame observation for the 21st century, when we know so much about the need to respect other cultures. When Hassell was also flippant about the demands of Muslim fasting, someone – senior colleagues, perhaps – might have thought it prudent, given the demands of basic civility, to take him to task. But neither Lockwood or Whatmore did so. Lockwood merely corrected Hassell’s mispronunciation.

“… one can easily see the subplot of what is happening here. It is already being said that the officers suffered from the politically correct regime forced upon Scotland Yard by the Lawrence inquiry. They themselves have claimed to be victims of a witch hunt, and the commissioner is portrayed as a destructively liberal figure who, because of the failings of those who should have known better, has been allowed to take the helm. ‘Is this man destroying the Met?’ the Daily Mail asked last month.”

Hugh Muir argues that “reactionaries are trying to use an employment tribunal decision to scupper the drive against police racism”.

Guardian, 4 July 2005

Marginalization, Iraq eclipse UK reaching-out to Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Iraq war and marginalization have cast a pall over a bridge-building bid by the British government with the Muslim minority, who said it is high time that authorities stopped living in denial and addressed the underlying causes of the extremist ideology behind the London bombings.

The Muslim Council of Britain, the main representative Muslim body in Britain, said ministers needed to accept the role political events such as the Iraq war had played in the growth of extremism, The Financial Times reported.

“It seems the government is in denial about this,” a spokesman told the paper. “Some of these policies have contributed to making the extremist message more palatable to Muslim youth.”

Anti-Terrorism Minister, Hazel Blears, went Tuesday to Oldham in Greater Manchester on the first stage of her eight-leg journey across the country in search of grassroots Muslim opinion.

She listened for two and a half hours as faith leaders, councilors, young men and women, who mostly welcomed the visit as “useful” while some branded it as a routine Labour-like PR exercise.

Dominic Grieve, the shadow attorney-general, agreed that the Iraq war was partly to blame. “The Iraq war had contributed to this anger, with the western intervention in a Muslim country fuelling the ‘great grief’ caused to British Muslims by the state of the Islamic world,” the FT quoted him as saying.

He added that he found the suicide bombings “totally explicable in terms of the level of anger which many members of the Muslim community seem to have about a large number of things.” Grieve warned he did not think that “simply by visiting community leaders you are going to get to some of these underlying issues”.

In an obvious retreat from his earlier stance, British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, acknowledged on July 26 that Iraq was being used to recruit terrorists.

One of the four would-be bombers arrested last week in the biggest massive manhunt in British history told investigators that they were motivated by the Iraq war and not by religious fervor.

Islam Online, 3 August 2005

Posted in UK

Fascists join attack on Ian Blair

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Joining the Daily Mail in an attack on Sir Ian Blair, the BNP rallies to the defence of police officers who made abusive remarks about Muslims, including a reference to Shi’ites as “Shitties”:

“Sir Ian described the remarks at the heart of this week’s employment tribunal defeat as Islamophobic: ‘That language was gratuitous, offensive and deliberate. Officers can expect to be disciplined for using language like that. I want this force to have no place for racism’. If I was one of those officers I would now look at suing Sir Ian for libel and abuse of authority within the Police. Not only is the language not racist as defined in common law, but it is also a fact that Islam is a religion not a race.”

BNP news article, 2 July 2005

Arizona paper cleared over ‘kill Muslims’ letter

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Arizona state Supreme Court ruled on Friday a Tucson newspaper could not be held liable for publishing a letter that urged people to kill Muslims to retaliate for the death of American soldiers in Iraq. Arizona’s highest court found unanimously the Tucson Citizen was protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and could not be sued for printing the letter in December 2003.

The lawsuit, filed by Aly W. Elleithee and Wali Yudeen S. Abdul Rahim, stemmed from a three-paragraph letter in the Citizen that called for quick retaliation for soldiers’ deaths. “Whenever there is an assassination or another atrocity, we should proceed to the closest mosque and execute five of the first Muslims we encounter,” the letter said. “After all, this is a ‘Holy War’ and although such a procedure is not fair or just, it might end the horror.”

Reuters, 1 July 2005

We look forward to articles by Nick Cohen and Melanie Phillips applauding the Arizona Supreme Court for its principled defence of the right to free speech.

Postscript:  Over at Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer’s admirers are already rallying to the defence of democratic values. One comment reads:

“If one has been following the sad situation of the repression of free speech in European countries, the UK, parts of Australia, and even Canada, in which authors of books, pastors, politicians, and citizens are being prosecuted as vilipends for ‘insulting or defaming Islam’, one would note that the loss of ancient rights, such as free speech, began with actions such as the one attempted by Aly W. Elleithee and Wali Yudeen S. Abdul Rahim.”

Dhimmi Watch, 3 July 2005