Pastor prefers jail over apology

Posted on by Bob Pitt

NalliahA Christian pastor who has been ordered to apologise for vilifying Muslims says he will go to jail rather than say sorry for his comments.

Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) deputy president Michael Higgins ordered two pastors of an evangelical order, Catch the Fire Ministry, to apologise for comments they made in a speech, on a website and in a newsletter. In a landmark ruling, the tribunal found Muslims were vilified by claims that Muslims were training to take over Australia, encouraging domestic violence and that Islam was an inherently violent religion.

Outside the tribunal, Danny Nalliah – one of the pastors taken to VCAT by the Islamic Council – described himself as a martyr and said he would go to jail before apologising.

Herald Sun, 22 June 2005

Throw away the key, I say.

We need this law to fight hatred

Posted on by Bob Pitt

We need this law to fight hatred

By Sadiq Khan, MP for Tooting

Evening Standard, 21 June 2005

It is, if its critics are to believed, a grievous threat both to our freedom of speech and to the nation’s cherished sense of humour. As such, the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, which has its second reading in Parliament today, has been derided as dangerous, politically cynical, and most of all, as unnecessary. So why do so few of my fellow Muslims see it that way?

Debating the Bill, Muslims tend to think not of vicar jokes but of incidents like one in a charity shop in Shepherd’s Bush recently, where a white, British Muslim woman was told by another customer: “You may be English, but you married a f***ing Muslim.”

We think not about alleged political calculations, but about the dangers faced, for example, by one woman recently attacked in the street in north-west London while wearing Muslim dress. She was warned sympathetically by the nurse who treated her injuries: “You have to take off this scarf. Every month we get several cases like you who come for treatment.”

Indeed Muslims might tend to question the extent of freedom of speech when simply going out dressed recognisably as a Muslim can invite assault. Many reported cases involve Muslim women having their headscarves forcibly pulled off and or having alcohol thrown at them. In one incident, a schoolgirl had her headscarf pulled off by a parent of another child at the school gates, to the sound of laughter from those watching.

All these incidents happened because these Londoners were Muslims. It was not about the colour of their skin but the religion they follow.

The Racial and Religious Hatred Bill is not about gagging comedians or curbing criticism of any religion. It is about giving Muslims and other followers of religions the same protection from hate crimes as, for example, black people.

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Jihadists strike at Newton Flotman

Posted on by Bob Pitt

For Islamic terrorists intent on the destruction of western civilisation, there is no escape from the all-seeing eye of Jihad Watch.

Continuing his relentless pursuit of jihadists, even to the depths of rural East Anglia, our friend Robert Spencer has picked up on a news item from the EDP24 website (“the site where Norfolk really matters”). It reports that a “saboteur cut train signalling and fibre optic cables at two points near Newton Flotman, south of Norwich, and went to great efforts to throw investigators off the scent”.

Who could have done such a thing? Robert leaps to the obvious conclusion – it’s likely the work of Al Muhajiroun!

Jihad Watch, 20 June 2005

The fact that Al Muhajiroun dissolved itself over a year ago and no longer exists is of course a minor quibble.

No terrorism charges against ‘California jihadists’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Terrorism charges have not been brought against the Hayats. Instead, both men are accused of making false statements about the training camps when they were first questioned by federal agents. Upon further questioning, the Feds say, Hamid Hayat eventually gave a detailed account of his time in the camp. Lawyers for both men said they did not believe their clients were involved in any terrorist activity (the Feds have until June 21 to bring formal charges). Hamid’s cousin Ismail laughs at the idea of his relative planning a terror strike. ‘This guy didn’t know how to build anything’, he says. ‘Any time something broke, he would call me to fix it’.”

The arrest of “California jihadists” Hamid and Umer Hayat analysed by Newsweek.

‘We’ oppose an anti-incitement law, says Will Hutton

Posted on by Bob Pitt

willhutton“Being a Muslim, especially a Muslim woman, in Britain is for many a dispiriting and occasionally terrifying experience. The society that prides itself on tolerance has lost its bearings over Islam. On the streets, the prejudice that Islam is irrationally and murderously violent and menacingly foreign has spawned a subculture of hatred and abuse. If you are a woman in a hijab, being jeered at, even spat at, is routine. Many never venture from their houses.

“This is fertile ground for widespread racism and where the law is currently uncertain. Harassment and abuse are certainly illegal, but the threshold that incurs legal action is very high; equally illegal is the expression of hatred, or views that might incite hatred, towards a group or individual for their race.

“But the woman in a hijab could be African, Asian or Middle Eastern. It is not her race that makes her the object of hatred; it is her religious belief and culture that require her to dress in such a conspicuously different way and make her part of the hated group. The law, as currently framed, offers her no systematic protection, and no explicit penalty for a political party, say the BNP, that chooses to make such hatred a central plank of its electoral pitch.”

Thus Will Hutton in the Observer, 19 June 2005

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Questions, bitterness and exile for Queens girl in terror case

Posted on by Bob Pitt

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Slumped at the edge of the bed she would have to share with four relatives that night, the 16-year-old girl from Queens looked stunned.

On the hot, dusty road from the airport, she had watched rickshaws surge past women sweeping the streets, bone-thin in their bright saris. Now, in a language she barely understood, unfamiliar aunts and uncles lamented her fate: to be forced to leave the United States, her home since kindergarten, because the F.B.I. had mysteriously identified her as a potential suicide bomber.

“I feel like I’m on a different planet,” the girl, Tashnuba Hayder, said. “It just hit me. How everything happened – it’s like, ‘Oh, my God’.”

The story of how it happened – how Tashnuba, the pious, headstrong daughter of Muslim immigrants living in a neighborhood of tidy lawns and American flags, was labeled an imminent threat to national security – is still shrouded in government secrecy. After nearly seven weeks in detention, she was released in May on the condition that she leave the country immediately. Only immigration charges were brought against her and another 16-year-old New York girl, who was detained and released. Federal officials will not discuss the matter.

New York Times, 17 June 2005

Atheists should welcome a law against religious hatred

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dobbo“Do you believe that anyone should be allowed to incite hatred against other people on the grounds of their religious belief? I don’t, even though I have no religious belief myself. That’s because I believe that nobody should suffer assaults, or live in fear, because of their religious beliefs. But they do. Today. In our country.

“Mothers collecting children from school have been abused and assaulted. So have men attending their places of worship. Homes have been stoned and fire-bombed. Recently it has been Muslim mothers, Muslim men, Muslim homes. Yet at present our laws offer no special protection to Muslims against incitement to these acts, even though it provides such protection to Jews and Sikhs and some Christians.”

Frank Dobson MP in the Guardian, 18 June 2005

Babar Ahmad – an unsuitable case for extradition

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Vote BabarAn unsuitable case for extradition

The argument that Babar Ahmad is a terrorist who should be handed over to the United States is highly suspect. Solomon Hughes reports.

Tribune, 17 June 2005

Home Secretary Charles Clarke must now decide whether to extradite British computer worker Babar Ahmad to the United States by July 15. Connecticut’s district attorney says Ahmad used a website to raise money for Chechen terrorists and the Taliban. On May 17, Judge Timothy Workman ruled the extradition was in order, passing it to Clarke for a decision. However, in his judgement, Workman said: “This is a difficult and troubling case. The defendant is a British subject who is alleged to have committed offences which, if the evidence were available, could have been prosecuted in this country.”

But while Ahmad has been arrested and investigated by British police, he has never been prosecuted in Britain. The Americans claim jurisdiction only because the “Azzam.Com” website in question had a US Internet service provider. Otherwise, all the offences they allege took place in Tooting.

Judge Workman added: “I have no doubt that the many and complex issues that have arisen in this case will need to be explored by the High Court which can review the decision.

The judge emphasised that he did not consider the evidence against Ahmad, who faces extradition under extradition laws introduced by David Blunkett after September 11. As Judge Workman made clear, under Blunkett’s law: “The need for the United States Government to provide prima facie evidence to support the charges has been removed.”

The judge also noted that Blunkett’s extradition law contains “no reciprocal benefit to this country”. While the law comes from a treaty between the US and Britain, the British cannot extradite US citizens in the same way, without evidence being tested in court. The extradition law is a one-way street because of what Judge Workman called “the failure to ratify the treaty by the United States.”

Under the law, the judge could not consider the evidence and instead looked carefully at American guarantees that they would not send Ahmad to Guantanamo Bay, put him before a “military commission”, “render” him to another country or apply the death penalty. The judge made clear that Guantanamo Bay or other options under US “Military Order Number One” were “inhuman and degrading”, but accepted guarantees from the American Embassy that this would not happen.

The US evidence, untested in the British courts, tries to show that Ahmad did more than run Islamist websites and actually funded terrorists. Yet, an American man, who is supposedly Ahmad’s co-conspirator according to the US case, was recently invited to dinner with President George Bush.

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In defence of ignorant racism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“When freedom of thought becomes an exception that confirms the rule, it means that a civilization is going back to the darkest era of human history, rather than evolving in direction of individual freedom and Human Rights. This is exactly what is happening to Europe, thanks to Islam. It’s not a secret anymore; we are serving on a silver platter our countries to Muslims. They are flocking to Europe in droves and arrogantly intend to change our lives, our laws and our values. Civility presupposes obedience to the laws of the country that hosts you; but it seems that Muslims not only cannot respect any law other than Sharia, they also demand that we live by their archaic laws. Our countries are being shaped to meet their needs.”

Another stirring defence of intellectual freedom, by an Italian supporter of Oriana Fallaci.

FaithFreedom.org, 17 June 2005