Arani & Co Solicitors has requested the assistance of all individuals in complaining about the treatment meted out to the Muslim detainees in Belmarsh Prison, especially the High Secure Unit.
Is Turkey going Islamist?
“Is Turkey going Islamist?” Daniel Pipes want to know. “Is it on the road to implementing Islamic law, known as the Shari’a?”
And what basis is there for supposing that the ultra-moderate AKP might be heading down that road? Well, they tried to reduce (not abolish but reduce) the penalties for teaching the Qur’an without state authorisation!
Mind you, the National Secular Society fully agrees with Pipes on this. Their report is headlined “Turkish secularism to be compromised by new penal code” . See NSS Newsline, 3 June 2005
Even though parliament voted overwhelmingly for a change in the law, Turkey’s president Ahmet Necdet intervened to veto it, on the grounds that it was incompatible with secularist principles. Phew! A welcome victory for civilised, democratic values. See Islam Online, 3 June 2005
Horowitz exposes ‘the unholy alliance of American radicals and Islamic terrorists’
David Horowitz and John Perazzo present “the second in a series of articles with visual maps that describe the alliances between American leftists and radical Islam, unlikely collaborators who have joined forces to oppose America’s War on Terror and its war of liberation in Iraq”.
And not only American leftists. Our own George Galloway is featured prominently for having argued that the progressive movement should – shock, horror – ally with Muslims where they find common ground.
Mad Mel rejects dialogue with terrorists (Ariel Sharon excepted, of course)
Melanie Phillips is appalled that Western governments should consider talking to democratically elected Hamas representatives: “Hamas is a jihadi terror organisation, period. The decision by Britain and the US to treat with it is spineless and shameful and wholly counter-productive for the defence of the civilised world.”
Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 7 June 2005
Whereas, of course, holding talks with elected representatives of Likud who are responsible for acts of state terrorism against the Palestinian people is entirely acceptable.
See also “US signals policy shift on Hamas: diplomats”, Islam Online, 6 June 2005
Australian Muslims decry detention, questioning powers
Australian Muslims have decried anti-terror security measures as creating a climate of fear and apprehension among the Muslim minority in the country.
“We want to live in a country where I feel proud to be Australian, belong to this land, where I have rights like any other persons,” Ali Roude, the deputy chairman of the Islamic Council of New South Wales, told a parliamentary panel reviewing the measures on Monday, June 6.
“Not always targeted, not always seen as a possible threat to Australia’s security, which is the feeling at the moment,” he was quoted as saying by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
Roude complained that Australian Muslims feel targeted by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), which has been given powers to detain people on terror-related suspicion for up to seven days and question them for up to 48 hours without charges.
Other sweeping powers also allow the security agencies to hold Australians even if they are not suspected of criminal behaviors.
AWL: No ‘pandering to the Islamists’
John O’Mahony (Sean Matgamna) of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty takes issue with Ridley Scott’s film Kingdom of Heaven:
“The Islamics [sic], played by Arab Muslim actors, have tremendous dignity, in contrast to some of the film’s most prominent Christians. The Islamics are merciful and humane, the Christian villains blindly and bigotedly brutal, war-provoking, and evil.”
This is “the reverse of the general situation in our world”, O’Mahony asserts. “In our world, it is not the non-Muslims and anti-Muslims who now shout with fanatical faith in their religion like the Crusaders in one of Ridley Scott’s scenes who shout ‘God Wills It!’. It is a large part of modern Islam.”
He concludes: “It is a shame for any reason to pander to the Islamists as this film does, concocting a fable not of enlightenment but of a Guardian-style quisling spirit towards assertive political Islam, one of the worst enemies of enlightenment and tolerance in the world we live in.”
Elsewhere in the same issue, under the headline “Muslim school stopped”, the AWL reports approvingly that “campaigners in Nottingham have stopped a local school becoming the fourth Muslim state primary in the country”.
An anonymous comment on the AWL’s website reads: “I am in favour of secular education. But I fear for the AWL when you run a story as this with no mention of racism. When you say local people were worried about lack of resources ummm don’t people say the same about asylum seekers and immigrants etc. These questions are never as straight forward as is portrayed in this article. By the way why choose a muslim school to be refused?” See here
Bush urged: ‘Never apologize’ to Muslims
“Some members of the Bush administration have taken a cue from a classic John Wayne Western and are advising their boss to take the film’s advice – ‘Never apologize’ – when dealing with Muslims, reports geopolitical analyst Jack Wheeler.
“In a column on his intelligence website, To the Point, Wheeler explains Wayne’s ‘She Wore a Yellow Ribbon’, made in 1948, though lesser known than many of the star’s films, includes what’s been called one of the top 100 movie quotes of all time. Wayne’s character, Capt. Nathan Brittles, who is facing an Indian attack, advises a junior officer: ‘Never apologize, son. It’s a sign of weakness.’
“It’s that attitude that some employees of the Pentagon, State Department and White House are urging President Bush to take when dealing with charges of Quran desecration and other allegations from radical Muslims. They’ve even sent a DVD copy of the film to the commander in chief.”
Race attack on Muslim headstones
Twenty-five Muslim headstones have been desecrated in an attack being treated by police as racially-motivated.
Gwent Police are investigating the incident at St Woolos Church, Newport. Police said the headstones in the Muslim area of the graveyard were pushed over on Friday morning, causing “considerable structural damage”.
Officers have stepped up patrols in the area and are contacting relatives. They are also speaking to community leaders to address any possible wider issues.
CAIR-CAN seeks probe of McGill ‘harassment’
The Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN) today called for an investigation of reports that Muslim students at Montreal’s McGill University are being singled out for harassment by campus security guards. The reports of harassment follow the eviction of the Muslim students from their prayer space in the university’s Peterson Hall last week. Students said security guards entered the prayer room, asked everyone to vacate the area and changed the locks on the doors. Now, the Muslim students are reporting that security guards in Peterson Hall are continuing to harass them. In one report, the students say security personnel would not permit them inside the building until they displayed their student cards. The students said the guards then followed them throughout the building until they left.
Burchill on Muslim women and hijab
“So certain moderate Muslims are now suggesting that devout women can take off their shrouds and walk free in God’s sunshine. How very magnanimous of them. It turns out that rigging yourself up like a parrot’s cage with the covering on is less to do with flaunting your devilish female charms and thus inflaming bestial male passion, as we were told, than allowing Muslim women to go ‘unmolested’. So now, if wearing the hijab means women will be molested by us nasty infidels, they can go without.”
Julie Burchill in the Times, 6 August 2005