“March 15th 2005 marks the first anniversary of the French Government’s decision to ban ‘religious symbols’. Since last year we have witnessed the oppression of an entire segment of the French society, namely, hundreds of Hijab wearing young Muslim women who have been forcibly excluded from schools by this draconian law. This open discrimination by France and other European countries is an unacceptable position for states that are party to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and makes a mockery of the French declaration of ‘Liberté, egalité, fraternité …’.”
Interview: William Montgomery Watt
The Reverend Professor William Montgomery Watt has written over 30 books including Islamic Political Thought (1968) and Muslim-Christian Encounters: Perceptions and Misconceptions (1991). In Scotland he has been a member of the ecumenical Iona Community since 1960. Amongst Islamic scholars he has been held in an esteem described as “most reverential.” The Muslim press have called him “the Last Orientalist.” This interview was conducted in 1999, his ninetieth year, at his home in Dalkeith. With Professor Watt’s approval and careful agreement of the final text, it uses both spoken material and statements drawn from some of his most important articles of recent years. It is, in a sense, a distillation of his life’s work.
Wilders unveils policies
AMSTERDAM — Independent right-wing MP Geert Wilders has unveiled an election programme said to be “plagiarised” from Pim Fortuyn. In it, Wilders calls for general tax cuts, a reduction in bureaucracy, improved safety and a significant cut in immigration.
Announcing his intention to run at the 2007 election, Wilders said he was “independent” of the “self-satisfied political elite who lost their way long ago and are at the point of saying farewell to age-old Dutch roots in exchange for multiculturalism, culture relativism and a European super state”.
Wilders — whose party (www.geertwilders.nl) stands to win four seats in Parliament if an election was held now — said he was in favour of a smaller government. This means reduced regulations, tax cuts and cuts to social security to prevent the collapse of the economy.
He called for billions of euros in cuts to the overseas development budget — retaining only emergency aid — abolition of the Education and Economic Affairs ministries and reducing the public service by 50 percent. Child allowance payments should also be reduced.
Wilders claimed that scrapping minimum wage laws and liberalising redundancy legislation would lead to greater employment, news service NOS reported on Monday.
Designed primarily to prevent marriage and family unification migration, he urged for Dutch borders to be closed for five years to non-western immigrants. No more asylum seekers should be allowed to enter the country.
Focusing on integration, Wilders said the present non-committal integration policy should be scrapped. Instead, those who do no integrate adequately and do not have Dutch citizenship should be forced out of the country immediately. Islamic schools should also be abolished, he said.
Islamic veils should be banned during public functions, Wilders said.
Met faces claim of Muslim racism
The Metropolitan police are being threatened with an £8m legal claim over allegations that they discriminate against the Middle Eastern community in Britain’s richest area.
One of the leading firms of Middle Eastern lawyers in London has filed an official complaint over the lack of police action when crimes are reported by Muslims.
Sir Ian Blair, new head of the Metropolitan police, has agreed to investigate the allegations made primarily against officers in Kensington and Chelsea, west London.
However, the police may still face an embarrassing legal case at a time when they are trying to win over the community whose assistance is critical in the fight against terrorism.
Muslim miscarries in cell after grilling at airport
A Muslim woman detained by officials at Glasgow Airport suffered a miscarriage in an immigration cell, the Sunday Herald can reveal.
Marina Miraj, a Canadian Afghan, collapsed in the airport detention room last month after being questioned for hours by immigration staff.
The woman, who is in her 30s and was three months pregnant, was rushed to Paisley’s Royal Alexandra Hospital after being found by airport officials on the cell floor.
Miraj had flown into the UK from Toronto to make plans to settle in Glasgow with her husband. She claims the stress of the interrogation and detention contributed to the miscarriage and is now considering legal action.
She described the ordeal as: “the worst experience of my life.” She added: “I will never be able to forget how I lost my baby in a police cell.”
‘A vote for intolerance’ – Cohen defends the right to incite religious hatred
Another diatribe from Nick Cohen against the extension of race relations laws to cover incitement to religious hatred.
He is particularly upset about Mike O’Brien naming Evan Harris as a leading Lib Dem opponent of the new law – on the grounds that the person O’Brien “singled out for attack wasn’t even on the Lib Dem front bench. All that appeared to distinguish him was that he was the only Lib Dem MP to come from a Jewish family”.
Yes, well, apart from the fact that Harris is a militant secularist who’s achieved notoriety among British Muslims, not least because of his enthusiastic support for the French hijab ban. Or hadn’t you noticed that, Nick?
Justice watchdog finds Muslim mistreatment
The warden and guards at a federal prison discriminated and retaliated against Muslim inmates, the Justice Department’s inspector general said Friday in a report that also detailed allegations of mistreatment of Muslims at other US lockups.
In one instance at the unidentified federal prison, the warden “unjustly and inappropriately” ordered an inmate transferred to special housing similar to solitary confinement for more than four months, Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said. The move came five days after the inmate talked to Fine’s investigators.
Federal prosecutors declined to pursue criminal charges against the warden, and the incident was referred to the federal Bureau of Prisons, he said.
The treatment of Muslim prisoners was part of a semiannual report Fine produces about possible civil rights or civil liberties violations by the Justice Department.
The inspector general began one new investigation in the last half of 2004. It involves allegations that guards at another federal prison abused a Muslim inmate and allowed other inmates to assault him.
Fine also noted that the federal prison officials have yet to discipline anyone for the abuse more than a year after he documented the mistreatment of Arabs and Muslims detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
In addition, prison officials told the inspector general they discovered more videotapes of the detainees at the Brooklyn facility, as well as of meetings between detainees and their lawyers. Previously disclosed tapes helped confirm that guards slammed detainees against walls, twisted their arms and conducted unnecessary strip searches. The prisons bureau and Fine are investigating why the other tapes were not given to them sooner.
Muslims say Dell forbade them to pray at work
Abdi Halane, a Somali refugee living in Nashville, is looking for a new job this month. In February, Halane was one of 30 Muslim assembly-line workers who walked away from their jobs building computers at a Dell Inc. facility after they were told to make a choice between prayers mandated by Islam and their job, according to Halane and another worker from the facility.
Ariel Sharon, far-leftist
Further evidence that the USA’s leading Islamophobe is, to employ a technical psychological term, completely barking.
Fire in Worthing mosque condemned by anti-racist campaigners
Anti-racist campaigners have condemned the fire, apparently deliberately started at a mosque in Worthing last night. The news of the fire came as campaigners sent a complaint to Channel 4 on the broadcast of ‘Immigration is a time bomb’ by Rod Liddle on 10 March.
National Assembly Against Racism press release, 11 March 2005