This was the front of last week’s edition of the French weekly L’Express. The Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France points out that it was just the latest in a series of shock covers about Islam, and not only in l’Express.
It shows a shop window with mannequins with headscarves, accompanied by the headline “Islam, the danger of communalism”, which as the CCIF points out suggests that the mere act of wearing the hijab represents a threat to social cohesion.
Jacob Bender is set to be the voice of Philadelphia-area Muslims, to take on discrimination they encounter in workplace and in the public sphere, and to fight expressions of hate. And his Jewish faith, Bender believes, can only help him do the job effectively.
“The Muslim community is under attack from Islamophobic forces, and it is the obligation and responsibility of people of good will to stand up and say this is a bigoted attack,” Bender said. “This is fully in keeping with my life goals.”
The Council on American Islamic Relations’ Philadelphia branch announced the appointment of Bender as its executive director October 15. Bender is the first Jew, and the first non-Muslim, to serve as director of a CAIR branch.
“The needs of the Muslim community are really the needs of any minority community in the United States,” said Iftekhar Hussein, chairman of CAIR-Philadelphia’s board of directors. “Jacob, being Jewish, understands that from his own background.”
An Islamic group proposing a community centre in the abandoned Worcester Park Tavern have been “pleasantly surprised” by the feedback they received during a public consultation.
The police were poised and ready on Saturday for a rumoured protest at 2pm. However, the protest never took place and the Ismaili community say the majority of people who turned up on Friday and Saturday wanted to engage with them.
Shaheen Verjee, 34, is a member of the Ismaili community in north London, attends the Ismaili community centre in Finchley, and runs her own clothing business.
As a community volunteer she helped in both events and said: “On the whole we were pleasantly surprised. There were obviously a few people who came in having made up their mind and some people who quite clearly said ‘I don’t like Islam and I don’t want you here’ but that was very few.
“The main concerns that came up were about traffic and parking. People were also keen to understand to what extent it will be available to the local community. We were very keen to say people are happy to come to our centre.
“We are trying to make clear we are a very open community – we do believe in being inclusive.”
Representatives of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars and the Crimean Muftiate (the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Crimea) are shocked by recent attacks on mosques in Crimea and are demanding that the law enforcement agencies take decisive measures to uncover these crimes.
A long-standing legal row over France’s laws banning the wearing of religious symbols in public places takes another turn Thursday as the Paris appeals court considers the case of a childcare worker sacked for wearing a headscarf.
In 2008, Fatima Afif was fired from her job at the private Baby-Loup nursery school in Paris suburb Chanteloup-les-Vignes after she refused to remove her veil while at work.
In April 2013, after years of legal wrangles and appeals, the Court of Cassation (France’s highest court) ruled that Afif was unfairly fired and was a victim of “religious discrimination”, arguing that because Baby-Loup was a private institution, France’s strict secularism rules did not apply. It also ordered the nursery school to pay Afif a fine of 2,500 euros.
A man hoping to create a mosque in Chipping Norton said he was shocked and upset after receiving a “nasty” leaflet through his door.
As previously reported in the Journal, town councillor Tahirul Hasan hopes to open a Muslim place of worship in the town. The father-of-three was set to convert a shop in Hitchman’s Mews into a mosque after securing planning permission in February.
But after the plans were approved, the shop’s landlord George Wissinter received a sinister phone call threatening to burn it down if the plans went ahead and Mr Hasan’s plans were left in tatters.
An EDL supporter has been fined after trying to charge at rival protesters at a South Tyneside rally.
Craig Owens repeatedly shouted “EDL” at the group who were in South Shields to protest against a march by the right-wing English Defence League on August 31. The 28-year-old was arrested [see photo] as he ran towards them but continued to shout as he was being led away.
He pleaded guilty to using threatening words or behaviour at South Tyneside Magistrates’ Court today. Owens, of Bruce Crescent, Hartlepool, was fined £65 and ordered to pay £85 and a £20 victim surcharge.
NEW YORK — Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio told a group of Muslim supporters Wednesday that they won’t have to live in fear of being under constant surveillance if he’s elected mayor.
As WCBS 880’s Jim Smith reported, de Blasio, the front-runner in the Nov. 5 general election, said that, on his watch, NYPD surveillance tactics would only be authorized to follow up on specific leads and that the police force would be under the supervision of a new inspector general.
“The efforts of surveillance have to be based on specifically specific information, and obviously you need to go through a careful vetting process,” de Blasio said during a rally at Columbus Park in Downtown Brooklyn.
A few weeks before last month’s vote on the city’s first mosque, Councilman Bill DeSteph received a 25-page PowerPoint presentation. It came from the leader of the local chapter of ACT for America, a group concerned about radical Islamists in the United States, and alleged the proposed mosque had ties to Muslim extremists.
DeSteph, the only council member to vote against the mosque on Sept. 24, later said he had information that the facility was a threat to national security, but he declined to give details. He said he passed the information to the federal government.
That PowerPoint, other correspondence obtained by The Virginian-Pilot through the Freedom of Information Act and interviews show that DeSteph used information from the local ACT leader to help make his decision on the mosque, and that ACT hoped he would be a political voice in Richmond for its agenda. DeSteph, a former naval intelligence officer, is running as a Republican for the 82nd District seat in the House of Delegates.
Since then, DeSteph has mostly refused to comment on the mosque, citing what he calls an “ongoing investigation.” Last month, the FBI wouldn’t comment on DeSteph’s allegations. The FBI has not responded to a request for additional comment because of the partial federal government shutdown.
This is not first time DeSteph has raised questions about mosques or Islam. In 2010, he wrote to New York City officials objecting to plans for a Muslim community center near the World Trade Center site. The letter was nearly identical to an online petition from ACT.
At the time, DeSteph was dating the daughter of the founder of the national ACT group, Brigitte Gabriel, an author and activist. Gabriel and ACT Executive Director Guy Rodgers, a former field director for the Christian Coalition and a political consultant, live in Virginia Beach.
The Quebec writer and feminist Janette Bertrand has published (in four different newspapers) an open letter “To the women of Quebec”, co-signed by 19 other women (“the Janettes” as they have become known), which bizarrely claims that the proposed law banning the hijab is equivalent to the law granting women the right to vote. The letter reads:
All my life I have fought for equality between men and women and I have always thought that if we want to keep this equality we have to be vigilant. At this point the principle of gender equality seems to me to have been compromised in the name of freedom of religion. I would like to remind you that men always and still today use religion in order to dominate women, to put them in their place, that is to say below them.
Faced with the prospect of a step backwards I feel the need to speak out. So I agree that there should be a charter of Quebec values – often rightly called the charter of secularism – and that the government should legislate. In this regard, we would never have had the right to vote, we would still be under the domination of men and the clergy, if the government of the time had not legislated. At that time, I recall, many men and women did not want this law, yet without the right to vote, where would we be today?