The New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY) today reported an apparently bias-motivated assault on a New Jersey Muslim woman taking part in a pro-democracy rally in Times Square on Saturday.
CAIR-NY reports that the woman, who wears an Islamic headscarf (hijab), was called an “f**king terrorist” during the assault. The incident and the arrest of the alleged perpetrator were caught on video.
The level of argument from secularists denouncing the niqab has reached a new low recently. Here, for example, is Joan Smith writing in the Independent on Sunday:
I’m aghast at the prospect of being treated by a health professional in a niqab. Patients often have to discuss intimate matters with GPs and nurse-practitioners, from sexual health to domestic violence. If someone doesn’t trust me enough to let me see her face, I’m hardly going to feel comfortable about her carrying out an intimate procedure such as a cervical smear. Nor is it easy to imagine a man discussing the symptoms of prostate cancer with a health professional whose idea of “modesty” doesn’t allow her to expose her nose.
Back in June, Tony Parsons wrote a column for the Daily Mirror in which he parroted the ignorant view expressed by Andrew Gilligan that there had been no significant upsurge in hate-crime against the Muslim community in the aftermath of the horrific killing in Woolwich on 22 May. Parsons assured his readers: “The ‘anti-Muslim backlash’ is somewhere between a grotesque exaggeration and a plain old lie. The British are a civilised, polite, tolerant people – and even after the hideous murder of young Lee Rigby, that is what we remain.”
Join me in a criminal court in suburban Paris on almost any weekday and I’ll show you exactly where national debates about female face coverings end up.
Ever since France introduced its “burqa ban” in 2011, there has been a constant stream of wretched cases involving the handful of Muslims who choose to wear such garments. Not only are perfectly upstanding women being fined for their choice of dress, principally the full-body niqab, which leaves a slit for the eyes, but an increasing number of defendants are being tried for attacking them.
One case involves two self-styled “patriotic vigilantes” who targeted a pregnant 21-year-old in the commuter town of Argenteuil, north-west of Paris, in June. The new law persuaded the men to shout racist insults before putting the woman in hospital, where she lost her baby. Another three reported cases on the same council estate over the course of just one month this summer saw full-veil wearers assaulted as their attackers shouted: “Dirty Arab, dirty Muslim.”
Those calling for a veil ban in Britain have clearly ignored such depressingly routine cases. They do not realise how the legislation introduced by President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government has not only stigmatised Muslim women, but somehow legitimised physical attacks on them. The ban in France is a hateful assault on basic freedoms, one that has been seized on by an unlikely alliance of rightwing politicians and feminists.
Excellent article by Nabila Ramdani in the Observer, 22 September 2013
Supporters of the English Defence League charged police lines and hurled missiles when the right-wing group held a demonstration in Sheffield today.
Hundreds turned out for the rally at Sheffield Lane Top, which was sparked by now-abandoned proposals to turn The Pheasant pub on Barnsley Road into a mosque. A counter demonstration was also held by Unite Against Fascism and One Sheffield Many Cultures.
Police said around 400 EDL supporters attended, with 250 involved in the counter-protest, while four arrests were made – two for drunk and disorderly, one for criminal damage to a police vehicle and one for possession of cannabis.
Alice Géraud interviews sociologists Abdellali Hajjat and Marwan Mohammed, authors of the forthcoming study Islamophobie: Comment les élites françaises fabriquent le “problème musulman”.
Update: See also “France: face à l’islamophobie, une résistance s’organise”, AFP, 24 September 2013
A thug who repeatedly punched an anti-fascist protester in front of children during an EDL march in Hull city centre has walked free from court. John Claydon, 46, was caught on CCTV punching David Harding, who was part of a small group of men and women taking part in a counter-protest.
Yesterday, Recorder Michael Smith sentenced Claydon – who has convictions for violence from 1999, 2001 and 2007 – to an 18-month community order and 100 hours’ unpaid work. HGV driver Claydon, 46, of Dronfield, Derbyshire, pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
By pandering to ethnic nationalism, the Parti Québécois is playing a cynical and dangerous game, Martin Patriquin argues.
Russia’s senior Islamic clerics warned the country’s leaders on Friday unrest could erupt in Muslim communities in Russia and beyond if a court decision ordering the destruction of a interpretive translation of Koran is not overturned.
Tuesday’s ruling by a court in Novorossiysk, a city in southern Russia, ordered the widely read text outlawed under a Russian anti-extremism law that rights activists say has been abused by local officials out of prejudice or to persecute groups frowned upon by the dominant Russian Orthodox Church. Rights campaigners said that the decision, which will apply nationwide unless it is overturned on appeal, comes dangerously close to banning the Koran itself.
Russia’s Council of Muftis sounded the alarm in an open letter on Friday to President Vladimir Putin, who has frequently called for unity among the leading faiths and warned that ethnic tension could tear Russia apart.
“Russian Muslims are very strongly indignant over such an outrageous decision,” Rushan Abbyasov, the deputy head of the council, which has close ties with the Kremlin, told Reuters. If the ruling is acted on, the cleric warned: “There will be unrest … not only in Russia but all over the world, we are talking about the destruction of the Koran.”
In the letter to Putin, the council drew a parallel with violence in the Middle East and Afghanistan over the actions of an American pastor, Terry Jones, who threatened to burn the Koran on September 11, 2010. “Is it necessary to discuss how the destruction of books, especially sacred religious books, has been received in Russia in the past?” it said.
“We recall how the burning of just a few copies of the Holy Koran by a crazy American pastor elicited a firm protest not just from Russian Muslims but from our entire society, in solidarity with the stormy and longlasting anger of the global Muslim community and all people of goodwill,” it said.
Two friends obsessed with Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik plotted a far-right hate campaign in Torbay, a court was told today. John Roddy, 20, and Tobias Ruth, 18, daubed racist graffiti on a mosque and spray painted Brixham police station. The pair styled themselves as Knights Templar in homage to Breivik and sent letters to Islamic centres telling worshippers to leave the country.
At Exeter Crown Court today Ruth, from Brixham, was sent to a Young Offenders Institution for two years and nine months. He had previously admitted conspiracy to cause criminal damage and to send malicious communications. Roddy, from Torquay, walked away from court with a suspended jail sentence. He admitted the conspiracy charges and possessing a terror manual on his computer.
Their arrests came in January after an area of Lymington Road in Torquay was sealed off by armed police who feared they may be dealing with a terrorist cell.