A city college that brought in a face veil ban has come under fire after it performed an embarrassing U-turn.
Just a day after David Cameron backed Birmingham Metropolitan College for outlawing religious veils on security grounds, bosses announced they had changed their minds. Now anyone can wear a face covering if it reflects their “cultural values”, the college said yesterday. The “cowardly” climbdown came after “politically correct critics” set up an online petition against the move.
On Tuesday, September 17, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) will hold a press conference to release a groundbreaking report, “Legislating Fear: Islamophobia and its Impact in the United States 2011-2012.”
The 158-page report by CAIR, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, includes the following:
Scotland Yard is facing court action next week after refusing to hand over the results of investigations it was ordered to conduct into claims that it used counter-terrorism powers to discriminate against and harass innocent Muslims.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is seeking a high court order against the refusal, which it says amounts to a clear breach of the law.
The IPCC ordered the investigations following complaints from Muslim Britons alleging police discrimination in the use of schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, 2000, which allows stops at airports and ports, even if wrongdoing is not suspected.
Montreal Demonstration against Quebec Charter of Values
Montreal, Quebec, September 12th, 2013 — The Muslim Council of Montreal (MCM) invites all Montrealers of conscience to join a peaceful demonstration this weekend against the Quebec Charter of Values recently unveiled by the Parti Quebecois government.
A teacher in Arkansas thought that the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks might be a good time to let middle school students know that not all Muslims are like the terrorists who carried out the deadly hijackings. But in the city of Sheridan, that idea didn’t fly with parents.
The superintendent of Sheridan School District was quick to point out that the school had “no thought of having this person address the classes to paint Islam as ‘a religion of peace.’” Even with that assurance, enough parents raise a ruckus that the school district told the guest speaker to stay home. According to one resident of this central Arkansas community with a population under 5,000, “there’s a lot of bigotry and hatred here.”
Peter Hain, Labour MP for Neath, has issued a press release in response to an attack on the mosque in Tonna in the early hours of this morning, in the course of which windows were smashed and two local people who intervened were assaulted.
The day after a controversial Florida pastor was arrested before he could set fire to thousands of Qurans, burnt scraps of the holy book were found in front of the Tampa office for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
A college which told pupils to remove facial coverings, including religious veils, for security reasons, has now changed its policy. A city college was forced to drop its controversial ban on Muslim face veils – less than 24 hours before a mass demonstration by hundreds of students.
The astonishing U-turn by Birmingham Metropolitan College came after a protest petition attracted a staggering 8,000 signatures in just 48 hours. Hundreds of students planned to gather outside the Matthew Boulton city-centre campus at 2.30pm on Friday to voice their opposition to the policy, which was criticised by city councillors and MPs.
The New York Police Department had legitimate reasons to put specific mosques and Muslim worshippers under surveillance as part of its counterterrorism efforts, a city lawyer said Thursday at the first court date in a civil rights lawsuit accusing the NYPD of religious profiling.
Peter Farrell of the city Law Department argued that before the case goes forward, the city should be allowed to present evidence specific to the six plaintiffs that he said would prove police were acting with legitimate law enforcement purposes. If the judge agrees, “then this case is over,” he said.
An American Civil Liberties Union attorney, Hina Shamsi, countered that her clients already had sufficient legal standing to sue the city and that the NYPD should be ordered to begin turning over sensitive reports and documents detailing the alleged spying on Muslims.
U.S. Magistrate Joan Azrack said she would rule at a later date.
“There are four Muslim families in San Angelo … and that’s four too many,” Tea Party member Terry Campbell declared.
By then, the wide and brightly-lit hall had all but cleared, leaving behind only the faint smell of cookies and stale coffee, where a half-hour prior excitement and anger had rung out. There had been roughly 40 members and guests in attendance – a mostly white and graying audience identifiable by their red polos with the name “Tea Party” proudly emblazoned on the breast – but Campbell’s opinion hadn’t stood alone.
“There is 1.6 billion … Muslims in the world, and they claim that only 10 percent of the Muslims is radical Islamists,” Campbell continued. “That means there is 160 million Muslim terrorists in the world. Now, it only takes one with a car bomb to kill hundreds of people. Now, how can you tell which one out of ten is the bad guy?” he paused slightly, “I don’t trust any of them.”
“It’s hard to,” fellow Tea Party member Jack Plott agreed.