Nearly 88,000 racist incidents were recorded in Britain’s schools between 2007 and 2011, the BBC has found.
Data from 90 areas shows 87,915 cases of racist bullying, which can include name calling and physical abuse. Birmingham recorded the highest number of incidents at 5,752, followed by Leeds with 4,690.
In response to the local authority figures, obtained under a Freedom of Information request, the Department for Education said racism needed to be “rooted out”.
Today Liberty announced it is intervening in the European Court of Human Rights case concerning the criminalisation of face coverings in France.
The Federal Court says an anti-Islam group has the right to give out leaflets from an information booth if it wants – and the local authorities must protect them.
Fribourg Council banned the group – The Movement Against the Islamization of Switzerland – from setting up an information booth Place Georges-Python during the anti-minaret campaign in 2009. It said it refused to give permission because of a fear that violence and unrest would break out as a result, provoking a legal challenge.
The Federal Court upheld the group’s complaint that the authorities had impinged on its freedom of expression as well as on freedom of information, newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung reported.
New research shows that that there is a link between the banning of the veil in France and increased levels of hostility towards veiled Muslim women.
The Research from the Department of Criminology at the University of Leicester suggests that the veil ban stigmatises veiled Muslim women as “criminals” and fosters Muslim “otherness”. Even if not explicitly inciting hate-motivated violence, the law in its application contributes to a climate of intolerance of Islam in the West.
Irene Zempi, who led the study, will present her research on Islamophobia at a Departmental Research Seminar at the University of Leicester tommorrow.
American philosopher Martha Nussbaum, author of the recently published book The New Religious Intolerance, examines the spurious justifications given for banning the niqab and burqa.
She concludes that “traditions of religious liberty and equality in both the United States and Europe” are under threat as the result of “a climate of fear and suspicion, directed primarily against Muslims”.
British Freedom (as the British Freedom Party has been renamed, because BFP is “too closely sounding to BNP”) reports that its executive council has held a meeting with the English Defence League leaders to discuss future political plans.
BF chairman Paul Weston will be attending an “SIOE (Stop the Islamisation of America)” event in New York on 11 September along with newly appointed vice-chairmen Stephen Lennon and Kevin Carroll. Presumably this is the SION conference to “fight blasphemy laws under the Sharia Islamic supremacist war on free speech” announced by Pamela Geller a couple of months ago, at which “English politician and freedom fighter Paul Weston” is an advertised speaker. According to the BF report: “This will be a high-profile visit with excellent opportunities to publicise British Freedom internationally.”
Wakeelah Salaam had been shopping by herself for less than ten minutes at the Bridegwater Commons Mall when a security guard approached her and told her to remove her traditional Muslim face covering.
“He said, ‘ma’am, I’m telling you, you cannot wear that mask in here. He came as close to me as though he was going to kiss me, and then he made the hand gesture like he was going to lift it up for me,” Salaam said.
Darling of the Islamophobic right, fellow at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute and serial liar Ayaan Hirsi Ali was in Berlin last week to receive the Axel Springer Honorary Prize. In her acceptance speech, which was delivered in English, she attacked the “advocates of silence” who censor the truth about Islam and the Muslim extremists who are destroying Europe:
The advocates of silence warn us that publishing these facts or debating them in the media and in parliament will transform the existing resentment towards Muslims into violent behavior. Censorship and silence, we are told, are the best preventive remedies against hatred and violence.
I believe that the advocates of silence are wrong, profoundly and dangerously wrong.
“The Baroness has inadvertently and quite clumsily given her full support to the far right and Islamophobes who are looking to peddle misinformation and hate based on religion.”
Mohammed Ansar replies to comments made by Sayeeda Warsi in her Evening Standard interview.
Over the past few days, Britain has been preoccupied with the prosecution and imprisonment of nine Muslim men (eight Pakistanis and one Afghani) on charges of being part of a child sex exploitation ring. Much has been said about the religious and ethnic background of the defendants, not to mention their victims, who were all white minors suffering from social problems, to the point that all issues became tangled up and intertwined; criminal considerations, religious and ethnic backgrounds and racial sensitivities. The result was heated discussions that mostly inclined towards unfair generalization, the promotion of a stereotyped image of Islam and false accusations against it.
Osman Mirghani analyses the response to the Rochdale “grooming” case.