The Arab American News has an extensive report on Pamela Geller’s so-called “human rights” conference in Dearborn – which barred Muslim women and Arab Americans from attending – and on the counter-conference “Rejecting Islamophobia: A Community Stand Against Hate”.
Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein honoured for campaign to overturn FIFA hijab ban
FIFA’s youngest vice-president, Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein has been honoured for his efforts to overturn the ban on the hijab in football at the inaugural Muslim Women’s Sport Foundation (MWSF) Ambassador Awards, held at Wembley Stadium last night.
Prince Ali, elected in January 2011 and FIFA’s youngest ever Executive Committee member, was given a Special Recognition Award for his achievements and contribution to Muslim women’s sport.
Derby: workshops to tackle hatred and fear of Islam
Free training is being offered for Derby’s voluntary and public-sector workers on how to tackle Islamophobia.
The University of Derby’s multi-faith centre, in Kedleston Road, will be holding three workshops. They are each designed to identify and tackle Islamophobia, defined as prejudice against Muslims or the hatred or irrational fear of Islam.
Sessions will be held on Wednesday, May 23, for Derby’s voluntary sector; Wednesday, June 20, for the East Midlands voluntary sector; and Thursday, July 26, for Derby’s public sector. Each session will run from 9.30am to 4.30pm.
For a booking form, contact Yessenia Aguilera by e-mailing mfc@derby.ac.uk or visit the centre’s website at www.multifaithcentre.org.
More responses to Sam Harris on Muslim profiling
Sam Harris’s blog post calling for racial and religious profiling of Muslims at airports has prompted some excellent replies.
See “Sam Harris, ‘Profile the Muslim looking people!'”, Loonwatch, 2 May 2012
And Chris Stedman “Sam Harris, will you visit a mosque with me?”, Huffington Post, 2 May 2012
Now deal with Wilders has collapsed Dutch minister says ‘burqa ban’ law is no longer needed
Outgoing interior minister Liesbeth Spies says the burqa ban she helped prepare can be scrapped along with a proposed ban on holding dual citizenship.
Now that the cabinet has fallen, she says she “wouldn’t shed a tear” if parliament were to scrap the controversial Freedom Party-sponsored bill. “Now the cabinet has fallen, there’s no longer any payoff,” she told national daily de Volkskrant on Wednesday.
Wilders calls on Muslims to leave Islam
PVV leader Geert Wilders has called on Muslims throughout the world to leave Islam. He made his call in a speech in New York, to promote his English-language book Marked for Death.
Wilders claims that his book explains that Islam is a “totalitarian ideology” and is an encouragement to freedom-loving Muslims to turn their back on Islam. “I support those who fight for freedom in the Islamic world completely. The Arab, Turkish, Iranian, Pakistani and Indonesian peoples have enormous potential. If they could free themselves of the yoke of Islam, if they could stop seeing Mohamed as their role model and if they could break away from the rancorous Koran, then they could achieve amazing things,” Wilders said in his speech.
California: student senator’s Muslim costume causes controversy
Leaders of Muslim student groups at the University of California, San Diego, are upset after a photo of a student senator dressed in Muslim garb circulated on the Internet.
Student Senator Ashton Cohen took a photograph at a campus party dressed in a robe and head-covering, with three women whom a caption identified as his “three wives,” according to the UCSD Guardian. Now, leaders of the Muslim Student Union and Arab Student Union, and Students for Justice in Palestine are admonishing him for “Islamophobia.”
“I was offended and disgusted that someone would think that’s OK to wear to a party,” Students for Justice in Palestine and Arab Student Union President Noor El-Annan told the Guardian.
UKIP candidate: ‘Koran is worse than Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf’
A candidate for UKIP has compared Islam’s holiest book to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Political Scrapbook can reveal. Academic Julia Gasper – a former Westminster hopeful and current council candidate in Oxford – said the Koran was “fascist” and compared those who defend Islam to holocaust deniers.
In emails seen by Scrapbook, Gasper ranted:
Why is it any more wrong to assert that the Koran is a fascist book than to assert that Mein Kampf is a fascist book? The Koran is a lot more explicit in advocating hate and murder than Mein Kampf is.
Having dismissed comparisons between sections of the Koran and the Old Testament as “not valid”, Gasper responded to suggestions that her hateful bile was demonising Muslims:
Words like “demonization” are just self-deception. They are being used to persuade you to keep your eyes shut. In fact, the apologists for Islam are really very similiar to Holocaust deniers.
To compound matters, the rant comes to light as another UKIP candidate is suspended for expressing sympathies with Norwegian mass-murder Anders Breivik – and just days after Julia Gasper herself was slammed for saying gays should stop “complaining about persecution” and start thanking straight people for giving birth to them.
Looks like they’ll be making that a double suspension then.
Political Scrapbook, 1 May 2012
Via Loonwatch
Populism consuming Europe
“From one end of Europe to the other, in the ultra-liberal democracy of the Netherlands, as in France, Switzerland, Spain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, and Belgium – from North to South and West to East – the picture is the same: populism rides roughshod, fears are deepening, mistrust is spreading, and racism is increasingly exemplified by the demeaning treatment inflicted upon criminalised migrants, nomads, foreigners: anyone, in short, who is ‘not like us’.”
Tariq Ramadan writes in the Gulf News, 1 May 2012
Sheffield UKIP candidate removed over Breivik blog post
A man who was due to stand in Sheffield’s local elections for UKIP has been stripped of the candidacy over comments made on his blog.
Steve Moxon, a former government whistle-blower, is standing in the Dore and Totley ward. On his blog he said Norwegian killer Anders Breivik’s thesis on Islam and political correctness was accurate. Mr Moxon said he “resolutely does not agree with” his crimes. UKIP said his comments were at odds with its policy.