Green presidential candidate says France should honour Muslim and Jewish religious festivals

Eva JolyFrance’s Green presidential hopeful raised heckles across the political spectrum Tuesday by suggesting that France should honour Muslim and Jewish festivals as well as Christian ones, by according them a national holiday.

Speaking in Paris on Wednesday at her first campaign rally, Green presidential candidate Eva Joly argued that national holiday status should be accorded to the Muslim festival of Eid-ul-Fitr and the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur.

“Each religion should benefit from equal treatment in the public sphere,” she said. “I believe that national holidays should also be accorded to faiths other than the Catholic faith.” Describing religious equality as a “key element” of French identity, she then blamed the policies of President Nicolas Sarkozy for dividing religious communities. “Yes, I’ll say it,” she said. “This [suffering] has been caused by five years of Sarkozy-ism.”

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Dutch queen dismisses mosque visit criticism

Queen BeatrixDutch Queen Beatrix has dismissed as “nonsense” criticism of her decision to wear a head scarf during a recent visit to a mosque in the United Arab Emirates.

National broadcaster NOS reports that the queen’s unusually forthright comment came Thursday in Oman to Dutch reporters covering her state visit this week.

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Islamophobia in the Netherlands

In the 1990s, the Netherlands was known for being extremely tolerant of foreign religions, says Frank Bovenkerk, emeritus professor at the University of Amsterdam (UVA).

“… until surveys suddenly showed considerable animosity towards Islam was developing. The researchers thought: ‘This kind of split with the past isn’t possible’. But it in fact was.”

Then came the attacks of 11 September 2001 in the United States and the murder of Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh by an Islamic extremist in 2004. Dr Bovenkerk blames Dutch politicians for fanning the flames of hostility towards Muslims: “After Van Gogh’s murder, the then deputy prime minister, Gerrit Zalm, said that we were ‘now at war’.”

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Long Island man accused of hate crime at mosque

Stephen PrattSuffolk County Police have arrested a Centerport man on charges of criminal mischief as a hate crime after police said he intentionally damaged a Huntington mosque parking lot last month.

Hate Crimes Unit detectives, with the assistance of Second Precinct Crime Section officers, were conducting surveillance at Masjid Noor Mosque, at 1032 Park Ave., as part of a continuing investigation into incidents of vandalism at the location. Police said that while detectives and officers were at the location Tuesday night, Stephen Pratt threw a glass bottle into the mosque driveway from his vehicle.

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Muslim student sues Connecticut university

University of BridgeportA Muslim woman is suing the University of Bridgeport, alleging that the school failed to investigate her claims that a fellow student sexually harassed her and instead retaliated by reporting her to the FBI based on a false claim that she was a terrorist.

Balayla Ahmad filed the federal lawsuit Tuesday saying that she was sexually harassed by a male student for months in 2009 and that university officials showed “deliberate indifference” to her repeated complaints. She said college officials recklessly disseminated false accusations by the harasser that they had good reason to believe were unreliable and threatened her with arrest by the FBI.

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Darwin immigration detention centre worker suspended over anti-Muslim comments on Facebook

A refugee advocacy group says it is unrepentant after it played a role in getting a worker at a Darwin immigration detention centre suspended for spiteful comments he wrote about Muslims on Facebook.

Victoria Martin-Iverson, from the Refugee Rights Advocacy Network, says she takes no joy in the staff member suspended, but is glad it was brought to public attention.

“I was surprised that someone could have so internalised those viewpoints as to see absolutely nothing wrong, that could have any consequences, in publishing those comments with his own name using links that go back to his own Facebook page,” Ms Martin-Iverson said.

“I assure you I take no joy in someone being stupid enough to put their employment at risk, but I am completely unrepentant for bringing this to public attention,” she added.

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Sweden’s education authority rejects blanket ban on veils in schools

Sweden’s education agency on Wednesday rejected a blanket ban on veils but said that teachers had in some situations the right to ban students from wearing them.

A general ban on Islamic garments such as the full-face niqab or full-body burqa could be considered a violation of religious freedom, the National Agency for Education said. The agency had been asked to clarify its guidelines on in which situations it was possible to ban facial coverings.

Lessons in which students could be required to remove veils included those involving laboratory experiments or metal and machinery work, the agency said.

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Another ‘price tag’ attack in West Bank

Price tag graffitiThree cars were torched and a mosque wall was spray painted with the sentence “price tag Gal Arye Yosef” in the village of Dir Istiya near Ariel in the early hours of Wednesday morning. The sentence refers to the name of an illegal outpost that was evacuated in the last few days.

The head of the Dir Istiya local council, Nazmi Salaman, told Ynet that at 1:40 am residents noticed a car with three passengers and an Israeli license plate driving at high speed on the village’s main street towards the exit. “Immediately after that the residents noticed that three cars parked cars were on fire near the mosque and one of the fences that surround the mosque had the ‘price tag’ graffiti.”

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Florida Family Association protests Muslim speaker’s visits to school

Florida Family Association banner

TAMPA — A history teacher who sought to broaden her students’ horizons got more than she bargained for when she invited a Muslim leader to Steinbrenner High School. Kelly Miliziano now finds herself in the crosshairs of David Caton’s Florida Family Association.

Caton, a well-known conservative leader, is calling on the Hillsborough County School Board to end visits by Hassan Shibly of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or allow time for speakers who could counter Shibly’s message. Stephen Hegarty, a spokesman for the school district, said he cannot imagine inviting one speaker to argue against another’s religion.

Candy Olson, chairwoman of the School Board, said, “Our kids need to understand a lot of different perspectives. They’re going to have to deal with everybody in the world, and they can’t just be afraid of them because they don’t know them.”

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Oklahoma’s Sharia ban unconstitutional, court rules

DENVER, CO — A federal appeals court today unanimously upheld a ruling that blocked implementation of a discriminatory and unnecessary Oklahoma state constitutional amendment that would have prohibited state courts from considering what is broadly described as Islamic “Sharia law” and “international law.”

The court concluded that by singling out Islam for unfavorable treatment in state courts, the law likely violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The court rejected the state’s argument that the constitutional amendment was necessary to protect against improper application of Sharia law, explaining:

“Appellants do not identify any actual problem the challenged amendment seeks to solve. Indeed, they admitted … that they did not know of even a single instance where an Oklahoma court had applied Sharia law or used the legal precepts of other nations or cultures, let alone that such applications or uses had resulted in concrete problems in Oklahoma.”

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