How Islamophobes lie about rapes in Oslo

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Earlier this year we dealt with the lies spread by “comedian” Pat Condell with regard to rapes in Oslo, which he claimed were carried out exclusively by “Muslim immigrants using rape as a weapon of cultural terrorism”.

LoonWatch has a piece by Farha Khaled (also posted on her blog) that exposes the way in which the same baseless claim has been used by many on the Islamophobic right, including the Israeli website Arutz Sheva. She wrote to the Norwegian Ministry of Justice and the Police, and received the following reply:

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‘Hijab rule: what took so long?’ Quebec newspaper backs right of women prison staff to wear headscarf

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Montreal Gazette has an editorial supporting the Quebec government’s decision to allow Muslim women prison staff to wear the headscarf:

Hijab rule: what took so long?

When the Quebec government announced it will reasonably accommodate female prison guards who choose to wear hijabs – the traditional Muslim head scarf – the Parti Québécois called the decision crazy.

What is crazy about this matter – apart from the fact that it became an issue in the first place – is that it took four years to be resolved after a discrimination complaint was filed with the Quebec human-rights commission by a prison-guard trainee who had been forbidden to wear a hijab.

Considering that there was never any restriction on inmates wearing hijabs, maintaining a ban on the garment for guards would have meant the prisoners had more rights than the jailers.

Now that would indeed have been crazy.

EDL member who threw concrete at police at anti-Islam protest fails to appear in court for sentencing

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A 28-year-old man caught on camera hurling lumps of concrete at the police during an English Defence League demonstration in Bradford city centre was ordered to appear at Court today or be arrested.

Michael Currie failed to attend Bradford Crown Court yesterday to be sentenced for an affray on Saturday, August 28, last year. Currie sent a doctor’s note saying he was unwell because of anxiety and unfit for work for a fortnight. His barrister, Thomas Gilbart, said he was encouraged by his solicitor to attend but said he was unable to.

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Pennsylvania: Muslim author cancels school visit after parents threaten protest

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lisa AbdelsalamLisa Abdelsalam said she feels “like she swallowed poison” in the days since the threat of parental protests caused the Muslim mother and author to cancel a talk with students at A.M. Kulp Elementary School in Hatfield. “I have a such a sick feeling in my stomach,” said Abdelsalam, 48, who lives in Colmar with her husband and children, all of whom were or are North Penn students.

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Posted in USA

Henry Jackson Society opposes ‘hate speakers’ – except when they’re leading members of the Henry Jackson Society, of course

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Henry Jackson Society logo

Students’ unions should introduce tougher rules to keep “hate speakers” off campuses and stop the spread of Islamist extremism, MPs have heard.

Hannah Stuart, co-author of Islam on Campus: A Survey of UK Student Opinions and Islamist Terrorism: The British Connections, made the suggestion in evidence to the Home Affairs Committee’s inquiry into the roots of violent radicalisation.

The committee held a day-long session at De Montfort University last week, including a workshop titled “How can we best counter radicalisation in universities?”

Nabil Ahmed, president of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, rejected many of Ms Stuart’s arguments, countering from the audience that it was “upsetting and hurtful for Muslim students to be caricatured as potential extremists, potential radicals, when none of this is applicable to 99.9 per cent of not just Muslim students, but all students”.

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Far right loses court case over Marseille mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The association in charge of the construction of the Grand Mosque in Marseille is relieved. On Wednesday 21 December the Marseille administrative appeal court rejected two appeals filed by elected representatives of the National Front and MNR (National Republican Movement) to overturn a decision by the municipal council in July 2007 authorising the establishment of a large mosque in the city with a long lease of 50 years on a plot of 8,600 square metres.

The court noted that “the constitutional principle of secularism, which involves the neutrality of the state and local authorities of the Republic and the legal treatment of different faiths, does not, in itself, prohibit the granting (…) of a long-term administrative lease in order to build a place of worship open to the public.”

It also took the view that the decision does not violate the 1905 law on separation of church and state and rejected the argument that the rent is too low (€24,000 per year).

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In Islamic law, Gingrich sees a mortal threat to U.S.

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sunday News Gingrich

Long before he announced his presidential run this year, Newt Gingrich had become the most prominent American politician to embrace an alarming premise: that Shariah, or Islamic law, poses a threat to the United States as grave as or graver than terrorism.

“I believe Shariah is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it,” Mr. Gingrich said in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute in Washington in July 2010 devoted to what he suggested were the hidden dangers of Islamic radicalism. “I think it’s that straightforward and that real.”

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CAIR: new Army policy will allow JROTC hijabs, turbans

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In October, the Washington-based Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization wrote to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta after a 14-year-old Muslim student at Ravenwood High School in Brentwood, Tenn., was forced to transfer out of a JROTC class when her commanding officers told her she could not wear hijab while marching in the September homecoming parade.

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