US Supreme Court clears way for Muslim woman to sue over headscarf removal

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Supreme Court will let a Muslim woman sue Southern California jailers for making her take off her head scarf in a courthouse holding cell.

The court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Orange County, Calif., officials, who were sued in 2007 by Souhair Khatib.

Khatib had gone to the Orange County Superior Court to ask for more time to complete her community service. But a judge ordered her jailed, and jailers forced Khatib to remove her head scarf.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments that holding cells aren’t covered by a federal law protecting the religious practices of prisoners. They also ruled Khatib had the right to wear the scarf unless jailers could show it was a security risk.

Associated Press, 3 October 2011

Muslim woman had veil ripped from her face

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A woman admitted ripping the head veil off a devout Muslim woman in Halifax. Jacqueline Zaro, of East Street, Sowerby Bridge, pleaded guilty on the first day of her trial to intent to cause religiously-aggravated harassment, alarm or distress in the incident on June 11 at King Cross Road, Halifax.

James Weekes, prosecuting, told Calderdale Magistrates’ Court the victim had moved to this country six years ago and was a devout Muslim who wore the veil to cover her face. He said the victim said she has had sleepless nights since and now feels vulnerable and too afraid to go out shopping on her own.

The court heard Zaro told police she had drunk three litres of cider beforehand and when she was shown CCTV footage she accepted she had pulled off the headscarf.

Magistrates gave Zaro a 12-month community order with supervision and six months’ with an alcohol treatment team. They also ordered her to pay £100 prosecution costs and £100 compensation to the victim.

Halifax Courier, 3 October 2011

Wilders’ anti-Islam book set for US launch next April

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-Islam Freedom Party, is currently working on a book about the history of Islam. Press agency Novum has announced that the book will be launched in the US in late April 2012 and then published in other countries.

The work will examine the “true nature of Islam” and the worldwide battle against Islamisation. The populist politician claims Islam is not a religion, but an ideology: “An ideology of hatred, of destruction, of conquest. It is my strong conviction that Islam is a threat to Western values, to freedom of speech, to the equality of men and women, of heterosexuals and homosexuals, of believers and unbelievers.”

The book on Islam will be Mr Wilders’ second major publication. In 2005, he wrote a short autobiography, entitled Kies voor vrijheid (Choose Freedom).

RNW, 3 October 2011

‘Political correctness continues to stifle debate on multiculturalism’ claims Mail writer

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Abhijit PandyaThe Daily Mail provides a platform for UKIP Islamophobe Abhijit Pandya to defend his support for Geert Wilders and his view that Islam is “morally flawed and degenerate”. The article also features an ignorant attack on the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia. Pandya is evidently unaware that this initiative has been sabotaged by supporters of Policy Exchange, who packed the APPG’s last meeting and ousted its secretariat.

The Mail is obviously very enthusiastic about Pandya, this being the third article by him it has published in the past week (in its “Right Minds” section, edited by Simon Heffer). The first was entitled “Uncontrolled immigration is destroying Britain’s literacy” and the second “Labour’s two-faced immigration apology still makes too many excuses”. As the EDL and BNP have already discovered, it’s very useful to have a right-wing bigot with brown skin making the kind of arguments usually associated with white racists.

Charges of Islamophobia are inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood with the aim of silencing critics of Islam (it says here)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

David Horowitz and Robert Spencer have a piece at FrontPage Magazine defending themselves against CAIR, the Southern Poverty Law Centre and the Center for American Progress, who have supposedly waged an “ugly campaign” to depict the authors as Islamophobes.

Horowitz and Spencer inform us that “the term ‘Islamophobia’ itself was invented by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the political fountainhead of Islamic terror”. It is “designed to create a modern-day thought crime” in an attempt to “abolish the First Amendment where Islam is concerned”.

The article has already been published at National Review Online, where it was given the misleading title “A rational fear of Islamism”. However, as Horowitz and Spencer make clear, their target is not Islamism but Islam itself:

Should those of us who are infidels – and therefore targets – not be concerned by a religion whose followers regard this Koranic incitement as the word of God: “Slay the pagans wherever you find them.” (9:5)?

Should Jews not be concerned by the Jew-hatred that permeates the sacred texts of this religion, whose prophet has said: “The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them, until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: O Muslim, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him” (Sahih Muslim 6985)? …

Should women not fear the expansion of a creed whose God likens a woman to a field men can till: “Your women are a field for you (to cultivate) so go to your field as ye will.” (Qur’an 2:223)? This God has decreed that a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man (2:282), that men can marry up to four wives, and have sex with slave girls (4:3), that a son’s inheritance shall be twice the size of daughter’s (4:11), and that husbands can and should beat their disobedient wives: “Good women are obedient…. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them.” (4:34). This God sanctions marriage to pre-pubescent girls, stipulating that Islamic divorce procedures “shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated” (65:4). Islamic law codifies all this and adds from Islamic tradition justification for honor killing, female genital mutilation, and even the prohibition of women leaving their homes without permission from a male guardian.

BBC head of religion hits back at BC/AD ban claims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Aaqil AhmedAaqil Ahmed, the BBC’s head of religion and ethics, has responded strongly to reports that the Corporation has banned the terms BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini). Last weekend it was claimed that BC and AD had been replaced across the BBC’s output by the modern, secular terms BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era).

“The story was quite simply wrong,” Ahmed wrote on the About the BBC blog. “We have issued no editorial guidelines or instructions to suggest that anyone in the BBC should change the terms they use.”

Radio Times, 2 October 2011

This hasn’t prevented the Daily Mail from reporting: “Government to save Year of our Lord from BBC’s ‘Common Era’.”

EDL supporters who vandalised Hartlepool mosque are sentenced

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Masjid Nasir HartlepoolThe EDL Facebook page reported earlier this afternoon that Anthony Smith and Steven Vasey, who pleaded guilty in August to conspiring to commit racially aggravated criminal damage after daubing graffiti on an Ahmadiyya mosque and two Asian-run businesses in Hartlepool, have both been jailed for 12 months.

This has now been confirmed by a BBC News report, which adds that the third EDL member in court over the mosque attack, Charlotte Davies, received a 12-week suspended sentence.

Continue reading →

Lawyers seek to prevent NYPD from destroying Muslim surveillance records

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Civil liberties lawyers will seek to impose a restraining order on the NYPD in federal court Monday to stop the destruction of any evidence related to the alleged surveillance of Muslim communities since the September 11 attacks.

They also hope to initiate an investigation into the allegations, made by the Associated Press in a recent series of reports, which the NYPD have rejected as false.

Attorneys overseeing the so-called Handschu agreement — a 40-year case that has continuously shaped the extent to which police can conduct surveillance and can maintain records of surveillance — will go before Judge Charles Haight, who has long presided over the Handschu case.

According to attorney Jethro Eisenstein, the AP’s claims that the NYPD kept records of the activities of law-abiding Muslims in restaurants, mosques and other places indicated a violation of the existing Handschu guidelines.

“They very specifically prohibit the retention of information that’s been gleaned from that kind of visit to public places, unless it involves either unlawful activity or potential terrorist activities,” he said. He added the AP’s claims that the NYPD was “shredding” evidence, added urgency to the need for a restraining order.

WNYC News Blog, 3 October 2011

Norway: police want to interview Alan Lake over Breivik killings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Reuters reports:

Police in Oslo say they want to interview Alan Lake, whom they believe is a key figure in Britain’s anti-Islamist English Defence League EDL, to find out if he may have been an ideological source of inspiration to Breivik.

“Alan Lake is an obvious person we would like to speak to,” Oslo police prosecutor Paal-Fredrik Hjort Kraby told Reuters. He added: “At this point in the investigation there is no indication that anyone knew about his (Breivik’s) plans.”

The English Defence League said in an email to Reuters that Lake had “absolutely nothing to do with the EDL”. Lake could not be reached for comment but has previously denied being a senior member of the EDL.

The claim that Lake has “absolutely nothing to do with the EDL” is disingenuous to say the least. The EDL leaders only dissociated themselves from Lake in the aftermath of the Oslo killings when his earlier rantings about executing political opponents became public knowledge. But even then they had to admit that Lake played “a role in the EDL during its early formation”.

Paul Ray, who was himself interviewed by the Norwegian police, has suggested that Lake was Breivik’s mentor, but without offering anything other than circumstantial evidence.