Dr Yahya Michot of Hartford Seminary has published an analysis of Qaradawi’s khutbah in Tahrir Square on 18 February together with a complete translation of the sermon.
H/T Aziz Poonwalla
Swedish politician charged over anti-Muslim poster is acquitted
A Swedish politician facing charges for producing a poster depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad naked together with his nine-year-old wife was found not guilty by a jury in Malmö on Wednesday.
Carl P Herslow, leader of the Skåne Party (Skånepartiet), a small right-wing populist regional party, is charged with agitation against an ethnic group (hets mot folkgrupp). The poster included the text: “He is 53 and she is nine. Is this the kind of wedding we want to see in Skåne?.”
Herslow admits producing the poster but contested the charges. He said the aim of the poster was to stimulate a debate about Islam, which he argued was incompatible with democracy and equality. “The intention was to provoke a strong reaction among both Muslims and non-Muslims,” he said.
The prosecution argued that Herslow should to be given a suspended prison sentence and for the posters to be confiscated. But after deliberating less than an hour the jury, which are only used in Sweden in freedom of speech cases, told the court that Herslow was not guilty of agitation against an ethnic group. As a result, the court cannot convict the politician when it delivers its formal verdict on March 16th.
France: veil ban comes into force in April
From Saudi tourists window-shopping on the Champs-Élysées to Muslim women in a departure lounge at Charles de Gaulle airport or the few young French converts on suburban estates, any woman who steps outside in France wearing a veil that covers her face will be breaking the law from next month.
France’s bitterly divisive debate on Muslim women’s clothing took a new turn when the legal details of the controversial “burqa ban” were published in a decree by the prime minister. From 11 April women will be banned from wearing the niqab – full-face Muslim veil – in any public place, including while walking down the street, taking a bus, at a bank, library or shop, or in a cinema or theatre. It will be illegal for a woman in niqab to visit the Louvre, or any other museum, take a train, visit a hospital or collect her child from school.
Face veils will be outlawed virtually anywhere outside women’s own homes, except when they are worshipping in a religious place or travelling as a passenger in a private car, although traffic police may stop them if they think they do not have a clear “field of vision” while driving. Women wearing niqab will be fined €150 (about £130) and be given a citizenship class to remind them of the republican values of secular France and gender equality. Any third party found to have coerced a woman into wearing the face covering, for example a husband or family member, risks a €30,000 fine and a year in prison.
Voices against Islamophobia
The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) publishes this week two timely reports on the nature, impact and campaigns against Islamophobia across Europe.
‘Islamophobia and progressive values’
This unique report draws attention to the specific role that a discourse on progressive values is playing in shaping Islamophobia. Dr Sabine Schiffer (Institute for Media Responsibility, Erlangen), Murat Batur (Kanafani Inter-Cultural Initiative, Vienna), Nadia Fadil (Centre for Sociological Research at the Catholic University of Leuven) and Marwan Muhammad (Collective Against Islamophobia in France) outline the general parameters of hatred towards Muslims. They examine the combination of intellectual currents – from the extreme-Right to those of the liberal intelligentsia – which are creating a closed circuit of thought and ensuring that Islamophobia is now the respectable face of European racism. (Download the report here (pdf file, 764kb)
‘Islamophobia, human rights and the anti-terrorist laws’
This report reveals how Islamophobia serves a function as propaganda for war. But anti-terrorist policies and emergency laws have also had the effect of turning Muslim communities all over Europe into ‘suspect communities’. Asim Qureshi (Cageprisoners) and Luk Vervaet (Committee for the Freedom of Association and Expression) consider the relationship between Islamophobia and the war on terror, focusing particularly on the ways in which the human rights of Muslim communities, refugees and migrants are being breached by counter-terrorism measures. (Download the report here (pdf file, 604kb)
Liz Fekete, editor of the two reports, said today: ‘There is no time to spare if we are to win back progressive values from those who have hijacked them in order to promote a reactionary monocultural creed, based on hatred towards Muslims’.
These reports are the proceedings of two IRR seminars held in London on the theme of ‘End the Isolation: building solidarity networks against racism and Islamophobia in Europe’ at Garden Court Chambers, Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 20 October 2010.
The first seminar on ‘Islamophobia and Progressive Values’ was the concluding networking meeting of the IRR’s Alternative Voices on Integration Project, which was funded by the European Programme for Integration and Migration of the Network of European Foundations.
EDL activist calls for stand against ‘molitious atacks from muslim extremists’
Activists from the far-right English Defence League (EDL) are using Facebook to recruit members for what they describe as its Dover division. A call to the people of the town has been made online by a man named Jason Heath, who encourages them to “take a stand” against what he describes as Muslim extremists.
In a badly spelt and punctuated posting on Facebook pages relating to Dover, including that of this newspaper, Mr Heath said: “if your sick and tired of your mum, sister, nan, girlfriend, kids or anyone you know not being able to walk through certain parts of hers/his//yours/OUR town at night even during the day, due to risk of molitious atacks from muslim extremists then take a stand, tell your friends and family to unite and take a stand, t…e…ll your neighbours to take a stand!!
“the time to stand up and take our country back is long over-due if you feel the need to make a stand for everything ENGLISH then join the EDL Dover division. we will never surrender and i hope that none of you will either.”
On the EDL Dover division Facebook group’s page, which has so far attracted 36 members, there are discussions about transport to a planned demonstration in Blackburn on April 2, as well as links to stories about Islam.
News of the Screws applauds hijab ban
“Hundreds of thousands of Muslim girls are to be banned from wearing veils at school, the News of the World can reveal. Headteachers will be told they can outlaw the full-face cover-ups under new rules being drawn up by Education Secretary Alan Johnson. Schools can already ban teachers from wearing niqabs, which cover the entire face apart from a slit for the eyes. And now pupils across Britain will be told they can’t wear them either…. Mr Johnson’s move has been welcomed by moderate Muslims. Dr Taj Hargey, of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford, said: ‘This is fantastic news. It is wrong for Muslims to be given special treatment’.”
News of the World, 4 March 2007
German interior minister says Islam does not ‘belong’ in Germany
Germany’s new interior minister has said Islam does not “belong” in the country, reopening a bitter debate over the integration of Germany’s 4 million Muslims.
Hans-Peter Friedrich, who took office on Wednesday, was being asked by reporters about a gun attack at Frankfurt airport in which two US servicemen were killed and another two injured. Investigators suspect the attack, carried out by a 21-year-old Muslim immigrant from Kosovo, was an act of Islamist terrorism. A federal judge in Karlsruhe on Thursday ordered the suspect be remanded to jail on two counts of murder and three of attempted murder, pending further investigation.
In his first press conference as minister, Friedrich said on Friday that Muslims should be allowed live in modern Germany, but he added: “To say that Islam belongs in Germany is not a fact supported by history.”
Daily Star reporter quits in protest at tabloid’s anti-Muslim coverage
The Daily Star has been accused of printing fictional stories by a disgruntled reporter who has resigned over its “hatemongering” anti-Muslim propaganda. In a resignation letter, Richard Peppiatt said he was leaving after the Star gave sympathetic coverage to the far-right English Defence League last month.
The reporter, who was once made to dress up in a burqa, now accuses the paper of inciting racial tensions and Islamaphobia. “You may have heard the phrase ‘the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil sets off a tornado in Texas’,” Peppiatt wrote to the proprietor, Richard Desmond, in a letter seen by the Guardian. “Well, try this: ‘The lies of a newspaper in London can get a bloke’s head caved-in down an alley in Bradford.’ If you can’t see that words matter, you should go back to running porn magazines.”
France: education minister demands that Muslim mothers on school trips leave hijab at home
Education Minister Luc Chatel has weighed in to complicate the lives of Muslim women in France even more, in addition to the debate on Islam before the 2012 presidential election, which is being hijacked by the far right with increasing frequency. In an excessively zealous application, in the name of secularism, of the old 2004 law that bans “any symbol that displays one’s religion” in schools, he has asked Muslim moms who want to accompany their children on field trips to leave their veils at home, whether they be the full version or simple headscarves.
Another US state considers ban on sharia law
Missouri is now the latest state seeking to ban its courts from consulting Sharia law. A bill introduced on Tuesday by State Rep. Paul Curtman (R) would bar courts from taking any foreign law, legal code or system into consideration when deciding cases.