The trial of PVV leader Geert Wilders on discrimination and inciting hatred charges will resume on March 14 when his lawyer Bram Moszkowicz will restate his opening remarks to the Amsterdam court, news agency ANP reports.
The public prosecutor will respond two days later.
An Islamic school at the centre of a documentary row will close tomorrow amid safety fears. Teachers at the Darul Uloom Islamic High School, in Small Heath, Birmingham, have held meetings with police chiefs and fear that youngsters could be targeted by the far-Right.
The Dispatches documentary, Lessons in Hatred and Violence, aired tonight and showed footage of a preacher making offensive remarks about Hindus and ranting: “Disbelievers are the worst creatures”.
But teachers at the school insist the undercover reporter captured an isolated incident where a 17-year-old senior student was talking to pupils. They have provided a letter which shows that he was expelled for his views last August – five months before the school was made aware of the tapes by producers.
A Birmingham faith leader has now backed the school’s record of teaching tolerance and MP John Hemming said he believed the documentary was irresponsible and had put schoolchildren at risk.
The school’s head of curriculum Mujahid Aziz said the decision had been to bring forward the school’s half-term by a week after meetings with police. Pupils were being told not to return to classes until the start of March.
“They filmed for six months and managed to collect a handful of comments which promote intolerance,” said Mr Aziz. “We were aware of the views of this 17-year-old student and we dealt with him by exclusion straight away – before we even knew that we were being filmed. What people will see in that clip is completely contrary to what we teach at the school about harmony and awareness of different faiths.
“Our concern now is for the safety of children and people coming to the mosque because we are worried that some people will get completely the wrong impression once they have watched this programme. After meeting with the police, we are bringing the half-term forward and we have been advised that there should be plenty of staff around on Monday night as a precaution.”
Birmingham MP John Hemming (Lib Dem, Yardley) said Channel 4’s portrayal of the school was irresponsible.
“If Channel 4 thinks this is a school where racism and intolerance is accepted in any way, they have got their facts seriously wrong,” he said. “They have already had hate mail and now they are having to close for the safety of their pupils. This kind of documentary is ideal fodder for the EDL. Channel 4 is putting the safety of children at risk by criticising a school which is doing its job properly.”
Mr Hemming was backed by Yann Lovelock, a Buddhist who sits on the executive board of Birmingham Interfaith Council. He said: “They have gone out of their way to make other faiths feel welcome and I have been invited to the school several times to speak to pupils about Buddhism. As far as I can see, they do everything they can to promote tolerance and understanding and I am happy to work with them.”
See also the Darul Uloom Islamic High School press release.
Read the school’s response to the documentary makers, Hardcash Productions, here.
Update: See “Dispatches Islamic school to complain to Ofcom”, BBC News, 15 February 2011
Martin Bright is not happy. Hopefully the news will spoil Andrew Gilligan’s holiday too.
A Thurrock Labour councillor has been suspended by her party for passing on allegedly racist comments in an email.
The suspension was announced four days after it was revealed that Belhus councillor Sue Gray had forwarded an email to people on her mailbox which purported to be an official email detailing Bedfordshire Police’s protocol guide for dealing with terrorism suspects who may be Muslims.
At the end of the email a comment was posted saying: “This is unbelievable. It’s now predicted that Britain will become an Islamic state by 2070. (Time to think about your children/grandchildren). Please forward this e-mail asap so that 40 per cent of British voters who didn’t vote last time might get the message.”
The email forwarded by Cllr Gray was passed to a police officer, who reported it and Essex police have confirmed an investigation to establish whether the crime of inciting racial hatred has taken place.
Cllr Gray issued an immediate apology when the story entered the public domain, saying she had inadvertently forwarded the email, one of many she receives, without reading it fully. She distanced herself from the comments within it, but the Labour party have announced her suspension pending an investigation.
Essex Enquirer, 14 February 2011
Via ENGAGE
A German banker who has said “all Jews share a certain gene” and described Muslims as “dunces” will speak tonight at the London School of Economics amid a row over free speech.
Anti-fascist campaigners vowed to demonstrate outside the LSE during Thilo Sarrazin‘s appearance in a debate on multiculturalism. The former executive member of the Bundesbank caused outrage in Germany last year with his comments, in which he also attacked Basques. He was removed from the country’s central bank and raked down by the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who called him “stupid”.
Several hundred people from as far away as Corona and the San Fernando Valley filled the lawn outside the Yorba Linda Community Center Sunday afternoon and lined Imperial Highway in response to a fundraising event by a Queens, N.Y.-based Muslim group Islamic Circle of North America Relief USA.
People started gathering about 3 p.m., two-and-a-half hours before the fundraiser began. Many in the crowd waved U.S. flags and carried signs saying, “God Bless America” and “No Sharia Law,” in reference to Islam’s sacred law. In the afternoon, the event had the atmosphere of a July 4 picnic. Many brought lawn chairs and blankets, sang patriotic songs and tied red, white and blue bandanas on their dogs.
The invitation of Islamic Scholar Mufti Muhammad ibn Adam al-Kawthari to speak at the University on Wednesday has sparked controversy across campus. Several campus societies, including StandforPeace, Amnesty International, Jewish Society, Freedom Society and York Conservatives, have collectively launched an official complaint, claiming that al-Kawthari “poses a threat to social cohesion at York” and that “his views are out of place in a civilised, free and equal society”.
The concern is centred on a report by the thinktank CIVITAS, profiling the Mufti, which explicitly states: “he places severe restrictions on male doctors treating female patients; he rules that women may not swim (even for medical reasons) where a male lifeguard is present, or where there are non-Muslim women; using tampons is ‘disliked’; a woman may not travel beyond 48 miles without her husband or a close relative accompanying her; a female is encouraged to remain within the confines of her house as much as possible; polygamy is permissible.”
Sam Westrop of StandforPeace, who has led the campaign against him speaking at York, has also pointed out that al Kawthari “legitimises rape” in his claim that “the narrations of the beloved of Allah clearly signify the importance of the wife obeying her husband in his request for sexual intimacy. It will be a grave sin (in normal circumstances) for the wife to refuse her husband, and even more, if this leads the husband into the unlawful.”
Speaking to Nouse, Westrop added: “It is a terrifying state of affairs that persons such as al-Kawthari are allowed to propagate their views on university campuses, and that the Union and University should so blithely approve such a speaker. We would all be up in arms if the far right popped up on campus stating that homosexuals have no rights and that capital punishment is suitable for adultery; so why should we hold back with people such as al-Kawthari? We urge the Islamic Society to change the speaker for this event, to someone far less disgusting.”
However, Dinah Salah, President of the York Islamic Society who organised for al Kawthari to speak at York as part of Islam Week, has spoken out against the allegations. She stated that the societies had been “recklessly sensationalising” his views and that they are being taken “bizarrely out of context”.
Salah continued: “It is important to note that socially conservative views should not be confused with violent extreme views. We find it deeply problematic that individuals seek to tarnish the good name and reputation of Muslim scholars under the premise of ‘extremism’ and ‘‘islamism’ based on misquotes of a very serious issue.
“We feel that such an approach is not cohesive to good campus relations and seeks to alienate Muslim students from engaging properly in their Students’ Union and hindering their development of a strong Islamic identity. The Islamic Society stands in favour of freedom of expression, with the only exception being when it incites hatred or violence. How can there be meaningful progression in our society, when individuals seek to restrict opinions and prevent constructive challenges of diverse views?”
See also The Yorker, 13 February 2011
It might be noted that Sam Westrop’s views on freedom of expression are somewhat contradictory, to say the least. Last year he condemned the exclusion of Douglas Murray, director of the Civitas-funded Centre for Social Cohesion, from the platform of a fringe event at NUS conference following complaints by FOSIS. According to Westrop, Murray should have been welcomed as a speaker because of the “importance to uphold freedom of speech”.
Murray, it may be recalled, addresed the Pim Fortuyn Memorial conference in 2006 on the subject “What are we to do about Islam?” He demanded “Why is it that time and again the liberal West is crumpling before the violence, intimidation and thuggery of Islam?” and offered the following solution: “It is late in the day, but Europe still has time to turn around the demographic time-bomb which will soon see a number of our largest cities fall to Muslim majorities. It has to. All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop…. Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board.”
More recently, Murray welcomed the formation of the EDL as “a grassroots response from non-Muslims to Islamism”.
Westrop, it seems, is in fully in favour of free speech for anti-Muslim hate preachers like Murray, but not for socially conservative Deobandi scholars like Muhammad ibn Adam al-Kawthari.
It is also interesting to see Westrop putting himself forward as a defender of women’s rights. In May 2009 he invited UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom to address the university’s Freedom Society, despite Bloom’s notoriously reactionary views on that issue. Bloom is on record as stating that “no self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age”, that he doesn’t think women “clean behind the fridge enough”, and that his role as MEP is “to represent Yorkshire women who always have dinner on the table when you get home”.
Channel 4 on Monday denied accusations that it “unfairly targeted” an Islamic school in Birmingham with “surreptitious” recording for a Dispatches documentary due to air tonight.
The Darul Uloom Islamic High School is one of the educational establishments due to feature in tonight’s Dispatches investigation into allegations of assault at Islamic schools across the UK. The school said on Monday it was “concerned that the truth has been distorted completely” in some of the allegations made by Dispatches.
Channel 4 responded that its investigation is “clearly in the public interest” and “shows secret footage of numerous adults on different occasions teaching pupils as young as 11 years of age contempt for other religions and wider society”. “We stand by our investigation and think the programme speaks for itself,” the broadcaster said.
Lessons in Hate and Violence, made by independent producer Hardcash, investigates allegations that some teachers in Islamic schools regularly assault young children and teach a message of hatred and intolerance. West Yorkshire police earlier on Monday arrested one man in Keighley in connection with footage due to be aired tonight.
A statement released by the school on Monday said: “We feel that a certain media channel has targeted us unfairly by surreptitiously recording inside our school for a period longer than six months. Over that period of time they have selectively gathered a handful of quotes and comments allegedly from some teachers, which they are using to attempt to portray our school in a light completely contrary to its ethos.”
The school, which is funded in part by charitable donations, added that its official policy was to “promote tolerance and appreciation of other religions” and that the majority of its students go on to become “upright citizens”.
“No school can claim to be immune from incidents that require remedial action,” the school said. “What we have demonstrated repeatedly, is that our procedures have dealt with contraventions in the past, and will continue to do so. These actions have included expulsions of students, and dismissals of teachers, as long as six months prior to us having knowledge of the surreptitious recording.”
Darul Uloom added that it would close early for half-term because of concern for the safety of pupils travelling to and from its site in the Small Heath area of Birmingham.
As Finland’s April elections draw nearer, the country’s tiny foreign population finds itself the focus of debate, with the anti-immigrant, nationalist True Finns party expected to make runaway gains.
The party has catapulted to popularity thanks to its affable, charismatic leader Timo Soini and its “Finns-first” message, seen by many as xenophobic in a country where immigrants make up just 2.9% of the population. “Immigration is a problem and not a solution,” Soini has argued in television debates.
Although the party won only 4.1% in the last elections in 2007, a recent surge in popularity saw it register 16.2% support in one January opinion poll published in Finland’s daily of reference Helsingin Sanomat.
But the party cannot quite shake off the taint of racism. A small fringe group of the party, led by Helsinki city councilman Jussi Halla-Aho, has published an election manifesto blasting multiculturalism. Halla-Aho was convicted last year over blog comments linking Islam to paedophilia and saying that Somalis are pre-disposed to mugging people and living on the dole.
The True Finns’ leadership, however, plays down Halla-Aho’s influence. “Every party has these young radicals,” says founding member Raimo Vistbacka, a member of parliament since 1987. Vistbacka insisted that official party policy, while sceptical of immigration, was not extremist or xenophobic.
ACT Liberal senator Gary Humphries has upset Canberra’s Islamic community by tabling a strongly worded anti-Muslim petition in the Senate, even though he says he does not agree with its content or know the signatories to it.
The petition, signed by three people from suburban Sydney, calls for a 10-year moratorium on Muslim immigration and a review of Australia’s immigration policy to ensure priority is given to Christians.
Citing the Constitution, the founding fathers and the current parliamentary prayers, the petitioners insist Australia is a Christian Commonwealth. They want any attempt to establish a Muslim nation in Australia to be rejected.
Senator Humphries tabled the petition on Thursday, the last sitting day of the week. He did not speak in support of it, but tabled it to be recorded in Hansard.
Under parliamentary convention, presenting a petition does not necessarily mean a senator or MP agrees with its contents. Senators and MPs are not required to table petitions on behalf of constituents, although it is generally accepted that they will.
When contacted by The Canberra Times yesterday, Senator Humphries said every citizen had a right to be heard.
Canberra Times, 15 February 2011
See also “Religious prejudice gone ‘beyond a joke'”, Canberra Times, 15 February 2011
Update: See “Abbott backs anti-Muslim petition MP”, ABC News, 15 February 2011