A Catholic high school in Volendam is guilty of discrimination on religious grounds for banning a Muslim pupil from wearing a headscarf, the equal opportunities commission said on Friday.
The girl started wearing a headscarf this school year and was banned from attending lessons, prompting her father to make a complaint.
The commission said school pupils should, in principle, be free to wear a headscarf, Jewish skullcap or Christian cross.
A former member of Chancellor Merkel’s Christian Democrats has formed a party to attract voters enthralled by Thilo Sarrazin and disappointed by Germany’s existing parties. Berlin politician René Stadkewitz’s new Freedom Party aims to leverage fear of Islam for political ends.
Spiegel Online profiles Germany’s answer to Geert Wilders.
The current issue of the Times Higher Education magazine carries an article by one Matthew Reisz which asks whether college authorities should police the activities of Muslim students, given that “Islamic extremism and even terrorism have emanated from some of our campuses”.
The main sources cited are Douglas Murray and Hannah Stuart from the Centre for Social Cohesion, Lucy James from the Quilliam Foundation, Raheem Kassam of Student Rights, Anthony Glees and Nick Cohen. The only voices allowed to counter this Islamophobic chorus are those of Ruth Siddall, UCL’s dean of students (welfare), and FOSIS president Nabil Ahmed who is represented by one short quote. Some objective study!
In the comments, the Rev Stan Brown writes: “As a chaplain at a London University I would have to add a word of caution about the Quilliam and CSC documents cited in this article. Their research seems to be largely based on internet searches. I attend Islamic society meetings and have heard some of the ‘radical’ speakers cited in these reports. I don’t know what they said elsewhere but I do know what they said in my own institution.”
This has provoked a furious response at Harry’s Place from the appalling Edmund Standing, who claims that the Rev Brown is “all too typical of the kind of wooly-minded individuals who can be found on campuses up and down the country”. The speakers Brown heard at ISoc meetings were no different from neo-Nazis, according to Standing. And, as a clincher, Standing reveals that one of Brown’s colleagues actually sent a message of congratulation to the MCB when Iqbal Sacranie was awarded a knighthood. This is what passes for proof of extremism in the demented world of Harry’s Place.
A former member of Chancellor Merkel’s Christian Democrats has formed a party to attract voters enthralled by Thilo Sarrazin and disappointed by Germany’s existing parties.
Berlin politician René Stadkewitz’s new Freedom Party aims to leverage fear of Islam for political ends.
Spiegel Online profiles Germany’s answer to Geert Wilders.
A neighbour from hell who launched a four-year “race hate” campaign against a family has now been jailed for possessing child porn. Nigel Hesmondhalgh, 37, is beginning a nine-month sentence after a series of degrading photos and videos of children were found on his home computer.
Detectives have welcomed the punishment, imposed by Judge Simon Newell at Burnley Crown Court, on Hesmondhalgh, of Stanley Street, Accrington. The judge also ordered him to sign the sex offenders’ register for 10 years.
Hesmondhalgh was jailed at the Burnley court in March for an offence of racially-aggravated harassment. Police obtained a two-year Anti-Social Behaviour Order against him, before his release, to prevent him from throwing dog dirt into his neighbours’ garden, or using racist language towards an Asian family.
Local officials for a Muslim civil rights organization have filed a lawsuit to stop a conservative commentator from using the group’s name in a website.
Dawud Walid, the executive director of Council on American-Islamic Relations-Michigan, said his group today filed a federal lawsuit this week against Debbie Schlussel alleging she created the site cairmichigan.com. Walid’s organization’s website is cairmichigan.org.
“I’m not an attorney, but I do know it’s a violation of federal trademark (laws) to hijack the name of an organization,” said Walid today. “CAIR is one of the most visible Muslim organizations in these United States of America. I can’t speak to directly to her motivations but in our opinion, Debbie Schlussel is an extremely intolerant person … a well-known anti-Muslim, anti-Arab bigot.”
Former screen idol Brigitte Bardot and other animal rights activists on Tuesday launched a poster campaign in France to end Jewish and Islamic ritual slaughter of animals.
“I can no longer accept that in order to please a god animals have their throats slit like in the Middle Ages without being stunned beforehand, when we have modern methods to prevent animals suffering,” the 76-year-old Bardot told AFP.
The Brigitte Bardot Foundation and six other rights groups are planning to put up more than 2,000 posters across France sporting a picture of a cow’s head and a text denouncing ritual slaughter.
France is home to Europe’s biggest Muslim minority, estimated at between five and six million, and to the continent’s biggest Jewish community, believed to number up to 700,000.
Amsterdam police chief Bernard Welten will not order his officers to arrest women wearing a burqa when the government introduces a ban, he told a tv show.
Police officers should always be sensible, Welten said. “I do not always consider myself an instrument of the government who should immediately do what I am told”, he is quoted as saying. It is “a very complicated dilemma”, he said, adding that the role of the police is to protect freedom, equality and justice.
Hero Brinkman, a former policeman and MP for the anti-Islam PVV told the Telegraaf Welten’s comments are unacceptable. The police should be subject to the government’s will, he said, “otherwise we live in a banana republic”.
Update: See “Coalition furious at police chief’s burqa comments”, Dutch News, 5 January 2011
LoonWatch has the details.
The right-wing site World Net Daily and conservative columnist Frank Gaffney came up with a new reason this week to hate the Conservative Political Action Conference, arguing that it has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood thanks to Grover Norquist, the Republican group Muslims For America, and Ex-Bush staffer Suhail Khan.
In an interview with TPM today, Khan described how “every few months there’s a different iteration of [Gaffney] and his cohorts’ wild accusations,” but it is simply untrue, and a part of Gaffney’s “temper tantrum” that he has been marginalized by the conservative movement.