Minister accuses Muslims of hostility towards Germans (so Muslims aren’t Germans?)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

German Family Minister Kristina Schroeder on Tuesday criticized Muslim youths for displaying hostility towards Germans.

“Such abuse is unfortunately commonplace amongst youths in certain areas – in the school yard, but also in the underground,” Schroeder told daily tabloid Bild. “We are dealing with fundamentally hostile attitudes towards other groups – particularly against Germans and Christians,” the minister continued, adding, “We need to act as decisively against this as against xenophobia.”

Her comments come amid a fierce debate currently taking place in Germany about the integration of the country’s 4 million Muslims, the majority of whom are of Turkish origin.

DPA, 2 November 2010

Wilders’ party warns of Islamic ‘right to lie’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Party for Freedom (PVV) has added a new word to Dutch vocabulary: takiyya. It says it is an Islamic rule that allows Muslims to lie to non-Muslims.

In his recently-published book, PVV MP Martin Bosma describes takiyya as “lying to strengthen Islam.” It amounts to Muslims being able to present themselves as liberal and modern, while secretly working on the introduction of the Sharia.

In a debate last week, GroenLinks leader Femke Halsema accused PVV leader Geert Wilders of making all Muslims suspect with the reference to takiyya. Wilders advised her to seek information from Islam experts.

If Halsema were to go to Maurits Berger for advice, she would not be convinced of Wilders’ views. The professor of Islam in the present-day West reacted angrily to the PVV message in De Volkskrant newspaper yesterday.

“How dare Wilders throw around Islamic terms about which he does not have a clue? Takiyya is a concept from the Middle Ages. It infuriates me that such a dogma from the past should be stuck onto the Muslims of today. It is as if you claimed that Christians think women who stay afloat are witches.”

“Only among extreme groups does this secrecy still do the rounds,” according to Berger. He considers it a “complete scandal” that Wilders and Bosma have introduced it. “This is manifest incitement to hatred.”

NIS News, 2 November 2010

Bill Maher stands by anti-Muslim remarks

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bill Maher showed up on CNN to talk about comments he made on Real Time regarding the “alarming” number of “baby Mohammeds” in England. Maher told Wolf Blitzer that he felt no need to “apologize for being a proud Westerner”, or for being worried that “Muslim people in these [Western] societies are having babies” at a faster clip than non-Muslims.

He clarified: “And when I say Westerner, I mean someone who believes in the values that Western people believe in that a lot of the Muslim world does not. Like separation of church and state. Like equality of the sexes. Like respect for minorities, free elections, free speech, freedom to gather. These things are not just different from cultures that don’t have them…. It’s better…. I would like to keep those values here.”

Mediaite, 1 November 2010

See also “Bill Maher’s anti-Muslim fixation”, TPM, 1 November 2010

At last, a party for Germany that ‘stands up against Islamization’ – Daniel Pipes is thrilled

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ren Stadtkewitz FreiheitDaniel Pipes files an enthusiastic report from the founding conference of René Stadtkewitz’s right-wing Freedom Party:

“The new party, whose slogan is ‘The party for more freedom and democracy’, speaks candidly about Islam, Islamism, Islamic law, and Islamization. Starting with the insight that ‘Islam is not just a religion but also a political ideology with its own legal system’, the party calls for scrutiny of imams, mosques, and Islamic schools and for a review of Islamic organizations to ensure their compliance with German laws, and condemns efforts to build a parallel legal structure based on sharia. Its analysis forcefully concludes: ‘We oppose with all our force the Islamization of our country’.”

Better still, from Pipes’ standpoint, “Freiheit robustly supports Israel, calling it ‘the only democratic state in the Middle East. It therefore is the outpost of the Western world in the Arab theater’.”

Pipes notes: “Germany is conspicuously behind most European countries with large Muslim populations in not having spawned a party that stands up against Islamization. That’s not for lack of trying; previous attempts petered out. Late 2010 might be an auspicious moment to launch such a party, given the massive controversy in Germany over the Thilo Sarrazin book ruing the immigration of Muslims, followed by Chancellor Angela Merkel announcing that multiculturalism has ‘utterly failed’. A change in mood appears underway.”

Still, with only “50-plus attendees” at it’s inaugural meeting, the Freedom Party has some way to go yet.

National Review Online, 2 November 2010

Preston: police say EDL is a peaceful non-racist organisation and UAF is the cause of violence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL in Bradford

A meeting with Preston councillors last week shows the extraordinary measures that police are prepared to use to block protests against the racist English Defence League (EDL). Preston independent socialist councillor Michael Lavalette told Socialist Worker about a police briefing of Preston council. The police asked to meet councillors about an EDL march planned for Saturday 27 November.

“I was shocked at what they came out with in that meeting,” Michael said. “They said that the EDL’s website states that it is a non-racist, peaceful organisation and that they would have to take that at face value. They said that the EDL has a right to protest and the police have to stay neutral. But then they launched a disgraceful attack against Unite Against Fascism (UAF).

“They told us that it is counter protests organised by UAF that cause trouble. They said that UAF is a front for the extremist Socialist Workers Party. The tenor was clear – UAF is as much of a problem, if not more so, than the EDL. I was furious and pointed out that UAF includes several national trade unions, MPs and labour movement activists.”

In the meeting with the police Michael said most EDL protests end in violence. “I pointed out that every protest has involved attacks on the police. In Stoke they ran riot and attacked cars and shops. I think the police wanted to use the meeting with councillors to clamp down on any counter protest and to abuse UAF.

“The EDL is being allowed to assemble outside the main church on the high street which is a five minute walk from Preston’s main mosque. If EDL supporters are allowed to march the 300 metres through the town to the Flag Market, they will be within minutes of Preston’s Asian community.”

Socialist Worker, 2 November 2010

US clinic denies Muslim doctor right to wear hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hena ZakiA medical clinic in Dallas, Texas has sparked controversy after saying a Muslim doctor applying for a job cannot wear her headscarf if hired.

Dr. Hena Zaki of Plano, Texas said Friday that she was shocked to find a no-hat policy at the CareNow clinic extended to her hijab. “He interrupted the interview and said he didn’t want me ‘to take this the wrong way,'” Zaki said. “Like an FYI.”

The 29-year-old doctor has called for an apology and a change in CareNow’s policy.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has criticized the no-hijab policy, calling it “a blatant violation” of federal law. “It’s obvious it’s a blatant violation,” said the council’s civil rights manager, Khadija Athman. “It’s a very straightforward case of religious accommodation. I cannot see any undue hardship on the part of the employer to accommodate to wear a head scarf.”

CareNow Chairman Tim Miller, however, has refused to apologize, saying in a statement that there is nothing wrong with the policy, which, according to him, “does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religion, or national origin”.

PressTV, 1 November 2009

See also CAIR press release, 30 October 2009

Update:  See “Texas clinic: Headscarf ban was misunderstanding”,Associated Press, 3 November 2009

CSU conference calls for ‘sanctions’ against migrants who oppose integration

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Horst SeehoferThe Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) voted to take a tough stance against immigrants who fail to integrate into German society at a party conference in Munich on Saturday.

Included in a new seven-point plan were proposals for “unspecified sanctions for parents who hinder their children from integrating into the German way of life or who themselves decline to integrate by learning German”.

The plan, which stipulates that permanent residents must accept a “leading” role for German culture in society, was approved unanimously.

Speaking at the conference, party leader Horst Seehofer denied claims that he was pandering to the extreme right following controversy over his call for an end to immigration from alien cultures – in particular from Islamic countries.

“If what I say is radically right wing, then two-thirds of the population is radically right wing,” Seehofer said. “We should not be timid about saying that we stand for German culture taking a leading role.”

German values were “based on Christianity and rooted in Judaism,” Seehofer added. “They are not informed by Islam and that must remain the case.”

Deutsche Welle, 31 October 2010

See also “Sarrazin wants ‘terms’ for migrants to live in Germany”, Hürriyet Daily News, 1 November 2010

German far right emerges from shadows as anti-Muslim campaign gathers force

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pro KolnIn today’s Observer Kate Connolly reports on prospects for the far right in Germany following the merger between Austria’s FPÖ and the anti-mosque campaign turned political party Pro Cologne.

She points out that it is the anti-Muslim mood whipped up by more mainstream political figures that provides the conditions for Pro Cologne to win support, and quotes Alexander Häusler of Düsseldorf’s University of Applied Sciences as saying:

“The anti-immigration utterings of Sarrazin, backed up by the comments by Merkel and Seehofer, are like a gift to the far right. They have had a door opened to them that has previously been closed, because it is now socially acceptable to say things that before nobody dared to voice.”

Neville-Jones repeats attack on multiculturalism, says Livingstone used it to ‘buy votes’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BigPeace.com, the website run by prominent Tea Party supporter Andrew Breitbart, carries an approving report of a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington by the Con-Dem coalition’s minister for security, Pauline Neville-Jones. It quotes her as saying:

“Multiculturalism in its original form meant you were entitled to dignity, to fair treatment and equality, irrespective of your origin. It turned into, well, because you’re Sikh we’ll give you some money so you can be a bit more Sikh; you’re Muslim so we’ll give you a bit more money so you can be a bit more Muslim – more mosques, more this, more that.”

Multiculturalism was “a mistaken policy, and what it’s done on the whole is to entrench difference and compound it”, Neville-Jones stated, adding that “the then mayor of London was an exemplar of this, Livingstone would buy votes that way. Not literally, but certainly to curry favour”.

For an earlier attack on multiculturalism by Neville-Jones see here.