See “Caroline Spelman: wearing burka can be ’empowering'” in the Daily Telegraph, “Burkas empower women: Top Tory woman insists freedom to wear Muslim veil is a right” in the Daily Mail and “Uproar after minister says: Let women wear a burkha if they want”, in the Daily Express.
Dudley: police continue to disperse EDL members
Police are still trying to disperse pocket groups of EDL members who are still in the town centre following today’s protests.
Trouble again flared following a seemingly calm protest of around 500 gathered English Defence League protesters, who converged on Stafford Street. At around 3.30pm, as the protest finished, some members flooded out of the car park and began a further stand off with police, as they began loading on to their coaches.
Despite EDL leaders promising today’s protest would be peaceful, a group of around a couple of hundred supporters tried to get down The Inhedge, as they tried to make their way into the town centre and the Unite Against Fascism counter protest.
Hollobone says he will ban veil-wearing constituents from surgeries
A Conservative MP says he will refuse to hold meetings with Muslim women wearing full Islamic dress at his constituency surgery unless they lift their face veil. Last night Muslim groups condemned Philip Hollobone and accused him of failing in his duty as an MP.
In an interview with The Independent, the Kettering MP said: “I would ask her to remove her veil. If she said: ‘No’, I would take the view that she could see my face, I could not see hers, I am not able to satisfy myself she is who she says she is. I would invite her to communicate with me in a different way, probably in the form of a letter.”
Mayor Bloomberg continues to defend ‘Ground Zero mosque’ plan
There’s no doubt that the site of a planned Islamic community center and prayer space is close to the World Trade Center site, as it is two short blocks from the site of the terror attacks. While some see the proximity as offensive, others like Mayor Michael Bloomberg see it as a virtue, symbolic of America’s commitment to religious freedom.
“I happen to think this is a very appropriate place for somebody who wants to build a mosque, because it tells the world that America, and New York City, which is what I’m responsible for, really believes in what we preach,” said Bloomberg on Friday.
The mayor’s comments were perhaps his most forceful on the controversy, which in this election year has quickly become a political football.
Opinions seem to split along political party lines. Republican candidate for governor Rick Lazio and Republican Congressman Peter King have demanded an investigation into the project’s funding, while Democrats like Andrew Cuomo have been supportive of the project.
Bloomberg, a political independent, brought up the topic unsolicited at a forum with Dartmouth College students.
During his weekly radio show, the mayor also sparred with a caller who asked, “How do you consider it un-American to question the appropriateness of a mosque at Ground Zero?” The mayor responded, “I don’t think it’s un-American. I just don’t think that the government should keep some people from praying the way they want to and let others pray.”
French police probe mosque vandalism
Police have opened an investigation after vandals scrawled swastikas and xenophobic slogans on the construction site of a mosque in north-western France, prosecutors said Thursday.
Inscriptions reading “Islam get out of Europe”, “No to Islam and to burkas”, along with swastikas, were discovered on Wednesday in Herouville-Saint-Clair, a suburb of the city of Caen in Normandy.
The incident came a day after French lawmakers passed on first reading a bill banning women from wearing the full-face Islamic vail in public.
67 per cent support veil ban in UK
Two thirds of British people would support a ban on Muslim women wearing face-covering veils in public similar to the one approved by French lawmakers this week, a poll found Friday
An online survey of 2,205 adults for Five News television found 67 percent of respondents agreed that the burkha – the full-face veil – should be banned. That figure rose to 80 percent among people aged over 55.
The YouGov poll was carried out between Wednesday and Friday, after France’s lower house of parliament voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to ban full Islamic veils in public spaces.
A Harris poll for the Financial Times in March revealed Britons were among the most tolerant in Europe towards the Islamic veil, with just 57 percent backing a ban, compared to 70 percent in France and 65 percent in Spain.
West Midlands community centre gutted in arson attack
A former community centre in Oldbury faces demolition after being gutted in an arson attack.
Up to 40 firefighters battled the blaze at Langley Hall in Vicarage Street last night, which was set to be taken over by the Langley Islamic Culture Centre. Crews battled flames from 1.30am to 6.30am, but the building was destroyed in the attack. Bosses at Sandwell Council say it is now likely to be demolished.
Racism veiled as liberation
Whose “way of life” is France’s lower house protecting? Not the women who wear niqabs.
Madeleine Bunting argues against the French veil ban.
See also Mehdi Hasan at the New Statesman.
More raving from McKinstry on the ‘the creeping Islamification of our society’
On the one hand, our civic leaders constantly trumpet their absolute commitment to the goals of equality and tolerance, especially for previously disadvantaged groups like women and gays.
On the other hand, they become utterly supine in the face of a hardline Muslim ideology that promotes bigotry, segregation and misogyny. The disastrous consequences of such institutionalised cowardice can be seen all around us. As the creeping Islamification of our society accelerates, our national identity is disappearing. Honour killings, and forced marriages, which would have been unthinkable 30 years ago, have now become features of modern Britain….
There is no more powerful symbol of the warped, contradictory values of our times than the rise of the burkha…. The burkha is rightly synonymous with medieval barbarity and theocratic totalitarianism. The urge to cover up women is the same impulse that stones them to death for adultery….
“In Europe … there is increasing pressure to outlaw this wretched instrument of subjugation. Belgium has already banned the burkha in public places, while Spain and the Netherlands are considering doing so. And this week the French Assembly in Paris voted overwhelming for a ban on wearing the full-face veil in public. Even the French Communists, normally in the vanguard of anti-western political correctness, supported the move.
Yet the political establishment here in Britain shares none of this indignation, despite all opinion polls showing that the vast majority of the public are in favour of such a ban. Like capital punishment or a freeze on immigration, this is not even seen as a polite subject for debate amongst the metropolitan elite.
There is no chance of any of the major parties taking up the cause. Just one backbench MP, the admirable Tory Philip Hollobone, has proposed legislation to outlaw the full veil but, without any real support in Parliament, his effort is doomed. That shows how deeply our politicians are in thrall to militant Islam.
Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express, 15 July 2010
Jerusalem Post interviews sinister right-wing bigot
Today’s Jerusalem Post carries a long, rambling interview with Douglas Murray of the Centre for Social Cohesion.
Among the aperçus Murray offers is the bizarre claim that multiculturalism led the British police to refuse to investigate murders if they were classed as honour killings (“This is a community matter, they’d say”), the assertion that “you are more likely to become a major terrorist if you’ve gone to university” (as demonstrated by the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who got “in touch with the top jihadis via his Islamic studies society”), and the revelation that Inayat Bunglawala, of all people, is a “very unpleasant sinister figure”!
Whereas there is of course nothing unpleasant or sinister about a right-wing bigot like Murray, who holds that “there’s a very rational fear in being scared of Islam today and wanting to act against it” and who advocates that “conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board“.