Sheila Musaji counters the “blizzard of bigotry that paints all Muslims and the entire religion of Islam as being evil” with which the Islamophobic right has responded to the so-called “Ground Zero mosque’.
Quebec: Hérouxville ‘secularist’ supports ban on veil, denounces multiculturalism, calls for end to immigration
The small-town radical secularist who helped touch off the furor three years ago over reasonable accommodation of minorities cast his own unique spotlight yesterday on the province’s proposed limitations on wearing face veils.
André Drouin dubbed Canada’s multiculturalism policy “idiocy” and called for a moratorium on immigration. He also cast doubt on the separation of church and state, noting the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms starts off affirming the “supremacy of God.”
Drouin made his comments on the last scheduled day of the National Assembly’s public hearings on Bill 94, which sets out guidelines for accommodating religious differences in Quebec’s public sector.
Among its provisions, Bill 94 would require people seeking government services to uncover their faces, including Muslim women who wear veils or burqas.
After only three days of testimony representing a handful of more than 60 briefs received on the topic, the Liberal government has suspended the public debate until a date to be determined in August.
While other witnesses this week objected to the proposed law, claiming Muslim women are being singled out, Drouin said no religion offers women equality. He said he supports the Parti Québécois’s proposal for a charter of secularism to end favourable treatment for religions and banning the display of religious symbols.
Drouin is author of the controversial Hérouxville “life code”, which warned prospective immigrants to his village of 1,338 in Quebec’s heartland that they were not allowed to burn or stone women.
Clapham Common is a ‘Muslim ghetto’ claims US TV presenter
This exchange between right-wing US TV presenter Bill O’Reilly and political commentator Imogen Lloyd Webber would be funny if it weren’t for the fact that a lot of US citizens get their information from Fox News.
Lloyd Webber attacks the proposed French ban on the veil as “a massive mistake”, “an infringement of women’s rights”, “completely counterproductive” and “an act of discrimination” – which is not at all to O’Reilly’s taste. He counters that the French “are really worried about these Muslim ghettos”, which he associates with riots and suicide bombing.
O’ Reilly insists: “The same thing’s going on in London. You have neighbourhoods in London, they’re totally Muslim, they speak Arabic. You walk in those neighbourhoods, you’re not in England – you’re not there, you’re in Kuwait.”
“I can’t actually think of one in London”, Lloyd Webber replies. “Clapham Common”, suggests O’Reilly, bizarrely. Lloyd Webber responds that “Clapham Common is full of posh people with push-chairs”!
Portraying Muslims as sub-human is not ‘free speech’
The depiction of Prophet Muhammad as a dog by a Swedish cartoonist has sparked off controversies and renewed debates on the limits to free speech. The incident at Uppsala University when Muslim protesters physically attacked Lars Vilks while giving a lecture on the limits of free speech is presented in the media as yet another instance of Muslim intolerance and violence. But let us first examine the subtext of the message that Vilks is trying to convey….
Muslims, in Vilks’s view, as represented by their prophet, are sub-human creatures to be looked down upon. They are perhaps the worst vermin that “nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth”, to use Swift’s phrase in a different context. In this respect, Vilks’s message seems fairly similar to that conveyed by the short “documentary” film Fitna produced by the Dutch politician Geert Wilders….
But does Vilks realise the impact of this kind of representation on the lives of ordinary European Muslims going peacefully about their business? Does he realise that the image he has created feeds into the racial profiling and stereotyping targeting the Muslim population in Europe in particular? …
Vilks has succeeded in gaining his moment in the spotlight. But the legacy of his action will be the perpetuation of a cycle of hatred and suspicion.
Amira Nowaira at Comment is Free, 21 May 2010
The veil is a ‘war against women’ and Australia should ban it too
It would seem there are some things in Australia we are not allowed to discuss. A ban on the burqa is clearly one of them. But the time has come to get over our fears and cultural fragilities – and grow up. The call to ban the burqa is receiving serious consideration in European parliaments. And it should here, too.
Belgian legislators voted last month to outlaw the burqa in public places. On Wednesday, a bipartisan resolution passed by the French parliament deploring the burqa – on the grounds of “dignity” and “equality of men and women” – was presented to the French cabinet, and a ban is expected later this year. Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Canada are also grappling with the issue.
But in Australia, in a sign of cultural timidity and intellectual weakness, we seem intent on shunning any meaningful debate about the burqa and its place in a liberal democracy.
Virginia Haussegger in The Age, 21 May 2010
Haussegger quotes Malalai Joya in support of her argument, omitting to inform her readers that the Afghan politician has condemned proposals to ban the veil, on the grounds that it is “against the very basic element of democracy to restrict a human being from wearing the clothes of his/her choice”.
See also “Nile vows to continue fight against the burqa “, Sydney Morning Herald, 21 May 2010
New York politicians rally in support of ‘Ground Zero mosque’
New York politicians gathered Thursday afternoon to denounce Tea Party leader Mark Williams and support a mosque and community center planned near ground zero. The politicians were responding to Williams’ blog rant against the mosque Wednesday, in which he said Muslims worshipped a “monkey god.”
“His spewing of racial hatred reminds me … of Adolph Hitler,” Borough President Scott Stringer said at Thursday’s press conference. “We reject him. We reject his bigotry.”
Stringer and other politicians stood together outside the former Burlington Coat Factory building on Park Place, where the Cordoba Initiative hopes to build a $100 million, 13-story community center with Islamic, interfaith and secular programming, similar to the 92nd Street Y.
While the Cordoba House’s location just two blocks north of the World Trade Center has sparked protests from some 9/11 family members and many others, the local politicians said Thursday that the location was fitting. “This is precisely where this kind of center for peace and place of worship should rise up,” City Comptroller John Liusaid.
In addition to Liu and Stringer, State Sen. Daniel Squadron, City Councilwoman Margaret Chin and Councilman Robert Jackson, the Council’s sole Muslim, all spoke in favor of the plans.
Update: See also “Mosque hysteria: All houses of worship are welcome everywhere in New York”, New York Daily News, 21 May 2010
NSW Parliament rejects veil ban bill
The Reverend Fred Nile today tried to introduce a bill to the NSW Parliament calling for a ban on the burqa, a head and body veil worn by some Muslim women. But his motion to have a private member’s bill read and debated failed by three votes to 29 – only he and two Shooters’ Party members voted for it.
The Christian Democrats MP wanted NSW to follow a growing list of European countries that have moved to ban women from wearing the full head and body covering in public.
Mr Nile’s Full-face Coverings Prohibition Bill was modelled on legislation recently passed by the Belgium Parliament. He says concealment of a person’s face – male or female – for any purpose, including terrorism, anarchism or discrimination against women, should be banned.
“We must do all we can to protect women, especially Muslim women, from discrimination and oppression so they live an open lifestyle,” Mr Nile said. “The wearing of the burqa is a form of oppression which has no place in the 21st century.” It also presented a security risk, he said, citing terrorists in the Middle East and Russia who had launched attacks while concealing their identity or weapons under a burqa.
Mr Nile introduced a similar bill in 2006 and 2002, prompting widespread condemnation.
Sydney Morning Herald, 20 May 2010
Catch the video of Reza Aslan commenting on the French plan to ban the veil.
See also “Burqa debate stopped in NSW upper house”, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 May 2010
‘A mosque at Ground Zero? A sick joke’
Thus Douglas Murray’s take on the proposal to build a new mosque and community centre in New York, not far from the site of the former World Trade Center.
Meanwhile, over in the USA, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer have written a piece entitled “The 9/11 mosque’s peace charade“. They dismiss the anti-extremist credentials of the Cordoba Initiative and the American Society for Muslim Advancement, the organisations proposing to build the mosque:
“How will a mosque, the place where jihadis go for spiritual sustenance, at Ground Zero help stop jihad terrorism? … Whom does a mosque at 9/11 really honor: the Americans who lost their lives, or the jihadis who murdered them?”
Geller and Spencer are organising a protest rally on 6 June through their organisation Stop Islamization of America.
And one Mark Williams, a leading figure in the Tea Party movement, has written on his blog:
“The animals of allah for whom any day is a great day for a massacre are drooling over the positive response that they are getting from New York City officials over a proposal to build a 13 story monument to the 9/11 Muslims who hijacked those 4 airliners. The monument would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists’ monkey-god and a ‘cultural center’ to propagandize for the extermination of all things not approved by their cult.”
CAIR: A Muslim response to ‘Draw Muhammad Day’
CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad assesses the “Draw Muhammad Day” provocation.
CAIR press release, 19 May 2010
See also Ahmed Rehab, “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day is not about rights. It’s about what’s right“.
New York mosque plan stirs up 9/11 memories
BBC News presents a balanced and informed view of the ‘Ground Zero mosque’ controversy.