Thus Phyllis Chesler’s response to the news that Tariq Ramadan will be speaking at New York’s Cooper Union on 8 April, following the lifting of the ban on his entering the US. Chesler herself probably won’t be turning up:
“I do not know if I’ll have the stomach to attend. Ramadan is not my problem, I know him for the snake he is. Rather, it would be the sight of so many Americans who’ve glamorized him, who are fooled by him, who have come to worship Death at his feet.”
The UN Human Rights Council on Thursday passed a resolution condemning Islamophobic behaviour, including Switzerland’s minaret building ban, despite some states’ major reservations.
The resolution “strongly condemns… the ban on the construction of minarets of mosques and other recent discriminatory measures.” These measures “are manifestations of Islamophobia that stand in sharp contradiction to international human rights obligations concerning freedoms of religions,” said the resolution.
Such acts would “fuel discrimination, extremism and misperception leading to polarization and fragmentation with dangerous unintended and unforeseen consequences,” it said.
Some 20 countries voted in favour of the resolution entitled “combating defamation of religions”, 17 voted against and eight abstained.
The resolution also “expresses deep concern … that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.” It “regrets the laws or administrative measures specifically designed to control and monitor Muslim minorities, thereby stigmatising them and legitimising the discrimination they experience.”
Most Quebecers and Canadians agree that women wearing the niqab or burqa should not receive government services, hospital care or university instruction, a new Angus Reid poll shows.
Ninety-five per cent of Quebecers support a proposed provincial law barring the face veil from government offices, schools and other publicly funded institutions, says the poll, provided exclusively to The Gazette yesterday.
In the rest of Canada, three out of four people give the thumbs up to Bill 94, tabled Wednesday by the Charest government. The bill would require all public sector employees to have their faces uncovered, as well as any citizen using government services, for example, someone applying for a medicare card or paying her car registration.
Nationally, four out of five Canadians support the bill.
Mario Canseco, vice-president of public affairs for the pollster, said the survey shows an unusually high level of support for a government measure. “It’s very rare to get 80 per cent of Canadians to agree on something,” he said. “With numbers like this, there is not going to be much of a controversy over the legislation in Quebec or anywhere else in the country,” he added.
Montreal Gazette, 27 March 2010
See also “Tories, Liberals back Quebec’s veil ban”, Globe and Mail, 27 March 2010
A 19-year-old man has been jailed for 16 months after he was found guilty of racially aggravated assault during a protest in Bedfordshire. Kier McElroy hit an Asian man with a banner in a shop doorway in Chapel Street, Luton, on 24 May last year.
Jurors at Luton Crown Court found McElroy guilty of racially aggravated assault occasioning actual bodily harm on student Venkateswara Muppalla. He had earlier admitted assault occasioning actual bodily harm. However, he denied he was racist.
He also pleaded guilty to a second charge of affray, which resulted from his actions that day when he said he was drunk.
The assaulted Asian man was cornered by a group of people marching in protest over an earlier demonstration by a group of Muslims at a parade by the Royal Anglian Regiment in Luton.
The protest was organised by United People of Luton, the direct precursor of the English Defence League. Although the supposed subject of the demonstration was Muslim extremism, this didn’t prevent McElroy from randomly targeting a Hindu.
This Saturday, politicians representing right-wing conservative parties from across Europe will descend on the Horst Palace to discuss the dangers of Islam. Delegates from the Belgian nationalists Vlaams Belang will be there as will politicians from Geert Wilders’s Dutch Party for Freedom and the Front National of Jean-Marie Le Pen. Others from Sweden, Austria and Eastern Europe are also on the invite list.
The hosts are a relatively new group of German right-wing conservatives called Pro-NRW (an abbreviation of the German state North Rhine-Westphalia) and the goal of the conference is clear: to follow in Switzerland’s footsteps and ban minarets across Europe. And they want to use a provision of the European Union’s new Lisbon Treaty to do it.
“I don’t think that minarets are part of our heritage,” conference attendee Filip Dewinter, floor leader for Vlaams Belang in the Flemish parliament, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “They are symbols of radical Islam. The question is whether Islam is a religion like Protestantism and Catholicism and for me it is not. It is a political system, it is a way of life and it is one that is not compatible with ours.”
Pro-NRW and the other right-wing parties were galvanized when Swiss voters last November passed a ban on the construction of new minarets in the country. Since then, the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which launched the referendum, have become the darlings of the European right. Indeed, the SVP has loaned their controversial campaign poster, which depicts missile-like minarets jutting out of a Swiss flag behind an ominous, niqab-wearing Muslim woman, to Pro-NRW for its campaign in Germany. And anti-minaret movements on the Swiss model have sprung up around Europe.
Dewinter has recently taken a closer look at whether a provision in the new Lisbon Treaty allowing for citizens’ initiatives could be used to push through a Europe-wide ban on the construction of minarets. On Saturday, delegates at the Anti-Minaret Conference will discuss whether to begin collecting the 1 million signatures such a path would require.
Dozens of people rallied on Saturday in Warsaw to protest plans by the country’s Muslim community to build a second mosque in the city.
Poland’s Muslim population, though growing, is still tiny and such protests are unusual. The event offered evidence that anxieties gripping the rest of Europe are now also taking root in this former communist country, as well.
The emotional rally drew a small group of counter-protesters. Police formed a barrier between the two sides, which had gathered at the mosque’s construction site in an outlying Warsaw neighbourhood.
French Muslims face considerable discrimination based purely on their religion instead of their country of origin, according to a study released Thursday by French and American researchers.
The study, “Are French Muslims Discriminated Against in Their Own Country?” found that Muslims sending out resumes in hopes of a job interview had 2.5 times less chance than Christians of a positive response to their applications. It also showed that monthly salaries of Muslims was on average €400 less than Christians.
“The discrimination Muslim candidates endure in the French labor market therefore seems to have concrete repercussions on their standard of living,” the study says.
See also New York Times, 26 March 2010
Download the report here.
A Conservative government would cut ties with the leading representative of the Muslim Council of Britain. David Cameron said that his party “won’t do formal things” with the Muslim Council of Britain unless the organisation distanced itself from Daud Abdullah, its deputy secretary-general.
The Labour Government cut ties with the council in March last year after Mr Abdullah signed the Istanbul Declaration in “solidarity” with the Palestinians after the Israeli bombing of Gaza. Relations were however restored in January this year.
In an interview with Ahmed Versi, editor of Muslim News, Mr Cameron said: “We should have a very positive relationship with the Muslim community and representatives of the Muslim community. There are other representative bodies. We would be fully engaged with them.”
Update: See also ENGAGE, 26 March 2010
NASHVILLE — One of three people who pleaded guilty to the firebombing of a Columbia mosque in 2008 was sentenced to just more than 15 years in prison.
Eric Ian Baker, 34, pleaded guilty in September to charges of destruction of religious property and using a fire to commit a felony.
According to a federal indictment and testimony, Baker tagged the Islamic Center of Columbia with swastikas and the words “White Power” while co-defendants Jonathan Stone, 20, and Michael Golden, 24, torched it with Molotov cocktails. Baker then helped spread the fire and stole a stereo system.
In federal court in Nashville on Thursday, Baker’s attorney Ray McGowan argued unsuccessfully that his client had been unfairly characterized as the leader of a loosely organized white supremacist group and an organizer of the firebombing scheme.
Co-defendant Stone testified at the hearing that Baker had given him a swastika tattoo on his chest. He also said that after they were in jail Baker instructed him to write in a letter to Stone’s brother that the brother should “recruit new members so that when we get out we will have an army.”
Judge Robert Echols gave Baker a shorter sentence than the one recommended by guidelines. He offered several reasons for this, including the fact that Baker had avoided any serious trouble with the law for the 10 years before the mosque burning.
Daoud Abudiab, president of the Islamic Center of Columbia, said he would have expected a longer sentence, given that Baker was thought to be the group’s leader.
Stone and Golden both pleaded guilty to the same charges as Baker. Golden was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Stone has not yet been sentenced.
Britain’s leading Islamic TV channel has regularly broadcast demeaning material about women and promoted extremist groups, it was alleged yesterday.
Programmes on the Islam Channel have told women they should not refuse to have sex with their husbands or leave home without their permission, an inquiry by the Islamic think-tank the Quilliam Foundation found. Women who wear perfume in public have been labelled prostitutes.
The channel has regularly acted as a propaganda platform for Hizb ut-Tahrir, the fundamentalist organisation that Tony Blair wanted to ban after the 2005 London bombings. It has also promoted hate preachers, a report said.
And, the inquiry by the Islamic think tank the Quilliam Foundation found, its broadcasts are also trying to sow hatred between different Muslim groups by promoting a single strand of hardline theology.