US State Department report: Europe biased against Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The annual report of US State Department on human rights has warned of increasing concern that discrimination against Muslims was on the rise in Europe.

The human rights report for 2009 cited Switzerland’s ban on the construction of minarets on mosques enacted in November, as well as continued bans or restrictions on head scarves and burqa worn by Muslims in France, Germany and the Netherlands.

The report said: “Discrimination against Muslims in Europe has been an increasing concern.” Germany and the Netherlands have prohibitions against teachers wearing head scarves or burqa while on the job, and France bans the wearing of the religious garb in public, the report said.

The report particularly focused on problems in the Netherlands, where Muslims number about 850,000, saying that Muslims face societal resentment based on the belief that Islam is not compatible with Western values.

The report blamed right-wing politicians for playing a role in fuelling the resentment. It said: “Major incidents of violence against Muslims were rare, but minor incidents, including intimidation, brawls, vandalism, and graffiti with abusive language, were common.”

Al Jazeera, 11 March 2010

Book launch in Birmingham

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A new book with a radical approach to Christian engagement with Islam is being launched at the Queens Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education on Monday 15th March 2010 at 6pm.

A Heart Broken Open – Radical Faith in an Age of Fear is the moving and insightful reflection by an Christian Minister of his grassroots engagement with Islam through relationships built from inner-city parish ministry in Leeds to the streets of Karbala, Iraq at a time of rising Islamophobia and the ‘war on terror’.

Read more here.

Virginia Islamophobes call for boycott of imam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hundreds of people are urging legislators to boycott the House of Delegates’ floor session on Thursday, when a Falls Church imam whom they accuse of condoning violence and defending terrorism is set to deliver the opening prayer.

The imam, Johari Abdul-Malik, and many other leaders in the Muslim and interfaith communities say the accusations are false. “To try to cast me as someone who’s a terrorist and closed-minded – they picked the wrong guy,” he said.

Soon after Sept. 11, Abdul-Malik was featured in paid ads produced by a group of national Muslim organizations, which denounced terrorism and the attacks. He has condemned terrorism and Osama bin Laden on “The O’Reilly Factor” and other television programs.

Still, letters and calls have poured into legislative offices since Friday, when a handful of concerned delegates let community activists know that Abdul-Malik was coming to Richmond.

“He’s an apologist for people who commit criminal acts,” said James Lafferty, chairman of the Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force. The group, along with the Traditional Values Coalition and Act for America, will hold a rally outside the state Capitol on Thursday morning.

Washington Post, 11 March 2010

See also “Islam-Bashers Try to Block Muslim Prayer in Va. Legislature”, CAIR action alert, 11 March 2010

Update:  See “Demonstration against Islamic cleric draws few”, Richmond Times-Dispatch, 12 March 2010

Further update:  See also “And who said that Islamophobia isn’t real?”, The American Muslim,11 March 2010

Islam has failed Douglas Murray

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“It is grotesque to argue that Europe has failed its Muslims. It has been made repeatedly obvious that it is Islam that has failed Europe.”

Writing on his Telegraph blog, Douglas (“conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board“, “there’s a very rational fear in being scared of Islam today and wanting to act against it“) Murray provides an entirely objective assessment of his recent debate with Tariq Ramadan.

The BNP Nazi at the heart of the EDL

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Chris Renton at EDL protestThe man in this picture is Chris Renton. He was photographed on the racist English Defence League (EDL) march on parliament last Friday.

Renton is a well known member of the British National Party (BNP) – and he is also on the leadership team of the EDL. In fact, Renton was one of the group’s founders. He runs the EDL’s Facebook pages and set up the EDL website and forums.

The BNP and EDL deny any links with each other. But the fact that this BNP Nazi is central to the EDL proves otherwise.

In a radio interview in July 2009, then EDL spokesperson Paul Ray confirmed that Renton was a BNP activist. And Renton is not the only fascist central to the EDL. Davy Cooling, the administrator of the EDL’s Luton Facebook site, is also on the BNP membership list. Many other known BNP members were spotted on the EDL’s march in London.

This is more proof that the EDL is a dangerous organisation with fascism at its core.

Socialist Worker, 9 March 2010

Cf. Robert Spencer’s assurance that “the EDL is standing up for human rights, for the freedom of speech, for Western civilization, for Israel, and for the defense against the global jihad and the Islamization of Britain. There is no credible evidence that this group is racist or fascist in the slightest degree.”

Opposition grows to EDL’s anti-mosque rally in Dudley

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL slogans BirminghamResidents are being urged to stay away from Dudley town centre on Easter Sunday, as far right group the English Defence League is set to descend on the town.

The extremist party claims to be bringing around 3,000 supporters on April 4 to protest against the planned £18million mosque.

Council leader, Cllr Anne Millward, said she was angered that the EDL want to come to the “peaceful town”, as West Midlands Police confirm there will be a “robust police presence” on the day in case of trouble. She added: “They say they are coming to protest against the planned mosque, but we’ve had a mosque in Dudley for over 30 years. So what is the point of them coming? We don’t want them and for them to come on Easter Sunday, one of the most important days in the Christian calendar, I think is an absolute travesty. I just urge people to stay away.”

Cllr Millward has also condemned plans announced by anti-fascist group Unite Against Fascism (UAF) who have confirmed they will be holding a counter-demonstration on the day, with fears that thousands of outsiders could angrily clash in the town centre. Cllr Millward said: “The plans for the anti-fascist group to outnumber the EDL I think is highly irresponsible. This group just need to be completely ignored.”

But UAF officials said they are organising the “largest peace protest to counteract” the EDL, whose protest will just be “thuggery and hatred”. Martin Lynch, Black Country spokesman for Unite Against Fascism (UAF), said:

“We don’t think people who believe in racism and hatred should be allowed to come to Dudley town centre or anywhere else for that matter. At a recent demonstration in Stoke they ran amok smashing property and hurting people. There is no way this is a legitimate protest of any kind. It will just be thuggery and hatred. If this does go ahead we will seek to call the largest peace protest to counteract theirs.”

Meanwhile, Jim Warner, spokesman for Dudley’s Trade Union Council (TUC) said members had passed a resolution supporting UAF’s counterprotest. Mr Warner said: “We are calling on all our local union branches to encourage members to turn out with their union banners for a peaceful protest. We have also put together a unity statement which has been signed by all our trade union branches, community and faith groups supporting this decision and calling for the protest to be abandoned.”

Dudley News, 10 March 2010

Update:  See “English Defence League switch date for Dudley protest”, Birmingham Mail, 14 March 2010

Niqab-wearer blocked again from class

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Quebec government has intervened again in the case of a Muslim woman who refused to remove her niqab veil during a French-language class.

Last week, Naïma Atef Amed filed a complaint with the province’s human rights commission after she was kicked out of a government-funded language class for new immigrants at the CÉGEP de Saint-Laurent in Montreal. The school had demanded that Amed take off her niqab veil, which covers her head and face and leaves only her eyes exposed, for part of the class.

Premier Jean Charest defended the school’s decision, saying that people who expect to receive public services must show their face.

On Tuesday, the province’s Immigration Ministry said it was informed last week that Amed, who is of Egyptian origin, had enrolled in another French class at a different publicly funded centre in Montreal that permitted her to wear the niqab.

“As we did last time, we told her that we have pedagogical objectives to meet in our French immersion courses, that they have to be taken with her face exposed,” said Luc Fortin, a spokesman for the province’s Immigration Minister. “She refused to take off her niqab and she left the course.”

The government is not prepared to compromise, said Immigration Minister Yolande James Tuesday. “It is a question of common sense,” said James.

CBC News, 9 March 2010

Le Pen launches anti-Islam campaign poster

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nonalislamism

French far-right party the Front National (FN) has revealed its latest election poster – a map of France decked in Algerian national colours, covered with minarets and featuring a woman whose face is hidden behind a “niqab” face veil. “No to Islamism,” the poster screams in big black letters.

The image is central to the FN’s campaign in the PACA (Provence Alpes Cote d’Azur) region, where the party’s leader, octogenarian firebrand Jean-Marie Le Pen, heads the party list in forthcoming regional elections due to begin March 14. The posters, already widely diffused on the Internet, are due to be distributed across France.

French anti-racist group LICRA failed to get an injunction against the distribution of the posters at a Marseille Court on Monday on the technicality “that the group itself was not based in Marseille”.

French campaign group MRAP has started proceedings at a Nanterre court (Paris) to ban the posters. The court is due to make a ruling on Friday, two days before voting in the regional elections begin.

Another anti-racist group SOS Racisme has started criminal proceedings against Le Pen, who will have to attend the criminal court in Paris on May 6. The group said in a statement: “Under the pretext of denouncing religious extremism, Le Pen has clearly marked a wish to solicit fear and rejection of not only Muslims but also all people of Algerian origin living in France.”

At a FN campaign meeting last weekend attended by thousands of party supporters, many of whom were carrying the poster, Le Pen railed against what he perceives as the “Islamist presence in France” and said mosques were “growing like mushrooms” across the country.

Nonalislamism2

Siddique released after terror conviction quashed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A man branded a “wannabe suicide bomber” by prosecutors will not face a retrial on terrorism charges.

Mohammed Atif Siddique, 24, a student from Alva, Clackmannanshire, was found guilty under terrorism laws in 2007. But Appeal Court judges in Edinburgh said on 29 January he had suffered a “miscarriage of justice” on one of the charges and quashed the conviction.

The Crown Office has said it does not wish to seek a fresh prosecution. Siddique has now been released.

His family wept and hugged each other outside the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh, after Lord Osborne said judges would quash the main conviction.

In a statement read out by his solicitor Aamer Anwar on the court steps, Siddique said: “I have always maintained my innocence, but they took my liberty, destroyed my family’s reputation and labelled me a terrorist. But I never had any bombs or plans to hurt anyone. In court it was said I was a wannabe suicide bomber, but I have always said I was simply looking for answers on the internet.”

The shopkeeper’s son was jailed for eight years in October 2007 after a four-week trial in Glasgow. He was found guilty of two charges under the Terrorism Act 2000, one under the Terrorism Act 2006 and a breach of the peace.

The most serious charge related to the possession of articles that gave rise to “reasonable suspicion” they were connected to terrorism. His conviction on that allegation resulted in a six-year prison term.

But at his appeal hearing in January Lord Osborne criticised the way the trial judge explained the main Terrorist Act charge to the jury. The judge, sitting with Lords Reed and Clarke in Edinburgh, said the “material misdirection” amounted to “a miscarriage of justice”.

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