Muslims don’t actually want to live in ghettos, shock survey finds

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims in EuropeMost of Europe’s Muslims want to live in mixed communities, not segregated neighbourhoods, a new report says.

The work by the Open Society Institute (OSI), an independent think-tank, looked at the social integration of Muslims in 11 West European cities. It calls for improved efforts to tackle discrimination.

Europe’s Muslim population is expected to double by 2025 and could reach 40 million. But data on them is very limited, OSI says.

The report says religious discrimination remains a critical barrier to their participation in European society, and the situation has worsened in recent years. The OSI says its aim is to promote tolerance and fairness.

Nazia Hussein, who supervised the work, says many Muslims are still seen as outsiders.

“The majority of Muslims that we’ve spoken to across 11 cities feel very strongly attached to their neighbourhood and city, they feel quite strongly attached to their country,” she told the BBC. “But at the same time they don’t believe that their fellow countrymen or the wider society sees them as either German or French or English.”

The report offers a series of snapshots from: the Netherlands (Amsterdam and Rotterdam), Belgium (Antwerp), Germany (Berlin and Hamburg), Denmark (Copenhagen), the UK (Leicester and London), France (Marseille and Paris) and Sweden (Stockholm).

BBC News, 15 December 2009

French debate on national identity turns into culture war

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Comments by a French junior minister about young Muslims in France have provoked a firestorm of criticism and put the spotlight on a controversial debate on national identity that threatens to spin out of control.

In one of the many local debates scheduled to be held as part of the nationwide discussion on what it means to be French, the junior minister for families, Nadine Morano, suggested Tuesday to a young Muslim that he should change his behaviour. “What I want of a young Muslim is that he loves France when he lives here, finds work and does not speak in slang. And that he doesn’t wear his cap back to front.”

“This brings back the ethnic vision of the nation, the one that took place at (the pro-Nazi puppet government of) Vichy,” opposition Socialist law-maker Arnaud Montebourg said. The president of the NGO Movement Against Racism (MRAP), Mouloud Aounit, told the online edition of the daily 20 Minutes that Morano’s words “are especially dangerous and extremely violent … I think today there is a terrible increase in Islamophobic statements.”

Criticism also came from conservatives who are growing increasingly afraid that the debate on national identity is turning into a clash of cultures between mainstream France and the large French Muslim community, which numbers about 5 million.

Monsters and Critics, 16 December 2009

See also Nabila Ramdani’s post at Comment is Free, 16 December 2009

France to ban full face veil, says ruling party chief

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jean-Francois CopeFrench President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party, the UMP, says it will push for a law banning the full-face Islamic veil, according to its parliamentary leader Jean-François Copé.

“The issue is not how many women wear the burqa,” Copé wrote in an article in the right-wing newspaper Le Figaro. “There are principles at stake: extremists are putting the republic to the test by promoting a practice that they know is contrary to the basic principles of our country.”

RFI, 16 December 2009

Southern California mosque vandalised

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rahmat P. Phyakul, board chairman and one of the founders of Al-Fatiha Masjid, reported to CAIR-LA that vandals shattered windows and glass doors of the mosque’s office and prayer hall on Monday, December 7. A plaque with Quranic verses was tossed on the floor, the sound system was destroyed and donation boxes were broken into.

The mosque has suffered prior incidents of vandalism. In the past, a passerby shouted anti-Muslim slurs at worshipers. The slurs reportedly included: “You, terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, F… your God, F…. you Allah.” Prayer rugs in the mosque were also covered with urine.

“We urge law enforcement authorities to utilize all their resources to immediately and fully investigate the vandalism at Masjid Al-Fatiha as a possible hate crime, especially because of the nature of the vandalism,” said Affad Shaikh, civil rights manager for CAIR-LA.

Phyakul added: “For those who have committed hate crimes against people of any faith, especially Muslims, they should know that they cannot silence us, shut us down or cause us to go away. This is our country, and we are here to stay and we are willing to stand for the truth and peace under any circumstances.”

CAIR press release, 13 December 2009

Express promotes campaign against Brick Lane minaret

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Brick Lane MosqueA decision to build a huge rocket-shaped minaret and two giant arches in the style of Muslim headscarves on one of Britain’s most historic streets is sparking outrage and risks escalating racial tension, according to community leaders.

Council chiefs in the east London borough of Tower Hamlets are using millions of pounds of public money to push through the bizarre scheme in Brick Lane, a symbolic melting pot of immigrant communities for more than 400 years.

The odd looking minaret has just been put up outside London’s most famous mosque, a building whose appearance until now has remained unchanged during previous spells as a Huguenot church, a Methodist chapel and as a Jewish synagogue. The structure will be joined soon at either end of the street by two arches that have been designed to look like Muslim hijabs.

Some consider it “cool”, while others have likened to a tower of washing machine drums. However, it is the symbolism of the minaret and the arches that has upset others. They believe it is disrespectful to Brick Lane’s history, with Clive Bettington, who runs the Jewish East End Celebration Society, going further.

“It shows absolute contempt for other religions,” he said. “People who come on my tours to respect what used to be a synagogue will be outraged. The arches are clearly meant to be Muslim in character and we are now objecting in the strongest possible terms.”

Sunday Express, 13 December 2009

Britain is ‘more sympathetic towards Islam than other European countries’ (no thanks to the Daily Mail)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

More than a million Muslims have migrated to Britain because it is more sympathetic towards Islam than other European countries, a study has found. There are now some 1.1million Muslim immigrants in the UK, according to the report by IPPR, the Blairite think tank. It means around 46 per cent of Britain’s 2.4million-strong Muslim population were not born in this country.

The IPPR report found that over the past decade, there has been an increase of 275,000 in the number of British residents born in Pakistan or Bangladesh – twice the population of Oxford. The number of Somali-born residents has also shot up, from fewer than 40,000 in 1999 to 106,700 this year.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: “The rapid rise in the Muslim population is just one way in which mass immigration promoted, even encouraged, by this Government has affected the whole nature of society.”

Daily Mail, 14 December 2009

German banker rapped over headscarf remark

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Thilo SarrazinAmid a rising tide of Islamophobia in Europe, a former finance senator in Germany has been strongly criticized for his racist, anti-Islam comments. On Sunday, Thilo Sarrazin, former Berlin finance senator and currently a member of the German Central Bank committee called for a headscarf ban in German schools.

His comments come only four months after the official let loose against “Arabs” and “Turks” living in Germany in an interview with the culture magazine Lettre International. “A large number of Arabs and Turks in this city, whose number has grown through bad policies, have no productive function other than as fruit and vegetable vendors,” he had said.

In his controversial remarks, Sarrazin also alluded to a new plan proposed by the country’s Immigration Commission, which would oblige foreigners seeking to live in Germany to sign “integration contracts” to respect Western values. “I don’t need to respect anyone who lives off the state, denies the state, doesn’t do anything to educate their kids, and just produces more headscarf girls,” Thilo Sarrazin had said.

Following his disparaging remarks, the senior official has faced strong criticism, with many calling on him to quit. On Sunday, Claudia Roth, leader of the German Green Party lambasted the executive board member, demanding his immediate resignation.

Press TV, 14 December 2009

Man who tore off Muslim woman’s veil convicted of assault

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A man who tore a Muslim woman’s veil from her face as he passed her in the street has been ordered by a court to pay her £1,000 in compensation. Stephen Ard, 29, of Gypsy Lane, Leicester, also received a jail term of 16 weeks, suspended for a year, and 150 hours of community service.

Leicester Magistrates’ Court heard victim Rehana Sidat felt “invaded and scared to walk down the street alone”. Ard pleaded guilty to religiously aggravated assault. Ms Sidat, who runs a drop-in centre for people with learning difficulties in Leicester, said: “He pulled my veil off and said ‘get that off’, he was really quite angry, it was shocking. I felt frightened.”

BBC News, 14 December 2009

Update:  See also the Leicester Mercury, 16 December 2009

‘Vile and racist desecration’ of French mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Castres mosquePolice say assailants have scrawled a Nazi slogan and hung pig feet on a mosque in southern France. Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux has denounced the “vile and racist desecration” of the mosque in the town of Castres.

Police say the swastika in black paint and slogans including Hitler salute “Sieg Heil” in German, “France to the French” in French, and “White Power” in English were scrawled on the mosque.

Hortefeux said Sunday any person found responsible for the overnight desecration should be “severely punished.”

Associated Press, 13 December 2009

See also Le Poireau Rouge, 13 December 2009

BNP links with Scottish Defence League exposed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

SDL demonstratorsLinks between the BNP and the right-wing Scottish Defence League can today be exposed by the Sunday Herald.

Both groups have publicly tried to distance themselves from each other, with the BNP claiming it would expel members found to be active in the Scottish Defence League (SDL) and its English counterpart, the EDL.

But one long-standing BNP member in Scotland told the Sunday Herald the party and the SDL shared many members and supporters, adding that the threat of expulsion was merely “a publicity thing” designed to placate the media. He said: “I am a member of the BNP and a supporter of the Scottish Defence League. A lot of the supporters are the same.”

On the threat of expulsion, he added: “That is a publicity thing. We both have the same views on radical Islam and we both don’t want Sharia law in Britain. We created our group [the SDL] to support what was happening down south with the English Defence League. I couldn’t say that the SDL was set up by BNP activists, but I was one of the early ones to support it.”

The claim that the expulsion threat was a publicity stunt was dismissed as “preposterous” by the party’s national press spokesman, who questioned the authenticity of the member who made the allegation.

However, information gathered by David Miller, a professor of sociology at the University of Strathclyde and a co-founder of the campaigning website Spinwatch, alleges that at least three BNP members are also Defence League supporters.

One is BNP Scotland member John Wilkinson. He leafleted on behalf of the party in the run-up to the European Elections, and is involved with running the SDL website. SDL supporter Iain Brooks, from Glasgow, is also listed on a leaked BNP membership list. And Adam Lloyd, the BNP organiser for Bridgend in Wales, is another listed as an SDL supporter, according to Prof Miller.

Sunday Herald, 13 December 2009