‘Flying while Muslim’ – US airline pays compensation to passenger

Posted on by Bob Pitt

JetBlueIn a victory for constitutional rights, two Transportation Security Authority (TSA) officials and JetBlue Airways have paid Raed Jarrar $240,000 to settle charges that they illegally discriminated against the U.S. resident based on his ethnicity and the Arabic writing on his t-shirt.

TSA and JetBlue officials prevented Jarrar from boarding his August 2006 flight at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport until he agreed to cover his shirt, which read “We Will Not Be Silent” in English and Arabic, and then forced him to sit at the back of the plane. The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on Jarrar’s behalf in August 2007.

“The outcome of this case is a victory for free speech and a blow to the discriminatory practice of racial profiling,” said Aden Fine, senior staff attorney with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group and lead attorney on the case. “This settlement should send a clear message to all TSA officials and airlines that they cannot discriminate against passengers based on their race or the ethnic content of their speech.”

On August 12, 2006, Jarrar was waiting to board a JetBlue flight from New York to his home in Oakland, California, when he was approached by two TSA officials. One of them told Jarrar that he needed to remove his shirt because other passengers were not comfortable with the Arabic script, telling him that wearing a shirt with Arabic writing on it to an airport was like “wearing a t-shirt at a bank stating, ‘I am a robber’.”

“As last week’s refusal by AirTran Airways to allow a Muslim family that posed no security risk to fly shows, what happened to Mr. Jarrar is not an isolated incident,” said Reggie Shuford, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Program. “Transportation officials have the important responsibility of ensuring that all flights are safe, but there is no reason that safety can’t be achieved while at the same time upholding the civil rights and liberties of all airline passengers. We hope this lawsuit and its successful result will serve as a powerful reminder that discrimination is against the law.”

ACLU press release, 5 January 2009

‘Safest’ seat remarks gets Muslim family kicked off plane

Posted on by Bob Pitt

AirTran logoWASHINGTON — A Muslim family removed from an airliner Thursday after passengers became concerned about their conversation say AirTran officials refused to rebook them, even after FBI investigators cleared them of wrongdoing.

Atif Irfan said federal authorities removed eight members of his extended family and a friend after passengers heard them discussing the safest place to sit and misconstrued the nature of the conversation. Irfan, a U.S. citizen and tax attorney, said he was “impressed with the professionalism” of the FBI agents who questioned him, but said he felt mistreated when the airline refused to book the family for a later flight.

Family members said FBI agents tried to work it out with the airline, but to no avail. “The FBI agents actually cleared our names,” said Inayet Sahin, Irfan’s sister-in-law. “They went on our behalf and spoke to the airlines and said, ‘There is no suspicious activity here. They are clear. Please let them get on a flight so they can go on their vacation,’ and they still refused.”

The dispute occurred about 1 p.m. Thursday as AirTran flight 175 was preparing for takeoff from Reagan National Airport outside of Washington, D.C., on a flight destined for Orlando, Florida. Atif Irfan, his brother, their wives, a sister and three children were headed to Orlando to meet with family and attend a religious conference.

“The conversation, as we were walking through the plane trying to find our seats, was just about where the safest place in an airplane is,” Sahin said. “We were (discussing whether it was safest to sit near) the wing, or the engine or the back or the front, but that’s it. We didn’t say anything else that would raise any suspicion.”

Some time later, while the plane was still at the gate, an FBI agent boarded the plane and asked Irfan and his wife to leave the plane. The rest of the family was removed 15 or 20 minutes later, along with a family friend, Abdul Aziz, a Library of Congress attorney and family friend who was coincidentally taking the same flight and had been seen talking to the family.

AirTran spokesman Tad Hutcheson said the incident began when some passengers reported hearing suspicious remarks by a woman and alerted flight attendants.

Aziz said there is a “very strong possibility” he will pursue a civil rights lawsuit. “I guess it’s just a situation of guilt by association,” Aziz said. “They see one Muslim talking to another Muslim and they automatically assume something wrong is going on.”

CNN, 1 January 2008

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Horowitz’s man of the year: Geert Wilders

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Wilders is a liberal in a uniquely European sense. What he champions are quintessentially Western values: separation of church and state; equality of the sexes; free expression; the right to provoke and even, yes, to offend. His proposal to ban the all-covering burqa owes more to the ideals of gender equality than to religious discrimination. Even his more controversial measure to stop the Islamisation of Europe – an end to all Muslim immigration – is more about safeguarding Western traditions than locking out foreigners.”

David Horowitz’s Front Page Magazine names the Dutch far-right racist politician Geert Wilders as its man of the year.

Islam made me an atheist, says Douglas Murray

Posted on by Bob Pitt

douglas_murrayOver at the Spectator Douglas Murray explains his loss of religious faith:

“Some years ago I started studying Islam. It didn’t take long to recognise the problems of that religion’s texts – the repetitions, contradictions and absurdities…. Gradually, scepticism of the claims made by one religion was joined by scepticism of all such claims. Incredulity that anybody thought an archangel dictated a book to Mohammed produced a strange contradiction. I found myself still clinging to belief in Christianity. I was trying to believe – though rarely arguing – ‘Well, your guy didn’t hear voices: but I know a man who did.’ This last, shortest and sharpest, phase pulled down the whole thing. In the end Mohammed made me an atheist.”

Still, Murray’s rejection of religious belief was not without difficulty:

“My final fear was one which I think a lot of Christians in this country feel, particularly as they see Islam re-emerging and gaining adherents in spite (or perhaps because) of its intransigence and intractability. It is, I suppose, a sense of cultural abandonment. We know how much of what we enjoy and relish comes through Christianity. Can we really go on without it?”

The answer, according to Murray, is for non-Muslim non-believers to counter the threat posed by Islam by becoming “cultural Christians”.

This peculiar Islamophobic version of atheism, which rejects God but upholds the need to defend Christian civilisation against the Muslim hordes, appears to derive from Richard Dawkins, who thinks that the increase of Islamic influence at the expense of Christianity would be “a poor exchange” and has stated: “This is historically a Christian country. I’m a cultural Christian…. I’m not one of those who wants to purge our society of our Christian history. If there’s any threat to these sorts of things, I think you will find it comes from rival religions and not from atheists.”

Update:  Over at Shiraz Socialist Jim Denham of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty recommends “this extraordinary account by Douglas Murray” to his readers. Of course, it’s hardly unexpected that an AWLer should ally himself with a vicious anti-Muslim bigot like Murray (“It is late in the day, but Europe still has time to turn around the demographic time-bomb which will soon see a number of our largest cities fall to Muslim majorities. It has to. All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop…. Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board”). After all, we recently witnessed Denham’s former comrade Alan Johnson enthusiastically promoting another hardline right-wing Islamophobe, Andrew Bostom. Surely it can only be a matter of time before Denham and Johnson find merit in the views of Nick Griffin.

Ed Husain is ‘driving Muslims to mass murder’ – Mad Mel falls out with the Quilliam Foundation

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Quilliam FoundationEd Husain’s Quilliam Foundation has issued a statement criticising the government’s failure to take a stand against Israel’s bloody onslaught on the population of Gaza. Ed himself is quoted as saying:

“Perceived double standards from our Government and the current green light (from Washington and London) to Israel’s killing machine will strengthen Al Qaeda’s metanarrative and radicalize yet another generation of young Muslims.”

This from an organisation that has spent its entire existence ingratiating itself with the government by claiming that Islamist ideology not foreign policy is the root cause of “radicalisation” (a term which of course obliterates the distinction between the general politicisation of Muslim youth in response to imperialism and the influence of terrorist groupuscules).

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Dutch Labour Party joins attack on Muslims, migrants and multiculturalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

PvdA logoUnder the headline “From the left, a call to end the current Dutch notion of tolerance”, John Vinocur reports from the Netherlands (“a country whose history of tolerance was the first in 21st-century Europe to clash with the on-street realities of its growing Muslim population”) on the latest attack on migrants and multiculturalism, this one by the chair of the PvdA:

“Two weeks ago, the country’s biggest left-wing political grouping, the Labor Party, which has responsibility for integration as a member of the coalition government led by the Christian Democrats, issued a position paper calling for the end of the failed model of Dutch ‘tolerance’…. If judged on the standard scale of caution in dealing with cultural clashes and Muslims’ obligations to their new homes in Europe, the language of the Dutch position paper and Lilianne Ploumen, Labor’s chairperson, was exceptional.

“The paper said: ‘The mistake we can never repeat is stifling criticism of cultures and religions for reasons of tolerance.’ Government and politicians had too long failed to acknowledge the feelings of ‘loss and estrangement’ felt by Dutch society facing parallel communities that disregard its language, laws and customs. Newcomers, according to Ploumen, must avoid ‘self-designated victimization’. She asserted, ‘the grip of the homeland has to disappear’ for these immigrants who, news reports indicate, also retain their original nationality at a rate of about 80 percent once becoming Dutch citizens.

“Instead of reflexively offering tolerance with the expectation that things would work out in the long run, she said, the government strategy should be ‘bringing our values into confrontation with people who thinkotherwise’…. And that comes from the heart of the traditional, democratic European left, where placing the onus of compatibility on immigrants never found such comfort before…. Labor’s line seems to stand on its head the old equation of jobs-plus-education equals integration. Conforming to Dutch society’s social standards now comes first. Strikingly, it turns its back on cultural relativism….

“Ploumen says, ‘Integration calls on the greatest effort from the new Dutch. Let go of where you come from; choose the Netherlands unconditionally’. Immigrants must ‘take responsibility for this country’ and cherish and protect its Dutch essence.

“Not clear enough? Ploumen insists, ‘The success of the integration process is hindered by the disproportionate number of non-natives involved in criminality and trouble-making, by men who refuse to shake hands with women, by burqas and separate courses for women oncitizenship. We have to stop the existence of parallel societies within our society’.”

Vinocur’s article concludes with a quote from Frits Bolkestein, former leader of the right-wing VVD (“who began writing in 1991 about the enormous challenge posed to Europe by Muslim immigration”): “The multi-cultis just aren’t making the running anymore. It’s a brave step towards a new normalcy in this country.”

New York Times, 29 December 2008

Daniel Pipes hails what he terms “A Dutch fissure in the Leftist-Islamist alliance“.

Update:  Under the heading “Dutch Left calls for an end to suicidal notion of tolerance” Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch also applauds the PvdA’s stance:

“For years I have insisted that the resistance to the jihad and Islamic supremacism is not a Left/Right, liberal/conservative issue, but one of the defense of our common civilization – however, hardly anyone on the Left has ever demonstrated any awareness of this, perhaps because they have increasingly discarded the values of that common civilization altogether. However, harsh reality is causing some people to wake up in the Netherlands.”

Don’t force Aussie Muslims into ghettos

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Australian Muslim leaders are warning that repeated opposition by local councils and residents to the building of Muslim schools and worship places is pushing the sizable minority into ghettos, reported the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday, December 27.

“When we’re not able to do that in some places, where the approach is unfairly delayed and unreasonably delayed, then it’s forcing people to go to one particular area, even though they don’t live in that particular area,” Keysar Trad, president of the Islamic Friendship Society, said.

Proposals by Australian Muslims to build schools and worship places have repeatedly been met with strong opposition from local councils and residents. For example, it took three years and a half to get approval from the Sydney local council to open a prayer center in Penrith city in New South Wales. Earlier this year, the Camden local council rejected a proposal to build a Muslim school to serve 1200 students in the city and surrounding areas.

Islam Online, 27 December 2008

Damian Thompson continues witch-hunt of MPACUK

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Damian Thompson 2We realise this site is in danger of turning into Damian Thompson Watch, but we have to register the fact that the Catholic Herald editor has made a further contribution to the mounting witch-hunt aimed at framing MPACUK as a violent organisation. This time Thompson takes issue with MPAC’s call to expose the Muslim “researchers” who forged receipts in order to assist the right-wing think-tank Policy Exchange in compiling its Hijacking of British Islam report which claimed to reveal the sale of hate literature in British mosques.

Thompson, of course, thinks it’s perfectly OK for Policy Exchange to publish false accusations against the Muslim community, but MPAC’s call for the exposure of those responsible for fabricating the evidence is “a threatening post on the MPAC official website which is apparently encouraging someone to dispense Islamic justice to Muslim traitors. ‘Protecting our community’, MPAC calls it. That’s a handy little euphemism, isn’t it?”

Update:  The raving Islamophobes at Jihad Watch have thrown their weight behind Thompson: “Sounds like MPACUK is publicly denouncing these Muslims for apostasy – and we all know what happens to apostates in Islam.”

‘Do Cameron’s Tories secretly admire Islam?’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The question is posed by Damian Thompson, who claims that, when it comes to countering “the spread of Islamic ghettos” in the UK, “there’s so little to choose between the two main parties that I can’t see a case for voting Tory”. He continues:

“Conservative political correctness is normally more funny than alarming, especially when practised by deeply snobbish Old Etonians. But when it extends to taking advice from Muslim radicals about the correct posture to take towards the ‘religion of peace’, then it is positively dangerous. Leading Tories think that they can demonstrate their intolerance of Islamic extremism by fulminating against one or two loopy Jihadist pressure groups. It’s as if Margaret Thatcher, confronted by the threat of socialism in 1979, had simply called for the banning of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party. Expel Vanessa Redgrave from the country and the unions will come to their senses.”

Daily Telegraph, 27 December 2008

That would be the same Tory Party whose leader pledges to break up “Muslim ghettos” and regards “rising Muslim consciousness” as a threat to social stability, whose security spokesperson Pauline Neville-Jones produces reports labelling the Muslim Council of Britain as extremist and accuses the entirely peaceful and apolitical Tablighi Jamaat of association with terrorism, a party whose MPs include the likes of Philip Davies, Michael Gove and Patrick Mercer, and whose supposedly “pro-Muslim” wing enthusiastically adds its voice to the assault on multiculturalism.

If this is amounts to politically correct admiration of Islam, as Damian Thompson believes, then you wonder which political party is conducting an anti-Muslim campaign aggressive enough to meet with his approval. The obvious answer is the BNP, who only the other day approvingly reproduced another anti-Muslim piece by Thompson on their website. Perhaps they should consider sending him a membership form?

Update: Well, no actual invitation to join the party as yet, but the BNP have again reproduced Thompson’s piece on their website. See “Tories accused of ‘secretly admiring Islam’ by leading Daily Telegraph writer“.