Local soccer association and Muslim council unite to back Safaa Menhem

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Alberta’s minister of recreation said Monday he backs a referee’s decision to ban a 14-year-old Calgary girl from playing soccer while wearing a hijab. But local soccer and Muslim associations plan to ask the provincial body that governs the sport to reverse its stance and allow religious headgear.

In a letter to the Alberta Soccer Association, which sets the rules for competition within Alberta, the Calgary Minor Soccer Association said the rule had been inconsistently applied and it asked for clear guidance on whether players can wear hijabs during games. “We’re hoping they give some leniency to the rules and allow a player with a hijab to play,” said executive director Daryl Leinweber. Soccer’s accessibility would be damaged if hijabs were banned, Leinweber said. “At a local level, should that exclude a player from playing soccer?” he said. “I don’t think so.”

Nagah Hage, chairman of the Muslim Council of Calgary, said he plans to file a similar letter with the Alberta association. “It’s not hard to see that it’s just another attack against a Muslim woman,” he said. Hage said he’d never heard of any safety concerns related to hijabs, adding other headgear is a regular part of other sports. There’s a remote chance someone would pull a hijab and injure a player, he said, but there’s potential for injury throughout soccer. “There’s a possibility of missing the ball and kicking someone with your foot,” he said.

Calgary Herald, 27 November 2007

Netherlands bans niqab from colleges

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Netherlands plans to ban face coverings worn by some Muslim women from universities, not only for students but also mothers and anyone else entering the grounds, the Education Ministry said Wednesday.

Education Minister Ronald Plasterk said in parliament that the planned ban, initially intended to apply only to the compulsory schooling system, would now also extend to tertiary education institutions, his spokesman told Agence France Presse. It would apply to pupils, teachers, cleaners and parents – all women who come through the gates of such institutions, said spokesman Freek Manche. “It will forbid any kind of garment that covers the face. The intention is to ensure that all people who communicate with each other on school grounds are able to look each other in the eye, to see each other’s faces,” he said.

Plasterk had initially intended the ban on garments such as the burka and nikab only for schools, citing the importance of children being able to recognize and identify others. “If you want to be present there (at school) as service provider, as parent, as teacher or as pupil, then you will have to let your face show,” the minister said when he initially announced the restrictions in September. “Freedom of religion must be weighed against the freedom of children to go to school in an environment where they can see each other’s faces.”

He hadn’t originally wanted to extend the ban to tertiary education, said the minister’s spokesman, “because this level of education is not compulsory. These are adults.” However, Plasterk had to adapt his plans on the insistence of a majority in parliament.

AFP, 26 November 2008

Media activists slam Daily Star over ‘inflammatory anti-Muslim’ stories

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Media campaigners condemned the right-wing trash tabloid Daily Star yesterday for running “highly inflammatory” stories against Britain’s Muslim community.

Over the last month, the paper has run stories with headlines including “BBC puts Muslims above You,” “Killjoys ban white Xmas,” “Poppies banned in terror hot spots,” “Muslim snub to forces’ and “Muslim nutters still preaching hate on our streets.”

In a letter to owner Richard Desmond and editor Dawn Neeson, Media Workers Against the War (MWAW) pointed out: “These headlines and the stories that go with them twist flimsy and misleading ‘evidence’ to pander to ignorance and prejudice against Muslims.”

National Union of Journalists general secretary Jeremy Dear noted that union members at the Daily Star have been at the forefront of campaigns against the use of their papers to publish material which goes against both the letter and spirit of the union’s code of conduct. “Journalists should not be forced to write articles that encourage discrimination and hatred in our society,” he added.

Muslim Association of Britain vice-president Mokhtar Badri regretted that any paper is running stories that don’t reflect the reality. “It is inflammatory to target a section of society in a way that only raises tensions between different sections of that society,” he said.

MWAW has also set up a petition which can be signed at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/dailystar.

Morning Star, 25 November 2008

Leeds councillors reject planning report opposing new mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Woodview RoadA plan to build a three-storey mosque on the site of an old clothing factory has won the backing of Leeds councillors – even though planning officers recommended it should be turned down.

The councillors decided the development would remove an eyesore [see picture, left] and benefit the community.

The new mosque will include halls, committee rooms, offices, storage rooms and a small car park. It will replace a small mosque in nearby Stratford Street which the panel heard the community had now outgrown.

A report to the panel said the original plan showed a building with a 17m dome and a minaret stretching to 23m in height. The scheme had been revised with the proposed dome now much smaller and six metres taken off the height of the minaret.

Despite the changes, council officials argued the building was still unacceptable. The report said it would be overly dominant, visually intrusive and clearly visible from Dewsbury Road. “The slope of the land will further emphasise the scale of the building,” the report added.

Yorkshire Evening Post, 24 November 2008

I mean, we can’t have a mosque being visible from the road, can we? You do wonder whether the same planning objections would have been raised if it had been a church.

Posted in UK

Don’t prosecute fascist anti-Muslim hatemongers says ‘libertarian Marxist’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP Islam Out of Britain“As one who exchanged blows rather than opinions with the National Front in the 1980s, it gives me no pleasure to say this. But we ought to uphold the right of the British National Party to express its views, however vile, after Merseyside Police arrested 13 of its members for distributing leaflets. I’m afraid that free speech means freedom for fools and scumbags, too.

“The BNP pamphlet doled out in Liverpool was called Racism Cuts Both Ways. You can see it on its website. It argues that everybody knows racial hatred is wrong, but that few realise that ‘the vast majority of the real racism that scars Britain involves white victims from the indigenous community’.

“It lays the blame for much of this on ‘relentless’ discrimination against British natives by ‘an institutionally hostile ruling class’ but also claims that ‘our people are the silent victims of an epidemic of racist violence, sexual exploitation and murder’ by Muslims and blacks.

“… racism is not a crime. And while police chiefs may judge ‘racist content’ to be offensive, that does not make it a criminal offence. It should not be the job of the police or the courts to outlaw any ‘ism’, idea or ideology.

“Incitement to racial or religious hatred is a crime, but difficult to prove (the BNP’s leader, Nick Griffin, was found not guilty in 2006). And rightly so. We should draw a clear line between words and violent deeds. The old playground saw about sticks and stones seems a more grown-up guide than current policy. That leaflet is arguably guilty of incitement to elect BNP councillors….

“For this old libertarian Marxist, state action against a political party, however odious, is nothing to cheer.”

Mick Hume in the Times, 25 November 2008

Continue reading →

BNP men held over ‘racist leaflet’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

bnp-islam-posterTwelve British National Party activists have been arrested in Liverpool on suspicion of handing out racist leaflets claiming that “our people” are experiencing an “epidemic of racist violence, sexual exploitation and murder” by Muslims.

The leaflet alleges the “average racist killer” is 40 times more likely to be from an ethnic minority than “a native Brit”; the Muslim community condones paedophilia; and the English are “relentlessly discriminated against by an institutionally hostile ruling class”. One passage reads: “Wherever there are large numbers of young Muslim men, groups team up to lure girls – often as young as 12 or 13 – into a nightmare world of sexual abuse, rape, beatings, drug addiction and prostitution.”

The 12 men, aged from 19 to 70 and from Liverpool, Wirral, Knowsley and St Helens, were arrested in the city centre at 12.50pm on Saturday.

The leaflet, “Racism Cuts Both Ways”, is also available on the BNP’s website [pdf here]. Anti-racism campaigners are preparing to submit a UK-wide complaint to the Metropolitan Police.

Assistant Chief Constable Colin Matthews of Merseyside Police said the arrests were made following the “distribution of leaflets … which officers believe to contain racist content”. He added: “Merseyside Police condemns racism and will take prompt action to support all our communities.”

The BNP intends to capitalise on the arrests. Simon Darby, a party spokesman, said it planned a “huge demonstration” in Liverpool. “It’s a mystery, you tell me what you think is criminal or inciting about it,” he said. “I don’t think Merseyside Police have any idea what they have done. It’s a knee-jerk reaction.” Asked if the party stood by the leaflet, Mr Darby said: “Obviously we do otherwise we wouldn’t have put it out.”

Independent, 24 November 2008

BNP response here.

See also the earlier arrest of BNP members in Manchester.

Muslim prisoners launch ‘reign of terror’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim fanatics hijack British prisonMuslim prisoners have launched a reign of terror inside a top security British jail.

The fanatics are forcing fellow inmates to convert to Islam or face punishment beatings. One man who stood up to the thugs was branded with a lump of hot metal, according to a prison source.

Some Al Qaeda supporters have set up a kangaroo court, sitting in judgment on prisoners and ordering punishments, the source said. The violent disciples of Osama Bin Laden have targeted even the toughest non-Muslim prisoners, including killers and rapists.

Sunday Express, 23 November 2008

But let it not be said that the Express‘s coverage is unbalanced. Buried at the end of the article is a quote from a Prison Service spokesman: “There is no evidence to suggest prisoners are being branded or assaulted in an effort to radicalise them.”

Odd, though, that Richard Desmond’s other title, the Daily Star, ran a similar scaremongering story about Whitemoor Prison only a couple of weeks ago which somehow managed to overlook this systematic campaign of violence against non-Muslim prisoners.

Update:  Meanwhile over at the Sun, under the headline “£3k curry treat for jail’s Muslims“, we find that, not content with intimidating killers and rapists into converting to Islam, Muslim prisoners at Whitemoor have been plied with chicken vindaloo at taxpayers’ expense.

MWAW: open letter to Richard Desmond

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MWAW masthead

Media Workers Against the War (MWAW) have written an open letter to Richard Desmond, proprietor of the Daily Star and the newspaper’s editor, Dawn Neeson, concerning the paper’s coverage of stories on Muslims in the past few weeks.

These stories have all appeared on the ENGAGE website and can be found in the news items and archive folders.

The letter by MWAW can be read here. To add your signature to the letter click here.

ENGAGE, 24 November 2008

Douglas Murray supports ‘Muslim reformers’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Victims of IntimidationWriting in the Sunday Times, Douglas Murray plugs his recent pamphlet Victims of Intimidation published by the right-wing think-tank, the laughably misnamed Centre for Social Cohesion.

And who are the so-called “moderate Muslim voices” whom Murray says governments should do more to support as an alternative to “radicals and radical-affiliated groups”? Well, here’s an example:

“Ehsan Jami, 23, the Dutch Labour party politician and founder of the Central Committee for Ex-Muslims, was repeatedly assaulted before being guarded by the Dutch police. He now requires constant protection but his own political party, instead of assisting his right to speak out about what he saw in the religion he was born into, tried to make him tone down his public statements about the treatment of women, apostates and homosexuals within Islam. Those like Jami who have left Islam are often treated, by our governments and broadcasters as much as by the Muslim communities, as though they are out of the discussion.”

First of all, there is no evidence that Jami was ever a practising Muslim, so it is difficult to see how he could have “left Islam”. He didn’t even study the Qur’an until after 9/11, and having done so he concluded that Islam provides the ideological inspiration for terrorism and violence. This has been the theme of his statements ever since. As for Jami’s so-called “Committee for Ex-Muslims”, it fell apart even before its official launch meeting because the co-founder of the organisation, Loubna Berrada, broke with Jami over his denunciations of Islam, and the Committee is now defunct.

Nor is Jami a “Dutch Labour party politician”. He was expelled by the PvdA after he co-authored an Islamophobic article with the Dutch far-right racist Geert Wilders which warned: “If we do not act now against the far-reaching Islamisation of the Netherlands, then the 1930s will be revived. The only difference is that back then the danger came from Adolf Hitler, while today it comes from Mohammed.”

This is not to excuse acts of violence, even against provocateurs like Jami, but Murray’s suggestion that Ehsan Jami is an example of the “Muslim reformers” with whom governments should seek to engage perfectly illustrates the ignorance and dishonesty of his pamphlet.

And while we’re on the subject of Jami, he was in the UK last month to attend a conference organised by the fraudulent “Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain”, a front organisation for the Islamophobic far-left sect the Worker-Communist Party of Iran.

Recently David Toube of Harry’s Place posted an article calling for a ban on Yasir Qadhi entering the UK, on the basis that he had made hostile comments about Shias. But did Toube raise any objections to Jami being allowed into the country? Of course he didn’t. As in Murray’s case, Toube’s pious expressions of concern for the welfare of minorities within the Muslim community are just a smokescreen for his own efforts to incite hostility towards Muslims and their representative organisations.