Belgium: How Islam corrupts the schools

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Le Vif Comment l'Islam Menace l'EcoleBelgian French-language magazine Le Vif/L’Express has come out with a five page spread in its August 29th issue about Islam in the Belgian school system.

The headline on the cover – “How Islam Threatens the School” – and the article’s title – “How Islam Corrupts the School” – have already drawn criticisms.

Sadly, the article itself is not available freely online, though I understand it doesn’t really bring any new data. Most schools in Brussels ban the veil, but there are other Muslim requirements from the school system – offering halal food or banning pork, enabling girls to drop gym and swimming classes and not to attend school outings, enabling students to fast at Ramadan, and giving students a place to pray at school.

The article claims that teachers and principles feel they can’t handle the situation. Not only in the case of science and creationism, teachers feel they’re being forced to adapt the curriculum in other subjects such as geography and history so as not to offend students.

Part of the criticism is that besides noting that 30% of schoolgirls in Brussels are Muslims, the article does not give factual data on how many such cases of demands there are from Muslim students and parents.

I received a response from Karim Chemlal, head of the League of Muslims in Belgium, who accuses the exposé of being shallow and not going into the real debate. He points to a study that says Islam is sometimes used as an excuse by students whose true motive is to provoke the system.

Islam in Europe, 4 September 2008

SIF cleared over grants

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An Islamic organisation with close connections to the SNP has been cleared by public spending watchdog Audit Scotland for the way it won Scottish Government grants. The Scottish Islamic Foundation is led by Osama Saeed, a Westminster candidate for the Scottish National Party, with an SNP researcher at Holyrood doubling as its spokesman.

Lord George Foulkes, a Labour MSP for Lothian, wrote to Audit Scotland asking it to investigate the grants. Auditors found that an application for running an event to celebrate Islamic culture and promote Scotland in Muslim countries was dealt with by officials in the Race, Religion and Refugee Integration Grant Scheme and met the criteria.

Herald, 4 September 2008

Let Muslim women speak

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The last few weeks have been particularly eventful for Muslim women on Comment is Free. We would have felt extremely exhausted by all the excitement, were it not for the fact that – with the notable exception of Samia Rahman and Reefat Drabu – we were spared the ignominy of having to participate in the debate ourselves.

“AC Grayling started us off by equating the headscarf with an iron shackle and stating that Muslim women are complicit in their own oppression. In the process of attacking the abhorrent denial of freedom that Muslim women can wrongly suffer, Grayling (in)advertently takes away the very same freedom of choice to decide to wear the hijab if we choose.

“Julie Burchill bigged up Christianity, and in the process scathingly dismissed Islam and Muslim women. The only “Muslim” women she suggested as role models – Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji – were those she claimed had rejected Islam and were no longer Muslim….

“Islamic theology has a strong framework for a blueprint of gender equality…. we may say, believe and do things which don’t fit in with the caricature of a Muslim woman who would be desperate to be ‘liberated’ from Islam if only she knew it.

“You may find our voices reverberating with the view that we like being Muslim women, we just want to make our lives better and in line with true Islamic principles. It would be nice if those who debate vociferously about Muslim women would therefore move over and give us the seat at the table that we’re demanding.”

Shelina Zahra Janmohamed at Comment is Free, 2 September 2008

Muslim wrongly accused of being a terrorist wins £14,000 compensation

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim police worker who was “maliciously” reported to the anti-terrorist squad by colleagues after the July 7 bombings has been awarded almost £14,000 compensation.

Mohammed Hussain, 30, was investigated by the Met’s specialist counter-terrorism command after false accusations from co-workers that he was an Islamic extremist.

He told an employment tribunal that he was made to feel “isolated and lonely” when colleagues “conspired” against him, especially after the July 7 attacks on London. Mr Hussain, a researcher in the Metropolitan Police’s forensic analysis unit, said he was made to feel like “a pariah”.

Daily Telegraph, 3 September 2008

See also the Daily Mail, 3 September 2008

BNP church fire comment ‘despicable’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Fat fascistA top Lincoln Tory has branded the words of BNP leader Nick Griffin as “despicable” after he commented on a fire at a church in the city which was about to be converted into a mosque.

The leader of the far-right party sent a statement to the Echo in the wake of a blaze at St Matthew’s Church. Griffin, who lives in Wales, said: “Perhaps a local householder was driven mad by the thought of being engulfed by a miniature version of Lahore.”

Lincolnshire Echo, 3 September 2008

Update:  Meanwhile, over at the BNP website, Voice of Freedom editor Martin Wingfield advances the bizarre theory that the Muslim community itself is responsible for the fire! “It’s a scorched earth policy which starts with the destruction of the places of worship of non-Muslims and it is happening in towns and cities across Britain where Islam is on the offensive.”

Mind you, Wingfield’s grip on reality is a bit weak generally when it comes to Islam. He goes on to warn his readers:

“The growing influence of Islam within Britain continues apace and the silence that greets this colonisation by stealth is deafening…. In those areas where Muslims are now the majority, they have moved from claiming ‘equal rights’ with the host population, to imposing their demands on the non-Muslim population….

“In many areas of Britain, it is we, the British, who are now the minority! From London boroughs such as Tower Hamlets and next door Newham (where over 75% of births are of babies not of British origin) to towns and cities such as Peterborough, Luton, Leicester, Bradford, and Birmingham, entire districts have been Balkanised by the ever increasing Muslim population creating within Great Britain, ‘Greater Pakistan’, ‘Greater Bangladesh’, and even ‘Greater Somalia’!

“Within these semi-autonomous areas there is no ‘host community’ for the colonists to integrate with – the ‘host’ British have been ethnically cleansed. Hence the new ‘majority community’, these very colonists, are now re-engineering local society to replicate the Muslim societies they ostensibly left behind in Pakistan, or wherever, when they came to Britain.”

The 2001 census puts the Muslim population in Tower Hamlets at 36.40% and in Newham at 24.31%. Further east, in Barking & Dagenham – where the BNP has been gaining ground by appealing to paranoid fantasies about Christian civilisation succumbing to the spread of “Muslim majority” areas – the figure falls to 4.36%, compared with a Christian population of 68.99%.

‘Decents’ on the Muslim threat

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Why is this man regarded any more favourably than Pat Robertson or Stephen Green’s Christian Voice?”

The question is posed by one Max Dunbar in the current issue of Democratiya, house journal of the “decent left”, and the man in question is Tariq Ramadan.

This sort of thing does our job for us. As we’ve remarked in the past, those who promote the view that Professor Ramadan represents some sort of fundamentalist threat to Western society discredit themselves more effectively than we ever could.

Continue reading →

MPs too scared of Muslim voters to challenge forced marriage, claims Cryer

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ann CryerPoliticians are too scared to speak out against forced marriage in case they lose valuable Muslim votes, according to a veteran Labour MP.

Ann Cryer said politicians in areas with high Muslim populations, many of which are Labour heartlands, should be at the forefront of the campaign to stop young couples being made to wed against their will by their families. Mrs Cryer said:

“There still is a nervousness to talk about this, especially those MPs in constituencies affected by these issues.They should be fighting on the front line, but they are the ones keeping quiet on the issue because they don’t want to lose votes.

“Some of the Muslim leaders in my area are doing their communities a disservice and trying to keep them in the backwoods. They don’t seem to have any understanding about the importance of having integration and cohesion, or to promote women to leadership roles in the community.”

However Mrs Cryer’s claims have been dismissed by Khalid Mahmood, the Muslim Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr. He claimed that MPs would not be so easily swayed by the perceived opinions of their constituents, and pointed out that many politicians supported the war in Iraq despite opposition from Muslim voters.

Mr Mahmood said: “In terms of being scared, I think that’s complete nonsense. Most MPs will speak their minds because that’s what they’re there for and most of them are strong enough characters. People do things because they believe in them, not because of this cynical reason. If that was the case, MPs would have stood up against the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.”

He added: “I’ve been adamantly against forced marriage and people have supported me in that. We’ve also got a rigid system with the embassy in Islamabad now and although it is an issue, it’s not an epidemic as Ann sometimes makes it out to be.”

Daily Telegraph, 2 September 2008

Fascist applauds Channel 4 documentary

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The BNP’s representative on the London Assembly applauds “Undercover Mosque – The Return”, broadcast by Channel 4 – who, as Barnbrook puts its, “unlike other media outlets, do not exhibit the customary subservience to the religion of multiculturalism”:

“For those who did not catch this programme you can see the whole Saudi-orientated shooting match by accessing Channel Four’s excellent catch-up facility here.  It details literally thousands of Islamic facilities being set up in this country by the use of £billions of Saudi money. Not wishing to spoil the context of the documentary I can tell you that on the proposed agenda in a Sharia Britain, would be the stoning to death of adulterers and death sentences for those wishing to leave the religion of peace.”

Richard Barnbrook’s blog, 2 September 2008