Veiled athletes challenge stereotypes in Beijing

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ruqaya Al GhasaraThe women in Roqaya Al Ghasara’s home town in Bahrain are so proud of their pioneering Olympic sprinter that some of them got together to design and sew a set of tailor-made aerodynamic veils for her to run in.

Egyptian fencer Shaimaa El Gammal, a third-timer at the Olympics, will don Islamic headgear in Beijing for the first time. She says it is a sign she is come of age and she feels more empowered than ever.

This year’s Games will see a sizable sprinkling of veiled athletes who are determined to avoid offending devout Muslims back home while showing skimpily dressed rivals there is nothing constricting about wearing “hijab”.

Two of them, Bahrain’s Al Ghasara and veiled Iranian rower Homa Hosseini, won the honor of being flag bearers for their countries at the opening ceremony’s parade of athletes.

“The hijab has never been a problem for me. In Bahrain you grow up with it,” said Al Ghasara, wearing a white baseball cap over a black veil that covers her hair and neck. Her baggy running gear exposes only her face and hands.

“There are more women in sport all the time from countries like Qatar and Kuwait. You can choose to wear the hijab or not. For me it’s liberating,” added Al Ghasara, whose close-fitting running veils come in red or white, the Bahraini colors.

Reuters, 11 August 2008

See also Gulf Daily News, 11 August 2008

‘The Muslim assassination plot and President Bush’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Or, rather, the assassination non-plot. Brad Greenberg of The Jewish Journal comes to the defence of CAIR employee Affad Shaikh who, through the most tenuous charges of guilt-by-association, was accused by FrontPage Magazine of being a covert terrorist with a plan to kill President Bush. Note the interesting exchange between Greenberg and Shaikh reproduced at the end of the piece.

The God Blog, 8 August 2008

OIC slams anti-Islam congress in Germany

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pro Koln (2)The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has expressed serious concerns about reports that an far right group is holding an anti-Islam conference in the German city of Cologne in September.

A spokesman for the OIC’s Islamophobia Observatory in Jeddah said in a statement issued yesterday that the proposed conference was aimed at arousing anti-Muslim sentiments in Europe and that it would pose a threat to inter-communal peace and harmony in society.

The right-wing extremist group Pro Koln is organizing the event on Sept. 19-20, with the aim of issuing a declaration against the purported “Islami-fication” of Europe. The meeting is expected to be attended by some of the most inflammatory names in European race politics, including Jean-Marie Le Pen of France, Austria’s Heinz-Christian Strache, and Belgium’s Filip Dewinter.

The organizers of the conference are motivated by racial hatred and xenophobia, said the OIC spokesman. “The OIC hopes that all segments of society in Germany and other parts of Europe will come out strongly against the holding of such a conference, and reject the proponents of hatred and racism,” he said in the statement.

Various international groups have condemned Pro Koln for organizing the conference and called for public initiatives to confront efforts to spread the right-wing propaganda against people of other ethnic or religious groups.

Meanwhile, German Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor Ralph Giordano has come out strongly against the planned conference. He said his protests against the “symptoms of a political and militant Islam” have always been based on his desire to “protect the constitutional state based on fundamental rights”. “Pro Koln doesn’t want any democracy at all,” Giordano said, adding that he would “defend any Muslim who is affected by anti-foreigner feeling or xenophobia.”

Arab News, 10 August 2008

See also Deutsche Welle, 8 August 2008

The new untouchables?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“There is an ugly specter haunting this 2008 election, the specter of Islamophobia. Both candidates have so far refused to visit Muslim organizations, but haven’t hesitated to visit Christian and Jewish groups. The message is clear: Muslims are outsiders, beyond the pale, perhaps exotic and even interesting in certain ways, but also dangerous, because being seen with them could have unpredictable political results. In electoral terms, American Muslims are the new untouchables.”

Lawrence Swaim at In Focus, 8 August 2008

Guilt by association for US Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hussein Ibish examines the resignation of Mazen Asbahi, Muslim-outreach coordinator for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign:

“Asbahi resigned on Monday, after just 10 days on the job, because in 2000 he served for a few weeks on the board of an Islamic investment fund with Jamal Said. Said has been allegedly linked to accused fundraisers for Hamas whose recent trial did not result in any convictions, but who remain under a cloud of suspicion.

“This reflects an unreasonable and unfair climate of guilt by association. It is part of a familiar pattern that is one of the main forces hindering the political integration of these communities into American civic life. Asbahi himself is not accused of any misconduct. Rather the issue is his fairly distant association with Said, who himself is disparaged because of the alleged activities of his own associates.

“The problem is that almost anyone who has been engaged in Arab or Muslim political affairs can probably be somehow connected in some manner to someone else somewhere whose views, activities or associations can be called into question in the post-9/11 environment.

“Call it two or three degrees of separation. These distant, usually third-party connections are then magnified out of all proportion and used to unfairly impugn or misrepresent the views and character of the person under attack.”

Comment is Free, 8 August 2008

See also James Zogby at the Huffington Post, 8 August 2008

Update:  And Ahmed Rehab in the Chicago Tribune, 10 August 2008

Anti-Muslim violence in Yvelines

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nouredine RachediTwelve days after the attack, Nouredine Rachedi (30), still bears the marks of the beating he received on the night of 24 July at Guyancourt in Yvelines. He has a swollen eye, scars on his head and is unsteady on his feet.

This French Muslim, who has a diploma in statistics and is a research analyst employed by a customer management company, was on his way home shortly before 1am and took a shortcut through a public park.

According to his statement to the police, two “European type” men, who were not wearing any distinct clothing, called to him from a distance asking for a cigarette. “I only had two. I told them couldn’t give them any.” One of the men then approached him. “He asked me if I was a Muslim”, Rachedi told the police. “I said ‘yes’. He then asked me how long I had lived in France. I replied that I was born in France and have always lived here. After these questions I asked why they wanted to know all this. The second man then came up and said ‘Because we are Nazis’.”

He then asked what the young Muslim thought of “the state of Yugoslavia” (this took place four days after the arrest of former Serb leader Radovan Karadzic had been announced). Nouredine Rachedi replied that he didn’t have an opinion on it. At that point the first man struck him on the head. “I fell to the ground and received … many kicks to my body and head.”

He says he protected himself as best as he could by curling up and covering his chest with his hands. “The attack lasted less than a minute. Then I heard one of them say ‘that’s enough, let’s get out of here’.” Rachedi says he got up and called for help, and then received treatment. The forensic medical unit at Versailles gave him 21 days complete rest from work due to bruising, a collapsed lung and wounds to his head that required stitches.

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Billboards announce: ‘Sharia law is hate’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An organization in Florida plans to educate what it perceives as an increasingly culture-tolerant public about the horrific dictates of Islamic law by purchasing billboard space with a simple, but confrontational message: “Sharia law is hate.”

The Central Florida chapter of the United American Committee, a nonprofit group that seeks to educate Americans on the threat of Islamic extremism, is raising money to purchase a six-month contract to display the billboard, which the group hopes will awaken the public to discussing the full extent of Islamic law.

“The UAC’s goal in this project is to raise awareness because most people have no idea what Sharia law is,” Alan Kornman, director of UAC’s Central Florida branch, told WND. “We are confident people will see the billboard and learn on their own what Sharia law is and come to their own conclusions. At the very least, we hope our billboard will spark public debate on this overlooked issue.”

The billboards will also include a link to UAC resources where people can learn more about Islam’s Sharia law, a set of religious codes – both moral and legal; Sharia law recognizes no separation of church and state – that bind both Muslims and Islamic nations.

“Under Sharia law if you are accused of stealing, a hand and foot from opposite sides are amputated. If you are caught having an affair, the woman is stoned to death and the man is given 80 lashes. If you change religions, you can be charged under apostasy laws and given the death sentence by a legal Sharia court. If you want to marry a nine-year-old child, Sharia law condones pedophilia, because Mohammad married Aisha at six and consummated the marriage at age nine. I find these and many more practices of Sharia law despicable and hateful,” said Kornman.

World Net Daily, 8 August 2008

Tebbitt on the Islamisation of the ‘Christian West’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lord Tebbitt warns of the consequences of the decline of Christianity:

“Watch out for the challenge from the mosques. An Islam with a modern face will soon begin to present itself as the natural home for those who long for moral certainty and a new sense of discipline within society. The calls for a caliphate, a religious state based on Sharia Law, will be toned down, the firebrand preachers will be done away with by the moderates, and there will be talk of the founding of a secular Muslim state, as in Turkey.

“And with no other options on the table, they may soon find that they have an awful lot of fellow travellers with whom to bolster their ranks.

“The task for the imams will be to exploit the fatal weakness of the multicultural society and replace a Christian church that has lost its sense of history and direction with a Mosque that has a strong, ingrained sense of both. For Islam, that would be a justified triumph. For the Christian West, however, it would be a monumental loss.”

Daily Mail, 8 August 2008

Muslim councillors ‘frozen out’ of extremism fight

Posted on by Bob Pitt

salmayaqoobMuslim councillors are being frozen out of Birmingham’s efforts to clamp down on Islamist terrorism according to Sparkbrook councillor Salma Yaqoob.

The local authority was awarded £500,000 as part of the government’s “pathfinder” Preventing Extremism project last year – and has now been given an additional £2.4 million under the three year Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) programme. Yaqoob’s beef is that all this cash is being spent by city officials without reference to elected Muslim representatives.

She raised the issue at a recent Council meeting where she said, “many projects have taken place in wards without the consultation and participation of ward members and without accountability to the local communities through the ward structures.” And she asked, “How will the existing structures which bring transparency and accountability … be utilised in any planning for this programme?”

The response to her request for “transparency and accountability” was to be told that she “misunderstands” the Council’s role – which could be explained to her in a private meeting with the Cabinet Minister for Equalities Alan Rudge. “This is public money,” said an outraged Yaqoob. “The way it’s being spent should be discussed in public. It should all be transparent.”

A case in point is a major anti-extremism conference organised by Aston-based management consultants Waterhouse in October (see link here). The event includes an address by reformed radical Ed Hussain, who Yaqoob argues is a divisive figure, more likely to stir up anger than heal wounds. “He is somebody who doesn’t want dialogue, he wants to close down dialogue,” she said. She believes that she and her fellow Muslim councillors would have been unlikely to ask him to attend – but of course, they weren’t asked.

Yaqoob again tried to take up the lack of democratic accountability at a cross-party meeting of Muslim councillors and community officials earlier this week – only for one city official to warn her that what she was doing was “against procedure”. He warned that he would “report her” (!) to Mike Whitby and Alan Rudge, and stormed out of the meeting. Although he eventually returned – 15 minutes later – the official is now the subject of a complaint.

“This is really worrying,” Yaqoob said. “Some officers don’t seem to realise that their job is to act in accordance with what councillors want – not the other way around. “The real issue here is that councillors are the elected representatives of the people and we have the contacts and the knowledge.”

Birmingham City Council have been invited to respond.

The Stirrer, 8 August 2008

Via Socialist Unity

The truth behind pan-Islamism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Farish Noor“Today there is much talk, accompanied by some degree of unnecessary speculation and fear-mongering, about the claims and ambitions of Islamists who seek to create a global Caliphate as the panacea for the ills of Muslim society worldwide.

“That such talk of a pan-Islamic global project would spook the spooks of the international anti-terror industry is, of course, not entirely surprising for nothing seems to agitate the public more these days than the idea of a couple of Muslims getting together and plotting the imminent takeover of the universe….

“In many respects it is not surprising nor unexpected that Muslims today would have such global ambitions for we do live, after all, in a global age and where the very idea of global citizenship – underpinned by the values of cosmopolitanism and universalism – are in common currency….

“Looking closer at some of the global Islamist networks that span the globe today, such as the Tablighi Jama’at (the world’s biggest Muslim missionary movement), the network of Islamist parties with transnational or supra-national ambitions, Muslim guilds and trading groups, Sufi mystical networks and the like, we can see that they all share family resemblances with the more mainstream modes of globalisation that is capital-driven.

“This is not to say that Islamist networks can be likened to McDonald’s or cast as a franchise business with branches to be opened around every street corner. But it does mean that much of the talk of pan-Islamism and the creation of global Islamist networks we have seen the world over thus far is not as alien or exotic as we might think.”

Farish A Noor in the Daily Times, 8 August 2008