“With the exception of The Guardian, the National Union of Teachers’ report ‘In Good Faith’ has been largely represented in today’s news media as primarily a ‘Muslim’ story. Implicitly, Islam is the only religion deemed a threat to Britain and British society.”
Julaybib Ayoub at Critically Unstable Muslim, 25 March 2008
Fury over plan to teach Koran in schools
By Gabriel Milland Political Correspondent
Daily Express, 25 March 2008
STATE schools should be forced to open their doors to Islamic preachers teaching the Koran, the largest classroom union demanded yesterday.
The National Union of Teachers’ conference also said existing religious schools – almost all of them Christian – should have to admit pupils from other faiths.
The union’s general secretary Steve Sinnott said that allowing Muslim imams to preach in schools would be a way to reunite divided communities.
But the proposals prompted immediate outrage. Conservative Party backbencher Mark Pritchard said: “This is just further appeasement for Muslim militants. We should just follow the existing laws on religious education, which state that it should be of a predominantly Christian character. All this will do is further divide many communities that are already split on religious lines.”
The British National Party denounces London mayor Ken Livingstone and his relations with the MCB and Yusuf al-Qaradawi. The fascists conclude that Livingstone is … a fascist! (Note, by the way, the endorsement of Martin Bright and the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association.)
Yusuf Smith responds to Charles Moore’s recent Centre for Policy Studies lecture (pdf) “How to beat the Scargills of Islam“.
Indigo Jo Blogs, 23 March 2008
It’s also worth noting the following excerpt from Moore’s ignorant lecture: “Phoney Muslim moderates, beloved of the media, are a great feature of our age. Look at Tariq Ramadan, for example, lionised at Oxford while considered so extreme in France that he found it easier to leave and work here.” As we’ve pointed out repeatedly, anyone who regards Professor Ramadan as an extremist has completely lost the plot. And who represents Moore’s idea of a “moderate”? Predictably, it’s Melanie Phillips’ favourite Muslim, Ed Husain.
Solihull Unite Against Fascism press release, 24 March 2008
BNP is inciting religious hatred on Facebook group – “Say no the Solihull Mosque”.
The BNP has used Facebook to help organise its campaign against the planning application by Solihull Muslim Community Association. The BNP facebook group “Say no to Solihull Mosque” claims to have 1600 members. It has generated over 1000 posts in under two weeks.
The Facebook group is being organised from Stoke on Trent, the administrator is based in Keele and the You Tube video is credited to Stoke BNP. The BNP administrator is openly using it as a recruitment tool, Alex E says “if you are fed up with mosques being built get involved in the BNP”.
The Group wall postings are inviting racist and islamophobic comment without the BNP organisers uttering a word. Examples of racist comments on the BNP Facebook site:
At 5:29am on 23rd March 2008
U avan a laugh???? Even if they did build a dirty mosque mans would just throw pigs guts at it!!!
At 10:35pm on March 18th, 2008
I have just heard the good news CONGRATULATIONS but the fight is not over. These bastards will not go away and until we kick them all out and send them back to their own countries we will have to continue fighting this war. But every time a muslim blows himself up or abuses a white person or tries to take over a neighbourhood we gain more supporters. Time is actually on our side and all of Europe is itching to kick these useless perverts out of Europe . I do not know one person who wants muslims in Europe and I know a lot of people around Europe . If Hitelr hadnt gone and messed things up for nationalism we would never have let them in. Well the tables are turning and these guys are toast.
At 12:43am on March 12th, 2008
fuck the pakis! this is our country! :@:@
These comments from the site are arguably an incitement to religious and racial hatred under the Public Order Act 1986. The BNP is responsible for publishing these comments if not directly speaking them. It is also in breach of the terms of use of Facebook. Facebook terms of use state that users agree not to upload, post or share content that the site deems “harmful, threatening, unlawful … inflammatory … hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable”.
A Solihull Unite Against Fascism spokesman said: “The BNP’s campaign against the so-called islamification of Solihull is clearly racist and is intended to direct hate against a particular section of the community. It is in clear breach of the Facebook terms of use and the site owners should take urgent action to close it down.”
At least 1,000 people have taken part in a demonstration in Amsterdam against the planned release of a film expected to be highly critical of Islam.
Protesters objected to the planned internet release of the film by Dutch right-wing politician Geert Wilders. Mr Wilders says the 15-minute film deals with Islamic ideology which he describes as “the enemy of freedom”.
Some protesters in central Amsterdam carried signs that said “Stop the witch hunt against Muslims”.
“We can no longer remain silent. There is a climate of hate and fear in the Netherlands,” said Rene Danen, a spokesman from anti-racism organisation Nederland Bekent Kleur (The Netherlands Shows its Colours), which organised the protest.
See also Canadian Press, 22 March 2008
And “Web host suspends site planned for anti-Koran film”, Reuters, 22 March 2008
In the UK the fascists rally to the defence of their co-thinker Wilders: BNP news article, 23 March 2008
George Clooney asked him to work as a consultant on two films, including “Syriana,” and national news programs and networks such as “The Today Show,” “Nightline” and CNN have featured the author on a regular basis. But retired communications professor Jack Shaheen says it’s a lonely job taking Hollywood to task for the ethnic stereotypes it portrays.
His latest book, “Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs after 9/11,” examines Arab and Muslim images in more than 100 post-9/11 movies, and challenges industry heavyweights to shatter the villainous stereotypes that the cinema presents to both the American and international public.
“I remember going to the library looking for literature and there was nothing on Arab images in American popular culture. Zilch,” he says. “But there were books on images of Jews, women, blacks, Hispanics and Asians, and I just gobbled those up. I studied them all to learn from their strengths and weaknesses. The exposure to that literature and history helped me not only look at images of the past from a different perspective, but it made me look for commonalities in demonization.”
Through his research, Shaheen found the same formula was repeatedly being used by Hollywood and TV to denigrate minorities.
“In order for a stereotype to be successful, they can’t be like us. They can’t have children. They can’t be devout. They can’t value human life as much as we do. They are violent. They oppress their women. They are savages,” Shaheen says.
“When I grew up, it was Native Americans. Blacks. … We had the red scare with Communists. So we have all of these formulas from the past that sort of make their way to the present. Now it’s Arab equals Muslim equals the godless enemy Other. And it’s hard, because once we begin to get a fixed image of a people or a faith in our minds, it’s difficult to shake.”
A Muslim Chaplain from Liverpool claims “discriminatory” interrogation is happening on a regular basis at Manchester Airport. Adam Kelwick, from Wavertree, says he was stopped and questioned for two hours on arrival at the airport as he returned from a Middle Eastern business trip on Wednesday, the third time this has happened since the introduction of the Terrorism Act in 2006. He claims officials searched his lap top, phone, asked for his bank account pin number and put a string of questions to him.
The chaplain, who carries out charity work in the city to aid social cohesion, claims other friends and colleagues have complained about similar experiences. He said:
“Some people I know would rather tolerate the congestion of the airports in London, rather than put up with the unreasonable questioning and discrimination at Manchester. I was ordered to remove all my items from my baggage piece by piece and was then taken into a small room and asked questions like ‘what is your mother’s date of birth?’ and ‘what school did you go to?’.
“It has happened a few times before at the airport but never when travelling from Liverpool or London. It is ironic, I was travelling in traditional Muslim dress, but an international terrorist isn’t going to fly around the world with a beard and a gown on. It is discriminatory and unfair. The first time it happens you think ‘OK, this is helping to deal with terrorism’ so I don’t mind, but for it to happen on a regular basis is unnecessary.”
Pope Benedict has baptised Magdi Allam, a Muslim-born journalist who has converted to Catholicism, during an historic Easter mass. A statement released by the Vatican less than an hour before the start of the Saturday ceremony confirmed Mr Allam’s conversion, adding: “For the Catholic Church, each person who asks to receive baptism after a deep personal search, a fully free choice and adequate preparation, has a right to receive it.”
After baptising Mr Allam – who was born in Egypt – Pope Benedict said a homily reflecting on the meaning of the procedure. “We no longer stand alongside or in opposition to one another,” he explained. “Thus faith is a force for peace and reconciliation in the world: distances between people are overcome, in the Lord we have become close.”
Muslim commentators have said Mr Allam’s baptism was his own decision but have criticised the high profile his conversion was given by the Vatican.
The Olympics is meant to promote solidarity – but the 2012 Games has become a question of faith for some in East London as Christianity and Islam vie to become the most visible religion around the 500-acre park.
Muslim leaders have begun a charm offensive with residents in the borough of Newham over controversial plans to build a 12,000-capacity “super-mosque” on the edge of the Olympic Park. Trustees of the Abbey Mills Mosque conducted tours of the 18-acre site in West Ham last week to show they had “nothing to hide”, say their Westminster lobbyists.
The Kingsway International Christian Centre, which claims to be the fastest-growing church in western Europe, wanted to build a church capable of holding 8,000 people – or five times the size of Westminster Abbey – after it was evicted from its home on the Olympic site. The congregation is still homeless and “crammed” into a 1,000-seat cinema while it plans its appeal, according to Pastor Dipo Oluyomi.
Alan Craig, a local councillor and leader of the Christian Peoples Alliance Party, is fighting their cause. “The symbolism of the largest church in Europe coming down and the largest mosque going up is powerful,” he said. “The whole world will come to East London and they won’t see a church or a cathedral, they will see a mosque.”
He is accusing officials in Newham borough, where Christianity is the dominant religion, of bias towards the Islamic project after they invited 250 community groups to the mosque’s open weekend.