Muslims slam Merkel’s mosque remark

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Angela MerkelBERLIN — German Muslims have hit out at Chancellor Angela Merkel for suggesting that mosque minarets should not be higher than church steeples, saying her provocative remarks were politically motivated.

“We must be on guard against sparking artificial discussions for political purposes which have little connection with reality,” Bekir Alboga, spokesman for the Coordination Council of Muslims, an umbrella organization for Muslims in Germany, said.

Merkel, a Lutheran pastor’s daughter, told a congress of her conservative Christian Democrats that “we must take care that mosque cupolas are not built demonstratively higher than church steeples”.

Merkel’s fellow conservatives in Bavaria have been saying for months that minarets should not dwarf steeples. Local residents are up in arms about plans to build mosques in Berlin, Munich and Cologne. Christians in Cologne do not want the city’s skyline – now dominated by one of the world’s largest cathedrals – to be altered by two tall minarets.

Islamophobic remarks have gained momentum after Merkel’s conservative party came to power in November 2005. In statements endorsed by Merkel’s party last June, Germany’s top cardinal warned against “uncritical tolerance” which could lead to Islam enjoying equal standing with Christianity in the country.

Islam Online, 7 December 2007

Hillary Clinton tells email slur aide to quit

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A volunteer for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has resigned after forwarding a chain email that suggested her rival Barack Obama is a Muslim who wants to destroy the United States by being elected to its highest office.

Judy Rose, a co-ordinator of the Clinton campaign in Jones County in the election battleground state of Iowa, forwarded the statement to eight people on Nov 21, according to a copy of the email obtained by the Associated Press.

“There is no place in our campaign, or any campaign, for this kind of politics,” said Patti Solis Doyle, the Clinton campaign manager, in a statement which called the email “outrageous and offensive”. She added: “This was wholly unauthorised and we were totally unaware of it.”

Daily Telegraph, 7 December 2007

Posted in USA

Woman nicknamed ‘lyrical terrorist’ escapes jail sentence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A 23-year-old former Heathrow airport worker who stored military manuals and wrote poems celebrating the beheading of non-believers avoided prison yesterday. Samina Malik, who called herself the “lyrical terrorist”, was the first woman convicted under section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 of possessing records likely to be useful in terrorism.

At the Old Bailey yesterday, Judge Peter Beaumont, the recorder of London, sentenced her to nine months’ prison, suspended for 18 months, and ordered her to carry out 100 hours of unpaid work. “In my judgment your offence is on the margin of what this crime concerns,” he told Malik. He said she was of previously good character and from a “supportive and law-abiding family who are appalled by the trouble that you are in”.

Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain, welcomed the decision to suspend the sentence. “Samina Malik was being prosecuted in effect for a thought crime because she had downloaded some material from the internet which anyone could download.”

Guardian, 7 December 2007

‘Could a robust Christian response be the answer to Muslim extremism?’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dominic Lawson interviews the Bishop of Rochester:

“Dr Nazir-Ali does not simply blame the Saudis, or other foreign governments who might have been funding militant Islam in the mosques of Great Britain, for the rise in Muslim chauvinism in this country. He blames the British people themselves, arguing that there has been a catastrophic collapse in Christian-based morality and spirituality in this country over the past 40 or so years and that this has created a ‘moral vacuum’ in society as a whole, which has been increasingly filled – at least in the minds of impressionable youth – by fundamentalist Islam…. Dr Nazir-Ali is deeply critical of the way in which New Labour, supposedly packed with devout Christians, has indulged men such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi.”

Independent, 7 December 2007

Hijab ban sidelines Edmonton soccer team

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim female soccer team in Edmonton has had to postpone all their games until the Alberta Soccer Association makes a final decision on players wearing headscarves on the field.

Half the girls on the Al-Ikhwat team wear a hijab, a headscarf worn by some Muslim females in keeping with their belief of dressing modestly.

The provincial association has temporarily banned players from wearing hijabs on the pitch after a referee asked a 14-year-old girl to leave a game in Calgary last month. He said her headscarf posed a safety risk.

The Alberta Soccer Association follows international rules that forbid all headgear, including sweatbands, but said it will review safety issues before making a final ruling on hijabs.

Amereen Chowdhry, a Grade 12 student who’s played with the team for a year and a half wearing her hijab, says it’s not dangerous. “Talk to us directly. Ask us what it’s like so we can show then that it’s not a dangerous issue. Our hijabs don’t have pins in it and they are tucked into our jersey,” she told CBC News.

The team plays in the Edmonton and District Soccer Association’s indoor league. Mike Thorne, the group’s executive director, said women wearing hijabs have been playing in Edmonton for more than seven years without any problems.

CBC News, 6 December 2007

‘Muslim prayer beds’ – more lies from the Daily Star

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dewsbury Hospital“Hospital chiefs who told nurses to point Muslim patients’ beds towards Mecca five-times-a-day last night climbed down. They said they would now only do it for the ‘terminally ill’. Nurses had been breaking off from health care duties to perform the ritual at Dewsbury and District Hospital in West Yorks….

“There were claims last night that the bed shifting policy almost cost one 80-year-old her life. Staff at Dewsbury Hospital were so busy gran Mavis Fox was able to slip out unnoticed and walk over three miles home. She was rushed back after falling and gashing her head. Overworked nurses had failed to spot that she was missing. Mavis’s family are now fuming that she was able to walk out.

“One angry relative said: ‘They said the nurse was busy and they didn’t have enough staff. My gran could have died that day. It was really cold and no one even knew that she’d gone. If they can make moving beds for Muslims a priority why can’t they make it a priority to look after other patients?'”

Daily Star, 6 December 2007

There has been no “climb down” by the Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust. There never was a policy of moving Muslim patients’ beds five times a day, nor were there any plans to implement such a policy. Read the original press release by the Trust and their correction of the Daily Star‘s lies here.

Muslims ‘criminalised for silly thoughts’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Abdul Bari at TUCYoung Muslims are being convicted of thought crimes and branded as terrorists for life, the country’s most prominent Islamic leader has told The Times.

Muhammad Abdul Bari said police and prosecutors were criminalising youths for harbouring “silly thoughts” and were undermining Gordon Brown’s £400 million drive to win Muslim hearts and minds. Dr Bari, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain, was commenting ahead of the sentencing today of Samina Malik, a shop assistant who styled herself as “the lyrical terrorist”, wrote poetry in praise of beheadings and joined extremist internet forums.

Dr Bari told The Times: “Many young people download objectionable material from the internet, but it seems that if you are a Muslim then this could lead to terrorist charges, even if you have absolutely no intention to do harm to anyone else. Samina’s so-called poetry was certainly very offensive but I don’t believe that this case should really have been a criminal matter. Young people may well have some silly thoughts. That should not be criminalised. It is their actions that we should be concerned about.” He said that if police were concerned about Malik they should have placed her under surveillance and detained her if she was involved in “actual terror-related activity”.

Dr Bari added: “Instead, she was prosecuted for what can only be termed really as a thought crime. This should not be of concern just to Muslims, but to all in our society who care about natural justice. Her conviction raises a lot of deeply worrying questions about Section 58 of the Terrorism Act and just how incredibly broad its scope is.”

He contrasted the stance taken by the police in cases like Malik’s with Gordon Brown’s antiradicalisation initiatives in schools, mosques and youth groups. The Prime Minister spoke in his security statement last month about mentoring programmes, roadshows and other methods to “isolate extremists”.

Dr Bari said that Malik’s conviction and other cases could prove counter-productive. He added: “It is certainly sensible for the Government to work with Muslim groups to counter extremist propaganda. This is, we have been told often, part of a ‘hearts and minds’ campaign directed at young British Muslims, but it is difficult to see how Samina’s conviction can do anything other than impair this effort.”

Times, 6 December 2007

A shabby triumph

Posted on by Eddie Truman

Geoffrey Alderman reckons that the Sudan teddy bear incident was manuipulated by the British Government  in order to allow UK Muslims to gain some positive publicity for speaking out against the jailing of Gillian Gibbons and intervening on her behalf with the Sudanese government.

Clearly annoyed at being unable to smear the Muslim Council of Britain in general and Inayat Bunglawala in particular as being supporters of barbarism, Alderman constructs a conspiracy theory to… smear the MCB and UK Muslims.

Comment Is Free, 5 December 2007

Giving aid and comfort to Muslim terrorists and their Koranic jihad

Posted on by Eddie Truman

The Christian fundamentalist website Movieguide.org is not happy about the new Brian DePalma directed film Redacted. With a summary of the film that it is “Giving aid and comfort to Muslim terrorists and their Koranic jihad”, the website lists its complaints:

“REDACTED is a controversial left-wing movie about two despicable American soldiers in Iraq leading a raid to rape and murder a teenage Iraqi girl and her family. This unbalanced, abhorrent movie will be used as propaganda by the brutal anti-Christian, anti-American Muslim terrorists who want to murder anyone who opposes their totalitarian aims.”

With attitudes towards women making up a substantial part of criticisms of Muslims in the 21st Century it is interesting to note that one of Movieguide.org’s complaints is of “an anti-American diatribe by some goofy-looking young woman on the Internet”.

Muslim woman sues for being forced to remove headscarf in US jail

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jameelah MedinaA Muslim woman arrested for riding a commuter train without a valid ticket has filed a federal lawsuit in the United States, claiming her religious freedom was violated when she was forced to remove her headscarf when she was taken to jail.

Jameelah Medina also said she was intimidated by a deputy who accused her of being a terrorist and called Islam an “evil” religion, according to the suit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

The suit names the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and Deputy Craig Roberts of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

After determining her ticket was invalid, the officers told her to get off at the next station, where a deputy would be waiting for her. Roberts handcuffed Medina, put her in the back of a police car and began driving her to a jail.

During the ride, Roberts berated Medina and Islam, according to the suit. Roberts “accused Medina of being a terrorist and supporting terrorism. He stated that Muslims are evil … and that the United States was in Iraq at God’s direction to squash evil,” read the suit.

At the West Valley Detention Center in San Bernardino, Medina was forced to remove her headscarf despite several attempts to explain to a female deputy why she wore it, the suit said.

After several hours, Medina was released without being charged or fined, her lawyer said.

Associated Press, 6 December 2007

See also ACLU press release, 6 December 2007