Author Archives: Eddie Truman

Muslim miscarries in cell after grilling at airport

Posted on by Eddie Truman

A Muslim woman detained by officials at Glasgow Airport suffered a miscarriage in an immigration cell, the Sunday Herald can reveal.

Marina Miraj, a Canadian Afghan, collapsed in the airport detention room last month after being questioned for hours by immigration staff.

The woman, who is in her 30s and was three months pregnant, was rushed to Paisley’s Royal Alexandra Hospital after being found by airport officials on the cell floor.

Miraj had flown into the UK from Toronto to make plans to settle in Glasgow with her husband. She claims the stress of the interrogation and detention contributed to the miscarriage and is now considering legal action.

She described the ordeal as: “the worst experience of my life.” She added: “I will never be able to forget how I lost my baby in a police cell.”

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Rosie Kane MSP: Muslims targeted by anti-terror legislation

Posted on by Eddie Truman

Motion from SSP to Scottish Parliament: “That the Parliament condemns the remarks of the Home Office minister, Hazel Blears.” … “believes that the targeting of Muslims by the security services will be done on a racist basis and abhors the fact that a Labour government elected with the support of substantial sections of Muslim communities should now be targeting those communities as if they were ‘the enemy within’.”

*S2M-2519 Rosie Kane: Muslims Targeted by Anti-Terror Legislation—That the Parliament condemns the remarks of the Home Office minister, Hazel Blears, to the Home Affairs Select Committee, and widely reported in the press, in relation to counter-terrorism powers that “some of our counter-terrorism powers will be disproportionately experienced by the Muslim community” and that “the threat is most likely to come from those people associated with an extreme form of Islam”; regards these remarks as directly associating our Muslim communities with terrorism; believes that they will be used by racists and far-right thugs as a green light to attack Muslims and will result in an increase in racist attacks; believes that the targeting of Muslims by the security services will be done on a racist basis and abhors the fact that a Labour government elected with the support of substantial sections of Muslim communities should now be targeting those communities as if they were “the enemy within”, and further notes that the last terrorist outrage committed in the United Kingdom was by a far-right racist against the lesbian and gay community.

More anti Qaradawi propaganda from the Sunday Times

Posted on by Eddie Truman

“In favouring Muslim voters at the risk of upsetting gays, Labour is following in the footsteps of Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London. Livingstone has assiduously courted the Muslim vote, even at the expense of goodwill among the gay community. He invited the Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi to London despite the sheikh’s views. Al-Qaradawi condemns homosexuality, advocates wife-beating and describes suicide bombers as ‘martyrs’. ”

Sunday Times, 27 February 2005

Tatchell’s Islamic conspiracy theory

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“Peter Tatchell’s slander that I seem ‘willing to sacrifice gay rights if it is politically expedient to do so’ (Qaradawi not welcome, LLB, November 2004) shows the depths of the errors to which he has been dragged by his ‘Muslim-fundamentalist-plot-to-take-over-the-world’ conspiracy theory.”

Ken Livingstone writing in Labour Left Briefing, February 2005

Islamic culture: A convenient scapegoat

Posted on by Eddie Truman

“Ever since the monumental day of 11 September 2001, the world has been inundated by stale clichés and dim-witted myths, poorly disguised as honest academic research and free objective journalism.

“In this great hyperbole, the world appears broken into two opposite trenches: a sphere of freedom, morality and civility, confronted by its antithesis: an enslaved barbaric realm that encapsulates all that “we” are not.

“The far-stretching lands of Islam loom largely in this bleak uncivilised sphere. If the modern West is dynamic, the world of Islam is stagnant. If it is governed democratically and honours self-ownership, Islam is plagued by a despotism that crushes the individual altogether out of existence. If it is rigorously rational, the world of Islam is the embodiment of raving instincts and wild emotionalism.”

Soumayya Ghannoushi on the Muslim Association of Britain website

Kenan Malik denies Islamophobia exists

Posted on by Eddie Truman

“In reality, discrimination against Muslims is not as great as is often claimed.” So says Kenan Malik. See:

‘What hate?’, Kenan Malik in The Guardian
‘Are Muslims Hated?’ Transcript of Kenan Malik’s Channel 4 documentary
‘Islamophobia Myth’, Kenan Malik on Frontpagemag.com
Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain responds to Malik’s views in The Guardian letters page
Waqar Khan comments in Asians in Media magazine
Dead Men Left blog takes on Malik

Police watchdog to examine all terror arrest complaints

Posted on by Eddie Truman

Muslims feel so victimised by police use of anti-terror powers that the independent police watchdog is to examine all complaints regarding arrests under the legislation.

Serious grievances, involving death, severe injury, alleged racism or large-scale corruption automatically go straight to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. But in other cases, it is up to the relevant police service or the individuals concerned to bring the matter to the attention of the IPCC, which then decides whether to pursue it.

However, the commission thinks the practical application of counter-terrorist measures has so damaged Muslim confidence in the police that it is actively calling in every terrorism-related complaint.

The IPCC will tell the home affairs committee inquiry into terrorism and community relations today that it has requested all 43 English and Welsh police forces to refer complaints or conduct matters arising from anti-terrorist arrests and stop and search.

The IPCC is urging Muslims to come directly to commissioners with grievances, or to go through their mosques or community leaders.

Nick Hardwick, the IPCC chairman, said that Islamic representatives thought their community was being “disproportionately targeted” by the police and had raised “some very significant issues” with the commission regarding arrests and stop and search.

Since the September 11 2001 attacks, British anti-terrorist officers have arrested 701 people, of whom more than two-thirds are thought to be Muslim. But only 119 have been charged with terrorist offences and 17 convicted.

Guardian, 25 January 2005

In the grip of panic

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“The rightwing press is in the grip of a moral panic, constantly serving up new theories to shore up the now familiar thesis that the west and Islam are locked in a clash of civilisations. Admittedly events in the world don’t help. Palestinian suicide bombing, the school siege at Beslan and beheadings in Iraq all fuel the image of an Islamism that shows no mercy.

“British Muslims have got caught up in this and it is affecting their lives, here in this country. For they stand accused – explicitly by the British National party, tacitly by more respectable others – of being a fifth column, a homegrown wing of a global movement bent on terrorising the west.”

Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian, 22 January 2005

Dialogue with a man of peace

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Dialogue with a man of peace

Ken Livingstone

Tribune, 21 January 2005

PETER TATCHELL has spent six months denouncing me for meeting a person, Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who is described by the Muslim Council of Britain, the main Muslim umbrella group in this country, as “the most authoritative Islamic scholar in the world”.

The fact that he has been so been vigorously supported in his campaign by newspapers like the Sun, the Star and the Daily Mail – which have never distinguished themselves by anything other than bigotry in relation to lesbian and gay rights – should have given Tatchell pause for thought.

As Mayor of London, I have a responsibility to meet the leaders of all of London’s many faiths and communities, irrespective of the fact that I disagree with them on particular issues.

Tatchell wages an unrelenting campaign, most recently in the 7 January Tribune, to paint Islam as a uniquely homophobic and reactionary religion. Yet I find that I disagree not only with Muslim leaders, with whom Tatchell seems to be obsessed, but also with Jewish, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Evangelical and other religious leaders on this issue.

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