CAGE has published the first-ever account of an NHS counter-terrorism training session. The testimony was written by a healthcare professional who approached CAGE after becoming concerned that she was being asked to inform on her patients.
See CAGE press release, 30 April 2014
Read the article here.
Community-law enforcement measures to combat hate crimes against Muslims were the focus of an expert meeting on 28 April 2014 in Vienna organized jointly by the Swiss OSCE Chairmanship and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). The meeting brought together government officials, community leaders, civil society representatives and academics from 26 OSCE participating States.
Muslims continue to experience violent manifestations of intolerance and discrimination in the OSCE region, the participants said, and governments need to do more to ensure the security of Muslim communities, including by enhancing their confidence in law enforcement agencies.
Referring to the findings of ODIHR’s annual hate crime report, Floriane Hohenberg, Head of the ODIHR Tolerance and Non-Discrimination Department, emphasized that day-to-day activities of Muslim communities are endangered by violent attacks. “We are concerned, however, that many of these incidents are not reported to the police because the victims believe that their complaints will not be taken seriously or that they will be victimized again,” she said.
Just weeks before the museum’s opening, tensions are rising over a video to be included in the exhibit, denials of media requests, and a board member’s allegedly anti-Muslim sentiments, Dean Obeidallah reports.
The National September 11 Memorial Museum board member in question is Debra Burlingame (pictured), who is the sister of Charles Burlingame, the pilot of the American Airlines flight that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.
Muslim leaders in the Czech Republic on Monday accused the police of abusing their power after armed officers raided Islamic institutions in Prague over the weekend, detaining 20 people during Friday Prayer at a mosque and a community center, and arresting the publisher of a book that law enforcement officials say incites xenophobia and violence.
A spokesman for the Czech police, Pavel Hantak, declined to identify the publisher or the book. He told the Czech news media that he did not want to help promote a book that disseminated racism, anti-Semitism and violence against what it called “inferior races.”
The police said the publisher was a 55-year-old Czech citizen who had the book translated into Czech. He has been charged with promoting hate speech, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Muneeb Hassan Alrawi, the head of the Association of Czech Muslim Religious Communities, said in an interview on Monday that law enforcement officials had indicated that the book behind the raids was “The Fundamentals of Tawheed” by Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, a Jamaican-born imam, who has been banned from entering Australia and Britain and expelled from Germany because of what his critics call extremist views.
Mr. Alrawi said that several copies of the book had been confiscated by the police during a raid Friday at the headquarters of the Islamic Foundation, a community center in Prague, the Czech capital.
Assed Baig analyses the hysteria around the supposed “Trojan Horse” plot by Islamists to take over Birmingham schools. He points out that Michael Gove’s background of Islamophobia (he is the author of the scaremongering anti-Islam book Celsius 7/7 and a member of the right-wing think-tanks Policy Exchange and the Henry Jackson Society) renders the education secretary incapable of examining the issues in an objective fashion.
We can’t ask Muslim mothers to stop the killing in Syria. That’s the job of the international community – and it is failing, argues Saleyha Ahsan.
MURFREESBORO — The U.S. Supreme Court should reject hearing an appeal about Rutherford County’s public notice before approval of a mosque, according to attorneys for the county.
“Defendants pray the Court deny the petitioners’ petition for writ of certiorari,” states a document sent this week to the high court in Washington, D.C., from county lead defense attorney Josh McCreary and County Attorney Jim Cope.
The document is in response to plaintiffs led by Kevin Fisher, Henry Golczynski and Lisa Moore asking for the high court to hear their case. Their attorneys recently completed their request for an appeal for a case that initially started September 2010 in seeking to stop construction of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro from being built on Veals Road off Bradyville Pike.
A film that will be shown at the National September 11 Memorial Museum when it opens next month unfairly links Islam and terrorism, clergy members said in letters demanding it be changed.
“The Rise of Al Qaeda,” a brief documentary narrated by NBC anchor Brian Williams, shows the growth of international terrorist groups in the years leading up to the 2001 attacks. The film has not been publicly released, but museum officials have screened it for groups including an interfaith clergy advisory panel.
Members of the clergy group sent a letter to museum officials this week asking that the film be re-edited to make it clear that not all Muslims support the terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center.
“We continue to posit that the video may very well leave viewers with the impression that all Muslims bear some collective guilt or responsibility for the actions of al-Qaida, or even misinterpret its content to justify bigotry or even violence toward Muslims or those perceived to be Muslim (e.g., Sikhs),” the clergy members wrote. The signers included Peter B. Gudaitis, chief executive of New York Disaster Interfaith Services, and the Rev. Chloe Breyer, executive director of the Interfaith Center of New York.
Loonwatch explains to Sunny Hundal.
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune has the details.
See also “CAIR-FL, parents, students to oppose anti-Muslim textbook bill”, CAIR press release, 21 April 2014