Talk show hosts at Fox News have been whipping US viewers up into a state of indignation over Muslims’ supposed failure to condemn the terrorist attack in Kenya.
Bill O’Reilly demanded: “What is the Muslim world doing about it? Nothing!” And Bob Beckel expanded on this theme:
Reversing course, Hillsborough County’s transit agency will allow the Florida Council on American-Islamic Relations to advertise on its buses.
The unanimous vote by members of the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit board of directors is a sharp turn from where members were in August, when eight of the 10 present rejected the advertisement on county buses, citing promotion of religion as a concern. The vote, taken Monday evening, came after CAIR Florida filed a letter requesting an appeal.
The nonprofit organization says it is aimed at challenging stereotypes of Islam and Muslims and defending civil liberties.
Its ad features a photograph of eight people and the CAIR Florida logo, with the message: “Embracing Diversity at Work, Defending Civil Rights in The Community.” It is meant to promote free legal advice the group provides to people of all religions, races or national origin, the organization said.
Controversial far-right group the Scottish Defence League are planning another protest in the centre of Dundee. They aim to hold a rally outside the Overgate Centre a week on Saturday in defiance of a council warning that they do not have permission for a gathering.
Police are drawing up plans to deal with any unrest from the extreme political organisation’s arrival in the city on October 5. The potential for disorder has been heightened by plans by an anti-fascist alliance to hold a demonstration against the SDL’s visit on the day.
In this week’s East London Advertiser, Sabby Dhalu, joint secretary of Unite Against Fascism, and Padraig Reidy, senior writer at Index on Censorship, debate the limits of the right to protest and freedom of expression.
The Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France reports on the conviction of an individual who posted an anti-Muslim hate message on the website of Le Figaro in 2011. The court imposed a one-month suspended prison sentence and a €1680 fine.
The message read: “… as for the Muslims who increasingly provoke the indigenous French with their shit halal meals … I advise them to immediately stop these provocations or leave France as soon as possible and return to their Muslim countries if they don’t know how to live in harmony with other religions, otherwise they will eventually only have the choice of the suitcase or the coffin as was the case for the ‘pieds noirs’ in the ’60s.”
Trendy clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) has agreed to make religious accommodations and allow workers to wear head scarves as part of a settlement of discrimination lawsuits filed in California, lawyers announced Monday. The retailer will now allow hijabs, the traditional head scarves worn by many Muslim women when in public.
One judge determined the company fired a Muslim worker from a California store, while another judge said it refused to hire another woman in the state because of their refusal to remove their hijabs during work. The rulings came after the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed lawsuits on behalf of both women.
In court papers filed Friday, Abercrombie agreed to pay the women a combined $71,000 and unspecified attorney fees. Additionally, it has established an appeals process for workers who believe they were denied religious accommodations.
The New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY) today reported an apparently bias-motivated assault on a New Jersey Muslim woman taking part in a pro-democracy rally in Times Square on Saturday.
CAIR-NY reports that the woman, who wears an Islamic headscarf (hijab), was called an “f**king terrorist” during the assault. The incident and the arrest of the alleged perpetrator were caught on video.
Join me in a criminal court in suburban Paris on almost any weekday and I’ll show you exactly where national debates about female face coverings end up.
Ever since France introduced its “burqa ban” in 2011, there has been a constant stream of wretched cases involving the handful of Muslims who choose to wear such garments. Not only are perfectly upstanding women being fined for their choice of dress, principally the full-body niqab, which leaves a slit for the eyes, but an increasing number of defendants are being tried for attacking them.
One case involves two self-styled “patriotic vigilantes” who targeted a pregnant 21-year-old in the commuter town of Argenteuil, north-west of Paris, in June. The new law persuaded the men to shout racist insults before putting the woman in hospital, where she lost her baby. Another three reported cases on the same council estate over the course of just one month this summer saw full-veil wearers assaulted as their attackers shouted: “Dirty Arab, dirty Muslim.”
Those calling for a veil ban in Britain have clearly ignored such depressingly routine cases. They do not realise how the legislation introduced by President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government has not only stigmatised Muslim women, but somehow legitimised physical attacks on them. The ban in France is a hateful assault on basic freedoms, one that has been seized on by an unlikely alliance of rightwing politicians and feminists.
Excellent article by Nabila Ramdani in the Observer, 22 September 2013
Alice Géraud interviews sociologists Abdellali Hajjat and Marwan Mohammed, authors of the forthcoming study Islamophobie: Comment les élites françaises fabriquent le “problème musulman”.
Update: See also “France: face à l’islamophobie, une résistance s’organise”, AFP, 24 September 2013
By pandering to ethnic nationalism, the Parti Québécois is playing a cynical and dangerous game, Martin Patriquin argues.