OLMSTED FALLS, Ohio — Faced with the threat of a federal lawsuit, the Olmsted Falls schools have pulled a video about Muslims in America from its seventh-grade social studies curriculum.
School Superintendent Jim Lloyd said the district agreed to remove the 2005 documentary TV show, “30 Days: Muslims and America,” rather than spend money defending the right to show it.
Yesterday’s Sunday Times reported: “A state-funded school in Blackburn has become the first to force its pupils to wear a hijab both in and out of class.”
The report expressed concern that the rules at the Tauheedul Islam Girls’ High School “require its 800 pupils ‘to wear the hijab outside the school and home’, ‘recite the Koran at least once a week’ and ‘not bring stationery to school that contains un-Islamic images’, such as pictures of pop stars”.
Not only that, but an antisemitic Saudi preacher is said to have visited the school. Haras Rafiq, described as “a former government adviser on the prevention of extremism”, is quoted as saying that he warned the Department for Education about this two years ago, but they ignored him.
On Saturday, September 28, a Muslim woman reported to the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN) that she was physically escorted out of the Chisholm Baptist Church for attending the Annual Hibbing Area Women’s Retreat.
CAIR-MN says it will pursue legal options if any federal or state anti-discrimination laws were violated.
Protestant Coalition co-founder Willie Frazer appeared at court in Belfast yesterday dressed up as Abu Hamza. You might think that he was trying to draw a parallel between himself and another extremist who has incited hatred on the basis of a warped interpretation of his religious beliefs.
But no. Frazer has been charged under the Serious Crime Act 2007 with encouraging the commission of criminal offences in a speech he made in January during the Belfast flag protests, and he was protesting against a Loyalist militant being prosecuted on the basis a piece of legislation that he claims was meant to be used only against Muslims.
The Virginian-Pilot has a forthright editorial condemning the hatred displayed last week when Virginia Beach City Council approved an application to build mosque.
It concludes: “Rather than allowing vile rumors and veiled threats to stand as the last word on this subject, Virginia Beach’s leaders and citizens should condemn such behavior and make clear that their community is better than that.”
That’s the headline to a report in the Daily Mail. The subject of the article is an unpleasant individual from Burnley named Jubel Miah, who was sent to a young offenders’ institution in 2010 for possessing heroin with intent to supply and has just been jailed after being convicted of assaulting his wife.
Well, that’s what Patrick Sookhdeo of the right-wing evangelical Christian Barnabas Fund says.
Condemning David Cameron’s statement that the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab “don’t represent Islam or Muslims in Britain or anywhere else in the world”, in an editorial on the Barnabas Fund website, Sookhdeo objects that this was as bad as Cameron’s claim after the murder of Lee Rigby that “there is nothing in Islam that justified this dreadful act”.
“While world leaders continue to fail to understand, or perhaps accept, the ideological basis within Islam for acts of violence,” Sookhdeo asserts, “they will never get to grips with the likes of al-Shabaab. To say that ‘they don’t represent Islam or Muslims in Britain or anywhere else in the world’ is flagrantly untrue.”
We have previously covered the difficulties the “counterjihad” publication Dispatch International has faced in booking meetings in Malmö and Copenhagen for English Defence League leaders Stephen Lennon and Kevin Carroll.
Earlier this week DI regretfully announced that the EDL speaking tour has now been called off: “Rarely has an arrangement met with so many problems. First we couldn’t rent a hall and now we have to cancel the meeting altogether.”
Four MPs for Geert Wilders’ anti-immigration PVV wore a badge in parliament on Wednesday featuring a flag associated with neo-Nazi groups, the NRC reports.
The Prinsen flag, which has an orange section rather than red as in the current Dutch flag, was adopted by the Dutch national socialist party NSB in the 1930s. It has since become a symbol of right-wing extremism and is used by groups such as the Nederlandse Volksunie and Stormfront.
MPs Martin Bosma, Reinette Klever, Machiel de Graaf and Harm Beertema wore the badge during the debate, the NRC said. The PVV declined to respond to question on why they had worn the flag.
Writing in the Sun, Rod Liddle takes issue with David Cameron’s statement that the horrific killings in Nairobi “don’t represent Islam or Muslims in Britain or anywhere else in the world”. Liddle concedes that only a “small minority of Muslims” support such actions, but says that the perpetrators were nevertheless Muslims: