A city college that brought in a face veil ban has come under fire after it performed an embarrassing U-turn.
Just a day after David Cameron backed Birmingham Metropolitan College for outlawing religious veils on security grounds, bosses announced they had changed their minds. Now anyone can wear a face covering if it reflects their “cultural values”, the college said yesterday. The “cowardly” climbdown came after “politically correct critics” set up an online petition against the move.
On Tuesday, September 17, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) will hold a press conference to release a groundbreaking report, “Legislating Fear: Islamophobia and its Impact in the United States 2011-2012.”
The 158-page report by CAIR, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, includes the following:
“There are four Muslim families in San Angelo … and that’s four too many,” Tea Party member Terry Campbell declared.
By then, the wide and brightly-lit hall had all but cleared, leaving behind only the faint smell of cookies and stale coffee, where a half-hour prior excitement and anger had rung out. There had been roughly 40 members and guests in attendance – a mostly white and graying audience identifiable by their red polos with the name “Tea Party” proudly emblazoned on the breast – but Campbell’s opinion hadn’t stood alone.
“There is 1.6 billion … Muslims in the world, and they claim that only 10 percent of the Muslims is radical Islamists,” Campbell continued. “That means there is 160 million Muslim terrorists in the world. Now, it only takes one with a car bomb to kill hundreds of people. Now, how can you tell which one out of ten is the bad guy?” he paused slightly, “I don’t trust any of them.”
“It’s hard to,” fellow Tea Party member Jack Plott agreed.
What was billed as a 9/11 memorial service took on elements of an anti-Islamic rally Wednesday, including a lengthy speech by the leader of what has been labeled an anti-Muslim hate group.
An audience of about 500 people, including schoolchildren, gathered at Patriots Park at 10 a.m. to hear remarks by city officials, law enforcement and family members of those who died on 9/11 and the ongoing fight against terrorism. But three other speakers used the podium to criticize Islam and the policies of President Obama, taking city officials by surprise, including Venice Mayor John Holic, who called the message “extreme.”
One speaker was Tom Trento, who heads an organization called The United West, which says its mission is to defend “Western Civilization against Shariah Islam.” The United West is based in Lake Mary and is classified as an “anti-Muslim hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Trento, whose speech lasted for nearly 30 minutes, told the audience: “I’m not talking about radical Islam or moderate Islam. I’m talking about all Islam. Their goal is to get every single one of us to convert to Islam. And they won’t stop until we do.”
A Birmingham college’s decision to ban Muslim face veils for security reasons has been backed by David Cameron today despite an outcry from some students.
The Prime Minister believes education institutes can enforce their own rules on school uniform but Nick Clegg said he was “uneasy” about the ban.
Controversial Gainesville Pastor Terry Jones, known for his plans to publicly burn copies of the Muslim holy book, was arrested Wednesday with thousands of kerosene-soaked Qurans, authorities said.
Jones, 61, was arrested on felony charges after a traffic stop near a pharmacy in Mulberry, a small town in Polk County, just before 5 p.m. He faces charges of unlawfully transporting fuel and openly carrying a firearm.
Deputies said Jones was riding in a pickup truck that was towing a smoker and trailer filled with kerosene-soaked Qurans. He also had extra bottles of kerosene inside the truck bed. According to Jones’ website, he planned to burn 2,998 Qurans in the Tampa Bay area on Wednesday.
Two weeks ago the self-styled Free Press Society and its Danish/Swedish publication Dispatch International announced that they have invited Stephen Lennon and Kevin Carroll to visit Scandinavia for a speaking tour later this month. The English Defence League leaders are to address meetings in Malmö and Copenhagen where they will explain “why they oppose England’s Islamization and how they go about it”.
Dispatch International was launched in August 2012, with Ingrid Carlqvist and Lars Hedegaard as editors, to serve as an organ of the international “counterjihad” movement. The far-right Sweden Democrats party (which observed that it had “many connections … both personal and ideological” with the Free Press Society) was so impressed with the new publication that it sent a free copy to each of its six thousand members. Challenged at a press conference over whether he was happy distributing a newspaper that compares Islam to Nazism, Sweden Democrats spokesperson Richard Jomshof said he thought this was “a perfectly reasonable comparison”.
Writing in the Montreal Gazette, Don Macpherson carries out a thorough demolition of the Parti Québécois government’s proposed “Charter of Quebec Values”.
Amanda Kelly of Global News has interviewed Alan Sked, the founder and former leader of UKIP, to get his perspective on Quebec’s Charter of Values.
Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer (recently banned from the UK because of their record of inciting hatred) are due to visit Toronto next week to address a meeting organised by the far-right Kahanists of the Jewish Defence League.
The National Council of Canadian Muslims has issued an action alert calling on concerned citizens to contact the federal Minister of Public Safety Steven Blaney to urge him to review whether these anti-Muslim extremists should be allowed into the country.
Update: See “Canadian Muslim leaders worried U.S. speakers will spread ‘hate’ about Islam”, Canadian Press, 13 September 2013