Another stupid provocation from Charlie Hebdo

charb
Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier

A French satirical magazine published nude cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed Wednesday, a move that could further inflame tensions after violent protests in the Muslim world over an anti-Islam film.

The cover of Charlie Hebdo shows a Muslim in a wheelchair being pushed by an Orthodox Jew under the title “Intouchables 2”, referring to an award-winning French film about a poor black man who helps an aristocratic quadriplegic.

Another cartoon on the back page of the weekly magazine show a naked turbaned Mohammed exposing his posterior to a film director, a scene inspired by a 1963 film starring French film star Brigitte Bardot.

AFP, 19 September 2012

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France: Socialist deputy mayor refused to marry Muslim woman who wore hijab

Florence CyrulnikThe Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France reports that on Thursday 6 September a young Muslim couple, Saad and Myriam, arrived at the town hall at La Seyne-sur-Mer in southeastern France to get married.

However when Florence Cyrulnik (pictured left), the Socialist Party deputy mayor who was to preside over their wedding, arrived she told Myriam abruptly that she would not proceed with the marriage unless the bride immediately removed her headscarf. Although Myriam was not wearing a face veil, which is of course illegal in France, she was informed that religious symbols were banned in public spaces according to a local secularist statute.

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Multiculturalism ‘past its sell-by date’ claims Cantle

Secularism 2012

The Daily Telegraph reports that Ted Cantle, author of a notorious 2001 report into riots in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley, will deliver a speech at a National Secular Society conference next week in which he argues that the idea of multiculturalism in Britain is now “well past its sell-by date”.

Cantle calls for a halt to all state funding for projects and services aimed at or run by religious groups or individual ethnic communities. He asserts that such projects are turning Britain into a divided society and amount to a form of state-sponsored segregation.

Appearing along with Cantle at the NSS conference will be Richard (“Islam is the greatest man-made force for evil in the world today”) Dawkins, the Islamophobic drunk Nick Cohen, and Maryam (“terrorism is justified and encouraged in Islam”) Namazie. So he’ll be in good company.

Atheists ignore Islamophobia at their peril

FatheistChris Stedman, author of the forthcoming book Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious, notes that “there are worrying indicators that public figures in the atheist movement are perpetuating and enabling a hostile stance toward Muslims – in many cases, above and beyond the criticisms they direct at other religious communities”.

He also criticises the failure of many of his fellow atheists to speak out when ethno-religious minorities are targeted, adding: “silence about the recent spike in bias and violence directed at Muslims, Sikhs, Arabs, and others isn’t a problem exclusive to the atheist community, but by neglecting to tackle it, the atheist movement is opting out of an important conversation about the mistreatment of certain minority groups in the United States”.

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Bell end

Filmmaker Eric Allen Bell is little known in the UK (not least because he hasn’t had much success with the few films he’s made) but he has become something of a celebrity among right-wing Islamophobes in the US.

It was Bell who directed a 2011 documentary titled Not Welcome which (at least in its original version) chronicled the backlash against the construction of an Islamic centre in Murfreesboro Tennessee, from a standpoint sympathetic to the Muslim victims of that campaign. More recently, however, the clearly unstable Bell has become a convert to the views of notorious anti-Islam propagandist Frank Gaffney, whose hysterical warnings about the “enemy-threat doctrine” of Sharia figured prominently in a court case launched by opponents of the Mufreesboro centre.

Bell’s increasingly demented Facebook page now features posts like this (note the use of block caps – the internet equivalent of green ink):

Eric Bell Islam worse than Nazism

If you thought that was bad enough, Loonwatch draws our attention to a more recent Facebook post (from 15 August) in which Bell urges his readers to consider the merits of a nuclear attack on Mecca:

Eric Bell nuke Mecca

This was followed by further comments such as these:

Eric Bell nuke Mecca comments

As Loonwatch notes, Bell allowed this stuff to pass while at the same time deleting comments that were critical of his proposal.

Some might imagine that even the likes of David Horowitz would draw the line at supporting a clearly disturbed individual who promotes this sort of sick lunacy. But they’d be wrong.

Only yesterday Horowitz’s FrontPage Magazine happily posted a new piece by Bell, “The threat of Sharia and the leadership of America’s two parties”, a Gaffney-inspired rant about a conspiracy by the Muslim Brotherhood (who else?) to impose Sharia law on the United States.

Who was behind the campaign against Islamia Village?

Islamic Far Right In Britain

When the Islamic Far-Right in Britain blog launched its campaign to get last weekend’s Islamia Village event at Thorpe Underwood Estate cancelled, it wasn’t in fact the blog’s main author, Andy Hughes, who approached the estate’s Trustees on its behalf.

Perhaps it was felt that Hughes still has a bit too much of the EDL thug about him to make a convincing advocate. Anyway, the person who acted as the IFRB representative in discussions with the estate management was an individual named “Damian”. Presumably this was because he had the advantage of middle class respectability as well as being rather more articulate than Hughes (and even, it would appear, a bit of an intellectual on the side).

This tactic seems to have worked well, as Damian certainly made a favourable impression on the Trustees, a spokesperson for whom posted a comment at Harry’s Place that included the following tribute: “Damian did an excellent job giving us accurate, substantiated information. I replied quickly to him, he responded likewise. We maintained a civil working dialogue throughout. He is to be commended.”

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Are Muslims and ‘mass migration’ a threat to secularism in Denmark?

Danish Regulation of Religion reportRamadan dinners in the Danish Parliament, staff parties without either pork or alcohol and prayer rooms at the airport are all examples of how religion is becoming more visible in public spaces.

“Prior to the mass migration of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, almost all Danes shared similar values and were members of the national Christian church, so religion was not an issue in everyday life. There was no need to discuss neither one’s own nor another person’s religious viewpoint, and secularisation was a matter of course. Today, it is difficult to be in a public place, read the newspaper, or go to school or work without encountering religious expressions and symbols,” says Niels Valdemar Vinding, a PhD student from the Centre for European Islamic Thought at University of Copenhagen and co-author of a recently published report from the European research project RELIGARE that examines religious diversity and secular models in Europe.

“Everywhere in Europe it is clear that the concept of secularism, where religion remains a private matter, is under pressure. Everything suggests that in the future religious organisations will have more influence on schools, workplaces and the media. This means that both private and public institutions will be dealing with religion more often,” explains Vinding.

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CAIR denounces PQ proposal to ban hijab

A national Muslim civil rights advocacy organization today condemned a proposal by Parti Québécois (PQ) leader Pauline Marois to ban the Muslim headscarf and other religious-based attire in provincial government offices if the PQ forms government after upcoming September elections.

The Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN) decried the remarks made Tuesday by Madame Marois at a campaign stop in Trois Riviere that, under a PQ government, Muslim women who wear the hijab would be barred from participating in the Quebec civil service. The PQ says other “overt religious symbols” would likewise be banned, while the Catholic crucifix would remain in Quebec’s National Assembly.

“Many Muslim women regard the hijab as an important and mandatory practice in their faith. The proposed exclusion of a targeted minority of women from the Quebec civil service under a PQ government undermines religious freedom and the democratic values of both Quebec and Canada. The PQ is once again using populist rhetoric and parochial ideas to advance their electoral strategy,” said CAIR-CAN Human Rights Officer Julia Williams.

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Parti Quebecois would bar hijab from civil service with secularism charter

Pauline MaroisPauline Marois is promising to end Quebec’s reasonable accommodation debate if she is elected premier on Sept. 4.

With a new Quebec Charter of Secularism, a Parti Quebecois government would seek to strike a balance between protecting the province’s values and allowing for different cultures to interact.

Under the proposed charter, civil servants would be barred from wearing any religious symbols, including the controversial wear of the hijab. The law would also prohibit citizens from refusing to be served by a member of the opposite sex.

“In Quebec, the state will be neutral. That is absolutely important. Next, the equality between men and women is a value that is not negotiable,” said Marois, at a campaign stop in Trois-Riveries.

Despite the rhetoric, the party leader said that Quebec’s cultural symbols would not be impacted, including Christmas trees and the crucifix that has hung in the National Assembly since 1936. “We’re not denying our past,” said Marois.

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French Muslims protest in Gennevilliers against Islamophobia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=D4ZQ9O3JvOQ

Press TV reports from a demonstration in Gennevilliers against the sacking (since withdrawn) of four Muslims workers at a summer camp run by the local authority. They were dismissed on the grounds that their fasting for Ramadan supposedly made them unfit to carry out their duties and they represented a threat to the safety of the young people they were supervising.

Gennevilliers has a Communist mayor, Jacques Bourgoin, who initially supported the sackings, and his position was strongly supported by the far-right Front National who stated: “Those who oppose this wise decision are making a mockery of the principles of safety and secularism.”

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