“The young men whom you call ‘radicalised Britons’ and ‘extremists’ are just honest Muslims who take their scriptures seriously (‘We are fighting British jihadists in Afghanistan’, 25 February). They sincerely believe what all Muslims are taught to believe: that the Koran is the inerrant word of God. If Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, will Afghanistan be lost in the faith schools of Birmingham?”
Letter from Richard Dawkins in the Independent, 26 February 2009
“The Houses of Parliament is where Winston Churchill stood firm, and warned – all throughout the 1930’s – for the dangers looming. Most of the time he stood alone. In 1982 President Reagan came to the House of Commons, where he did a speech very few people liked. Reagan called upon the West to reject communism and defend freedom. He introduced a phrase: ‘evil empire’…. Communism was indeed left on the ash heap of history, just as Reagan predicted in his speech in the House of Commons. He lived to see the Berlin Wall coming down, just as Churchill witnessed the implosion of national-socialism.
“Today, I come before you to warn of another great threat. It is called Islam. It poses as a religion, but its goals are very worldly: world domination, holy war, sharia law, the end of the separation of church and state, the end of democracy. It is not a religion, it is a political ideology. It demands your respect, but has no respect for you….
“Islam means submission, so there cannot be any mistake about its goal. That’s a given. The question is whether the British people, with its glorious past, is longing for that submission. We see Islam taking off in the West at an incredible speed. The United Kingdom has seen a rapid growth of the number of Muslims. Over the last ten years, the Muslim population has grown ten times as fast as the rest of society. This has put an enormous pressure on society….
“Britain seems to have become a country ruled by fear. A country where civil servants cancel Christmas celebrations to please Muslims. A country where Sharia Courts are part of the legal system. A country where Islamic organizations asked to stop the commemoration of the Holocaust. A country where a primary school cancels a Christmas nativity play because it interfered with an Islamic festival. A country where a school removes the words Christmas and Easter from their calendar so as not to offend Muslims. A country where a teacher punishes two students for refusing to pray to Allah as part of their religious education class. A country where elected members of a town council are told not to eat during daylight hours in town hall meetings during the Ramadan. A country that excels in its hatred of Israel, still the only democracy in the Middle-East. A country whose capital is becoming ‘Londonistan’….
“For the generation of my parents the word ‘London’ is synonymous with hope and freedom. When my country was occupied by the national-socialists the BBC offered a daily glimpse of hope, in the darkness of Nazi tyranny. Millions of my country men listened to it, illegally. The words ‘This Is London’ were a symbol for a better world coming soon. If only the British and Canadian and American soldiers were here.
“What will be transmitted forty years from now? Will it still be ‘This Is London’? Or will it be ‘this is Londonistan’? Will it bring us hope, or will it signal the values of Mecca and Medina? Will Britain offer submission or perseverance? Freedom or slavery?”
Meanwhile the National Secular Society opines:
“Yesterday marked a new low for democracy and freedom of expression in the UK. Not only was Geert Wilders not intending to incite violence, he is an elected politician of a sovereign state of the European Union and had no criminal record. The Government’s ban on him entering the UK should have been a clarion call for all those who cherish freedom of expression, the bedrock of democracy that underpins every other Human Right.
“So there should have been thousands marching outside Parliament last night to protect this, led by politicians and organisations devoted to our rights. Where were they? Nowhere. Were there even statements of outrage from these politicians and organisations at the Government’s shameful and cowardly act? None that I saw.
“This compounds the Government’s grave error many times over. It sends the signal that what they did was acceptable and that all that the Islamists – even Islamist Parliamentarians – have to do to shut down our democratic system is to say there will be ten thousand Muslims marching on Parliament. Just one such threat and the Government caves in, far less saying – as any democratic one should – that threats of violence are unacceptable and will be met with the full force of the law.”
Geert Wilders, the rightwing Dutch politician accused of Islamophobia, was today refused entry to the UK after arriving at Heathrow airport in London.
Wilders was due to show his 17-minute film Fitna, which criticises the Qur’an as a “fascist book”, at the House of Lords today. But on Tuesday he received a letter from the Home Office refusing him entry because his opinions “threaten community harmony and therefore public safety”.
Lord Pearson, who invited Wilders to Britain, said the screening of the film would go ahead today, whether he was there or not. Speaking outside the House of Lords, Pearson said he disagreed with some of Wilders’s views but was “coming at this from the angle of free speech”. Pearson described the Dutch politician as a “very brave man” and said he did not think he was a racist.
The peer initially said he did not believe there should be any limits to freedom of speech but when pressed conceded that there should be “a very few”, such as language that incited violence. Pearson said he believed a Hitler-type figure should be allowed to speak in public in Britain.
The National Secular Society president, Terry Sanderson, said he wrote to the home secretary saying she should not have denied an application by a “democratically elected politician from a sovereign state who wants to come and express an opinion”. “It may be a controversial opinion but he is entitled to express it,” he said.
A spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain described Wilders as “an open and relentless preacher of hate”. “We have no problem with the challenge of criticisms to our faith, but the film that will be screened by Lord Pearson and Baroness Cox is nothing less than a cheap and tacky attempt to whip up hysteria against Muslims,” he said.
The Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, Chris Huhne, said that while it was important to defend freedom of speech, Wilders “has overstepped the line that should be defended in a civilised society”.
“It’s nice to know that even devout Christians don’t allow facts to alter a good story. The Christian Institute recently got its woggles warped over ‘boy’ Scouts adopting an ‘Islamic’ pledge in Scotland. Clearly outraged, the Institute reported on ‘plans’ to replace the ‘god and queen’ oath made by UK Scouts as a condition of joining the movement, with one made to ‘Allah, the most Beneficent and Merciful’ in which The Queen is omitted.
“Unable to find anyone weighty to support their cause, the Institute wheeled out Richard Cox from the obscure ‘campaign against political correctness’ to rage against the ‘plan’. They also managed to quote a Scout Association official who stated that ‘The Scouts may have been a Christian organisation originally’.
“This (non) story is so old it really ought to be on The Antiques Roadshow. For starters, ‘boy’ Scouts stopped existing in Britain in 1967. In 1992, Scouting was opened up to girls. Today, UK Scouting is fully co-ed.
“Furthermore, the UK Scout Association has always been open to Muslims. They used to take the ‘Outlander’ promise, which according to tradition, was written by Baden Powell for ‘Scouts that had to omit the reference to God or a monarch for reasons of conscience’. This was later replaced by a Promise option that refers to ‘Allah’.
“The UK’s Muslim Scout Fellowship website reports that over a third of the world’s 28 million Scouts are Muslims. This rather flies in the face of the idea that Scouting may have originated as a Christian organisation, particularly as Baden-Powell said ‘Scouting holds no brief for one set of beliefs over another’.”
National Secular Society, 30 January 2009
Now, let’s be frank, we’ve had our differences with Terry Sanderson and his friends in the past. But credit where it’s due, here they’ve got it right.
Under the typically scaremongering headline “Learn the Koran: Muslims bid to teach your kids” the Daily Star reports on proposals for an Islamic faith school in Swindon (hat tip: ENGAGE).
The piece concludes with a quote from Keith Porteous Wood, director of the National Secular Society, who says the school would be a “disaster” for the community. He adds: “I have great sympathy for local parents. A lot of them would not want a Christian school and far less a Muslim one” (emphasis added).
Strange isn’t it how secularist Islamophobes like Porteous Wood manage to combine a militant atheist hostility to all religion with an ingrained belief that Islam is significantly worse than Christianity? (Cf. Richard Dawkins)
“The militant atheists of the National Secular Society have launched a campaign against the spread of Sharia in Britain, entitled ‘One Law for All‘.
“Good for them. Britons of all religious and ethnic backgrounds should fight against moves (supported by that nincompoop Rowan Williams) to establish a parallel Muslim legal jurisdiction in this country.
“It’s courageous of the NSS, which represents diehard old Lefties, to pick a fight with ‘community leaders’ who are attempting to force ordinary Muslims into an Islamic ghetto. The Guardian‘s multicultural chatterers (such as the frightful Madeleine Bunting) will be outraged.
“True, the NSS would like to strip all state faith schools of their legal rights – but, you know what? I’d rather see Catholic schools lose their state funding (which I’m not sure does them much good anyway) than allow the Government to franchise out the rule of law to Muslim Arbitration Tribunals, which is what is happening.
“The gutlessness of Christian leaders in allowing radical Muslims to infiltrate public institutions is deeply disheartening. A few Catholics and evangelicals speak out against it; but, for the most part, bishops are too busy engaging in ‘multi-faith dialogue’ or wailing about ‘secularisation’ to notice the radical anti-Christian agenda of Muslim leaders with real influence in local councils, schools, universities, prisons, the police and the health service.”
Damian Thompson at the Daily Telegraph, 11 December 2008
Europe’s top rights court ruled Thursday that a French school ban on headscarves was not a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In a case involving two French Muslim girls who had been expelled from school after refusing to remove their scarves during sports classes, the European Court of Human Rights held unanimously that the decision did not discriminate.
The applicants, Belgin Dogru and Esma-Nur Kervanci, are French nationals who were born in 1987 and 1986 respectively and live in the northwestern town of Flers.
Dogru, then aged 11, and Kervanci, aged 12, went to physical education and sports classes wearing their headscarves on numerous occasions in January 1999 and refused to take them off despite repeated requests to do so by their teacher. The teacher had said that wearing a headscarf was incompatible with physical education classes.
A month later the school’s discipline committee decided to expel the two from the school for failing to participate actively in physical education and sports classes.
The court observed that the purpose of the restriction on the applicants’ right to manifest their religious convictions was to adhere to the requirements of secularism in French state schools. The court also said that the penalty of expulsion did not appear disproportionate, and noted that the applicants had been able to continue their schooling by correspondence classes.
“It was clear that the applicants’ religious convictions were fully taken into account in relation to the requirements of protecting the rights and freedoms of others and public order,” the court said in a press release. It was also clear that the decision was based on those requirements and not on any objections to the applicants’ religious beliefs.
See also ECHR press release, 4 December 2008
The One Law for All campaign – supported by the National Secular Society – is to be launched in the House of Lords on International Human Rights Day, 10 December.
According to campaign organiser, Maryam Namazie, “Even in civil matters, Sharia law is discriminatory, unfair and unjust, particularly against women and children. Moreover, its voluntary nature is a sham; many women will be pressured into going to these courts and abiding by their decisions. These courts are a quick and cheap route to injustice and do nothing to promote minority rights and social cohesion. Public interest, particularly with regard to women and children, requires an end to Sharia and all other faith-based courts and tribunals.”
The campaign has already received widespread support.
National Secular Society news report, 5 December 2008
Sure it’s received wide support. The campaign is backed by a total of ten organisations, five of which – Children First Now, the laughably misnamed Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, Equal Rights Now – Organisation against Women’s Discrimination in Iran, the International Committee against Stoning and the Iranian Secular Society – are all front organisations for the Islamophobic far-left sect, the Worker-Communist Party of Iran. You do sometimes wonder whether the WPI has more front organisations than members.
One in four children with a religious belief is bullied at school as a result of their faith, research shows.
The findings have prompted anti-bullying campaigners to urge ministers to make it compulsory for schools to record all incidents of faith-based bullying, as they have to do in cases of racism and homophobia.
The survey of more than 1,000 pupils by the anti-bullying charity BeatBullying, showed that 23 per cent of the pupils were bullied as a result of their faith. In addition, 9 per cent of those with a faith were bullied as a result of wearing religious symbols to school. One 13-year-old Muslim girl said: “These two girls knew we were fasting, they got me in the toilets and tried to force crisps down my throat; they were all laughing their heads off.”
Read the Beatbullying Interfaith Report (pdf) here.
The report contains many other disturbing accounts of Muslim pupils being verbally abused and physically assaulted:
“They pushed me down the stairs, kicked me, dragged me by [my] hair, broke my tooth and hit me with a chair. They said my dad did 7/7.” (Jagatveer age 15)
“They would call me Paki, tell me to go back to Paki land and live with Osama.” (Mavish age 13)
“I got called a Paki and told that my religion was stupid.” (Jabeen age 12)
“Sometimes I hear boys laughing about bombs in Iraq. They do it in front of me, laughing that more Muslims have been blown up.” (Aruni age 13)
Still, not to worry – over at the National Secular Society website NSS president Terry Sanderson assures us that these are “claims to be read with a pinch of salt”.
Despite reassurances to the contrary, the Government is permitting sharia law to creep into Britain, says the National Secular Society.
Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said: “The creeping ‘recognising’ of Muslim religious councils is the first disastrous step in a gradual process of normalising sharia law in this country.
“Sharia arbitration disadvantages women and treats them unequally. Women within strict Muslim communities are going to be coerced into accepting decisions that severely discriminate against them,” he said.
“Who is to decide whether a decision by these councils has been willingly agreed, or whether women are being forced into accepting their inferior legal status by community and family pressure? The only way to ensure all are equal before the law is to have only one legal system – our secular system.”
BNP news article, 4 November 2008
Oddly enough, Terry Sanderson doesn’t see fit to provide a link to this piece in his daily news roundup on the NSS website, although any media reference to the NSS is usually publicised enthusiastically. What’s the problem here, Terry? A bit embarrassed, are you, that your hysterical nonsense about the threat from sharia law feeds into the far right’s racist propaganda?