Category Archives: Secular

No to Muslim schools says Amartya Sen

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Christian schools are perfectly acceptable but other faith schools, especially Muslim ones, are a big mistake and should be scrapped if the Government wants to encourage a unifying British identity, according to the man reckoned by many to be the world’s leading moral philosopher.

Commenting on the damage that he believes is being done by Muslim, Hindu and Sikh schools, set up because the Government wanted to give them parity with Christian institutions, Professor Amartya Sen said: “I am actually absolutely appalled.”

Trying to curb Islamic terrorism in Britain by going through Muslim organisations and defining the identities of immigrants only on the basis of religion had been another serious error.

Daily Telegraph, 27 July 2006

MCB speaks out on ‘honour’ killings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MCB logoThe Muslim Council of Britain insisted yesterday that “honour” violence was a cultural practice and nothing to do with faith. The council spoke out after a BBC investigation claimed that there were links between some cases of honour violence in Britain and islamist extremist groups abroad. Victims of such attacks are alleged by their families to have disgraced them.

The Crown Prosecution Service pointed to the death five years ago of Heshu Yones, 16, who was stabbed to death by her father, and claimed that Islamist terror groups were behind it. Crown Prosecution Service national lead on honour crime Nazir Afzal told Radio 4 that the threats to kill another woman, who is known as Miss B, came from her family but originated from an Egyptian terrorist group. He said: “They told her husband that, if he didn’t put his wife in her place, then they would do it themselves.”

However, Muslim Council of Britain spokeswoman Reefat Drabu disagreed with Mr Afzal’s comments. “First and foremost, there has to be clarity that this is nothing to do with any faith, in particular Islam,” she said. “It is a cultural practice and there is nothing in any faith that would condone it or say that it is the right thing do it. This is to do with misguided notions of family honour. It has nothing to do with radicalism or terrorism.”

Morning Star, 27 June 2007

Over at Butterflies and Wheels Ophelia Benson expresses indignation that the MCB should even be asked their opinion on the issue. After all, they’re only the most representative Muslim organisation in the UK, with some 500 affiliates. Who cares what they think? Ms Benson would no doubt regard it as much more appropriate for the BBC to ask Maryam Namazie and the “Council of Ex-Muslims” for a quote instead.

And David T of Harry’s Place comments: “The Muslim Council of Britain’s eccentric stance on this issue illustrates why it is no longer invited to the Home Office to participate in the process of public policy formation.” Whereas some of us might have thought that the government’s cold-shouldering of the MCB was perhaps rather more closely connected with their refusal to keep quiet about the role of UK foreign policy in fuelling terrorism.

Another boost for the ‘Council of Ex-Muslims’ fraud

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A new group of secular-minded former Muslims in the UK has urged the government to cut all state funding to religious groups and to stop pandering to political Islam.

The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, launched yesterday in London, opposes the interference of religion in public life. Its spokeswoman, Maryam Namazie, said the group provided an alternative voice to the “regressive, parasitical and self-appointed leaders” from organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain and the “oxymoronic” Islamic Human Rights Commission.

“We want to challenge the Islamic movement,” she said. “It does not surprise me people are afraid to criticise Islam. There has been too much appeasement from the government. There are specific policies and initiatives aimed at Muslims and this approach divides society.”

The council’s manifesto calls for the freedom to criticise all religions and the separation of religion from the state and legal system. Another aim is to break the taboos that come with renouncing Islam.

Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “We’re not taking them seriously. I don’t think Muslims will have time for this.”

The launch of a Central Council of Ex-Muslims in Berlin has inspired similar groups in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. The British branch has 25 members who are prepared to have their names and photographs published.

Guardian, 22 June 2007

As we’ve already pointed out, the Council of Ex-Muslims is a complete fraud. It’s a front organisation for the Worker Communist Party of Iran, an ultra-left sect most of whose leaders were never Muslims in the first place. It’s just an excuse for the WPI to indulge in their obsessive and destructive propaganda against Islam.

Unfortunately the Council of Ex-Muslims has been given credibility by having its launch at the House of Commons yesterday (I suspect Lib Dem MP Evan Harris was involved in this) and has been treated seriously by the media, who have shown no interest in investigating the origins of the organisation.

Update:  Read the National Secular Society’s report of the event here. Note that the so-called ex-Muslims referred to in the NSS piece – Maryam Namazie, Mina Ahadi and Mahin Alipour – are all leading figures in the WPI.

Ignore Islam, ‘ex-Muslims’ urge

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BBC News gives favourable publicity to the launch of the Worker Communist Party of Iran’s fraudulent front organisation, the so-called Council of Ex-Muslims (which claims that it “represents the views of a majority of secular-minded Muslims in Europe”), as does the Washington Post and the Daily Telegraph. See also A.C. Grayling’s ridiculous remarks (“a torch of hope in a dark quadrant of the world’s affairs”) at Comment is Free. Meanwhile, frothing-at-the-mouth right-wing US Islamophobe Michelle Malkin has hailed Maryam Namazie and her comrades as “the bravest of the brave“, who are “putting their necks on the line for Western civilization”. Malkin urges her readers: “Find a way to show your support.”

Sir Salman’s long journey

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Salman Rushdie“Driven underground and into despair by zealotry, Rushdie finally emerged blinking into New York sunshine shortly before the towers came tumbling down. Those formidable literary powers would now be deployed not against, but in the service of, an American regime that had declared its own fundamentalist monopoly on the meanings of ‘freedom’ and ‘liberation’.

“The Sir Salman recognised for his services to literature is certainly no neocon but is iconic of a more pernicous trend: liberal literati who have assented to the notion that humane values, tolerance and freedom are fundamentally western ideas that have to be defended as such.

“Vociferously supporting the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq on ‘humane’ grounds, condemning criticism of the war on terror as ‘petulant anti-Americanism’ and above all, aligning tyranny and violence solely with Islam, Rushdie has abdicated his own understanding of the novelist’s task as ‘giving the lie to official facts’.”

Priyamvada Gopal in the Guardian, 18 June 2007

Launch of the Council of ex-Muslims of Britain

Posted on by Bob Pitt

namazie and racist placards 2Maryam Namzie of the Worker Communist Party of Iran is pleased to announce: “A British branch of a new Europe-wide phenomenon is to be launched on Thursday 21 June in London. The Council of ex-Muslims of Britain is building on the stunning success of other branches already operating in Germany, Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. The British Humanist Association and National Secular Society are sponsoring the launch and support the new organisation.”

A comment on Namazie’s blog indicates the support that the new organisation can expect to attract: “Congratulations to this new group. I hope that you have much success and contribute to the end of Islam in Europe. Islam, like facism [sic] and totalitarianism, has no place in a modern Europe. These dead ideologies must be swept aside so that we can all move together into the future. A world without Islam is a world much closer to peace. Thanks for standing up and providing hope for the millions of people who are held captive by Islam – freedom is possible!!”

Maryam Namazie’s blog, 18 June 2007

Livingstone ‘plays the Islamophobia card’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

nss2Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society is not impressed by the coalition to defend religious freedom launched at City Hall in London earlier this week. Sanderson opines that “there is very little in the way of aggression towards Muslims beyond the racism that all minority communities suffer”. Well, Sanderson and the NSS – who in the past have called for the publication of racist anti-Muslim cartoons and happily repeated denunciations of “Muslim foreigners who have forced themselves on us” – would know all about that.

NSS news report, 8 June 2007

The NSS has the backing of Robert Spencer over at Jihad Watch.

Petition against Muslim girls’ school in Belgium

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BRUSSELS – A petition has been started in protest of plans to set up a secondary school in Molenbeek exclusively for Muslim girls. Many people are opposed to the idea, citing the separation of church and state in Belgium as grounds to block the plans.

The petition calls for a ban on “any ostensible sign of philosophical or religious membership in the context of a school, for students and especially for teachers.” They want this ban in effect for all schools that receive state subsidies.

“I don’t think that setting up an Islamic school is a fantastic idea, but that is what happens when people feel shut out by a traditional school,” was the response from Francophone antiracism foundation Mrax.

Expatica, 30 May 2007