Category Archives: UK

Quarter of young British people ‘do not trust Muslims’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

More than a quarter of 18- to 24-year-olds in Britain do not trust Muslims, a BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat poll suggests. Of the 1,000 young people questioned, 28% said Britain would be better off with fewer Muslims, while 44% said Muslims did not share the same values as the rest of the population. Some 60% thought the British public had a negative image of Muslims.

An adviser on anti-Muslim hatred said the findings suggested young people needed to mix more. Akeela Ahmed, from a cross-government working group on anti-Muslim hatred, said: “These findings indicate that we need to ensure young people are mixing at local levels and that they’re working on projects together so that people can get to know Muslims and vice versa.”

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Posted in UK

Scottish Defence League planning return to Dundee

Posted on by Bob Pitt

SDL in Dundee

Controversial far-right group the Scottish Defence League are planning another protest in the centre of Dundee. They aim to hold a rally outside the Overgate Centre a week on Saturday in defiance of a council warning that they do not have permission for a gathering.

Police are drawing up plans to deal with any unrest from the extreme political organisation’s arrival in the city on October 5. The potential for disorder has been heightened by plans by an anti-fascist alliance to hold a demonstration against the SDL’s visit on the day.

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Student thinks she knows better than Muslim women what form of dress their religious beliefs require

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A student asked not to wear her cap in Bromley College says she won’t agree unless Muslim women remove their headdresses as well.

Caroline Powell, of Sevenoaks Way, Orpington, is attending Greenwich University, which uses facilities in Bromley College, Rookery Lane. While inside the Bromley College buildings, the 39-year-old has been told repeatedly to remove her cap, but believes that, while Muslim women are allowed to wear headdresses, this represents “double standards”.

The 39-year-old told News Shopper: “It started in September last year when I got stopped at the door by a woman and she said ‘you need to take your cap off’. It is a small black leather cap but it’s part of my identity. She said ‘you need to take it off, they are the rules’. A Muslim woman walked in behind me and I asked if she was going to ask her to take off her headdress. I’ve read the Koran, and it doesn’t say they have to wear it, it is a choice.”

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Muslim woman verbally abused by racist yob – twice in a week

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim woman was told to get back to her own country twice in a week by a racist yob – despite her being white and British.

Police said it appeared the woman’s headscarf attracted the attention of the man. She was subjected to abuse on two separate occasions within days. The lady was walking in the Beaumont Park area with her son when she was verbally attacked.

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NSS thinks allowing Muslim employees to wear hijab is giving in to ‘Islamist demands’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yesterday it was reported that the clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch had lost two lawsuits brought by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after the company sacked one young Muslim woman and refused to employ another because they wore headscarves. The company announced that it had now changed its policy and would allow employees to wear the hijab.

Most of us would think this was a welcome victory against discrimination. But how does the National Secular Society report it? Under the headline “Abercrombie & Fitch accede to Islamist demands”. It’s the sort of response you would expect from the likes of Pamela Geller.

Worcester Park mosque plans set for second rejection

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A controversial plan to open a mosque in Worcester Park is set to be rejected for the second time after almost 4,000 people signed petitions.

Plans to convert a disused bank building in Green Lane into a mosque are due to go before Sutton Council’s development control committee for a second time on Wednesday night. And, for a second time, the authority’s planning officers have recommended councillors on the committee refuse planning permission.

The original plan to convert the building into a place of worship for the local Muslim community was rejected in December last year on the grounds it would bring too much traffic to the area.

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‘Secularist’ irrationality over the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The level of argument from secularists denouncing the niqab has reached a new low recently. Here, for example, is Joan Smith writing in the Independent on Sunday:

I’m aghast at the prospect of being treated by a health professional in a niqab. Patients often have to discuss intimate matters with GPs and nurse-practitioners, from sexual health to domestic violence. If someone doesn’t trust me enough to let me see her face, I’m hardly going to feel comfortable about her carrying out an intimate procedure such as a cervical smear. Nor is it easy to imagine a man discussing the symptoms of prostate cancer with a health professional whose idea of “modesty” doesn’t allow her to expose her nose.

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Tony Parsons on tolerance

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tony ParsonsBack in June, Tony Parsons wrote a column for the Daily Mirror in which he parroted the ignorant view expressed by Andrew Gilligan that there had been no significant upsurge in hate-crime against the Muslim community in the aftermath of the horrific killing in Woolwich on 22 May. Parsons assured his readers: “The ‘anti-Muslim backlash’ is somewhere between a grotesque exaggeration and a plain old lie. The British are a civilised, polite, tolerant people – and even after the hideous murder of young Lee Rigby, that is what we remain.”

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Don’t follow France’s burqa ban. It has curbed liberty and justice

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Join me in a criminal court in suburban Paris on almost any weekday and I’ll show you exactly where national debates about female face coverings end up.

Ever since France introduced its “burqa ban” in 2011, there has been a constant stream of wretched cases involving the handful of Muslims who choose to wear such garments. Not only are perfectly upstanding women being fined for their choice of dress, principally the full-body niqab, which leaves a slit for the eyes, but an increasing number of defendants are being tried for attacking them.

One case involves two self-styled “patriotic vigilantes” who targeted a pregnant 21-year-old in the commuter town of Argenteuil, north-west of Paris, in June. The new law persuaded the men to shout racist insults before putting the woman in hospital, where she lost her baby. Another three reported cases on the same council estate over the course of just one month this summer saw full-veil wearers assaulted as their attackers shouted: “Dirty Arab, dirty Muslim.”

Those calling for a veil ban in Britain have clearly ignored such depressingly routine cases. They do not realise how the legislation introduced by President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government has not only stigmatised Muslim women, but somehow legitimised physical attacks on them. The ban in France is a hateful assault on basic freedoms, one that has been seized on by an unlikely alliance of rightwing politicians and feminists.

Excellent article by Nabila Ramdani in the Observer, 22 September 2013