| Muslims and Islamophobia | |
| 30 Nov 2009, NewAgeIslam.Com | |
| Swiss minaret ban 'extreme Islamophobia' | |
 AI condemns Islamophobic Swiss vote
The Islamophobe Quartet of the USA
Islamophobe quartet in bitter unison
British Terrorism Against Muslim Minority: Islamophobic attack on Muslim students
Daniel Pipes, Islam 2.0 and Islamophobia 3.0
Barbara Kay: Toxic classrooms
Photo: Jamaat-e-Islami hold a protest in Pakistan. The party stated that this ban 'reflects extreme Islamophobia among people in the West.'
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Swiss minaret ban 'extreme Islamophobia'
Monday, 30 Nov, 2009
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani religious groups on Monday condemned a referendum in Switzerland that saw voters approve a ban on the construction of mosque minarets, calling it 'extreme Islamophobia.'
Switzerland on Sunday voted in favour of a ban on new mosque minarets - the towers or turrets attached to mosques from which Muslims are traditionally called to prayer - prompting dismay and anger in the Muslim world.
'This development reflects extreme Islamophobia among people in the West,' said Khurshid Ahmad, vice president of Jamaat-e-Islami, a Islamic political party that is represented in Pakistan's parliament.
'This also represents very serious discrimination against Muslims.' Pakistan is the world's second most populous Muslim nation.
The far-right Swiss People's Party (SVP) had forced a referendum after collecting a mandatory 100,000 signatures from eligible voters.
Conservative Swiss politicians argued that the minarets were not architectural features with religious characteristics, but symbolised a 'political-religious claim to power, which challenges fundamental rights.'
Ahmad described the Swiss decision as a serious violation of human rights and international law, telling AFP: 'This is an effort to provoke Muslims and prompt a clash between Islam and the West.'
Yahya Mujahid, a spokesman for Islamic charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa - accused of being a front for the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba radical insurgent group - also decried the referendum as a blow for inter-faith harmony.
'This new decision violates the principles of mutual understanding and religious tolerance,' Mujahid said.
'The West never takes respite in claiming to be champions of religious tolerance and inter-faith harmony, but this latest decision shows their bias against Muslims,' he added.
Far-right politicians across Europe celebrated the results, while the Swiss government sought to assure the Muslim minority that a ban on minarets was 'not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture.'
Having won a majority on turnout of 53 per cent, the initiative will now be inscribed in the country's constitution.
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/03-swiss-minaret-ban-extreme-islamophobia-ss-04
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AI condemns Islamophobic Swiss vote
30 Nov 2009
Amnesty International has expressed deep regret over the Swiss voters' approval of a ban on minarets, calling it a violation of religious freedom for Muslims.
"The 'yes' vote comes as a surprise and a great disappointment," David Diaz-Jogeix, Amnesty International's deputy program director for Europe and Central Asia, said on Monday.
"That Switzerland, a country with a long tradition of religious tolerance and the provision of refuge to the persecuted, should have accepted such a grotesquely discriminatory proposal is shocking indeed," Diaz stressed.
He also added that the ban violates the right of Muslims to manifest their religion in Switzerland, and is incompatible with the international conventions signed by the European country.
Sunday's referendum followed a controversial campaign against the symbolic architectural feature of Islamic mosques, spearheaded by far-right Swiss politicians, the Swiss People's Party (SVP).
The SVP's campaign posters depicted a Swiss flag sprouting black, missile-shaped minarets alongside a woman shrouded in a head-to-toe veil.
The poster, which was condemned worldwide for inciting hatred towards Islam, plays on fears that Muslim immigration will lead to an erosion of Swiss values.
Though the government opposed the ban, 57 percent of voters and 22 out of 26 cantons (or provinces) voted in favor of it, meaning minarets can no longer be erected anywhere in Switzerland.
The ban is expected to be rejected by either the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland or the European Court of Human Rights.
Islam is the second largest religion in Switzerland after Christianity, and its followers represent over 4 per cent of the country's population.
Of 150 mosques or prayer rooms in Switzerland, only 4 have minarets, and only 2 more minarets are planned.
None broadcast the call to prayer.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=112489§ionid=351020606
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The Islamophobe Quartet of the USA
2009-11-29
Paul J. Balles turns the spotlight on four prominent American Islamophobes and argues that the acts they use to justify their statements 'are no more related to the teachings of Islam than the paedophilia of a few priests is connected with Catholicism or the acts committed by Rabbi Meir Kahane of the Anti-Defamation League related to Judaism'.
Nidal Malik Hassan's brutal murders at Fort Hood were unforgivable acts of an obvious psychopathic killer. The fact that he was a Muslim had nothing to do with his maniacal action.
According to the Fiqh Council of North America (Muslim jurists), some individuals around the world issued statements praising the brutal killings and attacks and condemning the American Muslim community for "betrayal of Islam and for hypocrisy" for denouncing the massacre.
Such comments are not only a travesty of the teachings of Islam, they are just as psychotic as the action of the murderer. Islam teaches that all Muslims, wherever they live, must respect the life and property of all people, whether Muslims or non-Muslims.
Just as bad as the crazies who murder and support senseless slaughter, are the Islamophobes. Islamophobia is an irrational fear or prejudice towards Islam and Muslims.
The acts used by Islamophobes to attempt to justify their statements are no more related to the teachings of Islam than the paedophilia of a few priests is connected with Catholicism or the acts committed by Rabbi Meir Kahane of the Anti-Defamation League related to Judaism.
Pat Robertson, David Gaubatz, Paul Sperry and Daniel Pipes are all Islamophobic cult leaders who take every opportunity they can to vilify Islam and Muslims.
On his “700 Club” TV show, Pat Robertson commented, ridiculously, that Islam is "not a religion", but "a violent political system bent on the overthrow of the governments of the world and world domination".
Robertson's Evangelical followers are so completely brainwashed by their minister that they are incapable of discerning that his political blather is nothing but blind hatred of Islam. Unfortunately, his cult members don’t question or challenge Robertson. They follow blindly.
After the Fort Hood debacle, Dave Gaubatz, the opinionated co-author of the controversial Muslim Mafia, called for “a professional and legal backlash against the Muslim community and their leaders”.
Four Republican House representatives are basing a call for an investigation of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) on the extremely biased book, Muslim Mafia, written by the extremely biased, some would call unhinged, authors, David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry.
Paul Sperry, another Islamophobe, teamed up with Gaubatz in writing the book, Muslim Mafia. Sperry, who knows little or nothing about Islam, has no qualms about making unsupported claims and generalizing about Muslims.
The fourth in this quartet, Daniel Pipes, writes: "The deepest differences between Muslims and Westerners concern not politics but sexuality. Each side has a long history of looking at the other's sexual mores with a mixture of astonishment and disgust."
Pipes’s assertions are twisted and exaggerated generalities. He speaks of differences between Muslims and Westerners as if there weren't Muslims among Westerners.
To claim that sexuality represents a greater difference than politics shows Pipes's inability to make valid comparisons. Muslims and Westerners both marry, have sex and produce children, though Muslims view Western sex before marriage as illicit, immoral and a reflection of a degenerate society.
Pipes fails to see the scope of political differences. Westerners generally believe that democracy is a far superior system of government. Muslims have traditionally been comfortable with monarchies (or theocracies). Most of the problems have arisen from Western attempts to force democracy on Islamic countries.
"Here are some examples of customs and social attitudes from the Muslim side of the divide,” says Pipes, “that have me, for one, shaking my head...” He then relates anecdotal incidents of extremely rare events that have nothing to do with "customs and social attitudes".
A major problem with Islamophobes is that they attack people rather than issues. They busy themselves with name-calling and ignore legitimate concerns.
Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see pballes.com.
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=35950
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Islamophobe quartet in bitter unison
November 28, 2009
N idal Malik Hassan's brutal murders at Fort Hood were unforgivable acts by an obvious psychopathic killer. The fact that he was a Muslim had nothing to do with his maniacal action.
According to the Fiqh Council (Muslim jurists) of North America, some individuals around the world issued statements praising the brutal killings and attacks and condemning the American Muslim community for "betrayal of Islam and for hypocrisy" for denouncing the massacre.
Such comments are not only a travesty of the teachings of Islam, they are just as psychotic as the action of the murderer.
Islam teaches that all Muslims, wherever they live, must respect the life and property of all people, whether Muslims or non-Muslims.
Just as bad as the crazies who murder and support senseless slaughter, are the Islamophobes.
Islamophobia is an irrational fear or prejudice towards Islam and Muslims. The acts used by Islamophobes to attempt to justify their statements are no more related to the teachings of Islam than the paedophilia of a few priests is connected with Catholicism, or the acts committed by Rabbi Meir Kahane of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) related to Judaism.
Pat Robertson, David Gaubatz, Paul Sperry and Daniel Pipes are all Islamophobic cult leaders who take every opportunity they can to vilify Islam and Muslims.
On his 700 Club TV show, Robertson commented, ridiculously, that Islam is "not a religion," but "a violent political system bent on the overthrow of the governments of the world and world domination".
Robertson's Evangelical followers are so completely brainwashed by their minister that they are incapable of discerning that his political blather is nothing but blind hatred of Islam.
Unfortunately, his cult members don't question or challenge him. They follow blindly.
After the Fort Hood debacle, Gaubatz, the opinionated author of the controversial Muslim Mafia, called for "a professional and legal backlash against the Muslim community and their leaders".
Four GOP (Republican) House representatives are basing a call for an investigation of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) on the extremely-biased Muslim Mafia, written by the extremely biased, some would call unhinged Gaubatz and Sperry.
Sperry, another Islamophobe, who knows little or nothing about Islam, has no qualms about making unsupported claims and generalising about Muslims.
Pipes, who makes up the quartet, writes: "The deepest differences between Muslims and Westerners concern not politics, but sexuality. Each side has a long history of looking at the other's sexual mores with a mixture of astonishment and disgust." Pipes' assertions are twisted and exaggerated generalities. He speaks of differences between Muslims and Westerners as if there weren't Muslims among Westerners.
To claim that sexuality represents a greater difference than politics shows Pipes' inability to make valid comparisons.
Muslims and Westerners both marry, have sex and produce children, though Muslims view sex before marriage as illicit, immoral and a reflection of a degenerate society. Pipes fails to see the scope of political differences. Westerners generally believe that democracy is a far superior system of government. Muslims have traditionally been comfortable with monarchies (or theocracies).
Most of the problems have arisen from Western attempts to force democracy on Islamic countries.
"Here are some examples of customs and social attitudes from the Muslim side of the divide," says Pipes, "that have me, for one, shaking my head..." He then relates anecdotal incidents of extremely rare events that have nothing to do with "customs and social attitudes".
A major problem with Islamophobes is that they attack people rather than issues. They busy themselves with name-calling and ignore legitimate concerns.
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=265510
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British Terrorism Against Muslim Minority Islamophobic attack on Muslim students
By Ahmed J Versi
An 18-year-old Muslim student was attacked and beaten even after he lost consciousness by a gang of white youths on November 6. As they attacked him, they shouted “Where is your Allah now” and “Where is He to help you now.”
The first year business and computer undergraduate student had just left De Montfort University, Leicester, library with his friend at around 8.30 pm when they were attacked by around 10 white youths in Great Central Way, near the junction with Briton Street, Bede Island. The two students, Ahmed and Umar, (not their real name as they wish to remain anonymous) saw the gang taunting and abusing a Muslim woman wearing the hijab. She was with two other women who had gone ahead of her.
Ahmed told The Muslim News that he and Umar heard the gang tell the middle aged woman, “How do you like it if I walked in a balaclava. This is England. You should not be wearing a scarf.” They were concerned about what would happen to the Muslim woman and so they waited. One of the white youths turned towards them and asked them why were they were watching them. “I told them, ‘Leave her alone.’”
The woman tried to tell the white youths not to attack the students but they didn’t listen.
The white youths assaulted Ahmed and Umar, and began beating them. Ahmed fell down and the gang continued to punch and kick him even after he was unconscious. They “jumped” on his head and kicked his body. He was picked up and thrown on to the ground. Umar thought he was dying. “The next thing I saw was my friend standing over me telling me to recite the shahadah (‘There is no god but God and Muhammad in His Messenger). I lost conscious again. When I gained my senses I found myself in an ambulance.” He said he could not hit them back as “there were too many of them.”
Ahmed said his face was throbbing and “I was covered in blood. At the time my memory of the incident was hazy.” He received a number of injuries, including a broken nose, head injuries and cuts and bruising to the body.
They were taken to the Leicester Royal Infirmary for treatment. Ahmed was discharged from the hospital after 5 hours.
Ahmed said the police took a statement and also took his clothes for DNA test as some of the gang members spat at him.
Umar, who was in the first year studying mechanical engineering, told The Muslim News he managed to get up every time he was thrown on to the floor. He was therefore able to cover his head and prevent serous injury. He said he saw his colleague on the floor unconscious and thought he was dying. “So I began reciting the shahadah, Surah al Fatiha and Surah Ikhlas. His eyes were barely open.”
Both said they were not sorry that they had stopped and didn’t even think twice to help the Muslim woman. “They were unfair to her. She didn’t say anything to them. What they were doing to her didn’t make any sense,” Ahmed said. He said he was “upset” at the white boys behaviour. “I thought such kind of thing did not happen. Who’s to say what they would have done to her. It was scary,” related the teenager.
He added that he was “glad they attacked us and not her.”
A white woman who was passing by rang the police and an ambulance. The ambulance had to wait until the police arrived. Umar was told by the ambulance to go and inform the police where they were. “I had to walk to other side of the park – 600 to 700 yards to the police.”
Ahmed said the attack was “Islamophobic as they were talking about her scarf and also when they told me ‘Where is your Allah’ is to do with religion. How did they know we were Muslims? We could have been Sikhs for all they know.”
Umar said the attack was both Islamophobic and racist as they had also shouted “Pakis”. He was “very angry” and said he never experienced racism in East London where he was from. “It is very unfortunate at what happened as they didn’t know about Muslims fully.”
The father of Ahmed told The Muslim News that he couldn’t recognise his son’s face as “he was badly beaten.” They couldn’t X-Ray him because of the swelling and was told to return after the swelling had reduced, some five days later.
He said the police told him the CCTV was pointing “the other way” and so were not able to get the attack on camera.
“I was devastated and shocked and angry. It seems like the 1970s National Front are back again,” the father said. He echoed his son’s view that the attacks were Islamophobic.
A police spokeswoman said a 19-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the incident and released on police bail pending further enquiries. However, Sergeant Laura Millward, from Hinckley Road local policing unit, said the incident was racist because the victims “are Asian and because of the comments made during the assault we are treating this as racially motivated.”
The police are appealing to anyone who witnessed the incident to come forward, but are particularly interested in speaking with the woman, who was wearing a hijab, who was being racially abused by the group just before the assault. http://www.grandestrategy.com/2009/11/british-terrorism-against-muslim.html
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Daniel Pipes, Islam 2.0 and Islamophobia 3.0
by Sheila Musaji
Daniel Pipes’ views on who is or is not a “moderate Muslim” (basically no Muslim is really moderate in Pipesland) are not new. Back in 2003 he wrote an article “The Moderation of American Muslims” in which he found fault with a survey of Detroit area Muslims by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding called “A Portrait of Detroit Mosques: Muslim Views on Policy, Politics and Religion” which had found that “The vast majority of Muslim Americans hold moderate’ views on issues of policy, politics and religion.” What I found most interesting in this article was Pipes statement that: “But do the survey results actually say this? Emphatically not; Bagby’s results indicate anything but moderation, as some specific numbers suggest:
- By a ratio of 67 to 33, Muslims in the United States think “America is immoral.”
About (the graph does not allow complete precision) 90 percent of Muslims favor universal health care.
- Fully 79 percent favor affirmative action for minorities.
- Asked about the job being done as president by George W. Bush, 85 percent of Muslims disapprove and a mere 4 percent approve.”
And, as I pointed out at that time:
“So, it would seem that in order to slip from the status of moderate to that of extremist or even Islamist Muslim one only has to:
- have moral qualms about some of the policies of the U.S. government, or concerns about some of the trends in society that may be considered a slide into acceptance of immoral behavior.
- want to see universal health care (perhaps like that other “extremist” group, the Canadians or like Dennis Kucinich
http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/daniel_pipes1/0017749
Barbara Kay: Toxic classrooms
November 30, 2009
What follows is an edited excerpt from testimony delivered at a hearing of the Canadian Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism this month.
My attention has been drawn to the disturbing phenomenon of overt Jew hatred in high schools, especially those with high populations of students from countries where Jew hatred is officially sanctioned in the law of their countries of origin.
As a case in point I offer one particularly disturbing story, because I believe it points to wider issues of concern for the educational system and for our society. It involves a Jewish teacher in an Ontario French high school whose name I cannot reveal because she fears physical retaliation.
"Miriam" had taught in French language schools in the 1970s and 1980s in schools with large Lebanese Christian populations without incurring any anti-Semitism. In her current career she works amicably with Muslims. A child of Holocaust survivors, Miriam is demonstrably neither racist nor anti-Muslim.
In 2001 Miriam started teaching at a school largely populated by children of refugees, mainly from Djibouti and Eritrea, countries where there are no Jews but where hatred of Jews is deeply entrenched in the culture.
During the academic year of 2002-2003 Miriam started to encounter anti-Semitic taunts from students, such as "Does someone see a Jew here, someone smell a Jew? It stinks here." When she reported this and similar insults to the principal, the principal did not follow up. Indeed, the principal seemed more concerned about the students' sensibilities than hers.
The principal instructed teachers not to offend their Muslim students; they were not to look students in the eye, they were not to gesture with the forefinger to bid them approach and they were not to interfere with male students who were physically aggressive to male teachers.
During the invasion of Iraq, moments of silence were held in the classroom. Cultural presentations involved only Muslim culture and no Canadian content. Students were allowed to leave assembly during the playing of the national anthem.
The crisis of this story occurred when Miriam admonished a student for wearing a Walkman in class. The student screamed at her: "I don't have to listen to you; you are not a person, you are nothing, you do not exist as a person." When Miriam demanded he accompany her to the principal's office, the student followed her down the hall yelling, "Don't speak to me, don't look at me, you are not human, you are a Jew."
Although the student was ultimately suspended for 10 days, his parents expressed puzzlement about the punishment since, they patiently explained, the teacher was after all Jewish. They complained about the severity of the punishment to the school board.
There were no sensitivity courses laid on for the students or the parents. When, over her objections, the offending student and another guilty of the same offence were returned to Miriam's class, she decided she could no longer work under such circumstances. She contacted the Hate Crime Unit of the local police and reported everything.
The School board treated Miriam as the source of the problem and asked her to retire. A top litigator told Miriam she had an excellent case for a lawsuit but fearing for her family's safety under the glare of publicity, she decided not to sue.
Lest you assume Miriam was paranoid or Islamophobic or that this was an isolated case of a few bad apples: In 2004, the year Miriam left, a full 60 out of 75 francophone teachers asked for a transfer, not because of anti-Semitism but because of anti-Westernism, a growing discomfort in other areas for which anti-Semitism is the proverbial canary in the mine. French-Canadian children had already stopped enrolling and as I understand it, the school is now virtually all-Muslim, including the teachers and principal.
There are many immigrants entering Canada from countries where overt Jew hatred is endemic to the culture and even officially sanctioned in law. When they arrive here, it is somehow assumed they will absorb Canadian values, but they don't and their toxic attitudes persist. Instead of confronting their bigotry, this principal and the school board chose not to apply long-standing normative codes of behaviour and human rights law.
An instinctive political correctness set in. Out of fear of being labeled racist or Islamophobic
those in charge stifled their commitment to professional ethics and behaviour codes reflecting Canadian standards of pluralism and respect.
Imagine a reverse situation. Imagine if the aggressors and bigots were heritage Canadians harassing a Muslim teacher with these hateful words. It would have been a cause celebre and the media would have called for an investigative inquiry into the origins of the serious social problem represented by these racialized students and their families.
If preventative measures are not taken, if it is not made clear in no uncertain terms through education and persuasive push-back in this school and all schools where there are critical masses of students arriving from countries drenched in anti-Semitism, Jew hatred will metastasize in those cultural communities that consider it a norm, increasing exponentially.
There are many such schools in Britain and Europe where the atmosphere is so strained and hostile to anyone but Islamic kinship groups that they are simply no-go fiefdoms -Islamic mini-societies within the larger culture. We mustn't think that can't happen here, because it can. It is happening already.
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http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/11/30/barbara-kay-toxic-classrooms.aspx
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Sultan Shahin
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