'Fears of Muslim anger over religious book' - Item 2

Sounds to me like a cynical attempt by the authors, Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom – who are associated with the notoriously Islamophobic website Butterflies and Wheels – to boost sales of their book, which has already been turned down by Verso.

The report concludes with a quote from a Muslim critic: "No one will swallow talk about child brides. It would lead to a huge backlash, as we saw with The Jewel of Medina." And who is the individual the Sunday Times has chosen to approach as a representative voice of British Muslims? Wouldn't you know it, it's Anjem Choudary, leader of the minuscule gang of provocateurs who previously traded under the name of Al-Muhajiroun. [Islamophobia Watch] Read more

Fears of Muslim anger over religious book - Item 1

An academic book about religious attitudes to women is to be published this week despite concerns it could cause a backlash among Muslims because it criticises the prophet Muhammad for taking a nine-year-old girl as his third wife.

The book, entitled Does God Hate Women?, suggests that Muhammad's marriage to a child called Aisha is "not entirely compatible with the idea that he had the best interests of women at heart".

It also says that Cherie Blair, wife of the former prime minister, was "incorrect" when she defended Islam in a lecture by claiming "it is not laid down in the Koran that women can be beaten by their husbands and their evidence should be devalued as it is in some Islamic courts". [Times Online] Read more See Also: [MediaWatchWatch] Read more

God is merciful, but only if you're a man

There is plenty to criticise in Islam's view of women. Last year, the Observer told the story of a man in Basra who stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed to death his 17-year-old daughter for becoming infatuated with a British soldier. The relationship apparently amounted to a few conversations, but her father learnt she had been seen in public talking to the soldier.

When the Observer talked to Abdel-Qader Ali two weeks later, he said: "Death was the least she deserved. I don't regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion." [Guardian CiF] Read more

BBC make £30,000 payout to the MCB

“The BBC has offered to pay £30,000 and apologise to the Muslim Council of Britain after airing claims that it encourages the killing of British troops. The Corporation caved in after a panellist on the Question Time TV programme accused the country’s most influential Muslim organisation of failing to condemn attacks on soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The broadcaster was threatened with legal action over comments by former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore during a debate about Islamic protests which marred a soldiers’ homecoming parade in Luton.” [The Spittoon] Read more

Without Jihad I am 50% Muslim

Being Muslim is not merrily confined to the affirmation of faith in Allah, His books, His Messengers and the Day of Judgment. Being a Muslim is not confined to the duties of performing the prayers, observing the fasts, embarking on the pilgrimage, or paying the alms. Nor does it fulfill the concept of being fully Muslim, by observing the injunctions of Islam relating to marriage, divorce and inheritance. Every Muslim anywhere in the world should have one common goal, to this day the goal of the Ummah remains suppressed.

It is the concept of Jihad, the struggle and striving for Allah that Islam alone emphasis encompassing all the above that makes you a real Muslim. Jihad against prejudice and pro- political Jihad in today's battlefield where the sword is buried and the power of word is carried. [MPACUK] Read more

BBC offers apology and £30,000 to Muslim Council of Britain

Is not political debate supposed to be provocative? Does it not consist of the vigorous exchange of ideas, conflicting perspectives and contrary views? And may not the articulation of some of these offend?

It would appear not. For the BBC has officially abolished freedom of speech on its political flagship - Question Time. Political debate now falls under the totalitarian aegis of political correctness, and with true Newspeak censorship, ‘unacceptable’ arguments must be filtered out. And what cannot be said dare not be thought.

In a appalling capitulation to a vacuous ‘threat’ from the Muslim Council of Britain, the state broadcaster has not only apologised for comments made by Charles Moore, they have offered £30,000 of taxpayers’ money by way of compensation. [Archbishop Cranmer] Read more

Muslims in fresh Athens demo over alleged Koran insult

More than 1,000 Muslim migrants and leftists demonstrated in Athens Friday over an alleged police insult to the Koran, a week after two similar protests degenerated into clashes with anti-riot police.

The protest was called by leftist and anti-racist groups after a police officer allegedly tore up some sheets of paper with extracts from the Muslim holy book belonging to an Iraqi migrant during an identity check last week. "We want this officer put on trial, and we ask the government to protect our prayer sites in Athens," said Zuri, a Moroccan protester. [AFP News] Read more

Please uncover your face. It's our custom

Funny to return from Lebanon, Syria and Turkey - where women go unveiled - and return to Britain, the land of the full hijab. I see more women with their faces covered in Tower Hamlets than I did in Damascus.

I used to think that covering the whole face except for the eyes was the normal Islamic custom (in a week in Afghanistan I hardly saw a woman's face) and so was surprised to find that even in Syria, the most culturally conservative of the Middle Eastern countries I've just visited, not a tenth of the women seem to cover their faces. Most (by no means all) cover their heads, but you don't get that closed, turning-away feeling you sense along the Whitechapel Road in the East End of London. [Times Online] Read more

Our selective moral outrage is shameful

Muslims living in Britain and around the world are often outraged when Muslims are killed or Muslim holy sites attacked. This is a normal and often admirable reaction. However, I am increasingly frustrated that this moral outrage is often highly selective and is only ignited when it is non-Muslims who are doing the killing and attacking. [The Spittoon] Read more

UK student atheist socs face prejudice and death threats

The National Student carries an article detailing some disturbing evidence that atheist and secularist student societies are having a hard time in the UK’s universities.

Death threats and vandalism have dogged the Leeds University Atheist Society, prompted by their 24/7 ‘Rationalist Week 09’ and by a debate on free speech involving the Motoons. Apparently the death threats weren’t taken too seriously, as they were not reported to the police.

Further south, Southampton University Atheist Society had a free-speech debate repeatedly blocked by both the Muslim Society and the SU because they wanted to show Fitna as part of the event. They were eventually given permission to go ahead, but only with a police presence and security searches. [MediaWatchWatch] Read more

Turkish Author, on Trial, Says Novel Is Not Blasphemous

A Turkish author on trial after being charged with inciting religious hatred in a novel based on the birth of Islam said that his book was a work of fiction but the result of extensive research and consultation with religious leaders, and therefore could not be called blasphemous. An Istanbul court on Tuesday adjourned the trial of the author, Nedim Gursel, until June 25. He faces up to a year in jail if convicted.

The novel “Daughters of Allah,” published last year, questioned the ideas of belief and violence in Islam, but had no intention of humiliating religious values, he told the NTV network. The case was filed after a citizen complained that Mr. Gursel had used inappropriate language against the Prophet Muhammad, his wives and the Koran. [NYTimes.com] Read more

German Muslim community split over co-ed swimming classes

Muslim parents have lost an appeal against their nine year-old daughter having to attend mixed swimming lessons with boys. The girls can protect their modesty, however, with full-length bathing suits.

A court in the western city of Muenster has ruled that Muslim girls at elementary schools in Germany must attend mixed swimming classes with boys, rejecting a request from the parents of a nine-year-old girl for her to be excused from the lessons. [DW-WORLD.DE] Read more

Gender issues worsen Iraq's medical woes

This part of Iraq, says Dr. Ayad al-Hadithy, is so conservative that a man would rather have his pregnant wife die in labor than be touched by a male nurse or doctor.

It's just one of the difficulties faced by U.S. and Iraqi officials as they struggle to nurse the war-ravaged province of Anbar back to health. One showcase of their efforts is the reopening last year, for women only, of the Nursing School in Anbar's capital, Ramadi. Another is a field school in the town of Saqlawiyah that has just graduated its first batch of 10 female nurse's aides.
Nowhere are nurses more badly needed than in Saqlawiyah and its surrounding villages, where 50,000 people have no women doctors and only one female nurse and one midwife, both old and overworked.

The area's most recent records, from five years ago when the anti-U.S. insurgency was just beginning, show that one in five women dies in childbirth, and many women never even see a doctor. [Associated Press] Read more

Swine Flu - Allah Forewarned U.S.

It was through modern science that people came to know the wisdom behind Islam prohibiting certain stuffs. This prohibition was made before the discovery of the microscope. The prohibited stuffs are; dead animals where bacteria find an environment to grow, blood that contains even more bacteria, and finally swine whose bodies are magnets of some morbid strains that cannot be removed by any means of purification. The body of the swine is a place where many parasites, bacteria, and viruses grow and can be transfused to human beings and animals.

It's known that Balantidiasis is widespread among the swine herders and those people who mix with them. This malady may become epidemic under certain circumstances. This happened in one of the islands of the Pacific after a hurricane which spread the dung of swine all over the island. Wherever swine exists, such plagues and maladies erupt even in highly advanced countries. This is counter to their claims of the possibility of purging it through modern techniques which make the prohibition of pork invalid. [AllAfrica Global Media] Read more

Muslim clerics consider Facebook Fatwa

Muslim clerics are seeking ways to regulate online behaviour in Indonesia, saying the exploding popularity of social networking sites like Facebook could encourage illicit sex.

Around 700 clerics, or imams, gathering in the world's most populous Muslim nation today were considering guidelines forbidding their followers from going online to flirt or engage in practices they believe could encourage extramarital affairs.

Facebook said Indonesia, a nation of 235 million, was its fastest-growing country in Southeast Asia in 2008, with a 645% increase to 831,000 users – outpacing China and India. [news.scotsman.com] Read more

Can you read that license plate?

The following table [Driving Theory tests taken in a language other than English] comes from a release by the Department of Transport under the Freedom of Information Act, and I thought it might be interesting when put in comparison to Gordon Brown's comments to the Commons Liaison Committee in 2007 when he said that immigrants to the UK, "should be able to speak the English language".

Or perhaps Jacqui Smith's comments in the same year that immigrants "need to integrate into our country, learn English and use our language." [Dizzy Thinks] Read more

Islam and offence

Offence and Islam is a wide-ranging issue — I would go so far as to argue that it is primarily an intra-Muslim affair and only secondarily concerned with the non-Muslim world. And the manner in which offence is expressed varies almost as substantially as the causes of offence — from violent acts to tears shed in private, from parliamentary decrees to protest poetry.

One could ask, “why has the violently offended Muslim become such a prominent figure?” There are those who argue that Islam lends itself to violence, but this point of view entirely ignores the fact that the entwining of Islam, violence and offence has not existed in an unbroken thread through the centuries, but has become significant in very recent history. [Index on Censorship] Read more

Muslims are eager to contribute and play a more recognised role in advancing the best interests of their nation

One of the most pervasive underlying assumptions in the discourse on European Muslim integration is that Muslim religiosity is a threat to Europe. Those who believe in the irreconcilability of western and Muslim identity generally argue that Muslim piety, expressed in religious symbols and moral conservatism, contrasted against the backdrop of secular and sexually liberal Europe, is a recipe for increasingly insular Muslim communities and profound alienation from European national identity. [Guardian CiF] Read more

Ahern 'bemused' by criticism

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern has said he is “bemused” by recent criticism of his proposal to include an offence of blasphemy in new defamation legislation due to be debated before an Oireachtas committee tomorrow.

Mr Ahern was responding after the media watchdog of the world’s largest regional security organisation said the Government’s plan to introduce the blasphemy law would be in violation of international agreements on media freedom.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) representative on freedom of the media, Miklos Haraszti, said new court cases that might emerge as a result of criminalising 'blasphemy' would have a “chilling effect” on freedom of expression. [irishtimes.com] Read more

The Human Rights Council refuses to address the abuse of women in Muslim countries under Sharia

In December 2006, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), an international group established in 1971 and representing 57 countries, hosted an emergency summit in Mecca. The event became infamous after two angry imams from Denmark presented a dossier of cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten that mocked the Prophet Mohammed. In the ensuing uproar, Muslims murdered several people in Europe and torched the Danish embassy in Beirut.

But the cartoon episode wasn’t the summit’s starkest example of Muslim outrage over free speech. The most critical decision that the OIC made in Mecca was to adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward perceived insults to Islam. [Eastern Media Group] Read more

The Farce of the UN Human Rights Council

Article 22 of the declaration, which defines free speech, stipulates:

(a) Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shari’ah.

(b) Everyone shall have the right to advocate what is right, and propagate what is good, and warn against what is wrong and evil according to the norms of Islamic Shari’ah.

(c) Information is a vital necessity to society. It may not be exploited or misused in such a way as may violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets, undermine moral and ethical values or disintegrate, corrupt or harm society or weaken its faith.

(d) It is not permitted to arouse nationalistic or doctrinal hatred or to do anything that may be an incitement to any form of racial discrimination.

A Muslim scholar who critically examines the Koran as a historical text would find little in the Cairo Declaration protecting his free speech and much curtailing it. An agnostic doubting the prophethood or virtue of Mohammed would be similarly at risk. [Mick Hartley] Read more

Religious equality divides uni dons

After the university amended its equal opportunities policy to stress it “respects religious or philosophical beliefs of all kinds” and opposes discrimination, Prof Ross Anderson warned it could impact on freedom of speech among staff frightened of causing offence. A statement read out on behalf of Prof Geth Evans slammed the “half-baked” new policy as “misconceived and confused and . . . likely to do more harm than good”.

In March, Prof Anderson told the News iconic figures such as Newton and Darwin were part of a long tradition at Cambridge of “theicide” – the killing of gods – which was threatened by the policy amendments. He said: “This is very much an environment where people can challenge established belief and express thoughts which will challenge the faithful. “We should not allow ideas to be snuffed out in fear of causing offence.” [Cambridge News] Read more

“Without Pork and Alcohol, Norwegians are the World's Best Muslims”

Ghufoor Butt (no, I’m not making that up) is forming the ILP, which he explains in this interview. What intrigues me about this man is his artlessness. I can’t think of a better word to describe his frank opinions and his fearlessness in uttering them. The man has chutzpah to spare.

He says:The new party will prohibit homosexual practices and lower gasoline prices. “In about three years will the mayor of Oslo be a Norwegian-Pakistani,” says Ghufoor Butt. [Gates of Vienna] Read more

How free did we feel before this hot, itchy carapace swaddled our heads?

If you want to make a woman feel like a slut, just give her a headscarf. Hair which hitherto caused anxiety only for its recalcitrant frizziness, or greasiness, or stubborn, rogue curls is instantly transformed from neutral, necessary framing of too-tired, too-wrinkled or too-blotchy face into glinting, winking, evil sexual weapon, a trap to catch and poach and traumatise an innocent male. [independent.co.uk] Read more

Reaction to acid attack on Afghani girls

British Muslims for Secular Democracy is deeply concerned at news of the 12th May poison gas attack at a girls school in Charikar, north-east Afghanistan, which resulted in the hospitalisation of 98 people (including 84 students).

This is the third poisoning incident to take place at a girls’ school in the past fortnight. bmsd believes that every child has the right to obtain an education in a safe, secure environment and strongly condemns these attacks.

While no group or individual has accepted responsibility for the poisonings, Education Ministry officials say they believe it is a series of poison gas attacks by militants who oppose education for girls. [Pickled Politics] Read more

Muslim doctor says she was fired for attending Friday prayers

Here again we see the same phenomenon playing out that we have seen many, many times over the last few years: a Muslim demands that a workplace change its practices to allow for Islamic observance, rather than dealing with the parameters of the job as it is.

Every one of these incidents is a test case in the question of which will prevail: Islamic law or Western practice and custom. Will Muslims be established as a privileged class in Western countries, with rights that others don't have, or will equality of rights and equality of treatment be maintained? [Jihad Watch] Read more

Egyptian Child Abuse

Since Barack Obama has announced that he plans to address the Muslim world from Egypt in early June, perhaps he could raise the subject of television shows like this one, broadcast on Egyptian/Saudi channel Al-Hafez TV on April 27, 2009, featuring a smiling, jovial host indoctrinating Arab children to hate and murder Jews. [Little Green Footballs] Read more

History Repeats Itself

TV host: So the Prophet Muhammad had to put an end to the anarchy coming from there. Of course, the Jews, by their nature, know that their confrontation with the Muslims will come for sure. For sure. Why Maryam? Because our hatred towards the Jews is perpetual and continuous. When the Jews realized that Muhammad is the Prophet, they acknowledged that their hatred of him is forever – that they would be his enemies all their lives.

This is happening to this day. It is even said in the Koran: "You shall find the strongest people in enmity to the believers to be the Jews and the polytheists." The Jews. They are... Who is the greatest enemy of Islam? The Jews. They use any possible means. They cast doubt on the Koran and the sirra of our Prophet Muhammad. They try to distort the Koran, but our God protects it: "We have revealed the message, and we will most surely be its guardian." They do all they can to hurt the Muslims' feelings and to harm their holy places.

We pray that Allah liberates Jerusalem. In many cases, the Jews try to do to the Muslims... What are they trying to do to the Muslims? They try to harm the Muslims. They always try to do bad things to whom, Maryam? To the Muslims. That is why Allah has warned us very strongly about them. [...] [Mick Hartley] Read more

Judge’s comments raise women’s ire

A Jeddah court judge’s approval of husbands slapping their wives on the face if they spend money lavishly on unnecessary things triggered a hue and cry during a seminar on domestic violence here recently.

“If a person gives SR1,200 to his wife and she spends SR900 to purchase an abaya (the black gown) from a brand shop and if her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment,” said Judge Hamad Al-Razine. [Arab News] Read more

Scaremongering over Muslim demographics

Recently, a video has been popping up on various Muslim blogs, attempting to raise fears among Westerners that Muslim birth rates are vastly outstripping non-Muslim ones, to the point that some western European countries will have Muslim majorities by the middle of this century.

Another example of this kind of scaremongering appeared on the Telegraph’s blog site .... by some guy called Ed West, “a journalist and social commentator who specialises in politics, religion and low culture”.

West compares those on the left who “kept silent” about the issue of declining European birth rates coupled with rising Muslim ones to those on the right who “kept silent” about man-made climate change, until Hurricane Katrina forced the issue out into the open. [Indigo Jo Blogs] Read more

Muslim chef sues over pork request

A Muslim chef is suing Britain’s largest police force, claiming he suffered religious discrimination because he was expected to cook bacon and pork sausages for breakfast. Hasanali Khoja is due to put his case against the Metropolitan Police to an employment tribunal, which starts a 10-day hearing in London tomorrow.

The case has caused outrage in the British press and has been seized on by far right political parties, being branded “the madness of multiculturalism” by the British National Party.

Mr Khoja, 60, whose claim is being backed by both the Association of Muslim Police and the National Black Police Association, says he was refused permission not to handle pork when he took a job as catering manager at a police headquarters in west London. [The National] Read more See Also: [BBC] Read more See Also: [Harry’s Place] Read more

Just one in 10 British Muslims feel integrated into society, study claims

Only one in ten Muslims in Britain see themselves as integrated into the rest of society, a large-scale international survey said today. And it found that more than a third are dissatisfied with their standard of living. The levels of integration - or 'cohesion' as Labour ministers prefer to call it - compare badly with the way Muslims have mixed into the rest of the population in France and Germany.

There were divisions between Muslims and the rest of the population over religious symbols. More than half of the general population think that the removal of women's face veils is necessary for the Muslim minority fully to integrate into society. However most Muslims believe in the veil and only 12 per cent think it has to go in order to achieve cohesion. [MailOnline] Read more

Free Speech in Europe

It is probably well known to our readers that the British government, on the advice of Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, recently prevented Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch parliament, from visiting Britain, to which country he had been invited in order to show his short film Fitna to a group of peers in the House of Lords. Fitna means “turning away” or “temptation,” and denotes the sin to which young Muslims are exposed in Western societies.

The film purports to demonstrate the terroristic nature of the Koran and to give a warning against the Islamization of Europe. It has not been banned in Holland, but it is clearly a no-holds-barred attack on Islam as a creed and a social force.

.... Lord Ahmed, who claims to be a Muslim, announced that he could muster thousands of the faithful in order to make Mr. Wilders’s visit a serious problem for the government. Rather than test this insolent remark as it demanded, the government went along with what it took to be Muslim opinion, and made no effort to defend Mr. Wilders’s right, as a member of one European parliament, to explain his views to another. [The Spectator] Read more

Survey shows UK Muslims have more conservative attitudes on sex than Muslims in France and Germany

Muslims in Britain have zero tolerance towards homosexual acts compared to their counterparts in France and Germany, according to a survey published today.

On the issue of sexual relations between unmarried men and women, general populations surveyed express similar views, with the majority believing it was acceptable. But the Muslim populations polled again reflected greater diversity on the matter. French Muslims ranked highest again, with 48% believing it was acceptable, followed by 27% of German Muslims responding favourably.

British Muslims came last, with only 3% of those questioned personally believing that sex between unmarried men and women was moral. There was a similar outcome when asked for their views on extra-marital affairs. [guardian.co.uk] Read more See Also: [Harry’s Place] Read more

MCB Welcomes Poll Finding British Muslims at Home in the UK and Amongst Fellow Citizens

The Muslim Council of Britain today welcomed the findings of an ongoing poll conducted by Gallup and the Coexist Foundation showing that Muslims in the United Kingdom feel more loyalty towards the country in which they live than the general public believes they do. The poll reveals a triumph of fact over opinion – it challenges the idea that Muslims have divided loyalties, are separatist and, because of their faith and religiosity, have nothing in common with fellow Britons.

89% of British Muslims feel it is necessary to learn the English language, whilst 84% express the need to celebrate national holidays. These attitudes, the survey reveals, are prevalent amongst those who feel that religion is also important to their lives.

76 % of British Muslims said they had confidence in our country’s Judicial system and courts, thus negating those doomsayers who say Muslims want some sort of undefined ‘Shariah state’. On the issue of terrorism, 89% agreed that attacks in which civilians are targeted could not be morally justified at all. [The Muslim Council of Britain] Read more

Saudis Debate Ban on Women Drivers

As an article published last month in the English-language Saudi newspaper Arab News explained, the project, called “We the Women,” was started by Areej Khan, a 24-year-old Saudi woman currently studying design in the United States.

According to Arab News, she started thinking about how onerous the ban was when she saw that her retired father was forced to spend much of his time “chauffeuring her, her mother and three sisters.” [NYTimes.com] Read more

What the Gallup poll on Muslims really tells us is that there's no link between religion and feeling alienated from society

The takeaway line from the Gallup poll on Muslims and integration in western Europe is very simple: there is no correlation between religious observance and feeling alienated from the society around you; but this is what the society around Muslims believes.

The figures that Gallup has produced are quite startling, and apply both to beliefs and symbols. In England, Germany and France, the three countries surveyed, Muslims are twice as likely as the general public to suppose that Muslims are loyal citizens.

In Germany and the UK, they have higher confidence in the police and the judiciary than the general public (in France, where they are also over-represented in the prison system, they also mistrust the authorities more). [Guardian CiF] Read more See Also: [Guardian CiF] Read more

Sinister blasphemy law would play into the hands of religious nut cases

If Jesus were in Ireland today, under the new law, wouldn’t he be one of its first victims, held in Portlaoise, perhaps, while lawyers debated whether he should be deported to Israel, or the Palestinian Authority, or tried here? Muslims might find their mosques under close inspection, too.

We can only speculate as to why Justice Minister Dermot Ahern is proposing to introduce a new crime of blasphemous libel punishable by fines up to €100,000. Is it to salve his conscience for having to implement other policies which offend his personal sense of what is right and wrong? Is it a government ploy to distract attention from more pressing matters? Who knows? [Irish Examiner] Read more

Muslims are using Europe’s liberal democratic apparatus to roll back our hard-fought freedoms

Europe has become a place for new religions, new creeds, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, transnationalism. Everything is thus relative. This is an uncertainty that the Muslim does not share. The Muslim ethic and tribal spirit are far more resilient and fierce in war than the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism.

The numbers and insights that Caldwell has collected in his book are visible to many Europeans. During my life in Holland, and in my trips back, I have spoken to European intellectuals who see the revolution that Caldwell describes so well in his book. They may not call it a revolution, they may also not see it as complete, but they see the identity crisis in Europe. [International Free Press Society] Read more

The Muslim cleric who blames British mosques for the 7/7 bombings, says multiculturalism is a disaster and would throw Islamic fanatics out

'I will give £5 to anyone in Britain who wants to live under Sharia law,' he declares. 'It will help pay for their ticket to Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan, or wherever it is customary to live under Sharia law. 'Please, please go and leave us alone. This is Britain, not 10th century Arabia!'

We are indeed sitting in a bar, on a busy main road in Oxford. But the man before me is no stereotypical Islamophobe. For one, he is sipping a glass of water rather than something more inflammatory. More importantly, though by no means obviously, Dr Taj Hargey is himself an Islamic cleric; perhaps the most controversial imam in Britain today. In an age when the highest-profile Muslim preachers are bearded, anti-Western firebrands such as Abu Hamza or Omar Bakri Dr Hargey seems an anomaly. [MailOnline] Read more

Fear masquerading as tolerance

A central problem in welcoming people from poor countries is that Europeans have lost faith in parts of the civilisation to which migrants were drawn in the first place. ‘‘Europeans would like to exit from history, from la grande histoire, from the history that is written in letters of blood,’’ wrote the French political scientist Raymond Aron in the 1970s. ‘‘Others, by their hundreds of millions, wish to enter it.’’ It is hard to follow Europe’s rules and embrace Europe’s values, as newcomers are sometimes told they must, when Europeans themselves are rewriting those rules and reassessing those values. [Prospect] Read more

Denmark: Muslim attitudes towards terrorism, terrorist groups and the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars

An overwhelming majority of the Danish population clearly rejects terrorism. But in the group of Muslims the numbers are not as high as in the rest of the population.

When asking the non-Muslim part of the population, 97% says that terrorism is unacceptable. But only 82% of Muslims clearly reject terrorism, a survey conducted by Capacent for DR Nyheder shows. The rest of the Muslims do not directly reject terrorism. Six percent agree that terrorism can be acceptable.

Justice minister Brian Mikkelsen is concerned about the numbers. "We live in a rule of law and a democracy. In a society like ours it should have been all Muslims without exception who reject terrorism." [Islam in Europe] Read more