Migrant contracts show first fruit

Integration contracts for migrants, introduced two years ago, have had some success in Switzerland - but there is still room for improvement, a study has found. Some cantons have taken a harder tack than others. Meanwhile, critics have warned that migrants should not be forced to integrate.

.... It defines the migrant’s aims, such as attaining a language fluency level or attending an integration course. If these goals are not reached, sanctions may be imposed. People from around 45 nations have been involved so far. Study leader .... said that while all five cantons wanted better integration, they had chosen different paths. [SwissInfo] Read more [via Islam in Europe]

The German Connection

.... As a practical philosophy, Islamism can be traced back to an Egyptian schoolteacher named Hasan al-Banna. In 1928 he founded the Muslim Brotherhood, a group devoted to restoring a fundamentalist idea of Islam to government and society alike.

At the time, thinkers in the Muslim world were obsessed by the West's colonial dominance and by their own civilization's decline. Banna was a populist who aimed his idea of Islamic revival at a wide audience by putting his thoughts—and his rigid interpretation of the Koran—into plain words.

The movement tried to broaden its appeal still further by emphasizing social justice and providing welfare services. The Muslim Brotherhood's methods have inspired Islamists ever since, including, today, the members of al Qaeda and Hamas. [The Wall Street Journal] Read more [via Islam in Europe]

Saudi king's photo brings women's rights into focus

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is not normally associated with radical moves but the 85-year-old monarch is making waves with signals encouraging greater tolerance of women's rights.

In recent days Abdullah's appearance in an unusual group photograph has become a talking point across his realm and the wider Arab world. The king and his brother Crown Prince Sultan were flanked by 40 women dressed in modest abayas but mostly with their faces bare, a novelty that is seen as evidence of rare liberalism at the top. [guardian.co.uk] Read more

For Australia's sake, we need to ban the burqa

The burqa is no longer simply the symbol of female repression and Islamic culture, it is now emerging as a disguise of bandits and n'er do wells.

In Sydney this morning a man was robbed by a burqa wearing bandit who further disguised his (or her) identity by wearing sunglasses. The bandit was described by police as being of "Middle Eastern appearance". [The Sydney Morning Herald] Read more

'I have to keep her indoors now': Muslim husband's shocking response as wife is first to be fined £430 for wearing a burka

A husband has vowed to keep his wife indoors after she became the first woman in Italy to be fined for wearing a burka in public.

Amel Marmouri, 26, was handed the 500 euro (£430) penalty after she was spotted queuing inside a post office by police with her body and face fully covered by the garment. She was warned she would receive another fine if she were spotted again in her burka. [MailOnline] Read more

Imam tells Italy that wearing of veil is in tradition of the Madonna Veiled Muslim women have become the true upholders of western traditions of female dress, says Italy's top imam, who angrily condemned the decision to fine a woman in Italy for wearing a veil that completely covered her features.

The incident, which took place in the northern Italian town of Novara, was the first of its kind in Europe. Izzedin Elzir, the president of the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy (UCOII) and a former fashion designer, said: "If we go and see the beautiful artistic representations of the Madonna, we see her with the veil. We don't see her semi-naked, I think. [guardian.co.uk] Read more

Muslim husband confirms what we already knew: burqa-wearers are mere chattels LAME-BRAINED apologists who argue that Islamic face coverings ought to be tolerated in Western societies because they are a symbol of piety, or of modesty, periodically even go so far as to insist that women aren’t compelled to wear sinister abominations like the burqa. Some even claim that such garments are “empowering”.

This, of course, is utter bullshit – and was exposed as such when a Muslim living in Novara, Italy, declared that he would have no option but to place his wife under house arrest if the law prevented her from venturing out looking like a perambulating black pillar-box. [The Freethinker] Read more

All parties must stand up to Islamophobia

The intolerance towards Muslims must not be tolerated, but the main political parties have not pledged to take sufficient action to combat anti-Muslim prejudice. Legitimate criticism of Muslims who spew extremist rhetoric and commit criminal acts is acceptable.

However, the ugly trend of bigotry against law-abiding Muslims sweeping Europe should not be ignored by whoever comes into power as it is influencing debate here in the UK. …. Recently traffic police in France fined a Muslim woman for wearing a face veil while driving based on her not having sufficient field of vision. She was able to see as well as motorcyclists wearing helmets – but they are not being fined.

[Comment] .... the accusation, so beloved by certain types of commentators, of 'Islamophobia', you've used it too often, it doesn't have any sting anymore, except to mark you out as unable to engage in reasonable discussion with the majority community. So what are you offering to do to adapt yourselves to the majority? [Guardian Cif] Read more

Saudi liberals see hope as clerics argue over gender segregation

Divisions among senior Saudi clerics over the legality of gender segregation could mark a new drive by reformers allied to King Abdullah to push social reforms in the puritanical Islamic state.

The divisions came to the open when the kingdom’s morals police, or the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, reversed a decision to sack Ahmad al-Ghamdi, its regional head for the Mecca region. [Reuters Faith World] Read more

Aceh Drafts Regional Ban on Non-Islamic Broadcasts

Provincial office of the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission said it has proposed a draft regulation to ban non-islamic contents of broadcasting the province, to the provincial house which draw partial or total rejection from scholars and journalists.

.... a member of the Provincial Broadcasting .... said the specific law or Qanun will authorize the regional authorities to impose further censorship on “all film or television and radio production despite having past the National Censorship Body.” [TEMPO INTERAKTIF.COM] Read more [via Censor Watch]

Banning hijab no rights violation, court says

Sheriff's deputies did not violate a Muslim woman's rights by forcing her to remove her hijab, a religiously mandated headscarf, in a courthouse holding cell, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled Monday.

Souhair Khatib sued Orange County for damages under a federal law that prohibits government agencies from imposing a "substantial burden" on the right to practice one's religion in a prison, jail or pretrial detention facility. She said her religion forbids her to expose her head or neck to men outside her immediate family. [The San Francisco Chronicle] Read more [via Islamophobia Watch]

An £18 million “mega-mosque” at the centre of a far-right protest has been scrapped

Members of the English Defence League blasted out recordings of an Islamic call to prayer after scaling a disused building. Masked extremists ignored threats of arrest for inciting religious and racial hatred and unveiled banners saying “No to the burka” and “No mosque”. [Daily Star] Read more [via National Secular Society]

Dudley mosque plan scrapped Plans to build an £18 million mosque in Dudley town centre have been scrapped, the Express & Star can reveal today. The scheme to build a mosque with 65ft minaret on derelict land in Hall Street attracted huge protests, but has now been ditched by the Dudley Muslim Association.

Deputy council leader, Les Jones, told the Express & Star today the DMA had agreed instead to redevelop the existing mosque in Castle Hill, after months of delicate negotiations. [Express & Star] Read more [via Islam in Europe]

Tan ban in Iran

YOU can always rely on the mad, mad word of Islam to produce the wackiest stories in the world – but for sheer lunacy this month Iran beats all competition.

.... Tehran police chief Brig Gen Hossien Sajedinia – head of what some are now calling the Taniban – has warned that all women sporting a tan will be arrested and imprisoned because the look violates the “spirit of Islamic law.” Thus, any woman that looked like a “walking mannequin” will be punished.

.... And what about this statement, Sue? "We are not going to tolerate this situation, and will first warn those found in this manner and then arrest and imprison them." How the bloody hell can you “warn” someone who has a tan? What are they supposed to do – go home and take it off immediately? [The Freethinker] Read more

A Swiss canton on Tuesday passed legislation preparing the groundwork for a possible ban on the Islamic burqa

The local council in Aargau, a canton (state) in the north of Switzerland along the German border, voted overwhelmingly to work on a state initiative to make wearing the burqa in public places illegal. Most major parties backed the move.

Pushing the motion forward, the centrist and right wing parties in favour said the garment was a "symbol of male dominance over women," according to the Swiss news agency SDA. The parties also said the full body veil prevents the integration of migrants into Swiss society. [The Earth Times] Read more [via Islamophobia Watch]

Controversial Muslim group kept out of dialogue

The controversial Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (ICCS) will not be invited to take part in talks between the justice minister and Swiss Muslim groups. The head of the Migration Office, Alard du Bois-Reymond, met a delegation of the ICCS on Tuesday and said it was “unthinkable in present circumstances” for them to take part in the planned dialogue.

He said the organisation must distance itself explicitly from the stoning of women and give up its demand to create a fatwa council. The ICCS says such a council is needed as a theological authority for dealing with Islamic issues. [SwissInfo] Read more [via Islam in Europe]

'South Park' and the Informal Fatwa

.... Another idea is to do stories of Muhammad where his image is shown as much as possible. These stories do not have to be negative or insulting, they just need to spread the risk. The aim is to confront hypersensitive Muslims with more targets than they can possibly contend with.

Another advantage of such a campaign is to accustom Muslims to the kind of treatment that the followers of other religions have long been used to. After the "South Park" episode in question there were no threats from Buddhists, Christians and Jews—to say nothing of Tom Cruise and Barbra Streisand fans—all of whom had far more reason to be offended than Muslims.

…. In "South Park," this tyrannical rule is cleverly needled when Tom Cruise asks the question: How come Muhammad is the only celebrity protected from ridicule? Now we know why. [The Wall Street Journal Europe] Read more [via National Secular Society]

No-name radicals vs. ‘South Park’ just a distraction .... This is what I mean by saying the best way to counter free speech is with more free speech, not censorship.

…. Sadly, instead of dealing with the real cases of racism, bigotry and xenophobia regularly injected into our public airwaves by some of our political leaders and opinion makers, we have instead allowed ourselves to get sucked into a faux controversy involving two no-name idiots with a radical website taking on four pre-pubescent, fictitious cartoon characters from South Park, Colorado. [loonwatch.com] Read more

Danish law should take Sharia into account, say researchers

Some Muslims in Denmark marry, divorce and live their lives by special religious, cultural and tradition-regulated laws called Sharia. The Danish law system should take that more into consideration, say three professors of law and Islam, who contributed to a new English-language book on the perceptions of Sharia in Europe - a book which argues for that solution.

"It's a question of basic justice. If flexibility is not practiced from case to case, where people's culture, religion and traditions - including elements from Sharia - are also taken into account, some people are excluded in society from equal access to the justice system," says Jørgen S. Nielsen, professor of Islam at Copenhagen University. [Islam in Europe] Read more

Saudi eases ban on unrelated couples in cars

Unrelated couples caught together in the same vehicle will not automatically face prosecution in Saudi Arabia as the conservative Muslim kingdom relaxes strict rules prohibiting mixing of the sexes, the Saudi Gazette reported.

Under the new rules, unrelated men and women caught in the same vehicle could be pardoned if the circumstances in which they are found do not suggest immoral activities and neither has previous convictions, the local newspaper said on Monday. [Maktoob.com] Read more [via Religious Watch]

The burka, not bare flesh, demeans girls

Driving through Dublin city centre one day last week I saw a woman pushing a little baby girl in a pram. At least, I think she was a woman. Her hands looked young and slim and there was a glimpse of a heel under the ankle-length black burka that obliterated any other hint of humanity, let alone femininity. She was nothing more than a moving black silhouette, peering through a tiny lace grid, though no eyes were actually visible. [The Sunday Times] Read more

Polygamists 'breeding for cash'

The burqa, or face-covering veil, is getting all the attention in the debate over Muslim immigrants in France. But another controversial tradition among some immigrants is less noticed and far more widespread: Polygamy.

The issue resurfaced last week after a woman received a traffic citation in the western city of Nantes for driving with a veil over her face. Officials then accused her husband of having at least three other wives, and said he may be profiting from them financially while the state pays the bill. [The New Zealand Herald] Read more [via Jihad Watch]

Fear of Teddy Bears...

.... Clearly people are a little afraid to poke fun at islam but this is a minor matter. Why should people take risks when there is a better way.

It wasn't so many years ago that society as a whole was very tolerant of religion. Even disbelievers chose not to rock the boat, feeling perhaps that belief is at least benign, but probably good for society even if it's all nonsense.

But things changed as the West came up against islam. Here was a religion that was totally unacceptable in many (but not all) of its social mores. And the tolerance bubble seems to have burst. Now society is no longer giving religion an easy ride. [Religious Watch] Read more

Erica Connor: driven out of my own school

In 2001, Erica Connor was invited to Downing Street to celebrate her achievements as a head teacher who had transformed the fortunes of her primary school. Today, the 58-year-old works as a hospital care assistant, her illustrious teaching career destroyed by a cabal of Muslim governors whose accusations of racism made it impossible for her to run her school. [telegraph.co.uk] Read more

Europe: Interest in Burka-ban following Belgian vote

Last Thursday the lower house of the Belgian parliament passed a law banning the burka. It does not seem likely that this law will pass the Senate any time soon, but that did not prevent politicians elsewhere in Europe from calling for a continent-wide ban. [Islam in Europe] Read more

What's threatening about European attacks on Muslim veils BELGIUM'S PARLIAMENT is so polarized along linguistic lines that it has been unable to agree on a government for much of the past three years. At the moment it is ruled by a caretaker coalition. But the deputies managed to achieve near-unanimity this week on one pressing issue: discriminating against Muslims. A law passed by the lower house would ban the wearing of full Islamic face veils in any public place -- and exacerbate what is becoming an ugly European trend. [The Washington Post] Read more

MEP Koch-Mehrin calls for Europe-wide burka ban After Belgium's parliament voted to ban Islamic full-face veils, the German vice-president of the European Parliament has called for a ban of the burka throughout Europe. Silvana Koch-Mehrin called the full-body veil an attack on the rights of women in a guest editorial in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

"I would like to see all forms of the burka banned in Germany and in all of Europe," wrote the politician, a member of Germany's pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP). [The Local Europe] Read more [via Islamophobia Watch]

Belgium bans burkas: Women who refuse to show faces to be jailed for a week under draft law Belgium became the first European country to impose a full ban on wearing a burka last night. Its parliament approved a draft law which states women can be jailed for hiding their faces in public. The bill - which must be rubber-stamped by the Belgian senate - is set to become law by July. [MailOnline] Read more

Rejecting the burka In Britain, for instance, this total lack of willingness to integrate on the part of some Muslims has become an obstacle to the formal learning of English, has heightened inter-communal tensions, and has reinforced the ghettoization of Asian Muslims into separate enclaves with high unemployment and increased social alienation.

.... Those who support such legislation realize that an easygoing multiculturalism works only when there are basic shared values and a willingness to integrate. But European multiculturalism has deteriorated into rudderless moral relativism and a pusillanimous reluctance to criticize radical Islamic customs for fear of being branded an Islamophobe. [The Jerusalem Post] Read more

Burqa ban is a revival of an older European battle against religion

.... The battle between priests and secular primary school teachers — waged in villages across the country throughout the 19th century — was decisive in shaping the nation's political psyche. It turned France into a country where religion was accepted, but distrusted by the republican institutions.

Politicians, commentators, but also swaths of French public opinion, see radical Islam as a challenge to the secular state and to the values that it is supposed to promulgate — liberty, equality, fraternity. [Times Online] Read more

Jihadist walks free after ‘Islam will dominate…’ and ‘Kill Gordon Brown’ graffiti on war memorial ruled not hate speech

.... What really beggars belief is that the Counter Terrorism Division of the Crown Prosecution Service in London decided that the incident was not racially or religiously motivated saying, “While it was appreciated that what was sprayed on the memorial may have been perceived by some to be part of a racial or religious incident, no racial or religious group can be shown to have been targeted.” [manicstreetpreacher] Read more

War memorial: the final insult A BRITISH Muslim has shown ‘no remorse’ after desecrating Burton’s War Memorial with extremist Islamic slogans, a court has heard. .... senior lawyers from the Crown Prosecution Service have decided that graffiti proclaiming future world domination for Islam, glorifying Osama Bin Laden and calling for the assassination of the British Prime Minister “was not religiously or racially motivated”. [Burton Mail] Read more [via The Iconoclast]

Muslims and Westerners: The Psychological Differences

.... Islam is the perfect religion to give justification for those who feel under attack and to maintain the eternal “victim" fantasy. Islam is also “higher” than Christianity because it comes last in co-opting the revelations of Sinai and the New Testament.

What a perfect receptacle for projecting hatred. Islam incites, encourages and permits hatred of the Jew and Jihad. It’s perfect for a fragile personality that has the need to hate and the need to have an enemy. There are billions of people out there who share those sentiments and that profile.

As an underdog religion, Islam provides great mass appeal, which even Eric Hoffer, the author of the True Believer, noted in 1951. It should come as no surprise that its numbers are growing. If one has a grievance, Islam will take care of it. [The Iconoclast] Read more

Shall the religious inherit the earth?

.... Caldwell, too, thinks that while the West’s current encounter with Islam may be ‘painful and violent’, it has also been, ‘an infusion of oxygen into the drab, nitpicking, materialist intellectual life of the West’, for which we need to express our ‘gratitude’. The very values against which radical Islamists rail – the values of secular humanism – are also the very values that so disgust many of Islam’s greatest critics. Little wonder the critics both create fantasies about radical Islam's onward march - and feel unable to challenge it.

Whether or not the religious will triumph over the next century, no one can say. What is certain is that if they do, it will not be because secularists have been out-bred, but because they have been out-thought. The real challenge that secularists face is not in bed but in the public square. And it's a challenge that comes as much from Eurabists as from Islamists. [Kenan Malik] Read more [via Butterflies and Wheels]