The LibertyPhile Research website has been reorganised into two separate sites.
“LibertyPhile – This is Why” which monitors the causes of so-called “islamophobia”.
“LibertyPhile – Surveys” which concentrates on surveys and polls concerning Islam and Muslims.
A CONSERVATIVE Muslim government minister admits he shook hands yesterday with US first lady Michelle Obama in welcoming her to Indonesia – but says he really didn’t want to as it was against his religion.
According to this report, which has a video of the “aggressive” Obama handshake, Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring told tens of thousands of followers on Twitter: I tried to prevent (being touched) with my hands but Mrs Michelle held her hands too far toward me (so) we touched. [The Freethinker] Read more
U.S. doctors must become more attuned to Islamic beliefs and values that could affect the physician-patient relationship with Muslim Americans, researchers found in a recently released study. This will become even more important as the U.S. Muslim population of nearly 7 million continues to grow, they found.
In focus groups of Muslim Americans, "women would say, 'I delay care because I can't find a provider that's of the same gender. They want me to put this gown on, but I'm uncomfortable,' " says the study's lead author Aasim Padela, a Muslim emergency medicine doctor at the University of Michigan who is a visiting fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies in London. [USA TODAY] Read more [via National Secular Society]
.... just seven months ago, Indonesia's highest court issued a landmark ruling widely considered to be a major setback to speech and religious rights.
The Constitutional Court upheld the constitutionality of Indonesia's Blasphemy Act, which criminalizes speech or acts considered offensive to government approved religions as well as "deviations from teachings of religion considered fundamental by scholars of the relevant religion." [The Washington Post] Read more [via National Secualr Society]
To the extent that any absolute monarchy can claim a right to rule, the Saudi monarchy bases its claim on religious credentials. That might not have been much of a problem when Ibn Saud established the kingdom in 1932, but it is now. The dominant local version of Islam – Wahhabism – is no basis for running a modern state.
The present ruler, King Abdullah, seems to recognise this – at least, up to a point. Though a devout Wahhabi himself, he's a little more in touch with reality than many of the religious scholars and since coming to the throne five years ago he has been trying to modernise here and there, but very cautiously.
Among other things, he has been pushing for a proper legal system – though even that is too much for the more reactionary scholars who regard "man-made" laws as an abomination. [Guardian Cif] Read more
There is “no chance” that the extremist-backed mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman, will be readmitted to the Labour Party, sources close to the London regional party have said.
A move by Ken Livingstone to propose Lutfur’s readmission at the 30 November meeting of the party’s National Executive Committee has also been blocked, the sources said.
Livingstone, radical Islam’s single most important supporter in British politics, has met Ed Miliband to press for Lutfur’s rehabilitation after openly campaigning for Rahman during his election, against the official Labour candidate. [telegraph.co.uk] Read more
Tony Blair has written a fantastic piece for the Wall Street Journal about ‘making Muslim integration work'. As ever, it is spot on. His piece reminds us of the clarity and sense of purpose which pervaded his administration, and which is so desperately lacking today.
Blair pulls no punches, but neither does he pander to the easy canards about Islam and Muslims that have currently become so fashionable among a band of intellectually dishonest (or defeated) and self-appointed 'experts' in Europe and the United States. What he demonstrates is the purpose of the progressive agenda at its best against the rise of far-right extremism and anti-Muslim bigotry. [Standpoint] Read more
This post continues the series showing why British people (and Europeans) have such a poor opinion of Islam and Muslims. Read more
Two weeks after the extremist-backed politician, Lutfur Rahman, became mayor of Tower Hamlets, his council has placed CDs of sermons by an extremist Islamic preacher in its Town Hall.
The preacher, Abdur Raheem Green, has stated that “Islam is not compatible with democracy.” He also says that a husband has the right to administer “some type of physical force… a very light beating” to his wife, to prevent her from committing “evil.”
There is, of course, a considerable irony here. You may remember that Lutfur won the mayoralty with the help of smear literature falsely claiming that his Labour opponent was… a wife-beater. [telegraph.co.uk] Read more
Dutch Islam-opponent Geert Wilders discusses his fight for a Koran ban, why German Chancellor Angela Merkel is running scared on the immigration issue and his belief that the Netherlands' debate over Muslims has now crossed the border into Germany.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Wilders, you are said to be the strong man behind the new Dutch government because the minority cabinet depends on your support in parliament. Why is your party, 65 years after the Holocaust, relying on outdated approaches -- on religious and racial exclusion?
Wilders: We do not support religious exclusion -- and certainly not racial exclusion. We have no problems with other skin colors, nor with Muslims -- our problem is with Islam.
Indeed, we are expressing exactly what many of our compatriots feel. We became the third strongest party during the elections in June and are now, according to the most recent opinion polls, already the second strongest party in Holland. [SPIEGEL ONLINE] Read more
.... A Moroccan woman in New Jersey filed for a restraining order against her husband after he repeatedly had sex with her against her will. The Hudson County judge ruled that, although the evidence showed that her husband had assaulted and harassed her, a restraining order was unnecessary because the defendant was acting in accordance with his religious beliefs.
But like all bad judicial decisions, the ruling was quickly overturned on appeal and the husband now faces up to 20 years in jail.
Though this case is atypical, it nonetheless prompted an Oklahoma ballot initiative last Tuesday to change the state’s constitution to ban international and sharia law from being used when deciding state court cases. Though the results are still uncertified, the measure passed with a resounding 70 percent. [Cincinnati.Com] Read more [via National Secular Society]
Pakistan has “crossed a line” in sentencing a Christian woman to death for blasphemy. Asia Bibi, a 37-year-old farm worker mother of two, was convicted of committing blasphemy before her fellow workers during a heated discussion about religion in the village of Ittanwali in June last year.
Some of the women workers had reportedly been pressuring Bibi to renounce her Christian faith and accept Islam. During one discussion, Bibi responded by speaking of how Jesus had died on the cross for the sins of humanity and asking the Muslim women what Muhammad had done for them. [AsiaNews/Agencies] Read more
Woman faces death for blasphemy .... Human Rights Watch spokesman Ali Dayan Hasan said: The blasphemy law is absolutely obscene and it needs to be repealed in totality. It is primarily used against vulnerable groups that face social and political discrimination. Heading that category are religious minorities and heterodox Muslim sects. About three per cent of Pakistan’s population of 167 million is estimated to be non-Muslim.
Last July, two Christian brothers accused of writing a blasphemous pamphlet critical of the Prophet Mohammed were shot dead outside a court in Punjab.
Pastor Rashid Emmanuel, 32, and his brother Sajjad, were killed as they left a court hearing in Faisalabad city, where hundreds of Muslim protesters had demanded they be sentenced to death. [The Freethinker] Read more
RARELY in history has any society been as supine as modern Britain in the fact of a mortal threat.
The fabric of our civilisation is now at risk from militant Islam which aims to destroy our way of life. Yet instead of showing resolve in the face of this challenge, the political establishment vacillates between collusion and denial.
We are told that the Muslim zealots are a only tiny minority while we are also given constant assurances that there is no cause for concern in the rapid Islamification of our public culture. [Daily Express] Read more
Around 200 men flooded out of the al-Qa'id Ibrahim mosque into the midday sunlight following the Friday afternoon prayers in Alexandria. They held up banners before the hundreds of black-clad riot police who were there to greet them, and immediately began to chant.
"Shenouda is the enemy of God," they yelled, referring to Pope Shenouda III, the head of the Coptic Church, Egypt's largest religious minority. "Shenouda is an infidel ... State security, where is your Islam? Why did you leave the criminals alone?" [Time] Read more
Readers will be glad to hear that the hate preacher, Zakir Naik, will not be returning to the United Kingdom. You can read the judgement here. It is a devastating failure for the man. For the benefit of our Naik supporter in the comments below, here are a few of the statements brought to the attention of the court: [Harry’s Place] Read more
Ofcom, the UK’s broadcasting regulator has today ruled that the Islam Channel, Britain’s pro-Islamist satellite TV channel, has breached the UK Broadcasting Code after presenters on the channel advocated marital rape, justified violence against women and described women who wore perfume as ‘prostitutes’.
Ofcom’s findings were based on material in Quilliam’s report ‘Re-Programming British Muslims’, an evidence-based study of the London-based Islam Channel’s output which was published earlier this year. [Harry’s Place] Read more
Islam Channel censured by Ofcom Ofcom has ruled that Islam Channel, a London-based broadcaster, broke the broadcasting code for advocating marital rape, violence against women and describing women who wore perfume outside of the home as "prostitutes".
Five programmes broadcast on the satellite TV channel were ruled to be in breach of broadcasting guidelines, the media regulator said today. Ofcom launched its investigation into the programmes, which aired in 2008 and 2009, following a report by the Quilliam thinktank that was published in March. [guardian.co.uk] Read more
An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has established that the education watchdog has published positive reports praising Muslim schools for their contribution to community cohesion — even in the case of a school which openly states that Muslims “oppose the lifestyle of the West”.
The Ofsted inspector responsible for many of the reports, Michele Messaoudi, has been accused of having links to radical Islamist organisations.
This newspaper can reveal that another recent Ofsted inspector, Akram Khan-Cheema, is the chief executive of a radical Muslim educational foundation, IBERR.
Its website describes Islamic schools as “one of the most important factors which protect Muslim children from the onslaught of Euro-centrism, homosexuality, racism, and secular traditions”. [telegraph.co.uk] Read more
.... the society has come under fire over an ill-tempered debate on Thursday on the motion: “This house believes Islam is a threat to the West”.
The union has been accused of giving the debate an inflammatory motion title to stir up controversy, and speaker Stephen Gash – from pressure group Stop the Islamification of Europe – was described by the society as considering “the ideology of religious Islam hateful and incompatible with freedom and democracy”. He was heckled by members of the audience, and stormed out before the end of the debate.
The other speakers were Stephen Green, director of conservative Christian pressure group Christian Voice, writer Idris Tawfiq, who converted to Islam after being a Roman Catholic priest, and Muhammad Abdul Bari, chairman of the East London Mosque, and former secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain.
Madeleine Fresko, a Cambridge student who attended the debate, said some Muslim students had been “very scared” by its title. [Cambridge Newspapers] Read more
.... the recently-elected cabinet minister from the centre-left Social Democratic Party said the approval or extension of residency permits should be closely linked to the efforts immigrants make to integrate themselves.
“Compulsory schooling must be respected. Children should attend all courses and exceptions made on religious or other grounds, for example in swimming classes, should no longer be possible,” Sommaruga told the SonntagsZeitung. [swissinfo] Read more [via Islam in Europe]
ISLAMIC fanatics are mutilating themselves at a British mosque in a bloody ceremony carried out only yards from a busy high street. Shia Muslims use a five-bladed chain called a Zanjeer to whip their own backs and make cuts in their foreheads with razor blades in homage to their faith.
Bare-chested men were left bleeding heavily during the ritual known as Matam – self-flagellation – which a witness described as being “like a scene from a horror film”.
The Sunday Express found that up to 800 men performed the bloody ceremony in secret at the Imamia Mosque in Forest Gate, east London, last year. [Sunday Express] Read more [via Islamophobia Watch]
.... I met Thilo Sarrazin at his old school in Recklinghausen. He was there to promote his book, Germany Abolishes Itself. He is both reviled and admired for its controversial thesis.
Outside the school were a handful of protesters. One banner accused Mr Sarrazin of acting like the Nazis. There were many more, however, who had bought tickets to hear him. His book has sold close to a million copies.
His essential message is that Muslims are either "unwilling or unable to integrate" into Western society. "If the majority of migrants from non-Muslim countries don't have any obvious problem integrating," he told a packed hall, "then the failure to integrate on the part of migrants from Muslim countries can't be due to a fault on our side - because all are treated equally. It has to be because of a characteristic of Muslims themselves. [BBC] Read more
It's easier to say what the "mosque at Ground Zero" is not, than what it is. It's not a mosque, and it's not at Ground Zero – only nearby. It's not a "clubhouse for terrorists", as some objectors have called it, nor a work of "triumphalist stealth jihad". It does not "loom" over the "hallowed ground" of the 9/11 attacks, which cannot be seen from its site.
As to what it is, the explanation is not at first very enlightening. Park51, to use the project's proper name, is "a friendly and accessible platform" that "enriches lower Manhattan in body and spirit, with ecologically conscious design and operation".
However, its architect, Michel Abboud, makes things clearer: it is a Muslim version of the YMCA, or the many Jewish community centres in New York. That is, it will have a swimming pool, basketball court, childcare and exhibition facilities, a library, auditorium, restaurant and catering school. As with the Christian and Jewish versions, you won't have to be a believer to use these facilities.
[COMMENT] .... Like all the clerics who share his views, he claims to be a "moderate", but we know that "moderate" doesn't actually mean "moderate" in the same sense that most civilised people mean it.
The opposition to this "cultural centre" (LOL) have every right to be asking questions. Oh, and the bit about it having a swimming pool. I presume women will be free to use that facility? [guardian.co.uk] Read more
Why the Park51 debate remains unresolved .... What most New Yorkers, and most Americans, are looking for, though, is an absolutely unambiguous acknowledgment by moderate Muslim leaders, specifically Imam Rauf, stating that Muslims did, indeed, perpetrate the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in the name of Islam, even if it is a version of Islam they themselves abhor.
One may think this has already been said, but in Rauf's case, the statements on the subject are not unambiguous. This may seem like nothing more than a matter of parsing words, but words matter here; and actions even more so.
No matter where it is located, near Ground Zero or elsewhere, Park51 will never be able to realise its ambition as a place of conciliation until Imam Rauf clears up any doubt about his position regarding Islamist terrorism, affirms the Muslim identity of the 9/11 perpetrators, and takes the proper steps to address the legitimate concerns of New Yorkers. [Guardian Cif] Read more
The Austrian Institute for Youth Culture Research recently polled 400 youth (16-19 years old) in Vienna on politics, antisemitism, sexuality and ring-wing radicalism. In addition they polled 80 Turkish and Arab youth.
.... Youth researcher Bernhard Heinzlmaier says that the problem of sexist, antisemitic and radical right-wing attitudes is still widespread among Vienna youth, and there's no reason to point fingers at the immigrants, rather it's necessary to see the problem, discuss it and deal with it.
He says the reason for such views among immigrants are obvious: the youth live in an authoritarian-patriarchal environment and have fewer problems with dictatorships. [Islam in Europe] Read more
Iran finances mosques and sends imams to Norway. Here they preach hatred against the West. The aim is to prepare Norwegian Muslim ideological to carry out terror attacks, if they'll be ordered to do so one day, a source told Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
Saudi Arabia is not the only one who finances the building of mosques in Norway. In the battle to win the hearts of European Muslims with a very conservative extremist version of Islam, Iran also finances mosques and sends imams here. Norwegian Muslims are being prepared for action.
"The imams here come from Iran. They interpret the Koran for us and teach people the religious rules. They also give guidance in social situations," says Ali Reza Moaddeli. [Islam in Europe] Read more
The head of the world’s largest Islamic group came down heavily on growing Islamophobia saying that while US leaders resisted it, Europeans abetted the trend for political gain.
Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary-General of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), said xenophobia directed at Muslim immigrants was taking hold, especially in Europe. Vote-seeking politicians were advancing extremist groups behind the anti-Muslim sentiment.
“This issue has become a political agenda item,” the Turkish head of the 58-member OIC said in an interview, while stressing that Islam was also a European religion.
“What worries me is that political authorities or political parties, instead of stopping this, or fighting this, some of them are using this for their political ends, to gain more popular support in elections,” he said.
“I’m afraid that we are going through a process like the beginning of the 1930s of the last century, when an anti-Semitic agenda became politically a big issue (together with) the rise of fascism and Naziism... I think now we are in the first stages of such a thing.” [AFP] Read more