Sweden: First police cadet with a headscarf

Donna Eljammal (26) is Sweden's first police cadet with a headscarf. She had wanted to join the police long before she started wearing a hijab.

"Ever since I was little. I want to help others and move instead of just sitting in front of a computer."

A few years ago it became possible to wear a headscarf or turban as part of the police uniform, after some debate.

Q: Do you see the headscarf as a disadvantage or asset in your future career?

A: An asset. Swedish is a multicultural country and it's important that, within each field, there will be people of different backgrounds, since it increases knowledge and understanding. [Islam in Europe] Read more

Australia's Victoria state says no to Sharia courts

THE Baillieu government has ruled out introducing koranic courts similar to the Koori courts for Aboriginal offenders, despite growing support from the Muslim community.

A spokesman for Victorian Attorney-General Robert Clark rejected the proposal put forward by the president of the state's Somali community, which has also been dismissed by lawyers.

The government's refusal came as Australian Federation of Islamic Councils president Ikebal Patel said the suggestion of a koranic court "absolutely" fitted with a call he made earlier this year for legal pluralism. [The Australian] Read more [via Jihad Watch]

Nativity scene removed from Montreal-area town hall

A posh Montreal suburb has decided to remove a nativity scene and menorah from town hall rather than acquiesce to demands from a Muslim group to erect Islamic religious symbols

The decision by the Town of Mount Royal upsets a Christian resident who says the town is abandoning an established tradition under pressure from a tiny religious minority. [QMI Agency] Read more

Belgium: Teacher suspended for discriminating against students without headscarves

Mohammed G. (58) has been teaching in the Royal Athenum Verdi in Verviers since 2004. In 2010 an inspector reported 'bizarre behavior' by the teacher, and informed the school that the teacher preached radical points of view in his lessons.

The school investigated, resulting in a disastrous report by two inspectors. One student said that Mohammed had told her that her mother would burn in hell because her mother was Catholic. Another that the teacher reproached her, a Muslim girl, for walking hand-in-hand with a boy.

The teacher called girls without a headscarf 'sinners'. According to the inspectors he also discriminated against students without a headscarf: they automatically got lower grades. Mohammed G. also had his students learn Koran verses by heart, though that wasn't part of the curriculum. [Islam in Europe]Read more

A Muslim Apostate Defends the West: An Interview with Ibn Warraq

.... Then I discuss some of the Western values like accepting criticism and irony. Irony it seems is a bit incomprehensible to Islamic society. They don't seem to understand irony. The fact that you can actually criticize some of the most basically held beliefs of one's own culture and see the funny side of it, to see the humorous self-criticism or irony is one of the greatest strengths of the West.

Then there is the whole notion of objectivity. That is the scientific method which is a gift of the West to the rest of the world which has not been properly appreciated. I end this latest book with some rallying cries as to how we can defend Western civilization. [New English Review] Read more

Islamists and secularists in Tunisia stand-off

Thousands of Tunisian Islamists and secularists staged parallel protests outside the interim parliament on Saturday in a dispute over how big a role Islam should play in society after the country's "Arab Spring" revolution.

Tensions have been running high between the two camps since the revolt in January scrapped a ban on Islamists and paved the way for a moderate Islamist party to come to power at the head of a coalition government.

The latest round of protests was sparked when a group of hardline Islamists occupied a university campus near the capital to demand segregation of sexes in class and the right for women students to wear a full-face veil

About 3,000 Islamists gathered outside the constitutional assembly in the Bardo district of the Tunis on Saturday, separated by a police cordon from a counter-protest by about 1,000 secularists. [Reuters] Read more

A French minister of Arab origin says ‘there is no such thing as moderate Islam’

.... “It’s very worrying,” she was quoted as saying. “I don’t know of any moderate Islam.”

“There are no half measures with sharia,” she added. “I am a lawyer and you can make all the theological, literal or fundamental interpretations of it that you like but law based on sharia is inevitably a restriction on freedom, especially freedom of conscience.”

She was reacting to electoral successes scored by the Ennahda party in Tunisia, the Justice and Development Party in Morocco and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. [Al Arabiya News] Read more [via Islam in Europe]

Islamists Electoral Rise Due to Failed Secularism

.... Admittedly, much intellectual confusion -- and mischief -- is caused by an elastic concept like Islamism, which can be stretched to accommodate the mass-murderer Ayman Al-Zawahiri as well as the Tunisian leader and modernist thinker Rashid Ghannouchi.

As it turns out, fast-moving events in the Arab world illustrate what I was trying to say better than any intellectual abstraction. [Business Week] Read more

French minister: There is no such thing as moderate Islam

French minister said there was no such thing as moderate Islam, calling recent election successes by Islamic parties in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia "worrying" in an interview published Saturday.

Jeannette Bougrab, a junior minister with responsibility for youth, told Le Parisien newspaper that legislation based on Islamic sharia law "inevitably" imposed restrictions on rights and freedoms. [Middle East Online] Read more

BBC reveal huge scale of honour attacks in Britain, fails to mention "islam"

All right. I’m not going to make this difficult. The families giving the orders, as well as the victims, are in all, or almost all, cases Muslim. Surprised? No, of course you’re not. Honour attacks ranging in brutality from beatings to murder are commonplace in many parts of the Muslim world.

Since Britain, like many other European countries, has imported sizeable Muslim communities, which are to a significant degree unassimilated, the cultural practices of the old country have survived the transition to the new.

Finally, the figure of 2,823 attacks is almost certainly a gross under-estimate since, apart from anything else, it is drawn from only 39 of 52 UK police forces. [The Commentator] Read more

The Political Persecution of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff

On February 15, 2011, the Austrian Counterjihad activist Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff was convicted of “hate speech” in a Vienna courtroom for what she said in a private seminar about Muhammad and Islam.

The original charge was “incitement to hatred”. On the second day of her trial, the judge at her own discretion added a second charge, “denigration of religious beliefs of a legally recognized religion.” Elisabeth was acquitted of the first charge, but convicted of the second. She was sentenced to pay a fine of €480. Her case is currently being appealed to Austria’s highest court. If the verdict is upheld, and she refuses to pay the fine, she will spend two months in jail.

How could this happen in a modern European democratic state which recognizes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and enshrines the right to free speech in its Constitution? [Gates of Vienna] Read more

Salafis sense the best is yet to come in Egypt’s elections

The Salafi movement wants to model Egypt’s future on Islam’s past. If the first results of the country’s parliamentary elections are anything to go by, many Egyptians agree with them.

Ultra-conservative Islamists may have won 20 to 30 percent of the vote in the first leg of Egypt’s three-stage parliamentary vote, an outcome that has surprised and alarmed many Egyptians. They are worried about what this might mean for freedoms and tolerance in the Arab world’s most populous nation.

Salafis look certain to emerge as a vocal bloc in the first legislature since Hosni Mubarak was deposed, confirming the historic changes under way since the removal from power of a man who dealt with Islamists mostly as enemies of the state. [Reuters Blogs - FaithWorld] Read more

Islam, evolution, and the denial of science

.... I sometimes wonder how many of those who pour their inane opinions about creationism into their young pupils’ ears ever consider the damage they are doing; not to my science, but to their religion.

Why, when a student begins to learn the simple and convincing facts, rather than the fantasies, about how life emerged, should he believe anything else that his pastor, his rabbi or his imam has told him? Why build a philosophy based on fixed untruths, when we have so many truths, and so many things still to find out? [telegraph.co.uk] Read more

Islamists of every stripe to the fore

IF THE results of the first batch of Egypt’s elections are replicated across the country, the Islamists will emerge as a lot more powerful than most analysts predicted.

In a string of villages and cities, including Cairo, Alexandria and Port Said, the Muslim Brothers seem to have scored between 30% and 40%, which would earn them at least 40% of seats in the People’s Assembly, the legislature’s lower house.

Even more strikingly, the Salafists, who espouse a more extreme and puritanical Islamist ideology, have far exceeded expectations, in some places getting a good 20% of the vote. [The Economist] Read more

Conflict, theology and history make Muslims more religious than others, experts

Every religion has its true believers and its doubters, its pious and its pragmatists, but new evidence suggests that Muslims tend to be more committed to their faith than other believers.

Muslims are much more likely than Christians and Hindus to say that their own faith is the only true path to paradise, according to a recent global survey, and they are more inclined to say their religion is an important part of their daily lives.

Muslims also have a much greater tendency to say their religion motivates them to do good works, said the survey, released over the summer by Ipsos-Mori, a British research company that polls around the world. [CNN] Read more

Ultraconservative party to push for Islamic Egypt

.... "In the land of Islam, I can't let people decide what is permissible or what is prohibited," Hamad told The Associated Press. "It is God who gives the answers as to what is right and what is wrong."

The Nour Party is the main political arm of the hard-line Salafist Muslim movement, which espouses a strict form of Islam similar to that practiced in Saudi Arabia. Salafis, who often wear long beards and seek to imitate the life of the Prophet Muhammad, speak openly about their aim of turning Egypt into a state where personal freedoms, including freedom of speech, women's dress and art, are constrained by Islamic law — goals that make many Egyptians nervous. [Associated Press] Read more

Muslims call for women only exercise facilities

MUSLIM women are calling on Hounslow Council to provide more female only exercise facilities.

They say that due to religious constraints they can not exercise when there is a man about, even if he is the instructor.

They want more women-only facilities in leisure facilities and have complained, in some centres, even the changing rooms are communal.

Councillor Pritam Grewal said: "We current run a significant number of women’s sessions across our Leisure Centres. These include swim sessions, gym sessions and classes."

"However, none of the centres guarantee that there will be female only staff working." [Hounslow Chronicle] Read more [via National Secular Society]

"Promoting sharia in any form is a reckless pursuit on the part of democratic governments"

.... I often say dawah and jihad are two sides to the same coin – dawah being the peaceful invitation to accept the Islamic narrative. No matter what way the coin falls – both dawah and jihad effectively do the same job and it’s heads up for Islamic sharia either way. Unlike totalitarian regimes, democracy by nature is very accommodating to this ‘peaceful pillaging of society’.

It’s not just the Muslim Brotherhood who have a documented strategy of what they call civilizational jihad. In 1980 the Islamic Council of Europe published a book titled ‘Muslim Communities in Non-Muslim States’ – which outlined a strategy for the Muslim community on how to ‘resist assimilation and become a majority’ – so this is not a conspiracy, or just an ideal of some, but a documented strategy,… [Jihad Watch] Read more

The Growth of Islamic Faith Schools

The Guardian report on a rapid increase in Islamic Faith Schools here in the UK. LM's views on Faith Schools here and here have been clear and forthright I oppose them all while condemning the time bomb we are storing up for society by allowing Parents to send their kids to segregated schools resulting in the division of our children on the basis of Faith. [London Muslim] Read more

£7,000 payout for Muslim woman who wore a headscarf to job interview

A GRIMSBY bakery – found to have discriminated against a headscarf-wearing Muslim woman on religious grounds – is asking top judges to block a similar case being brought by her husband.

Country Style Foods Limited was ordered to pay Latvian-born Anastasija Bouzir about £7,000 in compensation following an employment tribunal's ruling that it failed to offer her a job at its bread factory in Wickham Road, after she wore a Muslim headscarf to her interview. [This is Grimsby] Read more [via National Secular Society]

Sharia law now on agenda after Islamist election gains

.... Leaked preliminary counts indicated that the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm took the largest share of votes. Following closely behind was the ultra-conservative Islamist Nour party and a liberal coalition, according to unofficial counts.

Spokesman Yousseri Hamad said the Salafi Nour party, which wants sharia law to be an integral part of Egypt's new constitution, expected to get 30% of the vote and was leading the polls in the rural Nile delta province of Kafr el-Sheik, known for high rates of illiteracy and poverty, and in parts of its longtime stronghold of Alexandria.

[guardian.co.uk] Read more

No more virginity in Saudi if women drive, says council

If women were allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, the result would be catastrophic and lead to “no more virgins,” said clerics from the Majlis al-Ifta al-Aala, the country’s highest religious council.

Women in the country have been pushing to drive, and a number of women have driven in protest to the ultra-conservative country’s ban on female drivers in recent months. [Bikya Masr] Read more

French government hardens immigration stance as elections loom

As he presented his party’s campaign platform ahead of next year’s presidential and legislative elections, French Interior Minister Claude Gueant laid down the gauntlet to the far right by hardening the government’s position on immigration.

“It’s easier for immigrants to integrate if there are less of them,” Gueant told Europe 1 radio. “It’s obvious that we need to better manage the flow of immigrants. For immigration to work, we need to be welcoming fewer immigrants each year.” [FRANCE 24] Read more [via Islam in Europe]

Saudis fear there will be ‘no more virgins’ and people will turn gay if female drive ban is lifted

Repealing a ban on women drivers in Saudi Arabia would result in ‘no more virgins’, the country’s religious council has warned.

A ‘scientific’ report claims relaxing the ban would also see more Saudis - both men and women - turn to homosexuality and pornography.

The startling conclusions were drawn by Muslim scholars at the Majlis al-Ifta’ al-A’ala, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council, working in conjunction with Kamal Subhi, a former professor at the King Fahd University. [MailOnline] Read more

Tunisian secularists protest at Islamists on campus

Tunisian universities went on strike and nearly 3,000 people protested against Islamist influence Thursday after religious hardliners occupied a campus to demand segregation of male and female students.

Tunisia, birthplace of the "Arab Spring" urprisings, has seen mounting tension between Islamists and secularists since its revolution in January paved the way elections won by a moderate Islamist party.

The Islamist Ennahda party, now leading a coalition government, says it has nothing to do with hardline Islam, but secularists accuse the party of creating an atmosphere in which fundamentalism can thrive.

.... Demonstrators outside Tunisia's interim parliament carried banners reading "All disasters come from Ennahda," "University is free" and "Niqab out," a reference to the Islamic full-face veil. [Reuters] Read more