Asad Shah death: Man admits killing shopkeeper because he 'disrespected' Islam

The man accused of murdering Glasgow shopkeeper Asad Shah has issued a statement saying he carried out the killing because he believed Mr Shah had "disrespected" Islam.

Tanveer Ahmed, 32, from Bradford, is accused of killing Mr Shah outside his shop in Glasgow almost a fortnight ago.

In the statement he denied the incident had anything to do with Christianity.

Mr Ahmed claimed Asad Shah had "disrespected" Islam by claiming to be a prophet.

The shopkeeper, an Ahmadi Muslim, who had moved from Pakistan to Glasgow almost 20 years ago, was found with serious injuries outside his shop on Minard Road in Shawlands on 24 March. He was pronounced dead in hospital.

Mr Shah was killed just hours after he posted an Easter message on Facebook to his customers.

The message said: "Good Friday and a very happy Easter, especially to my beloved Christian nationx" [BBC] Read more

Bradford Man Admits Killing Ahmadi Shopkeeper

.... There has long been a problem with almost all modern interpretations of Islam and the concept of freedom of speech. The Salman Rushdie Affair demonstrated just how much of a problem many Muslims still have with freedom. Often it is argued away by saying “We believe in freedom but not the freedom to insult religion.” But that is a nonsense – freedom of expression has to include the right to say things which others might find very distasteful about religion, otherwise it is hardly freedom. That is the only way a world which contains followers of so many different religions can function. That is a key lesson of the Enlightenment – which sadly has yet to cast its light on much of the Muslim world.

People are free to regard Ahmadis as being non-Muslims – that is their right. To persecute them on that account, however, is just revolting. [inayatscorner] Read more

France PM warns extreme Islam winning the propaganda war

Prime Minister Manuel Valls said extreme forms of Islam were winning the propaganda war for hearts and minds, warning the veil was being used as a political symbol for the "enslavement of women".

Speaking at a roundtable on Islamism in Paris on Monday, the premier warned that Salafists were "winning the ideological and cultural battle" in France, home of Europe's biggest Muslim population.

And he pledged to "massively" increase France's security and defence budgets in the coming years, as the country grapples with a growing jihadist threat after two deadly attacks last year.

"The Salafists must represent one percent of the Muslims in our country today, but their message -- their messages on social networks -- is the only one we end up hearing," he said. [AFP] Read more

Swiss legal expert to rule on Muslim pupils' handshake exemption

A Swiss legal expert will decide on the validity of a controversial ruling that allows male Muslim students to avoid shaking hands with female teachers for religious reasons, an official said Tuesday.

The decision reached by a school in Switzerland's northern municipality of Therwil sought to reach a compromise with two male students, aged 14 and 15, and their families, but ended up causing uproar and fierce public debate over the limits of religious freedom.

"We have asked for an expert opinion from our legal service," said Deborah Murith, spokeswoman for the education department in the canton of Basel-Country, where Therwil is located. [AFP] Read more

Swiss anger at Muslim handshake exemption in Therwil school

A Swiss secondary school has caused uproar by allowing two Muslim boys not to shake hands with women teachers - a common greeting in Swiss schools.

The boys had told the school in the small, northern town of Therwil it was against their faith to touch a woman outside their family.

Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said shaking hands was part of Swiss culture and daily life.

A local teachers' union said the exemption discriminated against women.

The case has propelled Therwil, a town of 10,000 people in the Basel-Country canton, to the centre of a national debate about Swiss identity. A similar case has been reported elsewhere in the region.

Christian Amsler, head of the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education, suggested that the school may have tried to get an "unpleasant problem out of the way" but had simply made a mistake. [BBC] Read more

Muslim conference selling different tickets to men and women

A Muslim group is selling male and female tickets to a major conference being held next month.

Organisers confirmed men and women will have to sit in separate areas, despite a tribunal finding another Islamist group guilty of discrimination by not allowing women to sit with men.

The Quest for Success conference is organised by United Muslims of Australia, who confirmed by telephone that members of the public who attend will be separated by gender.

It's similar to the recent discrimination finding against Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which forced a female journalist to sit at the back of a public rally.

"It's just as offensive to split women from men side to side as it is to split black people from white people from side to side," anti-discrimination campaigner Alison Bevege said.

The conference has also been criticised for hosting a UK preacher who has condoned child rape, and speakers who call for women to obey their husbands. [7News] Read more

Masood Azhar: The man who brought jihad to Britain

Masood Azhar, today the head of one of Pakistan's most violent militant groups, was once the VIP guest of Britain's leading Islamic scholars. Why, asks Innes Bowen.

When one of the world's most important jihadist leaders landed at Heathrow airport on 6 August 1993, a group of Islamic scholars from Britain's largest mosque network was there to welcome him.

Within a few hours of his arrival he was giving the Friday sermon at Madina Mosque in Clapton, east London. His speech on the duty of jihad apparently moved some of the congregation to tears. Next stop - according to a report of the jihadist leader's own magazine - was a reception with a group of Islamic scholars where there was a long discussion on "jihad, its need, training and other related issues".

The visiting preacher was Masood Azhar. Today he is wanted by the Indian authorities following an attack on the Pathankot military base in January this year. In 1993 he was chief organiser of the Pakistani jihadist group Harkat ul Mujahideen. [BBC] Read more

How did Charlie Hebdo get it so wrong?

This week, the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo published an editorial that answered once and for all the question “Is Charlie Hebdo racist?”. In a dispatch that read like a call to arms, the magazine – the target of a horrific terrorist attack last year that killed 11 people – considered what had happened in Paris and Brussels over the past year and asked: how did we end up here?

The editorial then laid the blame squarely on two factors – the complicity of the average, unaffiliated Muslim, and the erosion of secularism by a conspiracy of silence. Terrorism was fomented, it said, and people died because society could not voice discomfort at the many little “iceberg tips” of religious expression that had cumulatively eroded laïcité – the secularism written into the French constitution. Terrorism happened, in short, because freedom of speech was curbed.

The editorial gives credence and sanction to the view that there is no such thing as an innocent Muslim. That even those who do not themselves commit terrorism, somehow by just existing and practising, are part of a continuum that climaxes with two men blowing themselves up in Brussels airport. [Nesrine Malik, 898 comments]

[TOP RATED COMMENT 812 votes] I read their piece and yours, and I fall on their side.

[2ND 686] Quite. I don't think it is bigotry and prejudice to suggest that the muslim communities of western Europe need to take a long, hard look at themselves.

[3RD 582] I think Charlie Hebdo got it spot on.

[4TH 505] This piece is disgusting. Guardian you should be ashamed of printing this sinister apologism.

Where does begin wit the clangers. "Mild-mannered academic and religious scholar Tariq Ramadan" Planet Earth. Guardian, if you only knew, how people are making fun of you.

[5TH 433] you mean how did it's narrative not align to The Guardian's?

Tariq Ramadan is the king of twisting and turning, but hey. I'm probably a facist for posting Hitch

[6TH 428] If you can't say whatever you like about religion, then freedom of speech is indeed dead.

What is special about worshipping a sky god?

[7TH 400] If anything European secularism needs to become more vocal, more prominent and less tolerant. [Guardian Cif] Read more

‘What are the Isis brides running from?’

Today, Khan is an award-winning documentary-maker, a fierce defender of Muslim women’s rights and a brave challenger of jihadists and those who radicalise others (the threats against her continue for this). Her film Banaz, about the monstrous “honour” killing of a 20-year-old south London woman Banaz Mahmod by her family in 2006, won an Emmy award.

Last week her documentary Jihad: A British Story, was nominated for a Bafta. In it she interviews former recruiters and radicalisers of young people for the battlefields of Afghanistan, Iraq, Kashmir, Burma, Bosnia and Chechnya who now deeply regret their actions. She reduces one of them to tears (it’s a satisfying thought to imagine Isis members watching a woman do that).

The film explodes the macho charade of jihadists and reveals a different narrative: that often they are simply pathetic, inadequate, lost young men, often sexually frustrated, who are torn between two cultures — their parents’ and that of their Western friends — and want something to remedy their feelings of emasculation. [The Times (£)] Read more

Outrage as Muslim pupils exempt from shaking female teachers' hands in Swiss district

Male Muslim students at a school in northern Switzerland will no longer have to shake hands with their female teachers, following a ruling that was on Monday causing an uproar in the country.

A school in the northern municipality of Therwil, in the canton of Basel, reached the controversial decision after two male students, aged 14 and 15, complained that the Swiss custom of shaking hands with the teacher is counter to their religious beliefs if the teacher is a woman.

They argued that Islam does not permit physical contact with a person of the opposite sex, with the exception of certain immediate family members.

The local Therwil council did not support the school's decision, "but will not intervene as (it) is the responsibility of the school to set the rules," spokeswoman Monika Wyss told AFP in a statement.

The decision triggered an outcry across Switzerland with Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga insisting on Swiss public television Monday that "shaking hands is part of our culture." [AFP] Read more

School defends exempting Muslim students from handshake

A school district in canton Basel Country stands behind its decision to allow some Muslim students to not participate in a ritual of shaking their female teacher’s hand before and after class, despite the controversy the move has unleashed across Switzerland.

Last week it was reported that two Muslim students in a school in Therwil, a town outside Basel, did not wish to shake their female teacher’s hand along with the rest of the class because it went against their religious principles.

In Swiss schools, teachers often greet students with a handshake before and after a class. The school exempted the two students from the ritual, resulting in a nationwide debate over whether the exception should have been made. [swissinfo] Read more

Aamer Anwar warns of "climate of fear" in Muslim community

HUMAN rights lawyer Aamer Anwar has warned of a "climate of fear" stifling debate in Scotland’s Muslim community as police investigate death threats against him.

The campaigner last week played a key role in bringing together Glasgow’s bitterly divided Muslim community to condemn extremism and mourn the death of city shopkeeper Asad Shah in an allegedly religiously motivated killing.

In a dramatic sign of reconciliation between conservatives and liberals at Glasgow Central Mosque, Imam Habib ur Rehman used Friday prayers to reach out a hand of friendship to Mr Anwar.

However, the lawyer, who has a young family, remains a target for abuse and threats from conservatives who have accused him of trying to shut down the Mosque and "smearing" the entire Muslim Community.

Mr Anwar said The Herald: “A small minority have deliberately set out to create a climate of fear within the community. [Herald Scotland] Read more

Charlie Hebdo's latest editorial identifies Muslims as the solution, not the problem - how is that Islamophobic?

Charlie Hebdo’s latest editorial has given rise to a new wave of public outrage, with esteemed writer Teju Cole comparing the magazine’s satire to Trump’s rhetoric and Nazi logic. Whether one agrees with the latest editorial or not, drawing this historical parallel is far-fetched.

The difference is threefold: first, Charlie Hebdo’s mockery is targeting abstract concepts, ideologies and powerful elites rather than vulnerable individuals. Second, the goal of the journalists is to incite laughter, not hatred or fear. Third – and most importantly – the satirists are not abusing freedom of expression for the sake of politics; they are abusing politics for the sake of free expression.

.... According to a ComRes poll, 27 per cent of 1,000 Muslims polled admitted that they had sympathy with the Charlie Hebdo attacks. While we can disagree with their drawings and words, it is their right to ask the question: “How did we end up here?” And demanding their silence is far more dangerous than pondering that question. [The Independent] Read more

Death threats made against lawyer who called for unity in Muslim community

Police are investigating death threats made against a leading human rights lawyer who has played a prominent role in calling for unity in Scotland’s Muslim community.

Aamer Anwar said the messages came from “fanatics” opposed to his call for Muslims of all backgrounds and denominations to stand together against Islamic extremism.

He said he was taking the warnings “extremely seriously” and warned against hatred being imported to Scotland “from the cesspit of extremism in Pakistan”.

Last week, the lawyer chaired an event at Hamden Park calling for unity and condemning violence and extremism in the wake of the killing of the shopkeeper Asad Shah and recent terror attacks in Brussels and Lahore.

Speakers from different strands of Muslim faith, including the peace-loving Ahmadiyya sect which Mr Shah belonged to, the mosque’s Iman, from the Sunni tradition, and a Pakistani Christian, shared a platform together for the first time. [The Telegraph] Read more

Bulgarian education minister backs burqa ban idea

Bulgaria’s Education Minister Meglena Kouneva has expressed support for Prosecutor-General Sotir Tsatsarov’s idea of banning the wearing of the burqa at schools.

Tsatsarov told reporters on April 1 that legislators should ban burqas from public places, in particular educational establishments.

He called for a very careful discussion of the issue, adding that there should be no restrictions on religious freedom, while saying that religious motifs should not be used for unlawful propaganda, political ends or radicalisation.

“My opinion is that such restrictions should exist in relation to educational institutions, public places, just as such prohibitions exist in some Western European countries, in particular at educational institutions,” Tsatsarov said. [The Sofia Globe] Read more

Outrage as airline orders stewardesses to wear Islamic-style headscarf when flying to Iran

Air France has said female hostesses must cover their hair on flights to the Iranian capital Tehran.

The airline recently re-started flights to the fundamentalist nation after a thaw in relations with the West.

But outraged hostesses have criticised the airline, claiming they have a right to refuse to travel on the flights.

“It is not professional and they see it as an insult to their dignity.”

But the airline said staff must comply with Iranian laws.

While stewardesses usually have the choice between wearing a skirt or trousers on flights, Air France has ordered them to wear trousers and a long jacket for the three flights a week.

Flore Arrighi, head of air steward’s union UNAC, said: “It is not our role to pass judgement on the wearing of headscarves or veils in Iran. Now unions have written to the French women’s rights minister Laurence Rossignol for support.

She has previously criticised department store Marks and Spencer for selling the full-body "burkini" swimsuit. [Daily Express] Read more

Islamic extremist issue death threats against Scotland's top human rights lawyer

SCOTLAND's leading human rights lawyer has received death threats from Islamic extremists over his calls for unity within the country's Muslim community.

Though unable to give details due to an ongoing police investigation, Aamer Anwar said the threats came from individuals who have taken issue with his call for Muslims of all backgrounds and denominations to stand up together against Islamic extremism.

Anwar said he did not wish to go into 'the specifics' of the threats against him, but said he "presumed" they came from Islamic extremists.

Anwar's call for unity followed terror attacks around the world including in Brussels and Lahore, as well as the killing of Asad Shah, a Scottish member of the minority Ahmadi sect within Islam.

Divisions which have opened up in recent months between would-be reformers of the Glasgow Central Mosque (GCM), including Anwar, and its more conservative leaders, were put aside on Thursday when they shared a public platform with leaders of the Ahmadi community in a public show of unity. [Herald Scotland] Read more

Hard Evidence: Muslim women and discrimination in Britain

The controversy surrounding a now-infamous “I confronted a Muslim” tweet – and a subsequent race-hate charge – reminds us that tackling discrimination against British Muslims remains as big a challenge as ever.

For those who missed it, PR-man Matthew P Doyle took to Twitter to announce: “I confronted a Muslim woman in Croydon yesterday. I asked her to explain Brussels. She said ‘Nothing to do with me’. A mealy mouthed reply.”

Police were alerted to the incident when Doyle’s ill-judged comments about the encounter were retweeted by bemused internet users. While charges were eventually dropped, the story is a prime example of the type of discrimination encountered on a daily basis by many British Muslim women and an exception to an otherwise overlooked phenomenon.

Everyday incidents of anti-Muslim discrimination rarely make headline news – but recent research from the University of Cambridge’s Centre of Islamic Studies found that discrimination is the daily norm for many British Muslims. [The Conversation] Read more

Bulgarian Prosecutor-General wants bans on burqa in public places

Bulgarian Prosecutor-General Sotir Tsatsarov says that his personal opinion is that there should be restrictions on wearing the burqa in public places.

Tsatsarov said on April 1 2016 that legislative initiatives are needed that respond appropriately to the new conditions of a terrorist war.

“My opinion is that such restrictions should exist in relation to educational institutions, public places, just as such prohibitions exist in some Western European countries, in particular at educational institutions,” Tsatsarov said.

“But this is something that in any case have to be discussed very carefully. This discussion should begin at the relevant bodies of executive government,” he told reporters. [The Sofia Globe] Read more

Glasgow Imam Habib ur Rehman won't face charges over controversial messages

The religious head of Scotland's biggest mosque will not face charges over a series of leaked messages that apparently praised an extremist who was executed after murdering a politician in Pakistan.

Glasgow Central Mosque imam Habib ur Rehman was said to have made favourable comments about assassin Mumtaz Qadri, who was hanged in February for the murder of Punjab governor Salman Taseer, who opposed Pakistan's strict blasphemy laws.

The imam said a series of Whatsapp messages about Qadri in which he reportedly called the killer a ''true Muslim'' had been ''taken out of context'' and were about his opposition to Qadri's hanging and the Pakistani justice system. [Evening Times] Read more

Austrian etiquette explained to refugees

Newly arrived asylum seekers in Austria are being given a helping hand to navigate their new home by a pocket book explaining the do's and don'ts of Austrian life.

The book - which was produced by the Red Cross with the support of state broadcaster ORF - explains some of the etiquettes and cultural habits of Austrians.

A section on food and drinks explains that Austrians “eat a lot of pork, and also beef, chicken, turkey and lamb” and that “many people drink beer or wine, particularly in the evenings.”

.... Mohammed, a 27-year-old asylum seeker from Iraq, told the Kurier newspaper that the book would save him from making a lot of mistakes and that advice on where to get halal meat is particularly important.

“I don’t know which types of meat there are here and where I can buy halal meat,” he said.

“The book is meant as a guide,” explains Red Cross President Gerald Schöpfer. “The refugees should understand how Austria works.” [The Local] Read more

'Freedom of speech is ending where conversations about Islam begin. Teachers and students are walking on eggshells'

Children are being brainwashed into holding extremist views in illegal madrassas, preached at by hate-filled imams and subtly encouraged to isolate themselves. What chance does the average teacher have of changing that pattern, asks this history teacher

On 17 February 2015, three teenage girls – Kadiza Sultana, 16, Shamima Begum, 15, and Amira Abase, 15 (pictured) – equipped with handbags and wearing make-up, casually wandered into Gatwick airport. They had, allegedly, taken jewellery from their families to buy some air tickets. They were flying out to Turkey and intended to go on to Syria.

It was only a few weeks earlier that the girls had been posing for selfies and having a laugh with their mates. But now their intention was clear: to join the so-called Islamic State (IS), along with the 550 other women from Western Europe who have chosen to do the same thing.

Before their departure, the girls were students at Bethnal Green Academy, a school investigated last year as part of a counter-extremism operation. In March 2015, a judge in London confiscated the passports of a further five girls from the same school, as they had expressed a desire to go to Syria. [TES] Read more

Belgium to require immigrants to sign up to 'European values'

Non-EU migrants and refugees wishing to live in Belgium will have to sign a statement declaring their acceptance of local values or see their residency claim rejected, a government official said, in a move campaigners fear will fuel anti-immigrant sentiment.

Parliament is expected to pass the proposal to introduce a “newcomers’ statement” in the next few months, according to a spokesman for Belgium’s secretary of state for asylum and migration, Theo Francken, who drafted the plan.

People moving to Belgium for more than three months would have to sign the statement which includes a pledge to prevent and report any attempts to commit “acts of terrorism”. [The Guardian] Read more

Exposed: UK School Promoting Extreme Islam

A private Muslim school in Yorkshire is promoting an extreme form of Islam, claiming that Jews are engaged in a global conspiracy to take over the world and that adopting British customs is forbidden.

The Islamic Tarbiyah Academy in Dewsbury teaches 140 primary school children in an after-school madrasa and runs full-time classes for over-16s and adults.

Mufti Zubair Dudha, the centre's founder and head, is a respected cleric from the orthodox Deobandi sect which is thought to control half of all mosques and madrasas in the UK.

In one leaflet Mr Dudha quotes the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an early 20th Century anti-Semitic forgery, which claims to prove Jewish people are engaged in a global conspiracy.

He claims that colourful pictures, films, magazines and sporting celebrities are part of the conspiracy to "poison the thinking and minds" of young Muslim people. [Sky News] Read more

Antisemitism inquiry into Islamic school

A school accused of promoting Islamic extremism and antisemitism is under investigation by the Department for Education.

Islamic Tarbiyah Academy in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, teaches 140 children of primary school age in an after-school madrassa and also has full-time classes for those above the age of 16.

After an investigation by Sky News, a leaflet was found declaring that colourful pictures, films, magazines and sporting celebrities were part of a conspiracy designed to “poison the thinking and minds” of young Muslims.

The leaflet also quotes The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an antisemitic forgery first published in Russia in 1903.

The school is run by Mufti Zubair Dudha, a cleric from the orthodox Deobandi sect of Islam that is believed to run half of all mosques and madrassas in the UK.

Other leaflets warn of the evils of mixed-sex institutions and say Muslims should not adopt British customs. [The Times (£)] Read more