Four in 10 think British culture is undermined by multiculturalism

A large minority of people in the UK believe multiculturalism has undermined British culture and that migrants do not properly integrate, according to some of the broadest research into the population’s attitudes to immigration.

The study, conducted over the last two years, also reflects widespread frustration at the government’s handling of immigration, with only 15% of respondents feeling ministers have managed it competently and fairly.

Labour’s new immigration proposals show up Tory policy for the mess it is

On balance, the UK population appears to be slightly more positive than negative about the impact of immigration; however, 40% of respondents agreed that having a wide variety of backgrounds has undermined British culture.

More than a quarter of people believe MPs never tell the truth about immigration and half the population wants to see a reduction in the numbers of low-skilled workers coming into Britain from the EU.

The study was based on a survey of 3,667 adults carried out in June by ICM, as well as 60 citizens’ panels carried out on behalf of the thinktank British Future and the anti-racism group Hope Not Hate. [The Guardian] Read more

Use mosque visits to tackle Islamophobia, schools told

Schools should take pupils on trips to mosques in an attempt to tackle Islamophobia among their parents, the faith minister has said.

Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth also said that all churches, mosques, synagogues and temples should be twinned with places of worship from other faiths and should work together to serve as community hubs for all residents rather than only as prayer spaces for their own congregations.

Many non-Muslims were afraid to enter a mosque, he said. “Occasionally you find that parents are saying, ‘We’re not sure we want our kids to go to the local mosque.’ They are then persuaded by the school that it’s a good idea and the kids come back and tell them about it and the parents then say, ‘Oh, that’s interesting, perhaps we’ll visit ourselves.’ ”

[TOP RATED COMMENT 41 votes] As this country has a Christian heritage and culture, the correct move would be to ensure every Muslim child visits a Christian Church. Muslims like other migrants have to integrate into the host country’s culture not the other way round.

[2ND 38] Now I have seen the light! Islamaphobia in the general population is all about our ignorance of Islam! It has nothing whatsoever to do with the insular ghettoisation of many of our towns and cities ( and associated problems such as Rotherham, Rochdale and countless others), it has nothing to do with the preponderance of wars and terrorism in certain countries across the world of that persuasion, it has nothing to do with the extremist clerics and their followers etc etc.....it is all down to our own dumbness!

Thank you Lord Bourne, I am grateful for your insightful input. Are you intent upon arranging for our kids to visit Synagogues, Hindu and Sikh temples etc? ... No! I wonder why? [The Times (£)] Read more

Why Can't I Criticize My Religion?

.... On the surface, for those who wanted to reform Islam, the only place to do so appeared to be the West. We all assumed that here in the West, it would be safe to question and criticize. Instead, so many institutions utilize a far more subtle method of silencing criticism.

.... The more you conceal or disregard constructive criticism of Islam, the harder you are making it for reforms to occur in the religion and the easier you are making it for Muslim radicals to prevail.

.... The reason I criticize the radical elements of my religion is not because I have hatred in my heart, but because I desire to protect those who have been abused and abandoned by their leaders.

.... The more you conceal or disregard constructive criticism of Islam, the harder you are making it for reforms to occur and the easier you are making it for Muslim radicals to prevail. There are currently, around the world, atrocities being committed every moment of every day in the name of Islam; your goal should not be to be politically correct or fiercely protect this religion, but to heal its wounded and offer support to those that want to eliminate the abuses. Glossing over the often unspeakable acts to which sharia can lead will only empower those individuals who have malevolent intentions, while subjugating the most vulnerable to their cruelty. [Gatestone Institute] Read more

Hard line groups are 'weaponising' Islamophobia, Government’s counter-extremism tsar warns

Hard line groups are “weaponising” Islamophobia and “cynically” using human rights to promote their ideology, the Government’s new counter-extremism tsar has warned.

Sara Khan said that Islamist groups accuse their critics of being anti-Muslim, in an attempt to undermine “legitimate debate” about extremism.

She said that the “use and abuse” of the language of human rights is “perhaps the most concerning” tactic employed by fundamentalist groups.

“Groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, for example - who traditionally rally against what they perceive to be western human rights - increasingly and cynically use human rights to promote Islamist ideology,” Ms Khan said.

“They and their sympathisers weaponise Islamophobia in an attempt to shut down legitimate debate about Islamic extremism while undermining the general struggle against anti-Muslim hatred.” [The Telegraph] Read more

Peer demands Halal and Kosher meat should be labelled

Meat taken from animals that are slaughtered in the Halal or Kosher way without pre-stunning “should be labelled in shops”, a Lib Dem peer has said. The party’s former environment spokesman Baroness Parminter told the Lib Dem party conference that meat obtained in this way should not be exported.

The Halal and Kosher slaughter methods both involve cutting an animal’s throat, windpipe and the blood vessels around its neck with a sharp blade. Baroness Parminter said: “I accept the scientific evidence that the practice of killing by the throat, passing it without pre-stunning, does compromise animal welfare. [Blackpool Gazette] Read more

Cargill settles dispute with fired Muslim workers in Colorado, with $1.5 million payment

Cargill will pay $1.5 million to 138 terminated employees to resolve charges that its managers violated the Civil Rights Act by refusing to allow Somali-American Muslim workers to pray during their breaks at a meatpacking plant in Colorado, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Friday.

The agency said it found reasonable cause to believe the employees were harassed, denied their requests for prayer breaks, and fired from their employment at Cargill's Fort Morgan, Colo., beef processing plant in 2015.

While Cargill said it does not accept the EEOC's findings, it decided to settle out of court to avoid a protracted legal proceeding.

Cargill has reaffirmed its commitment to continue to allow Muslim workers to take short breaks to perform their prayers. Cargill's religious accommodation policy takes into account key business requirements, such as employee and food safety and production-line needs. [StarTribune] Read more

Four Belgian Political Parties Call for Banning of Pro-Sharia Islamist Party

Four political parties are pushing forward laws that could prohibit the pro-sharia Partij Islam ahead of Belgium’s upcoming municipal elections.

The Independent Federal Democrat Party (DEFI), the right-wing Reform Movement (MR), the Humanist Democratic Centre (CDH), and the Socialist Party (PS) have announced a proposal to ban parties “whose aim is to threaten public liberties”, which may include the Islamist party, Le Point reports.

The party gained notoriety earlier this year after its founder, Anderlecht municipal councillor Redouane Ahrouch, declared: “Our goal is a one hundred percent Islamic state.”

He was later fired from his job as a bus driver for his comments which included suggesting that buses in Belgium should be segregated by gender to prevent women being sexually harassed. [Breitbart London] Read more

A sobering look at Islam and human-rights discourse - A group of Muslim scholars offer a view from the Islamic tradition

MOHAMMAD FADEL, an associate law professor at the University of Toronto, is one of North America’s most thoughtful commentators on the interface between Islam, liberal democracy and Western understandings of the rule of law. He has made an elaborate case for the possibility of Muslims, including theologically conservative ones, finding a comfortable place in a diverse, noisy liberal democracy where many value systems co-exist. He draws on the ideas of John Rawls, perhaps the greatest American political philosopher of the late 20th century, to show that “public reason” can serve as a kind of common denominator between citizens with utterly different world views.

So it is sobering to find that in a newly published set of essays on Islam and the Western understanding of human rights, Mr Fadel puts more emphasis on difference than compatibility. His contribution is the sharpest of the essays, published by the Atlantic Council, an influential think-tank based in Washington, DC, under the title “The Islamic Tradition and the Human Rights Discourse”.

Mr Fadel artfully uses a Western source to show that basic concepts like freedom and happiness have one meaning for a liberal humanist and another for a theist idealist who sees the purpose of human life as devotion to God. For somebody in the latter camp, an addicted gambler is anything but free; but to the secular liberal, that way of life could simply be one way of exercising formal freedom.

Islamic thought about the family, as Mr Fadel adds, is oriented not only to the short-term happiness of individuals, and also to other perceived desirables such as “a reasonably stable household that produces a new generation of Muslims.” So Muslim thinkers could not be expected to see religiously mixed marriages in the same light as a secular libertarian would. He concludes that: [The Economist] Read more

Teacher's 9/11 lesson angers Vernon family

On a day of mourning for the 3,000 people killed on Sept, 11, 2001, by Islamic terrorists inspired by Osama bin Laden, a middle school social studies teacher allegedly decided to skip that part of the discussion Tuesday and instead teach a fictionalized account of a Muslim boy being picked on because his name is Osama.

School officials thus far have been mostly mum on the matter beyond acknowledging that it was brought to their attention and dealt with internally, but one couple told the New Jersey Herald Wednesday that they are outraged and have since had their daughter pulled out of that teacher's class.

Ed O'Rourke, a former Marine, said he and his wife, Jodi, found out about it almost by accident while having dinner with their daughter, who is in sixth grade, Tuesday evening. [New Jersey Herald] Read more

Pauline Hanson has slammed feminists in parliament who don’t support a burqa ban

PAULINE Hanson has slammed feminists as “pathetic” for not supporting a ban on the burqa.

Speaking on Today this morning, the One Nation leader suggested feminists in parliament who didn’t oppose the burqa were hypocrites.

“Here they are standing up for women’s rights, but there a lot of women who are forced to wear the burqa by their male counterparts,” Senator Hanson said.

“Now I’m sure that there’s the lot and they’ve actually said it in programs that I’ve watched … there’s a lot of women who have said that they want to move away from the ideology of Islam and it really is.

“Free these women. They fought to get their vote in this country — one of the first countries in the world to actually give the vote — and women are moving forward, they’re fighting for equality, they’re fighting for equal wages — and yet you’re quite prepared to see a woman get around fully clothed with this burqa, and even when they’re swimming. It’s ridiculous, it’s beyond me.” [news.com.au] Read more

Controversial ‘Anti-Islam’ Book Shoots to Top of German Best Seller List

A new book that is highly critical of Islam is now the number one bestselling non-fiction book in Germany, selling well over 100,000 copies less than two weeks after its initial release.

The book, entitled Hostile Takeover: How Islam Impedes Progress and Threatens Society, is the latest from former Social Democrat (SPD) politician and former member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank, Thilo Sarrazin. Hostile Takeover now leads Der Spiegel‘s bestseller list for non-fiction.

Mr Sarrazin is no stranger to controversy in Germany, having already published a harsh criticism of the country’s multicultural experiment entitled Germany Abolishes Itself in 2010. He has also become a leading thinker in Germany’s new right, which is largely centred around the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD). [Breitbart London] Read more

Tony Blair calls for battle of ideas against Islamists

Tony Blair has accused pressure groups such as Cage and Mend of trying to drive a wedge between Muslim communities and the government by portraying the British state as a “hostile” force.

The former prime minister said that Britain needed to engage in a “battle of ideas” against groups that he claimed were intent on undermining Prevent, the government’s anti-extremism strategy, and which had campaigned against the appointment of the anti-extremism commissioner, Sara Khan.

Mr Blair said that it was important to combat groups that promoted extremist ideas, even though they were not promoting violence. However, he warned that people in western societies, including Britain, were “bullied into accepting that if you’re attacking Islamism you’re attacking Islam and you’ve got to resist this”. [The Times (£)] Read more

French Muslims must resist Islamist extremists: Hakim El Karoui

French author calls for mobilisation against Islamists in bold call on President Macron to champion reform. The role of a revolutionary from within is never an easy one but for Hakim El Karoui that is exactly the challenge he has set himself as he seeks to change the place for Islam in French life.

The banker turned author can remember precisely when he realised that he could no longer remain on the sidelines as divisions rose within France. In the early days of 2015, the first of what would be a series of deadly attacks that rocked all France targeted the newspaper Charlie Hebdo and then a supermarket in Paris.

“I asked myself, can people like me do nothing?” he recalled to The National. “The answer to the question is obvious: no. I have been involved in the political debate for the past 15 years. I wrote several books on political and economic subjects and I decided that Islam was going to remain a private matter. But after the attacks I told myself that this was not going to be possible anymore.”

The author of a new report for the Institut Montaigne, Mr Karoui proposes a wholesale overhaul of the role of the French state in its relations with Islam. In the document he calls for an umbrella body that is more involved and seeks clearly defined outcomes. [The National] Read more

Austrians react to government’s headscarf plan

Austrians have reacted to a plan by the education minister to expand the headscarf ban for students and teachers to secondary schools.

Education Minister Heinz Fassmann said on Monday that the issue should be discussed throughout the country, especially in the parliament.

Speaking on Austrian state television ORF about a draft law to ban Muslim girls from wearing headscarves in kindergartens and primary schools, Fassmann said it is not yet known how many girls are wearing headscarves in the institutions in question.

However the ban is not related to the number, it is related to its content, he said.

The ban should be put in force for free education and protection of girls, Fassmann added.

"It is not just me and the ministry," Fassmann said, adding political parties, especially the parliament, must express their view on the headscarf ban for secondary schools and build a social consensus.

.... Another activist Michael Probsting blamed the far-right government of having a racist and Islamophobic attitude towards Muslims, which is an important minority group in the country.

“A headscarf ban is a violation of human rights, religious rights, and free-thinking,” he said. [Anadolu Agency] Read more

LGBT-friendly Berlin mosque deradicalises Muslim youth

Tugay Sarac was just 15 when he first talked about traveling from Germany to Syria to fight for Islamic State.

But unlike his friends at the time, Sarac had turned to radical Islam as a way of avoiding coming to terms with his sexuality.

“I had friends who, like me, were really radical extremists and even considered going to Syria or to Palestine to fight,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a quiet corner of the prayer room of Berlin’s Ibn Rushd-Goethe mosque.

Now 20, Sarac, who was born in Berlin to a Turkish family, learned from an early age that homosexuality was wrong - and un-Islamic.

“I thought being gay is bad and that through Islam, by praying to God, I could cure myself and become normal. I started praying five times a day: I just felt bad, like I was dirty or inferior somehow ... I was really ashamed of my gay thoughts.” [Reuters] Read more

Morocco bans forced marriage and sexual violence

Morocco's law criminalising violence against women has come into force.

The law includes a ban on forced marriage, sexual harassment in public places, and tougher penalties for certain forms of violence.

It has been criticised by Human Rights Watch for not explicitly criminalising marital rape and lacking a precise definition of domestic violence.

A government survey found that 63% of women between the ages of 18-65 had been victims of violence.

Samira Raiss, one of the main Moroccan campaigners for a law criminalising violence against women, said: "We will not stop here. This law is an asset but it has shortcomings that we have to work on." [BBC] Read more

France Grapples With Proposals to Counter Radical Influences Among French Muslims

.... El Karoui pointed out that almost all responses to religious questions posted on Islamic websites are provided by preachers with Salafist outlooks or links.

The report’s proposal on increasing the learning of Arabic at schools – rather than at mosques – has sparked an uproar from conservative political parties.

Experts and some moderate imams argue that Arabic should be taught at schools like any other language, using grammar books rather than purely focusing on the Qur’an.

Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer said he favors teaching Arabic at schools, but Republican lawmaker Annie Genevard said in a radio interview it was a mistake to think teaching it at school would keep Muslim children from learning at mosques, adding that the proposal “will not solve the problems of the rise of Salafism.” [CNSNews.com] Read more

Sweden Democrat leader's visit causes disquiet among Malmö's Muslims

When Jimmie Åkesson, the 39-year-old leader of the populist Sweden Democrats, starts railing against "giant mosque complexes, with huge minarets everywhere" Adam and Mohammed begin to protest.

"It's you who want to build that!" Mohammed, 25, shouts out when Åkesson accuses Muslims like him of trying to create a parallel society.

The leader of the Sweden Democrats is speaking in Sweden's third-largest city as part of an election tour which has seen protesters attempt to pelt him with eggs in Falkenberg, and a rapturous reception in the party stronghold of Landskrona.

In Malmö, the mood is somewhere in between, with a big crowd of supporters and a small but energetic group of protesters.

"Jimmie, you think we have so many problems in Malmö," reads one sign. "Well, go away and we'll have one less."

Opposition to an anti-immigration party should be no surprise in a city where more than half the people have at least one parent born abroad, and an estimated 20 percent are Muslim. [The Local] Read more

'He's preaching something that's illegal': Outrage at Muslim preacher's 'repugnant' views that it's a 'major SIN' for a wife to refuse her husband's demands for sex

Feminists and the NSW Attorney General have expressed concern after a Sydney Muslim preacher declared it was a 'major sin' for a wife to refuse sex with her husband.

Nassim Abdi, a fundamentalist Sunni, told an Auburn mosque in the city's west a woman would be 'cursed' by angels for withholding marital intimacy.

'If the husband calls the wife to be intimate and there's no legitimate reason for the woman to say no, then she must answer the call of her husband,' he said on Friday night.

'She must answer the call of her husband and if not she has committed a major sin.

'If the man calls the wife to bed and she refuses, the angels curse this woman and he sleeps with her whilst he's angry, the angels curse her until she wakes up.'

Mr Abdi preaches a seventh-century fundamentalist version of Salafist Islam from Saudi Arabia with the Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jamaah Association, which also advocates aspects of Sharia law. [Daily Mail Australia] Read more

Labour’s failure to tackle Muslim extremism has ‘pushed core supporters to join far right groups’, Unite boss warns

LABOUR has pushed thousands of its core supporters to the far right because of its failure to take on Muslim extremism, a union boss has warned.

Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner tore into the Labour leadership for remaining silent during last year’s Islamist terror attacks in London and Manchester.

And he blasted the Left for failing to criticise despotic regimes such as Iran but being the first to protest against Donald Trump and the Israeli government.

He warned that it had left many men lacking a voice to vent their anger - and had driven them to far-right groups such as the Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA).

Speaking at an anti-racism fringe meeting at the TUC conference, Mr Turner fumed: “We need to stop talking to ourselves and talk to the people who are drawn to some of these organisations – for a multitude of different reasons."

He said many who had been driven to far right groups had "genuine fears and concerns”.

.... “Where’s the left criticising the state of Iran for instance, who whipped trade unionists for taking strike action, who denies women human rights, who runs an obscene regime.

“Saudi Arabia, where we welcomed the head of Saudi Arabia to the UK. Did we protest? No we didn’t protest. [The Sun] Read more

Islamophobia row over Bodyguard

.... The opening episode included a scene in which a would-be suicide bomber appeared to act under the influence of her jihadist husband. Sergeant David Budd, a police protection officer played by Richard Madden, tells the woman that she has been brainwashed.

.... “Unfortunately the reality of our situation is that the principal terror threats in the UK do originate from Islamist sympathisers.

“I do understand that’s different from the religion of Islam, but it’s the reality of who the perpetrators are of the majority of the offences. If the show were set in the recent British past, the attackers might be Irish Republicans.”

Rohit Kachroo, ITV News security editor, claimed that the passive jihadist bride was “one of the great clichés in depictions of modern Islamist terrorism”. Lexi Alexander, a German-Palestinian filmmaker, accused British TV dramas of focusing on “bad Muslims”. [The Times (£)] Read more

Man arrested after breakfast with woman in Saudi Arabia

An Egyptian man in Saudi Arabia has been arrested after a video of him having breakfast with a woman went viral on Twitter.

In the video, a man with an Egyptian dialect eats breakfast beside a woman wearing a full face veil, who many assumed to be Saudi.

This is in contravention of the law in Saudi Arabia, where in workplaces or eateries like McDonald's and Starbucks, families and single men have to sit in different areas.

Women must sit separately from single men in these places.

They are not allowed to carry out most activities without being accompanied by their male guardians, usually a father or husband, but possibly a brother or a son.

The man was arrested by the Saudi Ministry of Labour and Social Development, who accused him of "committing several violations and taking up a post exclusively reserved for Saudis". [BBC] Read more

Macron to review report calling for reform of Islam in France

Islamists have an “intellectual monopoly” over public debate among Muslims in France and the state must intervene to limit foreign influence over worshippers, according to a new report submitted to President Emmanuel Macron.

The 617-page report, “The Fabric of Islam,” presents a comprehensive plan for reform of Islamic institutions in France following a call from Macron to bring them under the aegis of the state. During a July address to lawmakers at the Palace of Versailles, Macron committed to giving Islam “a framework and rules” by the fall. His goals: discouraging insular Muslim communities and combating extremist strands of the religion.

“Muslims, notably the young, inform themselves of the religion more and more on social media,” warned the report’s author Hakim El Karoui on BFM TV on Monday, adding that Salafist-aligned Saudis play a disproportionate role online.

His report, which was unveiled Sunday and published by liberal think tank Institut Montaigne, calls for the development of a “French Islam” — an autonomous, France-centric branch of the faith that would respond to French law. El Karoui, an essayist and ex-Rothschild banker, is also the nephew of former Tunisian Prime Minister Hamed Karoui. [POLITICO] Read more

Halal tax and Arabic in French schools: the new ways to stop Islamic fundamentalism in France?

A new report by a Paris think-tank underlines "the progress of Islamist ideology among Muslims in France", suggesting that Salafi Islam can be stamped out through a “halal tax” and Arabic being taught in French schools.

According to the report released on Sunday by France’s Montaigne Institute, Salafism - a radical branch of Islam that calls for worldwide sharia law – has a monopoly on Islamic religious thought in l’Héxagone.

Author Hakim El Karaoui, a consultant for the Paris think-thank who’s written on Arab and Muslim policy before, points to Turkey and Saudi Arabia as the main sources of funding for the dissemination of this radical school of thinking among France and Europe’s Muslim population.

The Montaigne Institute study highlights that this opaque financing pays for the promotion of Arabic learning among France’s Muslims at institutions that have a marked fundamentalist political-religious stance rather than just a linguistic one, the report suggests.

Through these obscure Islamic schools Salafi indoctrination "is gaining ground in France”, especially among "young people under 35", El Karaoui suggests. [The Local] Read more

Muslim group calls for preacher linked to Trump to be denied UK visa

Britain’s leading Muslim organisation has called on the Home Office to refuse a UK visa to a prominent US evangelical preacher with links to Donald Trump and a track record of Islamophobic and homophobic statements.

Franklin Graham, the son of the evangelist Billy Graham, has been invited to preach at a Christian festival in Blackpool this month.

The preacher, who said Trump’s election victory was evidence that “God’s hand” was at work, has called Islam “evil” and “wicked”, claimed Barack Obama’s “problem is that he was born a Muslim” and said Satan was the architect of same-sex marriage and LGBT rights.

The Muslim Council of Britain has joined three MPs, including a government whip, in demanding the Home Office apply its criteria on hate speech to Graham’s visa request. [The Guardian] Read more