French cabin crews have no right to tell Muslim women to remove their burqa aboard Air France flights - despite a nationwide ban on full face veils, the airline has ruled.
Islamic passengers can be ordered to remove the garment while waiting in French airports to board the plane at the gate.
But once on board, they are free to put their burqa back on, according to an internal memo to staff from Air France's legal department. [MailOnline] Read more
In the west-wing of the Sheikhupura prison, just outside of the bustle of Lahore, Pakistan, there’s a woman who has been confined to a tiny cell waiting to be hanged. Her name is Asia Bibi and her alleged crime is blasphemy, an offence that gets you the noose in Pakistan. [Toronto Star] Read more
Despite the attack ruining their modest headquarters in Paris (above), and despite a follow-up threat from the Turkish hackers’ group Akincilar, Charlie Hebdo is back this week with a new issue which, as Business Insider puts it, carries ‘A Truly Shocking Cover’.
Under the coverline ‘Love is stronger than hate’, a cartoon depicts a Charlie Hebdo artist kissing a Muslim on the lips. The illustration can be seen here.[The Week] Read more [via National Secular Society]
.... Self-censorship is the most invidious and successful type of censorship – not just because it is self-reinforcing but because once it is people invent reasons to cover for themselves.
So the worst thing that any British journal can imagine doing today is to run a cartoon of Muhammad. Not because – as they all say in public – it is insensitive, or provocative or offensive.
These are all names and things that journalists rejoice in getting called. It is simply and solely (as they sometimes admit in private) because they know that they will be at some degree of risk if they do. [The Spectator] Read more
Darul Uloom Deoband has advised Muslims against celebrating birthdays, contending in a fatwa that Islam does not permit such a practice which is a "tradition of western countries".
Responding to a query of an AMU student, Darul Uloom said that Islam does not permit such celebrations as they are against the Shariat law. [THE TIMES OF INDIA] Read more
.... In short, one hopes that the following principle -- well summed up by a prominent Melkite Greek Catholic deacon -- will come to be accepted as mainstream in Islam: '[O]ne's response to someone else's provocative action is entirely one's own responsibility.
If you do something that offends me, I am under no obligation to kill you, or to run to the United Nations to try to get laws passed that will silence you. I am free to ignore you, or laugh at you, or to respond with charity, or any number of reactions.'
In the meantime, Western governments and media must make every effort to stand in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo in the wake of this latest Islamist attempt at intimidation. [The American Spectator] Read more
.... In its simplest form, and just going by the term itself, ‘phobia’ can be defined as ‘an intense but unrealistic fear that can interfere with the ability to socialize, work, or go about everyday life, brought on by an object, event or situation’. Adding the prefix ‘Islam’ therefore implies that this irrational fear is triggered by Islam and directed at Muslims.
But are we conflating run of the mill prejudice that a few may encounter with a national epidemic of irrational hatred against Muslims?
Or is the cry of ‘Islamophobia’ simply a way of deflecting legitimate criticism of certain backward ideas associated with religion in general; and conservative Islam in particular? When we talk about Islamophobia, what is it we are really talking about? [independent.co.uk] Read more
The Islamist party Ennahda has sounded so moderate since winning Tunisia's first free election last month that it can be hard to see what role religion plays in its political thinking.
Faced with fears they might foist strict Islamic sharia rules on this reform-minded Muslim country, Ennahda leaders insist the beer, bikinis and foreign banks the old secularist rulers allowed will still be welcome under an Islamist-led government. [Reuters] Read more
.... women who leave a Muslim marriage, risk violence in the worst case and in some cases being forced to give up contact with their families.
This according to a new report from the Danish National Centre for Social Research (SFI), which for the first time investigated the extent of Muslim marriages in Denmark, based on interviews with 250 people, primarily from the Muslim communities in Denmark.
.... The report confirms that there are Muslim women in Denmark who experience violence, harassment and social isolation because their husband won't give up on the religious marriage. [Islam in Europe] Read more
Researchers used advertisements on Facebook pages to persuade over 10,000 followers of 14 far-Right parties in 11 European countries to fill in detailed questionnaires about their beliefs.
The study found the mainly, young men were angry about their governments and the EU combined with deep hostility to Muslim immigrants.
As well as carrying out surveys, Demos analysed data on 450,000 supporters of far-Right-parties, almost two-thirds were aged under 30, three-quarters were male, and more likely than average to be unemployed.
[A COMMENT] If islam was such a wonderful system then these people would not wish to leave the paradises of freedom that are the countries of the muslim world.
It is not racist, extremist or politically incorrect to worry about the society in which we live, and for which our ancestors fought, being changed by immigrants who do not share our heritage, our culture or our ideals. [telegraph.co.uk] Read more
.... But the prize for moral idiocy has to go to Time magazine's Paris correspondent, Bruce Crumley, who found it "hard to have much sympathy for the French satirical newspaper firebombed ... after it published another stupid and totally unnecessary issue mocking Islam".
Crumley admitted there was "no excuse" for the attack, but made a feeble joke at the magazine's expense, wishing it "good luck with those charcoal drawings your pages will now be featuring". [independent.co.uk] Read more
Three-quarters of Britons who become Muslims are female. Now a major new study has shed light on the difficulties they face in adjusting to their new life.
As Muslims celebrate the start of the religious holiday of Eid today and hundreds of thousands from around the world converge on Mecca for the haj, it emerged that of the 5,200 Britons who converted to Islam last year, more than half are white and 75 per cent of them women.
In the past 10 years some 100,000 British people have converted to Islam, of whom some three-quarters are women, according to the latest statistics. This is a significant increase on the 60,000 Britons in the previous decade, according to researchers based at Swansea University. [independent.co.uk] Read more
.... The irony is that this kind of argument is a form of Islamophobia itself, both because it demonstrates actual fear of Muslims (they might bomb us) and because it caricatures them as all the same, all equally thin-skinned and all interested in nothing beyond upholding the dignity of their holy prophet.
But in fact Muslims (whether they know it or not; many do) have much more than other people to gain from a lifting of the taboo on criticising any aspect of their religion, whether Sharia law, the Koran or the personality of Mohammed.
As long as such things cannot be discussed openly, Islam will continue on its present retrograde path, increasingly dominated by conservatives and those who use the religion as a vehicle of political power. [Heresy Corner] Read more
Death threats have closed the website of a French satirical magazine fire-bombed this week after featuring cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed, but that did not deter the daily Libération from publishing new drawings yesterday in a show of solidarity. [independent.co.uk] Read more
.... It most certainly isn’t defamatory to say that FOSIS has “failed to sufficiently challenge terrorist and extremist ideologies”. The truth is far worse. It is clear from their actions that FOSIS institutionally subscribes to extremist ideologies itself.
Over the last three years speakers at FOSIS events have included the following: [Harry’s Place] Read more
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg made an unexpectedly strong attack on the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (Fosis) during his speech to the Community Security Trust in Manchester last night.
Speaking about hate speech on campus, the Liberal Democrat leader declared: "But when individuals and groups express attitude that are hostile to Jews, Muslim and non-Muslim alike that cannot be tolerated. [TheJC.com] Read more
Tunisia's Islamist-led government will focus on democracy, human rights and a free-market economy in planned changes to the constitution, effectively leaving religion out of the text it will draw up, party leaders said.
The government, due to be announced next week, will not introduce sharia or other Islamic concepts to alter the secular nature of the constitution in force when Tunisia's Arab Spring revolution ousted autocrat Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January.
"We are against trying to impose a particular way of life," Ennahda leader Rachid Ghannouchi, 70, a lifelong Islamist activist jailed and exiled under previous regimes, told Reuters.
Tunisian and foreign critics of Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party that won 41.7 percent of Tunisia's first free election on Oct. 23, have voiced fears it would try to impose religious principles on this relatively secular Muslim country. [Reuters] Read more
.... The MCU's strategy and Lambert's relationship with Islamists are discussed in more detail in my piece, but the reason I'm also publishing this blog post is that the story took an unexpected twist after our magazine went to press.
On 16 October, it was revealed in the Guardian that Lambert had worked as an undercover police spy in the environmental and animal rights movements during the 1980s.
Under the name "Bob Robinson", he posed as an activist in London Greenpeace between 1984 and 1988, and even had an 18-month relationship with a fellow activist who was unaware of his true identity until the revelations broke last month. [New Humanist] Read more
Government officials in Iran are trying to convince a jailed pastor to return to Islam as he waits for the nation’s supreme leader to decide whether he should be executed for converting to Christianity, sources close to the case told FoxNews.com. [FoxNews.com] Read more
Looking further into the matter, that was a rush to judgment. For it seems that not a single Muslim student at CUA had gone to the District of Columbia Office of Human Rights to file a complaint.
That complaint was the work of John Banzhaf, a professor at GW, perennial litigant, and longtime contender for the title of National Pest.
In provocative language, Banzhaf told Fox News, 'It shouldn't be too difficult to set aside a small room where Muslims can pray without having to stare up and be looked down upon by a cross of Jesus. [The World] Read more
English law has eroded our right to freedom of expression (and, indeed, freedom of thought) far too far in recent years. Whereas in the past one was free to say whatever one liked provided that it did not amount to an incitement to violence, the law now in essence precludes speech that incites hatred or that is subjectively offensive to any person hearing it.
.... The right for these Islamists to burn poppies should, of course, be a two-way street. It should thus likewise not be an offence for those who wish to say things that these zealots might find or pretend to find offensive.
Put simply, we need to return to our ancient values and move away from the victimhood culture that neuters public debate and imprisons citizens in a prison of silence. Whatever happened to "sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me"? [Dale & Co] Read more
Islamophobia is on the rise in France, according to figures released by the French Muslim umbrella group, CFCM. Attacks and insults perpetrated against Muslims went 22 per cent in the first nine months of this year, the group says, and it fears that there will be more ahead of next year’s general election. [RFI] Read more
On his daily commute to Flen from his work in the capital, the 35-year-old man needed to carry out some of his daily prayers.
In order not to disturb fellow passengers, he made his way to a calm and secluded compartment – something he had done several times before.
”I started to pray but then the conductor arrived and shoved me three times in the back almost causing me to topple over. Then she said 'Show me the ticket! Hey!',” the man told news site Nyheter24.
The man refused to show his monthly rail pass to the female conductor as he felt he couldn't interrupt his prayers once he had started. [The Local] Read more
.... The reason why this is the worst aspect of the firebombing is that these pleas to be more "sensitive" to Muslims amount essentially to calls for restrictions on the freedom of speech and the creation of a special, privileged class that is beyond criticism.
That is the death of free society and the road to tyranny, for the class that is beyond criticism will have a free hand to do whatever it wants, and what will anyone be able to say? [Jihad Watch] Read more
The Daily Beast had a compilation of a dozen of the so-called “shocking" Charlie Hebdo satiric covers.
If there is anything “shocking” it is that allegedly, "offended" Muslims fire bombed the Charlie Hebdo editorial offices in Paris. Why you ask? Because they couldn’t stand another of the satiric journal’s issues dissing Islam.
This one focused on Sharia, satirizing the "divine" Muhammad, Allah’s messenger, as "co-editor." This disputed edition is only the latest. Another French publication France Soir had problems after it re-published the controversial Danish Cartoons of Jyllands-Posten in January, 2006. [The Iconoclast] Read more