Muslim preschools 'linked to Islamist groups'

Austria’s Integration Minister Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) wants to introduce tighter controls on Islamic kindergartens to prevent radicalization and said he believed the study was necessary because there is a danger of “parallel societies emerging”.

The author of the study, Ednan Aslan, is a professor at the Institute of Islamic Studies at Vienna University. He found that the religious education preached by several of the capital's 150 Muslim establishments led to "theologically-motivated isolation" and robbed children of their autonomy through "intimidation".

"Intellectual Salafists and political Islamists are the dominant groups in the Islamic kindergarten scene in Vienna," the study concluded.

“In many of their publications the Muslim Brotherhood and Milli Gorus reject the Western way of life as an inferior worldview,” Aslan writes in the 178 page study. [The Local] Read more

Young British girls forced into marriage over Skype

Girls in Britain as young as 11 are being forced into marriage via the internet while others are being secretly wed over the phone, two charities said on Monday.

Imams in Britain and abroad have been conducting ceremonies using Skype to marry British girls remotely to men abroad, said the charity Freedom, which campaigns against forced marriage.

The new husband is often promised that he will get a visa to come to Britain.

In one case, an 11-year-old girl from London was married on Skype to a 25-year-old man in Bangladesh, Freedom's founder Aneeta Prem said.

The girl, who hadn't understood the significance of the Skype call at the time, contacted Freedom after reading a book about forced marriage by Prem that her brother was given at school.

"As soon as she was old enough the family were planning to take her out to consummate the marriage," Prem said. [Thomson Reuters Foundation] Read more

Imam at Danish mosque: Stone women to death

A hidden camera showed Abu Bilal Ismail, an imam at the mosque, teaching a class about what he says is the appropriate punishment for adultery.

“If a married or divorced women engages in fornication, and she is not a virgin, she should be stoned to death,” Ismail says in the video clip.

“If someone violates their marriage, either man or woman, they commit adultery and their blood is thus halal [acceptable under Muslim law, ed.] and they should be killed by stoning. If the woman is a virgin, the punishment is whipping,” he says.

The clip also shows the imam advocating an “eye for an eye” policy.

“If someone kills a Muslim, then they should be killed,” he says, before adding that anyone who abandons their religion should also be killed. [The Local] Read more

Sharia courts in the UK are run by extremists who back cutting off criminals' hands, says Muslim scholar

Sharia courts administering Islamic justice in Britain are run by clerics who believe some offenders should have their hands chopped off, an investigation has found.

Muslim scholar Elham Manea said that some clerics also believe girls can be married at the age of 12 and described their prevailing attitude as ‘totalitarian’ and more backward than some parts of Pakistan.

The findings from the human rights specialist come amid continuing controversy over the role of sharia courts, which rule in family and inheritance disputes between Muslims who agree to be bound by the decisions. There are thought to be around 85 operating in Britain.

Last December, Home Secretary Theresa May set up an independent review into their role, amid fears that they discriminate against women.

Professor Manea, who is based at Zurich University, spent four years speaking to clerics at sharia courts in London and the Midlands. Her book on the project concludes that the courts represent ‘closed communities’.

Her findings, published by The Sunday Times, said that they increase ‘segregation, inequality and discrimination’ and can encourage ‘political instability and home-grown terrorism’. [Daily Mail] Read more

Young British girls forced into marriage over Skype

Girls in Britain as young as 11 are being forced into marriage via the internet while others are being secretly wed over the phone, two charities said on Monday.

Imams in Britain and abroad have been conducting ceremonies using Skype to marry British girls remotely to men abroad, said the charity Freedom, which campaigns against forced marriage.

The new husband is often promised that he will get a visa to come to Britain.

In one case, an 11-year-old girl from London was married on Skype to a 25-year-old man in Bangladesh, Freedom's founder Aneeta Prem said.

The girl, who hadn't understood the significance of the Skype call at the time, contacted Freedom after reading a book about forced marriage by Prem that her brother was given at school.

"As soon as she was old enough the family were planning to take her out to consummate the marriage," Prem said.

"She had been pulled out of school and was being taught to be a housewife." [Thomson Reuters Foundation] Read more

France: Criticize Islam and Live under Police Protection

"You are sentenced to death. It's just a matter of time." This message, in Arabic, was sent by Islamists to Laurence Marchand-Taillade, National Secretary of the Parti Radical de Gauche (Radical Party of the Left). She now lives under the protection of the French police.

Marchand-Taillade forced the Muslim Brotherhood to withdraw, under pressure from France's Interior Ministry, its invitation of three Islamic fundamentalists to a conference in Lille.

The Islamists in question were the Syrian Mohamed Rateb al Nabulsi, the Moroccan Abouzaid al Mokrie and the Saudi Abdullah Salah Sana'an, who deem that the penalty for homosexuality is death, that the international coalition against the Islamic State is "infidel," that Jews "destroy the nations" and that only religious music is permitted.

Laurence Marchand-Taillade published an article in Le Figaro in which she called for the ban of these Islamists with their "anti-Semitic and pro-jihadist message." [Gatestone Institute] Read more

UK’s sharia courts ‘ignore marital rape’ - A new book on the clerics who decide disputes in Islamic communities finds some condone domestic abuse and child marriage

THE Islamic law propagated by some sharia courts in the UK is more antiquated and extreme than in parts of Pakistan, according to a new book that claims they are prepared to condone wife-beating, ignore marital rape and allow a father to annul his daughter’s marriage if he dislikes her choice of groom.

The book is the result of a four-year investigation into the network of about 80 Islamic “councils” that decide disputes within Muslim communities by Elham Manea, an expert in Islamic law and human rights who is herself a Muslim.

Manea, a political scientist and professor at Zurich University in Switzerland, visited sharia courts in London and the Midlands where she interviewed clerics who have passed judgment on thousands of British Muslims, as well as listening to online recordings of their speeches.

She discovered that a number of them believe girls as young as 12 can be married and agreed with the notion that some offenders should have their hands chopped off as “corporal punishment”. [The Sunday Times (£)] Read more

Saudi man gets 10 years, 2,000 lashes over atheist tweets

A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a man to 10 years in prison and 2,000 lashes for expressing his atheism in hundreds of Twitter posts.

Al-Watan online daily said Saturday that religious police in charge of monitoring social networks found more than 600 tweets denying the existence of God, ridiculing Quranic verses, accusing all prophets of lies and saying their teachings fueled hostilities.

It says the 28-year-old man admitted to being an atheist and refused to repent, saying that what he wrote reflected his own beliefs and that he had the right to express them. The report did not name the man.

The court also fined him 20,000 riyals, about $5,300. [AP] Read more

Sexism row as mosque turns away women worshippers

The Islamic Centre in Soho is a mosque where women cannot pray. A sign clearly states no facilities for "sisters", and tells them to go elsewhere.

Anita Nayyar used to go to the Soho mosque. But she claims that on a number of occasions she was asked to leave, and that friends were told the same.

"I had two friends go there with their elderly mother. She has been told to go to this other mosque half a mile away.

She can't walk that far and she would have missed her prayer. I had another friend who went to pray there she knew that they had a ban she just went straight in because she needed to pray and the man in the mosque tried to take her out of the mosque."

We went to the mosque to ask if they have, on occasions, asked women to leave and to explain why they've put up the sign. At the door a man told us no one was available to comment today. [ITN News] Read more

Saudi religious police trained to fight black magic

Religious police in Saudi Arabia have begun training on how to fight black magic and arrest those involved in black art reports Emirates 247.

The ‘Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice,’ also known as the religious police are responsible for upholding the country’s strict laws on sex segregation and other moral issues.

According to reports, 30 members of the ‘Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice’ have completed a five-day course on combating magic at the Commission’s headquarters in the capital Riyadh.

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The course covered theoretical and practical measures on how to deal with magic and destroy black art work as well as how to identify magicians and sorcerers.

Magic is strictly banned in Saudi Arabia, and in 2012, the country is reported to have charged 215 magicians. [Asian Image] Read more

Muslim woman who eloped with Christian man and embraced Jesus killed by her own family in Egypt honour killing

A Muslim woman divorcee whose romance to a Christian man prompted her to convert to Christianity was killed by members of her family in Tamia, Egypt in yet another case of honour killing.

Marwa Mohamed, 26, was killed by her cousins and uncle in front of her parents and siblings after she was forcibly brought back to her hometown in Tamia, 87 km southwest of Cairo. Her body was reportedly dumped near a cemetery.

Her younger sister was also made to slit her older sister's throat "as a way to deter her from following in her footsteps,'Egyptian media quoted sources as saying.

The romance between Marwa, a Muslim mother of two (Sahar, 8 and Omar, 6) and her Coptic neighbor Karim Eid, 27, started in 2013.

George Fahmi, a relative of Eid and a resident of the same place, told authorities after the tragedy that Marwa used to frequent a nearby Christian jeweller's shop where Eid was working. The frequent meetings ended in the couple eloping and heading to Alexandria (280 km away from Tamia) during the summer of 2013. [Christian Today] Read more

This racist backlash against refugees is the real crisis in Europe

A coalition of the inhumane is rising in Europe. A group of political leaders have been meeting this week in Vienna to coordinate how to seal the western Balkan refugee passage. The countries involved, including Macedonia, Croatia and Serbia, don’t want to risk hosting thousands of stranded people in their poor societies. They expect that by intentionally causing a humanitarian disaster in Greece they are going to stop the misery of the world getting in their backyard. Only this week Greece pleaded with Macedonia to reopen its border as 4,000 refugees became stranded.

Meanwhile the four Visegrád countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) who have not been not invited to join these discussions, are also at the forefront of this ideological campaign to seal the Balkan route. Their motivation is based on an Islamophobic narrative, as advocated by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, a self-declared enemy of liberal democracy and consolidator of a Christian front against the Islamisation of Europe. [1636 comments]

[TOP RATED COMMENT 492 votes] I think the backlash is mainly against economic imigrants rather than real refugees.

I don't think it is racist either. Most people don't care what race they are, they just don't want them here

[2ND 392] Relocate them all to Saudi,Qatar, The Emirates, Kuwait, Dubai.... Plenty of room, plenty of money and a shared culture. Europe isn't the place for swarms of Islamic, economic migrants.

[3RD 350] It's also a matter of scale, the sheer number of people, potentially millions and millions (and the culture they bring with them)

[4TH 346] How about all the people who don't want them but are not racist?

[5TH 304] Take in one million and there will be another two million behind them. Europe must take the hard decision now and close off it's borders.

[6TH 284] We have seen the first signs of disaster associated with this wave of migration

Increased crime
Pressure on public services
Pressure on housing
Pressure on the NHS

We need to close the borders now if we want to be able to take the truly deserving

It's NOT RACIST to be concerned about migration

[7TH 254] The author appears to have a limited knowledge of geography. Why else does he concentrate on the flow of migrants towards Europe. There is plenty of space (and there are plenty of jobs) in the Middle East. [Guardian Cif] Read more

French court upholds radical mosque's closure outside Paris

A French high court has upheld the closure of a mosque outside of Paris because of evidence the Muslim place of worship had been infiltrated by radical Islamists.

In its first ruling regarding such a shutdown order, the Council of State says Thursday that the mosque in Lagny-sur-Marne, east of Paris, still represents a potentially "serious threat to public order and security."

The Interior Ministry says preachers with Salafist ideology have used the mosque to recruit fighters for the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, call for jihad and incite attacks in France and abroad.

The mosque's closure was carried out under France's state of emergency law that went into effect after the Nov. 13 attacks by mostly French and Belgian Islamic extremists that left 130 dead in Paris. [AP] Read more

Egypt Sentences Coptic Teenagers to Prison for Insulting Islam

An Egyptian court sentenced four Coptic Christian teenagers to up to five years in prison on Thursday after finding them guilty of insulting Islam, the latest of a series of high-profile blasphemy convictions that have drawn sharp criticism of Egypt’s judicial system.

The teenagers were convicted in Minya, an arid province south of Cairo, where they had been accused of filming a 32-second video in which they mocked the Muslim mode of prayer, said their lawyer, Maher Naguib.

A prominent TV presenter, a poet and a novelist have received jail sentences in recent months for blasphemy or offending public morals, in cases that seem to be at odds with the image of Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who styles himself as a bulwark against extremism.

The police initiated the prosecution of the Coptic teenagers after a Muslim classmate discovered the video. Three of the teenagers were sentenced to five years in prison, while the fourth, who is still under 18, is to be detained at a juvenile detention center. [NYTimes.com] Read more

Petting zoo owner not prosecuted for ejecting Muslim family

Huub van Leijsen, owner of petting zoo Pukkemuk in Dongen, will not be prosecuted for discrimination for asking a Muslim family to leave his establishment in December. The Public Prosecutor in Breda dismissed the case, Omroep Brabant reports

On December 28th Van Leijsen asked a group of about twenty Muslims to leave the petting zoo after he found their praying on the playground was making the other kids anxious. During the conversation, tempers ran high and eventually the police had to be called in. The group left the petting zoo and their entrance fee as refunded.

The Public Prosecutor decided that nothing discriminatory happened here. The group was not refused from the petting zoo. The praying, argument and police arrival led to behavior that is not desirable on a playground, according to the prosecutor. “There is no question of exclusion on the grounds of their religion, discrimination. [NL Times] Read more

Salman Rushdie fatwa causes outrage

We are outraged to learn that 40 state-run media outlets in Iran have raised $600,000 (£420,000) to add as bounty to Ayatollah Khomeini’s death fatwa on the writer Salman Rushdie because of his novel The Satanic Verses (Report, 22 February). We condemn the Iranian regime, its fatwa and the added bounty. We stand with Rushdie and the many Iranian freethinkers and writers languishing in prison, or facing the death penalty, for exercising their right to free expression and thought.

The Iranian regime must face global condemnation for its incitement to murder. Democratic and secular governments should unequivocally condemn the regime’s fatwa and bounty, demand their immediate cancellation, prioritise human rights and free expression, and side with freethinkers rather than appeasing a theocratic regime. [The Guardian] Read more

Egypt sentences 4 Coptic teenagers for contempt of Islam

An Egyptian court convicted four Coptic Christian teenagers for contempt of Islam on Thursday, after they appeared in a video mocking Muslim prayers, sentencing three to five years in prison and referring a fourth to a juvenile detention facility, one

The harsh ruling — which has followed a surge of blasphemy cases in Egyptian courts — underscores what rights groups describe as a culture of intolerance within the country’s judicial system at a time when the Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi is seeking to position himself as an advocate for religious reform.

The 30-second video showed the students pretending to pray, with one kneeling on the floor while reciting Qur’anic verses and two others standing behind him and laughing. One waved his hand under a second’s neck in a sign of beheading. The video was filmed during a students’ picnic to mock Islamic State group it beheaded Coptic Christians in Libya last year. [The Washington Post] Read more

Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the JW3

.... Today, Maajid does not offer platitudes about Islam being a peaceful faith and he tends to be critical of those who do (it is perhaps only fair to observe that in 2010 he was constrained by a clumsy debating motion, but I wonder if he would feel comfortable defending such a blunt proposition today, even for the sake of argument).

For her part, Hirsi Ali no longer describes Islam as a religion with which we are at war. Nor does neuroscientist and new atheist moral philosopher Sam Harris, who recently co-authored a fascinating dialogue with Nawaz entitled Islam and the Future of Tolerance. “I admit” Harris tells Maajid during their exchange, “that I have often contributed to this narrative myself, and rather explicitly”.

On the larger question of religious reform, Hirsi Ali and Nawaz describe the religious and political landscape in similar terms. In his collaboration with Harris, Nawaz talks about Islam as a series of concentric circles of fanaticism and belief. At the center are global jihadists like ISIS and al Qaeda and local jihadists like Hamas, followed by a circle of revolutionary and political Islamists (Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Muslim Brotherhood, respectively), all of whom are working in their own ways to establish a theocracy, and marshal transnational Muslim support for their project. In her recent book Heretic, Hirsi Ali refers to the above as ‘Medina Muslims’ who draw inspiration from the warlike, triumphalist chapters of Muhammad’s life. [Harry’s Place] Read more

Italy's top court rejects Lombardy's 'anti-mosque' bid

A bid by the Lombardy region to limit the construction of new mosques has been rejected by Italy’s top court.

The region’s right-wing leadership approved regulations, which became known as “anti-mosque” laws, in January 2015, but Prime Minister Matteo Renzi later referred the new rules to the Constitutional Court for review.

Roberto Maroni, the Northern League president of the Lombardy region, took to Twitter on Wednesday to announce the court’s decision, adding that left-wing politicians were hailing it “Allah”.

“The court has rejected our law regulating the construction of new mosques," Maroni wrote. "The left celebrates: Allah Akbar.”

The region had sought to subject anyone wanting to build a mosque, or other place of worship for a faith not officially recognized by the state, to an exhaustive list of restrictions, effectively preventing any new construction. [The Local] Read more

News From the Magic Kingdom

From Saudi Arabia comes the news that the mutaween, the feared religious police under the control of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, who patrol the streets and regulate the daily life of the populace, are now being given five-day courses in how to recognize, and then how to neutralize, a small army of wizards, witches, ghosts, demons, fortunetellers in the Magic Kingdom.

Apparently it’s a big problem. Why, there have even been reports of leprechaun-like creatures – possibly they’ve wandered down from the Old Sod to end up in the Empty Quarter – who find it great fun to persuade innocent Saudis to break the rules of Sharia. All these dealers in the magical and supernatural will be hunted down, and dealt with sternly, by the Saudi religious police — “sternly” can mean anything from long prison sentences to decapitation. Such worries are not new to the Saudis, however — the official anti-witchcraft unit within the Ministry of the Interior was first formed in May 2009. [New English Review] Read more

Iranian media outlets add £430,000 to bounty on Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie's head

Iranian media outlets have added £430,000 to a multi-million pound bounty for the killing of Sir Salman Rushdie 27 years after a death fatwa was issued over his 'blasphemous' The Satanic Verses.

On February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the county's Islamic revolution, called on all Muslims to murder the author and anyone involved in the publication of his work.

Iranian hardliners say Khomeini's decree is irrevocable and eternal after his death. And this month 40 state-run news organisations announced they are adding money to the reward.

A wealthy Iranian religious organisation initially offered £1.9million ($2.7 million) reward to anyone carrying out the fatwa and in 2012 it increased the amount to £2.4million ($3.3 million).

Now the semi-official Fars news agency has published a list of news outlets adding to the pot. Fars itself earmarked £21,400 ($30,000). [Daily Mail] Read more

Facebook restores Arab atheist groups ....but cyber-jihadists resume their attacks

Yesterday I wrote about Facebook's mass closure of groups used by Arab atheists and secularists following attacks by Muslim activists. Facebook now seems to have had second thoughts about its decision and over the last 24 hours almost all the affected groups have been restored.

This morning, however, the restored groups were reporting fresh attacks by cyber-jihadists.

The attacks mostly take two forms. One is to bombard Facebook with vexatious complaints, accusing the atheist groups of hate speech and other breaches of Facebook's "community standards". (The affected groups insist that they do not allow hate speech and take steps to prevent it.)

A second tactic is to infiltrate the groups and deliberately post offensive material in order to complain about it to Facebook. Sometimes the offensive material is disguised so that group administrators will not immediately spot it. According to Usama al-Binni of the Arab Atheist Network, one of the groups that was blocked and then restored: [al-bab.com] Read more

Iranian heavy metal band face execution after being charged with blasphemy for 'writing satanic music and speaking to foreign radio stations'

Two members of an Iranian heavy metal band could be executed for blasphemy after they were arrested by the state's religious guard and accused of writing 'satanic' music.

Nikan Siyanor Khosravi, 23, and Khosravi Arash Ilkhani, 21, the core members of the band Confess, are believed to have been arrested and jailed on November 10.

Held in Tehran's notorious Evin prison by the Revolutionary Guards until February 5, the pair wrote and released their own heavy metal albums and ran a record label.

Their latest album, released in October, included tracks named 'Teh-Hell-Ran' and 'I'm Your God Now', both of which would likely rankle with the state's hardline Islamic leadership.

Tara Sepehri Far, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, told MailOnline the pair likely faced up to five years in prison. [Daily Mail] Read more

Thousands demand headscarf ban in Valais

With an eye on Muslim hijab, Swiss People’s Party members in canton Valais have collected more than 4,000 signatures calling for a ban on headgear in public schools – despite a recent federal court decision rejecting a similar ban in another part of the country.

The initiative committee, led by the Valais branch of the conservative right People’s Party, submitted 4,385 certified signatures supporting the popular initiative on Monday – about 10% more than required.

Now it’s up to canton Valais to either amend the current law or to draw up a new one; if that doesn’t happen within three years, then voters will decide on the matter via a referendum.

Parliamentarian Jean-Luc Addor, co-head of the initiative committee, says that while headscarves don’t currently pose a problem in canton Valais, the situation could change. He considers headscarves a sign of the subjugation of women. [swissinfo] Read more

State-funded Danish Muslim school tells girls not to date

The private Muslim school Iqra Privatskole, located in Copenhagen’s Nørrebro district, received 18.5 million kroner in state-funded support in 2015. But the school’s outlook on dating may put future funding in jeopardy.

The school’s psychologist told Radio24syv in an interview that the school tells its female pupils not to have boyfriends.

“It is a command from God that one must not enter sexual relationships or dating relationships,” Amina Djondjorova told Radio24syv.

“It is hard to maintain the religious Islamic regulations in a society where they [the school’s students, ed.] see that others around them live in a different way. But nevertheless we try to tell them that it is best to refrain from acting on a crush,” she added.

The psychologist’s remarks led Copenhagen City Council member Lars Aslan Rasmussen to call for the school’s funding to be yanked. [The Local] Read more