Islamophobia Watch

In a letter in today's Guardian Martin Amis expresses indignation that Terry Eagleton should take exception to his remarks about Muslims.

(Just to remind you what these were: "There's a definite urge – don't you have it? – to say, 'The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order'. What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan ... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children.")

As Mart explains: "I was not 'advocating' anything. I was conversationally describing an urge...." And in a letter to Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the Independent he offers a similar defence against Eagleton's criticisms: "The anti-Muslim measures he says I 'advocated' I merely adumbrated...."

So that's all right then.

For Osama Saeed's comments, see Rolled Up Trousers, 12 October 2007

Rome, October 9 – The decision by a northern Italian city official to allow Muslim women to wear the burqa has sparked consternation in the country, even though at least one minister supported the move. "We have already said several times, and we reiterate it now, that the use of the burqa is unacceptable," said a spokesman for Interior Minister Giulio Amato.

A 1975 law, introduced amid concern over homegrown terrorism in the country's cities, forbids Italians from appearing in public wearing anything which covers their faces. Apart from this law, which appears to apply to the burqa, many politicians on both sides of parliament said the garment was also a humiliating imposition. "I am indignant. Covering up women's faces is an offence to their dignity," said Equal Opportunities Minister Barbara Pollastrini.

Vittorio Capocelli, the prefect of Treviso in the Veneto region, decided on October 5 that it was acceptable for Muslim women in the city to wear the garment as long as they were ready to remove it and identify themselves to police when required. A day later Family Minister Rosy Bindi, a prominent Catholic politician, indicated her agreement, saying that it was right to be "respectful of the veil" as long as women wore it of their own free will.

The apparent green light for the burqa drew a stinging editorial from Egyptian-born writer and journalist Magdi Allam in Tuesday's edition of Corriere della Sera, Italy's best-selling daily. "If the prefect's decision sets a legal and administrative precedent on a national level, Islamic women could soon be going to school completely covered, be getting hired in workplaces and circulating freely all over Italy," he wrote.

Muslim News, 10 October 2007

The report is reproduced from ANSA and the reference to the burqa distorts the position – which is that the 1975 anti-terrorism law prohibiting the use of any dress or disguise that inhibits the identification of an individual in public has been used to ban not just the burqa but the niqab too, though the the rule is open to local interpretation and its application has been geographically uneven.

A satirical US attack on a questionable conference has been taken seriously, a sad reflection on that country's ability to debate Islam, argues Brian Whitaker.

Comment is Free, 11 October 2007

That's the headline to an Evening Standard story which reports the possible redevelopment of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park in terms that echo the propaganda of the BNP:  "Officially it would be known as a 'multi-faith' cemetery but it is likely that it would principally answer calls for a Muslim graveyard in the largely-Asian East London borough. The local newspaper has been bombarded with letters from historians and nature lovers declaring: 'There is no way we'll allow them to dig up our ancestors'."

Cf. God Help Britain, 11 October 2007

From London's docklands to the rolling hills of Tuscany, from southern Austria to Amsterdam and Cologne, the issue of Islamic architecture and its impact on citadels of "western civilisation" is increasingly contentious.

The far right is making capital from Islamophobia by focusing on the visible symbols of Islam in Europe. In Switzerland it is the far-right SVP that is setting the terms of the debate.

Next door in Austria the far right leader Jörg Haider is also calling for a ban in his province of Carinthia, even though there are few Muslims and no known plans for mosques. "Carinthia," he said, "will be a pioneer in the battle against radical Islam for the protection of our dominant western culture."

In Italy the mayors of Bologna and Genoa last month cancelled or delayed planning permission for mosques after a vociferous campaign by the far-right Northern League, one of whose leaders, Roberto Calderoli, threatened to stage a "day of pork" to offend Muslims and to take pigs to "defile" the site of the proposed mosque in Bologna.

While the far right makes the running, their noisy campaign is being supported more quietly by mainstream politicians and some Christian leaders. And on the left pro-secularist and anti-clericalist sentiment is also frequently ambivalent about Islamic building projects.

Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne has voiced his unease over a large new mosque being built for the city's 120,000 Muslims in the Rhineland Roman Catholic stronghold. A similar scheme in Munich has also faced local protests.

The Bishop of Graz in Austria has been more emphatic. "Muslims should not build mosques which dominate town's skylines in countries like ours," said Bishop Egon Kapellari.

Guardian, 11 October 2007

The British National Party's press officer objects to the Islam is Peace campaign:

"... we learn that Islamic groups are currently covering London red buses, of all things, with adverts trying to convince us all that Islam is a religion of peace. I don't know which is more insulting, the use of red buses, which were utilised by Islamists for somewhat less peaceful means a couple of years ago, or the fact that they think the campaign will actually work. You see the problem is, if it really was a religion of peace, which self-evidently it isn't, there would be no need for such an effort to persuade us all otherwise. In fact by utilising this hybrid IslamoMarxist propaganda, which may very well work in peasant societies of the former Soviet Union or medievally orientated parts of the middle east, there's actually a real chance of making us designated European recipients considerably more resentful. Might I suggest that these posters would serve more purpose actually inside the mosques and madrasas rather than outside on our streets."

Simon Darby, 10 October 2007

Sameer Parker wants to know.

Just Your Average Muslim, 10 October 2007

"In a recent book John Mueller, an American academic, notes that the number of his fellow-countrymen killed by terrorists since 1960 'is about the same as the number killed over the same period by accident-causing deer'.... Hitherto, I have always rather enjoyed watching the deer in Richmond Park in London. But now I find myself looking at them with suspicion and resentment. Of course, we must be careful not to generalise about deer. Most of them live peaceful lives. But surely it is foolish to blind ourselves to the murderous threat posed by a small, but fanatical, minority of the deer community?"

Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times, 9 October 2007

"An ex-senator that opposes individual rights of women; a pundit that calls people 'faggots' and considers Islam a 'cult'; a Christian scholar who is considered a 'polemicist' and an 'Islamophobe' by conservative Christians themselves; and an intellectual who has received millions from 'far right' organizations since 2001, are rising up for the rights of women, gays, and religious minorities in the Muslim world. This laughable spectacle is called the Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. It will be coming to a university near you on October 22-26."

Ali Eteraz at the Huffington Post, 8 October 2007

Amnesty International UK launched a hard-hitting campaign on Monday against human rights abuses in the name of the "war on terror."

The human rights organisation called on people to make a stand against terrorism and against civil liberties being eroded by governments claiming to fight al-Qaida. The billboard and internet campaign is called Unsubscribe, after the process that internet users use to reject unwanted emails.

Speaking at a launch event in Birmingham, Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen said: "Unsubscribe is about rejecting the false choice between terrorism on the one hand and abuse of human rights on the other."

She stressed people's opposition to the government's detention without charge or trial of terror suspects under the pretext of national security. "They believe people have a right to know why they are being detained and they believe in the right to have a fair trial if someone is suspected of a serious offence," Ms Allen added.

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