Rolled-up Trousers

Mido subjected to Islamophobic abuse - again

Middlesbrough's Egyptian footballer Mido was subjected to Islamophobic abuse at the weekend's Tyne-Tees derby.

Newcastle supporters were chanting ‘Mido, he’s got a bomb you know’, though all you would have seen on Match of the Day was him being booked for telling them to "shut it" after scoring.

This isn't the first time that this has happened to Egyptian internationalist. It appears that while other prejudice has been eliminated from English grounds (let's leave the Scottish ones aside just now), Islamophobia remains a problem.

Coverage was also given to the issue in the Guardian, and while the Daily Mail did have an article leading on the fact that he was abused, they strangely omitted to mention what form it took.

UPDATE: The FA are investigating

UPDATE: More on this from Marina Hyde

Are you listening Brian Monteith?

Brian Monteith takes another stab at trying to tackle terror after his last attempt which included hitting out at forced arranged marriages:

... a spokesman for the Edinburgh Central Mosque said if its imam found plans for a criminal act he would inform the police. Are you listening Osama Saeed and Alex Salmond? This is the way forward towards multi-faith solidarity in the fight against religious-inspired terrorism. Let more like Mohammed Akram come forward and speak for the decent, peace-loving Muslims of Scotland.

Ahem and errm and there is plenty more where that came from.

Monteith for those who don't know him is the former Conservative MSP that thought it was acceptable for the taxpayer to foot the bill for his taxis home from bars, night clubs and off-licences.

UPDATE: Didn't want to include this till I confirmed it, but the Edinburgh Central Mosque spokesman above was actually my brother. There is no family rift on this issue, though he should possibly be disturbed that Mr Monteith likes him.

Labour friends of Muslims?

A glance at the Electoral Commission's latest report into party finances shows that the Muslim Friends of Labour donated over £300,000 to Scottish Labour's election campaign this year.

When the group was set up a few years ago with a dinner at Glasgow Central Mosque, the obvious problem was not whether Muslims were friends of Labour, but whether Labour were friends of Muslims.

The Herald reported that the "Muslim community" had donated £300,000 to Labour. While not strictly true, what MFL does is give cover to those giving donations by it not ending up on the Electoral Commission's web site. Noman Tahir calls for a naming and shaming (UPDATE: More in the Sunday Times).

Over the last few years, the decline in Muslim membership of the Labour Party has been well documented. What hasn't been reported however was a corresponding drop in donations from Muslims - probably because there wasn't much in the way of Muslim philanthropy of this sort in the first place. MFL is an attempt to recognise that money can buy you love in politics.

Belmarsh detainee Mr OO

Late last week, in a landmark case in the US, Jose Padilla was found guilty of conspiracy to support Islamic terrorism overseas, and will be sentenced in December, probably to life. The original charges of him as at the centre of a dirty bomb plot in the US had disappeared over the years since his arrest in a flurry of publicity in 2002. Last week little media focus was on the fact that after 43 months in solitary confinement in a military brig, including two year when he never saw his lawyers, Mr Padilla had lost his mind. Dr Angela Hegarty, an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Colombia, interviewed him for 22 hours, with great difficulty, as he resisted her just as he had resisted his lawyers' attempts to represent him. Her report of what had happened to his mind during this period, when even his name was taken from him and he was called John Doe, is chilling.

Dr Hegarty is the very person needed just now by a Jordanian refugee in Belmarsh prison known as Mr OO.

His story has turned from sad and confusing to positively Kafkaesque. He has spent 20 months in Belmarsh without knowing of what the UK government accuses him, nor why they now want to deport him to Jordan - the very country he fled from 15 years ago, when the UK then accepted him as a refugee.

Read the rest - Victoria Brittain at CiF

Scotland joining the UN

The Sunday Herald reports and features an article on the idea of Scotland applying for observer status at the UN.

This fits into the category of stupendous ideas that it's amazing no one thought of before.

Marco Biagi reckons the UK would block it. I don't think they could dare.

Drunkenness should be an aggravating offence

The Scotland on Sunday report on proposals being floated that alcohol fuelled crimes should face stiffer sentences than the same crimes committed when sober.

It's astonishing that this isn't already the case. The Herald reported last month that Justice Secretary Kenny MacKaskill was considering the change, which is already the way things are handled in England, and sends out the right message about the use of alcohol.

I've never been drunk myself, but I do get the feeling that people use it as an excuse for all sorts of inappropriate behaviour that they are really conscious of doing, albeit emboldened in a way that they would normally not be. If they have genuinely lost control of their senses, then that is something that they have done to themselves and should have been more careful about their limits.

Whatever the case is, people shouldn't be citing it as a mitigating factor, it should rightly be an aggravating one.

Palestinian footballers denied visa to tour England

The Palestinian U19 football team was due to tour England for a few weeks starting later in August.

However, it has been cancelled by the British Consulate in Jerusalem denying them visas. More here.

The highlight of the visit was to be a match at Ewood Park on 8 September - which coincidentally is the same day that England take on Israel at Wembley in a Euro 2008 qualifier. Doubt the Israelis will have so much trouble getting in.

German state bans 'Grace Kelly' hijab

North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state, has taken it's ban on a school teacher wearing the hijab a stage further.

She had suggested as a compromise that she wore it in the style of Grace Kelly from the 1955 movie To Catch a Thief. This was rejected, as the court ruled that Maryam Brigitte Weiss's intent was religious rather than stylistic.

This is strange not least because to rule out articles of clothing on the basis of the intention of the wearer is to open up other clothing to the same ban. Muslim women also cover their arms for religious reasons. Are they to be banned from blouses and jumpers too?

This is why the argument about religious 'symbols' is false when it comes to the headscarf. It's not like a pin badge on your shirt, and isn't unique to just one faith or indeed faith at all. In other words, you can wear an item of clothing if you're not a Muslim, but if you are, it's banned. I'm sorry, but that's just bad law.

...mistakes have been made in the discredited war on terror. Our selective concern for the sanctity of UN security council resolutions, the ease with which we have discarded human rights and embraced torture and extraordinary rendition, the rogues' gallery of tyrants we now treat as indispensable allies - these and other foreign policy errors have done far more to undermine our position in the Muslim world than Osama bin Laden ever will.

The consequences of this have been dire. Two years ago the Pew Research Centre analysed the sources of popular support for terrorism across a sample of six Muslim countries. It found little connection with poverty and a surprisingly small one with Islamic fundamentalism. By far the strongest correlation was with those who felt that America opposed democracy in their country. Contrary to common myth, al-Qaida thrives not because Muslims hate our values, but because we are seen to have been false to them.

David Clark at CiF

Engaging Hamas

Daniel Levy, son of Lord Michael Levy, has previously served as an adviser in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and as an official Israeli negotiator with the Palestinians. He is tipped to work for Tony Blair in his new role. He writes in this week's Jewish Chronicle:

My apparent “crime” is to support engagement with Hamas as part of a strategy for enhancing a ceasefire, security in the region, and ultimately, to advance a peace process that can actually deliver the goods. In being “dangerous” — presumably to Israel and perhaps also Anglo-Jewry — I find myself in not bad company.

Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, ex-Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, previous West Bank Divisions Commander and Civil Administration head General Ilan Paz, Gaza Brigades Commander Colonel Shaul Arieli and ex-deputy National Security adviser Yisraela Oron are just a few of the “dangerous” types who support this approach. In private, in Hebrew, many current senior Israeli officials share the same view and Israel has, of course, directly and indirectly negotiated ceasefires and prisoner exchanges with Hamas in the past.

Time for Muslims to cry freedom

Extract from my speech to the MAB and UKIM Scottish conference held on 5-6 August in Glasgow.

It’s been a tough year for the Muslim community. But when is any particular twelve months not tough for Muslims?

The good news is that the mendacity of the Blair era is at an end. There are new administrations in Westminster and Holyrood, a chance for a fresh start.

Tony Blair believed that the focus had to be kept on the Muslim community in order to divert attention from his foreign policy. The calls for Muslims to do more couldn’t be substantiated – as much as we’d love to be heroes we cannot do more - and thus descended to attacks on our beliefs and practices. We had regular initiatives from his government such as asking Muslim parents to spy on their children, for teachers to spy on their pupils, and government ministers telling their Muslim constituents to wear clothes that would make the minister feel more ‘comfortable’.

What was forgotten was the idea in our society that you can do as you please, as long as you do not bring harm to others. These principles have been all too easily forgotten in recent times. It led us to the remarkable situation where Muslims were having to dole out lessons to the government about liberalism.

But it is these notions of freedom which should be guiding lights for Muslims in the times ahead. And these liberties are not disconnected from the terror threat we face.

This post is a continuation from here

Then we come to Brian Monteith's article in the Edinburgh Evening News. He probably knows even less on the subject than Tom Gallagher.

Indeed he doesn't even know the difference between an arranged and a forced marriage:

...but does [Salmond] make plain his opposition to the continuing fatwa on Rushdie, the growth in so-called honour killings and continuation of arranged marriages that disgust most Scottish people?

Having such limited cultural awareness doesn't stop him wading into the issue though.

English policies cause schism

This post is a continuation from here

By the time Gallagher reaches his Herald article, he is now up to his third piece in quick succession. He can no longer rely on broad statements with no substantial analysis, and has to go into a bit of detail. It's no surprise then that things really come of the rails for him now.

He says about Muslims:

It is a community in which young people, especially, are pulled in different directions. Besides the appeal of secularism, moderates attached to the Sufi tradition are locked in competition with Islamists who promote a purist form of belief influenced by austere Arabian norms.

The recent attacks on me

At the Scotland United Against Terror rally I was heckled by someone in the crowd. Nothing new in that, happens quite a bit, par for the course.

Caught a glimpse of the bloke near the front, just looked like the normal vagrant, possibly drunk, but definitely looking a complete state. He disappeared shortly after - possibly he'd been taken away by the police. He'd actually been pulled up by one of the other attendees to whom he retorted he was an academic and therefore was under the impression that he was above everyone else and allowed to act like a berk. Then he was pulled up by another academic who was on hand.

I've just been told that the vagrant in question was actually Tom Gallagher. He had approached one of the organisers beforehand and asked if I was going to be speaking. He was also upset that no one from the Sufi Muslim Council was on the platform.

Muslim Scouts

As a former Scout myself, it was really heartwarming to see the scenes from England on the 100th birthday of the organisation.

The Daily Mail today reports though on how Scouts celebrating the centenary weren't treated to burgers and bangers because of religious beliefs:

...as 300 Scouts travelled back to the site where their movement was born, meat was whipped off the menu in favour of vegetarian cuisine because it might offend the different faiths of youngsters from 162 countries if it wasn't Halal or Kosher.

This led to the now customary frothing in the comments:

How do these other religions get on with swearing allegiance to god and the Queen then, all PC going far too far and should be done away with. If people can't accept what we do, then why should we accept what they do?

- Nigel, Somerset

This is dreadful! This country is going to the dogs. Lord Baden Powell will be turning in his grave.

- Isabel, Buckinghamshire

This is absolutely ridiculous! I do believe that the PC stupidity in the UK is absolutely barking mad. It defies belief and words.

- Charles, Durham,NC

It is a little known fact that there are more Muslim Scouts in the world today than from any other faith group.

Jihad: The Musical

Quite a bit of free publicity has been drummed up for the apparently controversial Jihad: The Musical at this year's Edinburgh Festival. See an example of the material here.

I've fielded quite a few calls about it. The first thing that has to be said is that Muslims haven't even heard of it and have a lot of other more important things to be worrying about. So please let's not have any "Muslims angry" headlines.

In principle, there is nothing wrong with mocking terrorists, as long as sensitivity is shown towards it's victims. As far as Muslims are concerned, I can't see what we should be worried about as long as the show doesn't start mixing the religion of Islam with terrorism. In this regard however, the title of the show doesn't inspire confidence.

"Jihad" is to struggle for good, and when used in the militaristic sense is the same as the Western concept of a just war. What the terrorists do is not jihad, and to give the terrorists this cloak of respectability is foolish. Many demands are made often of the Muslim community to distance ourselves from terrorism, but when people from outside link us back in like this, it does not help.

More disappointing comments from the Vatican

The Pope's private secretary has given warning of the Islamisation of Europe and stressed the need for the continent's Christian roots not to be ignored, in comments released yesterday.

"Attempts to Islamise the West cannot be denied," Monsignor Georg Gaenswein was quoted as saying in an advance copy of the weekly Sueddeutsche Magazin to be published today.

"The danger for the identity of Europe that is connected with it should not be ignored out of a wrongly understood respectfulness," the magazine quoted him as saying.

"He also defended a speech that the Pope gave last year that linked Islam and violence, saying it had been an attempt by the pontiff to "act against a certain naivety".

Daily Telegraph