We Should Defend Women’s Right to Wear The Hijab & Also to Take it Off

February 6, 2018 Article

As powers in Iran realise the futility in enforcing morality on women through the Hijab, a report just released shows how views have changed within the country with many Iranians believing that wearing the Hijab should be a personal choice and not state sanctioned or enforced. 

Indeed, such has been the courage of some women in standing without the Hijab in Iran that their simple actions have seemed to shake the foundations of the theocratic state. A simple action by some Iranian women has shown the futility of the state sanctioning of religion on the clothes and dress of citizens. It is those men in theocratic positions in Iran who feel fear now and not those women who risked their personal safety in taking off the Hijab.

So, just as we defend the right for women to take off religious clothing and symbolism, we understand that within different countries, women may also choose to put on the Hijab through choice. Choice is the fundamental word here. In the UK, many Muslim women have made the choice to wear the Hijab and that choice as to cover their bodies or not should be defended.

Much of the debate about the Hijab is polarising into the ‘for’ or ‘against’ camp, which is not helpful and misses the very fact that many Muslim women make that choice without parental pressure. In relation to children, this simple and straightforward rule becomes more difficult within public institutions such as schools. At the moment, there is a much heated debate about school uniforms and the Hijab, much of which is not bringing communities together or indeed, to a point of listening to each other. 

Just as we respect the choice of a woman to wear the Hijab in the UK, so we should respect the choice of a woman to take it off in countries like Iran. Taking off the Hijab does not make a Muslim woman less Muslim, nor does it entitle anyone to moralise about her body. Additionally, anyone who believes that taking off the Hijab makes a Muslim woman less Muslim, actually is part of the problem and not the solution. For in the end, the link with faith is a personal one and no state, nor any male dominated theocracy can change that simple fact.

The post We Should Defend Women’s Right to Wear The Hijab & Also to Take it Off appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: Hijab, Iran, Iranian, Muslim women, Opinions, theocracy

Parisian eyes on Brussels court as Bataclan suspect goes on trial

February 4, 2018 Article

More than two years after Islamist militants killed 130 people in their city, Parisians will be hoping for some new insight into the carnage when the sole surviving suspect appears in public for the first time on Monday.

But Salah Abdeslam, who goes on trial under high security in his native Brussels in relation to a shooting that preceded his capture and Islamic State suicide bombings there in March 2016, has so far shown little inclination to talk.

Kept under 24-hour suicide watch near Paris, 28, the 28-year-old has been transferred to a high-security prison close to France’s northern border so that he can be ferried to the Belgian capital’s Palace of Justice daily. Hearings are scheduled to last all week in a case related to events four months after the Paris attacks of November 2015.

With a French trial not expected until next year, his Belgian appearance, along with alleged accomplice Sofien Ayari, a 24-year-old Tunisian, will be his first moment in public since his arrest on March 18, 2016, close to his family home in the poor, western Brussels borough of Molenbeek.

Both men face up to 40 years in prison for attempted murder linked to terrorism for shooting at Belgian and French police who raided a suspected hideout in the southern Brussels borough of Forest on March 15, 2016.

Prosecutors say Abdeslam and Ayari slipped away, leaving a third gunman holding out until he was killed by police marksmen.

Lawyers for Abdeslam, a French citizen born to and raised by Moroccan immigrant parents in Brussels, accept he was in Paris on Friday, Nov. 13, when gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 at a rock concert, near the national stadium and outside cafes.

His elder brother, with whom he ran a bar in Brussels, was among those who blew himself up. Prosecutors believe the younger Abdeslam, whom they accuse of running logistics for the attack including ferrying fighters from Syria across Europe, would have met the same fate had his explosive vest not malfunctioned.

How the pair, from a broadly secular background with a history of petty crime, were transformed into alleged cogs within extensive Islamic State cells operating in Belgium and France is unclear. A third brother, who has visited Abdeslam in prison, told a Belgian newspaper in December that he might be preparing to talk, inspired by a devout religious faith.

The trial had been due to start in late December but was delayed after Abdeslam belatedly reappointed a defence counsel, who then requested more time to prepare the case. Lawyers do not rule out that there could be further adjournments this week.

The trial has triggered a high alert in a city where 32 people were killed in suicide bombings at its airport and on its metro system by members of the same Islamic State-inspired group on March 22, 2016. That came four days after Abdeslam’s arrest and was prompted, officials believe, by fears among the Brussels cell that he might betray their plan under interrogation.

More than 100 police are expected to be deployed in and around Brussels’ mammoth 19th-century Palace of Justice, which dominates the skyline over the Renaissance city centre.

The post Parisian eyes on Brussels court as Bataclan suspect goes on trial appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: Brussels, France, Islamic State, News, Parisians, Salam Abdeslam, terrorism

Driver who targeted London mosque was angered by Islamist attacks, TV show-prosecutor

January 22, 2018 Article

A man who drove a van into Muslim worshippers outside a mosque last June was motivated by deadly Islamist attacks in Britain and an obsession with a television account of Muslim men who targeted white girls, a London court heard on Monday.

Darren Osborne, 48, also lambasted politicians, calling London Mayor Sadiq Khan a disgrace and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn a “terrorist sympathiser”, prosecutor Jonathan Rees said, quoting from a note he said Osborne left in the van.

The note described Muslim men as rapists, “feral” and “in-bred” and when he was detained after the attack, Osborne said: “At least I had a go”, Rees told Woolwich Crown Court.

Osborne is accused of murdering Makram Ali, 51, a father of six who came to Britain from Bangladesh aged 10, and the attempted murder of other worshippers as they left a mosque in Finsbury Park in north London after late-night Ramadan prayers.

Osborne has denied the accusations.

“The evidence establishes that the defendant was trying to kill as many of the group as possible,” Rees told jurors. “The prosecution say that the note and the comments he made after his detention establish that this act of extreme violence was, indeed, an act of terrorism, designed to influence government and intimidate the Muslim community.”

The incident occurred just weeks after three Islamists drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge before going on a knife rampage, killing eight.

That attack came the month after a suicide bombing at a pop concert in Manchester killed 22 people. In March another Islamic State-inspired attacker killed five people by driving a car into passers-by on London’s Westminster Bridge and then stabbing to death a police officer in the grounds of parliament.

Rees said Osborne hired a van and drove to London from his home in Cardiff. After a plan to attack an anti-Israel march failed, Osborne drove around seeking alternative targets.

He is accused of ramming the crowd at Finsbury Park as worshippers helped Ali who he had earlier become unwell.

The court was told Osborne, who had never previously openly expressed racist opinions, had become obsessed with Muslims in the weeks before the attack after watching a BBC television drama “Three Girls”, based on true stories of victims of child sex gangs comprised mainly of British Pakistani men.

Rees said Osborne searched online for material related to the show, some of which was connected to far-right groups and Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of Britain First.

One of Fransen’s messages was re-tweeted by U.S. President Donald Trump in November.

Two days before the attack, Osborne told a serving soldier in a pub in Cardiff: “I’m going to kill all the Muslims”, the jurors were told.

Rees said Osborne’s former partner Sarah Andrews described the father of four as a loner and a functioning alcoholic with an unpredictable temperament who took medication for depression.

“With the benefit of hindsight, she describes him as a ticking time-bomb,” the prosecutor said.

The trial, which is expected to last two weeks, continues.

The post Driver who targeted London mosque was angered by Islamist attacks, TV show-prosecutor appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: Darren Osborne, Far Right groups, Finsbury Park, Grooming Cases, Jayda Fransen, mosque, News, Rotherham, Sadiq Khan, Tommy Robinson

Extremism is Consolidated Without Due Diligence by UK Groups and Individuals

January 18, 2018 Article

We are increasingly concerned about the lack of due diligence by some faith leaders in the UK in meeting with preachers coming from Pakistan. In particular, there is a growing Islamist movement in Pakistan which supports violent extremism against ‘blasphemers’, Ahmadi Muslims, Shias, Christians and other minorities. These groups are not just the ones involved in direct terrorism in Pakistan, they are groups who also provide social services and who are able to rally tens of thousands of people on the basis of continuing the marginalisation of minorities. 

Here in the UK, we are concerned as to the legitimisation of such groups and preachers who have previously supported murderers such as Mumtaz Qadri, who murdered the Punjab governor Salman Taseer. There is evidence that a handful of these preachers who are on video praising the extremist, have been met with and promoted as ‘moderates’ by Imams in the UK. Pictures and social media posts of Imams in the UK standing next to such individuals, do nothing to delineate Islam and Muslims from the extremist messaging that such preachers pour out when they lionise people like Qadri, for murdering someone whose views they disagreed with. Frankly, Muslims deserve better and especially when Muslim communities are so under the spotlight at the moment and when headlines in some media sources do nothing but further marginalise them in the eyes of the wider public.

We will keep a watching brief on this situation and urge faith leaders in the UK to conduct checks and some due diligence on the groups and individuals they meet with and who visit the UK. 

The post Extremism is Consolidated Without Due Diligence by UK Groups and Individuals appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: imams, Mumtaz Qadri, Opinions, Pakistan, Salman Taseer, UK

Leader of Britain’s UKIP faces calls to quit over girlfriend’s remarks

January 14, 2018 Article

The leader of Britain’s eurosceptic UK Independence Party faced calls on Sunday to stand down after a newspaper published racist messages sent by his girlfriend about Prince Harry’s fiancee Meghan Markle.

Last year, Henry Bolton was the fourth leader in a year to be appointed to the helm of UKIP, a party which helped bring about a Brexit vote. He hit the tabloid newspapers over Christmas when they reported that he had left his wife for 25-year-old model and UKIP member Jo Marney.

The Mail on Sunday published a series of messages sent by Jo Marney to a friend in which she made offensive comments about Markle and black people. The newspaper also published an apology from Marney, who said her comments had been “taken out of context”.

UKIP’s Bill Etheridge, a member of the European Parliament, said: “The time has come for Henry Bolton to resign as leader of UKIP. He must go, he must go quickly, he must go as quietly as possible.”

“It appears to me that the lack of experience in politics from Henry has got the better of him,” he said in a video statement, describing the last few months as “hell” for the party.

Peter Whittle, UKIP’s member of the London Assembly, also criticised the remarks, saying they were “disgraceful”.

“This person should not just be suspended from @UKIP but expelled altogether,” he said on Twitter.

Led by Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, UKIP won nearly 4 million votes in 2015, 12.6 percent of those cast, on its anti-European Union platform, putting it at the forefront of British politics even though it managed to win one seat in parliament.

But its fortunes have sunk since, hurt by internal fights over its future direction. At last year’s election in June, UKIP won 1.8 of the vote.

The post Leader of Britain’s UKIP faces calls to quit over girlfriend’s remarks appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: Henry Bolton, Jo Marney, Meghan Markle, News, text messages

Threat to Shoot Mosque Attendees Listed in Christmas Card to Institute

January 3, 2018 Article

A threatening card was sent to a mosque in the South Yorkshire area recently. Good wishes of “Have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year” were crossed out within the card.

It read:

“Muslim subhuman filth. I intend to carry out a mass shooting at your mosque early in the new year. I will wipe you dirty rats from the earth. Your women will be burnt and your children will flee in terror. Enjoy the time you have left. 

It was signed off by the so-called “the Muslim Slayer”. The violent language and use of the term ‘Muslim slayer’ have appeared in letters sent to mosques in London, the United States, and possibly early last year. We highlighted this campaign of hate as did the Guardian and the Independent. But there is nothing to suggest at this time that it is the same person or the same campaign.

South Yorkshire Police are investigating the matter.

 

 

The post Threat to Shoot Mosque Attendees Listed in Christmas Card to Institute appeared first on TELL MAMA.

Categories: anti-Muslim hatred, hate crime, mass killing, mosque, News, South Yorkshire

Online videos show Tehran street protests

December 31, 2017 Article

 Anti-government protests broke out in Iran for the third day running on Saturday (December 30) as separate state-sponsored rallies were staged to mark the end of unrest that shook the country in 2009, according to Iranian news agencies and state media.

Social media postings showed protests in the capital’s streets, including crowds gathered outside Tehran University and dumpsters set on fire.

Openly political protests are rare in the Islamic Republic, where security services are omnipresent but there is considerable discontent over high unemployment, inflation and alleged graft.

Some of the new protests have turned political over issues including Iran’s costly involvement in regional conflicts such as those in Syria and Iraq.

The post Online videos show Tehran street protests appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: anti-Government protests, demonstrations, Iran protests, Islamic Republic, News, Tehran, young people

German groups mobilise against rise of anti-Muslim Far Right party

November 20, 2017 Article

German civil rights groups are mobilising against the newly elected far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and other more hardline groups, vowing to avert the even stronger rightward lurch seen in neighbouring countries.
Thousands of protesters are expected in the eastern city of Dresden on Saturday when the anti-Islam PEGIDA movement  celebrates its third anniversary.
PEGIDA – Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West – has seen dwindling crowds since early 2015, with the AfD absorbing some of its supporters. The AfD won almost 13 percent of the vote in the Sept. 24 national election, making it the third largest party in the Bundestag, or lower house of parliament, and the first far-right party to win seats in more than half a century.
Exit polls showed that 60 percent of AfD voters cast a “protest vote”, with many angry at Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to allow in over a million mainly Muslim migrants.
Experts say the party’s rise is also part of a global trend that has brought right-leaning parties or leaders to power in Poland, Hungary, and most recently, Austria.
Germany’s mainstream parties have said they will not work with the AfD at a national level, but activists say they must stake out clear resistance to AfD comments on Islam and other issues in the parliament, and 14 out of 16 state legislatures.
“We’ve seen a strong and growing movement of people resisting the AfD in recent months in big cities, in small towns, and now we need that movement on a national scale,” said Nora Berneis of Aufstehen gegen Rassismus, or Standing up against Racism.
The group is planning a large protest in the northern city of Hanover on Dec. 2 when the AfD meets for a party conference.
The party has drawn sharp criticism from a German journalists’ group for seeking data on the ethnic backgrounds and political views of journalists who want to cover the conference.
CIVIC EDUCATION
Christoph Schott, with the global activist group Avaaz, said more than 500,000 people had signed an open letter to the AfD, rejecting the party’s “xenophobic” and “racist” messages.
The AfD rails against what it calls the “Islamisation of Europe” and denies it is racist.
Beginning with Allied “re-education” efforts after World War Two, Germany has developed an intense civic education programme.
The government doubled funding for projects aimed at combating right-wing, left-wing and Islamist extremism to over 100 million euros in 2017 alone. Some credit such policies with keeping support for far-right parties lower than in neighbouring countries.
But Axel Ruppert with the European Network against Racism said the AfD’s aggressive rhetoric was pressing the boundaries of “acceptable” discourse and hate crimes were rising.
Police data showed a 14-percent rise in right-wing extremist violent acts in 2016, and anti-Semitic crimes rose 4 percent to 681 in the first eight months of 2017.
The AfD’s entry into parliament has triggered a long-overdue dialogue about what went wrong during the unification of eastern and western Germany in 1990, said Michaela Glaser with the German Youth Institute, a non-profit research association.
“One silver lining … may be that things that were hidden before have become visible. And only if something has been articulated can it be addressed,” she said.

The post German groups mobilise against rise of anti-Muslim Far Right party appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: far right extremism, Far Right groups, News

Video of Muslim Hijab Wearing Female Singing ‘Ave Maria’ Goes Viral

November 12, 2017 Article

The video of a Muslim female in white singing ‘Ave Maria’, has gone viral. 

The Muslim female was seen singing a rendition of the Catholic prayer at the Bogor Cathedral in West Java, Indonesia on Monday November the 6th 2017. The rendition of ‘Ave Maria’ was at a funeral for her friend, Chatarina Suliyanti, according to another attendee at the funeral. 

Several version of the singing have circulated online, with one of the having been viewed more than 1.5 million times. 

 

The post Video of Muslim Hijab Wearing Female Singing ‘Ave Maria’ Goes Viral appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: Ave Maria, Catholic, Christianity, Hijab Wearing, Indonesia, Muslim female, News, West Java

How A Boarding School in Indonesia Generated a Global Jihad

November 12, 2017 Article

We know that specific institutions have on many occasions been the generator for producing radicalised individuals who go onto commit terrorists attacks. Another such institution based in Indonesia which has generated militants from Indonesia to Syria, has been the Ibnu Mas’ud boarding school where Muslim students are provided with boarding facilities, food and religious education. 

Ibnu Mas‘ud is one of about 30,000 Islamic boarding schools, or ‘pesantren’, across Indonesia. Many of these ‘pesantren’ provide much needed care and basic items for young people though Indonesian officials admit that a handful have generated young people who have actively been involved in terrorism and in the promulgation of extremism.

The chart below shows the radical alumni that have graduated from Ibnu Mas’ud. These radical alumni took two routes, one to set up local bases in Indonesia, with a second batch moving onto fighting with Daesh or the Islamic State. 

The radical alumni include individuals present in the Aceh training camp for Indonesian militants which was commanded by an individual called Dulmatin. Implicated in the Bali bombings that killed 202 people, Dulmatin had a bounty of $10 million on his head. Fearing an attack from militants in the Aceh camp against Government buildings and assets, a Government raid was conducted in 2010, leading to the capture of a number of militants who had studied at Ibnu Mas’ud. These included:

  • Hari Budiman: Jailed for 5 years for financing the Aceh camp,
  • Kamaludin: Jailed for 6 years for bank robberies to fund the militant training camp
  • Sofya Tsauri: Jailed for supplying weapons to militants
  • Enceng Kurnia: a logistics expert and a militant Islamist
  • Agus Kasdianto: Involved in the failed Jakarta bomb plot and for sustaining the terrorist camp.

Graduates of Ibnu Mas’ud who went onto fight for the Islamic State included:

  • Hatf Saiful Rasul: A 12 year old who fought and died in Syria for IS
  • Umar Jundal Haq: The son of a Bali bomber, who joined IS and who died in Syria
  • Didi Resdianto: Who travelled to Syria with his family and whose wife became a cheerleader for the Islamic State online

The Indonesian Government increasingly realises the internal threat to its own population and to the stability of the country by radical and extremist preachers and institutions. The fact that Indonesia remains a possible staging post for such militants to export young men for a global Jihad, will no doubt remain on the minds of Indonesian officials. 

 

The post How A Boarding School in Indonesia Generated a Global Jihad appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: Aceh, Aman Abdurrahman, Daesh, Dulmatin, Ibnu Mas'ud, Indonesia, Indonesian, Islamic State, News, pesantran