The Story of Jesus is Compelling to this Muslim

May 5, 2017 Article

I cannot deny what is patently obvious. That the story of Jesus (Iesu) is one that is compelling, energising and deeply inspirational and one that is a story of rebellion through self-introspection, love and through God’s grace. As a Muslim, this compelling story has a narrative that I hold dear and it is one of a man born into poverty who changes the world through love and the human spirit to create change.

The story of Jesus is also moving in many instances. It is the story of poverty that leads to a valuation in life by Jesus and his disciples, that the spirit is the most important. It is set against the Roman background of materialism and comfort and where Jesus is framed to be a rebel, someone who goes against the grain and who rejects materialism for selflessness. Allied to that is a fierce independence and libertarianism that courses through the story of Jesus. His is a story of a spiritual radical who questions the norm and reframes morality through a desire to sacrifice for others.

The story is also laced with huge symbolism. Images of Mary and the baby Jesus play to every mother and woman who has ever held their child in their hands. It is of maternal love, yet one which we all know, leads to the death of the child through his crucifixion some 30 years later.

Jesus’s story is also one of salvation through forgiveness and through self-sacrifice. ‘A lamb to the slaughter’ plays on the theme of a man caught up in the machinery of war through the Roman occupation. It is as if God is keeping score and the slate is wiped clean through the sacrifice of Christ, only to reset in a world of change, turmoil and persecution of the followers of Christ.

As a Muslim, Christ’s story is refreshing since it challenged the status quo. It gives hope to those who believe that they cannot change things for the better and it empowers the human spirit to challenge, not through physical violence but through persuasion and hope.

Who knows the truth of the facts that took place 2,000 years ago, but one thing is clear. The story of Jesus is relevant today but it should be seen through the prism of challenge. Jesus challenged, argued and harried those in power within institutions. If we are to value religion and belief, we must understand the story of Jesus, whether Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Sikh and Hindu. If we fail to do so, we will fail to understand how truly radical and outspoken Christ was against injustice, power and intolerance.

Fiyaz Mughal OBE is the Founder and Director of Faith Matters.

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Categories: Christianity, compassion, Iesu, Jesus, Lamb of God, Muslim, Opinions

Briton who promoted Islamic State with special cufflinks jailed for 8 years

May 2, 2017 Article

A British man who stored material about missile systems on data sticks disguised as cufflinks and created an extensive online manual for members of Islamic State was sentenced to eight years’ jail on Tuesday.

Samata Ullah, 34, an unemployed man from Cardiff in Wales, had admitted five terrorism charges including membership of Islamic State (IS).

Police recovered 30 pairs of USB sticks disguised as cufflinks, which contained a guide to missile systems and instructions on how to avoid detection online.

Counter Terrorism Commander Dean Haydon said Ullah had set up an online self-help library which contained IS propaganda, guidance on encryption and anti-surveillance techniques.   

“He’s created a one-stop shop for terrorists,” said Haydon in a statement, adding that Ullah used techniques the police had never seen before. “He was very technically competent… he was a very dangerous individual.”

Ullah posted video logs on his website to demonstrate his anti-detection techniques, featuring his gloved hand and voice-distortion technology to hide his strong Welsh accent.

In all, police recovered over half a million internet files and 150 digital devices.

Haydon said an investigation in Kenya had led police to Ullah, who had adopted multiple online personas, operating from dozens of email addresses and Twitter accounts.

The use of encryption by some internet companies “allows terrorists to operate with impunity”, Haydon said, a situation which he described as frustrating.   

Ullah had been able to conduct most of his activities by himself in his bedroom in Cardiff.   

“We found him quite a solitary character,” Haydon said.    “His character in the virtual world was very different from the one in the real world.”

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Categories: Islamic State, News, Samatah Ullah, terrorism, USB cufflinks, Wales

Saudi Arabia’s Death Sentence on Ahmad Al-Shabri is State Sponsored Murder

April 27, 2017 Article

Have you ever heard of the country that the United Kingdom is friendly with and where we overlook their human rights record?

Or have you heard about the country that sentences a man to death for blasphemy? No, we have not been watching the ‘Life of Brian’ recently and this is very real.

Saudi Arabia has rejected appeals by the lawyers of Saudi national, Ahmad Al Shamri, who was initially arrested on charges of atheism and blasphemy, before he was convicted by a local court and sentenced to death in Febraury 2015.

The defence of Mr Al Shamri relied on an insanity plea and they advocated that he was on drugs and alcohol at the time of the postings. Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia is on the verge of executing a man who abused religion and faith. His crime – blasphemy!

Saudi’s Make a Laughing Stock of Faith

This case again highlights how detached the State of Saudi Arabia has become from the rest of the world and from the fact that Islam has always talked about moderation, even with those who don’t believe. This means that life is sacrosanct in Islam and whether people question or leave Islam, their lives and the protection of their lives are still within the responsibility of the State and which Islam protects. The interpretation of Islam by the Wahabbi led Government is precisely the problem that has tainted Islam whose founding principles were based on co-existence and debate and negotiation and not on murdering people as the Saudi state now sees fit to undertake.

If Saudi murders this man, and that is what it will be, just remember this. Our country, the United Kingdom, will be round there touting for business – or – we can make clear that we don’t do business with murderers who are so scared of people challenging faith, that they need to murder them. We say, Islam is strong enough and with enough of a history of debate and dissent, meaning that those who leave and question it should be engaged with, rather than murdered. If we cannot value human life – every human life – than what is the point of faith?

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Categories: Ahmad Al Shamri, Blasphemy, killing, Opinions, Saudi Arabia

Legislating for What Women Wear Is Ludicrous. Let’s Stick to Core Issues – UKIP

April 23, 2017 Article

We are saddened to see that the Leader of UKIP, Paul Nuttall has said that UKIP will attempt to ban the niqab or the full face veil as part of its general election manifesto.

Citing integration and security risks, his focus on the niqab is a cheap ploy to play on the fears of some within communities, as an easy way to win votes.

The reality is that the number of women who wear the niqab in the United Kingdom is unknown and may well be very small. Yet, at a time when the nation needs to heal divides, such policy making is unwelcome and highly divisive. Furthermore, in the end, is it the place of the State or Government or political parties, to judge what a woman can and can’t wear? The answer to that is simply, no.

Our data and our information has also shown time and time again, women who wear the niqab or the face veil, suffer more aggressive anti-Muslim hate incidents and more incidents. Surely, now is the time to stop focussing on these women and try and ensure that we bring people and communities together, rather than building up grievances?

We believe that now is the time to steer away from the politics of what women wear and focus on the policies and principles that can provide opportunities to communities. In the end, what someone wears is their choice. If through their choice, they self-limit their futures then that is something that they have decided for themselves. Ensuring that there are employment opportunities, housing and access to goods and services are where the real policy battles are to be had. Let us stick to those areas which require focus and attention.

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Categories: ban, face veil, Manifesto, Niqab, Opinions, Paul Nuttall

Pakistani women kill man accused of blasphemy a decade ago – police

April 20, 2017 Article

Three women dressed in burqas killed a man who had been accused of blasphemy in 2004 in a northeastern Pakistani town, police said on Thursday, the second brutal killing over alleged insults to Islam in a week.

Blasphemy is a highly charged topic in Pakistan where there have been at least 66 murders over unproven allegations since 1990 according to figures from a Centre for Research and Security Studies report and independent records kept by Reuters.

The country’s strict blasphemy laws carry sentences ranging from small fines to the death penalty.

The women entered the home of Fazal Abbas, a faith healer and a leader of the minority Shia community in the small city of Sialkot, and asked him to perform a spiritual ritual during which one of them shot him in the chest, police told Reuters.

Abbas was accused of blasphemy in 2004 by members of a hard-line conservative group after which he fled to Denmark, his cousin Azhar Hussain and police inspector Nadeem Afzal said.

“He returned recently with the conviction that he would prove his innocence in court and had been granted bail by a local judge,” Hussain said.

Police say that one of the women acted as an instigator, persuading the other two to carry out the act and identifying Abbas as a blasphemer.

“It is their personal act, and I could not find their link to any religious group,” inspector Afzal said.

However, Abbas’ family believe that a hard-line religious group incited the women to track down their victim and pull the trigger.

On April 13 a mob beat student Mashal Khan to death when blasphemy accusations spread across a university campus in the northern city of Mardan. Police are now investigating a number of university students and faculty for their involvement in a brutal attack that shocked the entire nation.

In 2011, a bodyguard assassinated Punjab provincial governor Salman Taseer after he called for reforming blasphemy laws.

Taseer’s killer, executed last year, has been hailed by religious hardliners as a martyr to Islam and a shrine has been erected at his grave.

Recently, fighting blasphemy has also become a rallying cry for the government.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif issued an order last month for the removal of blasphemous content online and “strict punishment” for those found guilty of posting such content.

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Categories: Blasphemy, Fazal Abbas, News, Pakistani women, Shia, Sial Kot, Spiritual healing

Social Media Algorithms Promote Far Right & Islamist Groups in the UK

April 14, 2017 Article

The Times has just completed a detailed investigation into the way that advertising and pay per view clicks fund extremist and other content on the Internet and in the last few days they have also highlighted how child pornography and other activity, including the promotion of extremist material, has taken place inadvertently through the algorithm systems set up by social media companies.

We complained to a social media company about 8 weeks ago about how their algorithms were promoting far right and Islamist material to members of Muslim communities in the United Kingdom. In particular, Islamist material was being promoted to individuals who had an interest in Islam, Muslims and facets related to both and the algorithms were inadvertently strengthening such groups who promote a world view of political Islam at the expense of the rights of others communities and with narratives that include a ‘war being waged on Islam’ and where Muslims are the ‘victims’ of the West. Some of these groups have also wavered on what is terrorism and when it takes place in our country.

We would urge social media companies to ensure that their algorithms do not support groups who are against universal values of human rights, pluralism, free speech, democratic values and the right to question and dissent in communities. These are fundamental values and the last thing we want is for society to be shaped by a set of algorithms who know nothing about the context and nature of groups.

We will continue to make the case on such issues and we will continue to move forward constructively on such matters with social media companies.

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Categories: algorithm, Instagram, Islamism, Islamist, Opinions

No more baseball bats – National Front no longer taboo for French youth

March 14, 2017 Article

Just a few years ago, it was hard to find students willing to admit to being National Front cardholders. When a journalist went looking for members of the FNJ youth movement during the last presidential election campaign, most would agree to speak only if their names were withheld.

Five years on, young activists supporting Marine Le Pen’s election bid say they no longer have anything to hide, as she cruises to an expected first place showing in the first round next month.

“It just provides for lively discussions,” said 21-year-old economics student Corentin Corcelette, who, far from keeping his views secret, says he talks about the rollercoaster presidential election with friends of all political persuasions on campus.

Sitting in the same car as they drove around Lyon to put up “Marine President” posters, 20-year old biology student Remi Berthoux was also happy to give a reporter his name. He joined the FN two years ago, he said proudly, “to defend France’s values”.

Once consigned mainly to the shadows, young National Front supporters have come out into the open, as voters their age have lined up behind Le Pen. Daily polls by firm Ifop consistently show her earning nearly a third of the youth vote in the first round, easily beating any of her opponents, although she is still forecast to lose in a second-round run-off in May.

She fares better among voters under 25 than she does among the population at large, often by a margin as high as 7 percentage points. That is a big reversal from her first bid for the presidency five years ago, when her 15 percent share of the youth vote was around 3 points below her overall tally.

DETOXIFYING BRAND

Winning over young voters has been an achievement for Le Pen’s campaign to detoxify the National Front brand.

In the past, when the Front’s FNJ youth wing put up posters, “they would do so in the middle of the night,” said Sylvain Crepon, a researcher at the University of Tours who studies the French far right.

“They carried baseball bats to protect themselves and would often be with skinheads,” he said. “Now they can do it in broad daylight, which shows people have grown more accustomed to the FN. It’s become more acceptable.”  

There was not a baseball bat or skinhead in sight on the early evening last month when a group of nine clean-cut young men including Corcelette and Berthoux put up Le Pen posters in the streets of Lyon and on its university campus.

“We absolutely don’t see ourselves as far right, but as patriots who are disappointed with other parties,” said David Sedoff, a 26-year old warehouse worker.

Demographics are a major difference between the far right surge on the European continent and last year’s rise of populists in Britain and the United States.

U.S. President Donald Trump and the campaign to withdraw Britain from the EU both lost badly among young voters, on their way to victories won with overwhelming support from pensioners.

For Le Pen, the demographics are almost exactly reversed. She performs well among all categories of younger voters: those under 25, under 35 and under 45. Her worst results are among pensioners: the over 65’s are only age group where she consistently trails her rivals in polling for the first round.

Unlike their Anglo-Saxon cousins, continental populist politicians like Le Pen, the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders and Italy’s Beppe Grillo have turned young voters into their key constituencies. They feed on the resentment of a generation with little seeming hope of matching its parents’ standard of living.

In France, nearly a quarter of workers under 25 are unemployed, compared to a national jobless rate of about 10 percent, according to last year’s official statistics.

And those young people lucky enough to find jobs often work under far less generous conditions than previous generations. More than half of workers 24 and under have only temporary contracts or agency positions which come with few guarantees or rights, compared to 85 percent of French workers who enjoy full time contracts with strong worker protections.

While Le Pen’s theme of dramatic change appeals to many young voters, their grandparents benefit from the generous pensions of the status quo and worry that her plan to abandon the EU and its euro common currency would hurt their savings.

Young voters are also less likely to associate the National Front with its founder, Marine Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who topped out at 17.8 percent of the vote in his repeated quests for the presidency and never crossed into the mainstream.

He was convicted repeatedly for inciting racial hatred before his daughter banned him from the party.

MAKEOVER

Since then, Marine Le Pen has carefully reconstructed the party’s image and distanced herself from her father. She is referred to as “Marine” — without her surname — on her official campaign website and posters, and eschews the FN’s torch symbol for a new logo of a blue rose.

She tends to emphasise economic issues, portraying the FN as guardians of working class voters left behind in the decade since the global financial crisis, and blaming the EU in general and the euro in particular for making France less competitive.

But hostility towards immigration and suspicion of Islam are still central tenets for the party. In a country that has Europe’s biggest Muslim minority and has been hit by a succession of Islamist militant attacks in the past two years, the FN’s xenophobia is no longer the barrier to attracting young voters that it once was.

The FNJ youth movement’s website proudly declares: “100 percent National Front! Zero percent migrants!”

“Europe, immigration, I’m against all that,” said Eric Barbosa, a 20 year-old baker, at a meeting of the FNJ’s Paris branch.

Its relatively recent arrival as a successful election force also gives the National Front an advantage over traditional parties in attracting young activists seeking political careers.

It offers more opportunities for ambitious youth to make their mark than the main post-war parties of the centre-left and centre-right, where vacancies for posts are blocked by older incumbents and veterans.

FN candidates in local and regional elections are routinely the youngest in the field, often in their 20s or early 30s.

That means a quick path into frontline politics for people like 23-year-old Victor Birra, a business student who joined the FNJ youth movement five years ago and is now its head in the Lyon region.

He describes the youth movement as the “academy for FN cadres”, comparing it to the grand public institutes that traditionally produce many of France’s politicians.

But future ambitions depend first on getting out the vote for Le Pen, he said. “We’re fighting to win the presidentials.”

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Categories: Far Right groups, France, Front Nationale, Marine Le Pen, News, Presidential elections

Mahershala Ali and the importance of Black Ahmadis in America

February 27, 2017 Article

Mahershala Ali has won the Oscar for best-supporting actor – an accolade many had expected – for his performance in Moonlight, the critically acclaimed story of a black gay man’s coming of age.

Ali had already picked up awards from the Screen Actors Guild, Critics Choice, and the NAACP Image award. During his acceptance speech at the Screen Actors Guild, reflecting on his own experiences, he said: “I think what I have learned from working on Moonlight, you see what happens when you persecute people, and they fold into themselves.”

Muslims have won Oscars in various categories over the years but none in acting roles. Previous winners include Pakistani documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and director Asghar Farhadi – whose earlier film A Separation won the foreign film Oscar in 2012. His latest film, The Salesman, was screened in London’s Trafalgar Square hours before the ceremony. Farhadi did not attend the ceremony in protest at Donald Trump’s efforts to bar people entering the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries. His latest film would go on to win Best Foreign Language Film.

In Moonlight, Ali plays Juan, a drug dealer whose tender moments with the young protagonist Chiron provides him with a surrogate father figure who imparts life lessons bundled in moments of deep affection and unwavering acceptance.

Juan lives with his partner Teresa. It is within this orderly household that the problems of the external world – be it in school – or at home are forgotten. External contradictions fall by the wayside.

Within the swollen silences of dinner, the narrative is punctuated in the language of close affection. No judgements are made of Chiron. When it seems like the world has turned against him, Chiron is taught a powerful lesson about acceptance and to reject the hateful labels others apply.

Perhaps the most iconic and beautiful example of this loving bond between Juan and Chiron concerns the former teaching the latter to swim.

As Hilton Als writes, Moonlight “undoes our expectations as viewers, and as human beings, too”. For Ira Hilton III, the surrogate relationship between Juan and Chiron “speaks volumes for how Jenkins wants us to view relationships between black men.” Shane Thomas praises the universality of Moonlight, and for its assiduous and precise direction.

Stories concerning the religious identity of Mahershala Ali, however, have created their own momentum.

Born Mahershalalhashbaz (the longest prophetic name in the Bible) Gilmore in 1974 to a mother who was an ordained Christian minister, he converted to Islam in 1999, joining the Ahmadiyya sect in 2001.

His spiritual interest also included attending a Baha’i meeting and flirting with Buddhism. Yet, his defining moment of religious and spiritual clarity came from the act of prayer inside a mosque. Ali described this moment as: “I could not understand a word of the prayer, but ironically, they were tears of understanding. For the first time in my life, I knew where I was, spiritually speaking.”

Ali’s embrace of the Ahmadiyya sect should not be erased. It’s too important given the persecution Ahmadis face in Pakistan and countries like Indonesia.

A Faith Matters report titled, ‘Sectarianism, Extremism and Hate Crime, the Impacts on the Ahmadiyya Community,’ explored the complexities and root causes of this form violence and prejudice.

It’s a product of a wider extremist narrative which exploits the sensitivities around the blasphemy debate in Islam. It seeks to define Islam through its own narrow interpretations. This interpretative lens allows fundamentalists to dictate the narrative and define others as ‘outside’ of Islam, which helps normalise banal, everyday forms of prejudice, including the decision to boycott Ahmadi-run businesses. The murder of Glasgow shopkeeper Asad Shah made this sectarian issue headline news.

Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, deleted her congratulatory tweet after users pointed out that Ali’s Ahmadi beliefs. This deletion generated its own controversy.

Nor should we erase the historic role of Ahmadi missionaries in black communities in early twentieth America. An important figure in Mahershala Ali’s religious journey was the Chicago native Abdul Karim. The Ahmadiyya movement has maintained a missionary presence among black communities in Chicago since 1935. Within the city limits of Chicago stands the Al-Sadiq Mosque, which remains one of the oldest mosques in the United States.

Some of the earliest independent black mosques took inspiration from Ahmadi teachings. The first mosque in Cleveland was later established by the former Ahmadi Wali Akram. Some black converts established their own mosques to accommodate the growing black consciousness and scholarship around Islam. Before the rise of the Nation of Islam (NOI), Ahmadi missionaries offered “the first multi-racial model for American Islam”. This influence, according to the academic Edward C. Curtis, reached Elijah Muhammad, a religious leader in the NOI, who had “regularly quoted, verbatim, from Ahmadi literature, including Ahmadi translations of the Qur’an”. Ahmadi missionaries had converted around 10,000 people by the 1940s.

A key figure in the early days of the Ahmadi missionary work in the United States was Muhammad Sadiq, who arrived in Philadelphia on February 15, 1920. A year later, with the help of other Muslims, Sadiq had launched the monthly periodical The Muslim Sunrise to challenge negative stereotypes about Islam in the press.

Sadiq used the periodical to argue that Islam could resolve the racism Christianity had failed to answer. He contended that Islam and the Arabic language would unite all people of African descent. This post-colonial message came at a time of great social discontent and racist violence.

In a post-9/11 context, Ali himself has spoken openly about the prejudice he’s faced. This included having his bank accounts frozen and learning that he was on an FBI watch list. His wife stopped wearing the hijab following acts of hatred and prejudice. Ali told the Radio Times: “But I will say if you convert to Islam after a couple of decades of being a black man in the US, the discrimination you receive as a Muslim doesn’t feel like a shock.”

Ali’s big cinematic break was in David Fincher’s 2008 fantasy drama ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’.

 

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Categories: Ahmadi, Ahmadiyya, Mahershala Ali, Moonlight, News, Oscars

Comics and music shows in Saudi Arabia draw rebuke from clerics

February 26, 2017 Article

A comic show and a recent pop concert have drawn rebuke from powerful religious figures and social media users in Saudi Arabia this week, highlighting the sensitivity of cultural reforms underway in the conservative kingdom.

Thousands of Saudis – including women – decked out in costumes and face paint attended the country’s first-ever Comic Con in Jeddah on Sunday. The sexes rarely mix in public in a country which adheres to the austere Wahhabi brand of Sunni Islam.

The event was held by the state-run General Entertainment Authority (GEA), which has bucked some of the Islamic kingdom’s strict social codes to host a series of festivals, comedy shows and concerts this year.

It came weeks after Saudi Arabia saw its first major public concert in over a decade, also in Jeddah. Authorities announced this week that the headline act, Saudi superstar Mohammed Abdo, would perform in the more conservative capital Riyadh in March.

“We were astonished by the hideous act of the Entertainment Authority, by these events held in Jeddah that are not in line with good behavior or our great religion,” Hussein Al-Sheikh, the imam of the Prophet’s Mosque, posted on Twitter.

“It is a duty upon officials to consider God in these actions,” he said, calling on Saudi citizens to boycott events like it.

Sheikh Adel al-Kalbani, the former imam of Mecca’s Grand Mosque, said the state body set up to promote the kingdom’s entertainment drive “violates human nature.”

“Humans are meant to seek refuge in God in times of difficulty,” he wrote.

Tens of thousands of Saudis joined the clerics in critiquing Comic Con and the GEA, elevating the hashtag “a new disaster for entertainment in Riyadh” to Twitter’s list of trending topics there.

The GEA did not respond to requests for comment, but expressed regret in a statement posted by state news agency SPA for an unspecified “violation” by the Comic Con organiser of one of the terms of its permit.

“The violation was detected and stopped at the time, and penalties were issued against the executing body proportionate to the violation,” it said, without elaborating.

The GEA was “keen to maintain values, ethics and traditions, and consider them as a priority in all of its entertainment projects and activities,” it added, and welcomed any suggestions sent via social media.

Riyadh-based Time Entertainment, the organiser of Comic Con, could not immediately be reached for comment.

POTENTIAL BACKLASH

Saudi Arabia’s clerics offer legitimacy and public support to a king officially known as the guardian of Islam’s holiest sites. They retain control of the justice system but leave most other matters of governance to him, so long as his edicts do not contradict their interpretation of Islamic law.

Sheikh and Kalbani are prominent clerics, but are not members of the state-appointed Council of Senior Scholars, the only body in the country authorized to issue official fatwas or Islamic legal opinions. Their comments therefore do not carry legal weight.

Cinemas and public concerts are effectively banned in the kingdom, but the government promised a shake-up of the cultural scene with a set of “Vision 2030” reforms announced by Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last year.

Saudi Arabia is now trying to boost its entertainment sector as part of that plan, which aims at creating jobs and weaning the country off its dependence on oil.

Smaller shows and festivals have often sold out and proved immensely popular among Saudi youth.

Senior scholars have for the most part remained mum on plans for the sector, although the kingdom’s Grand Mufti, its highest religious authority, cautioned in January against the corrupting influence of cinemas, concerts and gender mixing.

‘FOOLS DANCING AROUND’

But Comic Con struck a nerve. In the week since the event, social media chatter about the GEA spiked and tens of thousands of users shared pictures of men and women mingling at the show to disparage it as distasteful.

“Our heroes on the southern border are sacrificing their lives and enduring great difficulties to protect the country and fools are dancing around and performing shameful acts. Disgraceful,” wrote Twitter user Yusra Razan, from Jeddah, referring to Saudi forces engaged in Yemen’s civil war.

Tens of thousands of others jumped to defend the entertainment drive and created a new hashtag, “the General Entertainment Authority makes us happy,” which also trended in Riyadh.

They shared videos of people rolling their eyes and waving their hands dismissively, and of men in beards and thobes merrily dancing to traditional drumbeats.

A Saudi university student from Jeddah, who spoke on condition he be identified only as Mohammed, dismissed the debate and said Saudi had more pressing issues to resolve.

“Personally I am disinterested in it. The country needs real and drastic reform. Activists are in jail, the economy is in danger,” he said by telephone.

“To me this [debate over culture] is not that important but I know it has many consequences. Conservatism is a big deal in Saudi Arabia, both social and religious.”

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Categories: GEA Entertainment Authority, Jeddah, News, Salafi Wahabbi Islam, Saudi Arabia, Sharia

Why a ‘burqa ban’ remains popular in Britain

January 25, 2017 Article

A majority of Britons favour a ban on the burqa, according to the latest YouGov polling.

There are clear indicators of support for a burqa ban: by age, political affiliation, and those who voted to ‘Leave’ in the EU referendum. The same is true for a similar YouGov poll in August 2016. A majority (70 per cent) of the latter in the December 2016 poll, for example, want a legal ban. Among Ukip supporters, 74 per cent favour the ban, as did 61 per cent of Conservative voters. Around half of Labour and Lib Dem voters opposed a ban. But sizeable minorities in both parties favour a ban.

Those of pension age (65+) were overwhelmingly in favour of a ban (72 per cent). In comparison to the 36 per cent of 18-24 year olds who back such a ban.

In August 2016, YouGov posed the question: “To what extent would you support or oppose a law that bans people from wearing the burka in the UK?” Support for a ban from Leave voters stood at 78 per cent.

Support among Conservative voters remains broadly the same in both polls (66 per cent in August 2016 and 61 per cent in December 2016). Once again, Ukip voters remain the most in favour of a ban.

This intensity from Ukip voters appears in earlier polls. In September 2013, YouGov asked: “To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement? The burkha should be banned in Britain,” of which, 93 per cent of Ukip voters agreed. A clear majority of Ukip voters favoured a burqa ban in universities, schools, courtrooms (as defendant or witness), and for security checks at airports. The 2013 data found near unanimous cross-party support for a ban when it concerns security and criminal justice.

In the 2011 data, however, Ukip voters were not represented. But YouGov’s data found that more than half of Conservative (77 per cent), Labour (60 per cent) and Lib Dem (55 per cent) voters favoured a burqa ban. Older generations were also most likely to favour a ban (71 per cent).

The data sets show a consistent reservoir of support in favour of a ban. This support, be it sizeable minorities or sizeable majorities of voters do cross party lines. Yet, there’s also the role of current affairs in shaping public opinion. This may prove negligible, but we should keep in mind that the 2011 poll came off the back of the public niqab and burqa ban in France.

In 2013, the field data was carried out on September 16 and September 17. The first date is important. On September 16, Judge Peter Murphy ruled that a Muslim woman can stand trial wearing a niqab but must remove it to give evidence. A month earlier, the woman was asked to remove her niqab by the judge. She was eventually jailed for witness intimidation in March 2014. Another political debate was brewing during this period. The one-time Home Office Minister Jeremy Browne calls for a public debate on banning certain Muslim veils in public institutions drew a response from Downing Street. A spokesman for former Prime Minister David Cameron made clear that: “The Prime Minister doesn’t believe Parliament should legislate on what people do and don’t wear on their local high street.”

In July 2013, Philip Hollobone MP put forth a Private Members’ Bill on face veils. It would, however, fail to make its passage through parliament before the end of the session.

The fieldwork for the August 2016 poll took place towards the end of the month. On August 8, 2016, Lisa Duffy, a prospective Ukip leadership candidate, called for a public ban on the face veil. This story appeared in all major media outlets. The Independent version of the story received two thousand shares. Readers of MailOnline shared the story 797 times.

Now, it’s possible that the Independent story shares were not from individuals favouring a ban, but it demonstrates how easily such stories on this topic permeate discussions. In a broader sense, some stories about the burqa lose perspective. In September 2016, for example, Leicestershire Police made the rare decision to express their ‘disappointment’ at press coverage regarding their uniform policy, which at no point had taken a position on the burqa.

On December 6, 2016, German Chancellor Angela Merkel backed a public ban on the burqa in schools, courts and state buildings. This is not a policy the Prime Minister Theresa May seeks to pursue. A Downing Street spokesman told the Daily Express: “It is not something that’s being considered in this country.” Theresa May ruled out a burqa ban in 2011 when Home Secretary. The Express story went viral in the weeks before YouGov carried out their polling fieldwork.

Not all European states have issued a sweeping ban. In Barcelona, for example, there have been restrictions on face veils in libraries and some public institutions since 2010. In the Netherlands, MPs backed a ban in public places such as schools and hospitals, and on public transport. In Belgium, however, as with France, has seen a ban since 2011.

 

 

 

 

 

The post Why a ‘burqa ban’ remains popular in Britain appeared first on TELL MAMA.

Categories: ban, Burqa, Media, News, Niqab, Opinion Poll, YouGov