Australian government implicated in torturing Muslim leaders

An embarrassed Kevin Rudd has been forced to apologise to Muslim delegates at this month’s 2020 Summit because their religious dietary needs were ignored by caterers who could not tell the difference between halal and vegetarian food.

In the absence of halal food – prepared in accordance to sharia dietary laws – the Islamic delegates were forced to eat “salad sandwiches and vegetarian pies”.

This was the Rudd Government’s second major summit-related gaffe involving a religious minority after the Prime Minister was forced to apologise to Jewish community leaders for holding the talkfest during the Passover.

Mr Rudd’s apology to Muslim delegates follows revelations by The Australian last month that the federal Government was considering setting up a Muslim advisory body – which would include sporting figures and academics – to help dismantle the stereotypical and overly religious image of Islam in Australia.

Prominent Muslim leader Fadi Rahman, who attended the two-day conference a fortnight ago, yesterday attacked summit organisers for failing to make halal food available for Islamic delegates.

He said the event’s catering manager could not distinguish between halal food – where animals, excluding pigs, are killed under religious supervision for hygienic and humanitarian reasons – and vegetarian food.

“They just thought to themselves vegetarian will do, that’s halal and that’s it, eat it,” he said. “But we said, ‘No, vegetarian is not halal. Vegetarian is vegetarian. Halal food is totally different, shouldn’t you guys have done your homework?’

“We were thinking to ourselves, ‘What the hell is going on? If they can’t get the halal food right, what the hell can they get right?”‘

Mr Rahman said Mr Rudd approached him and Queensland Muslim leader Mohamad Abdalla – who has been caught up in the scandal over Saudi funding for Griffith University – and apologised to the pair about the glitch, blaming the caterers for getting it wrong.

“We were sitting in our groups and he walked past and said, ‘Look I heard about the halal food, I’m terribly sorry, it’s to do with the catering company’. And we thought it was a nice gesture for him to apologise.”

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Malaysian groups criticise plans for Chelsea’s summer visit

Malaysian Muslim groups have called for protests when Chelsea football club visits in July because the coach, Avram Grant, and a player are Israeli.

An alliance of 21 Muslim groups is angry the Malaysian authorities have given permission for the Israelis to visit the country with the London club.

Malaysia has no diplomatic relations with Israel, and the Malay Muslim majority is strongly pro-Palestinian.

Malaysian citizens are banned by their government from visiting Israel.

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Counterterrorism terminology

The Associated Press reports that the National Counterterrorism Center in the United States has published guidance on using terms when talking about terrorism.

The last one is probably the best piece of advice:

Don’t use “salafi,” “Wahhabist,” “sufi,” “ummah” and other words from Islamic theology unless you are able to discuss their varied meanings. Particularly avoid using “ummah” to mean the Muslim world, as it is a theological term.

(Via Muse.)

Kuwaiti businessmen

Does anyone know if the Kuwaiti businessmen funding the Quilliam Foundation are supporting any similar moves to promote pluralism and combat Islamism in Kuwait?

Or is this an absurd question?

Algeria and Syria criticise British human rights record

The United Kingdom came in for robust questioning on its human rights record from other UN member states last week at the Human Rights Council, during the historic first session of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Over the course of three hours, 38 countries took the floor to ask UK Justice Minister Michael Wills about a wide range of issues, including racial discrimination, corporal punishment against children, abuses committed by UK armed forces abroad, and failure to ratify particular UN conventions and their protocols.

Coming at a time when the UK government is trying to pass yet another piece of counterterrorism legislation, which includes extending pre-charge detention to 42 days, it’s no wonder a significant number of countries asked about UK counterterrorism policies. Neighbors such as The Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland expressed concern about 42 day detention, but so did countries like Syria and Algeria. Algeria’s representative pointed out that the Human Rights Committee – the UN body that monitors compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – had recently “upbraided” Algeria for allowing up to twelve days of pre-charge detention.

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Indonesia considers ‘disbanding Ahmadiyyas’

More than 1,000 Indonesian Muslims gathered in front of the presidential palace on Sunday to press the government to ban a Muslim sect that has been branded heretical by most Muslims.

An Indonesian government team is drafting a decree that will ban the Ahmadiyya sect, which views itself as Muslim but has been branded a heretical group by the Indonesian Ulema Council, the secular country’s highest Muslim authority.

Chanting “Allahu Akbar (God is Great)” and “Disband Ahmadiyya”, the members of the Indonesian Muslim Forum (FUI), a group of about 50 Muslim organisations, urged President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to issue the decree.

“We are pushing the president to immediately issue a presidential decree disbanding Ahmadiyya,” FUI Secretary General Muhammad Al Khaththath told Reuters.

The FUI also asked the government to capture Ahmadiyya’s leaders and seize all its assets.

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Ziauddin Sardar lays into Quilliam Foundation founders

The embrace of former extremists is a slap in the face for Muslims who have worked tirelessly to build a British Muslim identity and foster inclusion by constructive community activity. It’s another attempt at the marginalisation of the overwhelming majority who never had a moment’s doubt that Islam gives no sanction for such murderous and misguided perversion of belief.

I am troubled by the fact that former extremists are seen as the only people who know how to deal with extremism. Just because you have been an inmate of a mental hospital does not mean you are an expert in clinical psychology. But former extremists are being lionised because they confirm the basic tabloid prejudice that violence is a natural part of being a Muslim. So whose ignorance is being vindicated? Certainly the potential of an open, unapologetic belief in Islam as a valuable part of British society is not on the agenda.

At every stage of dealing with extremism, the government has made the wrong choice. First, only British-trained imams were to be promoted, though how and what they were trained in was not examined. Then there were to be roadshows at which religious scholars selected for their moderation and tractability, rather than an understanding of the problems of young British Muslims, would explain the error of extremist ways. Then Sufism was touted as the solution, and the Sufi Muslim Council was created as the voice of moderation. Now the way forward is with sinners who were once mouthpieces for jihadi propaganda and advocated the violent rejection of all things western.

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Plan by pro-Israeli zealots to rewrite Wikipedia fails after exposure by Electronic Intifada

A plan by fanatical pro-Israeli zealots to pass off Zionist propaganda as undisputed fact on Wikipedia has failed after it was exposed by Electronic Intifada.

(Via Yunus Yakoub Islam.)

So much for our ‘progressive’ attitudes to violence against women

The British public gives more to a Devon-based donkey sanctuary than the most prominent charities trying to combat violence and abuse against women, a report released today by a leading philanthropy watchdog reveals.

New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) has calculated that more than 7 million women have been affected by domestic violence but found that Refuge, the Women’s Aid Federation and Eaves Housing for Women have a combined annual income of just £17m. By contrast the Donkey Sanctuary, which has looked after 12,000 donkeys, received £20m in 2006.

NPC estimates the cost to society of domestic abuse, sexual violence, forced marriage, trafficking and honour crimes has reached £40bn a year – greater than the country’s defence budget.

“As a society we are not spending enough on this issue whether through charities or the government,” said Justine Järvinen, the author of the report. “Violence against women appears regularly as the subject of media reports and in the storylines of soap operas but rarely does it come up in normal conversation, which suggests there is a stigma around it. The truth is it is very common.”

Every year 1.5 million women experience domestic abuse at least once, 800,000 are sexually assaulted and 100,000 raped, the report states. More than one in four women has experienced at least one incident of domestic violence by a current or former partner, which means 7.4 million women in the UK have suffered domestic abuse, according to government figures.

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Parliament’s dirty little secret

The House of Commons, held up as a beacon of democracy, has a ‘dirty little secret’, according to black MPs – its racism.

Dawn Butler, only the third black woman ever to have become an MP, said she faced such frequent racism from politicians of all parties that she had to ‘pick her battles’ to avoid being constantly in conflict with her colleagues. Disillusioned by what she has found, she is calling for a dedicated complaints department with the power to suspend politicians and send them on awareness training courses.

‘I thought people in Parliament would be progressive. It is still a shock that they are not,’ she said. ‘Over the past 400-plus years, the only black people – and black women in particular – in Parliament have been there to cook and clean. For some politicians, it’s still a shock to come face to face with a black women with any real power. Racism and sexism is Parliament’s dirty little secret.’

She is backed by Diane Abbott, the only other black woman in the Commons, who said that she had suffered 20 years of prejudice. ‘In the beginning, some of it was sheer ignorance. I remember being shocked when a Labour MP asked me once whether we celebrated Christmas in Jamaica,’ said Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington.

‘It has not helped that the Labour party powers-that-be have always seen me as “uppity” but I have dealt with the racism and misogyny by reaching out to other black women.’

Butler, who won the Brent South seat in 2005 when she was 35, described how shocked she was by the attitude of a senior Conservative who challenged her right to have a drink on the Commons’ Thameside terrace, a privilege reserved for MPs.

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