Today's Top Islamic News (DAILY)

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HRW slams France’s burqa ban
01/02/2010 06:00:00 AM GMT

PARIS — Human Rights Watch has blasted France’s efforts to ban burqa for violating rights of Muslim women, warning the move could stigmatize the whole Muslim minority in the country.

"We are still very concerned that the restrictions will seriously interfere with the rights of Muslim women in France - the right to manifest their religion and the right to personal autonomy," Judith Sunderland, senior researcher for Western Europe at Human Rights Watch, told the Inter Press Service on Thursday, January 28.

She said that any partial or blanket ban on the face-veil would be a violation of basic human rights.

"We certainly oppose any kind of blanket measure,” she said.

"But the piecemeal measures would also violate rights and be counter-productive because it won’t help women who may be forced to wear the veil, and it would violate the rights of those who choose freely to wear it.”

A French parliamentary panel recommended last week slapping a partial ban on face-veils in hospitals, schools, public transport and government offices.

France has seen a heated debate on the face-veil since President Nicolas Sarkozy described it last June as being "unwelcome" in France.

The European country is home to nearly seven million Muslims, the biggest Muslim minority in Europe.

According to the Interior Ministry, only about 1,900 Muslim women are estimated to being using face-veils.

A burqa is the all-enveloping cloak, often blue, with a woven grill over the eyes, that many Afghan women wear, and it is almost never seen in France.

The niqab, a garment that is often black, covers the face but leaves the eyes uncovered.

The rights group accused politicians championing the ban of taking a wrong approach for Muslim women integration.

"It’s a forced integration measure that’s bound to fail," Sunderland said.

"It’s just the wrong approach.

“I can’t see how a law restricting the wearing of the niqab would help those women who are forced to wear it."

The senior researcher warned that the ban would turn the life of veiled women into a hell.

"It will just make their lives impossible.

"How are they going to pick up their kids by bus, or talk to teachers who may be male, for instance?"

Sunderland warned that the measure could also exclude veiled women from the society.

"It may make them become more secluded and also excluded from French society.

"There are all sorts of policy measures that should be adopted to reach out to women whose rights."

The human rights group warned that the French ban would stigmatize the Muslim minority in the country.

"The measures will contribute to the stigmatization of Islam and Muslims in general," Sunderland said.

"It’s just a bad idea all around."

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Protesters say Afghan confab not about peace
Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:01:32 GMT

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown at Afghanistan Conference in London
Anti-war campaigners have held a rally outside the Afghanistan Conference in London, saying the meeting has nothing to do with peace.

On Thursday, large crowds of protesters from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and Stop the War Coalition (STWC), gathered at the Lancaster House venue, where the Afghanistan Conference was being held.

Protesters carried a coffin bearing the words "The Blood Price" to represent all of those who have died in the eight-year conflict. They also called for an end to the military presence in the war-torn country.

"The war in Afghanistan has no clear aims. It is clearly escalating and spinning out of control and can only have a negative impact on Pakistan and the whole of south Asia. NATO forces have been in Afghanistan for over eight years and the result appears to be increased drug production, high levels of corruption and terrible losses of life on all sides, both civilian and military," Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament chairwoman Kate Hudson said.

The STWC says the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. A spokeswoman for STWC also said that "the leaders gathering here (London) have only one response to the catastrophe their war has created — more war."

Last month, US President Barack Obama approved the deployment of 30,000 extra American troops to Afghanistan. Likewise, German Chancellor Angela Merkel committed 500 more troops to the Afghan war.

In November 2009, the UK sanctioned the deployment of 500 more troops to move its total force level in Afghanistan to 10,000.

Leaders and ministers from 70 nations met in London on Thursday to discuss the conflict in Afghanistan. The London conference will be followed by a meeting in Kabul later this year.

SG/MMN

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US Baptists Arrested For Haiti Child Trafficking
01/02/2010 12:11:09 AM GMT

WASHINGTON — A recommendation by a US government agency for an indefinite detention of dozens Guantanamo detainees is drawing rebukes from civil liberty groups for turning pledges to close the detention camp into empty words. "Just as important as closing the prison quickly is closing it right,” Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said in a statement cited by the BBC News Online on Saturday, January 23.

“And that means putting an end to the illegal policy of indefinite detention without charge or trial."

A Justice Department-led task force recommended Friday to release 110 Guantanamo detainees and prosecuting 35 others in federal and military courts.

The panel, formed to study how to deal with the detainees before the camp closure, also suggested holding the remaining 50 detainees indefinitely.

"This practice was wrong in Cuba and would remain so here, reducing the closure of Guantanamo to a symbolic gesture," Romero said.

The recommendation came as the Obama administration on Friday missed a one-year deadline to close the notorious detention camp.

Opened in 2002 by the Bush administration, the US has been holding terror suspects in the camp, branding them unlawful enemy combatants to deny them legal rights.

There have been reports of degrading and sadistic treatment of detainees at the infamous detention centre, which has been globally condemned as a stain on America's human rights record.

Unreliable

The rights group challenged the government claim that some of the detainees pose grave threats to the US security if released.

"If there is credible evidence that these prisoners are dangerous, there is no reason why that evidence could not be introduced against them in criminal trials," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU National Security Project.

Jaffer urged the Obama administration to either release the detainees or put them on trial before civilian courts.

"The criminal laws, and the material support laws in particular, are broad enough to reach anyone who presents a serious threat,” he said.

“The federal courts are fully capable of affording defendants fair trials while protecting the government's legitimate interest in protecting information that is properly classified."

The Obama administration on Friday withdrew charges against five detainees accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks, paving the way for their trial before a civilian court in New York.

The move came one day after Washington transferred two Guantanamo detainees to Algeria.

Jaffer said the Obama administration fears that the evidence against the detainees would not stand up in the US courts.

"Our justice system excludes coerced evidence not only because coercion and torture are illegal, but because coerced evidence is unreliable,” he said.

"If evidence is too unreliable to justify detention after criminal trial, it is certainly too unreliable to justify indefinite detention without trial."

Source: IslamOnline

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Blair faces public grilling over Iraq on Friday
Fri, 29 Jan 2010 06:08:08 GMT

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is slated to face a public inquiry on Friday over his decision to join in the invasion of oil-rich Iraq in March, 2003.

Blair has been criticized for cavorting with former US president George W. Bush and leading Britain to war.

On Wednesday, Tony Blair's top legal advisor Lord Peter Goldsmith admitted that he was skeptical of the legitimacy of US military action against Iraq.

According to Goldsmith, UN Resolution 1441 — which gave Saddam Hussein a final warning — was "not crystal clear."

"I didn't see any evidence of an imminent threat" that called for self-defense, Goldsmith said.

The British and the US governments justified the invasion by insisting on the imminent danger posed by the Iraqi government's possession of weapons of mass destruction in defiance of United Nations resolutions.

Britain sent 45,000 troops to support the 2003 US-led invasion, despite widespread doubts about its legality and mass protests against it on the streets of London.

Recent polls indicate that the majority of British citizens remain against the UK's involvement in Iraq.

HRF/JG/DT

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Protesters call for trial of Blair over Iraq war
Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:09:37 GMT

Protesters demand the setup of a criminal court for former British Premier Tony Blair as he gets a grilling from the Iraq War inquiry in London.

Hundreds of protesters and anti-war activists have held a rally in London, calling for the trial of Blair for sending British troops to Iraq.

The angry demonstrators chanted, "Tony Blair, war criminal," reportedly forcing him to enter the venue through a side entrance. The protesters say they are convinced the former premier gave them the slip.

"The real question Tony Blair needs to answer in the end will be at The Hague and before a war crimes tribunal," Reuters quoted Chairman of Stop the War Coalition Andrew Murray as saying on Friday.

The Iraq War panel is also expected to determine the legitimacy of the war.

Blair defended his decision to send 45,000 British troops to Iraq in 2003 and wage war in the country.

He also referred to routine meetings with former US President George W. Bush and his own government officials without specifying details of the proceedings in his meetings.

Blair's questioning is to continue in order to establish the motives behind the Iraq invasion.

GHN/JG/DT

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Tony Blair defends war legacy, cites 9/11
Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:27:08 GMT

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, now envoy to the quartet of Middle East peacemakers, testified at the Iraq war inquiry on Friday.
Almost seven years after he joined the US-led invasion of Iraq, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair defended his legacy before an official inquiry Friday in the face of criticism that he misled the nation with his war justification.

The inquiry, chaired by Sir John Chilcot, examines the legitimacy of the UK involvement in the Iraq war.

Blair arrived two hours early to attend six hours of scheduled hearing at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in central London, as he tried to avoid protesters and media outside.

Several hundred protestors gathered outside the building, shouting "Blair lied — thousands died," as the inquiry got underway.

"We haven't come here expecting an apology," one protester, Gary Walker, 31, told the New York Times. "But it's important to show seven years on that people still care about the illegal war."

The inquiry began by pressing Blair over exaggerating and embellishing the content of intelligence reports to convince his government and the British public that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) — a claim that was refuted shortly after the invasion.

In his defense, Blair said he was convinced after the September 11 attacks, Saddam Hossein, the former Iraqi dictator, posed as a greater threat by furnishing terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.

"If September 11 had not happened, our assessment would have been different. But after September 11, our view and that of the Americans changed, and changed dramatically," Blair said at the opening of his testimony.

''It wasn't that objectively he (Saddam) had done more, it was that our perception of the risk had shifted,'' Blair said. ''If those people inspired by this religious fanaticism could have killed 30,000, they would have. From that moment Iran, Libya, North Korea, Iraq ... all of this had to be brought to an end."

''The primary consideration for me was to send an absolutely powerful, clear and unremitting message that after Sept. 11 if you were a regime engaged in WMD, you had to stop.''

Blair has long argued that he had to act in line with Washington's decision in order to disarm the former Iraqi leader. However, his relations with the then US President George W. Bush came under scrutiny after the fall of Baghdad revealed that no weapons of mass destruction were found to justify the rationale for war.

The White House is yet to decide whether to ask President Bush to account for his war decisions. Many critics have assailed both Britain and the United States for what they call their intention of taking control of Iraq's vast oil supplies.

Sabah Jawad, an Iraqi protester who opposed the war, said Blair, now envoy to the quartet of Middle East peacemakers, should be taken to The Hague to "face criminal charges because he has committed crimes against the Iraqi people."

''The Iraqi people are having to live every day with aggression, division, and atrocities,'' Jawad said.

SES/MD

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Straw faces cover-up claims over Libya oil deal
Sun, 31 Jan 2010 16:35:29 GMT

British Justice Secretary Jack Straw is seeking to bypass Freedom of Information laws by refusing to publish details of his 2007 conversations with a BP lobbyist over Libya.

The calls in question were made weeks before Straw reversed a government move to block the release of a man charged with the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people.

Reports on Sunday said Straw, a former defense minister, faces cover-up charges over his intransigence about calls he received from Sir Mark Allen, an ex-MI6 spy turned consultant to the British oil giant, BP.

A member of the Scottish affairs committee, lawmaker Ben Wallace, is pressing for the release of the conversations' details, and is planning to appeal on public interest grounds.

Straw, while acknowledging the contact and denying any wrongdoing, turned down Wallace's request.

The row has brought the controversial release of the Lockerbie bomber from a Scottish jail last September back to the spotlight.

Terminally-ill Libyan Abdelbaset ali al-Megrahi, jailed for the attack on Pan Am flight 103, was released by Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill on compassionate grounds.

However, some British media as well as the enraged families of the victims in the United States and Scotland see clandestine oil deals beyond the official explanation.

BP signed a lucrative $900 million oil exploration deal with Libya the same year but feared that it could be jeopardized unless Britain penned the Memorandum of Understanding with Libya, which included the Prisoner Transfer Agreement.

Last year, declassified letters showed Straw had written to MacAskill, to say he could not guarantee Megrahi would be excluded from the deal, effectively paving the way for his release.

Earlier this month, an investigation by the BBC's Newsnight program suggested there were flaws in the evidence that settled the case against Megrahi.

ZHD/HGH/MD

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Blair testimony at Iraq Inquiry 'ludicrous'
Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:10:55 GMT

Police guard protestors outside the Iraq Inquiry on January 29, 2010, as former premier Tony Blair gives his evidence.

Two days after former British premier Tony Blair gave his evidence before the country's independent inquiry into the Iraq war, a former cabinet minister has described his testimony as "ludicrous."

Clare Short told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that it was fallacious to suggest that al-Qaeda would team up with "rogue states," after the September 11 attacks.

Short, who quit the cabinet soon after the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, defended Prime Minister Gordon Brown, saying he had been "marginalized" when the decision to go to war was made.

Brown was chancellor of the exchequer when Blair ordered the country's troops to join the US-led invasion.

The incursion was based on a now notorious dossier claiming the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Short said Brown's political priorities laid elsewhere at the time and that he neither opposed nor supported the invasion but was "preoccupied" by other concerns.

During his six-hour testimony, an unrepentant Blair said he still believed he had made the right decision and would do so again, if it meant deposing Saddam, whom he described as a "monster."

He said he believed the executed dictator "threatened not just the region but the world," and that the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, had "dramatically" changed British and US position towards that threat.

Notably, Blair steered away from Iraq towards new alleged threats, including Iran.

He argued that the Islamic Republic's nuclear program, which Tehran has repeatedly affirmed is for peaceful purposes such as electricity generation, was dangerous.

Blair urged world leaders to take on a tough stance towards Iran.
On January 12, a Dutch inquiry into Netherland's support of the 2003 invasion said the US and Britain had rushed to war without sufficient legal backing under international law.

The commission's 551-page report said UN resolutions prior to the outbreak of the war did not provide a legitimate mandate for the attack.

ZHD/HGH/MMN

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UK politicians, media fuel anti-Muslim hatred
30/01/2010 11:00:00 AM GMT

CAIRO – With Muslims often portrayed as “terrorists” who are seeking to “Islamize” the country, a British study is accusing politicians and media of fuelling hatred and assaults against London’s Muslims, reported the Guardian on Thursday, January 28.

"The constant assault on Muslims from certain politicians, and above all in the mainstream media, has created an atmosphere where hate crimes, ranging from casual abuse to arson and even murder, are bound to occur and are even in a sense encouraged by mainstream society," journalist Peter Oborne writes in the report’s forward.

The report, by the University of Exeter’s European Muslim research center, said politicians and media are to blame for the surging hate crimes against London Muslims.

"The report provides prima facie and empirical evidence to demonstrate that assailants of Muslims are invariably motivated by a negative view of Muslims they have acquired from either mainstream or extremist nationalist reports or commentaries in the media."

It cites the book Londonistan written by a Daily Mail writer as an example of the media role in fuelling anti-Muslim sentiments.

"Islamophobic, negative and unwarranted portrayals of Muslim London as Londonistan and Muslim Londoners as terrorists, sympathisers and subversives in sections of the media appear to provide the motivation for a significant number of anti-Muslim hate crimes."


The umbrella Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) on Wednesday accused the government of failure to tackle the surging anti-Muslim hatred, saying politicians either keep their silence or ride the bandwagon of anti-Islam trend.
A recent government-commissioned study has also found that a torrent of negative and imbalance stories in the British media demonize Muslims and their faith by portraying them as the enemy within.

British Muslims, estimated at two million, have also taken full brunt of anti-terror laws since the 7/7 attacks.

They have repeatedly complained of maltreatment by police for no apparent reason other than being Muslim.

* Rightist Assaults

The report, based on interviews with witnesses to and victims of hate crimes, notes a link between the media and anti-Muslim assaults by rightists, such as the British National Party (BNP).

"An experienced BNP activist in London explains that he believes that most BNP supporters simply followed the lead set by their favourite tabloid commentators that they read every day,” it says.

"When these commentators singled out Muslims as threats to security and social cohesion, he says that it was perfectly natural for BNP supporters to adopt the same thinking."

The BNP, a far-right and whites-only political party, is notorious for attacks against immigrants and Muslims.

BNP leader Nick Griffin had earlier described Islam as a “wicked and vicious faith”.

The report said that Muslims are the focus of assaults by rightists and gangs other than any ethnic or religious groups.

"Interviewees with long experience of extremist nationalist street violence in London are unequivocal in their assessment that Muslim Londoners are now a prime target for serious violence and intimidation in the way that Londoners from minority ethnic communities once were.

"Similarly, interviewees with experience of London street gangs that have no connection or affinity with extremist nationalist politics are adamant that Muslims have become prime targets for serious attacks.

"In addition, well-informed interviewees are clear that the main perpetrators of low-level anti-Muslim hate crimes are not gangs but rather simply individuals from a wide range of backgrounds who feel licensed to abuse, assault and intimidate Muslims in terms that mirror elements of mainstream media and political comment that became commonplace during the last decade."

London Muslims are being targeted by gangs in “punishment” over members turning to embrace Islam, notes the report.

"Often, they know someone who has left their scene and become a devout Muslim.

"That is like a defection. And whether they do or don't, they say they know this or that terrorist who used to be a great person till he joined the Muslims."

It said gang members believe Muslim values “oppose everything these kids aspire for”.

“Flash cars, nightclubs, expensive clothes, jewellery, drugs, alcohol, casual sex, glamour, dancing, music ...".

In 2004, a young British Muslim assaulted by a gang of youths while going to prayers in London, leaving him with brain-damaged.

The report, to be followed by another this summer covering Britain’s Muslims, called for utmost efforts to tackle the anti-Muslim hatred.

"Anti-Muslim hate crimes have not been afforded the same priority attention [that] government and police have invested in racist hate crimes."

Source: IslamOnline

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France follows up on banning Islamic veil
Sat, 30 Jan 2010 11:00:53 GMT

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has requested the country's top court to help the government draft a legislation banning the full Islamic veil.

The move by the French government comes three days after a French parliamentary report called for a ban on the full veil.

The report claimed that "Muslim women who fully cover their heads and faces pose an unacceptable challenge to French values."

If it becomes law, it would make it illegal for those women in France who wear the full Islamic veil to visit public buildings or carry out any administrative task.

France is home to Europe's largest Muslim minority. Meanwhile, Italy has said it may follow in France's footsteps and seek a ban on the "full Islamic veil."

Observers scoff at the attempt by the so-called western democracies that have accused Muslims of being intolerant and repeatedly boast their belief in basic freedoms, which include choice of religion. Yet, they argue, they are proving to be quite intolerant themselves, regarding the dress code of Muslim women as a social threat.

Some western European countries and the US have even taken measures to harass, detain, and even expel Muslim individuals for making speeches critical of their roles in the occupation and war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

HSH/MB