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So what do Muslim women, white men between 20 and 50, EDL sympathisers, and the desire to wear a head covering and face veil have in common?
Sounds a bizarre set of circumstances but there is a strand that links them together.
Anti-Muslim prejudice has been something that Muslim communities have talked about even before 9/11 and 7/7. Yet tangible data and support for victims has been lacking. Apart from a handful of organisations that have undertaken work at a policy level (and very occasionally at the grassroots) there has been little produced in this area. When some Muslims talked about Islamophobia or anti-Muslim prejudice, the response was that they "had a chip on their shoulder", were promoting a "liberal conspiracy" or worse still, "were trying to gain sympathy to Islamicise Europe," the latter not being far off the bizarre fantasies of many an EDL supporter.
Since February 2012, the TELL MAMA project has supported victims of anti-Muslim prejudice in England and mapped, measured and analysed hotspots where such incidents have been taking place. After just four months the results are shocking and sadly confirm what many people (or many Muslims at least) thought.
The main victims are Muslim women and of those, the most likely to be subjected to anti-Muslim incidents and attacks are those wearing the hijab - the religiously based head covering (even more so if they also wear the niqab, the full face veil).The main perpetrators of the attacks have been white males between the ages of 20-50 - who it seems had no problem in verbally abusing Muslim women going about their daily business and even on two occasions urinating on a Muslim female in broad daylight on the street and rubbing faeces into her hijab in a separate incident.
One of the most startling findings is that one in three of the reported cases involved a perpetrator with a link to the far-right English Defence League (EDL) or the British National Party (BNP). This involved the perpetrator having made supportive statements on EDL Facebook pages, through Twitter or through support for the EDL/BNP in what they wore or shouted during an attack. Add to that one case of an EDL sympathiser willing to shoot Baroness Warsi between the eyes, and the catalogue of far-right and EDL agitation is not only worrying, it is depressingly sad.
What is also worrying is the lack of action from Twitter and Facebook in ensuring that such poison and hate is not promoted. Take the case of a female EDL sympathiser who openly threatened to 'Clean up Britain' (great), by 'Bombing a Mosque' (deeply depressing). She obviously sniggered and two others EDL sympathisers gave her the thumbs up. Unfortunately for them, we have their Facebook page on a screenshot.
We should not fool ourselves, as people who believe in liberty, that peddlars of hate (of any background) will stop their activities. They will not: they will simply use other means to get their messages across. Until then, those who have suffered any form of hate crime should report it in to the police or to third-party reporting agencies. If you have suffered anti-Muslim prejudice, the please 'TELL MAMA'.
Fiyaz Mughal OBE is director of Faith Matters, an interfaith and anti-extremist organisation which runs the TELL MAMA anti-Muslim violence helpline. www.faith-matters.org @FaithMattersUK
Follow Fiyaz Mughal on Twitter: www.twitter.com/FaithMattersUK
Jamie Bartlett: Did the EDL Really Tweet That?
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you are aware of the mess Islam has created in UK? This article is total garbage.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2176519/Now-new-look-news-TV-studio-Egypt-staffed-exclusively-veiled-women.html
Why do i say that ?
Well FACTS are 1 in 3 of those reported were affiliated thats 33% with EDL affiliation so this racist is saying everyones EDL.
Another FACT this racist Author bypassed was the fact ASK MAMA counts legals requests to remove the facial covering element as the same as a thug ripping it off.
Fact : The author states WHITE EDL , which with only a 33% of reported cases being EDL is calling Customs Agents / Security Guards (In banks and high tension jury cases) / Judges / Teachers ALL who tend to request the removal of all facial coverings as EDL Islamophobes. So why did the Author feel the need to interject skin color and lie?
In the western world and even now the Muslim countries, westerners are hard at work trying to get Muslim women remove her clothing and exhibit herself in a provocative way. Underneath these attacks is the desire to remove the strength of the Muslim communities in western lands.
It is a fact, in the Muslim world, the women is the first line defense to immorality. When she is moral and upright so is her nation. When she is not, so goes the moral compass of that country.
Muslim Men must themselves return to their Islamic tenets and protect the Muslimah. There is a nexus between the two. Both must work in their natural orders and the sunnah. When one or both work outside the Islamic tenets, they both suffer.
So your assessment is flawed. Even today Muslims who opt for western style clothes are being put on western 'terrorist watch list programs, 'no-fly list programs', undictable coconspirator designations and so on.
Get a grasp of the usool figh concerning dress codes.
No, they haven't. Not even in relatively recent history is that statement true.
Even today, veils are worn to signify purity, as in a wedding ceremony, and grief. They do often signify a separation from society for one reason or another. Veils were routinely worn by upper class women in the western world within the past century.
"Always" is a really long time. You might want to be a bit more precise. Veils are not currently worn by most women in the western world except under special circumstances. That is a significantly different statement than yours.
How do you know they are truculent? You cannot see their face.
If they do not say "good morning", you could try doing so.
"Now, that overall attitude is extremely UNBRITISH!"
It would be nice to have a definition of what 'British' means in this context. Since the women are, in fact, British.
"and this is MY OWN COUNTRY, dammit."
It's their country too.
"Apart from which why is it that Muslim men are able to walk around like Jack the Lad while their women scuttle about either full of fear themselves or full of hatred for their host country?"
Muslim men often believe that the rules on modesty do not apply to themselves. The women are dressed modestly, I have no reason to believe that they are afraid or full of hatred.
"Try becoming part of the general community, bud and mix with us."
That takes two.
It is their country too........you say.....How the hell do you know if they are British? They can only be Bristish anyway by dint of Citezenship rules (if I with a British wife have a child born in Beijing are you goint to tell me my child is ......Chinese.hahahahahaa. how foolish would that be.
Oh and try to make contact? Done that many many times and on every occasion the woman has scuttled away like a black rat.
Now, before you accuse me of racism let me tell you that for the past 15 years I have worked internationally with many races and many ethnicities in S America, Africa and the Middle East and the rest of Europe. However Islam IS the threat. Rooted in the 7th century its adherents are impossible to engage with and their goal is the Caliphate.
By the way the one Muslim with whom I did try to help as she confided in me that her employers were unkind to her has disappeared and a week after I gave her my home number in case she wished to talk about her problems I had a telephone death threat
Now you take your burkas and go pal. I know how it really is;
Extremists bounce off each other. The far left try to make themselves look less radical by opposing the far right, yet both have the same socialist economic policies that as we have seen across southern Europe, again, always fail.
"The EDL leadership has estimated that the EDL has 100,000 members.[35] A research group has given a lower figure of 25,000 to 35,000 members."
If you got a figure of 500, it likely refers to the number who show up at any given event.
Given that mass social integration has failed miserably, any group which dresses in a way likely to draw attention to itself is asking for trouble - sadly!!
Just a hop, skip and a jump away from saying the way a woman dresses encourages rape...
I have met many Muslim women in my time and not a single one has been forced to wear the hijab - it is their choice! And Islam itself does not force it upon anybody but rather gives them the choice to wear it! I bet if you were to do a comparison you would find that there are proportionately more women and girls (getting younger by the day) in the UK 'forced' through social, peer, media pressure to have a certain type of body image than are actually 'forced' to wear the hijab. Have YOU done anything to show solidarity with them?
Robbing a bank is a crime. Blowing up tube trains is terrorism (clue is in the word).
For balance, invading Iraq wasn't terrorism. It was a war crime, but no one will ever stand trial for it. Mores the pity. I would love to see blairs face as the guilty verdict was read out.
>>>Who started the first world war ? Muslims ?
I doubt many Muslim women actually care all that much about you to go out of their way to change their dress code to irritate you and others who may think like you. I'm sure they have better things to worry about.
The Islamic dress code goes as far back as the start of Islam itself, it's not new nor is abnormal in many parts of the world. Just because it's because a media 'hot' topic recently (as has Islam in general) doesn't mean it didn't exist until now.
To find someone else's attire 'divisive' really says more about you than them. Simply put, division is a self-inflicted. You think it's divisive and therefore act like it is. If those who dress 'differently' don't see it that way and go about their lives like there isn't a division; who's the divisive one, you who are acting on you preconceived notions and prejudice or them whose only crime is to dress differently to please a higher being they believe in?
Prejudice arises from experience and is not of and in itself with positive or negative. Prejudice is in fact as normal as breathing, without it we would keep putting ourselves in harms way. Your prejudicial and preconceived notions of me are based on your experience of people who you identify as similar to me. My prejudicial and preconceived notions of muslims is based on my empirical experience of them. You are not in a position to judge or comment on those experiences as you were not there. It would be valid for you to challenge the form and nature of those experiences. In order to do so you need to present evidence that my worldview is fallacious, however, the evidence I know of is that muslims are deliberately divisive and judgmental of non muslims. It is a fundamental tenet of their faith that divides the world into believers and kuffars, and into the land of Islam and the lands of war or truce. There is no concept of live and let live in their fundamental ideas. It is the meme that creates the society and the society which carries those memes. I do not wish to live within their world view, so I must oppose their fundamental cultural practices.
Many Christian women used to wear the hijab / headscarf - it's more of the previous generation. Did you miss the queen wearing a headscarf? The headscarf is also a traditional Jewish thing.
1 DOES GOD HAVE A DRESS CODE
2 ARE MUSLIMS INFLICTING VIOLENCE ON OTHER MUSLIMS
3 DO MUSLIM WOMEN CHOOSE TO WEAR THE NIQAB OR HAVE THEY BEEN BRAINWASHED
FROM AN EARLY AGE. BY MEN.
4 WHERE IN THE KORAN DOES IT SAY WOMEN SHOULD WEAR A NIQAB.
5 IS ISLAM USED TO CONTROL MUSLIM WOMEN BY MEN....
6 WHY DO YOU CONDONE A RELIGION THAT ADVOCATES KILLING PEOPLE ?
7 EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS THAT HAVE BANNED THE NIQAB IN PUBLIC ARE THEY ALL
LOONIES OR DEFENDING RESIDENTS THE UNWANTED ISLAMIFICATION .....
if you could answer these simple questions we could understand your position better..
Anyway, let's say I agree with your view on every one of those points above. Just for argument's sake. Ok, done.
How does that change the news story about the results from the helpline: I don't think it does. I *can* agree with some, all, or none of your points *and still* focus on the news story itself (the results from the line) as relevant.
I'm a journo and work with, or report on, a lot of Muslim, Christian, Jewish (UK and overseas) stories and communities, so I can't just go "your religion is loony" or "you guys subjugate women" and "therefore, I'll ignore every piece of evidence that shows something I don't like".
Take NIgeria: mass killings on both sides of 'Christian' and 'Muslim' communities, masking complex tribal-ethnic and poverty + corruption from Government for decades story. It's not just "religion is bad" or "Muslims are stone age". There's shades of grey, and you (I) can agree one thing is bad (or argue against certain tenets of Islam) without agreeing that violence against Muslims is somehow good, or less "bad" than against anyone else.
cheers.
2.War and violence is an unfortunate result of human disagreement since the beginning of time. Regardless of religion.
3. Are Muslim women brainwashed to wear more or the real question, are Women in most communities brainwashed to wear less by men (regardless of religion)? (Just look at the younger generation and you have your answer)
4.Niqab is a personal choice, just like having pink hair, getting plastic surgery or wearing a hoody.
5. Britain has only in recent years learnt to give equal rights to women. Islam did this over 1400 years ago.
6.Islam is a religion that advocates love for your neighbor. Defence of your livelihood and family is the only situation where violence may be forgiven.
7. Muslims wish to live in a peaceful, cultured, understanding community, in harmony with all other religions. No discrimintion.
7. Muslims wish to live in a peaceful, cultured, understanding community, in harmony with all other religions. No discrimintion.
The koran advises muslims to KILL jews where they find them or force them out , If your not a muslim you are TAXED for it and not allowed to work in any position of power or governance. Hows that not discrimination?
How about Homosexuals who sharia see's flogged and or killed? Take Bandeh Aceh where a lesbian couple have been forced apart flogged and told if they see each other again it will be the death sentence. And up and down the uk there are articles of imams preaching homophobia.