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Jihad Watch Board member Tashbih Sayyed reflects on some recent veil controversies and their implications:
Recent events in Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States underline the fact that Muslim immigrants who subscribe to the Islamist ideology and insist on maintaining an “Islamic” identity that is different and distinct from the mainstream culture of their host communities are a serious threat to the domestic peace and social cohesion of the communities in which they live.In England, a 24-year old Muslim teaching assistant of the Church of England school in West Yorkshire refused to remove her veil when teaching the children. She also refused to work with men.
At an Islamic school in Leicester, non-Muslim girls have now been ordered to wear headscarves. And a Muslim police officer asked to be relieved from his diplomatic protection duty outside the Israeli embassy in London on “moral grounds” during the recent Middle East conflict because he objected to Israeli action against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In Australia, that country’s most senior Muslim cleric, Sheikh Taj el-Din al-Hilali, condoned rape in a sermon last month when he suggested that the women are attracting sexual assault by the way they dress. Referring to a recent rape victim, he said, “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside … without cover, and the cats come to eat it … whose fault is it, the cats’ or the uncovered meat’s?” Hilali was quoted as saying in the sermon. “The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred,” he was quoted as saying, referring to the headdress worn by some Muslim women. Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Pru Goward, said Hilali’s comment was an incitement to rape.In 2001, a Muslim woman, Sultaana Freeman, in Florida obtained a driving license that showed her veiled face with only her eyes visible through a slit and when in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the authorities demanded that she return to have her photo taken with her face uncovered, she refused.
In June, 2003, a Florida judge, Janet C. Thorpe,agreed with the state authorities that the practice of allowing veiled faces on driving licenses could help terrorists conceal their identities and ruled that Sultaana Freeman’s right to free exercise of religion would not be infringed by having to show her face on her license.
This year on October 11, Judge Paul Paruk in Detroit said he needed to see the face of a Muslim woman, Ginnah Muhammad, to judge her truthfulness. He gave her a choice: take off the veil when testifying or the case will be dismissed. She kept the veil on.
Paruk said that as a fact finder, he needs to see the face of a person testifying. “My job in the courtroom is to make a determination as to the veracity of somebody’s claim,” he said. “Part of that, you need to identify the witness and you need to look at the witness and watch how they testify.” http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006610220597
The veil issue came under focus in Britain when former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, now leader of the House of Commons, said Muslim women visiting his office should remove their veils. According to British Prime Minister Tony Blair Islamic head scarves are a sign of separation and Britain’s Muslims should be encouraged to integrate with mainstream society in order to improve the quality of their lives and most of the moderate Muslims agree with him.
“People want to know that the Muslim community in particular but actually all minority communities have got the balance right between integration and multiculturalism,” Blair said. He said that the veil “is a mark of separation, and that’s why it makes other people from outside the community feel uncomfortable.”
The veil has become an issue in other European countries too. On October 17, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said Muslim women should not “hide behind” full veils and the Netherlands has been mulling a ban on burqa-type garments that cover the whole body and face, after parliament last year supported such a proposal. According to a Radio free Europe commentary, Britain is just the latest European country to grapple with the issue—and there have even been moves in some places to ban the most conservative forms of Islamic women’s dress. Harriet Harman, Labor Party leader, said: “If you want equality you have to be in society not hidden away from it. The veil is an obstacle to women’s participation on equal terms.”
The reactions of the western governments to these events suggest that they have finally decided to fight back and reclaim the open societies from the grip of those who refuse to acknowledge the centrality of the western values of tolerance, fair play and liberal democracy. It is also indicative of a growing understanding of the Islamist agenda which wants to impose a cultural apartheid by constantly claiming to have been offended by this or that in the western culture. http://worldpoliticswatch.com/article.aspx?id=275
Resistance to integration and assimilation into the mainstream culture is the cornerstone of the Islamist agenda as it helps in the development of closed societies within the host societies. There is no doubt that a community that allows a number of closed communities to develop in its midst loses its social cohesiveness and becomes dysfunctional. It becomes a source of discontent and dissatisfaction, breeds conflicts and lives in a perpetual state of tension.
Knowing that a marginalized and disenfranchised youth serves as a never-exhausting source for terrorism and a divided society breeds such young men, the Islamist establishment has worked diligently and scientifically to sabotage social harmony in Europe. As a first step toward achieving this objective, Muslims are convinced that they will have to insist on maintaining their “Islamic” identity, as their culture is better than the host culture. To further divide the host societies along the religious lines, Muslims are encouraged to refuse to evolve in the culture in which they live. They are being forced to recede into closed societies by refusing to integrate into the mainstream culture. According to an Austrian government study, 45% of Muslims in Austria don’t want to integrate. http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=2454091
Observers have noted that closed societies serve the causes of Islamist extremists. They use such an environment to stay away from the spotlight. Experts believe that most of the sleeping cells use these isolated environments to hibernate and incubate. That’s why analysts insist that the immigrants who refuse to integrate should be watched closely. In their view, to insist on maintaining an identity different and distinct from the mainstream identy is the first step toward the creation of closed communities.
In order to understand why radical Islamists are working so hard to keep the Muslims from integrating, we will have to study what kind of an individual is created by an environment that rejects or looks down upon the mainstream culture.
Muslims who insist on keeping an alien and strange looking garb stand out and invite suspicion. Since they appear different, they find it difficult to be accepted by the mainstream. Consequently, they remain on the fringe of the society, feeling alienated and rejected. They blame the host culture for a situation that is entirely of their own creation and in many cases, they succeed in misguiding outsiders who often blame the host society for not doing enough to integrate its immigrant population. This situation suits global jihad perfectly, as the alienated and isolated youth can easily be recruited for the terrorist causes.
Germany recently has been wringing its hands over excessive violence in a high school in the Berlin neighborhood of Neukölln. The teachers at the school, 83 percent of whose student body is comprised of immigrants, recently went public with the increasing violence and aggressiveness in the classrooms. A number of German states have also recently considered adopting tests to determine the attitudes of potential citizens to the German constitution. The Netherlands, France and Denmark have likewise been confronting major difficulties with integrating their foreigner populations—many of whom are part of the 15 to 20 million Muslims who live in Western Europe. French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy last month proposed an EU-wide contract that immigrants would be forced to sign requiring them to learn the language of their new home country. http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,410098,00.html
What German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has said is true not only about the immigrants in Germany but about every immigrant group in the world. He said that while all levels of government must do what they can, immigrants themselves must also realize that they have to integrate. “Those who continue shirking their obligation to integrate and who don’t want their children to live as Germans made a mistake when they came to Germany,” Schäuble, of the governing conservative Christian Democrats, told Berliner Zeitung. “We will not achieve integration if the parents of children born here don’t realize that they bear a responsibility for raising and integrating their children into German society.”
What Europe is facing today is the direct result of their decades-old policies of multiculturalism that have helped the radical Islamists tremendously. And the U.S. will save itself from running into a lot of problems if it can learn from the Europe’s experience with Islamists.
The U.S. must declare that any immigrant group that insists on maintaining an identity of its own that is different and distinct from our American identity is a threat to our national security. And no one can deny that any group that does not believe in our American values, does not respect our liberal democracy and plans to replace our constitution by its totalitarian and fascist manifesto is nothing but an enemy of our freedoms.
Posted by Robert at November 3, 2006 2:18 PM
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"Resistance to integration and assimilation into the mainstream culture is the cornerstone of the Islamist agenda as it helps in the development"
-- from the article above
Except, however, for the most cunning, such as Tariq Ramadan, who urge outward and superficial conformity, and exploiting the new knowledge (for example, of the local language and mores, helpfully supplied in lessons paid for by the anxious Infidel state) in order to burrow further within, or rise higher within, that Infidel society. "Integration and assimilation" need only be outward, as with Tariq Ramadan himself, the acceptable face, apparently, of those who share the views, essentially, of the Muslim Brotherhood, and of the need to remove all obstacles the spread, and domination, of Islam.
Posted by: Hugh![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at November 3, 2006 2:34 PM
This story almost reads like a medical report regarding an infection. How apt-Islamania is like cancer, eating away at the insides of every nation until it is dead. What the vectors of this "infection" don't seem to realize is that we do not desire to live the way they want us to. It has taken centuries for the West to build itself to where it's the leader in every aspect of the world. Why would the West want to live like the third world basket cases from which this infection originated?
Either these idiots get with the program or go back to their cesspools of origin. And take your Western lapdogs with you while you're at it. If we wanted to live the way they want us to we would move to cesspoolia.
Posted by: ISLAMSFORLOSERS at November 3, 2006 2:44 PM
"There is no doubt that a community that allows a number of closed communities to develop in its midst loses its social cohesiveness and becomes dysfunctional."
Well, not really. It all depends on the nature of the closed community. There are the Quakers in America, which contradicts the above. I'm sure there are many other closed communities - the mormons perhaps. It is only when a "closed community" is ideologically disposed to violence and supremacism that strife occurs. The quakers, and the mormons, even with their polygamy - which they seem to keep entirely to themselves with no wish to spread to the wider culture - can be tolerated; Sharia cannot.
at November 3, 2006 3:01 PM
"Except, however, for the most cunning, such as Tariq Ramadan, who urge outward and superficial conformity, and exploiting the new knowledge (for example, of the local language and mores, helpfully supplied in lessons paid for by the anxious Infidel state) in order to burrow further within, or rise higher within, that Infidel society."
The correct implication here is that the social confrontation aspect of the conflict is only the most obvious front the battle is taking place on. The other is much more insidious, and will require very stringent profiling and detection measures in regard to immigration in western countries. Elected officials willing to face the political fallout from these measures must be supported (if there are any).
at November 3, 2006 3:05 PM
i agree with redwine
"What German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has said is true not only about the immigrants in Germany but about every immigrant group in the world. He said that while all levels of government must do what they can, immigrants themselves must also realize that they have to integrate."
I am totally pro the fact that chineses mantain their glorious culture (their dragon-festivity, their language etc, and they achieved that WITHOUT asking a single penny to the local government).
So let's make a divide between other cultures that are "closed" but pose NO threat to society (like the amish) and people that NO matter how integrated they DO always pose a threat to society.
Posted by: StillFedUp at November 3, 2006 3:31 PM
‘The reactions of the western governments to these events suggest that they have finally decided to fight back and reclaim the open societies from the grip of those who refuse to acknowledge the centrality of the western values of tolerance, fair play and liberal democracy.’
No, they have chosen an easy target with which they can look proactive while they keep the borders open to every scumbag in the world who fancies a free house.
The veil debate is utter nonsense. Do you think the jihadis will give a damn if their property is forced to uncover? The war will continue the same as always.
Until we can repatriate passport holders with terrorist convictions we will get nowhere.
at November 3, 2006 3:38 PM
"Well, not really. It all depends on the nature of the closed community. "
I have to agree on this one. In Nordic countries there is a Lutheran sect called Laestadianism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laestadian) who are a closed community and believe that they are the ones that go to Heaven and others will go to Hell.
In Laestadianism the ones belonging to the sect form a Kingdom of God on Earth. In addition, Laestadians don't practise birth control and it is not unusual for a Laestadian family to have ten children or more.
However, what distinguishes the Laestadians from Muslims is the fact that the former are fiercely loyal to the state. Even though some of their central teachings contradict the ones of the Lutheran Church, Laestadians today remain as members of the church. In addition, they do not seek to subjugate the non-Laestadians to their rule but contribute to the polical system of their host society.
The Laestadians reject those who leave Laestadianism. For example, children of Laestadian family who no longer wish to be part of the congregation are closed outside the community. However, they are not killed like Muslim apostates or females who have disgraced the family honor.
So, in fact, any closed community is not a threat to the state.
Posted by: Saatanan Islam at November 3, 2006 3:46 PM
Did you know that your average jihadi is terrified of dogs? They hate them with a passion. I suppose in third world countries dogs bite and carry Rabies and Tetanus.
I remember walking my mothers Doberman when I was a teenager and the path would clear as I walked by with a so called devil dog. My mothers dog as died unfortunately, but I am keeping on the family tradition and I now have my own Doberman.
I read that Muslims in Preston commented specifically about the white youths having terrible dogs with them. I will make an educated guess based on the fact that my dad comes from Preston that those youths had Staffordshire Bull Terriers and Lurchers.
Anyway the Romans understood the value of large and aggressive dogs in combat and would use them to great effect.
Dobermans for the win!
Posted by: Mert at November 3, 2006 4:20 PM
The best thing the government can do for these people who refuse to assimilate, is , stop supporting them and deport them. No arguing, no whining and crying, just deport.
It needs to be that way whether we support them in our countries or any muslim country in which we support.
It's not fair to them to be unhappy and they can be happier in their homelands. It's not fair to us who work for a living to support lazy mental people.
Posted by: freewoman at November 3, 2006 4:22 PM
"Did you know that your average jihadi is terrified of dogs? They hate them with a passion. I suppose in third world countries dogs bite and carry Rabies and Tetanus."
it's muslims who have rabies and tetanus
Posted by: StillFedUp at November 3, 2006 4:28 PM
Dr. Sayyed,
I hope you'll take the time to respond to my query.
How do you, as a Muslim, rationalize in your own mind, those passages that the Islamists themselves cite, with apparent authority, from the very same Islamic texts which guide both you and them, to justify their thinking and behavior?
What makes UBL and Ayman al Zawahari wrong, and you right?
Posted by: PRCS at November 3, 2006 4:28 PM
24-year old Muslim teaching assistant of the Church of England school in West Yorkshire refused to remove her veil when teaching the children. She also refused to work with men.
well give her a choice take off the veil or go back were she came from the same with all the imagants that refuze to learn the laguage and intergrate give them a time limit of say 7 years to do so
and redwine quoting
"It all depends on the nature of the closed community. There are the Quakers in America, which contradicts the above. I'm sure there are many other closed communities - the mormons perhaps. It is only when a "closed community" is ideologically disposed to violence and supremacism that strife occurs. The quakers, and the mormons, even with their polygamy - which they seem to keep entirely to themselves with no wish to spread to the wider culture - can be tolerated; Sharia cannot".
just were in the blazes did you get the idia quakers are a closed community ?? since when we intergate and react with scocity you might be thinking of the amish in pa that are a closed group that keep to them self anyone is welcome to attend the evagelical quacker church or attend a silent meeting
at November 3, 2006 4:47 PM
Salami from Qaradawi!!
What would happen to an Aussie Muslim who wanted to leave the cult of Islam?
Dr. Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, a world-renowned scholar and head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, president of the International Union for Muslim Scholars and participant in the InterFaith Cultural Organization says the same thing Mohammad said:
"Whoever changes his religion, then kill him."
In the good doctor's words:
"The greatest kind of danger that faces Muslims is that which threatens their moral aspect of existence, i.e., their belief. The ugliest intrigue the enemies of Islam have plotted against Islam has been to try to lure its followers away from it; they have even used force for this purpose.
"The third and most dangerous and cunning kind is the secular invasion, which still plays its role in the Muslim world, sometimes openly, and sometimes in disguise.
"The duty of the Muslim community -- in order to preserve its identity -- is to combat apostasy in all its forms and wherefrom it comes, giving it no chance to pervade in the Muslim world.
That is why the Muslim jurists (including the four main schools of Sunni and Shia jurisprudence) agree that apostates must be executed."
http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2006/11/death_to_the_apostates_if_it_i.php
Have a Nice Weekend!
Posted by: Ynkedoodl2 at November 3, 2006 5:48 PM
Tashbih Sayyed - Thank you for this well-written article.
Posted by: Josephine at November 3, 2006 7:32 PM
This article reminds me of something that was linked to via Small Dead Animals:
"Canadian Muslims Outraged over Treatment by Rogers Cable
"Email from Rogers Executive to Canadian Muslims Shows Lack of Understanding
"Canadian Muslims Feel Marginalized and Ghettoized by Rogers Cable"
And that's just the headline, folks. The language is so inflammatory and outrageous, it's unbelievable.
Posted by: Josephine at November 3, 2006 7:52 PM
“…and most of the moderate Muslims agree with him.”
Mr. Sayyed,
Some questions please. As a Muslim, how do you define “moderate?” What line, or lines, and how fine are those lines that divide moderate from immoderate? I ask because you say “most” moderates agree with Mr. Blair’s view of the veil. Why, in your opinion, would moderates be against integration into their host communities, thereby improving their lives and the health of their nation?
003.028
YUSUFALI: Let not the believers Take for friends or helpers Unbelievers rather than believers: if any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah: except by way of precaution, that ye may Guard yourselves from them. But Allah cautions you (To remember) Himself; for the final goal is to Allah.
003.118
YUSUFALI: O ye who believe! Take not into your intimacy those outside your ranks: They will not fail to corrupt you. They only desire your ruin: Rank hatred has already appeared from their mouths: What their hearts conceal is far worse. We have made plain to you the Signs, if ye have wisdom.
004.089
YUSUFALI: They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah (From what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks;-
004.144
YUSUFALI: O ye who believe! Take not for friends unbelievers rather than believers: Do ye wish to offer Allah an open proof against yourselves?
005.051
YUSUFALI: O ye who believe! take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: They are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them. Verily Allah guideth not a people unjust.
005.057
YUSUFALI: O ye who believe! take not for friends and protectors those who take your religion for a mockery or sport,- whether among those who received the Scripture before you, or among those who reject Faith; but fear ye Allah, if ye have faith (indeed).
O ye who believe…moderate?
The Qur’an says don’t integrate, don’t help, don’t make friends. The moderation you allude to sounds so…well, unIslamic.
at November 3, 2006 9:02 PM
Mert, they hate dogs because their despicable "prophet" hated dogs. Got nothin to do with rabies.
Posted by: Infidel33 at November 4, 2006 12:07 PM
Fair enough,
I've tested the dog hate theory a couple of times recently and whether they are scared of Rabies or Mo, the effect is still shock and awe at the sight of a barking Doberman.
So I still say Dobermans for the win.
Posted by: Mert at November 4, 2006 1:50 PM
Answer my questions please.
Posted by: butterfly at November 4, 2006 10:01 PM
I would very much like to hear your answer to PRCS's question too.
Posted by: butterfly at November 4, 2006 10:20 PM
The Mind Behind the Veil.....
Could there be a MIND behind the veil ??
To have a mind or not to have any, that is the question...
Posted by: Icarus_Project at November 5, 2006 10:37 AM
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