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 Another Inconvenient Truth >> Aki Nawaz “Go Join Hezbollah!" >> Amina Nawaz So, You Wanna Change the World? >> Sarah Waseem 10 Books To Read Before Going To University >> Mujadad Zaman Still Learning to Tread on Hallowed Ground >> Omar Fraser A Prophet for All >> Abdul-Rehman Malik Emerging from the Rubble: A Letter from New York City >> Zeeshan Suhail and Muntasir Sattar Istanbul’s Illuminated Ramadan Nights >> Abdal Hakim Murad The Pain of Panjshir >> Chris Sands A People Coming Apart at the Seams >> David Lepeska A Cynical Plan to Rebuild Islam >> Louay Safi Suffer The Little Children >> Tasneem Osgood Dangerous Denial on Darfur >> Muhammed Abdelmoteleb Is the Glass Half Full of Hope or Despair? >> Fozia Bora The Mother of All Muslim Organisations >> Mullah Charles Bala Subramaniam Narasimha Rao A Pious Mole >> Mudasser Ali Living on the Edge >> Tauhid Pasha The Silly Season >> Dal Nun Strong Walk in the Old Paths >> Daoud Rosser-Owen A Modern-Day Ibn Battuta - A tribute to Thomas Omar Abercrombie (1930-2006) >> Shiraz Sheikh “How can you hear a million words from a million mouths at the same time?” >> Shan Khan A Triumph of Myth >> Abdul-Rehman Malik The Timbuktu Charter: “We will be like ferocious lions” >> Muammar al-Gaddafi Updike’s Terrorist: An(other) American Folly >> Raneem Azzam A Crooked Commission >> Sunny Hundal Aural Remembrance Whitewashing White Terror Veil-Gate - The End of Tolerance? Organic Iftars, Unholy Garbage iPod vs iMuslim Formula One Fatwas Vox Populi |
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The End of
Tolerance? Page 14 As we go to press, “Veil-Gate” is in full swing and Britain’s pundits have never had it so good. Thousands of column inches have been laid at the altar of six square inches of fabric and there is no end in sight. Given the otherwise boring news agenda – a war going wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan, the catastrophic effects of global warming and the declining state of basic services, (yawn, ho hum) – Jack Straw’s veil comments have given many an op-ed page writer a way to earn their keep. It would be really funny, except it’s not. Especially when the bile, vitriol and barely disguised loathing of hyperventilating columnists and self-righteous politicians spills onto the streets. Here’s a quick round-up of how otherwise “tolerant” Britain behaves when it’s socially acceptable to take the gloves off: The day Straw issued his pained desire to look at the faces of veiled Muslim women, the Islamic Centre in Falkirk was firebombed. The day after, a Muslim woman was assaulted near Canning Town Tube Station in East London, had her hijab pulled off and was thrown to the ground. A Liverpool woman had her niqab torn off at a bus stop and young Muslim wearing a niqab in Straw’s Blackburn constituency was verbally abused by three youths. The Socialist Worker reported on two young Leicester men who were charged in connection with a brutal attack on two Muslims. The alleged attackers, who are both 17 years old, were jointly charged with two counts of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. On 15 October, Imam Mohammed Shamsuddin, 53, of the Dawat ul Islam centre in Glasgow’s west end as punched, kicked and assaulted with a chair and other office equipment by a man who entered the mosque. Racist graffiti was daubed on a house on Teesside. Mosques were attacked in Windsor and Preston. Women in Canterbury and Hackney were verbally abused. So who was it again, Jack, that had trouble dealing with a bit of difference? |