tagged: America USA drones Pakistan Iraq war soldiers Islamophobia FBI Barack Obama immigrants
8 Stories Buried By the Corporate Media That You Need to Know About
Thanks to the anon who recommended I read this.
December 15, 2011 | Not all news stories are treated equally.
As 2011 comes to a close, we will see lists of the year’s most memorable events and most important people, as is the pattern every year. But not all stories are created equal. When the corporate media bury significant developments in the back pages of the paper or the second to last paragraph of an article, it’s easy for stories to go unnoticed.
As usual, this year was packed with critical, newsworthy and insufficiently covered stories that should have, but didn’t, make the front page. Below are eight explosive must-read stories of 2011 that you may have missed.
1) Our Planet Saw the Largest Increase in Carbon Emissions Since the Industrial Revolution
Global emissions of carbon dioxide increased 5.9 percent in 2010, the largest increase on record, according to Global Carbon Project, an international group of scientists tracking the numbers. This increase, reports the New York Times, is “almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution, and the largest percentage increase since 2003.”
Another study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, traces an estimated three-quarters of the planet’s warming since 1950 to human activities. On top of that, the World Meteorological Organization warned that 10 of the hottest years ever recorded have occurred in the last 15 years, with temperatures this year registering as the 10th highest on record.
It’s obvious that the world is getting warmer at an accelerating rate and it’s our fault. What are world leaders going to do about it? Wait another eight years to cut emissions.
These statistics were released before last week’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, which ended with an agreement to kick the can down the road – they will negotiate a new climate treaty by 2015, which would postpone emission cuts until 2020.
To avoid the most devastating effects of climate change, we must limit the earth’s warming to 2°C. For that to happen, emission volumes cannot exceed 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide. Since emissions have already reached 390 ppm, higher than any other time in recorded history, the International Energy Agency warns that action cannot be delayed past 2017. Based on the Durbin agreement, emissions won’t be cut until 2020.
Unless something drastic pushes our leaders to change the destructive path we’re on, 2011 may go down in the history books as the year that humans irreversibly screwed themselves and the planet.
2) Widespread Trafficking Of Iraqi Women And Girls Thanks To The Iraq War
Since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, over 100,000 Iraqis have been killed and another 4.4 million displaced, leaving many women and girls widowed or orphaned.
As a result of the conflict more than 50,000 Iraqi women find themselves trapped in sexual servitude in Syria and Jordan, giving rise to a lucrative and growing sex industry that feeds off the chaos from the Iraq war.
Women and girls inside Iraq fare no better, often working in brothels run by female pimps. In an interview with the Inter Press Service, Rania, a former trafficker who now works as an undercover researcher for a women’s support group in Iraq, detailed a visit to “a house in Baghdad’s Al-Jihad district, where girls as young as 16 were held to cater exclusively to the U.S. military. The brothel’s owner told Rania that an Iraqi interpreter employed by the Americans served as the go-between, transporting girls to and from the U.S. airport base.”
Although human trafficking is illegal in Iraq, the country lacks a robust criminal justice system to enforce the law. Sadly, the victims of trafficking and prostitution are often the ones who are punished.
3) More Iraq Veterans Committed Suicide Last Year Than Active-Duty Troops Died In Combat
In 2010, 468 active duty and reserve troops committed suicide while 462 died in combat, marking the second year in a row that more US soldiers killed themselves than died at war, according to Congressional Quarterly’s John Donnelly.
Over the past decade, over 2,000 soldiers have taken their own lives, yet they receive little attention in our corporate media. In August the New York Times ran a story with the celebratory headline, “Iraq War Marks First Month With No U.S. Military Deaths.” That same month, the Department of Defense reported 19 possible suicides among active-duty soldiers. In July, that number reached a record high of 32. America’s decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan leave troops with deep emotional scars that can be just as dangerous as a combat wound. Perhaps it’s time we gave them the attention they deserve.
4) Drone Strikes Kill Innocent Civilians, Not Just ‘Militants’
After Jon Brennan, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, claimed in June that no civilians had been killed in US drone attacks in nearly a year, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that at least 45 civilians were killed in 10 US attacks during that period.
Overall, drone strikes in Pakistan have killed 780 civilians, including 175 children. The bureau documents 309 CIA drone strikes carried out since 2004 that have killed as many as 2,997 people. Over 85 percent were launched by the Obama administration, an average of one strike every four days. Yet the casualties of the US drone war rarely receive mention in the corporate media, except when described as “Islamic militants” or “suspected terrorists.” [note: suspected terrorists = anyone] This is challenged not only by the bureau’s data, but also by gruesome photographs of drone victims taken by local journalists.
The Guardian described the images captured by Noor Behram, a journalist from the North Waziristan region of Pakistan, whose work appeared in an exhibition at London’s Beaconsfield gallery in August:
The photographs make for difficult viewing and leave no doubt about the destructive power of the Hellfire missiles unleashed: a boy with the top of his head missing, a severed hand, flattened houses, the parents of children killed in a strike. The chassis is all that remains of a car in one photo, another shows the funeral of a seven-year-old child. There are pictures, too, of the cheap rubber flip-flops worn by children and adults, which often survive: signs that life once existed there. A 10-year-old boy’s body, prepared for burial, shows lipstick on him and flowers in his hair – a mother’s last loving touch.
Spencer Ackerman recently featured a number of Behram’s disturbing photographs at Wired, which can be seen here.
5) Record Number Of US Kids Face Hunger and Homelessness
A report released by National Center on Family Homelessness finds that one in 45 US children (1.6 million) are homeless, the majority under the age of seven. The Christian Science Monitor reports, “The number of homeless children in 2010 exceeded even the total in 2006, when thousands of families displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita produced a historic spike in homelessness.”
It doesn’t stop there. According to recent figures released by the USDA, 17.2 million American households (14.5 percent) are “food insecure,” one of the highest recorded rates since surveys were first conducted in 1995. As a result, 16.2 million American children – one in five— face the threat of hunger. According to emergency room doctors in cities around the country, this is leading to a dramatic spike in malnourishment in babies.
Over the summer, the Boston Globe reported on shocking levels of infant malnourishment in Massachusetts. Doctors at the Boston Medical Center (BMC) reported seeing “more hungry and dangerously thin young children in the emergency room than at any time in more than a decade of surveying families.” Pediatricians in other large cities, including Baltimore, Little Rock, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia, have also seen a rise in infant and child malnourishment since 2008.
BMC doctors also warn that “rising chronic hunger threatens to leave scores of infants and toddlers with lasting learning and developmental problems.”
The Globe likened child malnourishment and hunger among Boston’s poor to levels seen in the “developing world.”
6) Prisoners Are People Too
This summer, more than 6,000 California prison inmates went on a month-long hunger strike in solidarity with those held in solitary confinement at the Secure Housing Unit in California’s Pelican Bay State Prison. Pelican Bay is notorious for holding nearly half of its 1,111 prisoners in solitary confinement for longer than 10 years. The strike was suspended in July when inmates entered negotiations with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). They expected change, but prisoners who organized and participated in the strike were instead retaliated against by prison guards.
By September 26, the strike was back on, with 12,000 inmates throughout California and out-of-state facilities participating. But those numbers quickly dwindled as the CDCR disciplined those involved by limiting access to visiting family members and isolating participants from other prisoners. A string of prisoner suicides committed by inmates who participated in the hunger strikes followed. Colorlines’ Julianne Hing reported:
In recent months Alex Machado and Johnny Owens Vick, who were both housed in Pelican Bay’s notorious solitary confinement Security Housing Unit, and Hozel Alanzo Blanchard, who was incarcerated at Calipatria State Prison’s Administrative Segregation Unit, all committed suicide. Prisoner advocates say all three participated in a statewide hunger strike this summer to protest, among other things, prison discipline policies intended to identify prison gang members which punish innocent, unaffiliated inmates with decades of confinement to segregated units.
7) US Deports 46,000 Parents, Kids Left Behind In Foster Care
Under the Obama administration, deportations of immigrants have skyrocketed, with a record 397,000 people removed in 2011 alone and families torn apart as a result. According to an investigation carried out by Colorlines, the United States deported over 46,000 parents whose children were U.S. citizens between January and June of this year. With their parents detained or deported, at least 5,100 children have been placed in foster care, and many may never see their parents again. Our draconian immigration system is creating orphans. Investigative reporter Seth Freed Wessler writes:
These children, many of whom should never have been separated from their parents in the first place, face often insurmountable obstacles to reunifying with their mothers and fathers. Though child welfare departments are required by federal law to reunify children with any parents who are able to provide for the basic safety of their children, detention makes this all but impossible. Then, once parents are deported, families are often separated for long periods. Ultimately, child welfare departments and juvenile courts too often move to terminate the parental rights of deportees and put children up for adoption, rather than attempt to unify the family as they would in other circumstances.
8) FBI Teaches Agents That Muslims Are Violent Radicals
In September, Spencer Ackerman reported some disturbing findings about the FBI’s counterterrorism training materials. He revealed, among other things, that the FBI’s Training Division depicts all Muslims as potential terrorists. Ackerman writes:
The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that “mainstream” American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult leader”; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a ‘funding mechanism for combat.
At the Bureau’s training ground in Quantico, Virginia, agents are shown a chart contending that the more “devout” a Muslim, the more likely he is to be “violent.” Those destructive tendencies cannot be reversed, an FBI instructional presentation adds: “Any war against non-believers is justified” under Muslim law; a “moderating process cannot happen if the Koran continues to be regarded as the unalterable word of Allah.”
Ackerman also came upon an alarming description of Sunni Muslims, which is included in the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces mandatory online orientation material:
Sunni Muslims have been prolific in spawning numerous and varied fundamentalist extremist terrorist organizations. Sunni core doctrine and end state have remained the same and they continue to strive for Sunni Islamic domination of the world to prove a key Quranic assertion that no system of government or religion on earth can match the Quran’s purity and effectiveness for paving the road to God.
The FBI immediately apologized for the derogatory training materials, promising to comprehensively review all training materials. But it turns out that the FBI’s counterterrorism culture is soaked in Islamophobia, as demonstrated by the inclusion of books by Islamophobic authors Robert Spencer and Daniel Pipes in the FBI Quantico library.
This comes on top of a troubling pattern in counterterrorism law enforcement training — the use of Islamophobic ”terrorism consultants” to school agents on the Islamic faith. According to the Washington Monthly, this “growing profession” of consultants rakes in taxpayer cash to educate our cops about evils of Islam. One example is Walid Shoebat, who reportedly told an audience at a counterterrorism conference last year that the way to solve the threat of Islamic extremism is to “kill them…including the children.” Shoebat’s extreme denunciations of Islam helped fuel the paranoia of right-wing terrorist Anders Breivik, who massacred some 90 people in Norway earlier this year. According to the American Prospect, Shoebat is cited in Breivik’s manifesto 15 times.
Rania Khalek is an associate writer for AlterNet. Follow her on Twitter @RaniaKhalek.
Aut dosce, aut disce, aut discede: Growing hate against the South Asian Community in USA
- On December 14th in Texas, a 61 yr old Pakistani named Yaqab Bham was attacked when doing an ADT home security installation inspection. Attacked by the
- home owner after being asked questions of where Bham was from, he had his ear bitten off and 10 broken ribs. [full story]
- On December 8th, a Hindu Sri Lankan professor in Champaign, Illinois named Dhammika Dharmapala was stabbed in his throat at a train station by a man who wanted to “save his country.” [full story]
- On December 4th, a turbaned Sikh man was stabbed in his upper torso at the Fresno airport. The man that attacked him was a 26 year old white man and was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and possession of a knife in an airport. [full story]
- On November 25th, a 32 year old Hindu man originally from Calcutta was attacked in San Jose in the grocery store parking lot. Six of his teeth were knocked out. His attackers spit on him and called him a terrorist. The attackers have not been found. [full story]
Most of the crimes mentioned above are not currently considered hate crimes by local police and local advocates are working hard to make the crimes recognized as such. It’s difficult to imagine, especially seeing the crimes listed side by side, how the incidents were not fueled by islamophobic and xenophobic hate.
(continued)
Read how racism and hate against the South Asian Community in America continues to grow stronger and more violent. This is disturbing. If you have seen Aisha, please make sure to contact the TIPS HOTLINE at 816-474-TIPS as soon as possible.
tagged: Guantanamo Bay injustice islamophobia muslims racism rape torture violence detainees
Justice Denied: Voices from Guantanamo.
“The men in this video were held at Guantánamo for years without charge and denied any meaningful opportunity to challenge the legality of their detention. But now they are finally free. This is their story.”
Hear another story of an Ex-Guantanamo Bay detainee here & read “Real lives” testimonies from Guantánamo detainees, their families and loved ones.
Also watch “I Lost My Eyes” – Omar Khadr Interrogations at Guantanamo Bay:
“At the time of this interrogation in Guantánamo Bay, February 2003, the boy, Omar Khadr, a Canadian national, was barely 16, yet he had already been in military custody for seven months. Now 25, he remains in the US detention centre, though he will soon be transferred to a prison in Canada in deal which led him to plead guilty last year to war crimes.
As far as the Pentagon is concerned, Khadr’s case is closed. But a film about his interrogation, released in the UK this week, raises a series of deeply troubling questions. Firstly, it asks, why did the US try a child, captured in Afghanistan aged 15, when UN treaties decree underage combatants be treated as victims? How reliable was a confession Khadr says was extracted under torture and, it emerged later, tacit threats of gang rape?
The film, Four Days Inside Guantánamo, is released in the UK on Friday. It even casts doubt on the Pentagon’s claims that Khadr was responsible for killing a US solder, the incident for which he was tried.” (Read more here)
(Source: leptiir)
Alleged Queens firebomber wanted to massacre Muslims in mosque, prosecutors say
THE UNHINGED Queens pyromaniac who unleashed a scary New Year’s Day firebombing spree had planned to take out “as many Muslims and Arabs as possible” by lobbing Molotov cocktails at worshipers inside a mosque, prosecutors said.
Ray Lazier Lengend, 40, allegedly told cops he had planned to inflict “as much damage as possible” by hurling all five of his firebombs from the balcony of Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Center onto the crowd below.
The hateful bomb-hurler, who is under psychiatric observation at Bellevue Hospital center, flat-out told detectives he did not like Muslims or Arabs, prosecutors said.
“This is a message to anyone who does this in the future,” said Imam Maan Al-Sahlani, leader of Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Center, where Lengend planned to inflict major casualties. “It’s a good message that justice will come for you, the police will come for you.”
The imam applauded prosecutors’ use of the hate crime statute and hoped it would deter further anti-Muslim crimes.
“Obviously there is something wrong with him,” Al-Sahlani said.
Lengend, an unemployed truck driver from Queens Village, will face a judge via video arraignment Thursday from his bed at Bellevue.
He faces 18 charges including arson as a hate crime and weapon possession for throwing Starbucks Frappuccino bottles filled with gasoline at four occupied Jamaica buildings — two of them places of worship.
tagged: Anders Behring Brevik anders breivik terrorism terrorist Norway Europe islamophobia
![Anders Behring Breivik, who inspired him?
In the wake of the horrific Oslo bombing and subsequent mass murder at a Norwegian Labor party youth camp, the ideological motivation of Anders Behring Breivik has come under some very close scrutiny, and a debate is in progress about how much the anti-Muslim bloggers who supposedly inspired the killer have to take responsibility. Robert Spencer, an associate of David Horowitz and his misnamed “Freedom Center,” has come under the media microscope, along with Pamela “Shrieking Harpy” Geller – who used the killings as an opportunity to promote her new book – and in particular the “Gates of Vienna” (GoV) blog, which published many essays by the now-infamous blogger known as “Fjordman.” All of these charming folks were cited in Breivik’s manifesto [.pdf], which was released hours before the crime. (Read it all here)
The Guardian says:
Breivik’s Facebook page suggests he held strong Christian beliefs, enjoyed playing World of Warcraft fantasy games and was a fan of the psychologist William James and philosopher John Stuart Mill whose treatise On Liberty warns against the “tyranny of the majority”. (Read more here)
The West Has a Double Standard in Terrorism Cases:
“…Instead of focusing on Breivik’s stated identity as a right-wing Christian whose lengthy manifesto called for a Christian war to defend Europe against the threat of Muslim domination, Western media have focused on his hatred of immigration and multiculturalism (except The New York Times, which first called him a “Christian extremist,” but has since apparently changed his moniker to “anti-immigrant extremist” or “anti-Islamic extremist”). In contrast, although President George W. Bush always insisted that his “war on terror” was not a “war on Islam,” many Western media often refer to al-Qaeda as “an Islamist terrorist group” and some commentators speculate on whether Islam is an inherently violent religion, or so imply or even state.
Yet Western media sweep under the rug the religion-related motives of Breivik, Eric Rudolph, the U.S. abortion bomber, and Adolf Hitler, who clearly believed his Christian God wanted him to slaughter millions of Jews. These individuals are instead usually referred to as deranged or racist. These certainly might be apt characterizations — and we might even add brutal and ruthless — but the main point is that religious motives are downplayed in these cases, yet are accentuated in the case of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups that are Islamic.
The Western media should be more consistent and honest in their coverage. Neither Christianity nor Islam, in most of their modern forms, despite violence or brutality in their scriptures written long ago, are inherently prone to violence or the spawning of terrorists. Religious motives played only a secondary role in explaining all of the aforementioned terrorists’ actions. In Breivik’s case, he clearly hated Muslim immigration and multiculturalism and the non-Muslim Norwegians who he thought were fostering them. In the case of al-Qaeda, the root motivation of the attacks is not Islam, but the meddling in and occupation of Muslim lands by the United States and its Western allies. So stated religious identification may play some role in the attacks, but not a dominant one.”
Both Muslims & Christians can use alot of time refuting the belief that violence & terrorism is allowed in their religions. I can guarntee you that in Islam, killing civillians is not allowed, I’m sure Christians can say this too about their own religion too. Instead of focusing on wheter on not religions are violent we should focus on stopping such terrorist attacks from happening again. And we cannot do that, if we believe & have the same way of thinking as the guy above. If you truly want to know, what kind of religion Islam is, ask a muslim, instead of taking your knowledge from right-wing blogs. It’s exactly the same as taking your knowledge about Judaism from a Nazi-blogger.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxlep4zHdw1r4xznko1_500.jpg)
Anders Behring Breivik, who inspired him?
In the wake of the horrific Oslo bombing and subsequent mass murder at a Norwegian Labor party youth camp, the ideological motivation of Anders Behring Breivik has come under some very close scrutiny, and a debate is in progress about how much the anti-Muslim bloggers who supposedly inspired the killer have to take responsibility. Robert Spencer, an associate of David Horowitz and his misnamed “Freedom Center,” has come under the media microscope, along with Pamela “Shrieking Harpy” Geller – who used the killings as an opportunity to promote her new book – and in particular the “Gates of Vienna” (GoV) blog, which published many essays by the now-infamous blogger known as “Fjordman.” All of these charming folks were cited in Breivik’s manifesto [.pdf], which was released hours before the crime. (Read it all here)
The Guardian says:
Breivik’s Facebook page suggests he held strong Christian beliefs, enjoyed playing World of Warcraft fantasy games and was a fan of the psychologist William James and philosopher John Stuart Mill whose treatise On Liberty warns against the “tyranny of the majority”. (Read more here)
The West Has a Double Standard in Terrorism Cases:
“…Instead of focusing on Breivik’s stated identity as a right-wing Christian whose lengthy manifesto called for a Christian war to defend Europe against the threat of Muslim domination, Western media have focused on his hatred of immigration and multiculturalism (except The New York Times, which first called him a “Christian extremist,” but has since apparently changed his moniker to “anti-immigrant extremist” or “anti-Islamic extremist”). In contrast, although President George W. Bush always insisted that his “war on terror” was not a “war on Islam,” many Western media often refer to al-Qaeda as “an Islamist terrorist group” and some commentators speculate on whether Islam is an inherently violent religion, or so imply or even state.
Yet Western media sweep under the rug the religion-related motives of Breivik, Eric Rudolph, the U.S. abortion bomber, and Adolf Hitler, who clearly believed his Christian God wanted him to slaughter millions of Jews. These individuals are instead usually referred to as deranged or racist. These certainly might be apt characterizations — and we might even add brutal and ruthless — but the main point is that religious motives are downplayed in these cases, yet are accentuated in the case of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups that are Islamic.
The Western media should be more consistent and honest in their coverage. Neither Christianity nor Islam, in most of their modern forms, despite violence or brutality in their scriptures written long ago, are inherently prone to violence or the spawning of terrorists. Religious motives played only a secondary role in explaining all of the aforementioned terrorists’ actions. In Breivik’s case, he clearly hated Muslim immigration and multiculturalism and the non-Muslim Norwegians who he thought were fostering them. In the case of al-Qaeda, the root motivation of the attacks is not Islam, but the meddling in and occupation of Muslim lands by the United States and its Western allies. So stated religious identification may play some role in the attacks, but not a dominant one.”
Both Muslims & Christians can use alot of time refuting the belief that violence & terrorism is allowed in their religions. I can guarntee you that in Islam, killing civillians is not allowed, I’m sure Christians can say this too about their own religion too. Instead of focusing on wheter on not religions are violent we should focus on stopping such terrorist attacks from happening again. And we cannot do that, if we believe & have the same way of thinking as the guy above. If you truly want to know, what kind of religion Islam is, ask a muslim, instead of taking your knowledge from right-wing blogs. It’s exactly the same as taking your knowledge about Judaism from a Nazi-blogger.
Islamophobia Sweeps Europe
The continent which produced imperialism, slavery and Hitler now produces Geert Wilders. Belgium and France ban the burqah, a British MP has stated he will refuse to speak to constituents who refuse to reveal their face and Dutch Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders declares his aim to launch his Stop Islam movement in five countries. It is Europe, not the Moslems, who are seeking a culture clash.
Europe never ceases to amaze with its abject arrogance, its imperious imperialistic policies and its disgusting demagogy. The continent which produced, imperialism, slavery and Hitler now produces Geert Wilders. The victims this time are not the Jews, but Muslims and as was the case with Hitler, the horrific, racist, genocidal Nazi movement was not only endemic to Germany but had its metastases spring up all over the Continent in similar movements.
Like Hitler, in his revolting, cruel and totally unacceptable campaign against the Jews, Geert Wilders wishes to internationalise his movement, called “Stop Islam – defend freedom”. “Freedom” is a buzz-word much used and abused by those who have an agenda, used against the Soviet Union by those whose own practices were far from peaceful or well-intentioned: “Freedom” was used by those who supported repressive Fascist dictators in Africa and Latin America, “Freedom” was used by those who attacked Fidel Castro and then tried to assassinate him 700 times.
So not surprisingly, this odious racist called Wilders takes the same word in vain to further his cause. And precisely what is it?
“I have a problem with Islamic ideology, the Islamic culture, because I feel that the more Islam we get in our societies, the less freedom that we get” (Wilders, in London, 2009). Now for a man who states that he is not a racist, how near to the mark is that?
What is alarming is that Wilders has mounted passages from the Koran and shown them in Islamist terrorist attacks in the film Fitna, and what is even more alarming is that he has garnered support among the Dutch electorate, his PVV Party for Freedom gaining 24 seats in the Dutch Parliament (out of a total of 150), making it the third largest political party, in June’s election.
In the near future, Wilders promises to take his movement to the USA, Canada, France, Germany and the UK, where the Conservative Member of Parliament for Kettering, Philip Hollobone, has declared that he will refuse to speak to women who refuse to remove their burqahs.
What we are dealing with here is abject and utter pig-headed ignorance in a European holier-than-thou top-down attitude, this from the Continent that went globe-trotting “civilising” the world and its peoples with the Christian Bible and the bullet. Jesus Christ was not the only prophet, Christianity is one of the many religions, one of the many paths to God. It does not have a monopoly on the truth, it is not the only Word.
And if Europeans could strut around the Middle East, colonising vast swathes of Islamic territory in the past, imposing their will as they siphoned off resources, then why should Moslems be told what they can or cannot wear today?
Asking a Moslem woman to remove her burqah is an insult, given that she has chosen to wear it to hide her body in respect for her husband and if she has chosen to do that freely, out of her own volition, who has the right to tell her to act otherwise?
Just because an Islamic woman wears a burqah does not mean she is wearing a bomb belt under it any more than the man who is dressed as an Anglican bishop is gay or the Catholic priest is a paedophile.
Islam is a religion of peace; Islamist fundamentalism is something entirely different and it is important to separate the two issues, respecting Islam and its wonderful culture, including its laws, lores and traditions so as not to make dangerous parallels between two extremes which do not exist, then tar everyone with one and the same brush and create another wave of racism in a Continent whose equation appears to bear this as a constant factor.
If it is now a European value to tell people what they can and cannot wear, then how telling a statement this is on a Continent which has imposed the E.U. on its citizens in a most undemocratic fashion and how ominous it is that an odious creature such as Wilders can be seriously contemplating the internationalism of his racist priggish ignorance instead of being where he belongs – in the wilderness, far away from humanity.
Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY
PRAVDA.Ru
Also read Rise of right-wing extremism rattles Europe &Increasing Islamophobia in Europe dangerous trend.
