Year: 2004

The number of British Muslims who say they experience discrimination has nearly doubled in the past four years, according to a survey.

Eighty percent of the country’s 1.8 million Muslims say they have been discriminated against because of their faith compared to 45% in 2000 and 35% in 1999, the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) said on Thursday.

Muslim men are now just as likely as women to experience prejudice – a significant change which the IHRC blamed on an increase in the number of police and security checks carried out on Muslim men since the September 11 attacks in 2001.

White British Muslims report more discrimination than any other ethnic group, suggesting Britons are intolerant of people who convert to Islam.

“The anti-terrorism laws are profiling and targeting Muslim men,” Arzu Merali, one of the authors of the report, said. “Our case studies suggest nearly every Muslim man living in an urban area, particularly in London, has either been stopped and searched or knows someone who has.”

Eight percent of the 1200 Muslims questioned in the survey said they experienced some sort of discrimination every day.

Another 8% said it was a weekly problem, 8% described it as monthly, and 55% said they had been discriminated against “on some occasions”.

[Source: Al Jazeera]

The AIPAC spy scandal points to a massive undercover operation.

“In the 1950s, when the cold war was at its height, a series of spectacular espionage scandals

Interesting post over at Lawrence Of Cyberia:

“The truth is that whether the Palestinians under Abu Mazen turn into three million wild-eyed jihadis or three million Mother Teresas, they will not be the deciding factor in whether they remain under Israel’s military rule. The Occupation is going to continue till the Israeli people decide – for reasons of morality or simple cost – that they will finally let go of “Greater Israel” and no longer rule over another people. ”

[Read On: Lawrence Of Cyberia]
[Via: Macvaysia]

The Christian Science Monitor reports that the US Defense Department confirmed the contents of a report by the Defense Science Board that is highly critical of the administration’s efforts in the war on terror and in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather they hate our policies [the report says]. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the long-standing, even increasing, support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and the Gulf states. Thus, when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy.”

[Via: Yenayer]