Bill to restrict niqab scrutinized:

"A National Assembly committee analyzing Bill 94, which would make it illegal for Islamic women to wear the niqab in government offices, schools and hospitals, resumes sitting Tuesday. The hearing will hear from experts on the topic.

Quebec Justice Minister Jean-Marc Fournier has said the bill is “balanced.” But the Parti Quebecois has called for a ban on all ostentatious religious signs, including the hijab Islamic head covering, in the public sector and finds Bill 94 too meek. Islamic groups say Bill 94 singles them out and is discriminatory."

Getting ahead of prison radicalization - The Globe and Mail

More Canadians have been imprisoned on terrorism-related crimes in the past 18 months than used to face such charges over decades. Since October, 2008, 14 Canadians have been found guilty of terror-related acts. Some, like Momin Khawaja, Said Namouh, and Zakaria Amara are likely to spend decades behind bars. If, during that time, they convince even one other inmate to adopt their violent ideology, would their original convictions still be touted as a resounding counterterrorism success? To ensure that getting one terrorist off Canada’s streets does not inadvertently breed two others, we need a counterterrorism strategy that includes our prison policy.

Of course we must adapt U.S. and European lessons to the demographic, cultural and religious specifics of Canadian life; patterns that affect the spread of extremist ideologies within our society in general also affect prisons. But with that in mind, Correctional Service Canada (CSC) should follow the lead of its European counterparts by producing a prison guide on indicators of radicalization and establishing an extremism unit to monitor trends.

We must also deny extremists access to other inmates by a combination of containing radicals within one prison facility, segregating them from the wider population in regular prisons (and from one another) and displacing them frequently within the system. But we must also be alert to convicts who turn away from a terrorist past, because they can help combat the spread of radical ideas to other inmates. It requires a sophisticated understanding of our terrorist prison population and detailed assessments of each inmate.

A Canadian court issued a ruling today on whether Muslim women can be forced to remove their niqab while testifying and, lo and behold, both sides of the debate are happy. That's because the Ontario Court of Appeal determined that a witness is allowed to refuse to bare her face unless -- unless! -- the fairness of the trial depends on it. The judges' ruling reads in part:

There is no getting around the reality that in some cases, particularly those involving trial by jury where a witness's credibility is central to the outcome, a judge will have a difficult decision to make. If, in the specific circumstances, the accused's fair trial right can be honoured only by requiring the witness to remove the niqab, the niqab must be removed if the witness is to testify.

A 32-year-old Muslim woman, who accused her cousin and uncle of sexual abuse when she was a child, sparked the ruling when she refused to remove her veil on the stand. Her lawyer argued, "Really, it's all about making people feel welcome in our judicial system at a time when they're undergoing significant stress -- for example, by being a complainant in a sexual assault case." Indeed, a blanket courtroom ban on veiling could cause Muslim women to avoid the justice system altogether.

Source.

Peter McKay

Defence Minister Peter MacKay has cancelled a public talk by the executive director of the Canadian Islamic Congress, saying his organization is too "extremist."

The Defence Department didn't tell Imam Zijad Delic about the cancellation of Monday's event at National Defence headquarters to mark Islamic History Month. He first heard of it when reporters called him. Delic said he was shocked at the news, especially since he had given a public speech at Foreign Affairs and International Trade in 2008.

The Defence Department's visible minority advisory group had arranged the small event for Monday morning at the National Defence headquarters. Folk dancers from Bosnia and Herzegovina were to perform for 30 minutes; Delic was to speak for 20 minutes; and then there would be more cultural demonstrations.

Zijad Delic

Instead, MacKay's office released a terse statement late Friday saying: "Minister MacKay took the decision to cancel the imam's role based on extremist views promulgated by the Canadian Islamic Congress (which) has declared that Israelis over the age of 18 are legitimate targets of suicide bombers. These types of comments don't support Islamic Heritage, they simply divide Canadians, promulgate hate and they have no place in Monday's celebrations. Instead, Monday's celebrations will focus on the evolution of Islam in the Canadian Forces and the positive contribution of Canada's Muslim community to our society."

Mohammed drawn as a dog by L. Vilks.

Lars Vilks, a conceptual artist from Sweden with a $100,000 bounty on his head, could be found secreted away in a room at the Rittenhouse Hotel Thursday morning, receiving carefully screened visitors from the media.

Vilks is on a weeklong tour of the United States and Canada, speaking about freedom of expression. He had been scheduled to hold forth at the Union League Thursday, but late Wednesday, the event was abruptly called off.

Craig Snider, a Union League member who was hosting the speaker, said that after he realized the visit would require extraordinary security measures to protect Vilks, his associates, and anyone in attendance, "I voluntarily canceled it. I was not prepared to ask the league to take that kind of risk."

Instead, he invited members of the local media to interview Vilks at the Rittenhouse.

The artist's appearance in Ottawa was also called off, but, as of Thursday, stops in Toronto and Boston were still scheduled.

Sify.com:

A plot to target or kidnap British athletes and fans coming to India for the 2010 Commonwealth Games has emerged over their country's support to the war in Afghanistan.

Security sources have warned of "specific intelligence" about a threat by an unnamed Al Qaeda-linked group to take hostages in front of a global television audience.

Reports emerging from Australia suggest a number of countries are worried but will not upgrade travel warnings for fear of angering India.

They said citizens of Australia, the UK, Canada and New Zealand could be targets of a snatch attempt because their countries supported the war in Afghanistan.

Australia has asked fans not to wear national colours and in Britain it has emerged that security forces will work with counterparts from Canada, Australia and New Zealand to protect athletes at every venue.

"It is a serious situation. There is specific intelligence about an attempted hostage snatch. People travelling to India, and particularly Delhi, need to be aware of the risks," The Daily Express quoted a source, as saying.

There are also concerns about Pakistani group Lashker-e-Taiba (LeT) getting into the act, after Michael Leiter, director of the US National Counter-Terrorism Centre, told the US Senate the games would make "an appealing target".

Background: Jihadis appear near CWG.

Salim Mansur on National Post:

Tariq skilfully works to reassure the West he is a Muslim reformer at home politically and culturally in Europe, and Islam is as much Western as a result of Muslim immigration in recent decades as is Christianity and Judaism. He speaks in the tongue of Montesquieu and Rousseau, and invites his Western liberal audience to extend the same courtesy of recognition and respect to Muslims as Christians and Jews. But as the grandson of Al-Banna he speaks to his Muslim audiences the language of his grandfather and father, promotes Islamism and questions the faith of those Muslims who reject it unconditionally. Moreover as a protégé and ally of the Qatar-based MB leader Sheikh al-Qaradawi – notorious for his 2003 Islamist ruling that suicide attacks against Israelis are lawful – Tariq has much dissembling to do to confound his Western audience.

Caroline Fourest, a French journalist who has studied the written and spoken words of Tariq over several years, has written the most detailed biography titled Frere Tariq (an English translation as Brother Tariq is now available). Fourest’s work is invaluable in revealing the adroitness of Tariq hoodwinking Western politicians and journalists, and making them accomplices of MB’s strategy to be recognized as the sole authoritative representative of Islam while spreading Islamism among Muslims in the West.

Tariq counters the charge of doublespeak is evidence of Islamophobia (fear of Islam) in the West. He is abetted in this by the politics of multiculturalism and political correctness, and what is considered to be the requirements of diplomacy between the West and the Muslim world, especially the oil-producing Arab states.

But Muslims with tragic experiences of devastations wrought by Islamism are keenly aware of Tariq’s doublespeak as he engages in family business. Doublespeak and dissembling are the effects when someone strives to reconcile the irreconcilable as Tariq does in insisting on the compatibility of liberal democracy based on individual rights with the requisites of shariah-based rule.

The terrorist group, with links to Al-Qaeda, is training children to "kill infidels", as a new released video shows:

Framegrab from a video which allegedly shows former Toronto resident Omar Hammami indoctrinating young children and telling them to become martyrs in Somalia

"Do you know who I will kill with this gun?" a little boy says into the video camera, waving his toy pistol.
"Who will you kill with this gun?" the cameraman asks.
"The infidels."
The scene appears in a new video by the al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab that shows the Somali militant group indoctrinating children, some of whom appear to be toddlers.
Among those seen in the 28-minute video urging the children to fight and become "martyrs" is a former Toronto resident, Omar Hammami, alias Abu Mansour the American.
The video, distributed on the Internet this week by Al-Shabab's propaganda arm, shows a "children's fair" hosted by Al-Shabab leaders. The boys and girls, identified as the children of "martyrs," are given balloons and snacks and rewarded with toy guns for correctly identifying the late leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, from a picture.

Terrible, hein? Instead of plyting with toys, these boys are taught to dream about killing infidels. And they kill them afterwards: indoctrination from this age is so powerful.

Several days ago, the Olympic Committee banned Iranian football team to play in Youth Olympics because they were wearing the hijab. Islamist Watch posts about the dressing issue at sports:

Relative to most areas of public life, the sports community has proven quite resistant to demands that Islam be accommodated, perhaps because the integrity of competition requires that fixed rules apply to all. FIFA, the global governing body of soccer, is the latest to just say no:

The secretary-general of Iran's National Olympic Committee has called on Muslim countries to protest the world soccer body's ban on headscarves for women during the Youth Olympic Games this summer.

Bahram Afsharzadeh has said that FIFA's decision to forbid the Iranian women's football team from wearing headscarves during the games in Singapore is a violation of Muslims' rights and shows disregard for "issues such as nationality, religion, and race."

The decision also creates "obstacles on their part in the way of women's progress," the hard-line Fars news agency quoted Afsharzadeh as saying.

Yes, a representative of Iran's theocracy decried "obstacles … in the way of women's progress." But FIFA's rules trump his protestations. They stipulate that "basic compulsory equipment," which does not include headgear, "must not contain any political, religious, or personal statements." Moreover, "a player may use equipment other than the basic equipment provided that its sole purpose is to protect him physically and it poses no danger to him or any other player." So even if one disagrees that an Islamic headscarf, by nature, carries a religious message, good luck arguing that its function is to prevent soccer-related injuries.

This is not the first time that hijabs have stirred controversy in sports. Three years ago, the International Football Association Board, which writes the rules that FIFA enforces, refused to cave after the Quebec Soccer Federation announced that "the wearing of the Islamic veil or any other religious item is not permitted." In addition, the Swiss basketball association ProBasket told a player set to debut in a regional league last year that she could not don a hijab on the court, noting that the world governing body FIBA prohibits religious symbols or head coverings.

And while female Muslim boxers can wear hijabs at the 2012 Olympics, male counterparts in the UK have yet to win religious accommodation of their own. Muslims and Sikhs are attempting to overturn the Amateur Boxing Association of England's newly comprehensive ban on beards, enacted because "facial hair can cause abrasions to opponents' faces … and most importantly doctors say clean-shaven athletes allow them to see cuts."

We close with a tragic tale of Islamic attire and sports. A woman was killed last week in Australia when her clothing, variously described as a burqa or hijab, got caught by the axle of a go-kart that she was driving. Signs at the track reportedly "outline a number of rules, including appropriate footwear for drivers, but do not mention scarves or other forms of head-dress." If they had, a Muslim's life could have been saved — despite the inevitable charges of anti-Muslim bigotry that such restrictions would have provoked.

I have copied it in its entirety because I really believe it's all worth reading. This is not a matter of  bigotry or something similar: it's one of equality. If no one can compete with clothes which could be deemed religious, no one can, whatever the anger they can feel.

I insist that the ban should have been done before, in the moment they applied for their place at the Olympics. But that's not the point: the point is that if you don't comply with certain specific norms, you can't compete.