Solidarity
More evidence of the US government standing shoulder to shoulder with the UK.
UK Muslim leader barred from US
British Muslim leader Sheikh Dr Zaki Badawi has said he has been refused entry to the US without explanation. The head of the Muslim College said he flew from London to New York to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York but was turned back.
Dr Badawi said he was detained for six hours on Wednesday and that immigration staff were "very embarrassed".
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it had information indicating Dr Badawi was "inadmissible". Spokeswoman Janet Rapaport said that when problems arose at JFK airport, Dr Badawi voluntarily withdrew his application to enter the country and returned home. "We cannot disclose the information which led to the application being inadmissible because of privacy rules," she added.
Religion lecture
Dr Badawi, who is also a leader of the Council of Mosques and Imams, had been due to give a talk entitled The Law and Religion in Society. Mike Sullivan, of the Chautauqua Institution, said all he knew was that Dr Badawi was back in London. "We have no explanation as to why this happened," he said. Dr Badawi appeared with fellow British faith leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, on Sunday to deliver a joint statement condemning last week's "evil terrorist" attacks on London.
He most recently visited the US in 2003 - in the same year he was a guest of the Queen at a state banquet for US President George Bush.
Maybe George was offended by his table manners?
UK Muslim leader barred from US
British Muslim leader Sheikh Dr Zaki Badawi has said he has been refused entry to the US without explanation. The head of the Muslim College said he flew from London to New York to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York but was turned back.
Dr Badawi said he was detained for six hours on Wednesday and that immigration staff were "very embarrassed".
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it had information indicating Dr Badawi was "inadmissible". Spokeswoman Janet Rapaport said that when problems arose at JFK airport, Dr Badawi voluntarily withdrew his application to enter the country and returned home. "We cannot disclose the information which led to the application being inadmissible because of privacy rules," she added.
Religion lecture
Dr Badawi, who is also a leader of the Council of Mosques and Imams, had been due to give a talk entitled The Law and Religion in Society. Mike Sullivan, of the Chautauqua Institution, said all he knew was that Dr Badawi was back in London. "We have no explanation as to why this happened," he said. Dr Badawi appeared with fellow British faith leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, on Sunday to deliver a joint statement condemning last week's "evil terrorist" attacks on London.
He most recently visited the US in 2003 - in the same year he was a guest of the Queen at a state banquet for US President George Bush.
Maybe George was offended by his table manners?
posted by phylos @ 20:19
2 Comments:
oh they were "very embarrassed" thats just lovely.
I did a lot of study on Islam last year. My intent was to do some comparisson with Judaism. I found myself spending a semester learning about how uneducated Americans are about the Muslim faith.
Couldn't agree with you more Em. The same stereotyping is happening here now. The number of articles appearing in the media which start with a platitude like "I know it is a tiny minority of Muslims that are radical and who follow the extreme path cut by bin Laden.." and you think to yourself - there's a but coming along soon and sure enough along comes "but there is something in Islam which makes this happen". By the end of the article, a large number of readers have forgotten the 'small group' sentence and are equating all muslims with the few.
A woman was on a BBC News 24 show last night (her initials are JHB, she writes for The Express and she is a nasty bigot) helpfully pointing out that no female religious leaders from Islam had spoken out. Subtley using our acceptance of femminism as a tool to beat Islam is grotesque. Has Germany had a female chancellor? Has the US had a female president? It would be nice to see more female religious leaders in Islam, but isn't the Anglican faith divided at the moment over the ordination of women? Are there any females in the upper ranks of the catholic church? No. The catholic church has a very similar attitude to women as Islam - sit quietly over there love, make the tea and squirt out a few babies before you get all saggy and barren.
It is cultural as much as religious though. When i was in Tel Aviv years ago I was in a bar with a western woman having the usual, i'll pay, no i'll get this round, no it's my turn.... argument the frustrated barman just snatched the money out of my hand and said 'he is the man, he pays'. He wasn't an arab or a muslim and i don't think he did anything wrong - it was his culture - the way he had been bought up. What about our culture in the UK? There are a few women leading big companies over here but if you look at the directors of the top 100 companies in Britain, under 10% of them are women. Where is JHB's outrage?
Closed minds cause divisions. Open minds promote harmony. At the moment more damage is being done to race relations in the UK by white, middle class, establishment figures than by Al Qaeda.
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