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In the News

  • Birmingham Mail: Islamic preacher who called on God to 'prepare us for the Jihad' spoke at Trojan Horse school
    October 22nd, 2015
    A rabbi who has called for the state of Israel to be "dismantled" and an Islamic preacher with extremist views were allowed to speak at assemblies at a school at the heart of the Trojan Horse scandal, it has been claimed.
     
    Aaron Cohen, a rabbi from Neturei Karta - an anti-Zionist orthodox Jewish religious group - was among the speakers invited to talk to Alum Rock's Park View Academy, said Andrew Colman, a barrister for the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL).
     
    Sheikh Shady Al-Suleiman, a renowned Islamic preacher, also gave talks to pupils at the school, said Mr Colman.
     
    The Sheikh has been known to publicly call on God to "destroy the enemies of Islam" and to "prepare us for the Jihad".
     
    Mr Colman's claims came as part of the NCTL's case against five senior senior staff from the former Park View Educational Trust, which ran three Birmingham schools at the heart of the so-called Trojan Horse scandal - Park View, Nansen and Golden Hillock.
  • Times (£): Charity is allowed to fund group that praised Isis butcher
    October 22nd, 2015
    Charities are free to continue funding an advocacy group that called an Islamic State murderer a “beautiful young man”, the High Court has confirmed.
     
    Cage was thrust into the limelight when it emerged that among the terrorist suspects and jihadists it had supported was Mohammed Emwazi, who has been seen in Isis videos with the severed heads of western hostages.
     
    Cage and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust took the Charity Commission to a judicial review yesterday, complaining that the regulator had gone beyond its remit by telling the charity not to fund Cage. The commission claimed that there had been a misunderstanding.
  • Guardian: Irish parents fight for equal access to education
    October 21st, 2015
    Instead of starting school last month, Reuben Murphy found himself back in his Dublin nursery for another year as his mother, Nikki, re-embarked on her quest to find a place at a local state primary for her four-year-old son.
     
    She has already applied to 15 schools. But, following rejections from nine last year, Murphy is far from confident that a place will be found for Reuben. In a country where more than 90% of state schools are run by the Catholic church, unbaptised children like him are at the bottom of their admissions lists.
     
    “I’m desperate,” said Murphy. “I’ve met tons of parents who’ve baptised their children just to get a school place. We thought about it, but it goes against our conscience. I feel it would be an abuse of other people’s deeply held religious beliefs.”
  • Huffington Post: David Cameron says it's time to modernise Sunday trading laws to benefit families and create jobs
    October 21st, 2015
    David Cameron today backed allowing big retailers and supermarkets to open for longer on Sundays, despite opposition from religious leaders and some of his own MPs.
     
    The Prime Minister told the Commons this afternoon it was “time to modernise” the current laws, which restrict larger shops to only serving customers for six hours between 10am and 6pm on Sundays.
     
    Earlier this week, the Church of England claimed extending the hours would “erode” family life, while it has been reported at least 20 Tory MPs could vote against the measure.
  • BBC: Al-Shabab recruits return to Kenya after quitting group
    October 21st, 2015
    Nearly 700 recruits have returned to Kenya after quitting militant groups, a report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says.
     
    The report warns that a failure to reintegrate returnees may lead to further radicalisation.

    Somalia's Islamist al-Shabab militants are believed to be recruiting heavily in neighbouring north-eastern Kenya.
     
    Kenya has seen a series of militant attacks with one at a university earlier this year killed 148 people.

    Although the report does not mention where the returnees came from, Deputy Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims (Supkem) Hassan Ole Nadu has confirmed to the BBC that they were fighting for al-Shabab.
  • Times (£): Muslim parents who tried to join Isis can keep children, judge rules
    October 21st, 2015
    A Muslim couple accused of trying to take their four young children to Syria to join Islamic State should not have their children taken away, the head of the family court ruled yesterday.
     
    Sir James Munby found that Asif Malik, 31, and Sara Kiran, 29, posed no threat to the welfare of their children, who are all younger than eight. The family’s passports will be returned, despite the fact that they were arrested in Turkey last April as they headed for the Syrian border. Sir James said they had “put the incident behind them”.
     
    The judgment, made the day after the government announced a raft of plans to strengthen powers to stop Britons travelling to Syria, is thought to be the first of its kind.
  • Telegraph: Gove's bid to replace Human Rights Act encouraging childish 'fantasy' – equalities chief
    October 20th, 2015
    Michael Gove’s plan to replace the Human Rights Act with a new British Bill of Rights risks encouraging childish “fantasy”, the head of the Government’s equalities watchdog has suggested.
     
    Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve, the philosopher and chair of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), said any new charter which eventually replaces the Human Rights Act is likely to contain virtually the same principles as the controversial legislation it supersedes.
     
    The idea that the Government could come up with a completely new set of rights to those contained in the Act is, she said, like a child fantasising that there could be new set of colours to paint pictures with.
     
    Her remarks came as she delivered a lecture on freedom of religion and freedom of expression, hosted by the Christian think-tank Theos.
     
    She said the murders of the staff of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris earlier this year vividly illustrated the dangers of the increasingly prevalent belief that people have a “right not to be offended”.
  • BBC: Marine Le Pen goes on trial over Muslim remarks
    October 20th, 2015
    French National Front leader Marine Le Pen has appeared in court in Lyon, to answer charges of inciting racial hatred, for comparing Muslims praying in the street to the Nazi occupation.
     
    She made the comments at a rally in the city in 2010 when she was fighting for the leadership of the party.
     
    Ms Le Pen insisted on Tuesday she did not commit any offence.

    And the prosecutor called for her acquittal, saying she was not referring to the whole Muslim community.

    The National Front (FN) leader had only spoken about a specific number of people and was exercising her freedom of speech, Bernard Reynaud told the court.
  • Guardian: On assisted dying, California will be a test site for the world
    October 20th, 2015
    California is still in some respects a laboratory for the rest of the world. Really good things have come out of there, like tight emissions standards for cars, and really bad things, like techno-libertarianism. Now it has embraced assisted suicide, and in this done the rest of the world a huge favour.
     
    Although there are four other states where assisted suicide is already legal in the US, their combined populations are only a third the size of California’s. If we want to know what happens when a large, diverse state tries the policy, California is the place. Within 10 years or so we will be able to see who is right in the central dispute about these laws. Do they protect the weakest in society, or do they weaken them still further?
  • Life News: House will vote Friday on bill to de-fund Planned Parenthood using reconciliation to stop filibuster
    October 20th, 2015
    The House of Representatives will vote on Friday on a bill that will use the reconciliation process to approve legislation to de-fund the Planned Parenthood abortion business, which has been caught selling aborted babies and their body parts.
     
    After the House approved a previous de-funding measure, Senate Democrats defeated a bill to fund the federal government that included language de-funding Planned Parenthood for one year while the Congressional investigation continues into how it allegedly violated multiple laws to sell aborted babies and their body parts.
     
    House Republican leaders are planning to target Planned Parenthood’s funding by immediately drafting a fast-track reconciliation bill that would be able to overcome the Democrats’ filibuster and be approved on a majority vote in the Senate. The Republican leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives has announced that the House will vote on Friday, October 23, on the “pro-life reconciliation bill” — a fast-track bill (H.R. 3762) containing multiple pro-life provisions.