pi magazine november 2014
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passion islam magazine november 2014, shaker amer, muslim magazine, islamic magazineTRANSCRIPT
SportPalestine All-stars win UK tournament
NewsSenior delegates exploredigital autopsy facility
FeaturedThe FirstScientist
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Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has dismissed concerns over the abuse of British cleared detainee Shaker Aamer, in a letter to his lawyer at the legal and human rights charity Reprieve.
In August 2014, Clive Stafford Smith, Director of Reprieve, wrote to the Foreign Secretary after a fellow detainee had described what he called a new
‘standard procedure’ of abuses at the prison. Yemeni Emad Hassan, cleared for release and detained without charge since 2002, wrote that “an FCE [Forcible Cell Extraction, where a team of guards in riot gear manhandle a detainee] team has been brought in to beat the detainees, Shaker was beaten when the medical people wanted to draw blood.”
Mr Hammond, in a letter dated October 7th, responded that “we made enquiries with US Government officials who assured us that the report of an incident, relayed to you by another detainee, is not accurate.”? Yet similar descriptions of escalating punitive abuse at Guantanamo, which would appear to corroborate Mr Hassan’s allegations,
Continued on page 13
UK Govt IgnoresGitmo Brit Abuse
2 I Editorial www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014
Write to: Editor, PI Media, PO Box 159, Batley, West Yorkshire, WF17 1ADor email: [email protected] - www.pi-media.co.uk - mob: 07506 466 385
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t h e P a s s i o n
The government is seeking to furnish the Charity Commission, the regulatory body for British charities, with powers to prevent people with convictions for certain criminal offences ñ such as terrorism or money laundering ñ from being charity trustees and to disqualify people from being a charity trustee if the Charity Commission considers them unfit.
The laws were originally trailed in the government’s ‘Tackling Extremism in the UK’ report published in December last year and were widely criticised by IHRC and other Muslim organisations who saw them as a potential green light for the Commission to increase its taregting of Muslim-run charities on political grounds.
While the proposed legislation’s stated aim is to stem the flow of money and manpower to the current conflict in Syria, the reality is that the Charity Commission will have more teeth to harass innocent and law-abiding Muslim-run organisations. In 2010 the Commission launched an inquiry into the prominent Muslim charity Muslim Aid after complaints
from pro-Zionist quarters that it was channelling funds to a Palestinian group which Britain has designated a terrorist organisation. The Commission found no evidence to substantiate the allegations.
In the preceding years the Charity Commission launched no fewer than three separate inquiries into the Muslim-run Interpal whose work is dedicated to alleviating the plight of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and in the Palestinian diaspora. On each occasion it found no evidence to implicate the charity.
IHRC believes that given that the governmentís definition of extremism now incorporates a latitudinous range of beliefs and behaviour, it will allow the Commission to target a larger number of charities, simply on account of the religious and/or political beliefs they or their partner organisations appear to hold.
The government has turned the Charity Commission into a principal enforcement agent of its much-berated PREVENT programme, designed to combat religious and political extremism in the UK. The recent appointment by the Cabinet
New charity powers totarget Muslim groups
Office of Peter Clarke to the board of the Charity Commission underlines this transformation of the Charity Commission from an oversight agency into an instrument of repression against British Muslims.
Another recent appointment Tony Leifer is a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Deputies for British Jews ñ a major player in Britain’s Israel lobby. The BoD runs a campaign called “Speak Out For Israel!”, which promotes Zionist Federation events, and has organised rallies to defend Israel while the country conducted indiscriminate and deliberate attacks on civilians.
The chair of the Commission William Shawcross is himself renowned for his extreme anti-Muslim views. Shawcross supported the Iraq war and is friendly with American neoconservatives, has defended Guantanamo Bay as ‘model justice’. He is a director of the Henry Jackson Society ñ itself a registered charity - which is known for its virulent anti-Islamic members and views, In the hard-right National Review in 2010, Shawcross penned a vicious attack on Labour for being ‘in awe of Islam’.
An IHRC spokesman said: “These appointments all show that the ground was laid a long time ago for the Charity Commission to be turned into an instrument of oppression against certain sections of society who hold opposing views to those of the government. It is highly ironic that the head of the Commission and board members such as Leifer epitomise the same divisive forces that David Cameron claims to be trying to eradicate with these new powers.”
www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014 NEWS I 3
CAGE has raised serious questions in relation to a clause within the Serious Crime Bill which allows the British government to prosecute individuals they deem to be preparing for acts of terrorism from outside UK jurisdiction.
CAGE’s submission to the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR), detailed a number of human rights breaches within the Bill.
The Bill aims to extend extra-territorial jurisdiction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2006, effectively allowing the government to extend their powers under an
act that has already been deemed excessively broad, both in terms of its reach and in its definition of “terrorism”.
CAGE’s points were later referenced in the JCHR’s report. They included the following concerns:
“The government has not shown the necessity for extending their jurisdiction extra-territorially. Further, there has been no proper examination or assessment of the threat posed by travellers to Syria.”
“The government has also failed to prove that there is in fact a gap in the current law.”
Human rights group raises concerns overextension of terror act beyond UK borders
“Finally, and alarmingly, no alternatives to criminalisation were considered - for example to engage with communities in order to understand reasons behind travelling to begin with.”
The JCHR agreed on these points – and that the government did not demonstrate a need for such a dramatic extension of their powers.
CAGE also raised concern about issues concerning information sharing between the UK and foreign governments outside the legal framework, which could cast the reliability and impartiality of evidence in doubt – especially within the context of rapidly evolving and unpredictable political events.
Despite agreeing with some of the issues CAGE raised, unfortunately the JCHR were still satisfied with the government’s justifications and so the provision has not been opposed.
The JCHR recommended that prosecutions brought under this clause should be monitored closely - to see if it as operationally useful as the government claims.
4 I LOCAL & NATIONAL NEWS www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014
The Rt. Hon. Baroness Warsi, together with senior police figures responsible for serious crime in Bradford and Ramzan Mohayuddin of the Saad Foundation, visited iGene’s Bradford Digital Autopsy facility to review the potential of Digital Autopsy technology for forensic science and the preservation of evidence in criminal cases.
During the visit, Baroness Warsi was shown how a specially-trained pathologist can then conduct a full post mortem on a computer without the need to dissect the body. The body is scanned using conventional CT technology, forming an incredibly detailed 3D representation of the body and then iGene’s INFOPSY® software enables pathologies to rotate the 3D image and evaluate it from multiple angles.
The Bradford centre is operated by iGene as is part of the multimillion pound UK-wide network of Digital Autopsy facilities that is transforming the way post mortems are carried out. Using the system a scene of death or crime could be reconstructed digitally
using the 3D capabilities of the system and using a digital autopsy rather than a traditional invasive one preserves key evidence that might otherwise be damaged. The results are available almost immediately and can be shared digitally too, for example between Police Forces.
iGene has already used its cutting edge technology to help police solve the mystery of a man who committed suicide more than a year ago. It was contacted by the British Transport Police after extensive inquiries by officers to find the identification of the man, who was hit by a train, drew a blank. iGene has now sent the data and images to experts at Dundee University, who will now use them to try to create a full facial reconstruction. It is then hoped an appeal can be launched to find the identity of the man.
Baroness Warsi said: “iGene’s Digital Autopsy technology offers tremendous potential, not only for families who are seeking to understand how their loved one died and for this to be done quickly and without the need
for cutting of the body, but also for police and other authorities who can use it to assist in their investigations.”
Ramzan Mohayuddin, of the Saad Foundation, which helps bereaved families in their time of need and has a particular focus on the introduction of imaging services as an alternative to intrusive post mortems, said:
“This is about families having a choice and the ability to treat their loved ones with respect and dignity. The one certainty in life is death. Embracing technology is the way forward, intrusive post mortems are a Victorian practice, outdated and no longer good practice – iGene have turned research into reality”
The Saad Foundation was formed after the death of Saad Mohayuddin, 18yrs on 25th December 2008.
At that time the use of such techniques was limited and under - utilised by coroners as it was not an accepted practice.
Since then the Saad Foundation has been working with government bodies to progress the legislation under the Coroners and Justice Act, build the evidence base through research and through the Chief Coroner have guidance disseminated to practitioners on how this should be used.
The Saad Foundation has been working with Igene on the implementation of this service nationally and is now knocking on the door of local authorities to ensure they pay for the cost of scans rather than individual families.
Further info can be accessed on www.saadfoundation.com
Senior delegates exploredigital autopsy facility
A British surgeon who died in a Syrian prison last year after travelling to work in Aleppo was unlawfully killed, a London jury ruled.
Abbas Khan, a 32-year-old orthopaedic surgeon from London, was detained in Syria almost two years ago and found dead in a prison cell last December.
Shortly after his death, his family
said he had been arrested within 48 hours of arriving in Syria to volunteer as an emergency doctor.
Khan’s family had not believed the official explanation for the death given by the Syrian authorities - that he had committed suicide by hanging days before his scheduled release - and his body was brought back to Britain.
A spokesman for the Royal Courts of Justice said the jury had returned a verdict of unlawful killing.“Dr Khan was deliberately and intentionally killed without any legal justification,”.The jury had previously heard that Khan had gone to offer his medical skills and was not in the country to fight.
British surgeon killed unlawfully in Syrian jail
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www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014 LOCAL & NATIONAL NEWS I 7
Britain’s intelligence services do not need a warrant to receive unlimited bulk intelligence from the NSA and other foreign agencies, and can keep this data on a massive searchable database for up to two years, according to secret internal policies revealed by human rights organisations.
Details of previously unknown internal policies, which GCHQ was forced to reveal during legal proceedings challenging their surveillance practices in the wake of the Snowden revelations, reveal that intelligence agencies can gain access to bulk data collected from US cables or through US corporate partnerships without having to obtain a warrant from the Secretary of State. This position seems to conflict with reassurances by the Intelligence Services Committee in July 2013 that whenever GCHQ seeks information from the US a warrant is in place.
The “arrangements”, as they are called by Government, also suggest that intercept material received from foreign intelligence agencies is not subject to the already weak safeguards that are applied to communications that are intercepted by the UK’s Tempora programme. On the face of the descriptions provided to the claimants, the British intelligence agencies can trawl through foreign intelligence material without meaningful restrictions and can keep such material, which includes both communications content and metadata, for up to two
years.Descriptions of the policies were
disclosed to the parties after a secret hearing at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which is currently considering a challenge to GCHQ’s surveillance practices that has been brought by human rights organisations including Privacy International, Liberty and Amnesty International. A public hearing of the case was held in July, but these “arrangements” were revealed to the Tribunal in a closed hearing that the claimants were barred from attending. Some details about the policies are now disclosed in order for the claimants to provide comment.
It is the first time the Government has made available some details of the secret internal “arrangements”, the existence of which they rely on to show that their mass surveillance practices and extensive exchange of surveillance material with the NSA are in accordance with the law. The Government says these “arrangements” make their actions compliant with the Human Rights Act, even though the arrangements remain secret and immune from public scrutiny.
The disclosed “arrangements” bring into sharp relief the minimal safeguards and weak restrictions on raw intelligence sharing with foreign governments, including between the UK and the United States. The fact that GCHQ can request and receive large quantities of “unanalysed” raw bulk data from foreign
Secret policy reveals GCHQ can get warrantless access
Media reports suggest the British military is set to deploy its armed unmanned aircraft to Syria, despite opposition by members of the parliament.
The Independent said that the military, which has moved its armed Reaper drones from Afghanistan, is ready use them in operations against IS in Syria.
The report came days after London announced the redeployment of Reapers for operations in Iraq.
“We are in the process of re-deploying some of our Reaper remotely-piloted aircraft from Afghanistan to the Middle East,” UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told British MPs.
Britain set to deploy drones to Syria
intelligence agencies without a warrant in place, simply because it would “not be technically feasible” to obtain it in the UK, shows the inadequacies in RIPA to deal with intelligence agency co-operation. Under these “arrangements”, there is a clear risk that agencies can sidestep British legal restrictions to obtain access to vast amounts of data
The release of some details of the arrangements also raises serious doubts about the level of oversight provided by the ISC, which heard evidence from the Foreign Secretary as part of its current investigation into privacy and security. In July 2013 the ISC conducted an investigation of GCHQ’s access to the NSA’s PRISM programme, and reassured the public that “in each case where GCHQ sought information from the US, a warrant for interception, signed by a Minister, was already in place, in accordance with the legal safeguards contained in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.”
This statement obscures whether GCHQ could have sought information without a warrant in place, thus failing to reveal that RIPA interception warrants are not required for GCHQ access to intercepts obtained under programmes such as PRISM and Upstream. Furthermore, the ISC’s statement confines itself to instances in which GCHQ specifically seeks information, but doesn’t stipulate what processes are in place when it receives unsolicited bulk data from the NSA.
The Independent also quoted senior Whitehall sources as revealing that the armed drones “would be operating in Syria as well, initially for surveillance, but also in an attack capacity with Hellfire missiles if authorization is given.”
This came after British lawmakers voted to authorize military engagement
in Iraq, but they have not approved extending the strikes into Syria.
Several Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs say the validity of any military action in Syria is questionable under international law, because Damascus has not asked for foreign help.
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www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014 LOCAL & NATIONAL NEWS I 9
A senior Metropolitan Police officer has defended the use of spying powers against journalists saying that “nobody should be above the law”.
But assistant commissioner Mark Rowley said that there should be “good grounds” to believe someone is involved in criminality before intrusive surveillance is allowed against them.
So far Press Gazette has
uncovered four instances of police using powers allowed under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to spy on journalists.
In the three cases where phone records were seized - those involving the Ipswich Star, Mail on Sunday and The Sun - the journalists involved were not under suspicion of breaking the law. In the case of Milton Keynes Citizen journalist Sally
Met terror chief defends RIPAspying against journalists
Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) has instructed law firm Leigh Day to pursue an application for judicial review to challenge the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) decision not to suspend or revoke 12 existing licences for the export of arms/components to Israel.
The decision followed a review which was overseen by Vince Cable MP and the Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) which identified 12 licences for components that could be part of equipment used by the Israel Defence Forces in Gaza. However, BIS decided that it would not even suspend these licences unless “significant hostilities” resumed.
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has indicated
that grave breaches of international humanitarian law and other serious breaches of international law may have occurred during ‘Operation Protective Edge’, which was launched on 8 July 2014 against the population of Gaza, killing over 1900 people.
The wider legal basis for the legal action is outlined in the letter to BIS. All the correspondence between CAAT and BIS is available on the CAAT website.
Andrew Smith from CAAT, said: “The UK government’s response to the bombardment of Gaza was unacceptable. Vince Cable himself oversaw a review that identified 12 licences for arms that he accepted were likely to have been used in Gaza. He refused to even suspend them at the time, saying that he
would only do so if the violence continued.
“The violence continued, more people died, and yet he failed to follow through on his word. This wasn’t the first time UK weapons have been used against Gaza, so the licences should never have been granted in the first place.
“This is yet another example of the UK government doing everything in its power to promote and facilitate arms sales despite terrible ramifications for human rights. Arms sales don’t just provide military support to the recipient, they imply a strong level of political support too.”
Since 2010 the UK government has licensed £42 million worth of military licences to Israel, including targeting systems and drone components.
Legal action begins against BISover UK arms sales to Israel
Murrer, she was subject to audio surveillance under RIPA taping her conversations with a police officer, but she was cleared at trial.
Rowley told the Today programme: “RIPA is a series of provisions which is about tackling crime. Depending how intrusive the act is that we want to do is depends on the level of authority.
“Everyone would accept that nobody should be above the law, whether it’s a member of the public, whether it’s a police officer, whether it’s a journalist, we should be able to investigate and pursue any one of those.
“That’s how these powers should be used. To be going after intrusive surveillance against a journalist there ought to be good grounds to believe they are involved in criminality
“If Parliament were to decide there are special issues around journalistic privilege which means there needs to be new safeguards around that well that’s something for Parliament to debate.
“We will keep using the powers to chase down criminals whether they are ordinary members of the public or journalists.”
10 I ADVERTORIAL www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014
www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014 LOCAL & NATIONAL NEWS I 11
The British parliament took the historic step of voting unilaterally to back the recognition of Palestinian statehood last month.
Voting by 274 to 12, a majority of 262, MPs on all sides urged the Government to recognize the state of Palestine.
Support for the motion, while symbolic, marks a significant change in the political landscape, following the failure of successive peace negotiations and the bitter conflict in Gaza over the summer.
Significantly Labor whipped its MPs to vote in favor of the resolution; raising the prospect that the party would defy Israel’s wishes and recognize Palestine as a state should it come to power at the next election, The Independent reported.
But even previously staunch supporters of Israel within the Conservative Party chose not to oppose the motion which was brought by the backbench Labor MP Grahame Morris.
Richard Ottaway,
A rare public hearing of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) has for the first time revealed details of UK security services’ secret policies on the interception of private calls between lawyers and their clients, says the legal charity Reprieve.
The existence of the secret policies on legally-privileged material emerged in the course of a torture case brought by Reprieve and others, on behalf of Libyan rendition victims Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, Sami al-Saadi and their families.
Lawyers for Mr Belhaj and Mr al-Saadi – who in 2004 were abducted
with their families in a joint MI6-Libyan operation and rendered to Libya, where they faced years of torture – are fighting to have these policies disclosed, saying they fear their conversations with their clients have been spied on. The confidentiality of those conversations is bound by legal professional privilege (LPP).
In documents discussed at yesterday’s (16 October) hearing, the Government admitted that the policies provide “guidance” on the sharing of privileged material with security service personnel who are subject to litigation – such as in
First details of Government’s lawyerclient spying policies revealed
the Belhaj and al-Saadi case – but refused to say whether such sharing would take place.
In response to questions on this and related issues, the Government’s lawyers said that to answer fully “would be damaging to the public interest or prejudicial to national security.”
Cori Crider, Reprieve strategic director and a lawyer for the Belhaj and Saadi families, said: “MI6 helped kidnap my clients and ‘rendered’ them to Gaddafi’s dungeons - but the security services’ misdeeds didn’t stop there. We now know that each security service has at least a policy on their interception of privileged lawyer-client conversations – policies they claim are ‘too secret’ to disclose.
“The reason for these hard-line tactics is clear: there is a real risk that privileged information has been improperly used in our clients’ torture claims. If it’s true that information from their spying has tainted government officials or lawyers involved in the Libyan torture cases, then the government has a massive problem on its hands.”
Outraged by Israel’s Behavior, BritishMPs Recognize Palestinian State
chairman of the powerful Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said he no longer felt he could vote
to deny the Palestinians the right of recognition because of recent Israeli actions.
12 I ADVERTORIAL www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014
www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014 LOCAL / WORLD NEWS I 13
A UN human rights watchdog urged Israel to respect the rights of Palestinians, and demanded the country probe violations committed during repeated assaults on Gaza.
With tensions soaring in East Jerusalem and months of almost daily clashes, the UN Human Rights Committee published conclusions from its review earlier this month of Israel’s human rights record.
The committee lamented continued punitive demolitions of Palestinian homes in the West Bank, excessive force by the Israeli military and decried reports of the use of torture and ill-treatment of Palestinians, including children, in Israeli detention facilities.
It also slammed the “continuing
confiscation and expropriation of Palestinian land and restrictions on access of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”
The body, which oversees global rules on civil and political rights, and submits governments to regular reviews, also voiced concern over alleged human rights abuses during three Israeli military operations in Gaza since late 2008, including the nearly two-month war this summer that killed nearly 2,200 mainly civilian Palestinians and 73 people in Israel, mostly soldiers.
Israel “should ensure that all human rights violations committed during its military operations in the Gaza Strip
UN watchdog slams Israel abuses, demands Gaza war probe
UK Govt ignores gitmo Brit abusehave for some time been emerging from the prison. In a letter to William Hague in May of this year, Clive Stafford Smith sent testimony from Mr Aamer that he is sometimes FCEd up to eight times a day. He also included an excerpt from a recent letter of Mr Aamer’s, which said, “Last night, as I came back from my legal call, I was FCEd in much the same way I always am, as I peacefully refused to cooperate with them again. This time they did not just force me down on the floor of the room. They apparently decided that they had to get me dirty, so they threw me down in the passage way […]”
A recent trial in Washington D.C to assess the legality of force-feeding and FCE methods used at Guantanamo in the case of cleared Syrian Abu Wa’el Dhiab, revealed further levels of abuse. Giving evidence in court, Dr Steven
Miles, a bioethicist, decried the use of olive oil to force-feed prisoners and said that “it’s a form of punishment that is wrapped around the business” of force feeding the detainee.? Prior to the trial, Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the US Government to release video footage showing force-feedings and FCEs being carried out against Syrian detainee Abu Wa’el.
Lawyers at Reprieve wrote to the then-Foreign Secretary William Hague in May, asking that the British government request any video footage that the US may hold of Mr Aamer being FCEd, but Mr Hague responded that: “we do not view that it is necessary for the UK Government to ask the US Government to release cctv footage from Guantanamo Bay.”
Mr Aamer, whose British wife and their four children live in South London, has been cleared for release
from Guantanamo since 2007. It has long been stated British policy that Mr Aamer should be returned to his family in the UK.
Clive Stafford Smith, who is one of Mr Aamer’s lawyers, said: “The US military is not telling Mr Hammond the truth about the abuse of Mr Aamer, any more than they did to Judge Kessler, who had the good sense to demand to see the video footage. I have just returned from a visit and the brutal nature of the FCEing – to which Shaker is subjected probably more than any other prisoner – is only getting worse. Mr Hammond says that the UK is doing all it can to help Shaker but if it were his son or brother being beaten up every day, he would show a little more interest in evidence, and a little less in bland and false denials. It is far past time that Shaker was home with his wife and children.”
continued from front page
in 2008-2009, 2012 and 2014 are thoroughly, effectively, independently and impartially investigated,” the Geneva-based committee said in its conclusions.
It demanded that perpetrators, especially those in positions of command, be “prosecuted and sanctioned” and that the victims and their families be provided “effective remedies.”
And it criticised Israel’s continuing blockade of Gaza, lamenting that the blockade continues to “negatively impact Palestinians’ access to all basic and life-saving services such as food, health, electricity, water and sanitation.”
The committee’s comments came as tensions raging since the Gaza war started in July swelled after Israeli police shot dead a Palestinian Thursday suspected of an assassination attempt on a hardline campaigner for Jewish prayer rights at Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque.
In a bid to avoid further tensions, Israel ordered the closure of the Al-Aqsa compound to all visitors, drawing a furious response from Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, who described it as “a declaration of war.”
14 I WORLD NEWS www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014
Former prison guard in Guantanamo Bay Holdbrooks Jr. converted to Islam “after months of midnight conversations with the Muslim detainees.”
In United States Huntsville Alabama Terry Holdbrooks Jr., 29 converted to Islam. Former prison guard in Guantanamo Bay Holdbrooks Jr. converted to Islam “after months of midnight
conversations with the Muslim detainees.”
Haldbrooks said “As I got to know the detainees, as I learned their stories during my long night shifts, I came to see the detainees as individuals. Many were men who enjoyed talking about the same things I do, like ethics, philosophy, history, religion.”
Being a guard at Guantanamo
Bay Prison, Holdbrooks mulled over the information Army instructors has taught about Islam as he’d watched the so-called terrorists day after day.
What he’d been told wasn’t lining up with what he observed, saying, while the detainees were reading Quran and keeping the daily schedule of prayers, they remained undiscouraged under horrendous pressure, the Deen Show reported
The U.S. Supreme Court said it would consider whether a Muslim woman denied a job at an Abercrombie & Fitch Co clothing store because she wears a head scarf was required to specifically request a religious accommodation.
The nine justices agreed to hear an appeal filed in the closely watched case by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency that sued the company on behalf of Samantha Elauf. She was denied a sales job at an Abercrombie Kids store in Tulsa, Oklahoma in
2008.Elauf, who was 17 at the time,
was wearing a head scarf, or hijab, at the job interview but did not specifically say that, as a Muslim, she wanted the company to give her a religious accommodation. The company denied Elauf the job on the grounds that wearing the scarf violated its “look policy” for members of the sales staff.
A federal district judge ruled in favor of Elauf and the government, but in an October 2013 ruling the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit
U.S. top court takes up caseof Muslim woman denied job
Court of Appeals found that Elauf was required to ask for an accommodation.
Abercrombie has faced other lawsuits including one in which it agreed in 2004 to pay $40 million to several thousand minority and female plaintiffs who had accused the company of discrimination.
The once-trendy but now struggling retailer is well-known for its edgy marketing and often controversial CEO Mike Jeffries.
Jeffries, who was hired in 1992, revamped the company to “sizzle with sex” by introducing racy catalogs and advertising aimed at making the more-than-century-old brand a must-have for teenagers.
But he has stirred debate in the process by suggesting the company’s clothes were made for “cool” and “attractive” kids and not for “fat” people. More recently, sales have plummeted, and the company recently announced it would shrink its once well-known logo to appeal to younger shoppers.
The company did not return calls seeking comment on the Supreme Court’s action.
A ruling by the Supreme Court is expected by the end of June.
Guantanamo prisonguard converts to Islam
Contact: Editorial Team on 07506 466385, email: [email protected]
www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014 WORLD NEWS I 15
In Case YouMissed It
Cuba’s communist government has turned down a plan to open a mosque in the capital Cuba.
Pedro Lazo Torres, the leader of Havana’s Muslim community, revealed that his joint efforts with Turkey’s Religious Affairs Foundation (TDV) to open a mosque in Havana was rejected.
Torres expressed his dismay at the decision, noting that Russia was granted permission to build an Orthodox church in the country but 4,000 Muslims in Cuba still have no official place of worship.
Cuban Muslims have until now had to make do with performing congregational prayers in Torres’s living room.
In April, TDV assistant manager Mustafa Tutkun sought permission to begin work on a mosque, which was to be designed after the famous Ortakoy mosque in Istanbul.
The plan was part of a wider project by the TDV in building mosques for Muslims who live in the Caribbean.
A similar project in Haiti is due to be complete by the end of this year.
Cuba rejects plans for first mosque
A French company has developed a so-called “Halal test” which will allow Muslim consumers to detect, within a matter of minutes, the presence of pork or alcohol in food.
Priced at €6,90 each or €125 for a packet of 25, a device, simply called “Halal test”, is designed for use by Muslims who, under the dietary requirements of their religion are forbidden from consuming pork and alcohol, Le Nouvel Observateur reported.
In a similar style to a pregnancy test, the device consists of a strip which the consumer must put into a glass of warm water containing a sample of food. After a few minutes, the test will then show one of two options: either a single bar for a negative test or two bars for a positive one, which means there is alcohol or pork present.
The test was created by the company Capital Biotech, founded by Franco-Algerian duo Abderrahmane
France company launchhalal pork test kit
Chaoui, a graduate in business and entrepreneur Jean-François Julien.
While no test currently exists which allows Muslims to verify if food really is Halal - i.e. it contains meat from an animal slaughtered according to Islamic ritual, Chaoui, 25, says the test is important to confirm “the absence of food products forbidden by the Quran”.
The tests will be especially helpful to Muslims when buying unlabelled food, the Algerian born Chaoui said.
“While travelling, if you go to a restaurant or order a meal to takeaway, the products aren’t always labelled,” he said.
The entrepreneurs are tapping into a potentially lucrative market. With France home to around six million Muslims, the market for Halal food is estimated to be worth €5.5 billion a year.
Nevertheless, the business partners are optimistic that they will be able to one day create a test that will be able to determine how an animal was slaughtered based on the oxygenation of the blood.
An intensive air raid by U.S. drones in central Yemen’s Al-Bayda’ province left civilian casualties behind, a tribal source said.
“The victims were mainly women and children,” the source, told Anadolu Agency on condition of anonymity.
He said the attack had targeted a number of homes in Al-Bayda’s Wald Rabi’ district as part of a raid on suspected Al-Qaeda sites.
US air raid causes civilian casualties in central Yemen
16 I WORLD NEWS ww.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014
Muslims in French prisons reach up to 60% claimes France’s UMP party deputy Guillaume Larrive.
The conclusion drawn by Larrive in a report as part of an action plan “against Islamist radicalisation in prison” This action plan is now likely to involve several hundred prisoners, Le Figaro reported.
The report estimates that 60% of the prison population in France, that is to say 40,000 prisoners, can be considered Muslim, “culturally or originally”.
French deputy Larrive, who has worked on the budget of the Prison Service for 2015, calls for “setting up specialized anti-radicalization shock therapy units (USAR) for prisoners returning from jihad”.
However, French daily Le Monde, firstly regarded the statistics as a “shock-number” of the week, argued the findings of the report citing the related part of it, in which involves some observations of the author of the book “Islam in prison” Farhad Khosrokhavar.
The observations or estimations of Khosrokhavar covered only “those close to large urban centers and neighborhood institutions”, not all French prisons, Le Monde claimed.
Le Monde claimed the report allows us to question on the findings, emphasizing “the statistics 60% does not originate from an official census since ethnic and religious statistics are prohibited in France.”
Belgium is planning legislation to deprive those who go to fight abroad of their citizenship and residency, the new coalition government announced.
Under the proposals, those without Belgian citizenship could be denied entry to the country while those with dual nationality could lose their Belgian citizenship.
According to the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, just under 300 people left Belgium in the two years up to December to fight in Syria.
The London-based think tank said Belgium was one of the most heavily affected countries in western Europe, supplying 27 fighters per million of population.
The new Belgian prime minister Charles Michel, 38, is the leader of the
French-speaking Reformist Movement, which has formed a coalition with three Flemish parties, including the nationalist New Flemish Alliance.
Willy Borsus, vice president of the Reformist Movement, said during a press conference that the government must “act decisively” to fight “radicalization.”
According to Rachid al-Ghannouchi, the Tunisian leader of the Ennahda movement, discrimination in Western society is pushing young Muslims to join armed groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
Amnesty International said earlier this year that discrimination against Muslims “can result in isolation, exclusion and stigmatization.”
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More than half of French prisoners are Muslims - report
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www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014 WORLD NEWS I 17
Indonesia is leading calls for an increase in the allocation of places for the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Makkah that Muslims are expected to make at least once in their lives.
Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, wants extra places to cut the waiting list for pilgrims, who currently face a 20-year wait to visit Islam’s holy sites.
The country’s Minister of Religious Affairs Lukman Hakim has proposed a solution whereby countries trade allocations, similar to the way nations trade greenhouse gas emission quotas under the Kyoto agreement.
As the recipient of the largest quota, Indonesia, with a population of 253 million, sends around 200,000 pilgrims to Makkah and Medina every
year for the largest annual gathering of people in the world.
Each pilgrim must pay a deposit of around $2,500 and there are currently more than 2 million Indonesians on the waiting list. Last year, Indonesian banks held $914 million in Hajj deposits.
Hakim said a larger quota would alleviate many of the problems Hajj pilgrims face due to their age and the relatively gruelling nature of the trip for the infirm.
“We have given priority to applicants of over 70 years during the recent Hajj as they have been waiting longer to perform Hajj,” Hakim told Arab News.
This month 126 Indonesians died during the pilgrimage, one of the five
pillars of Islam. Among the 59,200 Turks who made the journey this month, 37 died.
The call for a quota raise was backed in Turkey, which has a waiting list of 1.25 million.
Professor Mehmet Soysaldi, a theologist at Firat University in Elazig, eastern Turkey, said: “These quotas are very limited due to Saudi Arabia’s restraints. However, this country [Saudi Arabia] should do its part to provide a good service to more pilgrims.”
He called for the Kingdom to plan for the next century and make infrastructure changes around holy sites by, for example, moving hotels in Makkah further out of the city and investing in a transport system that would reduce the risk of stampedes.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the “enemy” had now realized that “old habits” would no longer be tolerated as he reiterated his government’s tough stand in the ongoing cross border confrontation with Pakistan.
Addressing an election rally in Baramati town in India’s western state of Maharashtra, Modi said “today, when bullets are being fired on the border, it is the enemy that is screaming.”
“The enemy has realised that times
have changed and their old habits will not be tolerated,” he said.
The prime minister also hit out at his political opponents, who had accused him of going soft on Pakistan.
Indian Defense Minister Arun Jaitley accused Pakistan of cross border “adventurism.”
“Pakistan is the aggressor, but it must realize that our deterrence will be credible. If Pakistan
persists with this adventurism, our forces will make the cost of this adventurism unaffordable,” Jaitley told reporters.
“India is never an aggressor, it is a responsible state, but it has a paramount duty to protect its people,” he said.
He added that peace talks between the two countries could not resume under the present conditions.
Meanwhile, Pakistan military said three more civilians on its side were killed by “unprovoked” Indian border
forces’ firing.The spate of cross border attacks
between the two nuclear-armed countries has been ongoing since the last five days.
The latest civilian casualties on the Pakistani side put the death toll at 13; all victims were killed in northeastern Pakistan’s Sialkot district, the Pakistan military’s official media wing, the Inter-Services Public Relations said.
Both countries have accused each other of initiating “unprovoked” firing across the Line of Control, a de facto border which divides the Himalayan region of Kashmir between Pakistan and India.
Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said Pakistan was fully capable of responding to Indian shelling on its eastern borders in a “befitting manner.” However, it did not want to escalate tensions.
In a statement, Asif said: “We do not want the situation on the borders of two nuclear neighbors to escalate into confrontation. India must demonstrate caution and behave with responsibility.”
The on going fighting has killed at least 20 people on both sides, according to Indian and Pakistani officials.
Indian PM warns Pakistanover cross border attacks
Indonesia calls for greater Hajj quota
18 I WORLD NEWS www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014
A US drone strike killed an alleged prominent terrorist commander belonging to the Haqqani network and four of his companions in eastern Afghanistan a senior police official said.
The attack was reported in the Zurmat district of Paktia province
Deputy provincial police chief Mirzaman told Anadolu Agency all those killed were residents of Gardez city, the provincial capital of Paktia province.
Reactions to Austria’s recent proposed law change concerning its Islamic community are growing, with the amendment being accused of violating the constitutional rights of the country’s 500,000 Muslims.
The Austrian government brought a draft bill to parliament on October 2 which would prohibit foreign funding for Islamic organizations and oblige the Islamic community to agree a standardized German translation of the Quran and other religious texts.
The amendment, which overhauls Austria’s 1912 ‘Law on Islam’ over fears about rising extremism, also lays down rules on who can work as Islamic clerics in the country.
According to the bill, the employment of clerics from abroad would be prohibited. Imams would instead be trained at Austrian universities. Currently, some 300 imams work in the country, including 65 Turkish clerics.
The bill seeks to bar “influences from abroad” according to Minister of Foreign Affairs and Integration Sebastian Kurz, from the center-right Austrian People’s Party.
Kurz said the amendment was needed as time and conditions have changed, claiming the draft bill was to prevent extremism.
“The clear message should be that there is no contradiction
between being a faithful Muslim and a proud Austrian,” Kurz said.
Austria is home to more than 500,000 Muslims, about six percent of total population, making up the country’s largest non-Christian religious minority.
Austria’s interior ministry has claimed that some 140 Austrian Muslims are believed to have joined the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which has been operating in Syria and Iraq.
The critics of the bill say it promotes a “state-guided” Islam and is against the constitution, which guarantees equality and freedom of speech and of religion.
The prohibition of foreign funding has been the main target for critics as they say it violates the fairness of the constitution since the same legislation will not be applied to other religious communities.
An academic from Salzburg University’s law department, Metin Akyurek, called for the rights enjoyed by Protestant, Catholic and Jewish groups to be extended to the Islamic community to guarantee “equality” in Austrian society.
Austria’s aim of training its own imams was criticized by Akyurek as he says this goes against the right to teach religion based on the European Union’s human rights laws.
Austrian Muslims reactto Islam law change
He also questioned the timing of the law as Muslim communities come under suspicion over fears about extremism.
Dr. Farid Hafez, a scholar from Salzburg University, told the Anadolu Agency that the amendment is “institutionalized Islamophobia.” Hafez accused the Austrian government of trying to create its own “state-guided” Islam.
“There is a political motivation behind this bill,” he claimed pointing to the rise of euroskeptic and right-wing political groups in Austria.
The president of the Austrian Islamic Community, Fuat Sanac, earlier announced they would appeal to Austria’s constitutional court to halt the amendment, which “risked humiliating” the country’s Muslim population.
Sanac, on said the Muslim community did not want to be treated as “second-class” citizens.
The appeals will be evaluated until November 7 by the constitutional council.
US drone attack kills five in Afghanistan
www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014 WORLD NEWS I 19
Medical negligence and lack of adequate medical care in the Israeli regime’s detention facilities are taking their toll on the lives of hundreds of sick Palestinian inmates there.
The Tel Aviv regime is turning a blind eye to the deteriorating health conditions of about 1,500 sick Palestinians behind bars in Israeli prisons.
Figures show around 100 of the Palestinian inmates with health problems have been diagnosed with cancer and chronic diseases and are in need of immediate care.
Human rights organizations
have called on Israel to immediately release the Palestinian inmates diagnosed with serious illnesses.
“Any one visiting the Israeli hospitals, where sick Palestinian prisoners are kept, discovers that the jails might be better. We have always believed that the appropriate solution to treat the prisoners is through releasing them,” said Tayseer al-Ali, with the Palestinian Center for Defense of Liberties and Civil Rights.
Reports say over 7,000 Palestinians are being held in Israeli jails.
Approximately 2,000 of the Palestinian prisoners have been
arrested over the past few months.On September 26, the Ahrar
Center for Prisoners Studies said Israel was holding 540 Palestinians without trial, showing an increase in the number of these cases over the past six years.
Last month, the Palestinian Department of Prisoners’ Affairs accused the Israeli regime of serious negligence regarding the health conditions of Palestinian detainees.
Egypt has denied reports that its warplanes bombed sites belonging to Islamist militias in Libya’s eastern Benghazi city.
Presidency spokesman Alaa Youssef dismissed media reports that Egyptian warplanes had struck targets in Libya, according to the official MENA news agency.
Forces loyal to former army chief-of-staff Khalifa Haftar also denied Egyptian involvement in the airstrikes against Islamists in Benghazi.
“Reports about the participation of Egyptian warplanes in attacks on sites of extremist Islamist groups are untrue,” Pro-Haftar air commander
Saqr al-Garrouchi said.Associated Press news agency
earlier quoted two unnamed Egyptian officials as saying that Egyptian planes had struck sites of Islamist militias in eastern Libya.
The two officials said that the strikes “were part of an Egypt-led operation against armed militias in Libya that also included Libyan ground forces”.
But Libyan lawmaker Tareq al-Garrouchi said that the Egyptian planes that allegedly struck the Islamist sites were flown by Libyan pilots.
“The Egyptian government has
Egypt denies airstrikes onIslamists in Libya’s Benghazi
given four warplanes to the Libyan army command two weeks ago as part of Egypt’s support for the Libyan army in fighting terrorism,” he told Anadolu Agency.
In August, Islamist militia leaders accused Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of launching airstrikes against their camps in Libyan capital Tripoli.
Both countries, however, denied any involvement in the attacks.
Libya has been dogged by political instability since the 2011 ouster and death of longstanding ruler Muammar Gaddafi.
Ever since, rival militias have locked horns, bringing violence to Libya’s main cities.
The sharp divisions have yielded two rival seats of government in the country, each of which has its own institutions.
Two assemblies currently vie for legislative authority: the newly-elected House of Representatives, which convenes in the eastern city of Tobruk; and the General National Congress, which – even though its mandate ended in August – continues to convene in capital Tripoli.
The two parliaments support two different governments respectively headquartered in the two cities.
Sick Palestinian inmates in need of care
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20I WORLD NEWS www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has pledged to take “legal measures” to prevent illegal Israeli settlers from attacking the al-Aqsa Mosque in East al-Quds (Jerusalem).
“The Palestinian leadership will be taking the necessary legal measures, at the international level, regarding
the aggression of [Israeli] settlers on the al-Aqsa Mosque,” Abbas said, adding that the Palestinian government will “not allow settlers to attack the mosque.”
The holy Islamic site has been the scene of clashes between Palestinian worshippers and Israeli settlers and troops last month.
A 27-year-old Bosnian Muslim immigrant has been named the new Swedish minister of education, setting a role model for young, active Muslims.
The minister, Aida Hadzialic, was named earlier in October in Stefan Löfven new cabinet as the new Upper Secondary School and Adult Education Initiative in Sweden, IBNlive reported.
A law graduate from the University of Lund, Hadzialic became the deputy mayor of the Swedish city Halmstad at the age of 23.
Born in 1987 in Foča, Bosnia, the 27-year-old Swedish politician is now the youngest person ever to serve as a minister in Sweden.
Hadzialic was five years old when her family fled from war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Bosnia fell into civil war in 1992, and that left 200,000 people dead with millions displaced as Serb forces
Hitting a new record, the world’s seventh largest mosque has been inaugurated in Pakistan to accommodate thousands of worshippers in Lahore city.
“The mosque will become a symbol of Pakistan across the Muslim World,” Bahria Town chairman Malik Riaz told the Express Tribune.
The Grand Jamia Masjid, which has a total capacity of 70,000, accommodates 25,000 worshippers at its main hall, it has 21 domes and four 165 feet high minarets, the mosque was acknowledged as the world’s seventh largest mosque and the largest in Pakistan.
Designed by Nayyar Ali Dada, it has a marbled floor and decorated with tailor-made chandeliers and its ornate halls have been beautified with 4,000,000 mosaic tiles.
Pakistan opens world’s 7th largest mosque
Sweden appointsfirst Muslim minister
Mahmoud Abbas vows legalaction against Aqsa attacks
At least 1,300 Israeli settlers and hundreds of soldiers have forced their way into the compound while thousands of Palestinian Muslims under the age of 50 have been barred from entering the site.
Abbas called on all Palestinians to use “all means” necessary to protect the mosque from Israeli settlers, arguing that Israelis have no right to desecrate the holy compound.
Khaled Meshaal, the political bureau chief of Gaza-based Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, has also warned that the Tel Aviv regime is taking advantage of the current crisis in the Middle East to exert its control over the al-Aqsa Mosque.
The al-Aqsa compound, which lies in the Israeli-occupied Old City of al-Quds, is a holy site in Islam. The mosque is Islam’s third-holiest site after Masjid al-Haram in Makah and Masjid al-Nabawi in Medina.
launched ethnic cleansing campaign against Bosnian Muslims.
During the 43-month war, nearly two million people fled their homes, half a million of them are still listed as refugees.
In the final months of the three-year war, Serb forces, led by General Ratko Mladic, overran Srebrenica, killing some 8,000 Muslim men and boys.
Some 15 percent of Sweden’s population is foreign born, the highest in the Nordic region.
Muslims are estimated to make up between 450,000 and 500,000 of Sweden’s nine million people.
www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014 WORLD NEWS I 21
Egypt’s al-Azhar Islamic Center has plans to establish a college of Islamic sciences in Russia’s Republic of Chechnya.
According to al-Yawm al-Sabi daily, the construction of the college is expected to begin in a few days.
The decision for establishing the college came after a visit by Chechnya’s Grand Mufti to Egypt earlier this year.
During the visit, he met with a number of al-Azhar officials including Ahmed al-Tayyeb, the grand sheikh of al-Azhar.
Turkish Cypriots have been allowed to pray in a mosque in the Greek Cypriot-controlled southern Cyprus for the first time in 40 years.
The head of Religious Affairs in Northern Cyprus, Prof. Dr Talip Atalay, led prayers at the Kebir mosque and visited Muslim cemeteries in the city of Baf (Paphos) and its surroundings on the invitation of Greek Cypriot Archbishop Chrysostomos II.
After the prayers held at the Ottoman-era mosque, which was converted into a mosque by Mehmed Bey Ebu Bekir in the late 1500s, Dr. Atalay expressed his happiness, thanking the Turkish Cypriot Foreign Ministry - which arranged the visit - and
the Swedish embassy for it mediating role, World Bulletin reported.
Dr. Atalay’s visit marks the first visit of a Cyprus Mufti to Baf and its surroundings since the island of Cyprus was split in 1974 following an intervention from Turkey in response to a Greek-backed military coup on the Cypriot government.
Meetings between the religious leaders of Cyprus have become a regular opportunity to encourage dialogue between the two major religious groups on the island - Muslims and Christians - as the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot governments seek to resolve the Cyprus dispute.
France has emerged as the most desirable travel destination in Europe by Muslim tourists particularly among Malaysian travelers, according to a poll of travelers in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
Of the 400 Muslim respondents from Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and the United Arab Emirates, 30 percent cited France as their top European destination, followed by England and
Italy (tied at 28 percent), Germany and Turkey (tied at 26 percent).
France is particularly popular among Malaysian travelers, 28 percent of whom cited the country as their top pick.
The results of the Muslim Travel Index 2014 were released out of the Halal Tourism Conference held in Andalucia, Spain earlier this week.
According to the report, the halal
France most popular Europeantravel destination for Muslims
tourism sector was worth $140 billion last year, representing 13 percent of global travel expenditures and is expected to rise to $192 billion by 2020.
Another report from DinarStandard also predicted that 14 percent of international trips will be undertaken by Muslims by 2020, outpacing the global average when it comes to travel growth.
In the UK alone, visitors from the Middle East spent £1.1 billion ($1.8 billion) in 2013.
Here are the top European destinations for Muslim travelers according to the Muslim Travel Index 2014:1. France (30%)2. Italy (28%), England (28%)3. Germany (26%), Turkey (26%)4. Spain (23%)5. Netherlands (17%)6. Austria (14%)7. Scotland (12%)8. Greece (11%), Sweden (11%)9. Portugal (9%)10. Belgium (7%)
Top European destination for Saudi Arabia: Germany, Malaysia: France, United Arab Emirates: Turkey
First prayer in Cyprus mosque in 40 years
Al-Azhar to Open Islamic Sciences College in Chechnya
Gillingham FC chairman charged with racism by English FA
22 I SPORT www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014
In Case YouMissed It
New Zealand head coach Steve Hansen has named Sonny Bill Williams in a 34-man squad boasting 1,249 Test caps for their four-match northern hemisphere tour in November.
Williams, who was part of the 2011 Rugby World Cup-winning All Blacks squad and last featured for them in 2012, came back to union earlier this month after a two-year spell in
Australia’s National Rugby League.His only action has been with
Counties Manukau in the national provincial competition, but has a deal with the All Blacks and the Chiefs for 2015 and 2016, and could make a swift return to international action as the world champions begin their build-up to next year’s tournament in England.
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Amir Khan will be out to prove himself to Floyd Mayweather Jr when facing Devon Alexander on December 13, according to Golden Boy Promotions boss Oscar De La Hoya.
De La Hoya says a meeting is close to being confirmed but the contest will likely propel the winner into a fight against Mayweather in 2015.
Khan has constantly chased a fight with the unbeaten American, spurning the chance to face Alexander last year in order to enhance his bid to secure the career-defining bout.
“There are just little details that we are finishing but Khan and Alexander are going to fight,” De La Hoya said.
At 27, Khan had seemingly abandoned plans to face Mayweather, who says he will retire next year.
The Briton is likely to be sceptical regarding a future meeting with Mayweather, should he beat Alexander, having been continually overlooked as a potential opponent for the 47-0 fighter.
Sonny Bill Williamsnamed in All Blacks squad
December date set for Khan v Alexander
A Dubai-based businessman has been charged with race victimisation by the UK’s Football Association (FA) after the English club which he is chairman of allegedly refused to pay the medical bills’ for an injured black striker, it was reported.
Gillingham Football Club and its
chairman Paul Scally, who has lived in Dubai since 2006, were charged by the FA of breaching its rules by dismissing retired footballer Mark McCammom and refusing to pay for treatment for a serious injury, the Daily Mail reported.
The Barbados footballer used
the club in August 2012 and claimed the club and staff treated black players differently from their white colleagues.
McCammom said the club offered to pay for his medical bills on the UK National Health Service (NHS), while a white injured teammate was flown to Dubai for private treatment at the club’s expense
However, Scally described McCammon’s allegations as “maliciously and without foundation”.The club was ordered to pay McCammon £68,000 ($109,398) compensation to McCammon and has until November 14 to respond to the FA’s decision.
www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014 SPORT I 23
Palestine All-stars, a team of young Footballers from Kirklees borough, West Yorkshire pitted their wits against teams from across the UK at the national championship of the StreetGames Football Pools Fives at the beginning of October.
They qualified for the final having beaten tough regional competition and went on to win the competition having beaten teams from across eight regional qualifiers in the finals.
The two-day event was held at St George’s Park, the National Football Centre in Burton-Upon-Trent.
The players got to meet and play with a host of sports stars including
England Under-21 manager Gareth Southgate, England women’s defender Sophie Bradley, former England boss Graham Taylor and ex-Wales and Cardiff striker Nathan Blake.
As well as the competition, the lucky team got to stay at the Hilton Hotel inside the grounds of St George’s Park, be given a tour of the venue, enjoy a three-course meal with a guest speaker as well as rub shoulders with football legends.
Before the event Gareth Southgate, National ambassador for the StreetGames Football Pools Fives, said: “If the standard of the football so far is anything to go by then this should
Malaysian Football President Tengku Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah is targeting more places for Asian sides at future World Cups after launching a bid to join the all-powerful FIFA executive committee.
The Asian Football Confederation will vote for three members to join FIFA’s decision-making board with Tengku Abdullah the first of many expected to throw their hat into the ring for the election expected to take place in April or May.
Asia’s four representatives at this year’s World Cup all finished bottom
of their groups. It was the first time since the 1990 tournament in Italy that Asia did not win a game at the finals.
Tengku Abdullah is likely to face competition from incumbents Wowrawi Makudi of Thailand and China’s Zhang Jilong, with Qatari Hassan Al Thawadi another who could challenge after missing out on a spot 18 months ago.
The 2022 World Cup organizer was beaten by AFC President Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa but the Bahraini royal has since restructured
the AFC’s FIFA positions and will vacate the executive committee seat for a bigger prize.
The AFC voted in June to adopt policy that the confederation’s head holds a FIFA vice presidency position with Shaikh Salman to stand again as chief.
Current FIFA Vice President Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein fought the Bahraini on the policy before accepting defeat but the Jordanian royal could launch a presidency challenge or at least fight for one of the three remaining FIFA Exco memberships.
Malaysia launches bid to join FIFA executive committee
Palestine All-stars from Kirkleeswin national football tournament
be an absolutely fantastic final – and what better place to hold it than at the amazing facilities of St George’s Park.
“This will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for most of the competitors to show what they can do in the same place where England’s very best train for their international duties.
The young men who make up the Palestine All-Stars team come from Batley and Dewsbury and all attend the Kirklees Midnight Soccer Program at St John Fishers High School.
The Midnight Soccer Program is run by Kirklees Council Integrated Youth Support Service and was originally developed in 2007 in response to high levels of Anti-Social Behaviour at that time on a Friday night. The programme runs at Dewsbury (St John Fishers High School) and Huddersfield (Leeds Road Playing Fields). The programme has been running for 7 years and around 150 young people attend each week. The programme provides opportunities for young people to play in regional and national competitions as well as the annual Kirklees Cup event.
Team members were Adam Zaman, Anees Younis, Aadam Chhibda, Abdullah Mayat, Muhammad Omar, Aamir Aswat, Rafaqat Hussain, and Youssef Elmanea.
24 I FEATURED www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014
When learning about the Muslim scholars of the past, it is easy to be amazed by their brilliance, accomplishments, and contributions to the modern world. Each provided a lasting legacy that changed the world in their time and today. One scientist in particular stands far above the rest. He is Ibn al-Haytham, the great polymath who lived from 965 to 1040.
He was born in the Iraqi city of Basra during the Abbasid Caliphate. He came about 100 years after the establishment of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. Undoubtedly the culture of learning and advancement present in the Muslim world at that time had a great impact on him from an early age. He studied Islamic sciences and soon became a mayor of the city of
Basra. During this time, he continued to study, focusing on sciences and other empirical subjects. His big break, however, would come in another part of the Muslim world.
During his time as mayor of Basra, the Fatimid rival caliph in Egypt al-Hakim (the Fatimids were Ismaili Shias who rejected the caliphate of the Sunni Abbasids in Iraq) heard of an idea that Ibn al-Haytham had to dam the Nile. Al-Hakim was a man of contradictions. Although he was the leader of the heretical Ismaili branch of Shiism that most scholars of the day completely rejected, he opened up his domain to anyone who could benefit it. Al-Hakim invited Ibn al-Haytham to come to Egypt to attempt his radical idea to dam the Nile. After travelling
down the Nile to see where a potential dam could be built, he realized his plan could not go into effect with the technology of the day. There happened to be one problem: al-Hakim was known to be act irrationally ruthless, and acted quite insane on occasion. In order to escape some kind of punishment, Ibn al-Haytham pretended to be even more insane than al-Hakim himself! This daring idea saved him from excecution, but placed him under house arrest in Cairo for the remainder of al-Hakim’s life – 10 years.
Those 10 years didn’t even seem as punishment to the brilliant scientist. During this time, he got the peace and quiet he wanted to pursue his research. During this time, he dived into the study of light. He
Ibn Al-Haytham – The First Scientist
www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014 FEATURED I 25
wanted to understand what light is, how it works, and how humans see objects. Although what he studied and discovered was truly revolutionary, the way he researched was one of his biggest contributions.
The Scientific MethodToday, it is understood to students of science that everything must be proven. You cannot make claims about scientific theories based on assumption without experimentation. Before Ibn al-Haytham, that was not the case. The ancient Greek philosophies of science still held weight. The Greeks believed that scientific fact can be discovered through reason, or simply attributed to the actions of the gods. Ibn al-Haytham knew better. He was the first scientist in history to insist that everything be proven through a given method for discovering new information – the scientific method.
Western textbooks today usually give little information about the history of the scientific method. Usually the ancient Greek philosophies are mentioned, followed by the “revolutionary” work of Roger Bacon, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton. The truth that is forgotten is that those European scholars stood on the shoulders of Ibn al-Haytham (and other Muslim scientists). Without his ideas about proving scientific theories, we may still be living in a time when speculation, superstition, and unproven myths are the basis of science.
The Book of OpticsUsing his revolutionary scientific method, Ibn al-Haytham takes leaps and bounds into the field of optics. In his book, The Book of Optics, he was the first to disprove the ancient Greek idea that light comes out of the eye, bounces off objects, and comes back to the eye. He delved further into the way the eye itself works. Using dissections and the knowledge of previous scholars, he was able to begin to explain how light enters the eye, is focused, and is projected to the back of the eye.
In a similar way, he is the first to study the phenomenon of the pinhole camera. The concept of a pinhole camera is simple: a box with a tiny hole on one side is able to project an image of whatever is outside onto a side of the box on the inside. Those familiar
with the way modern cameras work will notice that that is how cameras work in general, but today with the addition of lenses. Ibn al-Haytham was able to build these pinhole cameras hundreds of years before the modern development of photography as we know it.
He also studied the way light is affected when moving through a medium such as water or gasses. From this, he was able to explain why the sky changes color at twilight (the sun’s rays hit the atmosphere at an angle, causing refraction). From this, he was able to calculate the depth of the earth’s atmosphere, 1000 years before it would be proven by spaceflight.
The translation of The Book of Optics had a huge impact on Europe. From it, later European scholars were able to build the same devices as he did, and understand the way light works. From this, such important things as eyeglasses, magnifying glasses, telescopes, and cameras were developed.
Beyond LightAs if revolutionizing the way humanity understands light and leading to the development of things we can’t live without in the 2000s wasn’t enough, Ibn al-Haytham also pioneered in other fields.
In 1020s and 1030s, he wrote numerous books on astronomy. He wrote about the mistakes of the Ptolemaic model of how the stars and planets move and provided a more realistic view of the way the universe works (although he knew the earth to be a sphere, he stuck to the ancient Greek idea that the earth was the center of the universe).
He completely refuted astrology as a scientific subject. Continuing with his firm belief scientific ideas needing to be proven, he came to the conclusion that the ideas of astrology were not rooted in any type of science, but in the thoughts and feelings of astrologers. He also noted that astrology directly contradicts one of the main ideas of Islam – that God is the cause of all things, not astronomical bodies.
He had a great influence on Isaac Newton, who was aware of Ibn al-Haytham’s works. He studied the basis of calculus, which would later lead to the engineering formulas and methods used today. He also wrote about
the laws governing the movement of bodies (later known as Newton’s 3 laws of motion) and the attraction between two bodies – gravity. It was not, in fact, the apple that fell from the tree that told Newton about gravity, but the books of Ibn al-Haytham.
Since he was also trained in the traditional Islamic sciences, he also wrote on how to use empirical methods to disprove a false prophet, and how to use math to calculate the prayer direction towards Makkah.
In a precursor to modern psychology, he researched the effect music therapy can have on humans and animals.
LegacyThe list of accomplishments and contributions of Ibn al-Haytham goes on and on. The truly amazing thing is that he wrote over 200 books, but only around 50 have survived till today. What he discovered that we do not even know about probably far outshines even the amazing works that have made it to the present day.
Unfortunately, his contributions have been overlooked since his death. While he was never someone who cared for the fame and prestige that came with being a great scholar, the unawareness today’s world has about his contributions is unsettling. When his books were translated into Latin as the Spanish conquered Muslim lands in the Iberian Peninsula, he was not referred to by his name, but rather as “Alhazen”. The practice of changing the names of great Muslim scholars to more European sounding names was common in the European Renaissance, as a means to discredit Muslims and erase their contributions to Christian Europe.
Regardless, his brilliant mind inspired countless others who stood on his shoulders. It is not a stretch to say that without his research, the modern world of science that we know today would not exist.
Sources:Morgan, M. (2007). Lost History. Washington D.C. : National Geographic Society.Masood, E. (2006). Science and Islam. Icon Books.“Ibn al-Haytham.” The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2012. Retrieved October 01, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com:http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-IbnalHay.htmlSteffens, B. (2007). Ibn al-Haytham : first scientist. Greensboro, N.C. : Morgan Reynolds Pub.
26 I I FEATURED www.pi-media.co.uk I November 2014
Parental engagement in their child’s homework is an issue that worries me. Many parents do not understand the extent, by which, it is important, for them, to get involved in their child’s homework.
Parents could become more proactive in contacting the school about their child’s performance, progress and homework. For younger children, parents should ask teachers about the due date and instructions in completing the homework. So a 7 year old child would need close supervision, whilst a 15 year old would have more autonomy.
The extent of parental-engagement with a teacher would therefore vary depending on the age of the child. Parents of an older child would only really engage with a teacher if the older child’s teacher was not as helpful in providing guidance for homework. Use the planner as a starting point to probe home to school communication. In serious situations call the school.
An additional point is parents should monitor their child’s homework.
For example, make yourself available to advise your child, answer simple questions and be aware of your child’s emotional state and in those bad circumstances offer positive feedback to motivate your child.
Another point is parents could better set-structures for school homework at home. Structures could be based on family routines and context. Setting time and space for homework is necessary for successful learning. Without good routines based on family-routines children might not perform fully in their homework. Family distractions may cause poor performance in homework.
Parents often complain that their child is easily-distracted. These children who struggle with studying need close monitoring. Distractions such as TV, PS3, x-box, tablet, computer games and mobile phones should be switched-off until the homework is completed.
Playtime of computer games and similar should be controlled. Children should be encouraged to play out for
the mind to work efficiently. A balanced approach is advised.
This is to ensure that whilst completing their homework, their focus does not go into technology or playing out with friends as they’ve already had or will enjoy that time - as a reward. However, a child who has strong self-regulations skills can have “loose” supervision and benefit from increased autonomy.
Pupil’s homework offer opportunities for students, teachers, parents and carers to become involved in helping children develop in learning. It allows parents an opportunity to see what is being learnt at school, then interact and get involved in supporting their child’s learning in various ways.
It allows study structures to be set around family context. Taking an interest in your child’s homework will reap profits for later life.
For more advice, contact Mr G. Dabhad on 01924 506010
www.improvetuition.org and like us on www.facebook.com/improvetuition
How should parents engagein their child’s homework?
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