2014年5月13日 星期二

The random Muslim scare story generator: separating fact from fiction

清楚解析當前英國社會的穆斯林議題:面紗、犯罪者、伊斯蘭法、伊斯蘭銀行與清真食物。
In Britain, there is now a cycle of Islamic scare stories so regular that it is almost comforting, like the changing of the seasons. Sadly, this rotation is not as natural, or as benign, although it is beginning to feel just as inevitable. We had the niqab winter last year, as the country lurched into the niqab debate for the second time in three years. Now we are in the spring of halal slaughter.
Add to this schedule the routine reports about gender segregation in UK universities and Muslim schools (as if the concept of gender segregation was somehow exotic to non-faith schools in the UK), claims of grand plans to "overthrow" non-Muslim heads of certain schools and you have a steady flow of creeping sharia messages, stoking a fear of a stealthy, incremental Islamicisation.
Channel 4's Ramadan coverage last year drew 2,011 complaints, the majority objecting to the broadcast of the call to prayer, a two-minute transmission. This reflects an increasing nationwide umbrage towards visible British Muslims, informed by repetitive stories that inaccurately amplify their religiously motivated activity.

2014年5月9日 星期五

The halal outrage has little to do with animal welfare

沒有科學證據,百分之百證實伊斯蘭宰牲,是非人道的方式。同樣,用電擊方式,未必動物不會感到痛苦。
The head of the British Veterinary Association has said that religious slaughter methods need to change to prevent animal suffering. It is unfortunate that the BVA and other animal welfare organisations in the UK tend to view religious slaughter as incompatible with humaneness; quite the contrary is true – compassion and animal welfare stand at the centre of the entire process.
Shechita and zabiha are not words commonly known by the public, but to Jewish and Muslim communities they are synonymous with sincerely held, religiously mandated care for animals. They refer to the Jewish and Muslim humane methods of slaughter of animals for food, and the body of religious law in which they are contained talks not only about the last two seconds of an animal's life, but about its treatment from birth.

英國清真食物(Halal meat)爭議: 三篇文章

1. We Muslims should be appalled by the sale of halal meat by stealth

貼標籤試的文章

‘This is covert religious extremism and creeping Islamic fundamentalism making its way into Britain by the back door. It is completely wrong that the food sensitivities of Britain’s Muslims — who amount to just 4.8 per cent of the population — should take precedence over the other 95 per cent.

‘But if the Koran does not insist on what have become the customary halal methods, why are they now so prevalent in Britain? One reason is that religious zealots and theological ideologues are deliberately promoting confusion about halal to sow discord and resentment.

‘Three of the main fundamentalist Muslim sects — the Wahhabi fanatics in Saudi Arabia, the Salafi extremists of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and the Deobandi zealots from India-Pakistan — are foisting their fabricated notions about it down our collective throats.

‘It is high time the white, liberal, Guardian-reading classes stopped behaving like apologists and woke up. There is a fundamentalist Trojan horse in our midst, and we must take corrective action.’

‘Antiquated customs like the insistence exclusively on the Hadith version of halal meat only serve to entrench that fundamentalism. They should be rooted out and consigned to the dustbin of history. They have no place in a modern British society, where Muslims wish to be fully integrated and part of the UK mainstream.’



2. Which restaurant chains have gone halal – and why?

‘That sounds bad. But banner headlines about "ritually slaughtered meat" conceal the fact that, according to a 2012 Food Standards Agency report cited by the RSPCA, 97% of cattle, 96% of poultry and 90% of sheep slaughtered using the halal method in UK abattoirs are stunned before being killed – a procedure that makes them insensible to pain and distress.’

2014年5月6日 星期二

UK hysteria over 'Islamist' threat is fuelling race hate

英國的伊斯蘭恐懼症

Once again, the British press is panicking over the "Islamists" that are apparently lurking with malicious intent on every street corner in the UK.
While tabloids fret over imagined Islamic plots to take bacon off Britain's streets, the broadsheets reflect a more highbrow hysteria over an extremist Islamism that has apparently taken root on British soils.
Meanwhile, the political class is doing its bit, too. Tony Blair, the Middle East war-mongering former prime minister turned Middle East peace envoy, has declared "radical Islam" to be the biggest threat ever, in the world. The British government itself has launched an inquiry into the Muslim Brotherhood, which, according to Prime Minister David Cameron is to "establish a complete picture" of the organisation.
And the UK Charities Commission - headed by William Shawcross, formerly of the neo-con Henry Jackson society - has declared "Islamist extremism" to be the most "deadly threat" facing charities in England and Wales thereby raising alarm that legitimate Islamic charities may have funding choked off by association, through a spread of fears over handing out hard-earned pennies to hot-headed jihadis.