At least – unlike Milosovic groupie Neil Clark – you don’t carry on conversations with them:

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=17766817&postID=113603271998970249

Still, if the state want to fund this sort of pr for paranoid racists, fair enough. At least it provides work for lawyers.

I didn’t see much of that thankfully.

BTW, the tab for promoting the BNP as a bunch of gentle high-minded protesters fighting for the Right for Freedom of Expression and values of the Enlightenment was also picked up by the Legal Aid in the last Nick Griffin trial. Meanwhile, violent racist attacks are up by 6%.

She won in the sense that

(a) Hizb ut Tahrir got on the telly, where they were left to spout about fundamental freedoms and basic rights, like a bunch of fluffy liberals;

(b) They also got to spread their message that ‘muslims are under fundamental attack in all aspects of their life CREATE THE CALIPHATE NOW!!!!!!!!”

(c) The tab for this public relations blitz was paid by Legal Aid. Didn’t cost them a penny.

Of course Begum didn’t get to go to school for two years for no good reason at all, but hey, in this life, you gotta make sacrifices.

Great to see the benefits of covering up and letting it go on adjacent comments…only on PP!

thanks
Sahara

Yeah, but it’s not happening, there is no groundswell amongst desi Muslims to forsake their ethnic and cultural roots – rather the opposite. That’s why they have to resort to foot stamping techniques like this to try and get their way. To manufacture alienation.

Surely that’s not what you’re saying as that undermines the entire concept of school uniform.

However I do agree with Zobia that too much has been made of this.

http://rswipe.blogspot.com/2006/03/crisis-in-our-schools-personal.html

..thought not.

Bob

Muslims have been sending their kids to schools in wchool uniforms in dozens of countries for hundreds of years and in order to do so, it has been incumbent on the parents and the kids that they respect the schools’ rules. *sigh*
Lets get this straight: The full back jilbab is a modern (at least of the last 200 years) and cultural interpretation of an Islamic tenet of modest clothing for women. Muslims should not feel forced or obliged to follow this interpretation and its not even Sunna (optional, recommended), let alone Fard (obligitory).

Shabina Begum’s school was not prejudiced, uncooperative or inflexible to the requriements of Muslim dress for girls in any way. Quite the opposite, they’ve been exemplary.

Just as Don finds it offensive to to see 12-year olds in ‘Porn Star’ tops, I also find it offensive to see girls as young as 4 or 5 covered up. Are these people suggetsing tha men should find them sexually attractive? When I ask parents why theey have little Sara (aged 4 and three quarters) in a full hijab, I’m invariably told “She needs to get used to it”.

Its a shame that the loudest and most regressive group of Muslims are motivated to do their best to force their interprestations (based largely on awkward-ist identity politics) on Muslims in the UK to appear to be *the* consensus for Muslim parents and schoolchildren.

As always, like I said from the start, this is primarily about mainstream Asian Muslims being challenged and hounded by the fringe.