Iranian protester Neda 'person of the year'

A BRITISH newspaper has named an Iranian woman shot dead during protests against her country's disputed June elections as its "person of the year".

The Times said Neda Agha-Soltan became a "global symbol of opposition to tyranny" after images of her bleeding to death during the protests in Tehran were shown around the world.

"Ms Soltan, 26, joined the protest because she was outraged at the way that the regime stole the presidential election," the newspaper said on its front page that included a photograph of protesters holding pictures of her.

"She wanted to make a difference, she said. She had no idea quite what an impact she would have. Mobile phone footage of her bleeding to death on a pavement flashed around the world.

"It tore the last shreds of legitimacy from the regime, made her a global symbol of opposition to tyranny, and inspired the Green Movement in a region where populations are all too easily cowed."

The move risks angering Iranian hardliners who say Ms Soltan's killing was "staged" to denigrate the regime, claiming there have been fabricated reports about the incident, including "widespread propaganda" by the foreign media.

Hundreds of thousands of opposition supporters poured into Iranian streets in week-long protests in June over the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saying the vote was rigged.

The demonstrations were suppressed following a call by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who gave his strong backing to President Ahmadinejad and warned the opposition against continued street protests.

The opposition movement has continued however to mount protests, with some members wearing the colour green in support of defeated rival presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Iran last month reportedly denounced Oxford University after one of its colleges set up a scholarship in honour of Ms Soltan, accusing it of joining a "politically motivated" campaign.

The Australian

Muslim total hits 2.4m as they say: UK's nicest to us

BRITAIN’S Muslim population has hit 2.4million because the UK is seen as the best country in Europe for the Islamic faith, a report is to reveal.

There are 1.1million Muslim immigrants and 1.3million UK-born Muslims – mostly the ­children of newcomers.

Muslims quizzed said there was less open hostility to Islam in Britain than other EU countries and that the Government is ­sympathetic to them.

But critics seized on the f­indings as confirmation that Labour’s multicultural policies are pandering to Islam.

Sir Andrew Green, of the ­pressure group Migrationwatch, warned the Muslim ­population in Britain was likely to be even higher than research showed.

He said: “The rapid rise in the Muslim population is just one way in which mass immigration promoted, even encouraged, by this Government has affected the whole nature of our society.”

Muslim illegal immigrants were unlikely to respond to Government-linked surveys, he added.

The population research is to be published next month in a new “faith map” of the UK drawn up by the Institute for Public Policy Research, a think-tank with close links to 10 Downing Street.

Even the authors admit the increasing numbers of immigrants of different religions will be “challenging” for social cohesion in the UK. The report found in the past decade a rise of 275,000 in the number of Muslims who were born in Pakistan or Bangladesh living in Britain.

The increase is equivalent to twice the population of Oxford.

And the number of Somali-born UK residents had also risen sharply – from fewer than 40,000 in 1999 to 106,700 this year.

Many of the newcomers had migrated to Britain from other parts of the European Union.

They claimed to prefer the UK because of “latent Islamaphobia” abroad, the report said.

The “faith map” showed that 4.5million immigrants living in Britain had a religious affiliation.

Of those, around a quarter were Muslim and more than half Christian. Polish Catholics and African Pentecostals also were also among the fastest-growing religious communities in the UK.

The findings were based on previously unpublished results of the Labour Force Survey, which quizzes 200,000 people each year.

Researchers said traditional church attendance had declined over the last decade but evangelical Christianity was growing.

The report, called Faith, ­Migration and Integration in the UK, says: “A challenging change is that brought about by the arrival of migrants with an established faith organisation whose traditions and beliefs differ from that of the UK-born population.”

A separate report found British Muslims are the most patriotic in Europe. Seventy-eight per cent think of themselves as British, says the Open Society Institute. In Germany it was 23 per cent.

Daily Express

England: Muslim schools under threat of closure

Many independent Muslim schools in England are under threat of closure, according to the Association of Muslim Schools (AMS).

The organisation, which represents almost 100 independent Islamic institutions, said many could not afford to stay open.

Most schools use fees and donations to cover costs and need about £2000 per pupil per year to stay afloat.

But the recession has seen donations fall and parents unable to pay fees.

The threat applies to "almost all" of the 130 Muslim faith schools in England, according to the association.

Among these, 119 are independent and reliant on fees and donations, but 11 are in the state sector so have guaranteed income and are not under threat.

Dr Mohammed Mukadhum, the chairman of AMS, said the schools, attended by thousands of pupils, were hand-to-mouth organisations, operating on a shoestring budget.

Dr Mukadhum said: ''Many of them have been relatively recently established so there has always been some financial struggle.

"But the economic crisis has put them under enormous pressure and they are getting through each day with great difficulty,'' he said.
''The possibility of closing down is a looming reality and the smaller schools are the ones that are most vulnerable,'' he added.
(..)

Zainab Rahman, 11, is in year seven at the secondary school.

''I love it here, I get to learn about my religion and I can talk openly about it.

"But if this school shuts down, I won't have anywhere to go," she said.

She said because there were no other Muslim faith schools in Oxford, she would be sent to Pakistan to study and would have to live with relatives there.

Her best friend was sent to Pakistan last month to be educated there, she said, because her parents could not afford the school fees.

''She didn't really have a choice and had to go abroad.

"I've lost touch with her since," Zainab said.

(more)

With thanks to Islam in Europe

The price of trying to save killed Iranian protester Neda Soltan

Martin Fletcher

The death of Neda Soltan in the protests that followed the Iranian presidential election touched the world, but what of the doctor who went to her aid?

As Arash Hejazi sat in an Oxford coffee bar, members of Iran's Basij militia in Tehran were demanding his extradition outside the British Embassy.

The previous day the Iranian regime had sent an Oxford college a letter of protest over a scholarship given to honour Neda Soltan, the student killed during a huge demonstration against electoral fraud in Tehran in June.

The letter also suggested that Dr Hejazi was responsible for her murder.

For Dr Hejazi, who had tried to save Ms Soltan's life, that was the final straw. He decided that it was time to speak out. It was time to reveal how the regime has sought to vilify, punish and silence him ever since he told the world, immediately after Ms Soltan's death, how she had been shot by a government henchman for peacefully protesting against President Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election.

Dr Hejazi is now living in exile in Britain, jobless and fearful, while back in Tehran the regime blackens his name and hounds his friends, family and colleagues.

"I told the truth. I just did what I had to do, but there were dire consequences," he told The Times. In short, a quirk of fate - that he happened to be standing near Ms Soltan the moment that she was shot - has turned his entire life upside down and made him "another victim of tyranny".

Dr Hejazi, 38, was doing a one-year postgraduate course in publishing at Oxford Brookes University at the time of the June 12 presidential election, and returned to Tehran on a business trip the following day. On June 20 he was caught up in a street protest when he heard a blast, looked around and saw blood gushing from the chest of the woman next to him.

She collapsed. Dr Hejazi, who had trained as a doctor before switching to publishing, tried in vain to save her life. Within hours a video clip of that scene had flashed around the world, transforming Ms Soltan into a symbol of the regime's brutality and of the Iranian people's battle for freedom.

So powerful were the pictures that Dr Hejazi, realising that the regime would try to suppress the truth, fled back to his wife and infant son in Britain. A few days later, in interviews with The Times and the BBC, he told how Ms Soltan was shot by a Basiji on a motorbike who was swiftly caught by other demonstrators.

Dr Hejazi's troubles began almost immediately. His father, a university professor, was interrogated for hours and ordered to tell his son to shut up. Senior officials in the regime asserted that Ms Soltan had been killed by foreign intelligence agencies, and that Dr Hejazi was part of an international conspiracy to undermine the Islamic republic. He was denounced in the state-controlled media. Iran's police chief declared him a wanted man. Read more ...

Source: The Australian

Dr. Arash Hejazi
Latest recipient of The MASH Award

Iran Condemns Oxford University Scholarship Honoring Woman Killed

Iran has protested to an Oxford University college over a scholarship in memory of the slain Iranian student who became an icon of mass street protests sparked by the disputed June election.

In Tehran, a small group of hard-line women demonstrated Wednesday against the scholarship in front of the British Embassy. The women chanted "Death to Britain," the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

Oxford's Queen's College established the Neda Agha Soltan Graduate Scholarship in Philosophy earlier this year, named for the 27-year-old student fatally shot on June 20 on the sidelines of a Tehran demonstration. Her dying moments were caught on a video viewed by millions on the Internet, and she became a potent symbol of the opposition's struggle.

"It seems that the University of Oxford has stepped up involvement in a politically motivated campaign which is not only in sharp contrast with academic objectives" but also linked to British interference in Iran's post-election turmoil, Iran's Embassy in London said in a letter to the provost of the British university's college. Queen's College confirmed it had received the letter dated Tuesday.

Iran has in the past accused Britain of playing a role in the protests following the June 12 presidential election and meddling in its internal affairs. The opposition said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the election by fraud. But hard-liners have described the massive protests as a plot by Iran's enemies to overthrow the system of clerical rule through a 'velvet revolution.'

The Iranian letter said Soltan's "suspicious death" is still a criminal case being investigated by the police at home.

It said she had been shot on an isolated street far from the protesters and her "murderers" had filmed her and her companions for 20 minutes before the killing.

Read more here,,,,

Source: FoxNews

Anger over plan to broadcast Muslim call to prayer on loudspeaker in Oxford

Muslim plans to broadcast a loudspeaker call to prayer from a city centre mosque have been attacked by local residents who say it would turn the area into a "Muslim ghetto".

Dozens of people packed out a council meeting to express their concerns over the plans for a two-minute long call to prayer to be issued three times a day, saying that it could drown out the traditional sound of church bells.

But a spokesman for the Central Mosque said that Muslim's also have the right to summon worshippers. Read more ...

Source: Daily Mail
H/T: Dhimmi Watch