person:peter tatchell

Mayor Boris & police endorse event with extremist clerics | Peter Tatchell Foundation
▻http://www.petertatchellfoundation.org/religion/mayor-boris-police-endorse-event-extremist-clerics

Mayor Boris & police endorse event with extremist clerics
posted by Peter Tatchell ... on Fri, 22/11/2013 - 15:26

Speakers say blasphemers, adulterers & apostates should be killed

MPs, City of London police & top BBC official support GPU

London, UK - 22 November 2013

“People who have sex outside of marriage, blasphemers and Muslims who leave the faith should be killed, according to some speakers at this weekend’s Islamic Global Peace & Unity (GPU) conference in London. The conference website says the event is backed by the Mayor of London, the City of London police commissioner, MPs, the former Archbishop of Canterbury and a senior BBC official,” reports Peter Tatchell, Director of the human rights organisation, the Peter Tatchell Foundation.

On the assumption that the GPU website is accurate:

“It is appalling that the Mayor, City of London police and prominent public figures are endorsing an event that promotes at least seven speakers with bigoted, violent views. It’s the equivalent of supporting an event with BNP and EDL hate speakers.

“How can the mayor and police justify giving their approval to a conference that hosts speakers who advocate discrimination and violence?

“On the GPU website there are messages of support from the Mayor of London Boris Johnson, the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Labour MP Stephen Timms and Labour peer Lord Parekh. Noam Chomsky is also listed and quoted under “Supporters.”
▻http://www.theglobalunity.com/about/supporters

“Speakers named on the GPU website include the Commissioner of the City of London Police Adrian Leppard and his Assistant Commissioner Wayne Chance, Tory MP Rehman Chishti, BBC commissioning editor Aqil Ahmed and Muslim Council of Britain leader Farooq Murad.
▻http://www.theglobalunity.com/speakers

“I have written letters of protest to the Mayor of London and the Commissioner and Assistant Commission of the City of London police, urging them to withdraw their support for the conference.

“The seven extremist preachers have variously expressed opinions such as:

“In their view, homophobia is praiseworthy, women should stay in the home and blasphemers and apostates should be killed.

“They stir anti-Semitism and say that people who have pre-marital or extra-marital sex deserve flogging and stoning to death.

“Opposing social integration and community cohesion, some clerics advocate a form of religious apartheid: Muslims should not associate with non-Muslims and Muslim parents should not send their children to non-Muslim schools.

“Freedom of religion is condemned as a blasphemous ideal and Ahmadiyya Muslims are said to deserve persecution.

“There are at least seven extremist preachers listed to speak at the GPU on 23 and 24 November at ExCel London.

“They are: Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, Sheikh Muhammad Al-Ya’qoubi, Sheikh Shady Al-Suleiman, Iman Abdul Wahid Pedersen, Sheikh Said Rageah, Sheikh Muhammad Al Shareef, and Sheikh Yasir Qadhi,” said Mr Tatchell.
Quotes from the seven extremist GPU speakers (with links to sources):

Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri

He has defended Pakistan laws that impose the death penalty for blasphemy and are used to persecute Ahmadiyya Muslims.

▻http://ahmadiyyatimes.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/exposing-dr-tahir-ul-qadri-rest-of.html
and
▻http://ahmadiyyatimes.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/concept-of-jihad-allama-tahirul-qardri.html
and
▻http://ahmadiyyatimes.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/faith-and-integrity-mullah-tahir-ul.html

Sheikh Muhammad Al-Ya’qoubi

He believes: Freedom of religion and freedom of expression are blasphemous and “false ideals.” The Grand Mufti of Syria was wrong to oppose violence against Jewish settlers in the Palestinian terrorities.

“....these wrong and false ideals like ‘freedom of religion’ or ‘freedom of expression’. In Islam I do not allow under the banner of ‘freedom of expression’ someone to come and curse or insult a Prophet of Allah... it is blasphemy, it is not freedom of speech at all.”

▻http://www.therevival.co.uk/defending-deen
and
▻https://www.facebook.com/notes/brotherhood-and-unity-amongst-muslims/mufti-of-syria-makes-troubling-statements-about-prophet-muhammadsaw/290738087679?comment_id=10720212&offset=0&total_comments=5

Sheikh Shady Al-Suleiman

The Sheikh says adulterers should be stoned to death:

“Remember that if there is an Islamic state the punishment of zina, the punishment of those who commit zina, if they have never been married before, they will be lashed 100 lashes. If they are married while they committed zina, or previously been married and divorced, and they committed zina, then their punishment is stoning to death.”

▻http://tifrib.com/shady-alsuleiman
and
▻http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OCK2RmnCmi8

and
▻http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJuSwwsAVHo&noredirect=1

Iman Abdul Wahid Pedersen

He admits that the stoning of adulterers is cruel, but he has defended the cruel punishment:

“I agree that stoning is a cruel punishment, but it doesn’t change the fact that according to Islam the practise has been ordained by our Creator. We are not in a position to change this. Things that are stated unambigiously in the Koran or by the Prophet Mohammed are not open to debate among Muslims.”

▻http://spengler.atimes.net/viewtopic.php?t=7119

Sheikh Said Rageah

He says Muslims should disassociate themselves from non-Muslims. Blasphemers who don’t repent should be killed. Women should stay at home and never leave the house without necessity:

“You will see a lot of them going to the kuffar (non-Muslims) , taking them as supporters and helpers and friends and allies…(Arabic) If they were true believers in Allah and the messenger (Arabic) they would never take them as allies.”

“…it could also, y’know, be to the point as far as killing that person (who commits blasphemy) if he doesn’t repent what he’s saying…Muslims do not tolerate anyone to insult Muhammad, Isa or Jesus, Moses, any of the prophets of God. If you’re in a Muslim country and you insult Muhammad or Jesus, you will receive the same punishment because both of them are the messengers of God.”

“Islam and Allah (Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala) is telling us in the Quran: stay home because otherwise you’re gonna cause fitnah to a lot of people…Allah created women for beauty…so women are like this they must understand. They should stay at home and not come out of the house unless it’s a necessity, otherwise Shaytan will take advantage of that and leave the people being tested and tried.”

▻http://tifrib.com/said-rageah

Sheikh Muhammad Al Shareef

The Sheikh believes the social integration of Muslims is wrong. Muslims should not associate with non-Muslims, and Muslims should not send their children to non-Islamic schools:

“The horror story begins when the child is entrusted to a non-Muslim…”

”If a parent has chosen public school for his son, in the final year when he looks over the school yearbook and sees a picture of his son standing hand in hand dancing with a kafir woman, at that time it will be too late to question his upbringing. Now is the time to question it, now, before it’s too late.“

▻http://www.kalamullah.com/current-affairs11.html
and
▻http://www.irfi.org/articles2/articles_3901_3950/islamic%20schools%20-%20who's%20responsiblehtml.htm

He also states that Jews control the media and Muslims should not ally with them, imitate them or marry them:

“Who owns the press? Well, you can believe me when I say that it is not the god fearing beloved of Allâh.
“It would be profitable for us to reflect on the implementation of our Wala’ and Bara’ in regards to the Jews:
“Firstly: We should not take them as our close allies. Secondly: We should not imitate them. Thirdly: A Muslimah may never marry a Jewish or Christian man that remains in his beliefs.”

▻http://islamicawakening.com/viewarticle.php?articleID=636
and
▻http://sunnahonline.com/ilm/jihaad/0006.htm

Sheikh Al Shareef says homophobia is praiseworthy:

“Alhamdulillah [praise to God] that you’re homophobic. Alhamdulillah we have a fear of homosexuality. And then they will say it as if it is a derogatory term, but in fact it is a praiseworthy term.”

▻http://www.studentrights.org.uk/article/1241/what_kind_of_revolution_fosis_
and
▻http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=C65Watj1-58

He argues sex outside of marriage deserves 80 lashes:

“One of them is a married person committing zina and the other is an unmarried person committing zina. So a married person committing zina is actually much, much more serious in Islam. They’re both serious and they’re both major sins but it is much more serious…if somebody’s married the punishment for that would be eighty lashes.”

▻http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ca_5KxXtJVY

and
▻http://tifrib.com/muhammad-alshareef-2

Sheikh Yasir Qadhi

The Sheikh claims the toleration of homosexuality is a sign of social regression:

“For those who have been around for a little bit longer than those who are eighteen or nineteen, look at how this own society and culture has evolved in the way it looks at homosexuals. In our own time, I remember as a kid in the eighties, which gives you an idea how old I was, growing up in the eighties I grew up, OK? I remember how homosexuals were looked down upon and the names that were given to these people, and how disgusted the average masses were with that segment of society. Now look, now look at how we have regressed, not progressed.”

▻http://tifrib.com/yasir-qadhi

He says Jews control Islamic studies and want to destroy Muslims:

“You go to America, you find that 95% of the Islamic Studies professors are Jews, you know that? 95% of Islamic Studies [sic] are Jews. And 0% of Judaic Studies [sic] are Muslims. I am not advising any Muslim to waste his time studying Judaism but I’m saying, why are Jews studying Islam? There is a reason, not that they want to help us, they want to destroy us [...] they want to bring about doubts, look at the doubts that exist, look at the divisions, the discord, look at the disunity, look at all these ideologies that are being spread (4). Know that the Yahood [Jews] and the Kuffar [Infidels] like this type of thing.”

▻http://web.archive.org/web/20060622155909/http://www.judeoscope.ca/article.php3?id_article=0370

The global struggle for queer freedom

By Peter Tatchell

London - 8 November 2012 - Global magazine
►http://bit.ly/YOXdZV


Homophobic persecution and discrimination is rife in large parts of the world, and the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are still not recognised or protected by international law. Nonetheless, progress towards equality is being made thanks to the defiance and bravery of activists.


Over the last two decades, the impoverished South Asian nation of Nepal has made an extraordinary transition from monarchical tyranny to a secular democratic republic. This progress has included significant advances for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Thanks to the campaigns of the LGBT or­ganisation, the Blue Diamond Society (BDS), there is cross-party consensus on LGBT equality in parliament, and the Supreme Court of Nepal ruled in 2007 that the government must repeal all laws that discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity.

As a consequence, citizenship and ID documents now include the option of ‘third gender’ to address the demands of people who do not identify themselves as either male or female; Nepal has opened South Asia’s first LGBT community centre; MPs are considering the legalisation of same-sex marriage; and the openly gay leader of the BDS, Sunil Pant, was elected to the Constituent Assembly in 2008 and now hosts one of Nepal’s most popular TV talk shows. Progress indeed.

However, in large parts of the world, homophobic and transphobic oppression remains rife. It is estimated that the global LGBT population is somewhere between 250 million and 500 million people (5-10 percent of the world population aged over 16). Most of these people – hundreds of millions of them – are forced to hide their sexuality, fearing ostracism, harassment, discrimination, imprisonment, torture and even murder.

Some of this violence is perpetrated by vigilantes, including right-wing death squads in certain regions of countries like Mexico and Brazil. They justify the killing of queers as ‘social cleansing’. Other homophobic persecution is officially encouraged and enforced by governments, police, courts, media and religious leaders. MPs in Latvia, Ukraine, Lithuania, some Moldovan cities and several Russian regions have proposed or passed laws banning so-called homosexual propaganda and promotion.

In Russia, religious leaders have united to denounce the LGBT community. The Orthodox Church has called homosexuality a “sin which destroys human beings and condemns them to a spiritual death”. The Supreme Mufti of Russia’s Muslims, Talgat Tajuddin, says gay campaigners “should be bashed…Sexual minorities have no rights, because they have crossed the line. Alternative sexuality is a crime against God.” Russia’s Chief Rabbi, Berel Lazar, has condemned Gay Pride parades as “a blow for morality”, adding that there is no right to “sexual perversions”. Successive Moscow mayors have repeatedly banned Gay Pride marches. This violates Russia’s constitution and law, which guarantee freedom of expression and the right to peaceful protest. LGBT people who have attempted to march have been beaten and arrested.

Meanwhile, the total criminalisation of homosexuality continues in nearly 80 countries – including most of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Middle East – with penalties ranging from a one-year jail sentence to life imprisonment. Half of these countries are former British colonies and current members of the Commonwealth – an association of nations that is supposedly committed to uphold democracy and human rights. The anti-gay laws in these Commonwealth nations were originally legislated by the British government in the 19th century during the period of colonial rule. They were never repealed when these nations won their independence from Britain.

As well as homophobic laws, British imperialism imposed homophobic prejudice by means of the fire-and-brimstone Christian fundamentalist missionaries who sought to ‘civilise’ the so-called ‘heathen’ peoples of the colonies. They instilled in these countries an intolerance of homosexuality that continues to this day. As a result, in part at least, homophobia is rampant in much of Africa.

In the last year, more than 20 men have been arrested in Cameroon on suspicion of homosexuality, often without any clear evi­dence that they had same-sex relations. Roger Jean-Claude Mbédé has spent a year in prison for sending an SMS text message to an­other man: “I’m very much in love w/u.” He is facing another two years behind bars in a filthy, insanitary prison where he suffers daily abuse from guards and inmates. In Nigeria, in 2005, six teenage lesbians, one only 12 years old, were ordered to be punished with an agonising 90 lashes for consensual same-sex relations. More recently, a Nigerian gay pastor from the House of Rainbow church and another Christian gay activist were forced to flee the country after receiving death threats. They were given no police protection. Government ministers in Namibia, echoing the hatred of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, have denounced lesbians and gays as “un-African”, as traitors and as spreaders of HIV/AIDS.

However, homophobic oppression is most extreme in the Islamist states that impose the death penalty for same-sex relations, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Mauritania, Sudan and Yemen. In some regions of other countries – such as Nigeria, Pakistan and Somalia – shariah law is enforced and LGBT people can be stoned to death. The Iranian persecution of LGBTs continues unabated. Twenty-two-year-old Amir was entrapped via a gay dating website. The person he arranged to meet turned out to be a member of the morality police. Amir was jailed, tortured and sentenced to 100 lashes, which caused him to lose consciousness and left his whole back covered in huge bloody welts. He is just one of many Iranian LGBTs who have been subjected to lashings, torture and imprisonment – and who are at risk of execution. In early 2006, Iran’s Gulf neighbour, the United Arab Emirates, imposed a six-year jail sentence on 11 gay men arrested at a private party. They were not imprisoned for sexual acts, but merely for being gay and attending a gay social gathering.

Iraq is an example of extreme persecution – LGBT Iraqis suffer even more today than they did under the dictator Saddam Hussein. A BBC investigation in 2012 revealed that the police have colluded with the targeted murder of up to 1,000 LGBT people by Islamist militias and death squads who seek the total extermination of ‘sexual deviants’. Gang rape, torture and detention without trial are also commonplace. The Iraqi government is denying or ignoring this homophobic terror campaign. Francesco Motta, the representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Iraq, says the Iraqi government is in violation of international law and its failure to take action against the killings makes the state an accomplice to the crime.

Amid this gloom, in 2008 something truly remarkable and historic happened: 66 countries signed a UN statement calling for the universal decriminalisation of homosexuality and condemning homophobic discrimination and violence. Although the statement fell short of majority support and is not binding on UN member states, this was the first time the UN General Assembly had addressed the issue of LGBT human rights. Previous attempts had been blocked by an unholy alliance of the Vatican and Islamist states.

In March 2011, a new version of the statement was signed by 85 countries. Three months later, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution condemning anti-LGBT discrimination and hate crimes, urging a UN report on the issue. The report, authored by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, was published in December 2011, and noted with concern: “Homophobic and transphobic violence has been recorded in all regions. Such violence may be physical (including murder, beatings, kidnappings, rape and sexual assault) or psychological (including threats, coercion and arbitrary deprivations of liberty).”

Despite these breakthroughs, even today no international hu­man rights convention specifically acknowledges love and sexual rights as human rights. None explicitly guarantees equality and non-discrimination to LGBT people. The right to love a person of one’s choice is absent from global humanitarian statutes. Relationships between partners of the same sex are not officially recognised in any international law. There is nothing in the many UN conventions that specifically upholds LGBT equality and prohibits homophobic discrimination. Some UN members and bodies have merely chosen to interpret the general commitments to equal rights and non-discrimination in the existing conventions as applying to LGBT people.

Likewise with regard to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It is only in the last decade or so that the ECHR’s equality and privacy clauses have been interpreted to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. In the late 1990s, British LGBT citizens filed appeals at the European Court of Human Rights against the UK’s then discriminatory, homophobic laws. They cited the ECHR’s right to privacy and anti-discrimination clauses to successfully challenge anti-gay UK legislation dating back centuries. These victories in Strasbourg forced the British government to repeal the unequal age of consent for gay men, discriminatory sexual offences laws and the ban on lesbians and gays serving in the armed forces. ECHR judgements also successfully pressured other countries, such as Romania and Cyprus, to decriminalise homosexuality. The convention has thus played an important role in challenging and overturning homophobic legislation.

Of the 193 member states of the UN, only a handful have repealed nearly all major legal inequalities against LGBT people: the Netherlands, South Africa, Belgium, Spain, France, Brazil, Germany, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Portugal, Canada, New Zealand and, more recently, the UK.

Britain’s record was not always so positive. Until 1999, when legislative reform began, the UK had the largest number of homophobic laws of any country on earth – some of them dating back centuries. Thanks to an astute 20-year twin-track campaign of direct action protest and parliamentary lobbying, today the UK is one of the world’s most progressive countries on LGBT rights.

Some supposedly liberal democracies have been slow to grant LGBT equality. The USA maintains a federal ban on same-sex marriage and not all states have full anti-discrimination protection. The Australian parliament recently voted down a bill to allow same-sex couples to marry, even though such legislation has overwhelming public support. Most of the emergent post-communist Central and Eastern European democracies maintain varying degrees of legal discrimination – and harbour public attitudes that are extremely homophobic.

Despite this discrimination, LGBT people have made huge strides forward in many parts of the world. A mere four decades ago, ‘queers’ were almost universally seen as mad, bad and sad. Same-sex relations were deemed a sin, a crime and a sickness. It was only in the early 1990s that the World Health Organization declassified homosexuality as an illness, and that Amnesty International agreed to campaign for LGBT human rights and to adopt jailed LGBTs as prisoners of conscience.

Nowadays, the global tide is shifting in favour of LGBT emancipation. In 1999, in New Zealand, Georgina Beyer became the world’s first openly transgender MP. Uruguay, once a military dictatorship, has lifted its prohibition on gay servicemen and women. History has been made in Lebanon – the first Arab Middle East nation to allow the open, legal establishment of an LGBT welfare and human rights group, Helem.

While fundamentalist religion is still a major threat to LGBT equality, campaigners also have allies in many faiths. The anti-apartheid hero Archbishop Desmond Tutu has compared homophobia to racism, and described the battle for LGBT freedom as the moral equivalent of the fight against apartheid. Eight countries now outlaw sexual orientation discrimination in their constitutions: South Africa (1996), Ecuador (1998), Switzerland (2000), Sweden (2003), Portugal (2004), the British Virgin Islands (2007), Kosovo (2008) and Bolivia (2009).

In almost every country on earth, there are LGBT freedom movements – some open, others clandestine. For the first time ever, countries like the Philippines, Estonia, Columbia, Russia, Sri Lanka and China are hosting LGBT conferences and Gay Pride celebrations. Via the internet and pop culture, LGBT people in small towns in Ghana, Peru, Uzbekistan, Kuwait, Vietnam, St Lucia, Palestine, Fiji and Kenya are connecting with the worldwide LGBT community. The struggle for LGBT liberation has gone global. We’ve begun to roll back the homophobia of centuries. Bravo!

More info: www.PeterTatchellFoundation.org

About the author:

Peter Tatchell has campaigned for human rights and LGBT freedom since 1967. In 1999, he made a citizen’s arrest of the Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, for human rights abuses.

No DNA link to Assange in condom central to sex assault case — RT
►http://rt.com/news/assange-condom-no-dna-277

Assange denies the allegation of rape, maintaining he had consensual sex with the second woman as well. The Swedish prosecutor’s office refused to comment on the report, saying that the investigation was ongoing.

" The condom DNA evidence was supposed to be the killer evidence… Now, when we have found that there is no DNA on one of these condoms for one of the alleged victims, it rather calls into question substantial evidence against him ,” human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell told RT.
(...)

And while Canberra has often been accused of turning a blind eye to Assange’s plight, the Indigenous Social Justice Association, an Australian group which wants recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty, showed their support by offering him an Aboriginal Nations passport on Sunday, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

His father, John Shipton, accepted the document on Assange’s behalf at a celebration in Sydney, which was attended by more than 200 people.

“Australian governments of every color are happy to abandon their citizens when they’re in difficult situations overseas,” the daily reports him as saying.

The group, which also accused the Australian authorities of failing to provide sufficient aid to one of its citizens, said the passport will be sent to Assange in London