Britain's Labour Party Vows to Ban Islamophobia
Islam, Muslims and the British Elections

by Soeren Kern • April 30, 2015 at 5:00 am

"In Miliband's Britain, it will become impossible to criticise any aspect of Islamic culture, whether it be the spread of the burka or the establishment of Sharia courts or the construction of colossal new mosques. ... If he wins, Miliband will ensure that the accelerating Islamification of our country will go unchallenged." — Leo McKinstry, British commentator.
The report shows that Britain's Muslim population is overwhelmingly young and will exert increasing political influence as time goes on. The median age of the Muslim population in Britain is 25 years, compared to the overall population's median age of 40 years.

Despite several grassroots campaigns to encourage British Muslims to vote in greater numbers, some prominent Islamists in the UK claim that voting is a "sin."

The leader of Britain's Labour Party, Ed Miliband, has vowed, if he becomes the next prime minister in general elections on May 7, to outlaw "Islamophobia."

The move — which one observer has called "utterly frightening" because of its implications for free speech in Britain — is part of an effort by Miliband to pander to Muslim voters in a race that he has described as "the tightest general election for a generation."

With the ruling Conservatives and the opposition Labour running neck and neck in the polls just days before voters cast their ballots, British Muslims — who voted overwhelmingly for Labour in the 2010 general election — could indeed determine who will be the next prime minister.

In an interview with The Muslim News, Miliband said:

"We are going to make it [Islamophobia] an aggravated crime. We are going to make sure it is marked on people's records with the police to make sure they root out Islamophobia as a hate crime.

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How Non-Muslims "Survive" in Turkey

by Burak Bekdil • April 30, 2015 at 4:00 am

A non-Muslim can rise and become a darling of today's neo-Ottoman Turks. He can win hearts and minds in important offices in Ankara -- and a bright career. But to maintain his fortunes, he must remain loyal to the official Islamist line, both in deed and rhetoric.
That is the kind of collective psychology into which Turkey's ruling Islamists force non-Muslims: either become a collaborator or...

Prominent non-Muslims in Turkey, then and now. Left, an Ottoman Janissary officer, who was taken as a child from a non-Muslim minority community. Right, the Armenian Christian intellectual Etyen Mahcupyan, who "retired" from his position as advisor to Turkey's Prime Minister after he angered Turkey's ruling Islamists by saying "what happened to Armenians in 1915" was "genocide".

Last October, Etyen Mahcupyan, a leading Turkish Armenian intellectual, "liberal" writer and columnist, was appointed as "chief advisor" to Turkey's Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu. At first glance, this was good news in a country where Islamists privately adhere to the old Ottoman "millet" system, in which non-Muslims were treated as second-class (if not third-class) citizens.

In reality, Mahcupyan was a reincarnation of the Ottoman "devshirme" system, in which the Ottoman state machinery produced several non-Muslim converts who enjoyed a place in the higher echelons of the palace bureaucracy, and the finer things of life, because their pragmatism earned them excellent relations with the ruling Muslim elite.

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