Halal stays ‘hors menu’ in French prisons
A plan to serve up halal meals to Muslim inmates in a French prison has been dropped, reports Associated Press.
The council of state said yesterday (23rd July 2014) that providing Halal meat at Saint-Quentin-Fallavier prison in Grenoble, eastern France, was impractical “owing to its financial cost and high needs for organization.” That view was upheld by the Council of State on 16th July 2014, which is the highest court in France, after the Court of Appeal had directed the state to provide such meals in March.
France’s Justice Minister Christiane Taubira also argued the plan would infringe France’s robust rules on secularism that ban religious expression in public places. France’s highest appeals court will have the final say.
The plan — which could have proved a test case — was being considered after the request of a Muslim inmate last November.
The French decision is in marked contrast to that of the Prison Service in Britain (see below), where Muslims have become so used to halal food, they are suing because pork DNA was found in it.
HARASSMENT OF NON-MUSLIMS
France has the largest Muslim population in western Europe, estimated at some 5 million. An investigation last year found evidence of Islamic oppression and harassment against non-Muslim inmates in French prisons.
The French magazine Valeurs Actuelles obtained a secret French government document about “proselytism in custody”. Written in 2011, it describes how Islam has taken over the French prison system. Non-converts are subject to pressure, insults, threats and violence. They are marginalised in day-to-day prison life.
BRITAIN SUED OVER PORK IN PRISON HALAL PIES
The situation seems little better in British prisons. The BBC reported in 2010 that gangs of Muslim prisoners were becoming an increasingly powerful force.
“Muslims run the prisons and there’s nothing the screws can do about it. For a Muslim you’d say it’s good but for a non-Muslim, it’s very, very bad,” said a former inmate.
In March 2014 the Guardian reported that the number of Muslims in the prison population had more than doubled to nearly 12,000 in a decade.
The 2011 census showed Muslims represented 4.7 per cent of the population in England and Wales, yet one in seven prisoners (14 per cent) in England and Wales is a Muslim, according to the statistics.
Amongst young offenders, the position is even more striking. The proportion of Muslim offenders is growing year by year. One in five males in young offender institutions identified themselves as Muslim in 2011/12, compared with 16% in 2010/11.
Our Government have bowed to pressure from Muslim inmates to serve them halal food. In September 2013. it was reported that some 200 Muslims were taking the Prison Service to court because traces of DNA from pork, which is strictly ‘haram’ or ‘forbidden’ in Islam, were found in supposedly ‘halal’ pies from a halal certified supplier.
EXTREMISM TAKING OVER BRITISH PRISONS
Since Islam is a religion built around observance and not around the repentance demanded by Christianity, it is perfectly possible to be a criminal – to be a terrorist or even to run a drug firm, a prostitution ring or an extortion racket – and still be a good Muslim.
The Government is so concerned that prisons could become breeding grounds for terrorism that it it has has deployed imams to help steer them away from extremist paths.
Yet even this desperate move is set to backfire. An expert has warned that imams with links to extremist Muslim groups are helping to turn Britain’s prisons into ‘state-funded breeding grounds for extremism‘.
Professor Anthony Glees, head of the centre for security and intelligence studies at the University of Buckingham, said: ‘Our prisons have turned into a state-funded breeding ground for extremism. It is completely unacceptable that imams with extremist views are allowed to preach in prisons.’
BURQA BAN LAWFUL
Earlier this month, Judges at the European court of human rights upheld France’s ban on wearing the burqa, accepting the French governments’ argument that it encouraged citizens to “live together”.
Foirmer president Nicolas Sarkozy told the French parliament when introducing the ban that the burqa was a sign of “servitude” that isn’t “welcome on French soil.”
There is no sign of such a ban being introduced in the United Kingdom, despite concerns that terrorists can use the dress to escape detection.
Somali-born Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed, 27, escaping police by changing into a burqa in the An-Noor Masjid and Community Centre in Acton, west London, last November. Yassin Omar, now convicted of attempting to blow up a tube train on 21st July 2007, also attempted to evade detection by wearing a burqa.
Latest atrocity from the followers of what Tony Blair described as the ‘Religion of Peace’: Christians crucified by ISIS in Syria. Thanks, Mr Hague.
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