The Centre For Social Cohesion

It will soon be two years since the July 7th bombs detonated across London, and memories have begun to grow a bit dim. Though not so dim, perhaps, as the legal team representing Sheikh Abdullah El-Faisal who was jailed for incitement in 2003. El-Faisal’s representatives have just announced that they will fight attempts to deport him on his early release from prison in a few weeks time - on human-rights grounds.

News arrives of last Friday’s motion passed by Britain’s National Union of Journalists calling for a boycott of goods and the imposition of sanctions on the state of Israel.

Neil Addison, the distinguished barrister and author of the legal textbook, Religious Discrimination and Hatred Law (Routledge Cavendish) shows some of the perverse consequences that can be expected to flow from Part 2 of the Equality Act 2006, which comes into force today, along with the Sexual Orientation Regulations. ‘Causing offence’ is now legally relevant and likely to give rise to a good deal of over-zealous litigation. It is worth reflecting on what John Stuart Mill said about giving offence.

There are already some voices calling for personal Sharia law to be applied in parts of the UK. Is it anything to worry about? Recent German experience suggests that any such calls ought to be firmly resisted. Johann Hari in the Independent describes a recent ruling by Judge Christa Datz-Winter involving a Muslim woman who asked for an early divorce because of the severe beatings meted out by her brutal husband. The judge declined to grant an early divorce because, despite police evidence of extreme violence, there was no "unreasonable hardship". Why? Because Muslim women should have "expected" to be beaten. The judge went on to cite passages from the Koran granting Muslim husbands the "right to use corporal punishment", including Sura 4, verse 34.

Perhaps the most interesting response to the ‘Bluewater cell’ convictions is this piece in today's Telegraph, written by Ed Husain, a former London-based student who was also once a member of the radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT).

HT were one of the groups which Tony Blair promised to proscribe after 7/7, when he claimed that ‘the rules of the game have changed.’ But the rules did not change, and although David Cameron also recently calling for a ban on HT in Britain, they remain legal and extremely active - not least on UK campuses.

The widow of the lead suicide-murderer of 7/7 has been arrested this morning, along with three others, for allegedly plotting an act of terror.

This comes at the same time as the arrest by the FBI of six jihadists on American soil. The six are believed to have been planning an attack aimed at achieving a maximum number of US service personnel casualties at Fort Dix in New Jersey.

On 9th June a ‘day of action’ is going to take place to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Six Day War. But this event - named 'Enough' - is not a celebration of the outbreak of peace, or a commemoration of the dead. It is, rather, a rally against ‘Israel’s military occupation of Palestine’.

The march is due to go through central London, and the organisers are stating that ‘We want tens of thousands of people to join us for the primary international event of the year in support of the Palestinian people’.

I wrote last week about the celebrity-endorsed protest due to take place in London in a couple of weeks time to commemorate the Six Day War, and - rather more ominously - ‘Israel’s military occupation of Palestine.'

The website of the ‘Enough’ coalition states that they ‘[oppose] all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Holocaust denial or Nakba denial, in forwarding the work of the coalition.’

According to their own literature, the organisers of next month’s planned London 'Enough' demonstration against Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories are ‘a group of charities, trade unions, faith and other campaign groups …[who] have come together because … [they] want peace for Israelis and Palestinians alike’.

A motion adopted yesterday at this year's annual conference of UCU, the country's newly-formed trade union for academics, calls upon members to decide whether to boycott Israel's universities.

Regardless of how they vote in what looks like fast becoming a bi-annual, if not annual, ritual at this time of year, the mere fact only Israel was singled out for this form of special treatment when its human rights track-record can hardly be judged any worse than that of many other countries, even judged by the lights of advocates of the boycott, suggests only one thing. Either what drives them is sheer unadulterated anti-Semitism or else the Arab lobby here is fast acquiring such a degree of influence as bodes ill for the future of this country, let alone that of Israel.

A London court has found a Kurdish man guilty of organising the murder of his 20-year old daughter for undermining his family's "honour".

Prosecutors said that Mahmod Mahmod ordered his relatives to arrange the killing of his daugher Banaz in early 2006 after finding that she left the husband he had forced her to marry and was now dating an Iranian Kurd who was "not a strict Muslim", Reuters reported.

The details of the case - the latest 'honour killing' to come before the British courts - are evidence of rising Islamic radicalism according to Nazir Afzal, a Crown Prosecution Service director who organised one of the UK's largest conferences on honour killings in 2004.

In light of the recent controversy surrounding the decision to allow Learco Chindamo – the murderer of Philip Lawrence – to stay within the UK, attention should be drawn to the case of Pegah Emambakhsh.

As of the 13th August, Emambakhsh – an Iranian lesbian - faces deportation back to Iran. Ms Emambakhsh sought asylum in the UK in 2005. She escaped Iran after her lover had been arrested, tortured and sentenced to death by stoning. It is highly likely that if Ms Emambakhsh were to return to Iran she would suffer the same fate.

Despite this, however, the UK Border and Immigration Agency (BIA) has ruled that she would not be in any danger if she were to return – even though not only is the UK government fully aware of Emambakhsh’s hazardous predicament in Iran, but Iranian human rights campaigners themselves have stated that numerous gays and lesbians have been executed since the Ayatollah’s accession to power in 1979.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband has questioned the fairness of US military tribunals for six Guantanamo Bay detainees charged with involvement in 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.

The men – including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks – were charged by the US Department of Defense on Monday with a raft of terrorism-related crimes including murder, conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism.

Britain’s politicians have been feeling gutsy of late, with the air in Westminster thick with views on various sensitive minority issues.

This week, it’s forced marriages.

Today Conservative party leader David Cameron announced that a future Tory government would criminalise forcing someone into marriage.

Today the blog takes a slight departure from social cohesion to highlight a story we feel is of urgent importance: British authorities’ decision to deport a young gay Iranian man home to almost certain hanging.

No, you didn’t misread. Her Majesty’s government has refused to grant asylum to 19 year-old Iranian Mehdi Kazemi. After coming to the UK to study English, Kazemi learned that an ex-boyfriend had been convicted and hanged for sodomy back in Iran – after naming Kazemi as a former partner.

The government welcomed the Centre’s recent honour crimes report, “Crimes of the Community: Honour-based violence in the UK”, published February this year, during a discussion Monday on the adequacy of government measures to protect victims of such violence.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Office, Lord West of Spithead, said that the government was aware it had not done enough. “We are determined to tackle so-called honour-based violence and to ensure that any gaps in services can be filled,” he told the House of Lords.

‘Crimes of the Community’, the Centre’s recent report on honour-based violence in the UK, was mentioned in a New Statesman article, Thursday 27 March, calling for the criminalisation of forced marriage to tackle honour-related crimes.

Criminalising forced marriage is the “first step” in dealing with honour killings, the article’s author, Ziauddin Sardar, said. “Making forced marriage illegal will send a strong message to those who maintain this obnoxious tribal custom that it has no place in contemporary Britain.”

Philip Balmforth, a West Yorkshire policeman who is recognised as one of the UK's leading authorities on honour-violence, has been threatened with the sack for speaking to the press.

Balmforth has been suspended from his duty and faces a disciplinary hearing later this week for giving an interview to The Times about Asian children who go missing from schools in Bradford.