To Sheikh Or Not To Sheikh?
“SHOULD Muslim police officers get special treatment?”
The Express cannot decide without the help of its readers. It shows and does not tell. The readers must always decide.
And to the story. A story illustrated by a picture of – yes, he’s back – Omar Bakri. The “Mad Mullah, the “Tottenham Taliban”, the “Green Ford Galaxy Driver”.
The news is that “outrage” has resulted from a Muslim woman police officer “refusing” to shake the hand of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair.
Until we learn otherwise, we believe that this is not a crime. There is no legal recourse for Sir Ian. He is not at liberty to cuff this non-handshaker, whether she be Muslim or not. Nor can he order her to be shot.
The paper talks of “uproar within the Metropolitan Police Service”. The female PC declines to shake her bosses hand at a passing–out ceremony.
A police source tells us: “This has never happened before and he was bloody furious.”
It’s understandable. No-one, least of all a figure of authority, likes to be embarrassed in public. But it happens to the best of us. You go to extend your hand and the other party lifts theirs and passes it through their hair or thumbs their nose.
And then Omar Bakri picks up a loud hailer and all the way from Lebanon tells us: “Islam forbids shaking hands between members of the opposite sex. She was right to have done what she did.”
Express reader Bakri may care to pick up his phone and register his “YES” vote in the approved manner. Only votes cast by phone are applicable in the paper’s daily question. One rule fits all. No debate. No phone vote. No right of appeal.
And Bakri has more to say. “Muslims should not join the police force and the establishment but should live in the community and should apply political pressure.”
Bakri has stepped into a grey area. If not a full officer of the law, can a Muslim be a community police officer? Aren’t police officers just people from the community upholding law and order in the community?
Is this the local community, a community of Express readers, or the greater Muslim community, stretching from the police’s Imber Court sports centre at Thames Ditton to Beirut?
Yes. Or No? Or agree to shake hands and call it a draw?
Posted: 22nd, January 2007 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
