Muslim preacher attacked in Scotland; Teacher Suspended for wearing Veil
'Pakistan Times' UK Bureau Report

LONDON (UK): A Muslim preacher was hurt in an apparently religiously or racially motivated attack inside his mosque in the Scottish city of Glasgow, police, health officials and witnesses said Saturday.

Imam Mohammed Shamsuddin, 53, the Bangladeshi imam at the Dawat ul Islam centre in Glasgow, was attacked Friday evening and taken to a hospital for treatment to minor injuries, health officials said.

He was discharged Friday night. Witnesses said the suspect, a white man, shouted abuse at Shamsuddin before punching and kicking him with anything he could lay his hands on, including a safety deposit box and a chair.

Strathclyde Police said they were treating the attack as racially motivated.

The incident comes after a suspected arson attack on a mosque last week that caused 10,000 pounds' (more than 18,000 dollars') worth of damage.

The mosque, which was established by members of the Bangladeshi community, is on the edge of the University of Glasgow campus and is used by Muslim students.

Khalid Rehman, a close family friend of the injured imam, said: "A man came into the mosque holding some stones and asked the imam something along the lines of why Allah permits people to be punished with stones."

Worshippers who had come to break their fast during the holy month of Ramadan were horrified when the man then attacked the imam, witnesses said.

Tommy Sheridan, a member of the autonomous Scottish parliament, said the attack occurred because Muslims were being isolated and demonized by British politicians.

He blamed it on the call by the Leader of the Commons (parliament), Jack Straw, for Muslim women to remove their veils and the subsequent failure of Prime Minister Tony Blair and other ministers to condemn his remarks.

Teacher Suspended for wearing Veil

Another report says that a Muslim teaching assistant at a British junior school has been suspended after refusing to remove her veil in class, a newspaper reported.

Aishah Azmi, 24, was asked to remove her veil, which reveals only her eyes, after pupils struggled to understand English lessons because they could not see her lips move, a British newspaper said.

Azmi is a bilingual support worker at Headfield Church of England junior school in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, northern England, where most of the seven-to-11-year-old pupils are of Pakistani or Indian origin.

Her suspension came days after former British foreign secretary and current Cabinet minister Jack Straw provoked controversy by revealing that he asked Muslim women visiting his constituency surgery to remove their veils.

Straw held his first constituency surgery in Blackburn, northwest England, Friday since his controversial comments and it passed off without incident.

A spokesman for the Kirklees Council, the school's local administrative body, confirmed that Azmi's case had gone to an employment tribunal and that she would remain suspended until it had reached a verdict.

Many children at the school are still learning to speak English and have Panjabi, Gujarati and Urdu as their first languages, according to a report by Ofsted, Britain's education regulator, in February.

The report said that Azmi was told she could wear the veil in the school's corridors and staff room but had been asked to remove it while teaching to facilitate face-to-face communication.

The area's lawmaker, Labour's Shahid Malik, a Muslim himself, said he thought that the request to remove the veil was "utterly reasonable".

"All right-minded people, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, will agree that in asking a classroom assistant not to wear a veil whilst in contact with children because it hinders their learning is perfectly acceptable and just common sense," he said.

The newspaper quoted a Muslim Council of Britain spokesman, Dr Reefat Drabu, saying Azmi was wrong to insist on covering her face because Muslim women were not even required to wear a headscarf in the presence of young children.

Meanwhile, a new Islamic school is to compel all female students to wear a headscarf, regardless of their religion.

Zainab Elgaziari, deputy head of Madani High School in Leicester, central England, opens in 2007, told a newspaper: "I can't see why if a student wears a headscarf it should be an issue.

"It is the same as a shirt or tie -- it's just part of our uniform."●