February 21-2014
An Iranian man living in Northern Ireland has told Press TV his 4-1/2-month-old daughter was “abducted” by British social workers nearly a year ago because his wife wears a headscarf.
The wife is a Northern Irish woman who converted to Islam on marrying Khosro Qanbarian-Alavijeh, who said he has lived in Northern Ireland for more than three decades.
He said the baby was being breast-fed at the time she was taken away.
He said the “abduction” happened last March when UK social workers entered the family home and took the baby away.
As of press deadline, there had been no statement from social workers in Northern Ireland.
Qanbarian-Alavijeh said, “Our daughter, Hannah Rosemary Fatimah Alavijeh, has been kidnapped and is held as a hostage on grounds of her mother wearing a headscarf and accepting Islam as her religion as well as myself being an Iranian Muslim.”
The only information on the matter came from PressTV, the English language outlet of Iranian state broadcasting. Qanbarian-Alavijeh did not say why he chose to approach PressTV and not the local media in Northern Ireland, which is a part of the United Kingdom and is separate from the independent state of Ireland.
Qanbarian-Alavijeh said he had to change his first name to Ricardo to avoid discrimination and social profiling. He didn’t say why he chose that name, which is not Irish or English.
Qanbarian-Alavijeh said he and his wife have been accused of spreading Islamic beliefs. PressTV did not say who has “accused” them of that or what difference that would make.
“We want justice for ourselves and our daughter,” he told PressTV, adding that he recorded video and audio of the social workers taking the baby away. He said the videotape shows the social workers saying their action was directly related to the parents’ religion.
According to the 2011 UK Census, there are 2.7 million Muslims in the United Kingdom, almost 5 percent of the population. Most of them live in England and Wales, however. The Census found only 1,942 Muslims in all of Northern Ireland.
PressTV flogged the story as further proof of what it regularly charges is an epidemic of Islamophobia in the West. It quoted Hamid-Reza Emadi, PressTV’s newsroom director, as saying, “There is a growing trend of Islamophobic attacks on Muslim immigrant families in Europe, particularly in the UK and France. Those governments are so scared that they cannot even tolerate a headscarf. They are scared because they can clearly see more and more people are converting to Islam.” But Britain—unlike France and some other countries—has no restrictions whatsoever on the headscarf or niqab or any other form of Islamic dress.
PressTV quoted Qanbarian-Alavijeh as saying the child was seized under a program called Social, Psychological and Dietetics, Cultural, Religious and Sexual Programming of a Baby. A Google search of that term turned up no references to it apart from the PressTV story.