Monthly Archives: October 2010

Katie Price repudiates EDL

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL and Jordan

Jordan is furious after Far-Right extremists posted a picture of her on their Facebook site claiming she supported their views.

The 32-year-old unwittingly posed for the snap with a bloke she thought was a harmless fan while recording at the BBC. But the man was Tommy Robinson, the leader of anti-Islam group the English Defence League – which then uploaded the image to the group’s Facebook site, claiming Kate was a supporter.

She is said to be “horrified” and is fighting to take the snap down. A spokesman for Kate, in Boston, Lincs yesterday to promote her new book You Only Live Once, said: “She is not and will not be associated with the English Defence League. Kate had no reason to suspect he had any connection with any group.”

Daily Star, 30 October 2010

See Holy Moly for the full statement by Jordan’s PR company:

“Katie Price does not and will not be associated with the English Defence League in any way. Katie’s legal team are doing everything in their power to remove this picture from the website. She simply posed for a picture with someone who told her he was a fan, as she does on many occasions. She had no reason to suspect he had any connection with any group, and had she known she would have flatly refused.”

Sweden alarmed by series of racist shootings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A string of 19 unsolved shootings – all of which appear to be racially motivated – are sending shockwaves through Sweden’s immigrant population.

Bejzat Becirov points to a large hole in the bottom corner of a window at the Islamic Centre, Malmo’s largest mosque. “It was last year,” he said, “New Year’s Eve, and there were people in there, drinking tea and writing greetings cards. Then one of them felt a kind of rush of air, and splinters of glass on the back of his neck. The police later found a bullet embedded in a piece of furniture.”

This is not the worst thing that has happened at the mosque. Mr Becirov, its director, also remembers an arson attack that caused severe damage in 2003. But the shot fired at the mosque late last year is now being re-evaluated. Could it form part of a wider series of unexplained attacks that the police in Malmo are now hoping the public can help solve?

The announcement last week by police that a string of unsolved shootings might be connected is causing deep concern in this city, where almost half the population has an immigrant background. The attacks that police are investigating have all taken place in the past year and have all been aimed at people who look as though they might be immigrants. Of those 19 shootings, one person has been killed and eight have been injured.

BBC News, 28 October 2010

Reject irresponsible claims that Lutfur Rahman is mayor of an ‘Islamic republic’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The New York blogger Pamela Geller, who believes America is being infiltrated by Muslim extremists, recently denounced Lutfur Rahman, the newly elected mayor of Tower Hamlets in east London, as a “vile Islamic supremacist”. Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips disapproves of Rahman too. She has declared that his victory provides “a platform for the progressive intimidation and silencing of British Muslims who do not want to live under sharia law, let alone the non-Muslim majority in the area.”

These large claims appear to be based on the uncritical embrace of a TV documentary of questionable worth and a vituperative anti-Rahman campaign conducted by its famous presenter. Nonetheless, the assertions are enlightening. Reaching an international market for tales of Islamist intrigue, they demonstrate how reducing the complexities of Tower Hamlets to a “sexy” narrative about alleged plotting fanatics obscures rather more than it reveals.

Dave Hill at Comment is Free, 29 October 2010

For another example of Gilligan-inspired Islamophobic ranting from the US right, see “London’s Islamic Republic” at the American Thinker, 28 October 2010

CAIR calls on airline to probe ‘profiling’ of Muslim passengers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN) today called on Delta Airlines to investigate recent allegations of religious profiling of Muslim passengers. CAIR-MN is calling on Delta to review its policies on what constitutes suspicious behavior and to conduct trainings to help staff avoid profiling of passengers.

In one incident reported to CAIR-MN, four Muslim men were escorted off a Delta flight when it landed at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport last month. A flight attendant had reported suspicious behavior after one of the men dropped a pen while filling out a customs form and bent down to pick it up.

In another incident, a Pinnacle Airlines commuter plane operated by Delta made an emergency landing in Fort Knox, N.D., after a flight attendant raised concerns about a smoke detector in a lavatory used by a University of North Dakota Muslim student from Saudi Arabia. The student and two other Muslim students he was traveling with were detained and questioned by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents and the local FBI for five hours, while the rest of the passengers were bused to their destination.

On Tuesday, a Muslim family in Tennessee was removed from a Delta flight operated by Comair at the Memphis International Airport. According to a Comair spokesperson, the “crew became concerned when a passenger exited the lavatory after an extended period of time and damage was found in the lavatory.” Investigators found nothing wrong with the lavatory.

“Wearing ‘Muslim clothing,’ using the restroom or picking up a dropped pen seem to have become pretexts for religious and ethnic profiling,” said CAIR-MN Civil Rights Director Taneeza Islam. “We believe these incidents are based on stereotyping that targets Muslim passengers and those perceived to be Muslim.”

Ms. Islam cited remarks by former NPR analyst Juan Williams that seemed to legitimize profiling Muslim passengers. NPR terminated Williams’ contract after he said, “[I]f I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.” Ms. Islam noted that none of the terrorists in past incidents on airplanes wore “Muslim garb.”

CAIR press release, 29 October 2010

Truth has limited effect in countering rumours about Park51, study finds

Posted on by Bob Pitt

'Ground Zero mosque' opponents3

Evidence is no match against the belief in false rumors concerning the proposed Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero in New York City, a new study finds.

Researchers at Ohio State University found that fewer than one-third of people who had previously heard and believed one of the many rumors about the proposed center changed their minds after reading overwhelming evidence rejecting the rumor.

The false rumor that researchers used in the study was that Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Imam backing the proposed Islamic cultural center and mosque, is a terrorist sympathizer who has refused to condemn Islamic attacks on civilians.

There is no evidence that this statement is true, according to FactCheck.org, a fact-checking service run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, and Politifact, the Pulitzer-Prize winning service of the St. Petersburg Times.

While providing a definitive rebuttal helped dispel belief in this rumor under two conditions, researchers found that it was easy to neutralize the positive effects of the rebuttal, simply through the use of certain photos or the addition of unrelated text.

“We didn’t have much success in shaking people’s beliefs in false rumors,” said R. Kelly Garrett, co-author of the study and assistant professor of communication at Ohio State.

Ohio State University Research News, 27 October 2010

For the central role played by Fox News in promoting false rumours about the Park51 development, see here.

Mayor bans EDL hooligans from centre of Amsterdam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL rioters BradfordAmsterdam mayor Eberhard van der Laan has shifted a pro-Geert Wilders demonstration, organised by the English Defence League, to the western port area in order to minimise the chance of riots.

Van der Laan said he had concrete evidence that members of the far-right EDL were coming to the Netherlands to look for a confrontation with both the police and anti-racist demonstrators.

The demonstration was due to be held on the Museumplein.

Dutch News, 28 October 2010

EDL to protest outside Harrow Council over Halal school menus

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A far right group that backed last year’s Harrow mosque protests looks set to demonstrate in the borough over Halal school menus. The English Defence League, which says it wants a peaceful protest, is demonstrating against Halal only meat menus in the borough’s schools, an issue that has already proved divisive among residents locally.

A statement on a Facebook event created by the group reads: “The English Defence League is against the inhumane slaughter of animals to produce Halal meat. The English Defence League is also against the rituals of Islam being forced upon our next generation without choice.”

Harrow Times, 28 October 2010

See also “English Defence League should ‘go home’, says Harrow MP Bob Blackman”, Harrow Times, 28 October 2010

Update:  See “Harrow Council tells EDL to cancel protest over Halal school dinners”, Harrow Times, 29 October 2010

Police investigate hate crime at Long Island mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hate crimes detectives are investigating the second incident in a week where a jar of nails was thrown onto the driveway of a Long Island mosque.

Suffolk County police received a call at about 7:45 p.m. Monday that shards of glass and nails were found outside the Masjid Noor mosque in Huntington. No other damage to the property, nor injuries, were reported.

A similar incident involving a jar of nails occurred last Wednesday.

A mosque official told Newsday in Tuesday’s editions that other vandalism has occurred in recent months, but police were only contacted for the first time last week.

CBS New York, 26 October 2010

Wilders applauds Merkel’s stand against Islam and multiculturalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dutch Islamophobic politician Geert Wilders hailed German Chancellor Angela Merkel for what he termed her “critical” stance towards Islam, the daily newspaper Die Welt reported Wednesday. Addressing the Dutch parliament, Wilders said Merkel had taken over “the lead in the area of criticism about Islam”. “Mrs. Merkel, you are right,” said the head of the Dutch anti-Islam Party for Freedom.

ABNA, 27 October 2010

See also “German chancellor rejects anti-Islam accolade from Dutch far right”, DPA, 27 October 2010

In his speech Wilders also stated: “If even the chancellor says that multicultural society has completely failed, then that means something. The most important politician of the Christian Democrats in the most important country of Europe breaks a taboo and says it like it is. And she says what millions of people are thinking.”

Did Cameron force Warsi to withdraw from Doha veil debate?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim cabinet minister Baroness Warsi pulled out of defending the burqa at an international TV debate because of “government pressure”, it was claimed today. The Tory party co-chairman had been due to appear in front of a global TV audience of 350 million people opposing the motion that “France is right to ban the face veil“. However, a Tory party source said that Baroness Warsi had pulled out for diary commitments.

Evening Standard, 27 October 2010

Update:  See also Daily Telegraph, 28 October 2010