Monthly Archives: September 2011

Catalan town council imposes 12-month ban on mosque building

Posted on by Bob Pitt

No licences for new places of worship will be granted in Salt (Girona) for 12 months. The proposal from mayor Jaume Torramade scrapped plans for a new mosque approved by the previous council.

The motion was supported by the mayor’s own CiU nationalist party, together with the PP and the PxC anti-immigrant party. Former PxC councillor Joana Martinez, who left the group after censure of her African partner, also voted in favour. So, too, did Carles Bonet who resigned from the party following differences with the party and criticism of his male partner from the Dominican Republic.

The plenary council session was preceded by moments of tension when PxC leader Josep Anglada was confronted by a group of immigrants and Indignados from the 15-M movement.

Carrying banners proclaiming “Racists get out of Salt” and “Salt is anti-racist” they condemned PxC’s campaign to halt the new mosque. Anglada, who had hoped to attend the council session, was prevented by police from entering the chamber with the excuse that it was full.

Undeterred, Anglada remained by the door where he was heckled by protesters. As tempers flared and insults flew police then escorted the politician inside, although he still did not succeed in entering the public gallery.

The council’s veto on licences for new places of worship could become permanent if the regional government carries out its promise to modify previous regulations obliging local councils to reserve sites for churches, mosques and temples.

Not only would this affect Moslems in Salt, where 43 per cent of residents are immigrants, but also Evangelists belonging to the Holy Ghost Fellowship who had hoped to build a temple there.

Euro Weekly News, 6 September 2011

The EDL after Tower Hamlets

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anti-EDL demonstrators Tower Hamlets
Anti-EDL demonstrators in Tower Hamlets on Saturday

By any standards, the English Defence League’s attempt to hold an intimidatory protest against the Muslim community of Tower Hamlets on Saturday was a failure.

The state ban on the EDL’s march, which reduced them to holding a static demonstration instead, not only dissuaded some of their supporters from attending the protest (a number of divisions complained that they had been unable to fill the coaches they had hired) but also created considerable logistical problems for the EDL leadership. The RMT’s threat to close down Liverpool Street station if the EDL gathered there, and the announcement by pubs in Camden that they would refuse to host the EDL, left Stephen Lennon and Kevin Carroll scrabbling around for a place to assemble their troops before entering the East End for the planned rally.

As it turned out, the EDL didn’t even get into Tower Hamlets anyway. The police penned them in at Aldgate, in the City of London, just short of the borough border. With the local community and its supporters having mobilised en masse against the EDL, the police no doubt reasoned that an attempt to hold an EDL rally in Tower Hamlets itself would have resulted in serious public disorder.

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EDL ‘violently attacked’ journalists, NUJ reports

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Members of the right-wing EDL (English D
English Defence League members try to break through police lines on Saturday

Journalists covering an English Defence League rally in London were subjected to a series of “violent attacks” on Saturday – including sexual assault and a photographer being set on fire, according to the National Union of Journalists.

The NUJ has revealed that after the event it received “numerous reports of harassment, threats and abuse” including “physical assaults, racist abuse, bottles and fireworks being thrown at the press and photographers being punched and kicked”.

The union claimed that one journalist “was subjected to a sexual assault” and said that another NUJ member “suffered minor burns after an EDL supporter used a flammable accelerant to set the photographer on fire”. The union said it was now offering support and assistance to the journalists who were abused and condemned the attacks as a “violation of press freedom”.

“These violent attacks are an appalling abuse of press freedom and a clear attempt by members of the EDL to deter journalists from carrying out their work,” said NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet. “These attacks are designed to intimidate NUJ members and those in the local community who are determined to stand up to far-right groups. The police need to take decisive action to ensure that the thugs who attacked journalists during the EDL protest are identified and prosecuted.”

NUJ London photographers’ branch secretary Jason Parkinson said Saturday’s violence was the “latest in a long history of violence, threats and even fatwas issued against the press”, which he claimed were designed to “intimidate and deter the media exposing the violent and racist behaviour of the far-right”. “An attack on the press is an attack on press freedom and on our democracy,” he added.

Before Saturday’s protests the NUJ warned there could be violence against journalists following instances of “verbal threats, intimidation and physical violence” at previous events.

Press Gazette, 6 September 2011

Update:  See “Eye-witness backs up NUJ account of EDL attacks”, Press Gazette, 7 September 2011

Cory Bernardi invites Geert Wilders to Australia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cory BernardiControversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders is coming to Australia with the support of senior Liberal senator Cory Bernardi.

Mr Wilders, who controls the balance of power in the Netherlands’ parliament, has outraged Dutch Muslims by comparing the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf and calling the Prophet Muhammad a paedophile.

In a statement to Foreign Correspondent, Senator Bernardi confirmed he has offered to help arrange meetings and a schedule for Mr Wilders in Australia. “I hope to be able within … this year, or maybe the beginning of next year, to visit Australia,” Mr Wilders said.

“I met one of your senators, Senator Cory Bernardi, not so long ago. He invited me to help him at least when I would visit Australia, and I will certainly do that as soon as I can. We all face immigration also from people from Islamic countries. We all see that, for instance, that is something that Senator Bernardi and now I believe also others in Australia is fighting against.”

Senator Bernardi’s approach is in marked contrast to Britain, where in 2009 the home secretary tried to ban Mr Wilders as an undesirable person.

ABC News, 6 August 2011

See also the Herald Sun, which reports Bernardi as saying of Wilders: “I think he’s got an important message to heed. Any rejection … of Mr Wilders’ attempt to come to this country would be a tacit admission that extremism or fundamentalism are already dominating public discourse.”

Victorian Labor MP Rob Mitchell is quoted as saying: “Australia is no place for a freak show; Geert can take his views back to the gutter he got them from.”

Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration Kate Lundy called for opposition leader Tony Abbott to “clarify if he supports his parliamentary secretary bringing out such a divisive figure and promoting his extreme views”.

The consequences of Islamophobia, in the U.S. and abroad

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The July 2011 massacre in Norway was a tragic signal of a metastasizing social cancer — Islamophobia. The Norwegian assassin, Anders Behring Breivik’s, 1500-page manifesto confirmed the dangerous consequences of hate speech that has been spread by American and European xenophobes and websites that are quoted hundreds of times in his fear-filled tract.

Because the small number of extremists responsible for 9/11 and terrorist attacks in Europe and the Muslim world legitimated their acts in the name of Islam, we have seen an exponential increase in the past ten years of hostility and intolerance towards fellow Muslim citizens. This hatred threatens the democratic fabric of American and European societies and impacts not only the safety and civil liberties of Muslims but also, as the attacks in Norway demonstrate, the safety of all citizens.

The broad spectrum of preachers of hate that include politicians, media commentators, Christian Zionist ministers, and biased media and internet sites exploit legitimate concerns about domestic security and engage in a fear-mongering that conflates Islam and the majority of Muslims with a small but deadly minority of militants. The Gallup World Poll revealed that 57% of Americans when asked what they admired about Islam said “nothing” or “I don’t know.” So. too, a Washington Post poll revealed that a shocking 49% of Americans view Islam unfavorably.

John Esposito at CPOST, 3 September 2011

Tower Hamlets: community unites against EDL

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tower Hamlets anti-EDL protest (2)

Muslim Volunteers Maintain Calm Despite Far-Right Threat

• Mass peaceful protest in support of tolerance and hope
• EDL fails to march through Tower Hamlets
• IFE members praised by police for professionalism

Over 10,000 people of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds claimed the streets of the East End yesterday in the name of tolerance and hope, defying more than 1,000 hooligans from the far-right English Defence League (EDL) attempting to march on Tower Hamlets.

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Settlers set fire to West Bank mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A mosque in the West Bank village of Qusra, south of Nablus, was set on fire Monday morning, hours after Israeli police officers destroyed three illegal structures in the settlement outpost of Migron.

According to Palestinian sources, a group of settlers arrived at the village mosque at approximately 3 A.M., threw burning tires toward it, and broke several of its windows. The event is the latest in a series of clashes between settlers and Palestinians in the region.

Haaretz, 5 September 2011

IRR briefing paper on the Oslo massacre

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Institute of Race Relations has published a briefing paper by Liz Fekete, Breivik, the conspiracy theory and the Oslo massacre. The paper includes:

• An analysis of the various elements in the Islamic conspiracy theory that Breivik drew on, its discursive frameworks, its key shapers and followers. Here certain intellectual currents within neoconservativism and cultural conservatism, and concepts such as clash of civilisations, Islamofascism, new anti-Semitism and Eurabia, are examined. While these may not support the notion of a deliberate conspiracy to Islamicise Europe, they are often used by conspiracy theorists to underline the righteousness of their beliefs and actions.

• An appendix of ‘Responses to the Oslo massacre’ from official statements to ripostes from counter-jihadists, extreme-right politicians and neoconservative political commentators.

• Detailed documentation of anti-Muslim violence and related provocations throughout Europe in 2010 and 2011 including desecrations of mosques and Islamic cemeteries; petrol bombs and other attacks on mosques and worshippers; physical attacks and extreme-right campaigns.

See IRR press release, 1 September 2011

Coalition seeks actions on NYPD mosque spying

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A coalition of a dozen civil rights and advocacy organizations is calling on the Senate Intelligence Committee, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Department of Justice to take action in response to revelations that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) is engaged in widespread religious and ethnic profiling and monitoring of Muslim communities and houses of worship in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

The revelations are contained in documents obtained by the Associated Press (AP) showing that undercover NYPD officers in a so-called “Demographics Unit” targeted the Muslim communities with the assistance of individuals linked to the CIA. NYPD officials denied the Demographics Unit ever existed, despite the AP’s publication of an NYPD presentation that described the mission and makeup of the unit.

A coalition letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee requests that the committee conduct “an immediate investigation into this affair and hold formal hearings on the civil rights implications of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sponsoring domestic spying activities by the NYPD and its legality.”

The coalition letter to the U.S. Marshals Service requests that the organization “withdraw its deputization of those special unit police officers involved in the above mentioned NYPD intelligence gathering activities, taking into account their safety and liability, the legality of such activities, and the civil rights implications of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sponsoring domestic spying activities by the NYPD.”

A similar coalition letter to the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Special Litigation Section requests “an immediate investigation into this apparent pattern of profiling by the New York City Police Department.”

Coalition members include:

* Afghans for Peace
* Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund
* Asian Law Caucus
* Bill of Rights Defense Committee
* Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
* Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR)
* Demand Progress
* Defending Dissent Foundation
* DownsizeDC.org
* Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM)
* Jews Against Islamophobia
* South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT)

CAIR press release, 2 September 2011

Athens is the only European capital without a mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Eid al-Fitr celebrations in Greece

Muslims performed Eid al Fitr prayers outside in Greece, in the gathering “permitted by authorities” in the only European capital without an official mosque.

The Greek government has repeatedly set aside plans for the construction of a mosque and Muslim cemetery in the city of five million people.

Greece has a growing Muslim community and Athens’ Muslim community is without an official mosque and prayers are usually held at cultural centers or community halls or private apartments around the city.

The Muslim community in Greece is estimated at about 1 million, in a country where the only mosques are in the northeastern region of Xanthi near the Turkish border, home to a large Muslim Turk minority.

No mosque has operated in the Greek capital since the country left from the Ottoman rule in 1832 and Muslims in Greece have to pray at stadiums in Athens as a proper mosque still remains a dream after more than two decades of campaigning.

World Bulletin, 2 September 2011