Monthly Archives: September 2011

CAIR calls on councilman to apologise for anti-Islam Facebook comment

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dumitru 9-11 Facebook comment

The Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) today called on the City of Orange Councilman Jon Dumitru to apologize for an anti-Islam Facebook posting in which he falsely linked the “teachings of Islam and the Koran” to the 9/11 terror attacks.

On the anniversary of 9/11, the Councilman posted a picture of the burning Twin Towers on his official Facebook page, and wrote underneath: “It was 10 years ago today that most Americans learned first-hand of the teachings of Islam and the Koran being filled with messages of peace….as they killed thousands of our fellow Americans! Today I remember those lost, left behind, and those across the world searching for these pure evil terrorists and dispatching them from this world! WE WILL NEVER FORGET, WE WILL NEVER FORGIVE!”

CAIR-LA sent a letter to the Councilman today informing him of the offensive nature of his comment and called on him to apologize to American Muslims. The letter also asked the Councilman to meet with members of the American Muslim community to discuss the negative impact of his inflammatory remarks.

In the letter, CAIR-LA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush wrote:

“Your hateful statement in which you falsely insinuate that the teachings of Islam and the Quran would allow the terrorist attacks of 9/11 is deeply troubling to all Muslims, including many who live in your city. Muslims across the world, especially those here in the United States have unequivocally condemned the 9/11 attacks and all forms of terrorism. Using the tragedy of 9/11 as an opportunity to spread misinformed views about Islam and the Quran is a failure of leadership.

“At a time when our entire nation was mourning that tragic day and emphasizing unity among all Americans, you unfortunately decided to falsely blame an entire faith community. We have learned from history that such smears and stereotypes have only led to scapegoating of entire communities.”

CAIR-LA press release, 15 September 2011

Mind you, Jon Dumitru does have his admirers. Pamela Geller for one. Over at Atlas Shrugs she hails Dumitru as a patriot who is under attack from one of the “un-indicted co-conspirator Muslim Brotherhood groups that are working towards this nation’s destruction”. Geller urges her supporters to “rally behind the courageous Councilman” and email him messages of support.

And the Christian News Wire has issued a press release from Dr Gary Cass of DefendChristians.org who demands: “Can anyone blame Dumitru for his feeling after seeing hundreds of his fellow first responders killed in the name of Allah?” Cass denounces CAIR’s complaint as “just another ploy to keep Americans off balance when confronting the threat of encroaching Islam”.

Senators blast FBI terror-training ‘lies’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The FBI swears it has stopped teaching agents that “mainstream” Muslims are proto-terrorists and that Mohammed is a “cult leader”. But top Senators aren’t prepared to let the FBI turn the page on its anti-Islam counterterrorism training, revealed by Danger Room on Wednesday.

“There is no room in America for the lies, propagated by al-Qaida, that the U.S. is at war with Islam, or the lie propagated by others that all Muslims support terrorism,” Sen. Joe Lieberman, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, told Danger Room.

Lieberman is one of the most consistently hawkish members of Congress. Not coincidentally, he’s been disturbed at recent reports that “inaccurate or even bigoted” anti-Islamic sentiment — his words — is substituting for diligent, responsible counterterrorism. In a letter this week to John Brennan, the president’s assistant on homeland security, Lieberman called for “meaningful standards” on law enforcement counterterrorism training, a point he reiterated to Danger Room.

“Proper training about violent Islamist extremism is absolutely essential for our law enforcement personnel in order to empower them to identify and understand this grave threat, and then protect the American people from it,” Lieberman says. “Part of this training must be an understanding of the clear and profound difference between Islamist extremism, which is a totalitarian political ideology that is at war with us, and Islam, which is a religion practiced by more than a billion people around the world, including millions of law-abiding and loyal Americans.”

Nor is Lieberman the only senator with oversight responsibilities disturbed by the FBI training materials. “Patriotic Muslim Americans can be one of our nation’s best weapons against radical Islamic terrorists,” Sen. Ron Wyden, a member of the intelligence committee, told Danger Room. “Anyone who stigmatizes the entire Muslim American community will miss out on opportunities to work in partnership with that community to identify and take action against emerging terrorist threats before they can do harm to our country.”

Danger Room, 16 September 2011

Call for public inquiry into policing of Bolton anti-EDL protest

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bolton anti-EDL protestA group of antifascist protesters are calling for a public inquiry into the policing of last year’s English Defence League rally in Bolton.

Justice4bolton claim Unite Against Fascism members, who were protesting against the EDL in Victoria Square last March, were “mistreated” by police. The group is now calling for a public inquiry into the policing of the event, with particular focus on the arrest of protestor Alan Clough.

Alan Clough, of Ainsworth Road, Radcliffe, was due to stand trial at Bolton Magistrates’ Court accused of threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour at the rally, but the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to proceed after viewing video footage of the rally. Justice4bolton alleges that the footage shows Mr Clough being pushed by police officers and hit on the head with a baton before being pushed to the ground and arrested.

An independent investigation into the day’s events, which is being led by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, is already underway, including the circumstances of Mr Clough’s arrest.

Justice4bolton also wants the government to create “enforceable procedures” on how to police protests and is asking the trade unions to fund their list of demands, or action plan.

Bolton News, 16 September 2011

French businessman to pay ‘burqa’ fines in Netherlands too

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Netherlands is about to ban burqas in public. In doing so it is following the example of France and Belgium. Rachid Nekkaz, a Muslim with an Algerian background, has set up a million-euro fund in France to pay the fines.

He thinks burqa bans violate European constitutional rights and fundamental freedoms, which is strange because personally he believes burkas do not help integration: “Personally I am against burqas, because I don’t think wearing a niqaab helps the integration of these women into French society.”

After the introduction of a burqa ban in France, Mr Nekkaz set up the organisation Touche Pas à Ma Constitution or Don’t Touch My Constitution. The organisation will also help Dutch women if the ban is introduced. “Dutch women who get fined can phone me.” Mr Nekkaz says. “My number is on the internet.”

And it is not just an empty promise. The rich 38-year-old entrepreneur has already paid fines for two girls in Brussels. He says one million euros may be a lot of money, but it is nothing if it enables you to defend civil liberties.

The cabinet will decide on the ban today. Then it still has to go through parliament, but it is already clear that a parliamentary majority backs the measure.

In Belgium, legal proceedings have been taken against the ban (which includes the niqaab). The court’s verdict is expected soon.

RNW, 16 September 2011

Advice for the Met Police Commissioner

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bernard Hogan-HoweBob Lambert, former head of Scotland Yard’s Muslim Contact Unit and author of the soon-to-be-published Countering Al-Qaeda in London: Police and Muslims in Partnership, has some advice for the new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

Lambert urges Bernard Hogan-Howe “to be as tough on far right terrorism, political violence and intimidation as his predecessors have been on terrorism and political violence associated with al-Qaeda and fringe Muslim extremists”. With regard to the English Defence League, Hogan-Howe should “ensure that the group is treated as a threat to community safety, and repudiate colleagues and politicians who seek to excuse them”.

“Most crucially of all,” Lambert writes, “Hogan-Howe should be tough and brave in standing up to the Home Secretary in defending Muslim organisations and groups she has wrongly branded ‘non-violent extremist’. He should support his police chief in Tower Hamlets who hails the Islamic Forum Europe (IFE) stewards and youth workers in Tower Hamlets as outstanding partners of police. By the same token, courage should be displayed in defending the outstanding work of Muslims in London who have helped to tackle the threat of al-Qaeda influence.”

Excellent advice. We can only hope it is followed.

The Platform, 15 September 2011

Dutch government drafts veil ban legislation

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Dutch prime minister says the government has drawn up legislation to ban face-covering veils such as the burqa worn by some Muslim women.

Mark Rutte says the proposed ban will be sent to the government’s legal advisory body, the Council of State, before lawmakers vote on it, a process likely to take months.

The government said in a statement Friday that the ban aims at “protecting the character and customs of public life in the Netherlands.”

Associated Press, 16 September 2011

National Secular Society honorary associate accuses Muslims of sponging off welfare state

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Shreela FlatherBaroness Flather of Windsor and Maidenhead became a heroine of the right-wing press earlier this week as a result of her speech to the House of Lords in support of the Welfare Reform Bill, where she accused some communities of migrant origin of exploiting the welfare state. She even argued that larger familes should be penalised by reducing child benefit payments for third and fourth children.

Shreela Flather told the assembled peers: “The minority communities in this country, particularly the Pakistanis and the Bangladeshis have a very large number of children and the attraction is the large number of benefits that follow the child. Nobody likes to accept that, nobody likes to talk about it because it is supposed to be very politically incorrect.” She went on to say that “Indians … do not have large families because they are like the Jews of old. They want their children to be educated. This is the other problem – there is no emphasis on education in the Pakistani and Bangladeshi families.”

That there was an Islamophobic undercurrent to Flather’s baseless claims about migrant welfare spongers, which are of course common currency on the racist right, was strongly suggested by the fact that she specifically exempted migrants from Hindu-majority India and attacked communities originating in two Muslim-majority countries.

In a comment piece published in the Daily Mail (where else?) Flather makes this accusation quite explicit, asserting that it is “some Muslims from these two regions” who “produce ever larger families in order to claim extra payments and publicly-subsidised housing”. She goes on to criticise the fact that a couple who have contracted an Islamic marriage abroad can claim benefits for their children, and adds: “But the state handouts do not end there, for under Islamic Sharia law, polygamy is permissible. So a man can return to Pakistan, take another bride and then, in a repetition of the process, bring her to England where they also have children together – obtaining yet more money from the state.”

An honorary associate of the National Secular Society, Flather regards herself as a cultural Hindu in much the same way that Richard Dawkins says he is a cultural Christian, though the term Flather prefers is “Hindu atheist”. Interestingly, this is the very same term that Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, founder of the (Hindu-supremacist, anti-Muslim) Hindutva movement, used to describe himself.

Only a few weeks ago we saw another NSS honorary associate, David Starkey, declaring that Enoch Powell was right. And now we have Shreela Flather ranting about about immigrants milking the benefits system. Will the NSS take any action against Flather over this? Don’t bet on it. The NSS president, Terry Sanderson, is on record as stating that “immigrants are importing their own brands of religion into Britain” which are “primitive, hysterical, fanatical and alien”. And he dismissed criticisms of Starkey on the grounds that there was nothing wrong with “voicing a well-intentioned but off-beat opinion in an important debate”.

ACLU amends California mosque-spying lawsuit

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A civil liberties group in Los Angeles has amended its lawsuit alleging the FBI spied in mosques to include new claims the bureau used anti-Muslim training materials.

Peter Bibring, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California said Thursday that FBI training materials included quotes from Islamic texts that were taken out of context to show the religion preaches violence.

The FBI has acknowledged a lecture at its training academy was critical of Islam but this was discontinued. In a statement, the FBI said policy changes were under way to ensure all training was consistent with FBI standards.

The amended lawsuit, filed Tuesday, claims the FBI paid an informant to infiltrate Southern California mosques, violating Muslims’ freedom of religion by conducting indiscriminate surveillance because of their faith.

Associated Press, 16 September 2011

Teenager admits sickening attack on elderly Muslim outside Kilmarnock mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

------Wire Picture Name:sfkst190711mosque-1.jpgA teenager shouted racial abuse as he kicked and stamped on a 71-year-old grandfather’s head for 10 minutes. And he later sent a sickening text boasting about his horrifying actions.

At Kilmarnock Sheriff Court on Monday, the 16-year-old – who cannot be named for legal reasons – pleaded guilty to carrying out the vicious attack outside the Ayrshire Central Mosque in July.

His victim, who had already suffered a stroke, sustained severe facial injuries in the unprovoked attack which took place in the early hours of the morning.

Nancy Beresford, prosecuting, said that the former Crosshouse shopkeeper had gone to the mosque, in Hill Street, Kilmarnock, to prepare for Friday prayers at around 1.40am. As he approached the door, clad in white robes, he noticed a male and two females, along with young children, standing in the street, with another group of females nearby.

The 16-year-old then came towards him shouting abuse, including “Paki bastard”. He punched the pensioner in the chest, causing him to fall to the ground. The teenager continued the assault, while still shouting abuse.

Interviewed, he denied the assault and racial abuse. The 16-year-old told police that he couldn’t understand “why somebody was praying at that time in the morning”.

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Flying while looking like you might be Muslim: American woman hauled off plane in handcuffs, strip-searched and interrogated

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Shoshana HebshiAn airline that reported suspicious behavior by two men aboard a flight from Denver on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks said authorities in Detroit removed them – and a female passenger who is half Middle Eastern and claims she was later strip-searched – without consulting the pilots or crew.

However, airport police and the Transportation Safety Administration said authorities responded after getting an in-flight alert from Frontier that three passengers were engaged in suspicious activity.

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