Monthly Archives: May 2012

Reward offered in Wichita mosque fire

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A reward is being offered in connection to a fire that destroyed a Wichita mosque.

Authorities said last week that an Oct. 31 fire at the Islamic Association of Mid-Kansas was intentionally set. The fire caused an estimated $150,000 in damage.

Capt. Stuart Bevis, Wichita Fire, said the fire remained under investigation for some time due to technical analysis being performed in Maryland. The Wichita Police department, the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Federal Bureau of Investigation assisted with the case.

The ATF is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to arrest and conviction of the person who started the blaze. Anyone with the information about the incident should call ATF at 1-888-ATF-FIRE, FBI at 316-262-0031 or the Wichita Fire Department at 316-337-9146.

KAKE, 16 May 2012

Walthamstow: EDL march ‘will inflame tensions’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tensions could rise in the community if far-right group the English Defence League (EDL) is allowed to march through Walthamstow, critics claim. Both the Waltham Forest Anti-Cuts Union and Trades Council have criticised plans posted online for an EDL demonstration in the area on Saturday August 18.

The EDL, which describes itself as an “inclusive movement” opposed to Islamic extremism, denies being a racist organisation. But a spokesman for the WF Trades Council said: “There is no other reason that this organisation should come to Waltham Forest other than to seek to divide our multicultural community and to incite racial tension”. He added that plans were underway for an alternative ‘We Are Waltham Forest’ event on the same day, designed to celebrate the borough’s multiculturalism.

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Melbourne’s northern suburbs regarded as a hot spot for potential terrorists

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Melbourne’s northern suburbs were regarded as a hot spot for potential home-grown terrorists, a Labor MP revealed yesterday.

Maria Vamvakinou, whose federal seat of Calwell includes suburbs with high populations of Muslims – such as Broadmeadows and Dallas – said the area had been under surveillance by national security agencies.

“My area, having such a high concentration of Australians of Muslim faith, was an area of interest to the federal police and to ASIO, especially immediately in the aftermath of September 11,” she said. “Most people who live in Broadmeadows, they might be of Muslim background, but they pretty much live ordinary lives.”

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EDL’s Tommy Robinson attracts Twitter hatred after racially abusing ‘underage’ user

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The leader of the far-right English Defence League has come under fire after racially abusing a girl who told him she was 15-years-old on Twitter.

Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, told Twitter user ‘Asianish’ “You’re pretty fit for a Muslim”. Defending herself, she wrote back “I’m 15 and you’ve got the cheek to call Muslims paedos.”

Robinson’s Twitter abuse comes after the EDL boss highlighted the race of the Asian men convicted in Rochdale grooming case, linking their Pakistani and Afghan origins to the sexual exploitation of under-age girls.

Huffington Post, 16 May 2012

See also EDL News, 16 May 2012

Brookfield aldermen approve mosque – construction set for summer

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Over objections of some residents who sought to table the project, the Common Council unanimously approved a mosque on Pheasant Drive intended to serve a growing Waukesha County Muslim community.

Brookfield aldermen unanimously approved plans for a nearly 13,000-square-foot mosque, to the joy of Waukesha County Muslims and chagrin of opponents who sought to table the project Tuesday.

The Common Council voted 14-0 Tuesday to grant a conditional use permit, with aldermen assuring residents the city had “thoroughly vetted” traffic and other site issues before green-lighting construction.

“We’re elated,” said Mushir Hassan, a Brookfield resident, physician and project leader for the mosque. “We live in a very sophisticated, educated community that understands that they’ve worked with, lived with, and dealt with Muslims and people of all different faiths and cultures on a regular basis,” Hassan said after the meeting.

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Class materials from military’s anti-Islam class repeatedly cite Islamophobic authors

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sharia and the Constitution cartoon
Slide from a presentation titled ‘Sharia and the Constitution’

A class taught by the military to officers at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, came under fire when a report on Wired’s Danger Room blog last week exposed it for teaching soldiers to engage in a “total war” on Islam and taking a war on Islam “to the civilian population wherever necessary.”

The full set of course materials, hundreds of documents and slide shows obtained by ThinkProgress, reveal just how deep Islamophobia ran through the military instruction. The material contained dozens of citations to the work of some of America’s best known anti-Muslim bigots.

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Legislation to ban veil is sweeping Europe like ‘political Swine Flu’, researchers claim

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Banning and criminalising the Muslim face veil tests the very foundations of modern liberal society, warn researchers from Queen Mary, University of London and the University of Sussex.

The paper ‘Reasons to Ban? The Anti-Burqa Movement in Western Europe‘ examines the move to legislate against, and to criminalise face-veiling which has swept across the EU recently.

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Children as young as 10 being groomed in Northern Ireland

Posted on by Bob Pitt

This is the headline to an article in the Belfast Telegraph, which reports that girls in the North of Ireland “are being sexually exploited in the same way as the girls in the notorious Rochdale grooming case, a leading charity has said”. It quotes Jacqui Montgomery-Devlin of Barnardo’s Safe Choices as saying that sexual exploitation is happening in “every town and city across Northern Ireland”.

However, given that Muslims number only 1,943 out of a total population of 1,685,267 in the North, 97% of whom are Christians, I rather doubt that the commentators who saw the religious affiliation of the perpetraors as a central factor in Rochdale will be arguing the same in this case.

MP urges EDL march ban on Bristol’s day of Pride

Posted on by Bob Pitt

English-Defence-LeagueA Bristol MP has written to police and the council urging them to scrap plans to allow a march by right-wing extremists to go ahead on the same day as the city’s Pride march.

The English Defence League (EDL) is allegedly planning on holding a march in Bristol on Saturday, July 14 – the same day as the city’s annual Pride celebrations.

Kerry McCarthy, MP for Bristol East, has said “many LGBT people will feel intimated by the proposed march and people will inevitably stay away from what is suppose to be a family friendly event”.

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