Police in the Czech Republic have charged a man who is suspected of planning attacks similar to those by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway.
The 29-year-old man was charged with unlawful possession of weapons and endangering the public. Weapons, explosives and police uniforms were found in his flat in the city of Ostrava and detectives say he was using the name Breivik on the internet.
The ever-shrinking forces of the English Defence League in Chelmsford
It was a victory for the police as a potentially explosive double-march involving an anti-Islamic group and their anti-fascist opponents passed through Chelmsford almost trouble free on Saturday.
A ring of police officers surrounded more than 50 members of the anti-Islamic group, the English Defence League, as they walked slowly from the Wheatsheaf pub in New Street to Chelmsford Library.
Fearing a repeat of the trouble that broke out during last month’s EDL protest, in which three men were arrested, more than 100 police officers from eight different forces, swamped the city centre, creating blockades with riot vans, to ensure the two groups did not cross paths.
A Muslim protester is calling for revision of the frisking process at the Houston Police Department after she said she was stripped of her religious headscarf during a recent arrest this month while rallying for janitor wages.
The incident highlights the varying policies local police agencies have regulating when religious head coverings are allowed during the arresting and booking process. It also shows the fine line law enforcement must straddle when trying to respect one’s faith while ensuring that people who are arrested do no harm to themselves or others.
Gov. Pat Quinn celebrated the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan at a ceremony that drew 15,000 people to Toyota Park on Sunday morning in the southwest suburb of Bridgeview.
The governor used the occasion to sign a bill that will allow university students who have religious holiday conflicts with tests or assignments to ask for and receive alternate assignments.
Gov. Quinn also decried recent attacks against local Muslims, citing a shooting at a Morton Grove mosque, an attack on an Islamic school in Lombard and the desecration of a grave in an Evergreen Park cemetery.
Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration is responding to what it calls “confusion” about the role of a Muslim staffer and a council that has advised two state departments on Islamic affairs.
The Republican governor was criticized this summer by several GOP groups over what they perceived as the growing influence of a version of the Islamic code called Shariah in state government.
Claude Ramsey, the deputy to the governor, sent a letter distributed to the state GOP’s executive committee last week seeking to quell those concerns.
“I want to start by clearly expressing there is no effort by the Haslam administration, the State of Tennessee, or any agency or department of the State to promote or advance Shariah law or Shariah complaint finance,” he said in the letter.
Sud Ouest reports that vandals broke into a former bakery at Le Barp in Val de l’Eyre in south-west France, which has been rented by the Moroccan community for use as a prayer hall during Ramadan, and defaced the walls and carpets with racist graffiti and swastikas.
Belal El Filali, the 70-year-old vice-president of the local Moroccan association, who came to Le Barp in 1969 to work in the strawberry fields says: “For more than forty years I have lived here, and we have never seen this.”
The mayor of Le Barp, Christiane Dornon, who lives nearby, has condemned the attack. “I am outraged, these are people who have lived here for more than thirty-five years, there have never been any problems, it is a community who should be treated with respect.”
Victoria police are investigating provocative, anti-Muslim comments posted on the I Love Downtown Victoria Facebook page, suggesting the new Masjid AlIman Mosque on Quadra Street be blasted with a rocket launcher. The comments appear to have been posted late Thursday afternoon by Facebook user Dan Speed.
Speed’s profile page states his work and education include the Canadian Coast Guard (security), Canadian Forces, Department of National Defence, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, Canadian Airborne Regiment, Sauder School of Business and Stelly’s Secondary School.
Times Colonist, 18 August 2012
See also CBC News, 18 August 2012
The head of a federal inquiry into multiculturalism hopes to push back against the notion that all Muslims in Australia want to impose Sharia law.
Labor’s Maria Vamvakinou describes this as a myth and a “fault line” in the community, along with the perception that Muslims do not want to integrate with mainstream Australia. She also wants migrants to be described by their ethnic origin as opposed to faith, to overcome the trend of grouping all migrants from Afghanistan or Iraq as Muslims.
The Joint Standing Committee on Migration has uncovered wide-spread prejudice against Muslims in its inquiry into multiculturalism.
Hank Williams Jr. reprised his role as a fiery anti-Obama blowhard on Friday, telling fans at a concert that the president was Muslim and anti-American.
The statement came near the end of a concert at the Iowa State Fair Grandstand. Williams Jr.’s comments were first reported in a review by Des Moines Register reporter Joe Lawler.
According to Lawler, the show was relatively free of politics until the end, when Williams Jr. made the following claims: “We’ve got a Muslim president who hates farming, hates the military, hates the U.S. and we hate him!”
The comments were apparently met with applause and loud cheers.
Members of a small far-right group have displayed caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad during demonstrations outside mosques in Berlin, but officials say their protests have gone peacefully.
Saturday’s demonstrations by the Pro Deutschland group – held under the slogan “Islam does not belong in Germany – stop Islamization” – followed a failed attempt by three mosques to get display of the caricatures prohibited. A court ruled they were protected by laws allowing artistic free expression.
Police said a group of up to 70 supporters of Pro Deutschland took part, while a few hundred counterdemonstrators protested against them. There was a heavy police presence.