Yearly Archives: 2012

Police at Paris airport bar three Saudi women wearing face veil from entering France, citing ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A police union says three Saudi women who refused to remove their face veils at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport have been barred entry to France.

A 2011 French law bans people from wearing Islamic face-covering veils anywhere in public.

An official with the SGP-FO police union said Tuesday that border police asked the women to remove their veils after they arrived Monday on a flight from Doha, Qatar. The official says the women refused, border police refused them entry in France, and they returned to Doha Monday night.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly for the police.

Associated Press, 12 June 2012

Worldwide counter-jihad alliance to launch with Stockholm demonstration on August 4

Posted on by Bob Pitt

SION logoThis is the typically bombastic headline to a press release from Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer’s Stop Islamization of Nations (SION) announcing a forthcoming protest in Sweden.

The Stockholm demonstration was originally an initiative by British Freedom, the political ally of the English Defence League. At a recent BF/EDL strategy meeting it was reported that “party leaders are planning to go to Stockholm to deliver a public apology on behalf of Luton for the fact that the Stockholm bomber was radicalised in the town”.

Taimur Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, who died in a failed suicide attack in the Swedish capital in December 2010, did indeed live in Luton for a number of years, but there is no evidence that the town or its Muslim community had any influence on his turn to violent extremism. In 2007, when Abdaly tried to use the Luton Islamic Centre as a platform to win support for his (at that stage still non-violent) extremist views, he was challenged by the centre’s leadership and forced to leave.

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Swan Valley, Australia: mosque plan withdrawn after threats

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mosque in the Valley logoOverwhelming community opposition has crushed a woman’s dream to build a mosque in Henley Brook but not her desire to revive the project one day.

Mosque in the Valley Foundation director Maria Marasigan said negative and retaliatory comments directed toward the current owner of the property they had intended to purchase had made her question the approach to the project, and cease preliminary planning discussions with the City of Swan.

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Campaigners accuse police over handling of EDL march in Leicester

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Leicester 2012 banner
English Defence League protestors in Leicester, February 2012

Police have defended their handling of the English Defence League’s march in Leicester earlier this year.

A national campaign group, the Network for Police Monitoring – Netpol – yesterday criticised officers’ conduct toward people opposed to the EDL’s presence in the city centre on Saturday, February 4.

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Commission votes to appeal ruling on Murfreesboro mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rutherford County Planning Commissioners voted Monday night to fight a judge’s recent ruling saying they didn’t give residents enough warning about the building request for the Islamic Center in Murfreesboro.

Construction on the building on Veals Road and Bradyville Pike is still ongoing, but opponents have filed a stop work order. A judge is expected to rule on that issue Wednesday.

Rutherford County Chancellor Robert Corlew ruled May 29 that county officials violated the state’s Sunshine Law by not providing adequate notice of the meeting where the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro was approved. The order prohibits further meetings on the mosque without proper notice.

News Channel 5, 12 June 2012

NAMP complained to home office that EDL targeted Muslim police officers but Met took no action

Posted on by Bob Pitt

NAMP_logoLast July the Independent on Sunday reported that the National Association of Muslim Police had delivered a letter to the home secretary, Theresa May, expressing their concerns about the targeting of their members by the English Defence League, and in particular about the case of an EDL member who had been arrested in 2010 in possession of explosive devices and a list of Muslim police officers’ names.

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Shariah charade

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In the 19th century, Catholicism was regarded by many people in this country as thoroughly incompatible with Americanism. They saw it as a hostile foreign element that would subvert democracy. Today, a majority of the justices on the Supreme Court are Catholic, and they are taken to be as American as Mountain Dew.

We’ve come a long way in religious tolerance. Or maybe not. The belief that Catholics are irredeemably alien and disloyal has given way to the fear that Muslims pose a mortal threat to our way of life.

Steve Chapman on the bogus threat of Islamic law in the US.

Chicago Tribune, 10 June 2012

When is a terrorist not a terrorist? When he’s a white non-Muslim

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Real-life scenario No. 1: A man with a weapon strides into a military medical office in Texas and opens fire, killing 13 people and wounding 29 before he is stopped and taken into custody. In the ensuing news media coverage and public discussion, the incident is widely viewed as an act of terrorism.

Real-life scenario No. 2: A man with a weapon shows up at a public gathering inside a supermarket in Arizona and opens fire, killing six (including a U.S. district judge) and wounding 13 (including a member of the U.S. House of Representatives) before he is stopped and arrested. In the ensuing media coverage and public discussion, the incident is generally not characterized as terrorism.

The difference? In the first scenario – the 2009 Fort Hood shootings – the perpetrator, Nidal Hasan, was a Muslim of Palestinian ancestry. In the second – the 2011 Tucson shootings that left Rep. Gabrielle Giffords gravely wounded – the perpetrator, Jared Loughner, was non-Muslim and white.

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