A teenager who had just left a mosque was punched in the face by a thief who stole her handbag. The 17-year-old has been left with a suspected fractured eye socket, swelling and bruising to her face after the incident on Saturday.
At the time the girl was wearing full Asian dress including a veil. She described the experience as “terrifying”.
Richard Bartholomew provides a useful roundup of websites featuring photos of the Stop Islamization of America demonstration in New York yesterday.
As predicted, the threat by Geller and Spencer that only American flags would be permitted on the demonstration and that signs would be “confiscated” was widely ignored.
In addition to posters with the word “Sharia” in dripping blood and flyers reading “No Obama’s Mosque”, slogans included “What God Do You Kill For?”, “Cordoba=Conquer, Not Here!”, “Muhummad was the First Radical Muslim: Osama bin Laden is Following Directions” and “Transform Islam, Not America”. One man carried a placard with the word “Toilet Paper” and a Qur’an attached to it.
Update: Salon.com has a selection of leaflets distributed on Saturday’s demonstration.
The Architects Journal reports that NRAP Architects have submitted an outline planning application for a 9,500-capacity mosque at the Riverine Centre in Newham and provides “exclusive images” of the plan. Unfortunately, to subscribers only.
However, the Riverine Centre website has been updated with details of the plan. You can consult an overview of the proposals here.
It would obviously be too much to ask that the right-wing press should cease referrring to the development as a “mega-mosque”, but perhaps they could bring themselves to stop publishing references to and illustrations of the old Mangera Yvars design for a 12,000-capacity mosque that was scrapped five years ago.
The outside of a mosque in a French city has been smeared with excrement, the latest in a series of vandalism incidents involving Muslim places of worship in the country.
The Interior Ministry said Wednesday that police are seeking the culprit or culprits, adding in a statement that “to attack a religion is to attack the (French) Republic.”
The Limoges mosque in central France was vandalized in July with Nazi symbols scrawled on its doors. In the latest incident, excrement was smeared on the doors and elsewhere before dawn.
SAN FRANCISCO — Global shipping company UPS violated federal law when it allowed supervisors and coworkers to discriminate against and harass an employee for being Arab and Muslim, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit filed today. The suit also alleged UPS illegally retaliated against the worker after he reported the harassment to the company, his union and the EEOC.
Since 11 September 2001 – and especially since the murder of Theo van Gogh – Muslims and Islam have frequently been unfavourably portrayed at the heart of public debate.
Manifestations of Islamophobia can be found on the Internet, in comments by the PVV, and in acts of violence committed against mosques. Dutch anti-discrimination policies are coming under pressure now that this ideology has forced its way to the centre of the political stage.
How do negative connotations about Muslims come about? Where are the acts of violence taking place? Is the Netherlands the front line in the ‘clash of civilisations’, as has been claimed by politicians, opinion formers and others in the international arena? Or is it all about an exclusion mechanism?
Campaigners have sworn to flood the streets of Walthamstow with demonstrators if an English Defence League (EDL) march planned for October goes ahead.
A former sales assistant at Dunnes Stores has claimed she wanted to work her rostered hours but could not do so as she was not permitted to wear a hijab at work.
Loreta Tavoraite (35) of Parknamore, Ballincollig, Co Cork, has brought a case for unfair dismissal against Dunnes Stores (head office) at South Great Georges Street, Dublin. Ms Tavoraite, who is originally from Lithuania, began working at Dunnes Stores, Ballincollig, Co Cork on July 26th, 2007.
The Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France reports that during the night of September 7-8 racist and Islamophobic graffiti were sprayed on two places of worship at Epône in north-central France. The slogans included “France for the French”, “White France” and “Islam = shit”.
Sud Ouest reports that a building at Le Barp in Val de l’Eyre in south-west France which is used by the local Moroccan community as a prayer hall has suffered the third graffiti attack since July.
Swastikas and other Nazi symbols were accompanied by racist and xenophobic slogans such as “dirty rats out” and “France belongs to us”.
The words “maire = collabo” were also found – a reference to the mayor of Le Barp, Christiane Dornon, who organised a demonstration in support of the Moroccan community following the previous two attacks.