Yearly Archives: 2012

British Freedom party spokesman explains why foul-mouthed racist abuse is not racist

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tony SutcliffeIf there were Olympic medals being handed out for political spin then the man who had just introduced himself to me as “Tony Smith” was clearly going for gold.

I was interviewing him against a back drop of largely drunken men waving banners and chanting foul-mouthed racist abuse at a rally organised by the far-right English Defence League in the West Yorkshire town of Keighley.

“Tony”, who admitted he was giving me a false name, had a ready answer when I asked if their language and behaviour was acceptable for a Saturday afternoon political rally in a town where many British Asians live. “That is really unfair,” he told me. “It’s not about race. It’s not about colour. It’s about culture.”

BBC News, 14 August 2012

Vandals shoot paintballs at Oklahoma City mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Oklahoma mosque vandalismThe Grand Mosque of Oklahoma City was fired upon by paintballs early Sunday, and the vandals fled the scene before they were apprehended.

About 2:45 a.m., the vandals pulled into the parking lot of the Grand Mosque, 3201 NW 48, and fired upon the building’s doors, Hassan Ahmed, the mosque’s imam and director said.

“A car pulled here in front of the main entrance and started shooting paintball guns, but at the time, I didn’t know it was that. I thought it was bullets they were shooting into the building. And I could hear when I was coming from the house, but before I reached there, they were gone,” Ahmed said.

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EDL’s Alan Lake loses his job at development bank

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The man known as Alan Lake, a key strategist and funder behind the racist English Defence League (EDL) is out of his job at a major international development bank.

The news comes the week after another shadowy EDL strategist, Chris Knowles, was sacked by Leeds council.

Lake, whose real name is Alan Ayling, masterminded the EDL’s strategy of bringing together football hooligan firms into an anti-Muslim army of racist street thugs.

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Ex-worker sues Disney, says company forbids Muslim head scarf

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Imane Boudlal press conference

A former Disneyland restaurant employee sued Walt Disney Co on Monday for harassment and religious discrimination, saying she was fired because she wanted to wear a Muslim head scarf at work.

Imane Boudlal, a 28-year-old Muslim, worked as a hostess at the Storytellers Cafe, a restaurant inside Disney’s Grand California Hotel & Spa at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, according to a complaint filed in federal court.

Two years into the job, Boudlal asked permission to wear a hijab, a head scarf worn by Muslim women, while at work. She said she offered to wear a scarf that matched the colors of her uniform or featured a Disney logo.

According to her lawsuit, Disney managers denied her request, saying it would violate the company’s policy for how employees “look” while on the job. Among the restrictions, the policy prohibits visible tattoos and fingernails that exceed a quarter of an inch, the lawsuit said.

Boudlal was given the choice of working in a back area, away from customers, or wearing a fedora-style hat on top of her head scarf. When Boudlal refused, she was fired, the lawsuit states.

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ACT government to make religious vilification illegal

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The ACT government will propose changes to the territory’s Discrimination Act to make religious vilification illegal.

Attorney-General Simon Corbell will introduce a bill in the Legislative Assembly next week in response to the secret campaign by the Concerned Citizens of Canberra against the Gungahlin mosque. The bill will make it unlawful to publicly incite hatred, contempt or ridicule of a person based on their religion.

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Man charged over Southampton mosque bomb hoax

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A 43-year-old man has been charged with making hoax bomb threats against mosques in the Southampton area.

Timothy Bingham, of Fairbairn Walk, Chandlers Ford, has been charged with committing a bomb hoax.

A call was made to police on Saturday night but police said they were satisfied the threat was not credible.

Mr Bingham, who appeared before Southampton magistrates, was remanded back into custody, to reappear before the court on Thursday.

BBC News, 14 August 2012

Racist yob jailed for revenge attack on Carlisle takeaway

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A man who took revenge on a kebab shop after his girlfriend was jailed for being part of a racist mob which launched a drunken attack on it has himself now been sent to prison.

Gavin Mossop, 27, spent one night in prison for contempt of court after shouting at the judge as he jailed the 11 racists in February. And he was back at the city’s Crown Court yesterday for his own drunken racist attack on the takeaway in Carlisle.

Mossop, who lives with his mother in Highmoor Park, Wigton, was jailed for nine months after pleading guilty to charges of taking revenge and racially aggravated public disorder.

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Anti-mosque campaigners insist that opposition to Islamic centre ‘is not about religion’ … and invite rabid Islamophobe to lecture on the threat from Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamthreat

After months of arguing over county building codes in an effort to keep the proposed Cordoba Center Islamic mosque and cemetery out of San Martin, the Morgan Hill/Gilroy Patriots are turning the debate to the threat of Islamic presence in the South County with a public event this Saturday.

Guest lecturer Peter Friedman, expert in Islam studies and administrator of the website Islamthreat.com, will be speaking on topics such as “Islam – Threat to America,” and “Islam and Women,” at the Gilroy Library from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. “If the Muslims are going to be our neighbors, we need to know more about them,” said Susan Mister, Gilroy resident and member of the Morgan Hill/Gilroy Patriots.

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National Front planning to protest ‘once a month’ at proposed Sunderland mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

NF Sunderland mosque protestMembers of the National Front are planning to protest once a month at the site of a proposed new city centre mosque, Sky Tyne and Wear has learned.

The right wing group demonstrated against the building of a mosque in St Mark’s Road in Sunderland on Saturday, August 11. Police were forced to separate the protesters and anti-fascist groups as tensions heightened in front of worried residents.

Following the protest, the North East National Front (NENF) Facebook page announced the group will protest every month. The posting, which has been forwarded to Northumbria Police and Sunderland City Council, claimed that the NF “won the day”.

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Germany refocuses on neo-Nazi threat

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Until the discovery last year that a string of unsolved killings had been perpetrated by neo-Nazis, few in Germany considered far-right extremism a major threat.

After the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, security agencies around the world poured energy into fighting Islamist terrorism, and Germany did so with special urgency because several of the hijackers had lived in Hamburg. But the shift led to the neglect of other types of homegrown violence in this nation of 82 million people, critics now say, allowing a neo-Nazi movement to flourish.

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