Reports and comment from Islamophobia Watch 21-27 July 2014
Monthly Archives: July 2014
Crisis in Britain First – Dowson quits, Golding calls off mosque invasions
Jim
Dowson, the brains (and money) behind the far-right Britain First group, has resigned from the organisation and indeed from political life generally.
In a rambling resignation letter posted on the Britain First website, Dowson announces “my retirement from all political activities forthwith and my withdrawal from Britain First with immediate effect”, a decision that he attributes to “recent political and personal events and family health issues”.
In an accompanying statement, Britain First asserts that the state “persecution” Dowson has suffered in Northern Ireland has been exacerbated by a media campaign instigated by Hope Not Hate (described, bizarrely, as “the biggest far-Left group in the country”) that has sought to “portray James as the ‘evil genius’ behind the ‘far right’ in Britain”.
But another of Dowson’s motivations for leaving the organisation would appear to be his disapproval of the “mosque invasions” that Britain First has been carrying out over the past few months:
“The media have put him under enormous pressure recently regarding our invasions of mosques across Britain and understandably this has forced Jim to distance himself from these activities, notwithstanding the fact that these mosque invasions have cause considerable exposure of issues such as Muslim female genital mutilation, second class treatment of women, extremism and grooming gangs.”
Even Dowson, it seems, is embarrassed to be associated with a gang of thugs who think it’s brave to barge into places of worship and harass elderly Muslims.
Racist protest outnumbered in Marrickville
A small group of eight people from the racist, far right “Party For Freedom” held a protest outside Woolworth’s supermarket in Marrickville on July 26. They were objecting to a sign saying “Happy Ramadan” the store had put up earlier in the week.
The Party for Freedom is a newly formed group that grew out of the white nationalist Australian Protectionist Party. It campaigns against multiculturalism, wants to “halt Muslim and third world immigration”, encourage “culturally compatible migrants” especially from Europe and North America, and wants Australia to withdraw from the UN refugee convention.
FIBA to review ‘discriminatory’ ban on headgear
Facing claims that Muslim and Sikh players are being discriminated against, basketball’s governing body will review its ban which prevents players wearing headgear for religious reasons.
FIBA said Friday that its policy-making board will review the issue at an Aug. 27 meeting in Sevilla, Spain, ahead of the World Cup.
“FIBA’s Central Board, which is ultimately responsible for changes to the Official Basketball Rules, will review these requests and decide how to proceed in the best interest of the sport,” the 214-nation governing body said in a statement.
The United States Olympic Committee and India’s government had this week called for an end to the ban.
“We take seriously American athletes’ right to compete and believe that reasonable steps can be taken to accommodate athletes of all religious beliefs,” said the USOC, which was urged to intervene by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
India’s sports minister Sarbananda Sonowal responded after two Sikhs on the national team had to remove their turbans before FIBA-sanctioned Asia Cup matches in China this month. The minister said he was “shocked and outraged,” and asked the IOC to send guidelines to Olympic sports federations.
Current FIBA rules prevent players wearing “headgear, hair accessories and jewelry,” allowing only a 5-centimeter headband to control hair and sweat.
Muslims should be treated the same as Hitler, DFer says
Mogens Camre, a Dansk Folkeparti politician who is a member of the Gladsaxe city council, tweeted recently that when it comes to persecuting Jews, Muslims in Europe have “picked up where Hitler left off, and only the same treatment that Hitler received will change the situation.”
Camre said that it is “obvious” that Muslims are persecuting Jews in Europe. “You also have an imam in Aarhus, calling for the killing of Jews and an extraordinary situation in Norway where the Norwegian police are armed to the teeth and patrolling the streets in front of parliament and at the borders,” Camre told DR Nyheder.
‘Trojan horse’ scandal wrecked community cohesion – study
A new study into the effects of the “Trojan horse” scandal in Birmingham finds 90 per cent of the city’s Muslims feel community cohesion has been damaged by the way the affair was handled.
It began with an anonymous letter that is widely now believed to have been a hoax. But the Trojan horse allegations, that a group of hard-line Salafis were plotting to impose a strict interpretation of Islam in secular state schools, exploded into one of the biggest scandals Birmingham has ever seen.
There were four separate inquiries, one led by the former head of counter-terrorism in the UK, and dozens of reports in 25 schools. It also led to a political fall-out at the heart of government and contributed to the demotion of the education secretary, Michael Gove.
Every morning as they started their school day, children in the city, and their parents, had to contend with camera crews and journalists waiting outside the gates, filming them and asking for interviews.
Now a study by Birmingham City University, released exclusively to Channel 4 News, has looked at the impact this had on those children. The study, by criminologist Imran Awan, found some worrying evidence that Muslim communities have been left feeling targeted and stigmatised.
“Previous studies have shown that British Muslims felt very comfortable with their identity, they felt well integrated and proud to be British citizens,” Mr Awan told me. “But much of this has been undone by what they feel has been relentless, unfair criticism.”
One mother said: “What’s the point of us trying to integrate, every time we do we are somehow told it’s not good enough, or we’re not getting it right.”
‘Nazi’ cop Leanne Rissman, aka Sharia Anne, still on beat
A Queensland policewoman who launched a racist internet attack against an Aboriginal activist under a fake Facebook profile, where she also called for the banning of Muslims in western society, has escaped disciplinary action after undergoing “cultural training”.
Leanne Rissman, who uses the pseudonym “Sharia Anne”, was confirmed by an internal police investigation as being behind internet posts and emails in which she calls Aborigines “oxygen thieves” with a “disgusting aversion to work”.
Despite calls for her sacking, Senior Constable Rissman is helping run the overnight shift at the Townsville watchhouse, where a high proportion of prisoners are Aboriginal.
West Australian activist Joyce Capewell, whose son and brothers served in the police, was the target of the attack from Constable Rissman in January on her Facebook page Boomerang Justice. Lawyers for Ms Capewell are preparing a legal action alleging racial vilification.
“A person with those sorts of racist attitudes has no right to wear the badge, attitudes like that don’t change with some training,” she said. “How is a policewoman like this going to treat Aboriginal people and Aboriginal prisoners?”
Police fear arson after Sweden mosque fire
Swedish police suspect arson after buildings at a mosque in Norrköping in eastern Sweden burned down in the early hours of Friday morning.
“Some of the buildings have been saved but there is a great deal of damage, both smoke and water damage,” said Stefan Hagdahl at the emergency services in Östergötland to the local Nörrköpings Tidning daily.
Up to 14 fire fighters from two fire stations in the city battled the blaze which was reported shortly after 1am on Friday. The fire ravaged some surrounding buildings. The main mosque building managed to escape damage thanks to the efforts of the fire fighters.
According to Norrköping Islamic Centre the buildings were due to have been rebuilt into a new mosque. “We hope that this is cleared up as soon as possible so that the project can be continued,” the centre wrote in a statement.
Regulator’s views on Islam come under close scrutiny
In April, the chair of the Charity Commission told The Sunday Times: “The problem of Islamist extremism is not the most widespread problem we face in terms of abuse of charities, but is potentially the most deadly. And it is, alas, growing.”
William Shawcross might have had in mind Abdul Waheed Majeed, who travelled from the UK with a charity aid convoy to Syria and drove a truck packed with explosives into the wall of a prison in Aleppo in February. This was believed to be the first suicide attack carried out in Syria by a Briton, but whether this on its own justifies the “most deadly” assessment is up for debate.
Since February, the Charity Commission has hosted meetings for charities that work in Syria, joined a national police campaign to protect young people from the dangers of travelling there and issued 10 tips to help Muslims give safely during Ramadan. It has also opened monitoring cases and statutory inquiries into Muslim charities working in Syria, and into other Muslim charities.
Of the 20 most recent statutory inquiries announced by the commission, five involved Muslim charities. This is hugely disproportionate: out of more than 180,000 charities registered with the commission, there are perhaps 2,000 that can be defined as Muslim or Islamic.
It is hard to see where risk-based monitoring ends and bias begins. The accusation of bias was raised by Sir Stephen Bubb, head of the charity leaders group Acevo, who said last month that the chief executives of Islamic Relief and Muslim Aid, and the head of the Muslim Charities Forum, had told him the regulator was “targeting Muslim charities in a disproportionate way”.
Bristol Muslim woman’s shock at being spat at and verbally abused
A Muslim woman was left shocked and in tears when she was verbally abused and spat at by a stranger ranting about the Middle East.
Hasina Khan, who was born in Bristol, was on her way to work when she was attacked by a man in Cabot Circus at about 9am on Monday. Saliva ended up on her hijab and her left hand.
The 36-year-old, who lives in Horfield, said: “I’ve experienced hostility and racism many times, from being called Paki in the street to having alcohol thrown at me.
“I remember during the 1990 Iraq invasion being pushed by a boy at school followed by ‘haha we are bombing you’, to more recent years when the world turned to topple Libya and I experienced yet again a rise in racism. In fact, every time there is aggression towards Muslims outside of the UK, I experience aggression from within the UK.
“However, nothing could prepare me for what happened on Monday. Because of Israel’s bombardment of the mainly-Muslim population of Gaza, was I again being targeted?
“I had just past Pret A Manger and a man came charging towards me with such aggression I thought he was going to punch me in the face. He was ranting and he spat in my face. I felt it fall onto my left hand.
“I was in shock at what was happening. I asked him what his problem was, but he continued to rant and said something along the lines of ‘your people are killing’ and something about ‘Middle East’ and ‘killing Christians’. He spat at me again. It was terrifying. I thought he was going to attack me at any second.
“Then my defence mechanism just kicked in and I started to shout at him. What a coward – he then started to back away. He tried to say something else, but I continued to shout at him until he left Cabot Circus. I’ve read so many reports that hate crime towards Muslim women is increasing in the UK, but nothing really prepares you for what to do if it happens and how humiliating, terrifying and dirty it makes you feel.
“I hope he is caught so he cannot terrorise and traumatise other women.”
The attacker was white, with short-brown hair and a short beard, a dark-green T-shirt with a white pattern or writing on the front, and he had two silver necklaces with silver coin-shaped pendants.