Monthly Archives: August 2014

New Gillingham mosque receives planning permission despite Britain First campaign

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Plans for a large mosque were approved by Medway council this evening as police waited outside after a ‘day of action’ by right wing activists.

Right wing pressure group Britain First carried out a ‘day of action’ in the Medway towns today in protest at the mosque plans. Activists handed out leaflets and protested with a banner stating “No more mosques!”

Before the meeting, uniformed Britain First members were confronted outside the council offices by a group called The Truth About Britain First, who also handed out leaflets.

Six members of Britain First attended the meeting and shouted at the end about the segregation of women.

Continue reading →

Croydon’s Labour and Conservative groups join forces to condemn BNP’s anti-mosque campaign

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP stall New AddingtonBoth major political parties in Croydon have joined forces to condemn the British National Party’s ‘distorted’ campaign against a mosque being built in New Addington.

The estate’s four Labour ward councillors, Conservative Croydon Central MP Gavin Barwell and the Tory Greater London Assembly Member for Croydon and Sutton Steve O’Connell, have released a joint statement regarding a campaign they have attributed to the BNP.

It is in relation to a meeting called this Sunday (August 17) at the ACA [Addington Community Association] regarding the possibility of a mosque being built in New Addington, which they say is clearly being organised by the BNP.

In May, the Advertiser reported the Shirley branch of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community were considering New Addington for a new base but were also looking at Addington, Shirley and South Croydon.

The area’s councillors, Mr Barwell and Cllr O’Connell have today accused the BNP of running an “opportunistic hate-driven campaign”.

Continue reading →

Israeli scholar says outcry over his rape remarks has not hurt planned U.S. tour

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mordechai Kedar with Geller and Spencer at SION conference
Mordechai Kedar with Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer at Stop Islamization of Nations conference in New York in 2012

An Israeli scholar who has come under fire for discussing rape as a hypothetical deterrent to Hamas terrorism says the controversy over his remarks has done little to dampen interest in his planned speaking tour next year at college campuses and other sites in the United States.

Mordechai Kedar, a senior lecturer in Arabic literature at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, said in an interview on Israeli radio last month that terrorists can be deterred only by the threat of their mothers and sisters being raped. Both he and the university said he was not advocating rape, just describing reality, but his comments have been widely denounced as having the potential to incite war crimes.

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Kedar said his comments had been oversimplified and taken out of context. The denunciations, he said, have only raised his profile and increased interest in having him speak during his planned 45-day tour of North America in January and February. No organization has canceled any of his planned appearances, he said. In fact, he added, “at least two or three places invited me only because of this witch hunt.”

Although many colleges and campus organizations have not yet booked speakers for the coming academic year, Mr. Kedar said so far he has been asked to appear at academic events in Ann Arbor, Mich., and in Sarasota, Fla., and to give a talk sponsored by Ohio State University.

Mr. Kedar did not provide details about his Ann Arbor or Sarasota engagements. Matt Goldish, a professor of history and director of the Melton Center for Jewish Studies at Ohio State University, said his center is sponsoring a talk by Mr. Kedar at a local community center. The center initially had booked Mr. Kedar to speak last January on the subject of Arab media but canceled the event because of poor weather.

Asked about Mr. Kedar’s recent remarks about rape, Mr. Goldish said his center is “a little bit concerned” about the comments but “not concerned enough that we would cancel him.”

Continue reading →

Manassas Mosque vandalized in possible hate crime

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Manassas Mosque vandalism (2)A Prince William County mosque was vandalized Monday night or early Tuesday, and Muslim leaders described the incident as a hate crime.

Abu Nahidian, the imam at Manassas Mosque, said he arrived Tuesday morning to find an expletive written twice in spray paint on the windows of the mosque that he helped found 20 years ago. Eight windows were defaced, and a glass door was shattered. Because the mosque has a double set of doors, the house of worship could not be entered, Nahidian said.

The mosque has been vandalized before when tensions in the United States ran high over violence in the Middle East, Nahidian said. The last previous incident was three years ago.

“We do not hurt anybody. If those with our names are doing something, why should I become the victim? You haven’t seen me doing anything,” he said. “We are a part of the whole earth, and we love the whole earth.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations issued a statement characterizing the vandalism as a possible hate crime and asking police to investigate.

Continue reading →

Ed Husain: can’t he be persuaded to go back to New York?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bad news. Ed Husain, formerly of the Quilliam Foundation, has returned to the UK. Predictably, one of his first public acts has been to whip up fear and prejudice against fellow Muslims who oppose Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza or even just peacefully follow their faith by wearing the hijab or niqab. In a comment piece for the Evening Standard, Husain writes:

I have just returned home to London after three years of living in New York. There, I met American Muslim leaders fully at home in the US and among the most patriotic Americans I know. They support their soldiers at home and abroad….

But what I see and hear among activist Muslims in London worries me. At mass demonstrations for “Free Palestine” at the weekend, some chanted, “Obama, what do you have to say? How many kids have you killed today?” on a day when the US government was trying to rescue Yazidis in Iraq. If Palestine is to be freed, it should be freed from Hamas.

Socially, there is the rise of children at primary schools across the capital wearing hijab, or headscarves. This is a sign of separatism, a desire to assert difference from other children decided by parents. I see niqabs or face-covers for women, and British Asian Muslim men wearing Arab clothes that our visitors from the Gulf readily discard. How did we become silent at this physical changing of our city’s face?

Politically, being visibly Muslim is fast becoming a statement of rebellion.

Continue reading →

Elswick racist jailed after family driven out of their new home as they try to move in

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Daniel McStayVile racist thugs drove an Asian family out of their new home as they tried to move in. The Ali family pulled up outside their new house in Elswick, Newcastle, only to be greeted by a seething gang of young yobs.

Boxer Daniel McStay [pictured] and five or six youths started punching and kicking their car, telling them to get off “their estate” and threatening to kill them.

Terrified Mr Ali, who had his wife and three daughters in the car, frantically began reversing to try to get away as the gang kicked his car. One of them threw a pint glass of beer at the back of his car, which smashed showering the car with alcohol and glass.

Fifteen minutes later McStay and two youths subjected another man to a racist attack as he waited in his car for his friend outside Elswick mosque.

As McStay, 22, was jailed for eight months, Mr Ali told how the incident had left him and his family scared to move in. He said: “We had been looking forward to moving in to the new house but now we do not wish to do so. My daughters and wife are extremely upset, we have not been involved in an incident like this before. My family have been racially targeted for no reason. The damage to my car can be repaired, however mentally we have all suffered.”

Newcastle Crown Court heard the family were taking furniture to the house on Brittania Place, Elswick, around 3pm on March 23, ahead of moving in. Just after Mr Ali, his wife and daughters, aged, 10, 18 and 19, pulled up, McStay and the others approached from behind, swigging alcohol.

Neil Pallister, prosecuting, said one of them shouted: “You better not be moving here or we will kill you, this is our estate.” There followed a tirade of vile racist abuse and a 17-year-old started punching the driver’s side window shouting “Get out of here or I will kill you.”

Mr Pallister said: “All of the males were involved in the racial abuse and McStay joined in. Clearly Mr Ali and his family were in great fear and he began reversing his car down the street and turned round to drive away. As he reversed his car the group began kicking his car and ran after him and his family. One of them threw a pint glass which hit the rear window of the car, smashing glass and showering the car with alcohol as they drove away.”

After getting clear of the attack and reporting it to police, the family saw their car had been dented, causing hundreds of pounds of damage. Mr Pallister said: “They were too scared and frightened to move into the address.”

Just fifteen minutes later McStay and two youths targeted an 18-year-old as he waited in his car outside Elswick mosque. He was racially abused and told to leave the area and also had his car kicked.

Continue reading →

Black flag at gates of east London council estate ‘was not an ISIS flag’ say police

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Young Muslims today defended the flying of a black flag above the gates of an east London council estate. Youths at the gates to the Will Crooks estate, in Poplar, branded objectors to the flag – which has been adopted by some jihadist groups – as “racist”.

The flag was removed yesterday for the second time following two visits from Met officers in as many days. It was hung there alongside the Palestinian flag as part of an “end the siege in Gaza” protest.

Today one youth outside the estate said: “It’s just racists complaining. If it was the St George’s flag, it would be alright. But this is our version and there’s this big reaction.” Another added: “I don’t understand why it has caused so much reaction. All it is is a declaration of the belief in Allah. It’s not the ISIS flag.”

The first flag was taken down by local nun, Sister Christine Frost, 77, on Friday, after she suspected it had been hoisted there by “naive young hot heads.” However, it reappeared before local community leaders decided to remove it yesterday afternoon after police visited the estate in Poplar High Street.

A Met spokesman said they first attended on Friday but the flag had been removed when they arrived.

They added: “Police were made aware of a flag displayed at the Will Crooks Estate again on Sunday, August 10. Officers attended the venue, spoke to residents and met local community leaders who removed the flag voluntarily. It was not an ISIS flag. There are no criminal offences arising from this incident.”

Continue reading →

Reports and comment from Islamophobia Watch 4‑10 August

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Reports and comment from Islamophobia Watch 4-10 August 2014

Mehdi Hasan tells Wilderness Festival the ‘hysterical’ British press is encouraging Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mehdi Hasan on Islamophobia in British press

Sections of the British press are encouraging Islamophobia and publishing “brazen lies” that exacerbate community tensions, one of the UK’s leading Muslim journalists has said.

In a controversial attack on his fellow journalists, Mehdi Hasan – The Huffington Post UK’s political director and a columnist for the New Statesman magazine – has claimed that the country’s leading newspapers publish stories about Muslims that they would not dare publish about any other minority group.

In the wake of terrorist attacks such as the 9/11 and 7/7 bombings, the UK press has been “given free rein to effectively target, distort, misrepresent and demonise the Islamic faith and its 2.7 million adherents in this country,” Hasan told a packed crowd at the Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire on Saturday evening.

As a practicing Muslim and as a working journalist, Hasan said “I love my job… but I find myself awkwardly straddling the divide between British Islam and the British media.”

“I get pretty exhausted of having to constantly endure a barrage of lazy stereotypes, inflammatory headlines, disparaging generalisations and often inaccurate and baseless stories,” he said.

“We have seen in recent years, recent months and, even, recent weeks, a “hailstorm” of press stories that are “unbelievably negative about, hostile towards, distrustful of, Islam and Muslims,” he said.

British Muslims, Hasan pointed out, are singled out as ‘The Other’ by a series of inflammatory front page newspaper headlines. “Dangerous and counter-productive” coverage of Muslim issues, such as the Spectator‘s front page, pictured above, “basically stigmatises all Muslims,” Hasan said – and in particular Muslim children – as violent extremists.

Hasan isn’t alone in his view on the “hysterical” front page – the magazine’s imagery prompted a furious backlash, with critics, including former cabinet minister Baroness Warsi, branding it “appalling” for “stigmatising children and alienating communities.”

Nick Lowles, from the anti-racist campaign group Hope Not Hate, wrote that the front page was simply “unadulterated hatred… we wouldn’t put up with it against any other religion.”

But in the UK and in relation to Islam, Hasan said, we do put up with it. Muslims are expected to “suck it up” and put up with this “awful, discriminatory, hysterical press coverage,” he claimed.

Continue reading →

FBI targeted mentally disabled Muslim American citizens

Posted on by Bob Pitt

FBI-NYPD JTTFA Human Rights Watch report, documenting abuses in US terrorism investigations, has illuminated some incredibly dubious practices carried out by law enforcement.

The report looks at investigations that began shortly after 9/11 and have carried on until the present day.

One disturbing practice, which seems to pop up over and over in the report, is the targeting of those with mental disabilities to ‘create’ crimes. This occurs during ‘sting’ operations, when agents pose as members of the Muslim American community, infiltrating mosques.

In an average sting operation, an undercover agent finds a suspect who they think is, say, selling illegal arms. They approach them and gather information, waiting for a crime to unfold.

However, when it comes to counter-terrorism operations, law enforcement officers have been accused of breaching this time-honored system, using a subject’s mental disability to actually foster terrorism. You read that right, by the way – counter-terrorism efforts are being used to foster terrorism.

Continue reading →