An arson attack is thought to have caused £10,000 worth of damage to a recently refurbished Islamic education centre in South Devon.
People arrived at the Plymouth Islamic Education Trust centre (Piety) on April 19 to discover “raw sewerage pouring into the street” after a fire damaged the building’s exterior wall and sewage pipes. CCTV footage from the early hours of the morning suggests that the damage was caused by two individuals setting fire to wheelie bins beside the centre.
A European election candidate has been arrested on suspicion of “religious or racial harassment” in a Hampshire city.
Liberty GB candidate Paul Weston had been reading a Winston Churchill quote describing Islam as “militant” and “retrograde” through a megaphone outside Winchester’s Guildhall on Saturday afternoon.
Standing on the steps of the Guildhall, he addressed passers-by with an excerpt from former Prime Minister Churchill’s book The River War, written in 1899 while he was a British army officer in the Sudan. Police were called after complaints from members of the public, and the 50-year-old, from Dorset, was told to disperse but failed to do so.
A spokesman for Hampshire Constabulary said: “He was further arrested on suspicion of religious or racial harassment. He has been bailed pending further enquiries to report back to police on May 24.”
A security guard at the Central Mosque told a court he was left feeling “very bad” after finding bacon had been thrown into the building and placed on the main door handles. Usman Mahmood, 34, said it “hurt my feelings to have this meat in my sacred place” as he gave evidence at Edinburgh Sheriff Court.
He said he had opened the mosque for worship at around 6am on January 31 last year and had gone to his office to watch CCTV. Mr Mahmood told the court: “I saw persons running towards the main entrance and when I went upstairs I saw a piece of meat hanging on the window of the worshipping area and two pieces on the entrance door handle.”
Australia’s violent far right has begun to stir again, targeting Muslims in a campaign that has erupted into conflict with Islamic radicals involving at least one shooting, death threats and intimidation.
The worst of the anti-Muslim drive is led by the Australian Defence League, joining a small but widening base embracing the Australia First Party, a registered political party that contests local, state and federal elections, white supremacists, neo-Nazis and skinheads.
A newly formed Australian branch of Greece’s fascist Golden Dawn has been supported by Australia First. Golden Dawn has a history of violence, uses Nazi symbolism and regards Adolf Hitler as a “great personality”.
Australia’s far right has drawn heavily on foreign mentors. The ADL grew from Britain’s violently anti-Muslim English Defence League, with others linked to an international network of fascists and white supremacists.
Reports and comment from Islamophobia Watch 21-27 April 2014
Ukip could be haemorrhaging candidates before the May elections with yet more derogatory and offensive comments revealed from its prospective councillors.
One Enfield council candidate, William Henwood, suggested the comedian Lenny Henry leave Britain to live in a “black country”. He was responding Twitter to comments from Henry that there were not enough ethnic minority faces on the BBC. The Ukip candidate tweeted in response: “He should emigrate to a black country. He does not have to live with whites.”
He is not the only candidate to have extreme views revealed in the past week since the party’s manifesto was launched. A Ukip Camden candidate Magnus Nielsen [pictured] wrote on Facebook that most mosques in the UK have been “taken over” by “fundamentalists”. “Islam is organised crime under religious camouflage. Any Muslim who is not involved in organised crime is not a ‘true believer’, practising Islam as Mohammed commanded,” he wrote on his page.
A UKIP candidate has defended tweets in which he said comedian Lenny Henry should emigrate to a “black country” and compared Islam to the Third Reich.
William Henwood, who is standing in a council election, said he did not think the messages were offensive. He tweeted after Henry said there should be more black and ethnic minority people in creative industries.
UKIP said it was a “non-racist, non-sectarian party whose members are expected to uphold these values”.
Mr Henwood told BBC political correspondent Ross Hawkins: “I think if black people come to this country and don’t like mixing with white people why are they here? If he (Henry) wants a lot of blacks around go and live in a black country.”
On another occasion Mr Henwood tweeted: “Islam reminds me of the 3rd Reich Strength through violence against the citizens.”
That’s the headline to an article in today’s Sunday Telegraph, which resumes the paper’s hysterical campaign against the Law Society’s supposed complicity in the Islamification of the UK. As before, Baroness Cox is quoted as an authority. And what illustration did the Telegraph choose to accompany their report? Yes, it was the one below, of a group of Anjem Choudary’s supporters.
Assed Baig analyses the hysteria around the supposed “Trojan Horse” plot by Islamists to take over Birmingham schools. He points out that Michael Gove’s background of Islamophobia (he is the author of the scaremongering anti-Islam book Celsius 7/7 and a member of the right-wing think-tanks Policy Exchange and the Henry Jackson Society) renders the education secretary incapable of examining the issues in an objective fashion.
Vile cartoons of Muslims swilling alcopops and chasing pre-pubescent girls, as well as graphic depictions of Lee Rigby’s murderer, could be broadcast on the BBC and ITV this week, submitted as the BNP’s official party election broadcast.
The party can submit a five-minute broadcast to major channels ahead of the May European elections.
An 10-second clip, leaked to The Huffington Post UK, shows an animation of a girl and the BNP’s bulldog mascot looking at a billboard which says ‘Muslim Grooming Gangs At Large’. She is then confronted with a gang of Muslims in traditional dress, swigging blue WKDs, as a background song to the tune of ‘All Things Bright And Beautiful’ mentions how “there’s some who prey on little girls from takeaways and taxis”.
The girl walks past a burqa-wearing Big Issue seller with a small boy, with a sign saying ‘Sale’ around his neck. She encounters a black silhouette, with blood red hands, a clear reference to Woolwich soldier Lee Rigby’s murderer Michael Adebolajo, as the song references those who “kill with knives and axes”.