Yearly Archives: 2014

Ontario man charged with racial assault on teenage girl

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Hamilton man is charged with assault after he allegedly yelled racial slurs at a teenage Muslim girl and chased her out of her apartment building.

A 17-year-old girl was heading to her apartment building on Oxford Street around 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday when a man began yelling what police say were racial slurs at her in the lobby. The man yelled at her to leave the building, said Det. Carmine Pietroniro from Hamilton Police Services’s hate crime/extremism unit.

The longer the culprit yelled, the more aggressive he became, Pietroniro said. “At that point, he tried kicking her.”

Another tenant helped restrain the man, while the victim ran to her apartment and told her mother about the incident, police say.

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Brandeis withdraws honorary degree for notorious Islamophobe Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A university has reversed a decision to grant an honorary degree to an advocate for Muslim women who has made comments critical of Islam. Brandeis University said in a statement that Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali would no longer receive the honorary degree, which it had planned to award her at the May 18 commencement.

Ali, a member of the Dutch parliament from 2003 to 2006, has been quoted as making comments critical of Islam. That includes a 2007 interview with Reason magazine in which she said of the religion: “Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace. I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars.”

Brandeis, outside Boston in Waltham, Massachusetts, said it was not aware of Ali’s statements earlier.

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‘There’s no Muslim plot to radicalise Birmingham schoolchildren’, insists city council chief executive

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mark RogersBirmingham schools are not at the centre of a Muslim extremist stealth plot to radicalise pupils and claims of a Trojan Horse-type takeover are without foundation, city council chief executive Mark Rogers has insisted.

Mr Rogers attempted to defuse critical media coverage over the issue by insisting investigations have failed to uncover any conspiracy by hardline Islamists to infiltrate classrooms.

In his first major interview since starting the top council job, Mr Rogers told Chamberlain Files that there were issues in some schools, but this did not involve radicalisation. He believed “new communities” in Birmingham were simply looking for the same educational environment for their children that they would get in the country they came from.

There were certain “customs and practices” these communities wanted to see that did not always fit in with the national curriculum that exists in Britain. They were asking “legitimate questions” about the type of schooling they wanted for their children and how that could fit in with the “liberal education system” we have in this country.

Chamberlain Files, 7 April 2014

David Cameron’s religious adviser is descended from founders of the ‘terrorist’ Muslim Brotherhood

Posted on by Bob Pitt

That’s the headline to a report in the Daily Mail. The adviser with the supposed terrorist links is none other than Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University, who the Mail’s reporter Martin Beckford indignantly informs his readers “is one of 14 members of the Foreign Office’s Advisory Group on Freedom of Religion or Belief, chaired by Tory peer Baroness Warsi”.

Any informed commentator would have told the Mail that Professor Ramadan is the epitome of a liberal and progressive interpretation of Islam, and has no organisational or even ideological links to the Muslim Brotherhood, never mind to terrorism. So, instead, Beckford turned to Douglas Murray, associate director of the Henry Jackson Society, who provided him with a predictably ignorant and scaremongering quote: “David Cameron should be deeply embarrassed by this. Tariq Ramadan is extremely loyal to his father and grandfather and he does not, by any means, speak out against the Muslim Brotherhood.”

U.S. Islamophobes stand by Wilders as his own party members defect

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Daniel Pipes with Geert WildersDutch politician Geert Wilders has once again become the subject of controversy after he led supporters in an anti-Moroccan chant during a campaign rally last month. Despite the mass condemnation he has received for the remarks, Wilders’ anti-Muslim counterparts in the United States are standing by his draconian approach to immigration.

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Birmingham faith leaders’ concern over ‘Operation Trojan Horse’ scaremongering

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Birmingham faith leaders

A group of faith leaders in Birmingham has released a joint statement in response to “sensational” media headlines over an alleged “Islamic plot” to infiltrate Birmingham schools.

The alleged plot – known as “Operation Trojan Horse” after a letter was supposedly found detailing the plans – has been covered extensively in the mainstream media which has accused a group of Birmingham Muslims of trying to Islamize education in the city.

But Muslims  are increasingly showing concern over what they see as media scaremongering. A Twitter hashtag #islamicplot is being circulated ridiculing the accusations, saying that when a group of non-Muslims try to achieve something it is simply considered a “plan” but when Muslims do the same it is a “sinister plot.”

The faith leaders include Dr Mohammed Naseem, Mr Abdul Rashid, Bhai Sahib Mohinder Singh, Rabbi Margaret Jacobi, Mr Guy Hordern, Bishop David Urquhart, Dr Andrew Smith, Mr Mohammad Talha Bokhari.

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Front National bans halal school meals

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen said on Friday it would prevent schools from offering special lunches to Muslim pupils in the 11 towns it won in local elections, saying such arrangements were contrary to France’s secular values.

France’s republic has a strict secular tradition enforceable by law, but faith-related demands have risen in recent years, especially from the country’s five-million-strong Muslim minority, the largest in Europe.

“We will not accept any religious demands in school menus,” Le Pen told RTL radio. “There is no reason for religion to enter the public sphere, that’s the law.”

The anti-immigrant National Front has consistently bemoaned the rising influence of Islam in French pubic life.

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There’s no difference between Bill Maher and Fox News when it comes to Islam and Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bill Maher, a self-proclaimed “9/11 Liberal” has a history of Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism, claiming falsely that Islam and Muslims are: uniquely more violent than practitioners of other faiths, the Bible is less violent than the Qur’an, there are “too many Mohammads” in the West and he is fearful they will “takeover,” Arab men (who he interchanges with Muslims) are all horrible to women, and women cannot vote in 19 out of 22 Arab states. Maher is also a staunch supporter of Obama’s drone assassination programand is on record defending Geert Wilders.

Loonwatch, 3 April 2014