Yearly Archives: 2014

Man yelled racist abuse at mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A man unleashed a racist tirade outside a Scottish mosque shortly after drummer Lee Rigby was killed in London.

Grant Gallagher was heard shouting: “The soldier was innocent. He didn’t deserve to die – you terrorists killed him.” He angrily grabbed the gate of the mosque in Livingston, West Lothian, while yelling racist abuse.

Livingston Sheriff Court heard that an Asian man who had stopped his car and wound down the window and a woman having a cigarette in her garden nearby both heard Gallagher’s bizarre rant at 2am.

The prosecutor said: “It’s my understanding that the incident wasn’t protracted. It lasted a few minutes. Such was the concern that the police were summoned and the accused was detained and arrested some time later.”

He said Gallagher had made no reply when he was charged by the police. He added: “I have no information as to why he was shouting these things at the mosque in particular and I’m not told whether or not he was sober. He certainly was on his own at the time.”

Gallagher, 54, of Lime Grove, Livingston, pled guilty to behaving in a threatening and abusive manner on May 26 last year. He admitted shouting and swearing and making racist remarks during the incident, classed as a racially aggravated offence.

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Katie Hopkins says she is not a racist during unruly Channel 5 show Big British Immigration Row: Live

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Katie Hopkins black curtain tweet

Rabble-rousing motormouth Katie Hopkins insisted that “this country is full” during a typically histrionic performance on last night’s The Big British Immigration Row: Live.

“I am not a racist because I believe there should be a universal treatment for everyone,” she insisted during the Channel 5 debate – having ‘jokily’ tweeted earlier in the day that she would greet civil rights commentator Mo Ansar in the studio wearing a ‘black curtain’.

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Attackers of Plovdiv mosque fined for hooliganism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dzhumaya Mosque windows smashedThe first four people involved in a February 14 2014 mob attack on the historic Dzhumaya mosque in Plovdiv have been penalised under a fast-track procedure. Two were each fined 400 leva (about 200 euro), one was fined 300 leva and another was sentenced to two days’ detention.

A further four of the 120 arrested during the melee in Bulgaria’s second city on February 14 were to be penalised on February 17, local media said. By February 15, just 10 of the 120 initially arrested were still in custody, prosecutors said. Of those penalised, none was from Plovdiv. They were from Sofia, Varna, Vratsa and the town of Kozloduy. Police worked overtime at the weekend on preparing cases against those accused, according to the Interior Ministry.

The conduct of the police in Plovdiv during the incident, which saw not only the mosque targeted with paving stones, fireworks and bottles, but also the crowd of about 3000 march on the Turkish consulate and the city headquarters of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, has come in for criticism. Centre-right GERB opposition leader Boiko Borissov alleged on February 16 that police deliberately had been pulled back to allow the attack on the Dzhumaya mosque.

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Virginia county sheriff hosting anti-Muslim training by disgraced conspiracy theorist

Posted on by Bob Pitt

John-Guandolo

The Culpeper County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia is planning to host a three-day training by John Guandolo, a notorious Muslim-basher and conspiracy theorist who resigned from the FBI before he could be investigated for misconduct, according to promotional materials.

It’s hard to believe that the Culpeper County Sheriff’s Office would knowingly associate itself with such a disreputable character, who regularly attacks the U.S. government, claims that the director of the Central Intelligence Agency is a secret Muslim agent for the Saudi government and says that American Muslims “do not have a First Amendment right to do anything.”

Josh Glasstetter of the Southern Poverty Law Center writes at Salon, 17 February 2014

Thugs jailed for racist attack on Muslim they blamed for Lee Rigby killing

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Three Ashford thugs launched a nasty racist attack on an innocent man talking on a mobile phone to his mother in Pakistan.

The drunken yobs – who were carrying beer cans – spat at their victim Sarfaraz Khan before screaming the vile accusation: “You kill our soldiers”… followed by the taunt “Lee Rigby” – the soldier who died in an unprovoked attack in London. Now James Carpenter, 26, from Mallards, Ashford, Benjamin Gordon, 24, of no fixed address and Daniel White, 23 of Wellesley Road, Ashford have all been jailed for the racially-aggravated attack.

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Discrimination Olympics: Meddling with Muslims in Sochi

Posted on by Bob Pitt

During its buildup, NBC’s Bob Costas stated that the Sochi Games will, “take place against a backdrop of questions about policy differences, security, cost overruns and human rights issues, including Russia’s anti-gay propaganda law”.

The firestorm against Sochi’s brazen homophobia leading up and during the Olympics was fierce, capped by President Barack Obama sending a US delegation led by openly gay athletes. The message, from news desks and the Oval Office, was clear – the US opposed the structural homophobia built into the Sochi Olympics.

No similar statements were made of the pervasive Islamophobia encircling the Games. Rather, the media and political rhetoric in the US toward Muslims and Islam are aligned with those of Russia, and linked inextricably to terrorism. American misalignment with Russia’s per se homophobia, and its converging interests with Moscow’s framing of Muslim threat, highlights the ever more relevant observation of Derrick Bell, who held that: “Domestic civil rights policies are only promoted when they advance majoritarian (white) interests abroad.”

The policing of Muslims stateside, and its nexus to the “global war on terrorism”, has – in large part – erased word of Sochi’s brazen Islamophobia from news headlines, and hushed the US government from calling into question the religious freedoms of Muslims in Russia.

Khaled A. Beydoun explains why Putin’s Islamophobic policies pervade the Winter Olympics at Sochi.

Al Jazeera, 17 February 2014

Reports and comment from Islamophobia Watch 10‑16 February

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Reports and comment from Islamophobia Watch 10-16 February 2014

‘Moderate Muslim’ wants family fun day cancelled

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Under the headline “EDL to target Legoland after Muslim HATE preacher hires park for day out”, the Daily Star Sunday has thrown its weight behind the campaign to pressurise Legoland Windsor into cancelling a booking by the Muslim Research and Development Foundation, who have hired the theme park for a family fun day on 9 March. According to the Star, Legoland’s decision to “has outraged ­moderate Muslims”.

Now, which “moderate Muslim” do you suppose would be so vicious and embittered as to want to deprive Muslim children of a harmless day out at Legoland? No prizes for guessing that it’s Taj Hargey. He tells the Star: “I would ask Legoland that if they are happy to let his group hire the park, then would they be happy to let the BNP and other extremist far-right groups hold their family fun day there? Both groups spread hatred and intolerance.”

An English Defence League supporter applauds the role that Hargey is playing: “Legoland can cancel the booking without losing face by saying that they have considered the opinion of sensible Muslims like Dr Hargey and thus etc etc.”

US religious freedom rep funded by Islamophobes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the US’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, repeated its request to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) to investigate one of its own members, this time for being funded by the same group that backs a notorious Islamophobe.

Earlier this year, CAIR asked for an investigation of USCIRF Vice Chair Zuhdi Jasser for apparently seeking to deny religious rights to Muslim military personnel. In a letter sent to USCIRF Chairman Dr. Robert P. George, Corey Saylor, director of CAIR’s Department to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia, wrote in part:

“We are writing today to expand upon the concerns regarding Dr. Zuhdi Jasser that were expressed on our letter to you dated January 24, 2014. Additional information has come to light regarding the financial dependence of Dr. Jasser’s American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) on groups known for promoting Islamophobia in the United States.

“Tax filings for the New York-based Abstraction Fund reveal that between 2010 and 2012, Jasser’s organization accepted $45,000 in grants and contributions. In 2012, 82 percent of the Fund’s total $1,982,930 contributions and grants went to groups known for their active role in spreading anti-Islam prejudice.”

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Quebec halal butchers vandalised and shot at

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Souibgui AbdelbariA halal shop owner in Quebec’s Eastern Townships is blaming the provincial government’s secularism charter for acts of vandalism and violence, including air-rifle shots fired at his window.

Vandals have also showered Souibgui Abdelbari’s store with “No to Islam” placards and hundreds of paper crosses. “In my opinion, this is related to the charter,” he said, referring to the Parti Quebecois’ proposed ban on religious symbols in the public service. These things didn’t happen in Sherbrooke before that.”

Attacks against Abdelbari’s shop have intensified in recent weeks. A storefront window was shattered twice and he also found bullet holes in a window. More recently, the front of his shop was littered with about 500 small crosses. “It makes me fear for my family’s safety,” he said. “Someone who does things like that could do something worse.”

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