Yearly Archives: 2014
Molotov cocktails thrown at mosque in Crimea
Unknown vandals have attacked Chukurcha-Jami mosque in Crimea, drawing Nazi swastikas before setting the mosque on fire in a new provocation to Crimea’s Tatar Muslim, Crimean News Agency reported on Friday, June 13.
The attack which occurred on Thursday, June 12, was caught on surveillance cameras video which showed men throwing Molotov cocktails.
Imam of Simferopol Muhammed Islamov said the incident was a provocation and the guilty would be found soon.
The attack is not the first on the mosque which faced another hate attack in 2004.
Gove and Ofsted: hypocrisy and double standards
Mushy Peas takes on the Secretary of State for Education over his conception of “British values”.
Protest rally staged in Bulgaria capital against returning properties to Grand Mufti’s Office
Some 60 people stated a protest rally in front of Sofia Court House in the capital city Sofia against returning the mosque in the city of Kyustendil and other properties to the Grand Mufti’s Office, FOCUS News Agency reported. Football fans, Mayor of Kyustendil, Petar Paunov, angry citizens, and others took part in the demonstration. They carried posters reading “Let us save Bulgarian cultural monuments” and “Europe with museums, not mosques, no to Islamisation”.
A Muslim reporter’s icy welcome from Texas GOP: ‘Where are you from?’
Even conservatives were quick to criticize a Keller school trustee’s bigotry. But while most of north Tarrant County denounced Jo Lynn Haussmann’s Muslim-bashing last week, another story unfolded in downtown Fort Worth.
UT Arlington senior Heba Said, opinion editor of The Shorthorn, wrote Wednesday about the disgusted looks and comments of “you people” and “y’all Muslims” directed her way as she covered the Republican state convention.
In one panel session, a prominent official of the Republican Party of Texas repeatedly described all Muslims as Islamists. At an autograph event for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Fort Worth police circled Said and then followed her.
Said, 22, is a star student, a Texan and a graduate of Trinity High School in Euless, one of the nation’s most diverse and successful schools. Her column answered convention delegates’ persistent question, “Where are you from?” “I am an American,” she wrote. “The question is, are you?”
Said’s appehension about the convention was borne out, she wrote: “I discovered a cult-like hatred that is simply disgusting.”
Qur’ans burned in front of Dearborn mosque
Several Qurans were burned in front of a Dearborn mosque yesterday in possible connection with anti-Islam Pastor Terry Jones’ visit to the city on Saturday.
The three books were burned in front of the Karbalaa Islamic Educational Center, 15332 West Warren Ave. The imam of the mosque, Sheikh Husham Al-Husainy, confirmed that the incident occurred and that police are investigating.
Al-Husainy said he met with public safety officials, including the FBI and Dearborn’s police chief, yesterday. “I’ve been in this mosque for 20 years, and this never happened,” Al-Husainy said.
A group of local imams are convening tonight in Dearborn to discuss how to handle the situation.
Man forces his way into home, terrorizes family from Iraq
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A woman may have been the victim of a hate crime. Police said the woman is from Iraq, and the man who beat her did because he thought she was a Muslim. She is actually Catholic.
The man forced his way into her family’s apartment off Montgomery Boulevard. Investigators said he punched the woman in the face while screaming, “I hate Muslims.” He then stole cash and gold from the home, and ripped the family’s citizenship papers into pieces.
Police think the man targeted the family. “This is a family that fled Iraq in 2007 because of religious persecution. This family is not Muslim. They’re Catholic and they fled because they were being tormented in their own county,” Officer Simon Drobik said.
The woman did not get a clear description of the man. Police think he may belong to an extremist group.
KOAT Albuquerque, 12 June 2014
See also “Woman attacked, target of violent hate crime”, KRQE News 13, 11 June 2014
Update: See “Iraqi Catholic terrorized in ABQ home”, Albuquerque Journal, 13 June 2014
Virginia church offends Muslims with pamphlet that says they’re going to hell, need Jesus Christ
A Virginia church has generated a lot of controversy over its distribution of a pamphlet that some claim wrongly stereotypes Muslims.
Bible Baptist Church of Roanoke made local news when some in the city’s Muslim community expressed concern over the distribution of a pamphlet on Islam. Titled “Unforgiven?” the pamphlet was created by Chick Publications, a fundamentalist Christian evangelism outlet.
In an interview with local media, Roanoke resident Hussain Al-Shiblawi said the messages in the pamphlet suggest that Muslims are violent and are condemned to hell. “It basically indicated that the people are violent, the religion itself is violent, and the facts in here are not true,” said Al-Shiblawi to WBDJ 7 news.
“It shows him trying to kill his grandmother, saying, ‘If you weren’t my grandma, I’d kill you where you stand, Allahu Akbar’ … Read it before you hand it out, read it. Even though you don’t write it, you still hand it out.”
Al-Shiblawi also said that Bible Baptist Church regularly distributes Christian material to the community on Sundays, which he finds inspirational, but he’s deeply offended by the “Unforgiven?” pamphlet.
“Unforgiven?” is designed as a comic story, featuring a black man who converts to Islam while in prison after being threatened with physical violence. The man proceeds to fully embrace an extreme form of Islam, while his Christian grandmother attempts to prove his beliefs wrong by showing him that Christianity, and belief in Jesus Christ, is the only way.
The grandmother fails, however, and the final images in the comic strip show the man being condemned to hell. The final page has a message about the need to accept Jesus Christ and the Bible.
In the so-called ‘Trojan horse’ debacle, Birmingham schools have become Gove’s sacrificial lamb
The problem in these schools is not an issue of radicalisation, argues Myriam Francois-Cerrah.
Spectator disgraces itself with Islamophobic cover
This is the cover to this week’s Spectator. A cartoon of a frightened child clutching the Qur’an in one hand and a scimitar in the other. How could Spectator editor Fraser Nelson possibly have thought that was a good idea?
As you can see, the main article in the magazine is by the raving neocon, Douglas (“conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board”) Murray, who Nelson apparently thinks is an entirely appropriate person to lead the Spectator‘s commentary on the so-called “Trojan horse” controversy.
Not only that, but Murray’s piece is followed by an article from Innes Bowen claiming that almost half of British mosques are run by co-thinkers of the Taliban.
The issue also contains an entirely sensible article by Matthew Parris entitled “This ‘Islamist conspiracy’ is WMD all over again”, which argues that the “Trojan horse” affair looks very much like a repetition of the neocon propaganda that provided the justification for the invasion of Iraq. Good for Matthew Parris.
But Fraser Nelson saw fit to bury that article on page 27 and omit any reference at all to it on the cover. He evidently thought it more important to promote a piece calling for support for England football team manager Roy Hodgson.