Complaining that the proposed Abbey Mills Islamic Centre “will change the face of the landscape and will be a defiant symbol of the extent of this alien religion in our capital city”, the BNP urges its supporters to vote in an Evening Standard online poll which poses the question “Are you in favour of the £100m mosque?”
BNP news article, 7 January 2007
The online poll is here.
More than 20 prominent religious leaders have launched an on-line petition demanding that Rep. Vigil Goode (R-Va) reexamine his opposition to newly-elected Rep. Keith Ellison, a Muslim from Minnesota, taking his unofficial oath of office using the Qur’an, and to apologize for his statement that, without punitive immigration reform, “there will be many more Muslims elected to office demanding the use of the Qur’an.”
The petition warns, “An attack against one religion is an attack against them all. Next week, it could be Jews. Next month, it could be Christian fundamentalists or evangelicals. Right now, it is Muslims. It is they who feel targeted by repression and abuse, and they who live among us in a growing climate of fear…. We hold it to be self-evident that all Americans have the right to practice their faith, whatever it may be, and that any Americans – regardless of race, color or creed – may be elected and sworn into office holding whatever book they consider sacred…. We would point out that there are some five million Muslims in the US. Many have been here for generations. They are every bit as American as Rep. Goode. Some Americans have also converted to Islam, including Rep. Ellison. We call for a renewed unity among people of conscience and of faith.”
The petition adds, “In a spirit of reconciliation and peace, we invite Rep. Goode to join with us in an inter-religious delegation to visit a mosque in his district, in order that the healing may begin.”
Atlantic Free Press, 7 January 2007
The online petition is here.
FBI fingerprint examiners were reluctant to admit that they had mistakenly linked an Oregon lawyer to the 2004 Madrid train bombings in part because he was a Muslim convert and had represented a terrorism defendant in court, according to a report released yesterday by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
The 20-page summary report by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said that Brandon Mayfield’s religion “was not the sole or primary cause” of the FBI Laboratory’s mistaken identification of him, but it contributed to the bureau’s reluctance to reexamine conclusions in the case. Several FBI and Justice Department officials acknowledged that “Mayfield’s religion was a factor in the investigation,” the report said, in part because officials expected that any suspect in the bombings was likely to be Muslim.
A racist thug who tried to firebomb a mosque and daubed sick graffiti on its walls was jailed yesterday.
Mark Bulman, 22, got five years for the attack in which he wrote “Go to Auschwitz” and “Allah is a pervert” on the building.
He also painted a Nazi swastika on its walls after smashing a window and lobbing in a petrol bomb. But it failed to explode in the empty building.
See also “Racist jailed for arson attack on mosque”, Swindon Advertiser, 6 January 2007
Another article from the Advertiser sheds a revealing light on the British National Party’s new “respectable” image. A couple of months earlier, when a teenager was convicted of an arson attack on the same mosque, a spokesman for the Swindon branch of the BNP had stated: “We just want to say that justice has been done and he deserves to be locked up for this attack on the Muslim community.” And who was this BNP spokesman? None other than Mark Bulman.
A top French judge ruled that an extreme-right group cannot serve pork soup to the needy, saying the charitable handouts aim to discriminate against Muslims and Jews who don’t eat pork because of their faith.
Judge Christian Vigouroux of the Council of State, the country’s highest administrative body, said late Friday that such giveaways by the far-right group Solidarity of the French threaten public order. His ruling approved a decision by Paris police to refuse permits to the group on the grounds that such handouts could spark angry reactions.
France is home to more than 5 million Muslims and some 600,000 Jews. Both Islam and Judaism prohibit eating pork, and Vigouroux said the group had shown “a clearly discriminatory goal” with its charity.
Solidarity of the French was just one of several far-right groups that began distributing pork soup across France over the last four years. Critics contend the giveaway of pork soup is a far-right ploy to draw support for their efforts to defend against perceived threats to European culture.
Far-right groups defend the soup as nothing more than an age-old staple of the rural heartland from which all the French, at least in the national imagination, are said to spring. “Pork-fat soup is traditionally the soup of the poor because it provides complete nourishment,” said Bruno Le Griel, a lawyer for the group.
Le Griel argued that no one was forced to consume the pork soup. But the judge said the group’s Web site indicated it was a policy to refuse dessert to anyone who did not eat some soup first.
Associated Press, 6 January 2007
See also Libération, 6 January 2007
“Muslim worshippers are being urged by radical clerics to ignore British law.” Jamie Doward plugs a forthcoming documentary in the Channel 4 Dispatches slot.
When you are chairman of your party’s international office and its human rights commission and a member of the all-party parliamentary Friends of Islam group, it might be advisable to swot up on what is happening in the Middle East. However, constituents of Gary Streeter, the Tory MP for South West Devon, must hope that he knows more about Dartmoor than he does about the Muslim world.
Streeter confessed last week he did not know the difference between a Sunni and a Shi’ite. He was one of 30 Middle East “experts” from the world of politics put on the rack over Iraq, Iran and other countries in the region by The Sunday Times. Streeter, once private secretary to John Major, the former prime minister, also failed to identify Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran.
He was not alone. Many of those quizzed did not know their Hamas from their Hezbollah. Both Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat MP for Brent East, and Sally Keeble, Labour member for Northampton North, thought Hezbollah was an organisation based in Palestine.
Anne Milton, the Tory MP for Guildford, wears the dunce’s cap after getting 13 out of 14 questions wrong. It even slipped her mind that she was a member of the Friends of Islam group. “Ooh, am I?” she said. “Oh yes, I suppose so. I forgot. I don’t think I’ve sat on it yet.”
Irfan al-Alawi and Stephen Schwartz of the so-called Center for Islamic Pluralism continue the witch-hunt of Tablighi Jamaat over the proposed new mosque – or “Ken’s mega-mosque” as they now dub it – at Abbey Mills in East London. The article contains the welcome news that Asif Shakoor and the Sunni Friends of Newham, who were co-operating with Irfan al-Alawi in the campaign against the mosque, “now profess indifference about the project”.
“When the first Muslim congressman in U.S. history, Keith Ellison (Hakim-Mohammed) of Minnesota, won the 2006 election and was making the regular thank-you-to-my-supporters speech, he allowed his fans to shout, ‘Allahu Akbar!’, the same phrase allegedly used by the 9/11 suicide pilots.
“Since November he’s addressed various different Islamic groups and organizations, and he’s used the Quran to be sworn into office. He’s also been linked to Islamic organizations with questionable agendas. What he hasn’t done is respond to requests from WND to confirm that he will, in fact, base his decisions on the laws of the United States on the U.S. Constitution, not the Quran.”
World Net Daily, 5 January 2007
If similar accusations of “dual loyalty” were levelled at a US Congressman who was Jewish it’s not difficult to predict what WND’s response would be.
“It is fairly common knowledge that insofar as terrorism is concerned, what happens in England will most certainly, eventually, happen in America. FSM Contributing Editor Adrian Morgan, in this utterly shocking and carefully documented expose, informs us of our future. When you read this, you will not be able to sleep until you are certain that we can stop such infiltration in our own homeland.”
Family Security Matters, 4 January and 5 January 2007
Makes Anthony Glees appear almost reasoned and objective by comparison.