Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Anti-fascists express disgust at BNP

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP NoAnti-fascist campaigners waving flags and placards gave BNP leader Nick Griffin a noisy reception as he arrived at Leeds Crown Court to answer race-hate charges yesterday. Mr Griffin was also greeted by a handful of far-right supporters as he arrived with co-defendant Mark Collett.

The BNP leader is charged over a speech he made in West Yorkshire in 2004, which was filmed by an undercover BBC reporter. Mr Collett faces four similar charges relating to two speeches that he made in the town during the same year.

Rodney Jameson QC opened the prosecution’s case by detailing the alleged racist remarks. He said that Mr Griffin had told a crowd at the Reservoir Tavern in Keighley, on January 19 2004, that Islam was a “wicked, vicious faith.” Mr Griffin is also alleged to have said that Asian Muslims were turning Britain into a multiracial “hell” as they tried to conquer the country. Mr Jameson said that Mr Griffin had urged the gathering to vote BNP to ensure that “the British people really realise the evil of what these people have done to our country.”

Continue reading →

Muslim beating in New York

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Five Orthodox Jewish teens have been slammed with hate-crime charges in the brutal beating of a Pakistani immigrant in Brooklyn. “They hit me in the face with brass knuckles four or five times while somebody held my hands,” said the victim, Shahid Amber, 24, a gas station attendant. “Then they all beat and kicked me. They were screaming ‘Muslim m-f-r. You m-f-g Muslim terrorists. Go back to your country’.”

New York Daily News, 3 November 2006

Paris airport faces strike threat

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Unions at France’s main airport, Charles de Gaulle in Paris, have threatened to call a strike over alleged bias against Muslim workers.

Seventy-two workers, mostly Muslims, have lost security clearance at the airport since May 2005. Officials say the workers posed a risk because of alleged links to groups with “potentially terrorist aims”.

Unions will hold a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the strike, which could be called for the end of the month. Didier Frassin, head of the main CGT union at the airport, told AFP news agency there would also be a march outside the prefecture in Roissy, which took the decision to remove the security clearance from the workers.

BBC News, 3 November 2006

‘Muslim degree course is set to cause controversy’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Under that heading this week’s Tribune reports that the University of Chester is to offer a degree in Muslim youth work, which has been developed in collaboration with Muslim agencies.

Ron Geaves, head of theology and religious studies at the university, is quoted as saying: “It seems to me that if ever a community was crying out for more skilled youth workers, it is the Muslim community. There are a huge number of Muslims who work already in the voluntary sector but are not qualified, which limits their career choices.”

Ann Cryer, Labour MP for Keighley, is not impressed. “I get a bit fed up with the idea that we have to have specific things geared to the Muslim community”, she tells Tribune. “Why can’t we have a youth worker working with all youngsters generally?”

Yakoub Islam adds:

In relation to this story, it is worth mentioning that Professor Ron Geaves is an ethnologist who has been working with British Muslim communities for over two decades. His research has seen him spend prolonged periods living within Muslim communities in England, particularly working class Barelwi Muslims who voices are seriously under-represented in every area of British society.

Ann Cryer’s comments are therefore all the more offensive for their willful ignorance, in the face of one of the most authorative academic voices on Muslims in Britain, whose knowledge of the impact of decades of discrimination against Muslims comes first hand. British Muslim communities are dogged by high rates of youth unemployment due to Islamophobia. Many young Muslims feel marginalised by British society. This is reflected in the rates of drug abuse and criminality, such that today Muslims make up 1 in 10 of the prison population in England.

Professor Geaves’ comments reflect his understanding of a desperate need; Anne Cryer’s reflect the bigotry of a desperate and despicable politician.

Camilla hides poppy behind ‘Muslim scarf’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Camilla Hides Poppy“Camilla meanwhile has being coming under fire from the Daily Express for one for not wearing a poppy. Yesterday they declared ‘Islamic Camilla dumps poppy’, because it was chaffing her ‘Muslim scarf’.

“Today, they are moaning that ‘she is wearing one but you can’t see it under Muslim scarf’. As you can see from the picture, she is wearing the traditional Pakistani daputta. This is a Muslim scarf how? The Express would do well to remember before stoking this Islamophobic and racist nonsense that tens of thousands of soldiers from the sub-continent laid down their lives in WWI for their British colonial masters, and if they’re sincere about commemorating the war veterans, then let’s focus on that.”

Osama Saeed at Rolled Up Trousers, 2 November 2006

Former PM blasts Australian government for marginalising Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The former prime minister, Malcolm Fraser, is at odds with the Federal Government over tensions over Islam in Australia. The Government has branded the former Liberal leader an apologist for radical Islam, after Mr Fraser accused his party of marginalising Muslims for political purposes. Earlier this week, Mr Fraser said the Government was gearing up for what he called a Muslim election next year.

ABC Online, 2 November 2006

Self-immolation – a new trend among Islamophobes?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Angered and distressed by the threat of the evils of Islam to his country, his homeland, his family and his kinfolk a German vicar committed suicide by setting himself alight on Tuesday (31st) in protest. The 73 year old Roland Weisselberg poured petrol over himself and set fire to himself in the Erfurt monastery, where Martin Luther took his monastic vows in 1505. Tuesday was a national holiday in parts of Germany to celebrate the Protestant Reformation. Despite robust efforts by many on the scene who rushed to extinguish the flames, Mr. Weisselberg later died of his injuries. In a farewell letter to his wife the vicar wrote that he was setting himself on fire to warn against the danger of the Islamification of Europe.”

BNP news article, 2 November 2006

We can only hope that Nick Griffin and the entire BNP leadership are inspired to follow Mr Weisselberg’s example.

BNP not racist shock

Posted on by Bob Pitt

bnp-islam-poster“46-year old Nick Griffin is the head of the British National Party, which is sometimes described as ‘far-right’ and demonized in the media.

“Two years ago, he was talking about what he thought about Islam and asylum-seekers. Unbeknownst to Mr Griffin, he was being secretly filmed by the BBC. The comments were then screened on ‘The Secret Agent’, a documentary which was more of a PC smear campaign than an objective assessment of the current BNP party policy….

“The BNP had a previous history of racism from when it first began, but Nick Griffin has moved the party forward like no other figurehead before, and overt ‘racism’ has not featured in any of its documents or policies since he became leader. The party is against immigration, against the culture of giving tax-payers’ money to so-called ‘asylum-seekers’, and most importantly, it is against the spread of Islam.”

Western Resistance, 2 November 2006

Worth noting that the proprietor of this site is also a great admirer of Peter Tatchell.

Federal charges urged in hate attack on NY Muslim

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today called on the Justice Department to bring federal charges against a number of teens who attacked a Muslim man in Brooklyn, N.Y., Sunday evening.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said prosecutors are calling the attack a hate crime. The victim, who will require reconstructive facial surgery, said: “They were saying you Muslim terrorist…get out of the country.”

A court hearing for two of the alleged attackers is scheduled for Friday in Brooklyn Criminal Court.

“The viciousness of this attack, coupled with the allegations of bias-motivated slurs should be sufficient to bring federal hate crime charges against the alleged attackers,” said CAIR Legal Director Arsalan Iftikhar.

Iftikhar said that CAIR yesterday called on religious and political leaders to repudiate the growing Islamophobia in American society that can lead to such attacks.

CAIR press release, 2 November 2006