Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Wilders tried to claim legal fees from parliament: Volkskrant

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pipes and WildersAnti-Islam politician Geert Wilders last year tried to claim between €500,000 and €600,000 as parliamentary expenses for legal fees incurred during a trial for inciting hatred, the Volkskrant said on Saturday.

Sources told the paper Wilders’ claim was rejected after discussions between members of parliament’s management committee, known as the presidium and on the advice of an accountant.

Parliamentary parties are allowed to submit expenses claims to the presidium if they are for services needed to support their work.

Civil servants and most members of the presidium decided the legal fees for the trial were private expenses. In addition, the claim itself was “not very concrete”, the paper said.

Wilders’ was represented at his trial by celebrity lawyer Bram Moszkowicz who has since been struck off. The bill was not broken down into daily costs and there was no proper explanation of all the charges, a source told the paper.

One member of the presidium told the paper: “I saw the bill and I thought ‘well there is someone who understands about expenses’. There was no supporting evidence. It was an amount between €500,000 and €600,000.”

Three other members of the presidium have also confirmed the story, the paper said.

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Boycott Halal movement in Australia set to escalate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Boycott Halal in Australia

The virulent Boycott Halal movement in Australia is set to escalate with a petition to federal parliament in the New Year demanding the Corporations Act 2001 be changed to mean only Muslims bear the cost of halal certification on everyday products.

Halal products are those deemed permissible for Muslims to eat or use under religious law. Many mainstream products in Australian stores are halal certified including food from SPC, Nestle, Kelloggs and Kraft. Supermarket chains pay for certification for some products, as do dairy factories and meat processors.

Worldwide the halal industry is worth $US 2 trillion and is growing 20% a year. Companies are keen to capitalise on the boom, so halal certification is increasingly common. All products exported to Muslim countries are certified before they go.

Australia has 21 Islamic groups approved by the federal government to issue halal certificates. Of the 21 only four, with one in Melbourne and three in Sydney, get most of the work, including Indonesian contracts.

The new Indonesian government has begun to dismantle an Islamic agency which is facing corruption allegations and which approves halal imports from Australia. Halal exports are worth $12 billion with growing competition from China and Brazil.

The Boycott Halal campaign is led by New South Wales farmer Kirralie Smith and supported by extremist groups including the “Islam-critical’ Q-Society, Restore Australia, the Australian Defence League and the Patriots’ Defence League.

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Pig’s head hung on mosque door in Vienna

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Kocatepe mosque vandalism

In a barbaric affront to Muslim sensibilities, part of a pig’s head and some pork tripe was attached to the door of a mosque in Vienna’s 21st district on Christmas day.

The imam of the Kocatepe mosque spoke to the Andadolu press agency about the incident, condemning the vandalism as an “unacceptable” act.

The head of the Turkish-Islamist Union in Vienna (ATIB), Fatih Karadaş, condemned the attack saying that “this is not an attack against Muslims but the whole of humanity. We, as Muslims, will preserve our calm and collective attitude.”

This is not the first incident of its type, as Austria’s Muslim community has been attacked several times this year in similar hate crimes. An Imam Hatip school in Vienna that concentrates on religious education was also vandalized. A pig’s head was left in front of the school’s door during Ramadan in early October.

And in August, a pig’s head was impaled on a fence at a construction site for a new islamic school.  It’s not known who left the pig’s head at the centre, but even if someone confesses there is little the police can do as nothing was damaged and therefore there are no criminal charges.

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ACLU supports free-speech rights of anti-Islam group

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bible Believers display pig's headA civil rights organization is defending the free-speech rights of a Christian group that hates Islam, saying its members were unfairly removed from the Arab International Festival in Dearborn in 2012.

In a legal brief filed this month, attorneys with the Michigan branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said that Wayne County sheriff’s deputies violated the First Amendment by ordering a group of Christian evangelists from California called the Bible Believers to leave or face citations for disorderly conduct.

At the annual festival in June 2012, the Bible Believers brought a pig’s head mounted on a pole and signs with anti-Islam messages that denigrated Islam’s prophet. Observant Muslims consider pigs to be unclean.

They also shouted crude messages at festival attendees, many of whom were Muslim. In response, members of the crowd hurled water bottles and rocks at the Christian group, who walked away to avoid being hit. As they walked away, some in the crowd followed and continued to pelt them.

Attorneys for the Bible Believers filed a lawsuit against the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office, which was thrown out last year by U.S. District Judge Patrick Duggan in Detroit, saying deputies were justified in removing the evangelists “because of the effect the speech had on the crowd.”

In August, a three-judge panel with the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Duggan’s decision. But in October, the full court vacated that decision, saying the 15 judges will reconsider the case in March.

It was a rare move, one that was praised by attorneys with the American Freedom Law Center, a conservative group co-led by Ann Arbor attorney Robert Muise that is representing the Bible Believers.

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Thousands sign online petition against German anti-Islam PEGIDA movement

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anti-PEGIDA petitionMore than 65,000 people have signed an internet petition against the right-wing PEGIDA movement since it was established on Christmas Eve. The signatures are being collected on change.org, with its organizer aiming to reach 1 million.

PEGIDA was formed in October in response to growing sentiment within Germany against immigration and Islam, with its protests particularly focused on the eastern German city of Dresden. The group’s name loosely translates to “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West.”

The latest protest in Dresden on Monday drew a record 17,500 people. However, resistance to the movement is growing, with thousands joining counter-demonstrations.

“Now is the time to profess that the phrase ‘We are the people!’, regardless of origin, color, religion or whatever, has been and must continue to hold true,” organizer Karl Lempert said.

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Dutch Muslims concerned by mosque attacks

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MoskNee

An unidentified man wearing a hoodie placed fireworks in the window of the Selimiye Mosque in Enschede, a city in the Netherlands, on December 14. A few seconds later, the fireworks exploded, breaking the window.

The motives of the perpetrator remain unclear – he has not yet been caught – but mosque board member Sezgin Akman said he suspects the attack was inspired by hatred of Islam. “Maybe someone wanted to tell us we are not welcome,” he said, adding the mosque has received several threatening letters in the past.

More than one-third of the Netherlands’ 475 mosques have experienced at least one incident of vandalism, threatening letters, attempted arson, the placement of pigs’ heads, or other aggressive actions in the past 10 years, according to research by Ineke van der Valk, author of the book Islamophobia and Discrimination.

The Kuba Mosque, in the city of IJmuiden, said it has counted more than 40 such incidents since its founding in 1993.

“Lines like ‘go to hell, Muslims’ on the wall, graffiti that contains Nazi symbols, pig heads on the doorstep, Molotov cocktails … A lot has happened,” said Suleyman Celik, a board member of the Kuba Mosque. “Two years ago, a female visitor who left the building was pelted with beer bottles by men driving by in a car. She broke her teeth and had to go to the hospital.”

On June 23, two men shouting racist slogans entered the Kuba Mosque after an argument outside. They threatened to kill those inside, and broke the nose of one of the mosque’s board members. They were arrested two days later by police.

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Swedish marchers denounce Christmas Day arson attack on mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Eskilstuna solidarity demo

Several hundred marchers turned out in a Swedish town on Friday to denounce an arson attack on a mosque that injured five people on Christmas Day as the traditionally tolerant country confronts the rising influence of the extreme right.

A firebomb was thrown through a closed window of the mosque in the central city of Eskilstuna on Thursday, injuring five of the nearly 70 worshippers inside, two of whom remained in hospital on Friday.

Answering calls by the “Together for Eskilstuna” Facebook page to denounce the attack, a large group of people converged on the damaged mosque to show their support. “Several hundred people were there to deliver a message of friendship,” a police spokesman, Roland Lindqvist, told AFP.

According to police, windows in a second Eskilstuna mosque were broken overnight on Thursday, though authorities couldn’t say whether the two attacks were linked.

Sweden’s leftist prime minister, Stefan Löfven, denounced the “hateful violence”. “We will never tolerate this kind of crime. Those who want to practise their religion should have the right to do so,” Lofven told SR radio.

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UKIP official retweets pro‑PEGIDA comments

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The PEGIDA demonstration in Dresden last Monday, in which an estimated 17,500 people protested against immigration and the “Islamisation of the west”, was widely condemned as a shocking example of xenophobia and intolerance that has no place in Germany.

Needless to say, on the British far right PEGIDA has been hailed as an inspiration in the fight to stem the Muslim takeover of Europe. It has certainly renewed the enthusiasm of former English Defence League leader Stephen Lennon (“Tommy Robinson”) for Islamophobic street protests, and he has tweeted his intention to try and emulate PEGIDA’s success when his ban on associating with members of the EDL runs out next July.

Another person to be impressed by PEGIDA’s achievements is Helen Hims, who is chair of the Wells branch of UKIP and vice-chair of the party in Somerset. She retweeted a number of approving comments on Monday’s demonstration (“German anti muslim protestors demand an end to Islamisation with record high turnout”, “Growing Anti Muslim marches in Germany….Excellent!”) earlier this week, including one from Lennon himself (“Germany is waking up, are we?”)

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Arson attack on Swedish mosque injures five

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Eskilstuna mosque arson (2)

An arsonist set fire to a mosque in central Sweden on Thursday injuring five people, police said, as the country grapples with a political crisis caused by the rise of the extreme right.

“Somebody threw an object through a closed window and afterwards a fire started inside,” police spokesman Lars Franzell told AFP. “There were between 15 and 20 people in the premises.”

Refugee-friendly Sweden woke up to the reality of a new political landscape in early December when the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats brought down the government by refusing to back its budget proposal in parliament.

The mosque is located on the ground floor of a building in the city of Eskilstuna, some 90 kilometres (55 miles) west of Stockholm. According to police, the fire started in the early afternoon. Police said they were investigating the incident as a case of aggravated arson but had no suspects yet.

The five injured were taken to hospital to be treated for injuries including smoke inhalation, lacerations and fractures.

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Green MPs warn of growing threat of Islamophobia in Germany

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ozcan Mutlu and Belit Onay

“Islamophobia poses a big problem in Germany, like anti-Semitism,” warns Özcan Mutlu [above, left], a representative of the Green Party in the German parliament in Berlin.

Speaking with The Anadolu Agency on Thursday, Mutlu warned that the rising turnout of the demonstrations was of grave concern for the five million Muslims of Germany. Demonstrations in the East German city of Dresden led by the far right group Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident have attracted thousands.

“Islamophobia has peaked nowadays in Germany, becoming especially widespread in Europe after the 9/11 terror attacks,” he pointed out.

Mutlu blames German media for failing to adequately cover the threat. “German media has not taken its responsibility of warning the people about Islamophobia so far,” Mutlu said.

“The problem is not the large turnout at these demonstrations, but the fact that they propogate racism and Islamophobia,” Mutlu said. Mutlu pointed out the anomaly that a large number of demonstrators turn out in Dresden, yet the city has a relatively small Muslim population.

Nearly 100,000 Turkish entrepreneurs in Germany employ approximately 400,000 people, according to the Independent Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association. “The demonstrators’ concerns are completely irrelevant, because, the immigrants in Germany do not harm the German economy; on the contrary, they make a contribution to the economy.”

The Green Party has demanded the enhancement of new programs and projects for immigrants, as well as additional financing for them. “But the ruling parties do not agree with us, and they have declined all of our demands,” Mutlu complained.

Mutlu also said that paying more attention to education was essential in eliminating Islamophobia, anti-semitism and anti-immigrant feeling. “We have to teach our children to be aware of racism, and we also have to teach that multiculturalism is rich.”

Lower Saxony Green Party Deputy Belit Onay [above, right] drew attention to the rising number of mosque attacks in Germany, saying that the mosque attackers are driven by Islamophobia. “There is no proof that the organized crime syndicates have committed the attacks,” Onay told AA.

The most recent mosque attack occurred in Dormagen city in the federal state of Northern Rhein-Westphalia on Saturday. Neo-Nazis attacked the Turkish-Islamic Union’s Suleymaniye Mosque by painting swastikas on its walls.

“The mosque attack in Dormagen is unfortunately a common type of attack,” Onay said. “After the 9/11 terror attacks, an average of one mosque attack every two weeks has been carried out in Germany from 2001 to 2011.”

The Turkish Parliament’s Human Rights Committee issued a report in November on the arson attacks targeting the mosques in Germany. The conclusion of the report was that the attacks had become frequent, and that suspects could not be arrested.

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