French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party, the UMP, says it will push for a law banning the full-face Islamic veil, according to its parliamentary leader Jean-François Copé.
“The issue is not how many women wear the burqa,” Copé wrote in an article in the right-wing newspaper Le Figaro. “There are principles at stake: extremists are putting the republic to the test by promoting a practice that they know is contrary to the basic principles of our country.”
Rahmat P. Phyakul, board chairman and one of the founders of Al-Fatiha Masjid, reported to CAIR-LA that vandals shattered windows and glass doors of the mosque’s office and prayer hall on Monday, December 7. A plaque with Quranic verses was tossed on the floor, the sound system was destroyed and donation boxes were broken into.
The mosque has suffered prior incidents of vandalism. In the past, a passerby shouted anti-Muslim slurs at worshipers. The slurs reportedly included: “You, terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, F… your God, F…. you Allah.” Prayer rugs in the mosque were also covered with urine.
“We urge law enforcement authorities to utilize all their resources to immediately and fully investigate the vandalism at Masjid Al-Fatiha as a possible hate crime, especially because of the nature of the vandalism,” said Affad Shaikh, civil rights manager for CAIR-LA.
Phyakul added: “For those who have committed hate crimes against people of any faith, especially Muslims, they should know that they cannot silence us, shut us down or cause us to go away. This is our country, and we are here to stay and we are willing to stand for the truth and peace under any circumstances.”
A decision to build a huge rocket-shaped minaret and two giant arches in the style of Muslim headscarves on one of Britain’s most historic streets is sparking outrage and risks escalating racial tension, according to community leaders.
Council chiefs in the east London borough of Tower Hamlets are using millions of pounds of public money to push through the bizarre scheme in Brick Lane, a symbolic melting pot of immigrant communities for more than 400 years.
The odd looking minaret has just been put up outside London’s most famous mosque, a building whose appearance until now has remained unchanged during previous spells as a Huguenot church, a Methodist chapel and as a Jewish synagogue. The structure will be joined soon at either end of the street by two arches that have been designed to look like Muslim hijabs.
Some consider it “cool”, while others have likened to a tower of washing machine drums. However, it is the symbolism of the minaret and the arches that has upset others. They believe it is disrespectful to Brick Lane’s history, with Clive Bettington, who runs the Jewish East End Celebration Society, going further.
“It shows absolute contempt for other religions,” he said. “People who come on my tours to respect what used to be a synagogue will be outraged. The arches are clearly meant to be Muslim in character and we are now objecting in the strongest possible terms.”
More than a million Muslims have migrated to Britain because it is more sympathetic towards Islam than other European countries, a study has found. There are now some 1.1million Muslim immigrants in the UK, according to the report by IPPR, the Blairite think tank. It means around 46 per cent of Britain’s 2.4million-strong Muslim population were not born in this country.
The IPPR report found that over the past decade, there has been an increase of 275,000 in the number of British residents born in Pakistan or Bangladesh – twice the population of Oxford. The number of Somali-born residents has also shot up, from fewer than 40,000 in 1999 to 106,700 this year.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: “The rapid rise in the Muslim population is just one way in which mass immigration promoted, even encouraged, by this Government has affected the whole nature of society.”
Amid a rising tide of Islamophobia in Europe, a former finance senator in Germany has been strongly criticized for his racist, anti-Islam comments. On Sunday, Thilo Sarrazin, former Berlin finance senator and currently a member of the German Central Bank committee called for a headscarf ban in German schools.
His comments come only four months after the official let loose against “Arabs” and “Turks” living in Germany in an interview with the culture magazine Lettre International. “A large number of Arabs and Turks in this city, whose number has grown through bad policies, have no productive function other than as fruit and vegetable vendors,” he had said.
In his controversial remarks, Sarrazin also alluded to a new plan proposed by the country’s Immigration Commission, which would oblige foreigners seeking to live in Germany to sign “integration contracts” to respect Western values. “I don’t need to respect anyone who lives off the state, denies the state, doesn’t do anything to educate their kids, and just produces more headscarf girls,” Thilo Sarrazin had said.
Following his disparaging remarks, the senior official has faced strong criticism, with many calling on him to quit. On Sunday, Claudia Roth, leader of the German Green Party lambasted the executive board member, demanding his immediate resignation.
A man who tore a Muslim woman’s veil from her face as he passed her in the street has been ordered by a court to pay her £1,000 in compensation. Stephen Ard, 29, of Gypsy Lane, Leicester, also received a jail term of 16 weeks, suspended for a year, and 150 hours of community service.
Leicester Magistrates’ Court heard victim Rehana Sidat felt “invaded and scared to walk down the street alone”. Ard pleaded guilty to religiously aggravated assault. Ms Sidat, who runs a drop-in centre for people with learning difficulties in Leicester, said: “He pulled my veil off and said ‘get that off’, he was really quite angry, it was shocking. I felt frightened.”
Update: See also the Leicester Mercury, 16 December 2009
Police say assailants have scrawled a Nazi slogan and hung pig feet on a mosque in southern France. Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux has denounced the “vile and racist desecration” of the mosque in the town of Castres.
Police say the swastika in black paint and slogans including Hitler salute “Sieg Heil” in German, “France to the French” in French, and “White Power” in English were scrawled on the mosque.
Hortefeux said Sunday any person found responsible for the overnight desecration should be “severely punished.”
Associated Press, 13 December 2009
See also Le Poireau Rouge, 13 December 2009
Links between the BNP and the right-wing Scottish Defence League can today be exposed by the Sunday Herald.
Both groups have publicly tried to distance themselves from each other, with the BNP claiming it would expel members found to be active in the Scottish Defence League (SDL) and its English counterpart, the EDL.
But one long-standing BNP member in Scotland told the Sunday Herald the party and the SDL shared many members and supporters, adding that the threat of expulsion was merely “a publicity thing” designed to placate the media. He said: “I am a member of the BNP and a supporter of the Scottish Defence League. A lot of the supporters are the same.”
On the threat of expulsion, he added: “That is a publicity thing. We both have the same views on radical Islam and we both don’t want Sharia law in Britain. We created our group [the SDL] to support what was happening down south with the English Defence League. I couldn’t say that the SDL was set up by BNP activists, but I was one of the early ones to support it.”
The claim that the expulsion threat was a publicity stunt was dismissed as “preposterous” by the party’s national press spokesman, who questioned the authenticity of the member who made the allegation.
However, information gathered by David Miller, a professor of sociology at the University of Strathclyde and a co-founder of the campaigning website Spinwatch, alleges that at least three BNP members are also Defence League supporters.
One is BNP Scotland member John Wilkinson. He leafleted on behalf of the party in the run-up to the European Elections, and is involved with running the SDL website. SDL supporter Iain Brooks, from Glasgow, is also listed on a leaked BNP membership list. And Adam Lloyd, the BNP organiser for Bridgend in Wales, is another listed as an SDL supporter, according to Prof Miller.
A Swiss shoe-shop owner has built a mock minaret on the top of his warehouse in defiance of a ban on the Muslim architecture.
Guillaume Morand extended a chimney, gave it the form of a minaret and sprayed it in gold paint to protest against a constitutional amendment approved in a nationwide referendum last month.
“It was scandalous that the Swiss voted for the ban,” said Mr Morand, 46, who owns the Pomp It Up chain of shoe stores. “Now we [the Swiss] have the support of all the far-right parties across Europe. This is shameful.”
The tower, made of plastic and wood above his warehouse near Lausanne, is a “message of peace and tolerance” designed to last for two years before it rots, he said – but there are no plans for it to be used to summon Muslims to prayer. “Our minaret is pretty,” he said. “You could say I’m proud of it and I’m happy that people are talking about it.”
His neighbours are less enthusiastic and have showered him with racist insults since the minaret appeared this week, he said. One telephoned a threat to demolish the structure.
An anti-Islamic protest near a north-London mosque has passed peacefully with no arrests.
Fifteen members of Stop Islamification of Europe (SIOE) protested near Harrow Central Mosque against plans for a new mosque nearby. About 200 members of Unite Against Fascism also gathered but a large police presence prevented the groups approaching the mosque or each other.
Ahead of Sunday’s demonstration, SIOE said it planned a peaceful protest against the building of a five-storey mosque next to the Station Road mosque. Leader Stephen Gash previously said he would only organise a protest if 2,000 SIOE supporters pledged to turn up.
Still, Gash can take consolation in the fact that the actual turnout was a mere 1,985 supporters short of that figure.
Update: See UAF report.