Category Archives: Anti-Muslim violence

Violence against Muslims increases in Holland

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Geert WildersViolence against Muslims in the Netherlands rose considerably last year, according to the latest monitor on racism and extremism published by Leiden University and the Anne Frank Foundation on Wednesday.

The number of violent incidents against Muslims rose to 82 in 2007, from 62 in the preceding year. However the total number of racist attacks last year was down to 187, according to the 306-page report.

The Anne Frank Foundation says anti-Muslim sentiment has grown “significantly” in the last year and public opinion about Muslims has become more negative.

The researchers also point to the stream of anti-Muslim comments by the populist PVV party, led by the controversial member of parliament Geert Wilders. This, and the massive attention they are given in the media, has contributed to Islam phobia in the Netherlands, the foundation says.

The fact that the justice department decided not to prosecute those who made these anti-Muslim statements also played a role, say researchers Jaap van Donselaar and Peter Rodrigues.

The researchers also conclude that the PVV can be labelled as an extreme-right group because of, for example, its dislike of “strangers” and the political establishment and its tendency towards authoritarianism. The party also attracts more radical right-wing extremists.

Wilders is furious with the report. “They have gone completely mad. It is an insult to the PVV and our voters,” he told ANP news agency.

The arrival of the PVV has played a major part in changing the extreme-right climate in the country, according to the report. And the willingness of extreme right groups to take action has grown significantly. The number of demonstrations organised by extreme right-wing group is expected to rise to 20 this year from 12 in 2007.

Dutch News, 10 December 2008

See also “Islamophobia on the rise” on the website of the Anne Frank Museum.

It’s also worth noting that Wilders’ ally Ehsan Jami, who has made his own contribution to the rise of Islamophobia in the Netherlands, has just released his film Interview with Mohammed.

Vandals hit French Muslim graves

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim graves defacedThe graves of as many as 500 Muslim war veterans have been vandalised in northern France, in an attack President Nicolas Sarkozy said was “repugnant”.

Gravestones were daubed with swastikas and letters spelling out anti-Islamic slogans at France’s biggest military graveyard near Arras in the north-east.

The attack took place on the eve of Islam’s Eid al-Adha festival, when Muslims visit the graves of loved ones. Dozens of police searched the graveyard on Monday as an investigation began. It is the third time the Muslim sector of the Notre Dame de Lorette cemetery has been attacked.

President Sarkozy called the latest incident “abject and revolting” and said it was “the expression of a repugnant racism directed against the Muslim community of France”.

The cemetery holds the graves of tens of thousands of soldiers killed in World War I, including those of 576 Muslims.

The authorities estimated that about 500 graves were damaged. Vandals had sprayed letters on the tombstones which, when linked together, formed anti-Islamic insults, the French news agency AFP said.

The local prosecutor says the damage resembles another act of vandalism in April, for which two young men with neo-Nazi sympathies were later jailed. One of them had already been jailed for a previous attack on Muslim graves at the cemetery.

Police say security has been reinforced but the site remains difficult to guard.

BBC News, 8 December 2008

Children ‘bullied for their beliefs’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BeatbullyingOne in four children with a religious belief is bullied at school as a result of their faith, research shows.

The findings have prompted anti-bullying campaigners to urge ministers to make it compulsory for schools to record all incidents of faith-based bullying, as they have to do in cases of racism and homophobia.

The survey of more than 1,000 pupils by the anti-bullying charity BeatBullying, showed that 23 per cent of the pupils were bullied as a result of their faith. In addition, 9 per cent of those with a faith were bullied as a result of wearing religious symbols to school. One 13-year-old Muslim girl said: “These two girls knew we were fasting, they got me in the toilets and tried to force crisps down my throat; they were all laughing their heads off.”

Independent, 17 November 2008

Read the Beatbullying Interfaith Report (pdf) here.

The report contains many other disturbing accounts of Muslim pupils being verbally abused and physically assaulted:

“They pushed me down the stairs, kicked me, dragged me by [my] hair, broke my tooth and hit me with a chair. They said my dad did 7/7.” (Jagatveer age 15)

“They would call me Paki, tell me to go back to Paki land and live with Osama.” (Mavish age 13)

“I got called a Paki and told that my religion was stupid.” (Jabeen age 12)

“Sometimes I hear boys laughing about bombs in Iraq. They do it in front of me, laughing that more Muslims have been blown up.” (Aruni age 13)

Still, not to worry – over at the National Secular Society website NSS president Terry Sanderson assures us that these are “claims to be read with a pinch of salt”.

Man who firebombed community centre escapes jail

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A man who admitted firebombing a former Methodist chapel as it was undergoing conversion to an Asian community centre walked free from court yesterday.

Anthony Foster, 38, from Falmouth, and another unknown man threw bottles filled with flammable liquid through a window at the building at Quenchwell, Carnon Downs, near Truro. Magistrates in Truro yesterday gave Foster an eight-week suspended sentence for arson, which met with “disappointment” from the police officer in charge of the case who said he believed the incidents were racially motivated.

Speaking after the hearing, Insp Mark Richards from Truro police said he did not think the Asian community would be reassured by the magistrates’ actions. He added: “I’m disappointed with an eight-week suspended sentence. We were treating this series of offences as religiously or racially motivated. Foster has made limited admissions to the court. I don’t think the community are under any misapprehensions about the motivation for some of the attacks that have taken place at Quenchwell.”

The targeted building was being renovated and Foster was caught on CCTV set up by police after the site was previously attacked and racist graffiti painted on the walls. At a previous hearing, Foster’s defence barrister Michael Gregson said Foster was helping a friend who said he had a grievance with a builder working on the site. Foster was unaware of the building’s former status as a chapel or of its conversion to an Asian community centre.

The court was told the site was subjected to a number of vandalism attacks in June and July of this year. [See here, here and here.]

Insp Richards said he did not think the Asian community would be reassured: “At the end of the day, we are talking about someone who has thrown two petrol bombs into a premises without checking who or what is in there.” The inspector sought to reassure people in the Asian community that the police were continuing to do everything they could to investigate and prevent other offences.

Western Morning News, 12 November 2008

Veiling and security

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Metro niqab pictureThe Metro carries a story on the comments made by Admiral Lord West, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Security and Counter Terrorism, to the Commons Defence Committee meeting yesterday on “UK national security and resilience” where he said that ending radicalization among young British Muslims could take up to 30 years.

The newspaper complements the news item with a picture of Muslim women in niqab. Is it any surprise that some Muslim women have had their veils forcibly torn from their faces when newspapers allude to connections between forms of Muslim dress and stories on terrorism and security?

You can write to the newspaper via email: mail@ukmetro.co.uk or post: Metro, Associated Newspapers Limited, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT.

Engage, 22 October 2008

Can we take the opportunity to give a big plug to this excellent new website.

Pair who forced their Muslim colleague to eat bacon lose appeal

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Kingstanding man who subjected his “vulnerable” Muslim colleague to a 10-month bullying campaign saw his appeal against a jail sentence for racially aggravated harassment thrown out by the Appeal Court this week.

Sean Martin Melaney, 29, of Streatham Grove, along with two other road maintenance workers, admitted to harassing colleague Amjid Mehmood. All four worked for a road maintenance firm in Walsall. The three were each sentenced at Wolverhampton Crown Court in April to three-years imprisonment.

The workmates had bullied Mr Mehmood by:

 ■ Pulling his trousers down and exposing him to passing motorists while working on the M6.

■ Force-feeding Mr Mehmood bacon, which it is against his religious beliefs to eat.

■ Dropping him off in Lozells at the time of the Asian/Afro-Carribean race riots in 2005 and then driving off, telling him the residents would come and get him.

■ Tied Mr Mehmood to railings with duct tape, stripping him and dousing his clothing in dirty water.

Despite the Crown Court’s findings Melaney and Lee Paul McDermott, 31, of Blue Stone Walk, Rowley Regis, appealed the three-year jail term.

Mr Justice Pitchford, sitting in the criminal appeal court with Lady Justice Hallett and Judge Nicholas Cooke QC, said the conduct of the pair had been “appalling”.

Refusing the appeal he said Mr Mehmood was: “A man who was vulnerable in his workplace, by virtue of his personal qualities, his minority race and in the troubled times in which he was living. We have considered the matter of these men’s conduct, its persistence over a prolonged period and its traumatic effect on their victim. We conclude that the sentences were both principled and appropriate.”

Sutton Coldfield Observer, 10 October 2008

Proof that vilification leads to violence?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“My contention has been that media vilifications of ethnic or religious groups can lead to violence, and said as much in my letter two months ago to Standpoint, which they finally got round to printing in the most recent edition. While they printed most of the letter, they omitted that bit, despite the low hum of violence which has sounded for the last few years: an imam blinded in London, another suffering brain damage, a mosque being destroyed in Basildon, a man threatened with a chainsaw in Bolton, and this past weekend, a Muslim cemetery vandalised in Southall, west London….

“Recently, a pro-Israeli group paid various newspapers in ‘swing’ states in the upcoming American Presidential election, including Ohio, to distribute a propaganda DVD called Obsession, which features interviews with one anti-Muslim ‘expert’ after another and essentially portrays Muslims as Nazis. Some editors have refused to distribute it, and have faced accusations of ‘censorship’, as if newspapers did not have to make judgements from day to day (or week to week) on what to publish and what to hold, and as if the film cannot be downloaded for free off YouTube. It’s such a coincidence that last Friday night, a mosque was attacked in Dayton, Ohio. The thugs – terrorists, to some minds – who did this did not just pour petrol through the letterbox at night and set fire to the place; oh no, they sprayed a ‘chemical irritant’ into the building while people were praying their taraweeh.”

Yusuf Smith at Indigo Jo Blogs, 30 September 2008

Muslim graves desecrated as Austria swings to the right

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Police have blamed far-right extremists for the desecration of a Muslim cemetery in the town of Traun, near Linz, in the same weekend that political parties of the Far Right made huge gains in the Austrian general election.

More than 90 graves were severely damaged at some point between Friday night and yesterday. The perpetrators sprayed Jewish symbols such as the Star of David on some of the graves but detectives believe that this may have been an attempt to disguise the motives of far-right extremists driven by a hatred of Muslim immigrants.

A spokesman for the local Muslim community said that it was deeply shocked at the news of the desecration, which comes as the religious month of Ramadan nears its end.

Austria is embarking on a round of soul-searching after its swing to the right in the parliamentary elections. Polls and analysis conducted immediately after the vote, which established the Far Right as the country’s second-strongest political bloc, indicate that the change was brought about by predominately young voters who are concerned about their future in the European Union.

The two far-right parties that captured almost 30 per cent of the vote, the Freedom Party and the Alliance for the Future of Austria, have campaigned on a vehemently anti-immigration ticket and some of their slogans were deemed xenophobic by critics.

Heinz-Christian Strache, the head of the Freedom Party – which won more than 18 per cent of the vote – campaigned against headscarves and burkas and expressed his opposition to foods seen as being related to Islam.

At his final rally, in Vienna, he spoke of a “European brotherhood” to prevent the rise of Islam. Both parties seek to ban the building of mosques and minarets, arguing that they are political symbols of the “Islamisation” of Austria and Europe.

The Times, 29 September 2008

The suggestion that the graffiti was intended “to disguise the motives of far-right extremists” is unconvincing. The traditionally antisemitic European far right is now moving towards a pro-Israel position, and on the basis of a common hatred of Muslims it has even won the support of a small section of the Jewish community. The reference to “Kadim” – the name of an Israeli Jewish settlement in the northern West Bank, which was evacuated in 2005 after being attacked by Palestinian militants – suggests that Zionist extremists may well have been responsible for desecrating the graves.

Muslim graves vandalised at west London cemetery

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Southall cemetery vandalismNearly 40 Muslim graves have been vandalised at a west London cemetery.

Several headstones were damaged or pushed over, and flower pots and ornamental fencing were broken at the cemetery in Bridge Road, Southall.

Most of the vandalism is in the Muslim area of the cemetery, but there is also damage to the Christian area, a Metropolitan Police spokesperson said. Police are treating the incident as racially motivated, although no-one has been arrested.

The discovery was made after Muslims had finished praying all night for Layat Al Qadr, one of the holiest evenings of Ramadan.

“Pillars that have been embedded four feet in the ground have been uprooted, said Dalawar Chaudhry from the Central Jamia Mosque. “This has been a calculated attack. Glass smashed all over the place, two inch thick marble stones have been smashed in two with sheer determination.”

Muslim community leaders said it was possible the incident was timed to coincide with Ramadan. “Because this was the month of Ramadan we had a special evening the previous day and so I think it may have been targeted for that specific reason,” said Javed Mirza from the Muslim Funeral Society.

BBC News, 29 September, 2008

See also “Stacey attacks grave vandals”, Ealing Times, 29 September 2008

Yusuf Smith replies to Douglas Murray

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yusuf Smith reproduces his letter to Standpoint magazine, in response to Douglas Murray’s article attacking Peter Oborne’s exposé of Islamophobia. Note that the version of the letter published by Standpoint omitted the closing passage which pointed out that the publication of inflammatory Islamophobic material in the press is often a precursor to actual violence against Muslims.

Indigo Jo Blogs, 27 September 2008