Category Archives: Anti-Muslim violence

Family’s hell at the hands of racist yobs

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Sheffield mum says she has suffered years of sickening racist abuse for living with an Asian man. Nicola Clark says her life is being destroyed by racist yobs who have subjected her and her 33-year-old partner Aftab Hussain to a spate of attacks since they and their children moved on to the Arbourthorne estate two years ago.

Nicola said: “They have destroyed my life – I cry every night because I am so worried about our kids’ safety. “I would happily move out of my flat and into a shed in the middle of nowhere if it meant we could be safe. We have suffered so much abuse over the last two years – they have even thrown bacon at me because they know Muslims don’t eat pork. I’m not Muslim but I know it was a dig at my partner. It’s absolutely awful.”

She said yobs chased her partner up the street with an iron bar, and later threw a beer can at them. The 32-year-old claims the gang of teenagers, believed to be aged from about 13 to 17, have repeatedly hurled racist abuse at them and warned them to leave the estate. Nicola, who last year gave birth to her second child, Arshad, claims she has also been forced to scrap three cars over the last 18 months after they were vandalised by the yobs.

Sheffield Star, 26 March 2008

Danish Islamophobia kills Muslim teen

Posted on by Bob Pitt

COPENHAGEN — Danish Muslims link the racist murder of a Muslim teen last week to an increasing Islamophobic atmosphere fanned by the reprinting of a cartoon satirical of prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him).

“Deniz Ozgur Uzun was killed because of his dark, Middle Eastern skin,” Jihad Abdelalim Alfara, the chairman of the Islamic Council in Denmark, told IslamOnline.net. Uzun, a 17-year-old Turk attending a technical high school, was distributing newspapers in the Amager district of Copenhagen Wednesday when he was verbally harassed by three Danes, aged 15, 17 and 18.

“They tried to provoke him with racist slur,” said Abdel-Hamid Hamdi, head of the Shura Council of the Islamic Council in Denmark. “He ignored them and went his way before they stopped their car and started assaulting him.”

A friend of Uzun, identified by the media as Mohammed, said the three attacked Uzun with a baseball bat and a hammer, leaving him unconscious. The Muslim teen was put on life support at a hospital in Copenhagen with “severe brain damage” before he was pronounced dead the next day.

Alfara, the Muslim community leader, believes the racist attack is directly linked to an Islamophobic atmosphere in the Scandinavian country fanned by the recent reprinting of the prophet cartoon. “Was it necessary to have someone killed for people to realize that racism is on the rise in Denmark following the cartoon crisis?”

Islam Online, 24 March 2008

Qaradawi urges killing of Wafa Sultan (according to Robert Spencer)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yusuf_al_QaradawiAccording to Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, Yusuf al-Qaradawi has taken time out from calling for gay men to be stoned to death in order to urge the murder of Wafa Sultan:

“… now he has directed his rage against Sultan, a fifty-year-old Syrian-American psychologist: ‘She said unbearable, ghastly things that made my hair stand on end’. Specifically, ‘she had the audacity to publicly curse Allah, His Prophet, the Koran, the history of Islam, and the Islamic nation’. He repeated that she ‘leveled accusations against Islam and the Muslims, and cursed Allah, His Prophet, the Islamic nation, the shari’a, and the Islamic faith and culture’. These are serious charges, and Qaradawi states them in terms that his jihadist minions will understand as meaning that she must be killed.”

Front Page Magazine, 25 March 2008

Even the MEMRI-edited transcript of Qaradawi’s Al-Jazeera broadcast provides no basis for this hysterical nonsense.

White lies

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ruqayyah Collector“Last Orders promoted many racist myths unchallenged. The BNP was the party favoured by most of those who mentioned voting in the programme, unchallenged by the narrator, who failed to point out it wants an all-white Britain and has a history of leading members with convictions for inciting racial hatred and violence.

“Instead, we see myths about Asians and Muslims presented as fact, the culmination of which is a young BNP supporter in front of a union flag with a swastika saying: ‘If I saw a young Paki getting kicked and knocked over, I would not blink an eyelid, I hate them so much.’

“This was not debate, but allowing a space where such attacks go unchallenged on mainstream television. The prophesising of a war coming to Bradford would have been chilling for any Asian person watching. In my experience, debunking the myths displayed here is the first step to challenging and eradicating the racism and violence that it breeds….

“There is in reality a growing climate of hostility which blames Muslims for ‘changing the complexion’ of Britain, in much the same way that the migrant Jewish community was attacked at the start of the last century. The isolation resulting from racism is what underlies the issues, which the White season fleetingly dabbles with. It singles out Bradford, where racism in housing and poverty and economic disadvantage has created barriers…. the BBC must do more to challenge racist myths, especially as they tend to gain currency, which is exploited by the far right in the runup to elections.”

Ruqayyah Collector responds to the BBC’s “White season“.

Comment is Free, 13 March 2008

Men admit to varied roles in mosque fire

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamic Center of ColumbiaIt’s too early to tell if the case of three men charged with setting a Columbia mosque on fire will be tried solely in federal court, said Mike Bottoms, Maury County district attorney.

Michael Golden, 23, Eric Baker, 32, and Jonathan Stone, 19, are accused of spray painting swastikas and throwing Molotov cocktails at the Islamic Center of Columbia, 1317 South Main St., on Feb. 9. The men are being held on $250,000 bond in Nashville, Bottoms said.

In a preliminary hearing on Monday, agents testified that the men incriminated themselves by admitting to various levels of participation in the crime, Bottoms said. Two of the three men facing federal charges in connection with the mosque firebombing told federal authorities that they are members of the Christian Identity movement, widely considered a white separatist movement.

The men had planned in early February to “burn” the Islamic Center, according to a federal affidavit. The men purchased black spray paint and gasoline, the affidavit alleges. The Islamic Center was set on fire shortly before 5:20 a.m. on Feb. 9.

Stone told special agents that brick was used to break the window of the door and that they threw two Molotov cocktails on the floor. Stone nearly set himself on fire, according to the affidavit. Baker told agents he was the driver, according to the court document. Baker admitted to spray-painting swastikas and white pride slogans on the building, the document states. Baker added, “what goes on in that building is illegal according to the Bible,” the affidavit states.

The case will go to a Maury County grand jury within 30 days, Bottoms said.

The state has charged the men with arson of a religious building, and the judge refused to reduce the charge to arson. At Monday’s hearing, the president of the Islamic Center testified that the building is used entirely for church and prayer services, Bottoms said.

The Tenesseean, 28 February 2008

Britain sent hundreds to face torture

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Britain sent hundreds to face tortureBritain sent hundreds to face torture

By Louise Nousratpour

Morning Star, 26 February 2008

FORMER SAS soldier Ben Griffin revealed yesterday that British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan were “deeply involved” in US torture flights.

Since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, British special forces, operating in a joint US/UK task force, have been responsible for the detention of “hundreds, if not thousands” of individuals, he said. These detainees have since ended up in Baghdad’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison, Guantanamo Bay and other secret CIA locations.

“During my time as member of the US/UK task force, three of my colleagues witnessed a brutal interrogation in which near-drowning and electric cattle prods were used,” Mr Griffin told a Stop the War Coalition press conference. “The special forces’ policy of detention and not arrest was regarded as a clumsy legal tool used to distance British soldiers from the whole process. But my colleagues and I were in no doubt that anyone we detained, including non-combatants, would subsequently be tortured.”

Last week, Foreign Secretary David Miliband admitted to MPs that two US rendition flights transporting terror suspects had landed on British soil. But Mr Griffin said that this “pales into insignificance” to the actions of British forces, adding: “For the government to claim that they only became aware of the use of British territory this week is disingenuous.”

He rejected claims that the British army had acted as a bulwark against US torture in Iraq and Afghanistan, arguing: “In my experience, the opposite is true – that British soldiers have become more like their US counterparts. The British army has accepted illegality as the norm.”

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Britain did host US torture flights

Posted on by Bob Pitt

We did host US torture flightsBritain did host US torture flights

By Louise Nousratpour

Morning Star, 22 February 2008

FOREIGN Secretary David Miliband made a forced apology yesterday after admitting that an air base on the British territory of Diego Garcia was used by CIA torture flights.

Mr Miliband’s belated admission stood in stark contrast to new Labour’s previous claims that the US had not used British territory or airspace for “rendition” flights.

In the face of credible evidence gathered by human rights organisations, former foreign secretary Jack Straw and former prime minister Tony Blair both flatly denied that rendition flights had touched down on British soil.

In a Commons statement, Mr Miliband told MPs that he was “very sorry” that previous information given by ministers had been “incorrect.”

Details of the two flights, which stopped to refuel at the Indian Ocean island in 2002, were only passed to the government by US authorities last week. Mr Miliband claimed that this was due to an “administration error” on the part of the US. He hailed Washington’s “voluntary” decision to disclose the information as a sign of US commitment to ensuring that it will not happen again.

Campaigners and Labour MPs reacted furiously to the disclosure, warning that the US had “deliberately lied” to the British government and would do it again.

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Hate site comments suggest violence against Missouri mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today asked the St. Louis, Mo., office of the FBI to investigate apparent threats against a local mosque posted on an anti-Muslim Internet hate site.

Threatening comments on the Little Green Footballs hate site about a new minaret being built near that mosque included:

1. “I suppose dynamite would be considered an extreme response.”
2. “The tower would make a nice target for lots of things…Perhaps one could start by bombing the thing with pig s**t from a light plane.”
3. “Anyone got some RPGs to coat in pig fat?”
4. “Would be a shame if it were to be vandalized or destroyed. Just a shame I tell you….wink wink STL youth.”

“These types of violent comments should not be taken lightly and should be investigated by state and federal law enforcement authorities,” said CAIR Civil Rights Manager Khadija Athman.

The apparent threats come following a recent arson attack on a Tennessee mosque allegedly by three members of the “Christian Identity” movement and a fire-bomb attack on a Minnesota Muslim business.

CAIR press release, 19 February 2008

See also “Mosque threatened, Muslim group says”, St Louis Post-Dispatch, 20 February 2008

Stab woman made ‘terrorist’ claim

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mary McKayA 32-year-old woman who stabbed an Asian teenager she called a terrorist has been jailed for six years.

At the High Court in Edinburgh, Mary McKay admitted attempting to murder Tarik Husan, 17, in Tollcross Road, Glasgow, on 10 September, 2007.

Lord Menzies said: “It seems to me this was a completely unprovoked attack on an unarmed stranger in the public street without any explainable motive.”

McKay will be supervised for two years after her release.

She stabbed Mr Husan in the chest and arm at a bus stop in Glasgow and told him “you’re all terrorists”. McKay, who had taken cocaine, later claimed she had gone to stab her mother, but had missed the bus and stabbed Mr Husan instead.

The court heard that after the attack she walked into a shop still clutching the knife and waited for the police to arrive. “I just stabbed a guy with the same colour of skin as a terrorist,” she later told police.

Mr Husan, 17, had only arrived in Scotland a short time before the attack.

BBC News, 13 February 2008

Feds charge 3 with firebombing mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamic Center of ColumbiaNASHVILLE, Tenn. — Three men have been charged in the firebombing of a small mosque over the weekend, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

Authorities said Eric Ian Baker, 32, Michael Corey Golden, 23, and Jonathan Edward Stone, 19, had planned for a week to burn down the Islamic Center of Columbia, about 40 miles southwest of Nashville, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul O’Brian said.

The men are accused of using gasoline, rags and empty beer bottles to set fire to the storefront mosque on Saturday. The men, who were arrested later that day, are facing federal charges of unlawful possession of a destructive device and state charges of arson.

The federal complaint filed against the men says Stone and Baker told officers they were members of the Christian Identity movement, an extreme doctrine that claims white Europeans are God’s chosen people. The complaint also said Baker spray-painted swastikas on the walls of the building, including the phrase “White Power.”

Associated Press, 13 February 2008

See also Al Arabiya, 13 February 2008