Category Archives: Anti-Muslim violence

Threats push hijab-clad Belgian to resign

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A hijab-clad Muslim woman in Belgium was forced to quit her job after no longer being able to stand up to death threats from a fundamentalist group.

“I have decided to quit, to let it drop, to take some time off so that things calm down,” said 31-year-old Naimi Amzil, according to Agence France Presse (AFP) Thursday, March 3.

Amzil, of a Moroccan origin, has been receiving death threats for no reasons just because she is a Muslim and wears hijab.

The latest in a series of death threats was a letter containing two bullets signed by an extremist group calling itself “New Free Flanders”. The fundamentalist group said that an execution was being prepared, threatening to poison produce made at the delicatessen factory in west Flanders where she worked.

Amzil and her employer Rick Remmery, who runs a successful worldwide famous seafood firm based in western Belgium, hit the newsstands after they were received by Belgian King Albert II following their refusal to bow to death threats against them.

The tragic chain of events became known last November when a group calling itself “New Free Flanders”, demanded that Remmery sack 31-year-old Amzil if she insists on wearing hijab, accusing him of being “a bad Belgian who collaborates with Muslims.” The group threatened Remmery and his family in case of noncompliance.

Amzil offered to take off her hijab during working hours or resign, but a brave Remmery shrugged off both options.

Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said he was disappointed at Amzil’s resignation, vowing to bring those behind the threats to justice. “I am shocked. We will do everything we can to find those behind this.” Similar reactions were expressed by other Belgian officials.

Belgian Equal Opportunities Minister, Christian Dupont, stressed that “it is a scandal that the person making these threats remains comfortably at home.” “It is unacceptable and inhuman that a worker who wears a headscarf… should be driven to resign after a series of threats,” said Dupont.

IslamOnline, 4 March 2005

Rise in race crimes ‘due to war on terror’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rise in race crimes ‘due to war on terror’

Robert Verkaik

Independent, 18 January 2005

Racist crime in England and Wales reached record levels last year, prompting fears of an outbreak of Islamophobia sparked by the war on terror.

Figures published by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) today show prosecutions of racially aggravated offences have increased by 2,500 since race-hate laws were introduced in 1999. In the past two years, those prosecutions have jumped by more than 20 per cent.

Today’s report confirms fears raised by Muslim and Asian leaders that there is a link between the war on terror and a rise in racist incidents.

Last year, the Director of Public Prosecutions warned that a growth in race-hate crime and a sharp rise in the number of young Asian men being stopped by the police threatened to alienate Britain’s Muslim communities.

That picture is supported by prosecutions of religiously aggravated crime, which has more than doubled in the past year with Muslims identified as the victims in half of all cases.

One of the 49 cases involved a passenger in a minicab who subjected the Muslim driver to racially and religiously abusive language. After pleading guilty to religiously aggravated common assault, he received four months imprisonment. Ken Macdonald QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, told The Independent last year that the typical race-hate element of a crime involved white youths calling Asians “mullahs, Bin Ladens or Taliban”.

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Rise of racism and its perpetrators escaping justice unacceptable

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Today’s figures on conviction rates of perpetrators of racism show an small increase in the rate of prosecutions (2%), but in the context of a 13% rise of the number of racist crimes referred to the CPS. The figures also show a rise in cases of religious hatred, with half the cases affecting Muslims or people who were perceived as being Muslims.

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Neo-Nazi gang arrested for mosque attacks

Posted on by Eddie Truman

BARCELONA — Police have arrested a neo-Nazi gang which had carried out attacks on mosques and businesses owned by Muslims.

Seven people, including three teenagers, were arrested in towns near Girona, in Catalonia in north-east Spain. Those arrested were partially identified as Gerard B.A., 18, Jessica P.C, 24,  Josep V.V., 20, Francisco A.G., 20, who were all from Palafrugell, Salt or Girona. Three other teenagers who are under age were not named by police.

The group, called The Black Front, was said to espouse Nazi philosophy. The group carried out attacks on mosques, businesses owned by Muslims and other people whose ideologies were opposed to their own.

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Boy, 14, beat Muslim student in racist attack

Posted on by Eddie Truman

It did not occur to Yasir Abdelmouttalib to be afraid. And he paid little heed to friends warning him against wearing Islamic white robes to prayers. That decision seems to have cost him his health and his future. It almost cost him his life.

Yesterday the trial ended of three 14-year-old boys accused of a vicious attack on the 22-year-old university graduate as he waited for a bus in Willesden, north-west London, one Friday afternoon in June.

The jury heard how three boys taunted and spat at Mr Abdelmouttalib through the bus window and how, when he remonstrated, one boy took ferocious revenge. Mr Abdelmouttalib, a tall, slight figure, was repeatedly punched and kicked and struck in the head with a heavy roadsweepers’ broom.

One teenager was convicted at Harrow crown court of causing grievous bodily harm with intent and will be sentenced on December 20. Two others, who denied taking part in the attack, were acquitted.

Mr Abdelmouttalib was unable to give evidence. He remains in hospital, brain damaged and paralysed. He has lost most of his sight.

He told the Guardian that he still retained his spirit: “Everything has changed, but they will not defeat me … I was an active man. Now I can’t do anything. I can’t read, my memory is failing. I had to stop my studies.” He hopes to do a PhD one day. “But who can tell? My life is in the hands of Allah.”

His speech is slow and slurred, but his anger is palpable. “I would sentence him to death because as far as I am concerned, he wanted to kill me. He hit me as if I had sworn at him or killed someone he loved.”

He believes his tunic and beard may have singled him out. “All the time television talks about Osama bin Laden and I think they thought, ‘Let’s take revenge.’ They are not human beings. No human would attack someone like this.”

Guardian, 30 November 2004

The Left and Islam

Posted on by Eddie Truman

“Since September 11 2001, Islamophobia – fear and hatred of Muslims – has been on the rampage across the Western world. In the UK, racist tabloid newspapers daily churn out frenzied reports of Muslim clerics declaring jihad against the West. The scaremongering of newspapers like the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express has succeeded in inciting widescale violence and abuse directed against the entire Muslim population.”

Eddie Truman in Scottish Socialist Voice.

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BNP activists admit to race crime

Posted on by Eddie Truman

British National Party activists have confessed to racially motivated crimes including an assault on an Asian in a BBC undercover documentary. BNP member Steve Barkham told reporter Jason Gwynne how he kicked and punched a man during the 2001 Bradford riots. The Secret Agent also shows the party’s leader Nick Griffin condemning Islam as a “vicious wicked faith”.

BBC News, 15 July 2004

Australian Muslim prayer hall site vandalized

Posted on by Eddie Truman

SYDNEY — The site of a controversial Muslim prayer hall was vandalized on Thursday with pigs’ heads skewered on stakes and pork offal smeared throughout the building.

Developer Abbas Aly said builders renovating the hall at Annangrove discovered the vandalism when they arrived at work on Thursday morning. “Everyone’s mostly upset, it’s a very un-Australian thing to happen,” he said. “But this won’t put us off.”

The prayer hall attracted fierce opposition when it was first proposed in 2002, with the local Baulkham Hills Council receiving an unprecedented 5,000 letters from residents who did not want the building.

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The rising tide of Islamophobia in Britain

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Life for Britain’s 1.6 million Muslims has never been easy. For decades they have struggled in the face of discrimination. But since 11 September 2001, things have become even worse. A report by the Commission on British Muslims yesterday revealed just how poorly they are treated in this country.

“There has been an upsurge in attacks on Muslims and their places of worship. The police have been ineffective in preventing such assaults. They seem more concerned with harassing young Muslims under new stop-and-search powers granted by the Terrorism Act. There has been little evidence that such heavy-handed tactics achieve anything other than alienating the Muslim community.”

Editorial in the Independent, 3 June 2004