Happier days: Guramit Singh on an English Defence League platform alongside Stephen Lennon
A convicted offender who fled Nottingham before his trial is now back in custody. Guramit Singh Kalirai, 31, of Ullswater Crescent, Bramcote, was arrested by officers in Long Eaton yesterday (Sunday 6 October 2013).
Plans to turn an abandoned pub into an Islamic community centre have sparked a fierce debate.
The South West London Ismaili Community has purchased the old Worcester Park Tavern which closed in August 2012. The group is launching a public consultation on proposals to turn the former public house into a centre for activities, a library and an area for meditation and spiritual practices.
Many of those commenting on our online story hope that the scheme will rejuvenate the building which has been left abandoned and blighted by squatters.
Others have voiced their opposition to it, with one reader commenting: “I’m sorry but I grew up in the area and don’t want to see this. I don’t live in the Middle East, I live near Worcester Park. This will just drive the area down and drive away residents that have lived in the area all their lives.”
But Nikki R hit back: “The ignorance that comes out when people read the word ‘Islamic’ is breathtaking. If and when the centre is open, politely request to visit. They’d make you welcome and you may learn more about people than what the Daily Mail chooses to tell you.”
A woman from Charlton has been fined £150 pounds and ordered to pay £100 compensation after assaulting a woman wearing a burka in an unprovoked attack.
Tracy Davies has been found guilty of racially aggravated common assault. Her victim – a 55-year-old Somali woman – was shopping with her daughter in Woolwich when the 46 year old from Charlton Lane shouted racist remarks before hitting and punching her several times. Davies denied having carried out the attack – but a number of witnesses claimed otherwise.
The science teacher of a teenager accused of planning a repeat of the Columbine massacre told a court the boy asked him which gun he would prefer to be shot with. The 17-year-old, who can not be named for legal reasons, also asked for advice from the chemistry teacher about making explosives and told him he wanted to “blow up a mosque,” the Old Bailey heard.
The teacher, who can not be named, told the jury his former pupil looked at firearms on the internet while at school and referred to weapons used in the Columbine high school shootings in Colorado, in which 13 innocent people were killed. “He was encouraging me to look at the guns and make some sort of judgment about whether it was a good gun,” the teacher said. “He asked me which gun I would prefer to be shot with. The message – which I took as an empty threat at the time – was he was considering a shooting.”
The teacher told the court that the student would launch “tirades” against particular religions, aiming his abuse mainly at the Muslim and Jewish faiths, as well as targeting a pupil with German grandparents. “There were many instances of defiance and instances of racial abuse,” he said. “Instances of racism, tirades – long, drawn out – which were frankly painful to listen to. He seemed to believe that people of the Muslim religion did not have a place in this country.”
We have previously covered the controversy over plans for a new mosque in Worcester Park. These plans resulted in a mass petition against the development, interventions by the National Front and English Defence League, and the daubing of a swastika on the door of the building, before the application for planning permission was finally rejected by Sutton Council last month.
Yesterday the Surrey Comet reported that the Ismaili community are hoping to convert a derelict pub in the same area into a community centre (further details can be found at the Worcester Park Blog). Predictably, the proposal has unleashed the usual wave of anti-Muslim hatred and bigotry.
English Defence League protesting in Bradford in August 2010
Two Bradford MPs today demanded the banning of a march by the far-right English Defence League in Bradford next weekend. The controversial rally planned for Saturday, October 12 has been allowed by police to proceed. But today MPs George Galloway and Gerry Sutcliffe asked West Yorkshire’s Police Commissioner and Chief Constable to reverse the decision.
Mr Galloway said: “The EDL are a scourge who seek to sow division and hatred wherever they go. Time and again, people from ethnic minorities, their places of worship, passers by and even the police have been subject to terrible abuse and even violence from the thugs who come on all their events.”
We have already run two pieces on National Secular Society council member and One Law For All spokesperson Anne Marie Waters and her involvement with the notorious “counterjihad” publication Dispatch International (see here and here).
However, it’s also worth noting that Waters’ new role as a contributor to DI has gone down very well elsewhere in the “counterjihad” network. Here is George Igler congratulating Ingrid Carlqvist on her recruitment of such a well-known figure from the secularist movement:
Carlqvist we have previously introduced – she is co-editor of DI and a firm proponent of the view that western civilisation is being dumbed down as a result of “huge immigration from low IQ countries”. But who is George Igler?
A 16-year-old neo-Nazi plotted a Columbine-inspired school massacre using pipe bombs, knives, and a crossbow, the Old Bailey heard today (Weds).
The English Defence League supporter stockpiled homemade bombs, terrorist manuals, and an array of weapons as he planned attacks on his former school and the college where he was studying for his A-Levels.
He kept a notebook of potential targets, including the local mosque, REEL cinema, Loughborough University and council offices, and dubbed plans for an armed assault on his former school as “the new Columbine”, it is said.
Inspired by the violent Nick Cave film Outlaw and Heath Ledger’s portrayal of Batman nemesis the Joker in The Dark Knight, the teen allegedly drew up a list of teachers and pupils he wanted to murder.
He scrawled the mantra “When order fails, violence prevails” in his notebook, which had Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara on the front alongside slogans including “EDL: No Surrender”, “British and Proud”, and Nazi Swastika drawings. The teenager, who is now 17 and cannot be named because of his age, had a Nazi flag above his bed and wrote essays on his hatred of Muslims.
Controversial protest group the English Defence League has cancelled a demonstration in Bournemouth which would have coincided with the visit of Millwall Football Club.