Walsall Labour Party is giving its full support to a peaceful demonstration celebrating community strength and tolerance being held in Gallery Square on Saturday at 11am.
The “We are Walsall” rally is being held to counter the racism of the English Defence League who are bussing in people from across the country to incite hatred of the town’s Muslim community.
Earlier this week the English Defence League’s political wing, the British Freedom party, announced the appointment of their new South West regional organiser. She’s an EDL activist from Bristol named Chelsea Anne White.
White’s explanation of her decision to join British Freedom features the usual anti-Muslim rhetoric – “mosques, we don’t want them and we don’t want burka-clad women on our beaches…. We don’t want animals sent for halal slaughter”.
Fiachra Gibbons reponds to Marine Le Pen’s proposal to ban the kippah along with the hijab.
El País reports that the Ibn Al-Abbar Islamic centre at Onda in eastern Spain has been the victim of an arson attack. The chairman of the centre’s committee, Milud Guettaf, said that it was only because the attack was on a part of the building where there are no carpets that the fire did not spread throughout the centre.
Guettaf added that worshippers had been subjected to racist abuse by an individual as they left the mosque the previous evening. He also referred to the role of the far-right group España 2000, which has a councillor in Onda, in whipping up anti-Muslim sentiment. In November last year España 2000 organised a demonstration in the town, protesting against the mosque and the “Islamist invasion”.
Expose draws our attention to a link to a YouTube video that was posted on the official EDL Facebook page this morning. It features a brutal attack by Russian skinheads on an anti-racism festival at Miass in August 2010. The link has since been removed without explanation.
The soundtrack to the video is “Kick the Reds In” by the neo-Nazi band Whitelaw, which you may recall was also used by the EDL’s Essex Division to advertise an anti-mosque protest in Chelmsford last month.
A kickboxing champ has said an Anders Breivik-style attack could happen in the UK.
Darren Clifft, who is pictured on Facebook doing a Hitler salute while dressed in a Ku Klux Klan hood, said far-right nuts had been inspired by the Norwegian who killed 77 people in Oslo and on the island of Utøya. And the jobless racist, 22, said he would applaud anyone who carried out such an attack.
The cancellation of Saturday’s planned rally in Melbourne against Islamophobia didn’t prevent people turning up to denounce Islam. The small anti-Islam protest brought together atheists brandishing signs reading “(Like all religions) Islam is false” and fascist thugs wearing SS insignia. The latter included Nationalist Alternative, a neo-Nazi group who reject opportunist attempts to win popular support by targeting Islam alone and uphold the right of white Australians to abuse and insult Muslims and Jews equally.
Fears are growing of trouble in Walsall next weekend after it was revealed that the English Defence League are to mount a demonstration in the town centre – while groups opposing the far-right group are also planning an event in the town.
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen called Friday for a ban on wearing Muslim veils and Jewish skullcaps in public, adding to religious tensions sparked by cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
In an interview with the Le Monde newspaper, Le Pen called for religious headwear to be banned “in stores, on public transport and on the streets”.
Asked if the ban should apply to the Jewish skullcap, known as the kippah or yarmulke, as well as Muslim headwear, she said: “It is obvious that if the veil is banned, the kippah is banned in public as well.”
Today your Guardian teams up with Waltham Forest Council to stop the English Defence League (EDL) peddling its hatred and prejudice in our borough for the second time in two months.
Our joint campaign “Waltham Forest – United. Strong. Together.” calls on the government to step in and ban the EDL from going ahead with its planned march through Walthamstow on October 27.
The move follows hot on the heels of the EDL’s last parade through the town on September 1, when its route was blocked by opponents who outnumbered the marchers by 10 to one.