Thirty war graves of Muslim soldiers who fought in World War I have been attacked and defaced in the southern city of Carcassonne.
Racist insults and swastikas were painted on the graves, which are identified by the Islamic symbols of the star and crescent. Slogans including “France for the French” and “Arabs out” were painted on some of the gravestones, reported daily newspaper Le Figaro. The graves of Muslim soldiers in the same graveyard were attacked earlier this year in September.
The Dutch Freedom Party, the Netherlands’s third largest political party, urged the Foreign Affairs and Defense Ministries last week to reconsider Turkey’s continued membership in NATO.
Geert Wilders, head of the party, and its Mideast expert, deputy Wim Kortenoeven, accused Turkey of abandoning its allies – Israel earlier this year, and now France.
Earlier this year we dealt with the lies spread by “comedian” Pat Condell with regard to rapes in Oslo, which he claimed were carried out exclusively by “Muslim immigrants using rape as a weapon of cultural terrorism”.
LoonWatch has a piece by Farha Khaled (also posted on her blog) that exposes the way in which the same baseless claim has been used by many on the Islamophobic right, including the Israeli website Arutz Sheva. She wrote to the Norwegian Ministry of Justice and the Police, and received the following reply:
A 28-year-old man caught on camera hurling lumps of concrete at the police during an English Defence League demonstration in Bradford city centre was ordered to appear at Court today or be arrested.
Michael Currie failed to attend Bradford Crown Court yesterday to be sentenced for an affray on Saturday, August 28, last year. Currie sent a doctor’s note saying he was unwell because of anxiety and unfit for work for a fortnight. His barrister, Thomas Gilbart, said he was encouraged by his solicitor to attend but said he was unable to.
The association in charge of the construction of the Grand Mosque in Marseille is relieved. On Wednesday 21 December the Marseille administrative appeal court rejected two appeals filed by elected representatives of the National Front and MNR (National Republican Movement) to overturn a decision by the municipal council in July 2007 authorising the establishment of a large mosque in the city with a long lease of 50 years on a plot of 8,600 square metres.
The court noted that “the constitutional principle of secularism, which involves the neutrality of the state and local authorities of the Republic and the legal treatment of different faiths, does not, in itself, prohibit the granting (…) of a long-term administrative lease in order to build a place of worship open to the public.”
It also took the view that the decision does not violate the 1905 law on separation of church and state and rejected the argument that the rent is too low (€24,000 per year).
The controversial sale of the Drill Hall site in High Town to a Muslim group has been axed, with Luton Borough Council announcing yesterday (Dec 21) that homes will be built there instead.
At a secret meeting last week, members of the council’s executive decided that the site should be used for housing, rather than be sold to the Shia Muslim Masjid-e-Ali group for £1.5 million.
A spokesman for the group said its members were “extremely disappointed” by the decision.
Attackers sprayed a West Bank mosque with anti-Islamic and pro-settler graffiti on Monday, a Palestinian official said, in an assault that bore the hallmarks of another raid by Jewish extremists.
The mayor of Bani Naim south of Hebron said that slogans in Hebrew sprayed on walls surrounding the village’s Sahaba mosque included “curses against the Prophet Mohammed” as well as “price tag” and “Yitzhar youth,” a reference to a hardline settlement and nearby outpost in the northern West Bank.
Hundreds of Arabs across Israel took to the streets Saturday to rally against attacks on mosques and the so-called ‘mosque bill,’ which aims to prohibit mosques from sounding public calls for prayer.
The protesters carried signs reading: “We won’t agree to silence the Muezzin”, “A democratic state doesn’t attack freedom of religion” and “Transfer state.” Demonstrators also chanted against the torching of mosques in Jerusalem and in the West Bank.
Dozens of demonstrators gathered in the Arab-Israeli towns of Umm al-Fahm and Shfaram, with more protestors joining in various other communities, including Baka al-Garbiyeh, Tira, Taiba, Sakhnin, Tarshiha, Nazareth, Rahat, Jaffa, Kabul and Jisr az-Zarqa.
Thus the headline to a report by the British National Party. They have uploaded a video of the annual procession held by Shia Muslims in Newport to mark the Day of Ashura. According to the BNP, this is a “striking example of the steady colonisation of our country”.
All is not lost, though: “The good news is that these Muslim colonists are still massively outnumbered in Wales, and indeed through the UK as a whole. It is not too late to both stop and reverse the immigration tide. But time is running short.”
Not that short, you might think. Shia Muslims currently comprise around 0.3% of the population of the UK.
The Home Office has written to an umbrella group representing a range of Jewish communal and religious groups in response to statements distancing themselves from the methods and aims of the English Defence League.
Earlier this year the leaders of the United Synagogue, Reform, Liberal and Masorti communities, as well as the Board of Deputies and the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ congregation, highlighted their opposition to the EDL’s tactics and called on the far right organisation to refrain from using Jewish and Israeli symbols in its campaigns.