Anti-Islam PVV party leader Geert Wilders said on Friday that his website has been hacked. The hacker called himself a “Turkish Muslim Hacker” and left a photo of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and a verse from the Koran on the site.
The hacking follows a clash between Wilders and Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte on Thursday which focused on the PVV attitude to Erdogan.
The page has now been taken off-line and it is not known what action Wilders will take.
The Daily Star provides a platform for the English Defence League to claim that they “oppose Nazis and racists as much as al-Qaida hate-mongers” and only wear balaclavas because they “all live in Muslim neighbourhoods where our faces would be recognised”.
Today the University of Northampton publishes its new study The EDL: Britain’s ‘New Far Right’ Social Movement.
You can download it here.
I’ll try to do a review of this later, but in the meantime I would recommend Chapter 4, “The English Defence League’s leaders and followers”, by Mark Pitchford. Its conclusion is spot on:
“First, the EDL is unarguably connected to the BNP and other far‐right groups, whether by previous association or by shared interest. Secondly, some of these far‐right individuals have possessed significant weaponry that identifies them as potential ‘lone wolf’ terrorists. Thirdly, EDL leaders and followers have engaged in criminality, especially racially aggravated incidents. Fourthly, the EDL engages in double-speak that powerfully questions their claim to be a single‐issue, non‐racist movement.”
Perhaps someone should send a copy of this chapter to Adrian Tudway.
James Cohen, the recently appointed leader of the English Defence League’s Jewish division, has a post over at the International Free Press Society’s website attacking the 8-month sentence imposed on an EDL member, one Daniel Parker, who chanted racist slogans outside a mosque in South Yorkshire.
Bizarrely, Cohen heads his report “EDL supporter jailed for 8 months for chanting outside a London Mosque”. I mean, I know the EDL’s support within Anglo-Jewry is so minimal that they have to appoint a Canadian as the head of JDiv, but is Cohen really so ignorant of the country whose Jewish community he’s supposed to represent that he thinks London is in Yorkshire?
Cohen also complains that the Sheffield Star editorial he reproduces “gives little to none in terms of information that would indicate what this person actually did”. Well, let us fill in some of the details for him. According to a report in the Yorkshire Post, Daniel Parker was part of an EDL gang who besieged the Muslim Community Centre in Barnsley, throwing stones at the building and subjecting the imam to what the judge who sentenced Parker described as “vile and disgusting” racist abuse.
On their Facebook page, by the way, Barnsley EDL state: “Our arguement is not against normal muslim people but extremists preaching hate on our streets/harbouring terrorists and encouraging the formation of an islamic state within our shores. Despite constant bad press claiming we are racist this is completely inaccurate….”
Prime Minister Mark Rutte has crossed swords in parliament with populist Freedom Party (PVV) leader Geert Wilders. The PVV has an agreement to support the minority centre-right government from parliament on most issues.
At one point, the two men shouted at each other to “behave normally”. The exchange followed the prime minister objecting to an earlier statement by a PVV MP, calling Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan an “Islamic monkey”.
Mr Rutte also warned the PVV leader against overemphasising the problem of criminality amongst Dutch-Moroccan youths. He told Mr Wilders that this could lead to the alienation of law-abiding and highly qualified members of the Dutch-Moroccan community. Mr Wilders countered that such people should take the criminal members of their community in hand.
The prime minister also made it clear that the government is against holding a referendum on banning the construction of new minarets on mosques in the Netherlands. On Wednesday, the PVV put forward holding such a referendum.
Here’s a photo from Blackburn EDL’s Facebook page that a contact has drawn our attention to. It may be questionable whether Michael Nazir-Ali knew that the people he was being photographed with were EDL. But it’s hardly surprising that they wanted to discuss “the dangers of sharia law and radical Islam” with him, as the former Bishop of Rochester’s views on those issues have much in common with the EDL’s.
The discussion took place in June at a talk by Nazir-Ali at St Andrew’s Church in Leyland, which was billed by his hosts as focusing on “the rise of Secularism and Islam and how Christians in high density Muslim areas like ours might best respond”. Nazir-Ali’s talk was well received by the EDL. “I could have listened to him for at least another 2 hours!!!”, one member of Blackburn division commented. “Felt GREAT that a man of the cloth was on our wavelength – BRILLIANT!!”
It’s just one more example of how mainstream Islamophobia provides the conditions in which more thuggish forms of anti-Muslim hatred exemplified by the EDL (see for example here and here) can thrive and grow.
The anti-Islam PVV wants to hold a referendum on the building of new minarets in the Netherlands, along the line of the Swiss vote, party leader Geert Wilders said on Wednesday. Wilders said he is to submit draft legislation to parliament to pave the way for a public vote.
“Minarets hurt the eyes. They are the towers of a rising desert ideology,” the Telegraaf quoted Wilders as saying. Minarets have nothing to do with religion, he said. Rather, they are meant to be an “imperialist and ideological sign of domination’.
Plans for a new mosque and community centre in the West Midlands have been turned down for the second time. Dudley Council refused permission on Monday for the buildings, which would feature a 35ft (10m) high minaret.
Dr Kurshid Ahmed, chairman of the town’s Muslim association, said the decision was “Islamophobic”. The council said its decision was based solely on planning reasons as the scale and design of the building would be out of keeping with buildings in the area.
The council originally refused outline planning permission for the Hall Street mosque in February 2007 on the basis the land had already been designated exclusively for employment use under the council’s unitary development plan. A planning inspectorate overturned the council’s reason for refusing outline planning approval in July 2008. The council fought the decision in the High Court in July 2009 and lost.
Full plans for a mosque and community centre went before Dudley planning committee on Monday night but were rejected.
Dr Ahmed said: “Obviously I am disappointed but certainly not surprised because decisions in Dudley planning committee are driven by the influence of bigotry, racism and Islamophobia.” Dr Ahmed said he was aware that the proposed buildings had been described by some councillors as “an alien feature” and “a blot on the landscape”.
He added: “There’s not really any planning consideration as the two comments that you’ve just referred to suggest, so it is a decision based on people’s prejudices against Islam. They don’t want to see a mosque or they see it as a blot, they see it as completely out of character, which means that they are still living in some historical context and don’t see the globalisation of today and Dudley as part of that.”
Dr Ahmed said it was evidence that council policy was being determined on the basis of anti-Muslim prejudices and described it as “institutional Islamophobia”.
See also Dudley News, 20 September 2011
Update: Kurshid Ahmed’s charge of Islamophobia is reinforced by the news that Gavin Boby of the far-right Law and Freedom Foundation (aka “Mosquebusters”) is involved in the anti-mosque campaign. For details see here, here and here.
The Sheffield Star has an editorial welcoming the 8-month prison sentence given to English Defence League supporter Daniel Parker who chanted racist slogans outside a South Yorkshire mosque.
Plans for a mosque and community centre on land in Hall Street, Dudley have been rejected by Dudley Council planners.
Members of the Development Control Committee unanimously refused the application for Dudley Muslim Association to build the mosque. Despite last minute alterations and changes to the design by the applicant, councillors still slammed the multi-million pound proposal, calling it “characterless”, “featureless”, “inappropriate” and an “alien feature”.
However councillors did agree to extend the time limit for the previous application, which means the DMA have a further three years to submit more plans.
Speaking about the decision following the meeting, DMA spokesman, Mushtaq Hussain, said he was “very disappointed” with the outcome. He said the DMA would now need to consider whether they would lodge an appeal against the decision, which he believed would be likely. But he added the architects would also be going back to the drawing board to look at further plans.
Dudley News, 19 September 2011
See also “Mosque plan refused amid wave of protest”, Express & Star, 20 September 2011
And “Plans for new mosque in Dudley rejected by council”, Birmingham Post, 20 September 2011
Update: Needless to say, the English Defence League are chuffed to bits about this further setback for the DMA.
Last year the EDL organised two demonstrations in Dudley against the proposed mosque – one of which ended in a riot, while the other resulted in an attack on a Hindu temple. In between, a rooftop protest at the intended mosque site was staged by two EDL members – UDA supporter Leon McCreery and raving antisemite John “Snowy” Shaw. Only a couple of months ago EDL supporters were posting comments on the EDL Facebook page threatening to bomb the mosque if construction went ahead. So you can see why the EDL are proud of their record.