The court case against anti-Islam campaigner and MP Geert Wilders will go ahead as planned, the three judges hearing the case said on Monday.
Wilders’ legal team had tried to have the case dropped on a number of legal grounds.
But while agreeing the case, based on charges of inciting hatred and discrimination will continue, Wilders should not be charged with comparing Islam to fascism, the judges said.
April elections in Finland could see the rise of yet another Northern European anti-immigrant, nationalist rightwing party that flatly rejects the far-right label while using populist rhetoric.
The True Finns is the latest such party to show signs of gaining mainstream traction. Opinion polls suggest its showing in the April 17 parliamentary election could leap from its 4.1 percent score in the 2007 election right up to 20 percent.
The True Finns, Sweden Democrats (SD), the Danish People’s Party (DPP) and Norway’s Progress Party (FrP) are all already represented in their respective national parliaments.
Christian Voice will be leafleting football supporters attending the England v Ghana friendly at Wembley Stadium this evening to warn them that halal meat is allegedly being served in the stadium takeaways.
The text of the leaflet can be consulted here. It states:
“We asked the FA to confirm in writing that the beef burgers at Wembley are not halal. They refused. They would not even say if their halal chicken, lamb and any beef on sale is stunned before slaughter. Even if it is, that is not the point. A Muslim slaughterman still chants ‘Bismillah Allahu Akbar’ (meaning ‘In the name of Allah, Allah is the greatest’) over each halal animal killed, sacrificing it to Allah. Anyone buying halal meat will be eating Sharia Law.”
“Eating Sharia Law”! Well, at least we’re spared the usual lying nonsense from right-wing anti-halal campaigners about being motivated by concern for animal welfare.
Alan Lake of the English Defence League, who has a background in right-wing evangelical Christianity, has been plugging the event on his 4 Freedoms site. But without any evident success. On the Protest Against Unlabelled Halal at Wembley Facebook page all of 10 people are listed as “maybe attending”.
Update: It appears that the leafleting was less than a total success. One supporter who joined Christian Voice leader Stephen Green in handing out the leaflets reports that “a muslim complained and a Policeman arrived with someone from the Brent Council to challenge me as to whether I had sought permission to give them out. I had not… and neither had Stephen… So they seized whet leaflets we had in our hands… and sadly we had to stop”. According to another account, the leaflets that Green and his supporters did manage to distribute were “discarded like confetti all along Wembley Way”.
Detectives hope new CCTV images will help them find a man who attacked a police officer at Chester railway station. An initial appeal to find the suspect failed, but British Transport Police hope the release of a new image [left] will encourage further witnesses to step forward.
The incident took place at about 4.40pm on Thursday, November 11, last year following a demonstration by the English Defence League in Chester.
After the demonstration a large number of EDL members arrived at the city’s station to catch trains. BTP officers attended and sought to control a swelling crowd, but as the number of people grew officers became involved in an altercation with several protesters.
During the fight PC Graham Funnell was assaulted twice and was kicked to the groin by one of the demonstrators.
DC Jaime Brannagan said: “PC Funnell was carrying out a civic duty to maintain order and protect members of the public when he was assaulted by the EDL member. BTP simply will not tolerate violence or aggression on the railway and will do everything in its power to bring those who behave inappropriately to justice.”
He added: “We were unsuccessful with our initial appeal to trace the man responsible, but I now hope, with the release of a CCTV image of a man we would like to speak to in connection with the incident, we will be able to jog someone’s memory and bring the offender to justice. It’s possible the offender is from Shropshire as several others in the group bought tickets to Shrewsbury, but it is also possible he is local to Cheshire or Merseyside.”
If you recognise the man from the CCTV, or have any information in relation to the incident, please contact BTP on 0800 40 50 40 or call Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111. In all calls please quote reference 389 of 11/11/10.
Far right groups are thought to be one of the causes behind a rise in race hate attacks in Portsmouth, The News can reveal.
New figures show that 455 incidents were reported to the city’s Racial Awareness Service over a nine-month period – a 25 per cent year-on-year rise. Police also say hate crime – which includes those targeted because of their race or religion – went up by 16 per cent in the city to 317 last year. Fareham, Gosport, Havant and Waterlooville also saw a nine per cent rise in hate crime.
Sharon Furtado, who manages Portsmouth City Council’s Racial Awareness Service, said: “The rise (in race attacks) could be due to a whole host of reasons. Last year we had the elections and the British National Party and far right groups had more of a platform to express their views. Sometimes people listen to them and it touches a chord with them. It could also be down to the recession and there being a feeling that immigrants are coming in and taking jobs. We don’t know what the trigger is that makes someone decide to act.”
Last November, up to 100 people were involved in a demonstration at the Jami Mosque in Victoria Road North, Southsea [pictured]. The protest was sparked after a small group of Muslim extremists – not from Portsmouth – burned poppies in London during the two-minute silence on Armistice Day. The English Defence League was blamed for organising the protests, which resulted in several arrests and charges.
Geert Wilders was invited to deliver the annual lecture at the Magna Carta Foundation in Rome on 25 March. His speech can be found on the PVV website, and has been enthusiastically reproduced at Jihad Watch, Atlas Shrugs, Winds of Jihad and other rabidly Islamophobic blogs. The British National Party in London are fans too, as indeed is the BNP’s former legal adviser Lee Barnes.
Most of the content of Wilders’ speech is predictable. You know the sort of thing. Islam is plotting to conquer Europe (“Islam strives for world domination. The koran commands Muslims to exercise jihad and impose shariah law”) and the left has made a conscious decision to facilitate this takeover through its embrace of multiculturalism. According to Wilders:
“Leftist multiculturalists are cheering for every new shariah bank, for every new islamic school, for every new mosque. Multiculturalists consider Islam as being equal to our own culture. Shariah law or democracy? Islam or freedom? It doesn’t really matter to them. But it does matter to us. The entire leftist elite is guilty of practising cultural relativism. Universities, churches, trade unions, the media, politicians. They are all betraying our hard-won liberties.”
And not just the left. According to Wilders, “the establishment parties of the Right still harbour their belief that Islam is a religion of peace on a par with peaceful religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and others”. Whereas, in Wilders’ opinion, “the truth is that Islam is evil, and the reality is that Islam is a threat to us”.
Wilders offers his solutions. “First, we will have to defend freedom of speech” (except of course when freedom of speech is used to attack Wilders himself). We must abandon cultural relativism, resist the encroachment of sharia law, “forbid the construction of new mosques” and strengthen the powers of the nation state in order to “stop immigration from Islamic countries”, while existing communities of recent migrant origin “must assimilate and adapt to our values”.
One proposal that hasn’t been heard from Wilders before, so far as we know, is to support and celebrate Muslims who decide to renounce their faith. Wilders states:
“An International Women’s Day is useless in the Arab world if there is no International Leave Islam Day. I propose the introduction of such a day in which we can honor the courageous men and women who want to leave Islam. Perhaps we can pick a symbolic date for such a day and establish an annual prize for an individual who has turned his back on Islam or an organization which helps people to liberate themselves from Islam.”
You might wonder whether this opens up the possibility of co-operation between Wilders and Maryam Namazie, who has played a prominent role in the campaign to encourage Muslims to abandon their faith. At any rate, it looks to me like Namazie and her Council of Ex-Muslims would be worthy recipients of Wilders’ prize. Wilders could also consider approaching Johann Hari, who might well be interested supporting this initiative – particularly if it involves his hero Ehsan Jami, who was expelled from the Dutch Labour Party for co-authoring an anti-Islam article with Wilders and has since joined the PVV.
The man behind proposals for an Islamic Cultural Centre at a disused social club destroyed by fire says he is uncertain what the site’s future holds.
Mohammed Munchab Ali, chairman of the Flintshire Muslim Cultural Society, told the Leader that plans to establish a centre with a mosque in Flintshire remain in place despite Shotton Lane Social Club being burned to the ground early on February 4.
But he said any possibility of developing on the former social club land is out of the group’s hands and they remain in the dark over what the likely future of the site is.
Police yesterday confirmed they are continuing to investigate the cause of the blaze, although they have said they are treating it as suspicious.
Mr Ali, who reached an agreement for the society to move into the social club shortly before the fire, said: “What happens with the site in Shotton is beyond our control. We are still waiting to hear from the police about the fire. The situation has not really changed since the fire but we still want to create an Islamic Cultural Centre in Flintshire.”
The group is continuing to use Queensferry Community Centre but retain hopes they can expand by moving into a larger facility despite the fire and protests against the proposed development. Their hopes for a new centre include inviting all members of the Flintshire community to come and learn more about Islamic culture and to provide more facilities for women and children.
“Although we are still able to use the community centre, it is a limited facility,” added Mr Ali, owner of the Bengal Dynasty chain of restaurants. “We are finding difficulties because of the small space available and we wanted to expand our activities. “The reasons why we wanted to move are still in place.”
The site is now in the hands of receivers, with the remains of the building having been demolished. Community leaders earlier this week called for action to be taken quickly over the future of the land and clear up the “eyesore” of rubble that remains.
Mr Ali said he felt people had stopped talking about the fire during the past seven weeks but added there has been plenty of support for his organisation’s aims. He said: “A lot of people have written to us since the fire. We have had people wiring and saying they were very sorry about what had happened. If there is a positive over what happened, it has been the support we have received from people.”
Islam has emerged as a central issue in the campaign for French local elections Sunday that President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party hopes to win by taking a tough line on the integration of France’s large Muslim minority.
Sarkozy, who faces an uphill battle for reelection next year, has set the tone by blurring the border between his UMP party and the National Front, the once-shunned anti-immigrant party that recently overtook him in opinion polls.
Interior Minister Claude Gueant, until recently Sarkozy’s chief of staff in the Elysee Palace, has fleshed this out with a series of statements flirting with the anti-Muslim rhetoric that has made National Front leader Marine Le Pen so popular.
“The French don’t feel like they’re at home here anymore,” Gueant said this month in a verbal wink and nod at voters upset by the large numbers of Muslims in the country. “They want France to remain France.” The minister has called the Western-led air strikes against Libya a “crusade,” evoking Christian-Muslim conflict, and suggested that patients in public hospitals must avoid wearing religious symbols – another issue concerning mainly Muslims.
This rhetorical escalation came as France neared a runoff vote Sunday in local council elections. Le Pen’s National Front surged to win 15 percent of votes in the first round on March 20, just two points behind Sarkozy’s UMP party.
Both the centre-right government and Le Pen declare their aim is to defend “laicite” – the aggressive French secularism that strives to keep religion out of the public sector.
But amid debate about offering halal food in school canteens and Muslims praying in the street because their mosques are too small, the term “laicite” is clearly code for the problems France has adjusting to its 5-million strong Muslim minority.
The debate has alienated many Muslims, even such moderate figures as Grand Mosque of Paris Rector Dalil Boubakeur, who announced Wednesday he would not take part in a public debate on secularism that the UMP plans to hold on April 5. He said the debate about Islam “has greatly upset and worried Muslims who feel stigmatised because of their faith.”
The debate has carved deep rifts in the UMP leadership, even pitting Prime Minister Francois Fillon against Sarkozy and the UMP secretary general Jean-Francois Cope.
The debate has also sown confusion on the left because of a petition against the Islam debate launched by Respect Mag, a magazine that aims to promote intercultural understanding. The UMP rounded on opposition Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry and former Socialist Prime Minister Laurent Fabius for supporting the text when it emerged that Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss-born Muslim activist, had also signed it.
Both quickly withdrew their support because of Ramadan, who is vilified here as a covert Islamist out to subvert France. “If these two (parties) had wanted to agree to open the door wide to Marine Le Pen, they would not have done anything differently,” said Ramadan, a professor of Islamic studies at Britain’s Oxford University.
A Mansfield man has been jailed for eight weeks for causing criminal damage during English Defence League and Unite Against Fascism protests in the Leicester. John Kavanagh, 22, of Fritchley Court, pleaded guilty at Leicester Magistrates’ Court to two charges of criminal damage.
The incidents happened on October 9 last year, when damage was caused to windows at Fabrika Bar at the Arts Centre in Humberstone Gate East. Damage was also caused to police barriers placed on Humberstone Gate.
Two men have been charged in connection with a fire at a mosque in Stoke-on-Trent.
Emergency crews were called when live CCTV footage showed smoke coming from the mosque in Regent Road, Hanley, at about 0630 GMT on 3 December, 2010.
Two men from the city, aged 23, and 28, have been charged with arson with intent to endanger life. Staffordshire Police said the men were due to appear before North Staffordshire magistrates on Friday.
See also The Sentinel, 25 March 2011
Update: See “Hanley mosque arson attack suspects bailed for crown court”, The Sentinel, 26 March 2011
Further update: See also “English Defence League activist charged with arson & intent to endanger life”, Exposing the English Defence League, 28 March 2011