Category Archives: Far right racists

BNP wins two seats in Europe

Posted on by Bob Pitt

bnp-islam-posterThe British National Party on Monday won its first seats in the European Parliament, in a major breakthrough for a party reviled by mainstream politicians for its anti-immigration stance.

Party chairman Nick Griffin was elected an MEP in the northwest of England region with eight percent of the vote, hours after Andrew Brons won the BNP’s first ever European seat in the nearby Yorkshire and the Humber region.

Griffin had earlier hailed Brons’ win – with almost 10 percent of the vote – as “a huge breakthrough” for his party, and used the victory to reiterate his party’s anti-immigration and anti-Islam stance.

Griffin told Sky News television: “This is a Christian country and Islam is not welcome, because Islam and Christianity, Islam and democracy, Islam and women’s rights do not mix. That’s a simple fact that the elites of Europe are going to have to get their heads round and deal with over the next few years.”

AFP, 8 June 2009

See also ENGAGE, 8 June 2009

Update:  See Inayat Bunglawala’s piece at Comment is Free, 11 June 2009

Antwerp: Vlaams Belang protest against mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

VlaamsBelangprotest2

Vlaams Belang held a protest yesterday against the mosque at the Sint-Bernardsesteenweg in Antwerp.

According to the party, with an area of 4,000 sqm, this would be the biggest in Flanders and would also have a koran school and imam training.

In recent days the VB gave out 50,000 flyers against the mosque which according to them would be a symbol of the Islamization of Antwerp and Flanders.

According to VB leader Filip Dewinter, the Jisr Al Amana mosque is everything but a good idea. “Islam is like a cuckoo which lays its eggs in our European next. We hatch them and will in the end be cast off,” he said.

The party walked through the local market with three women dresses in a burka with the slogan “Islam can harm your freedom”.

Islam in Europe, 5 June 2009

Dutch far-Right comes second in European Parliament election

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Geert Wilders’ far-Right anti-immigration party made significant gains in the European Parliament elections in the Netherlands on Thursday, according to exit polls.

The European Parliament elections had been widely expected to punish governments struggling to cope with the global economic crisis, and polls released by the ANP news agency and broadcaster NOS put the Right-wing Freedom Party on course to win four of the 25 Dutch seats in the parliament, after having none in the previous assembly. This put Mr Wilders’ party second only to the ruling Christian Democrats, which got nearly 20 per cent of votes, according to the poll.

Mr Wilders, who was banned from Britain by the Home Office because of his controversial views on Islam, won support from Protestant and Catholic voters disenchanted with what has been perceived as the growing influence of the nation’s 800,000 Muslims, many of them immigrants from Morocco and Turkey.

Mr Wilders, whose party was contesting European elections for the first time, campaigned on an anti-EU platform and criticised Turkey’s bid to join the EU. “Should Turkey as an Islamic country be able to join the European Union? We are the only party in Holland that says, it is an Islamic country, so no, not in 10 years, not in a million years,” he said.

Daily Telegraph, 4 June 2009

Resisting extremism in Luton

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anti-Al-Muhajiroun-protest2Farasat Latif was taking his daughter to school when he found out that the mosque he ran in Luton had been firebombed by right-wing extremists.

In the middle of the night two men in a stolen silver BMW had driven up to the Masjid Al Ghurabaa in the Bury Park area and poured petrol through a side window before making their getaway.

The anger that Mr Latif felt following that fire on 4 May could have been directed solely at the bigots who set his mosque alight. But the people he was most furious with were a motley collection of 15 to 20 young men who regularly preached a radical and intolerant brand of Islam from a street stall down the road and had helped foster the image that Luton was an Islamist stronghold.

Two weeks earlier those same men – most of whom are former members of the banned Islamist group Al Muhajiroun – had greeted soldiers of the Royal Anglian regiment who were returning from Iraq with screams of abuse and placards declaring them “Butchers of Basra”, “murderers” and “baby-killers”.

The protest outraged whole swaths of Britain, not least Luton’s 25,000 Muslims who knew all too well that their town would once again be associated with extremism.

Once the Masjid Al Ghurabaa was firebombed, in what police suspect was a retaliatory hate attack, Mr Latif sadly concluded that Luton’s ordinary Muslims were paying the price for the actions of the “Al Muhajiroun boys”. Which is why he decided to act against them. Shortly after Friday prayers last week he and 300 supporters marched down to Dunstable Road where the sect often set up their stall and told them in no uncertain terms that they were no longer welcome in Luton.

Mr Latif hopes that their decision to turn on the extremists within their own community will now prompt Luton’s white community to do the same. “I believe people on all sides are sick of the extremists,” he said. “I now hope the white working class will weed out the fascists and hate mongers just like we now have. Otherwise things will only get worse.”

Independent, 3 June 2009

Read Islamic Centre statement (pdf) here.

‘No Sharia’ demonstrators riot in Luton

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Luton riotNine people have been arrested after hundreds of anti-Islamist protesters clashed with police yesterday. The streets of Luton descended into violence after demonstrators, many hiding their faces behind balaclavas, brandished England flags and chanted at officers.

A group called March for England was said to have organised the rally as a peaceful protest against Muslim extremists. They were joined by a local group United People of Luton.

The mob, which included teenagers and women, held banners with slogans such as “No Sharia Law in the UK” and “Respect our Troops”. Some protesters wore masks with the horned face of Sayful Islam, a hardline Muslim activist in Luton who took part in an anti-war rally in March, which disrupted a homecoming parade for troops.

But chaos broke out when a crowd of around 500 ran away from police who had been escorting the protest along its route, and ran down side streets towards the town centre. Officers on horseback and police dogs were deployed, and policemen drew batons to defend themselves.

Groups of young men in balaclavas and England shirts chanted outside the city centre and one balacava-clad protester held a Rottweiler on a chain, while others clashed with police in riot gear. One Asian man was hit across the face with a banner and left with a bloody nose.

Police said during the disturbance three car windscreens were smashed and a window at a take away restaurant in Chapel Street had been broken. Last night Luton town centre was calm as police maintained a presence on the streets.

A spokesman for United People of Luton, Wayne King, said many people in Luton were concerned and annoyed that the Muslim community in the town had not taken steps to deal with Sayful Islam’s “hate-filled preachings”. The 24-year-old, who wore a T-shirt with the words “No surrender to Al-Qaeda” on it, said:

“We decided enough was enough after the soldiers got heckled as they marched through the town centre by the Muslim extremists. Our community has been racially attacked for the last 10 years. A mosque in the town got set on fire a few weeks ago and it made national news but churches in Luton are regularly being set fire to.”

Daily Mail, 25 May 2009

For the background, see Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, 25 May 2009

For an eyewitness account, see Three Counties Unity, 25 May 2009

Also http://www.reconciliationtalk.com/

Meanwhile, over at his Lionheart blog, Paul Ray endorses the rioting. In reply to a comment objecting to “headlines of masked men and violence”, Ray demands:

“What are you doing about the Islamification of Great Britain? Islam has taken over Luton, and the police and council have done nothing but sit back and allow it to happen. This is the culmination of the past 25-30 years. The people of Luton have now arisen to reclaim their community!!! How do you expect them to do it? …

“No one thinks that removing the militant wing of Islam from our land is going to be easy, and if the government will not do it then the people will, and they will quite obviously be wearing balaclavas to do that, because the government will come down on them for defending their community…. So decide where you stand and who you stand with.”

No doubt Luton Council will bear this in mind next time Ray applies for permission to hold a demonstration in the town.

Update:  Read Unite Against Fascism statement on the Luton riot here.

Further update:  Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion points out that the photograph in the Mail report, captioned “Catalyst: Anti-war Islamists protested during an Army march in Luton earlier this year – partly sparking yesterday’s response”, is not of the notorious Al Muhajiroun protest but of a different event entirely.

Turkey urges police action on BNP flyers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Turkish government has demanded the withdrawal of election leaflets distributed in Scotland by the British National party, claiming they are intended to incite racial and religious hatred. Flyers promoting the BNP’s European election campaign suggest that millions of Turkish Muslims would flood into Britain if the country were to be granted full EU membership.

One BNP leaflet being handed out on the streets of Glasgow said taxpayers’ money “shouldn’t be wasted on expanding Europe so that millions of Muslims in Turkey can join the invasion of foreign job snatchers”. Another urges voters to “oppose the dangerous drive backed by the other main parties to give 80m low-wage Muslim Turks the right to swamp Britain”.

Officials at the Turkish embassy in London have complained to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and have suggested the matter be referred to the police because the leaflets potentially breach race relations legislation.

“It is obvious that these are racist and highly inflammatory statements which insult both Turkey and the Turkish nation as a whole and put hundreds of thousands of Turks and Turkish Cypriots who live and have been born in Britain at risk of racist abuse and attacks,” said Orhan Tung, a spokesman for the embassy.

“I think the leaflets are a clear breach of both the Race Relations Act and the Racial and Religious [Hatred] Act, which makes it an offence to distribute written material with the intent to stir up religious or racial hatred. We believe that the relevant British authorities such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission should consider taking legal action against the party in question.”

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Archbishop of Vienna takes stand against Austrian far right

Posted on by Bob Pitt

FPO posterA Church leader has added his voice to criticism of the campaign tactics of the far-right Austrian Freedom Party.

The Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, spoke out in a sermon on Thursday, warning politicians against exploiting Christian symbols.

He did not name the Austrian Freedom Party (FPOe), but it is using the slogan “The West in Christian hands” in its European election campaign. The FPOe’s leader held up a cross at a rally against a Muslim centre recently.

In his Ascension Day sermon, Cardinal Schoenborn said the Cross “must not be misused as a fighting symbol against other religions”. He said the Cross was “a sign of love, which does not answer violence with violence, or hate with hate, but conquers hatred and hostility through devotion and forgiveness”.

BBC News, 22 May 2009

BNP threatens Basildon Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP Islam Out of BritainA Muslim leader has urged people not to vote for the BNP in next month’s council and European elections and claimed the Islamic community in Basildon has already been threatened by the far right group.

Brother Sarfraz Sarwar, leader of the Basildon Islamic Centre, says members of the British National Party have been deliberately dishing out their pro-election leaflets near to the Vange Community Centre where Muslims hold their Friday prayers.

He also said one member of the local Muslim community was “verbally abused” by the BNP. Brother Sarwar said: “One of our brothers was coming out of prayers when he saw the BNP handing out leaflets. He screwed it up and threw it away and that’s when they began hurling racist abuse at him.”

Brother Sarwar says the man was threatened with comments such as “We are going to get you” and “your time has come!” He said: “There were four men trying to intimidate him in the street. They were definitely from the BNP. They deliberately targeted us near to our prayer centre.

“I am urging people not to vote for the BNP just because they are fed up with the other parties. A lot of people in our community are worried the BNP could win lots of seats because of the current political climate. They are scared.”

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ENGAGE complains to the Daily Mail about Amanda Platell article

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dear Sir,

Amanda Platell in her column, ‘Equality? You must be joking!‘, (Daily Mail 21st May 2009) makes some shockingly inaccurate remarks.

She claims, ‘In March this year, a large group of Muslims in Luton protested in the town with deeply offensive posters vilifying our returning troops, calling them rapists and murderers.’

The group of Muslims involved in the protest numbered no more than 20, something patently obvious from television footage from the day. In a town where Muslim residents number in excess of 25,000, how could 20 possibly be said to constitute ‘a large group of Muslims’?

Ms Platell also writes of Christian festivals being routinely cancelled at Easter and Christmas each year while no similar treatment of Muslim festivals would be conceivable. Stories of the ‘banning of Christmas’ have regularly been shown to be fabrications; the work of imaginative journalists keen to foment mischief between communities.

It is falsehoods such as these that bolster the likes of the far right BNP.

Yours sincerely,
Inayat Bunglawala
Advisor on Research and Policy
ENGAGE