‘Moderate Muslim’ wants family fun day cancelled

Under the headline “EDL to target Legoland after Muslim HATE preacher hires park for day out”, the Daily Star Sunday has thrown its weight behind the campaign to pressurise Legoland Windsor into cancelling a booking by the Muslim Research and Development Foundation, who have hired the theme park for a family fun day on 9 March. According to the Star, Legoland’s decision to “has outraged ­moderate Muslims”.

Now, which “moderate Muslim” do you suppose would be so vicious and embittered as to want to deprive Muslim children of a harmless day out at Legoland? No prizes for guessing that it’s Taj Hargey. He tells the Star: “I would ask Legoland that if they are happy to let his group hire the park, then would they be happy to let the BNP and other extremist far-right groups hold their family fun day there? Both groups spread hatred and intolerance.”

An English Defence League supporter applauds the role that Hargey is playing: “Legoland can cancel the booking without losing face by saying that they have considered the opinion of sensible Muslims like Dr Hargey and thus etc etc.”

Outrage at hate threat to ‘burn’ planned Cambridge mosque as city shows its support for the £17m project

Cambridge UnitedOutraged anti-fascists have hit back at a threat to “burn” a planned mosque in Cambridge’s Mill Road. Cambridge Unite Against Fascism (CUAF) was reacting to a 1,600-signature petition against the £17.5 million mosque in another attack by the English Defence League (EDL). And a protest group was also criticised for a legal application to block the mosque being built claiming it could be “a front for terrorism”, as the News reported.

The online petition launched by a Cambridge resident and EDL supporter also has anti-Muslim hate comments on it from contributors who claim to be from the city. But many of those posting comments appear to be from America – where the host website is based. One hate comment said: “If they still build it, burn it.” The News has passed details to police.

Now a petition supporting the mosque signed by residents including Cambridge MP Julian Huppert and Richard Howitt MEP, has been relaunched.

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Anti-Islamic mob of ‘football fans’ smashes windows of Plovdiv mosque

Plovdiv demonstration 14.2.14Hurling paving stones, rocks and fireworks, a large mob of protesters – many of them from football fan clubs – smashed windows of Plovdiv’s historic Dzhumaya Mosque in the centre of Bulgaria’s second city.

The February 14 protest was the latest in a series against court applications by the office of the Chief Mufti, spiritual leader of Bulgaria’s Muslims, for properties historically owned by the Muslim community. The court applications have been lodged under the country’s Religious Denominations Act, which makes provision for such applications by all officially recognised religious groups in Bulgaria.

A large cordon of police in riot gear stood between the crowd and the mosque building, which also features a recently-reopened cafe offering Turkish delicacies, but the missiles were hurled over the heads of the police.

While the crowd were at the mosque, each blast of a firecracker or sound of breaking glass was greeted by cheers from the mob. After the smashing of windows, police began to attempt to move the crowd, unofficially estimated at 2000 people, back. During this engagement, three people were injured and one arrested.

Reporters at the scene said that at the Turkish consulate, which is some distance away adjoining Plovdiv’s city park, demonstrators shouted, “you are not Europeans, you are barbarians”. Demonstrators also marched in the direction of the city headquarters of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, the party led and supported in the main by Bulgarians of ethnic Turkish descent, saying that they wanted to occupy the building. Demonstrators chanted “freedom or death” and “down with the MRF”.

Bulgarian-language news website Plovdiv24.com has video of the mosque incident.

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Another French mosque desecrated

Souna de Blois mosque desecration (3)

The mosque of the Moroccan cultural association in Sounna de Blois, a town situated between Orléans and Tours, was desecrated during the night of 11-12 February (see reports by La Nouvelle République and Atlasinfo).

On Wednesday morning worshipers arrived at the mosque to find a pig’s head and several pieces of pork at the site, along with the slogan “MLE France” sprayed on the door of the mosque. The meaning of these initials is unknown, although it may be that ML stands for “mouvement de libération”. Boujama Hannou, the president of the association, has appealed for calm.

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Police investigate hate comments on Legoland Facebook page

Legoland Windsor

As we have previously reported, the spate of hate-filled comments posted on the Legoland Windsor Facebook page by English Defence League and Casuals United supporters, in response to the park being hired out to a Muslim organisation, led to the page being taken down. It is now back up, and features the following statement from Legoland:

Hi everyone, we’re back!

We are so sorry we had to remove our page for a couple of days. The removal of the page was requested by the Thames Valley Police as an investigation is currently underway to identify those responsible for some of our wall posts, private messages, phone calls and emails.

Anyone posting or thinking of posting offensive and threatening messages on this page or other social media sites should be aware that the Thames Valley Police are monitoring the situation closely and we will not hesitate to take robust and swift action against anyone engaging in this type of activity.

The Social Media and Customer Services team very much look forward to getting back to sharing all our exciting updates before we open on the 14th March!

Update:  See “Legoland is blasted for ‘Muslim day'”, Windsor Express, 14 February 2014

Also Muslim Research and Development Foundation press statement, 14 February 2014

Cambridge News discovers ancient anti-mosque petition

More than 1,400 people have signed a petition against a planned £17.5 million Cambridge mosque in another attack by the English Defence League (EDL). The latest bid to stop the construction of the mosque in Mill Road comes after a protest group was criticised for a legal application to block it being built in which they claimed it could be “a front for terrorism”.

Now an online petition launched by a Cambridge resident and EDL supporter named ‘Phillip Cufc Jackson’ has gathered 1,498 signatures on US based website causes.com. The ‘Stop construction of mosque on Mill Road, Cambridge’ petition claims it was launched “because us Cambridge people do not want this super mosque built on our doorstep and we have been lied to on the actual amount of opposition to this project”.

Cambridge News, 13 February 2014


It is difficult to see how this qualifies as news. It is quite misleading to state that the anti-mosque petition is the “latest bid to stop the construction of the mosque in Mill Road” and “comes after” Gash and Webra’s legal challenge. The petition was launched by Jackson – a supporter of the EDL and member of the East Anglian Patriots – back in August 2012, with a target of 3,000 signatures. Over the course of 18 months it has attracted just over half that number, and judging by the dates of the accompanying comments had become pretty well moribund, though the report in the Cambridge News will now no doubt give it a bit of a boost.

Update:  See the petition welcoming the mosque which has been signed by Richard Howitt MEP along with local councillors, trade unionists, community groups and others.

EDL member gets community order and curfew for anti-Muslim hate crime

A member of a far-right group nailed a copy of the Koran to a proposed Muslim education centre. Graham French, 28, also sprayed EDL, which stands for English Defence League, on the former Melrose Arms in Shotton Colliery, in December.

It was after planning permission for a change of use, which has caused controversy, was granted.

French, of Dene Crescent, Shotton Colliery, admitted racial or religious aggravated criminal damage to the wall of a multi-faith centre. He was given a community order with six months supervision at Peterlee Magistrates’ Court plus a one-month tagged curfew between 10.30pm and 7am.

Sunderland Echo, 12 February 2014

EDL resists Islamification of Legoland

FamilyFunDay Legoland adThe past few days have seen a frothing-at-the-mouth far-right campaign against a decision by Legoland Windsor to allow a Muslim organisation to hire the theme park for a family day out.

You may think you’ve heard this before, and you would be right. This is essentially a rerun of the campaign last year against an event at Chessington World of Adventures held by the same Muslim group, and in both cases the source of the campaign was a post on an extremist anti-Muslim website called Kafir Crusaders.

In the course of this latest outbreak of anti-Muslim hysteria the Legoland Windsor Facebook page has been assailed by angry bigots from the English Defence League and Casuals United, to the extent that Legoland evidently became tired of deleting abusive comments and took the page down. Opponents of the Family Fun Day have set up a Boycott Legoland Windsor Facebook page and are planning to demonstrate outside the park and harass the families who are attending the event. The EDL Facebook page has featured the usual calls for the venue to be blown up with all the people in it.

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Labour councillor claims anti-EDL protest will ‘create a battleground on the streets of Grantham’

Grantham counter-protest

A district councillor has condemned the actions of those organising a counter-protest in Grantham later this month.

The Journal broke the news online yesterday (Monday) that John Morgan, husband of Labour district and county councillor Charmaine Morgan, is organising a demonstration on St Peter’s Hill against a protest by the English Defence League, which opposes the building of an Islamic Community Centre in Mowbeck Way, Grantham.

But Councillor Ian Selby has reacted in horror and believes any counter-protest, planned for Saturday, February 22, would be “playing into the hands of the EDL”, and could see women and children getting seriously hurt if protests turn violent.

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Quilliam intent on maintaining close relations with former EDL leaders

Lennon and NawazSince they announced the resignation of Stephen Lennon (“Tommy Robinson”) from the English Defence League at a heavily publicised press conference last October, Quilliam’s relationship with the former EDL leader hasn’t turned out to be quite the success they had anticipated.

Not only has Quilliam’s claim that Lennon had broken with extremism been widely recognised as baseless, but they have suffered the additional embarrassment of being publicly associated with a convicted criminal currently serving an 18-month prison sentence for mortgage fraud. Consequently, Quilliam’s initial expectation that they might win back some of their once generous state funding on the basis of facilitating Lennon’s departure from the EDL has failed to materialise. With Lennon incarcerated and out of public view for most of this year at least, Quilliam would have been well advised to move on, forget the whole sorry business and hope that everyone else did too.

However, while it would be quite understandable if Quilliam were indeed getting cold feet over their links with Lennon and backtracking from the relationship, this is clearly not the case. Showing complete disregard for the first law of holes, Quilliam have in fact been working hard to attract further publicity for their protégé, on the basis of a claim that he has been the victim of physical violence from his fellow prisoners.

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