Over at the Huffington Post Aaron Sankin reports that a San Francisco-based group called Bay Area Art Queers Unleashing Power (BAAQUP) have mounted a guerrilla art campaign against Pamela Geller’s latest round of anti-Muslim ads on the city’s buses.
A message pasted over the ads by BAAQUP reads: “I’m Pam Geller and I fund anti-Muslim hate speech. I’m obsessed and must struggle to stop.”
NASHVILLE — Sometimes a mop sink is just a mop sink.
Building managers and legislative staffers have sought to reassure some concerned Tennessee lawmakers that recent renovations at the state Capitol did not install special facilities for Muslims to wash their feet before praying.
“I confirmed with the facility administrator for the State Capitol Complex that the floor-level sink installed in the men’s restroom outside the House Chamber is for housekeeping use,” Legislative Administration Director Connie Ridley wrote in an email. “It is, in layman’s terms, a mop sink.”
See also “Scary sink terrorizes Tennessee state legislature”, Loonwatch, 25 March 2013
Update: Also “Fears of creeping sharia at the Tennessee capitol go down the drain”, The Atlantic Wire, 26 March 2013
And “CAIR says sponsors of Tenn. anti-Islam bill ‘sink’ to new low”, CAIR press release, 26 March 2013
With the assistance of self-styled “Left-leaning Hampstead liberal” David Goodhart, the Daily Mail continues its anti-migrant, “Islamisation of Britain” propaganda with an attack on the Ahmadiyya movement’s Baitul Futuh mosque in Morden.
Update: See also “‘Merton’s not white anymore’, moans former liberal in the Daily Mail”, Indigo Jo Blogs, 26 March 2013
Protestors braved freezing weather conditions at the weekend to stage a repeat demonstration outside Newham Town Hall against council decisions surrounding the site of a controversial application for a 9,000-capacity mosque.
Pressure group the Newham People’s Alliance organised a second protest on Barking Road against Newham Council’s decision to take legal action to clear the Riverine Centre site in West Ham currently used to house the London Markaz, a temporary hub for up to 3,000 Muslim worshippers.
Last week the Commission nationale consultative des droits de l’homme (National Consultative Commission on Human Rights, CNCDH) released its annual report on racism, antisemitism and xenophobia in France.
The report found that there was a 30% increase in anti-Muslim incidents in 2012 – 53 acts (up from 38 in 2011) and 148 threats (up from 117) – confirming the trend in 2011 when there was a rise of 34%.
CNCDH president Christine Lazerges argues that while antisemitism is cyclical, anti-Muslim racism is more worrying. “We are dealing with a much more structural phenomenon, as we see an increase for the past three consecutive years,” she states. “Numerically the figures are small, but they show only the visible part of the iceberg.”
The New Jersey Star-Ledger interviews Diala Shamas, co-author of the recently published report Mapping Muslims: NYPD Spying and Its Impact on American Muslims.
Members of a Swedish anti-Muslim nationalist group were outnumbered by police and counter-protesters during a demonstration Saturday in Malmo.
Swedish Defence League speakers had trouble making themselves heard over the chants from their opponents, The Local.se reported. The news website said only about 20 SDL members were present, while more than 100 police officers and about 600 counter-demonstrators showed up, the news agency TT reported.
Most of the action came from clashes between the counter-protestors and police. Snowballs were tossed at police officers and barricades knocked down.
The SDL, modeled on the English Defence League, was founded in 2012. The two groups abandoned plans in August for a joint demonstration in Stockholm because of the threat of opposition protests.
The counter-protesters had at least one banner that linked the SDL to the Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik, TT reported. Breivik said in postings on the internet before he set off a bomb in Oslo. Norway, and gunned down scores of teenagers at a youth camp that he had been inspired by the SDL.
The Stavropol Territorial Court has rejected a lawsuit against the ban on wearing headdresses to school, including the hijab, a Moscow lawyer said on Friday.
Lawyer Murad Musayev filed the lawsuit on behalf of the region’s Muslim people, who seek to annul the new school uniform requirements introduced last September.
“The court has rejected our lawsuit,” he said. “I believe this ruling was politically motivated. We will find out why the court ruled against our lawsuit in five days when they send the hearing documents to us.” He added that he plans to appeal the decision.
Earlier this week the Daily Mail published a story headlined “Dark Knight killer James Holmes ‘is now a Muslim who prays five times a day'”. The report began:
“James Holmes, the gunman behind the Dark Knight massacre in Colorado last July, has reportedly turned Muslim and prays five times a day. The killer showed off a lengthy, thick beard during a court appearance earlier this month, and a prison source has claimed it is a symbol of his new-found faith. The source said Holmes has turned to Islam as a way of justifying his horrific murder spree in an Aurora, Colorado cinema on July 20 which left 12 people dead and 58 people wounded.”
On Wednesday evening, the Associated Students at the University of California (ASUC) at Berkeley voted unanimously to support a resolution “condeming Islamophobic hate speech at the University of California.”
The resolution focused on the recent incident of the outrageously racist and Islamophobic hate speech of Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz, who was videotaped in June 2012 saying that campus activists involved in Students for Justice in Palestine and Muslim student organizations have ties to “terrorist organizations.”
Rossman-Benjamin, as The Electronic Intifada has extensively reported, is the co-founder of an outside political group, the Amcha Initiative, which seeks out students and professors who criticize Israel or engage in Palestine solidarity activism, accuse them of “anti-Semitism,” and urge university administrations — or state officials — to take punitive action against them.