Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Pink News apologises to Islam Channel

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islam Channel logoThe right-wing press has been running articles, evidently inspired by the Quilliam Foundation, accusing Muslim TV channels of inciting hatred against the LGBT community. (See “Muslim fanatics spouting on British TV: Extremists use fringe stations to call for terror, murder and the torture of gay people” in the Daily Mail and “Preachers of hate who spread their violent word on British TV channels” in the Sunday Telegraph.)

These reports in turn prompted a poorly worded piece to appear this week in Pink News which clearly led its readers to believe that Islam Channel had been promoting homophobic hate speech on air.

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CAIR seeks probe of FBI ‘retaliation’ in Minnesota

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today called on Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate an apparent act of retaliation against a local community leader by FBI agents at the Minnesota field office.

CAIR says the alleged retaliation, in the form of an FBI visit to the home of the director of the civil rights group’s Minnesota chapter Lori Saroya , followed just two business days after public disclosure by that chapter of an FBI investigation into alleged intimidation tactics used on a local Somali Muslim by two agents.

CAIR press release, 13 February 2013

Pat Robertson claims Islam is ‘demonic’ and ‘not a religion’ but an economic and political system

Posted on by Bob Pitt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyXQjevYw1Y

Controversial conservative Christian Pat Robertson doubled down Tuesday on claims that Islam is not a religion.

According to Right Wing Watch, Robertson, an elder statesman of the evangelical movement, made the inflammatory claim during an episode of his TV program, “The 700 Club.”

“Every time you look up – these are angry people, it’s almost like it’s demonic that is driving them to kill and to maim and to destroy and to blow themselves up,” Robertson said of Islam. “It’s a religion of chaos.”

He went on to say, “I hardly think to call it a religion, it’s more of – well, it’s an economic and political system with a religious veneer.”

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Marine Le Pen to speak at Cambridge Union

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Front National election posterThe Cambridge News reports that Front National leader Marine Le Pen, notorious for her virulently Islamophobic rhetoric, is billed to speak at the Cambridge Union on 19 February.

A spokesman for the Cambridge Union Society is quoted as saying:

“Whether you agree with her politics or not, this event represents one of the very few opportunities a British audience has had to directly engage with Mme Le Pen, who finished third in the last French presidential election, behind Hollande and Sarkozy, and currently sits in the European Parliament as a democratically elected representative.

“The Cambridge Union has a two-hundred year history of promoting the art of debating and free speech and this event is fundamentally in keeping with that tradition.”

See also Morning Star, 12 February 2013

Unite Against Fascism is organising a demonstration against Le Pen. Details can be found here.

Prosser offers ‘apology’ … in which he expresses contempt for Islam and calls for racial profiling of Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim leaders have rejected an apology by Canterbury MP Richard Prosser over his call for Muslims to be banned from Western airlines.

The list MP’s remarks provoked outrage yesterday, although NZ First leader Winston Peters refused to sack him and said he did not have to apologise. However, speaking on Radio New Zealand’s Nine to Noon show this morning, Prosser apologised. “I’m sorry … to the majority of peaceful, law-abiding Muslims who are not involved in terrorism.”

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FBI helped mentally ill ‘terrorist’ prepare bomb

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A mentally ill man who thought he was meeting someone linked to the Taliban was arrested Friday morning after federal agents say he tried to detonate some sort of car-bomb at a Bank of America branch near Oakland’s airport.

But the explosive was a fake, prosecutors said, adding that the FBI had been eyeing Matthew Aaron Llaneza, 28, of San Jose for a while during an undercover investigation monitored by the FBI’s South Bay Joint Terrorism Task Force.

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