Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
Can Geller sink any lower?
Pamela Geller is exploiting the name of a young Muslim woman murdered by her stepfather in order to promote her organisation Stop Islamization of American, falsely claiming that the murder was an Islam-inspired honour killing and without the slightest concern for the distress she is causing to the dead woman’s family. LoonWatch has the details.
Update: See also “Pamela Geller’s ghoulish obsession with ‘honor killings’ takes an ugly turn”, Little Green Footballs, 4 February 2012
Party leaders unite against Scottish Defence League march
Four of Scotland’s highest profile politicians have urged councillors to block moves by the far-right Scottish Defence League to march in Glasgow.
SNP deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon, and Scots Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem leaders, Johann Lamont, Ruth Davidson and Willie Rennie are backing the move. In an open letter, they say such a march would bring “vile, toxic hate”.
The Scottish Defence League (SDL) has applied to the council to hold a march on 25 February. The SDL is an offshoot of the English Defence League (EDL). Both groups have been associated with violence at previous gatherings.
Ms Sturgeon, Ms Lamont and Ms Davidson are among 24 signatories to the letter which opposes any SDL march in Glasgow.
Front National divided over National Assembly candidate’s racist cartoons
The Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France draws our attention to the controversy over racist and Islamophobic cartoons posted on the Villeurbanne Front National blog by Stéphane Poncet, who is an FN candidate in the forthcoming elections to the National Assembly.
Marine Le Pen, who is struggling to get the 500 nominations she requires to stand in the presidential election and consequently needs to project a moderate image, has dissociated herself from Poncet, stating that she “deeply regrets” the publication of the drawings on an FN website. The party’s vice-president Louis Aliot has said that disciplinary action will be taken against Poncet.
The CCIF wonders how the FN is in a position to take such action “when Marine Le Pen herself adopts this hatred of Islam and foreigners as a founding principle of her political programme”.
Party leaders unite against Scottish Defence League march
Four of Scotland’s highest profile politicians have urged councillors to block moves by the far-right Scottish Defence League to march in Glasgow.
SNP deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon, and Scots Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem leaders, Johann Lamont, Ruth Davidson and Willie Rennie are backing the move. In an open letter, they say such a march would bring “vile, toxic hate”.
Vigil at site of Hilliard arson
Heba El-Hosseiny passes out candles at a unity vigil outside the Hilliard home of Mohamed Soltan, who escaped with his roommate from a fire set there before dawn on Jan. 16. The Council on American-Islamic Relations-Ohio sponsored the event in response to what it views as a hate crime. The house had been painted with anti-Arab and anti-Islamic slurs months earlier. Hilliard police and the FBI are investigating.
Florida: Muslim woman refused service at gas station
An October incident that has just come to light is casting a cloud over a Boca Raton Chevron station for what one woman claims is discrimination.
Wednesday, La-Fleur Mohammed talked about her experience at the Boca Raton station where she said she was refused service because she was wearing a traditional Muslim headdress that covered almost all of her face.
“She took my money and said ‘you can’t come in here dressed like that’,” said La-Fleur Mohammed. “I said, ‘excuse me but this is my religious right’.”
Mohammed continued, “She said, ‘well, I need to see you’. I said, ‘no, you don’t. Please just give me $20 on pump number one’ and that’s when she just threw my money back at me.”
Two more French mosques daubed with racist graffiti
“It seems that not a week goes by without a new mosque desecration”, the Collectif Contre l’Islamophobie en France observes.
Yesterday a mosque in the Glonnières district of Le Mans was found covered with graffiti reading “Islam out of Europe”, “No Islam” and “France for the French”.
On Saturday a mosque in Miramas was also daubed with Islamophobic slogans along with the name of Front National presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. It was the second time in four months that the mosque had experienced such an attack.
Show Racism the Red Card threatened by cuts
Cuts are threatening Tynside-based football charity Show Racism the Red Card, it was revealed today. The organisation, which has headquarters in North Shields, faces an uncertain future unless a Government finance bid is successful.
Bosses from the 15-year-old group submitted an application in September and were told they would have a decision in December. But the charity, which faces a deficit of more than £100,000 after posting a significant loss last year, is still waiting for an answer.
Leicester: former council leader calls for ban on EDL march
City mayor Sir Peter Soulsby has been urged to ask the Home Office to outlaw Saturday’s English Defence League march.
The call was made yesterday by former city council leader Ross Willmott. He said he was concerned at the potential for disorder breaking out along the route allocated to the group, which includes Belgrave Gate, the Clock Tower and Church Gate.
Instead the group – whose members turned violent during a previous demonstration in the city in October 2010 – should only be allowed to go ahead with their “static” demonstration outside the city centre, Coun Willmott said.