Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

EDL Angels are not sick?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Angels demoThis Saturday the English Defence League will be holding a demonstration in Downing Street to protest against David Cameron’s attack on the EDL in the House of Commons last month, when he observed that he had described some sections of society as sick and added that “there is none sicker than the EDL”.

In an evident attempt to soften the EDL’s public image as a mob of violent Nazi-saluting racists, Saturday’s protest has been organised by the women’s section, known as Angels, who have been collecting signatures for an online petition headed “EDL Angels are not sick” that they will be handing in at Downing Street. As we have pointed out previously, the flaw in using the EDL’s women members to front the campaign is that the Angels themselves have a well-established record of violence, racism and fascist sympathies.

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NYPD spied on city’s Muslim partners

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Reda ShataThe New York Police Department’s intelligence squad secretly assigned an undercover officer to monitor a prominent Muslim leader even as he decried terrorism, cooperated with the police, dined with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and was the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning series by The New York Times about Muslims in America.

Sheikh Reda Shata was among those singled out for surveillance because of his “threat potential” and what the NYPD considered links to organizations associated with terrorism, despite having never been charged with any crime, according to secret police documents obtained by The Associated Press.

This was life in America for Shata: a government partner in the fight against terrorism and a suspect at the same time.

During his time at the Islamic Center of Bay Ridge since 2002, he welcomed FBI agents to his mosque to speak to Muslims, invited NYPD officers for breakfast and threw parties for officers who were leaving the precinct. As police secretly watched Shata in 2006, he had breakfast and dinner with Bloomberg at Gracie Mansion and was invited to meet with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Shata recalls.

“This is very sad,” Shata said after seeing his name in the NYPD file. “What is your feeling if you see this about people you trusted?”

Associated Press, 5 October 2011

Pam Geller linked anti-Muslim activist calls for mass murder of Congressmen, Muslims, liberals and journalists

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Further evidence has emerged of violent threats (“send all of the muslim immigrants back to their native countries, in boxes”, “burn all the mosques”) by John Joseph Jay, a founding members of the board of Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer’s American Freedom Defense Initiative, the umbrella organisation for Stop Islamization of America. Think Progress has the details.

Update:  See “Spencer and Geller disavow anti-Muslim activist’s call for violence, say he was never a board member”, also at Think Progress.

US Supreme Court clears way for Muslim woman to sue over headscarf removal

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Supreme Court will let a Muslim woman sue Southern California jailers for making her take off her head scarf in a courthouse holding cell.

The court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Orange County, Calif., officials, who were sued in 2007 by Souhair Khatib.

Khatib had gone to the Orange County Superior Court to ask for more time to complete her community service. But a judge ordered her jailed, and jailers forced Khatib to remove her head scarf.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments that holding cells aren’t covered by a federal law protecting the religious practices of prisoners. They also ruled Khatib had the right to wear the scarf unless jailers could show it was a security risk.

Associated Press, 3 October 2011

BBC head of religion hits back at BC/AD ban claims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Aaqil AhmedAaqil Ahmed, the BBC’s head of religion and ethics, has responded strongly to reports that the Corporation has banned the terms BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini). Last weekend it was claimed that BC and AD had been replaced across the BBC’s output by the modern, secular terms BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era).

“The story was quite simply wrong,” Ahmed wrote on the About the BBC blog. “We have issued no editorial guidelines or instructions to suggest that anyone in the BBC should change the terms they use.”

Radio Times, 2 October 2011

This hasn’t prevented the Daily Mail from reporting: “Government to save Year of our Lord from BBC’s ‘Common Era’.”

Lawyers seek to prevent NYPD from destroying Muslim surveillance records

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Civil liberties lawyers will seek to impose a restraining order on the NYPD in federal court Monday to stop the destruction of any evidence related to the alleged surveillance of Muslim communities since the September 11 attacks.

They also hope to initiate an investigation into the allegations, made by the Associated Press in a recent series of reports, which the NYPD have rejected as false.

Attorneys overseeing the so-called Handschu agreement — a 40-year case that has continuously shaped the extent to which police can conduct surveillance and can maintain records of surveillance — will go before Judge Charles Haight, who has long presided over the Handschu case.

According to attorney Jethro Eisenstein, the AP’s claims that the NYPD kept records of the activities of law-abiding Muslims in restaurants, mosques and other places indicated a violation of the existing Handschu guidelines.

“They very specifically prohibit the retention of information that’s been gleaned from that kind of visit to public places, unless it involves either unlawful activity or potential terrorist activities,” he said. He added the AP’s claims that the NYPD was “shredding” evidence, added urgency to the need for a restraining order.

WNYC News Blog, 3 October 2011

Swedish anti-racist magazine releases report on anti-Muslim hatred

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Den Antimuslimska MiljönExpo Research has released a study of the anti-Muslim milieu. The report shows how several Swedish websites incite violence against Muslims.

After the terrorist attacks in Norway on 22 July, awareness of the anti-Muslim milieu increased. Expo Research’s study analyses how hatred of Muslims is spreading.

Among other things, the report shows that violent comments and posts are a regular feature of the anti-Muslim blogosphere.

A comment on one of Swedish Democrat MP Kenth Ekeroth’s blog posts about Islamisation and multiculturalism draws the following conclusion:

“the only obvious consequence of these trends with immigrants is the long-term use of lethal force against all immigrants especially Mohammedans, or civil war between the old Nordic people and the new immigrants, it is not a question of if but when.”

The new study describes the influential sections of the international anti-Muslim milieu, and the key concepts and texts and comments in the Swedish blogosphere.

The report was prepared by Research Expo, part of Expo Foundation. Expo Research collects and analyses information about racist groups, networks and phenomena.

Among other things, Expo Research is responsible for Expo’s archives, which contain Scandinavia’s largest collection of right-wing propaganda, and publishes a regular report on the white power movement.

The report can be downloaded here

Expo, 25 September 2011