Publisher of ‘pro-Islam’ school textbook receives threats

Police are looking into a series of online threats made against a Georgia textbook publisher after a parent complained that one of the books promoted Islam and polygamy.

The controversy began last week when Hal Medlin, the parent of a student at Campbell Middle School in Cobb County, Georgia, complained to the school about an assignment that he said “slanted positively” toward Islam.

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the part of the assignment in question was called the “letter from Ahlima”: “The assignment by a teacher at Campbell Middle School, which asked students to write on the issue of dress codes, included a fictional two-page letter ostensibly written by a 20-year-old Saudi Arabian woman. In it, the character writes approvingly of wearing the Islamic veil – and of her fiance’s multiple wives and the law of Sharia.”

The letter is part of a unit in the textbook devoted to the Middle East, and according to the AJC is paired with a letter from an Israeli woman discussing her own life.

The story was picked up by anti-Islam blogger Pamela Geller, which she called “grotesque”. “Misogyny, homicide bombing, Jew hatred, packaged in multi-culti tolerance of Islam, is being spoon fed to our young,” Geller wrote.

And the publisher, InspirEd Educators, complained that a number of other bloggers made “terroristic threats” and that it has “received what the police have classified as hate email and phone calls, and the company and its staff have been threatened and discussed with threatening language on various websites and blogs.”

Local police say they are investigating the threats, which include one blogger’s comment that “there will be a blood bath,” according to WSB-TV.

An official for the publisher defended the lesson: “It’s important for kids to have some empathy for other people in the world. Some people think we’re trying to teach their children to be Muslims, and that could not be more ridiculous.”

TPM, 29 September 2011

Matthew Goodwin on the popular appeal of the far right

“Muslims now find themselves at the core of a new and potent far right narrative, which vilifies Muslim communities while claiming to defend traditions of tolerance, gender equality and the rights of homosexuals. It downplays socially unacceptable arguments about race in favour of more acceptable arguments about the compatibility of values and cultures.”

BBC News, 28 September 2011

Germany: authorities discuss surveillance of Islamophobic right

German anti-mosque protestorOfficials from the BfV, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, will discuss the country’s increasingly vocal Islamophobe scene at a meeting on Thursday. There have been calls to put right-wing populist and anti-Muslim groups under increased surveillance.

Islamophobes in Germany could come under increased surveillance by the country’s domestic intelligence agency. There are concerns that the anti-Muslim scene is becoming increasingly dangerous, and some intelligence officials want it to be subject to greater scrutiny, despite stringent German privacy laws.

The subject will be discussed at a meeting on Thursday between the president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Heinz Fromm, and the agency’s leaders in the 16 German states. Officials in Bavaria are considering putting right-wing populists under observation as a new form of extremism, while Hamburg has declared it is watching an internet discussion forum similar to anti-Islamic website “Politically Incorrect” (PI).

A spokesman from the North Rhine-Westphalia interior ministry told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper that PI was not currently under observation by intelligence agents, but that the blog was being read closely and that the opinions and comments published on it were “undemocratic.” The xenophobic comments were calculated to “incite young people”, the spokesman added.

Most states are reluctant, however, and the federal interior ministry has also not yet committed itself on the matter. In essence, the question is whether the hatred of Muslims is enough to endanger freedom of religion and international understanding – or whether it is a radical but legitimate expression of opinion by individual authors within the limits of the constitution.

Spiegel, 27 September 2011

BBC ‘jettisons 2,000 years of Christianity’ … at the behest of Marxists and Muslims

Mail on Sunday BBC abolishes Christian era1This is the front page headline in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday. The accompanying article begins:

“The BBC has been accused of ‘absurd political correctness’ after dropping the terms BC and AD in case they offend non-Christians. The Corporation has replaced the familiar Anno Domini (the year of Our Lord) and Before Christ with the obscure terms Common Era and Before Common Era.”

And the Mail‘s James Delingpole chips in with a comment piece claiming that “all reference to Christ has been expunged” by the BBC, as part of a “Marxist plot”. The BBC’s outrageous policy, Delingpole tells us, is “an act of cultural suicide. Most of us may not realise this but the ideological Left certainly does, for it has long been part of its grand plan to destroy Western civilisation from within.”

But it’s not just the Marxists who are behind the BBC’s decision to abolish the Christian era. As the Mail‘s report emphasises: “The website for BBC Religion and Ethics, headed by commissioning editor Aaqil Ahmed, who is a Muslim, is littered with references to Common Era and Before Common Era.” And this is repeated beneath a photo of Ahmed, just in case readers have missed its sinister significance. Indeed, over at his Guardian blog, Martin Robbins points that the original caption to the picture (see below) read: “End of an era: BBC head of religion Aaqil Ahmed, the Corporation say, bizarrely, the change has nothing to with Mr Ahmed.”

This nonsense has been demolished by Tabloid Watch, who point out that the Mail‘s own report provides the refutation of its scaremongering introduction. Buried at the bottom of the article we find: “The BBC said last night: ‘The BBC has not issued editorial guidance on the date systems. Both AD and BC, and CE and BCE are widely accepted date systems and the decision on which term to use lies with individual production and editorial teams’.”

Mail on Sunday BBC abolishes Christian era2

Vile train hooligans need tackling now

I know this happens all the time and probably won’t be ‘news’ to you, but I’m so angry I needed to tell someone.

Yesterday, getting the train from Sheffield to Norwich, a group of what I would describe as disgusting bigots and football hooligans got on the train from Nottingham to Grantham.

The carriage was full of families of all ages including very small children. They were extremely drunk, disturbing, crude and basically acting like animals: punching the train roof, spilling beer everywhere and causing general chaos. I have attached a photo of the main lout punching the train and being disruptive, and I also have a video of him chanting offensive and crude songs. Particularly disturbing was when they were chanting “EDL”.

I am so ashamed to think I live in a world of disgusting people like this. There should be more done in local areas to deal with animals like these, and they should be named and shamed.

Their faces should be spread over the front page of the newspaper, so in a more sober state they can realise how disgustingly they acted.

I was with my elderly mother and she was so upset about their behaviour and attitude. Everybody on the train was too scared to confront them so we just had to endure it.

Email to the Grantham Journal, 25 September 2011

Wilders’ website hacked

Anti-Islam PVV party leader Geert Wilders said on Friday that his website has been hacked. The hacker called himself a “Turkish Muslim Hacker” and left a photo of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and a verse from the Koran on the site.

The hacking follows a clash between Wilders and Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte on Thursday which focused on the PVV attitude to Erdogan.

The page has now been taken off-line and it is not known what action Wilders will take.

Dutch News, 23 September 2011

EEOC sues Albuquerque hotel over ban on employee wearing hijab

MCM Elegante Hotel704 HTL Operating, LLC and Investment Corporation of America, doing business as MCM Elegante Hotel in Albuquerque, violated federal law by subjecting a Muslim woman to religious discrimination and to retaliation for opposing the discrimination, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit it filed on September 21, 2011.

In its suit, the EEOC said that the hotel failed to accommodate Safia Abdullah’s request to work wearing a hijab, a head scarf worn by Muslim women for religious purposes. In addition, the EEOC alleges that the hotel either failed to hire Abdullah or discharged her because of her religion and/or because she engaged in the protected conduct of opposing discrimination, including requesting religious accommodation.

Such alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on religion and retaliation for opposition to discrimination. The EEOC filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico (EEOC v. 704 HTL Operating, LLC and Investment Corporation of America Civil Action No. 1:11-cv-00845) after first attempting to reach a voluntary settlement through its conciliation process.

“We will vigorously prosecute cases of religious discrimination throughout our district, including claims that involve the employer’s refusal to provide reasonable accommodation for an individual’s religious beliefs,” said Regional Attorney Mary Jo O’Neill of the EEOC’s Phoenix District Office, which has jurisdiction over Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Utah. “We are particularly concerned when the accommodation requested is easy to provide and the employer appears to have reacted to myths or stereotypes about a religion.”

EEOC press release, 22 September 2011

New study of English Defence League published

EDL Britain's New Far Right Social MovementToday the University of Northampton publishes its new study The EDL: Britain’s ‘New Far Right’ Social Movement.

You can download it here.

I’ll try to do a review of this later, but in the meantime I would recommend Chapter 4, “The English Defence League’s leaders and followers”, by Mark Pitchford. Its conclusion is spot on:

“First, the EDL is unarguably connected to the BNP and other far‐right groups, whether by previous association or by shared interest. Secondly, some of these far‐right individuals have possessed significant weaponry that identifies them as potential ‘lone wolf’ terrorists. Thirdly, EDL leaders and followers have engaged in criminality, especially racially aggravated incidents. Fourthly, the EDL engages in double-speak that powerfully questions their claim to be a single‐issue, non‐racist movement.”

Perhaps someone should send a copy of this chapter to Adrian Tudway.

More evidence of FBI’s anti-Islam bias revealed

FBI library books

Following months of denials, the FBI is now promising a “comprehensive review of all training and reference materials” after Danger Room revealed a series of Bureau presentations that tarred average Muslims as “radical” and “violent”.

But untangling the Islamophobic thread woven into the FBI’s counterterrorism training culture won’t be easy. In addition to inflammatory seminars which likened Islam to the Death Star and Mohammed to a “cult leader”, Danger Room has obtained more material showing just how wide the anti-Islam meme has spread throughout the Bureau.

The FBI library at Quantico currently stacks books from authors who claim that “Islam and democracy are totally incompatible”. The Bureau’s private intranet recently featured presentations that claimed to demonstrate the “inherently violent nature of Islam”, according to multiple sources. Earlier this year, the Bureau’s Washington Field Office welcomed a speaker who claimed Islamic law prevents Muslims from being truly loyal Americans. And as recently as last week, the online orientation material for the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces included claims that Sunni Islam seeks “domination of the world”, according to a law enforcement source.

Danger Room, 23 September 2011

See also Think Progress, 23 September 2011