Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

EDL flash protest in Hull results in violence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In Hull, a group of EDL supporters staged a brief demonstration in the centre of town and then gathered outside the mosque in Pearson Park. The same mosque was targeted by the EDL and members of the fascist British National Party in December.

People from the mosque were joined by antifascists at extremely short notice to defend the religious building. One antifascist protestor says:

About 25 of the EDL rabble came out of a side street and marched past shouting racist abuse and making threats. The police allowed the EDL to spout their abuse but stopped the mosque supporters from approaching them.

The EDL then disappeared. More people turned up including students from the university. By now we had around about 80 people defending the Mosque. The EDL never came back.

However, this comes after we heard the mosque was attacked during the week and had some of its windows broken.

Unite Against Fascism, 15 May 2011

See also the Hull Daily Mail, which reports: “Two arrests were made during the course of the day. The first arrest was made in the Pearson Park area of the city at about 2pm. The second was in Spring Bank, when a man in his 30s was detained after an attack on a car full of Asian men.”

Does the BBC have a problem with Muslims?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Does Britain have a problem with Muslims

Yesterday’s The Big Questions on BBC TV was devoted to the issue “Does Britain have a problem with Muslims?” The very title illustrates how Islamophobic discourse has entered the mainstream. Can anyone imagine the BBC broadcasting a programme that addressed the question “Does Britain have a problem with Jews?” or “Does Britain have a problem with Blacks?”

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Melbourne: anti-racists shut down Australian Defence League demonstration

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anti-ADL protest Melbourne

Muslim groups are worried by a new nationalist organisation that claims Australia is in danger of being Islamicised.

Australian Defence League supporters clashed with Left-wing protesters in the city yesterday as the group held its first local rally, sparking a warning from the Baillieu Government that bigotry would not be tolerated. A small team of police initially kept the groups apart, but ADL supporters were forced to end their protest early when activists encircled them and tore up placards.

The ADL is an offshoot of the English Defence League, which has staged demonstrations in areas of high Muslim concentration in the UK.

About 40 ADL members, including women dressed in mock hijabs, protested in Federation Square yesterday over issues such as the certification of halal meat and concern sharia law would be introduced.

Protest organiser Martin Brennan claimed the group had 1400 members but denied it was anti-Muslim. “We are not racist whatsoever, we are against radical Islam infiltrating Australia,” he said.

Australian Federation of Islamic Councils president Ikebal Patel said the group was provocative and wrong to believe that most Australian Muslims wanted to bring in sharia law. “It’s of great concern that anyone is out there trying to disrupt the peaceful social fabric of Australia,” he said. Islamic Council of Victoria spokesman Nazeem Hussein said the ADL’s views were uninformed and saddening.

State Multicultural Affairs Minister Nick Kotsiras said the Government did not tolerate racism, bigotry or the incitement of hatred. “Activities which undermine the multicultural harmony of Victoria will be dealt with swiftly,” he said.

The ADL protest was swamped by the much bigger group of activists and unionists who shouted anti-racism slogans. Anti-racism protester Mick Armstrong, from Socialist Alternative, said the ADL was trying to copy the tactics of its British counterpart. “They have had their protest and we have ended it,” he said.

Herald Sun, 15 May 2011

Update:  See also Melbourne Protests, 16 May 2011

Far-right anti-Islam protestors in Lyon outnumbered by counter-demonstrators

Posted on by Bob Pitt

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAFP reports that nearly 500 far-right activists gathered in Lyon today to protest against halal meat and the “Islamisation of France”.

The Bloc Identitaire had originally intended to hold a “March of the Pigs” through the city but after that had been banned they had to settle for a static “rally for freedom” instead. Bloc Identitaire president Fabrice Robert told the protestors that “Islamisation is a reality in France” while the crowd chanted “Islam out of Europe”, threw smoke bombs and vandalised a kebab restaurant.

They were outnumbered by left-wing counter-demonstrators, variously estimated at between 800 and 2,500, who raised the slogan “Fascism is gangrene” and called for economic and social equality.

The English Defence League proudly announced that its representatives would be joining the “Marche des cochons”, in order to “support our French brothers in the defence of French culture”, evidently unaware that the march had been called off.

There were reportedly five EDL members at the demo. They told Lyon Info that they were there to defend democracy, freedom of expression and the French way of life, “without really knowing what it is”. They did know the British way of life, though, an EDL representative pointed out. And anyway “we’re all Christians”.

It appears that the British far right share another central feature of their culture with their French counterparts. Lyon Info reports that only 2-300 Bloc Identitaire activists actually made it to the rally. The rest were to be found in the neighbourhood bars.

Update:  The EDL states that two of its representatives have been arrested in Lyon, including EDL leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.

Further update:  Le Progrès reports that 80 far-right activists were arrested after causing criminal damage and chanting Nazi slogans. Clearly the EDL were in good company.

One more update:  The EDL admins have now removed the thread on Lennon’s arrest from their Facebook page. That decision might not be unconnected with the posting of comments like this:

The entire thread has however been screengrabbed by Exposing racism and intolerance online. See here, here, here and here.

Republicans welcome Wilders to Tennessee

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anti-Wilders protest TennesseeDutch politician Geert Wilders sees a kindred spirit in Tennessee – a state where new mosques draw protests and the legislature is considering a bill that once targeted adherents of Islamic law.

On trial for hate speech in his home country, Wilders brought his headline-grabbing views on Islam to Middle Tennessee on Thursday. He came to town as the invited guest of the Tennessee Freedom Coalition, a 2-week-old political coalition founded by Republican former congressional candidate Lou Ann Zelenik.

“I come with a warning for America,” said Wilders, a filmmaker and member of the Dutch parliament, and something of a cult celebrity in some conservative circles. Close Islamic schools, he warned America. Halt construction of mosques – or “hate palaces”, as he calls them. Cut off immigration from “non-Western and especially Islamic countries”, and expel any immigrants who do not “assimilate”.

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Newt Gingrich: a Catholic running against Islam?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and high-profile conservative intellectual, announced today that he is officially in the running for the Republican nomination for president. Along the way he’s been playing the politics of religion.

In the speeches and media appearances he did in preparation for his run, he has emphasized two things. The first is the importance of God and morality in the public square, referencing his own conversion to Catholicism to give him credibility. The second is to rail against the dangers of Islam in America….

The irony, of course, is that many of the same slanders leveled at the Catholic Church are now leveled at Islam in America. Catholicism was considered incompatible with liberty, democracy and pluralism. Any inroads made by Catholics into the corridors of power was considered a threat to the American way of life. Catholics were considered loyal to the autocratic Pope, not the American flag. Catholic politicians would enact policies to advantage their Church and hurt American values, everything from appointing an Ambassador to the Vatican to sending public funds to parochial schools.

The “No Popery” signs of previous eras feel remarkably like the “No Sharia” signs of today. The view of the Catholic faith as inherently incompatible with American values mimics today’s view of Islam. And the hysteria about the effects of increasing Catholic influence on American culture sound precisely like today’s fears about Muslims.

Eboo Patel, Washington Post blog, 11 May 2011

The coordinated attack on multiculturalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Open Democracy has published an article by Liz Fekete based on her excellent study for the Institute of Race Relations, Understanding the European-wide assault on multiculturalism. She concludes:

“… the social agenda of Blue Labour (as fashioned by Lord Glasman), the fashionable credo of civic nationalism (articulated by Michael Ignatieff and others), the Searchlight strategy for pulling the rug from under potential extremists, all seek to win back the faith of the white working class at a time of austerity and fragmentation. And all, to one degree or another, are in danger of appealing, if not directly to faith, flag and family, to a latent ethnic nationalism.”

Al-Qaida not a fringe opinion among Muslims, Shoebat tells South Dakota security conference

Posted on by Bob Pitt

South Dakota emergency personnel who gathered Wednesday in Rapid City for a Homeland Security Conference got a controversial presentation about Muslim theology, culture and terrorism.

Walid Shoebat, who says he was a former terrorist in the Palestine Liberation Organization before converting to Christianity, said that Americans should focus on what he called the “culture of terrorism” among Muslims rather than “only the ones who carry out the explosive act”.

Shoebat said closet supporters of terrorism exist throughout the Muslim community in mosques, community groups and in the U.S. armed forces. “You’ve been infiltrated at all levels,” Shoebat said. “Are all Muslims who interpret for the U.S. military terrorists? Of course not. But that doesn’t mean you play Russian roulette.”

Shoebat’s appearance was paid for by a federal grant from the Department of Homeland Security as part of the second annual South Dakota Homeland Security Conference. He also spoke at the first conference last year in Sioux Falls.

Jim Carpenter, director of homeland security for South Dakota, said Shoebat was invited back this year because last year’s speech was among the most popular among the law enforcement, fire, medical and other personnel at the conference. “The critiques and evaluations that came back highly recommended that he come back again,” Carpenter said. “We acted on those, and that’s why he came back.”

In Wednesday’s presentation, Shoebat cited excerpts from the Quran, which is the Muslim holy book, that justified violence against non-Muslims and particularly Jews. These excerpts, he said, showed that Islam itself was inherently violent. He rejected what he called the “myth” that “the Muslim world is divided in two – moderate Islam and extremist Islam”.

Ex-Sen. Jim Abourezk, who is a Christian of Lebanese ancestry, said Shoebat throws “one blanket over all Muslims, whether good or bad, saying they’re all bad”. Shoebat’s rhetoric, Abourezk said, harms Muslims who “would love to be left alone and to be able to worship in the way they see fit”.

“He’s a scam artist and he’s a liar,” Abourezk said. “He doesn’t have any credibility when he claims he was a PLO terrorist.”

Rapid City Journal, 12 May 2011

Cf. Chris Hedges, “Your taxes fund anti-Muslim hatred”, Truthdig, 9 May 2011

Update:  See Richard Bartholomew’s comments at Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, 13 May 2011

Muslims in Europe face growing hostility, Council of Europe report finds

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hostility toward Muslims is growing throughout Europe and Islam is perceived as a major threat by many Europeans, according to a new report by a high-level body within the Council of Europe.

The report also suggested ways to prevent discrimination against Muslims, calling on European countries to accept that a person can be a “hyphenated European” – for instance a “Turkish-German” – just like one can be an “African-American”.

Chaired by former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, the Group of Eminent Persons’ report on intolerance and discrimination in Europe drew attention to the “rising intolerance toward immigrants and Muslims throughout Europe”.

“There is a growing hostility to Muslims throughout Europe,” said the report, titled Living Together: Combining Diversity and Freedom in 21st Century Europe.

“Islam is perceived as a major threat to Europe by many Europeans because they feel that the minority is growing and that Islam is incompatible with modern European life,” the report said. “Because increased immigration of Muslims to Europe in recent decades has resulted in more ‘visible’ Muslim communities and coincided with the growth of political Islam, many Europeans have acquired the conviction that Islam per se is radical, militant and incompatible with European values, and that Muslim immigrants and their descendants therefore cannot be integrated into European societies in the way that earlier waves of migrants have been.”

The report described the discrimination against Muslims in Europe as “a serious human-rights problem”, stressing that such prejudices are “combined with racist attitudes” directed against people originating from Turkey, Arab countries and South Asia.

“Muslims with this background are discriminated [against] in the labor market and the education system in a number of European countries. There are reports showing that they tend to be targeted by police in repeated identity controls and intrusive searches,” the report said.

Hürriyet Daily News, 10 May 2011

Download the report here