In a penetrating BBC TV documentary See You In Court (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b010hkr1/See_You_in_Court_Episode_3/)
the trustees of Finsbury Park Mosque, previously North London Central Mosque, were shown successfully defending the good name of the mosque against a false allegation of distributing extremist literature in a report by the influential right wing think-tank Policy Exchange. Had the allegation been true it would have been especially damaging to the mosque because of the mosque’s unhappy history before the present trustees brought to an end the extremist influence of Abu Hamza and his supporters in February 2005.Although eventually the mosque trustees were unable to conclude a libel claim against Policy Exchange in court because of a legal technicality the mosque nevertheless secured a published clarification from Policy Exchange which went a long way to retracting the false allegation. As the documentary revealed this was a significant climb-down by Policy Exchange that would not have been achieved without the determined efforts of the trustees and the expert guidance of libel lawyers. For the BBC documentary the case was an example of a local mosque being prepared to challenge the weight of a leading think-tank and to restore its good name.
Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
Montreal: Muslims call for crack down on hate crime after repeated attacks on mosque
The Muslim Council of Montreal (MCM) is calling for harsher penalties and zero tolerance for hate crimes in the wake of an attack last week on a Dorval mosque.
“It is indeed distressing that in a pluralistic and multicultural society such as ours, we have religious institutions being targeted again and again in crimes of hate and violence,” Salam Elmenyawi, president of MCM, said on Saturday. “These attacks go against the very Canadian values and principles that we are all committed to and must be condemned in the strongest terms.”
Elmenyawi’s comments follow an overnight break-in last Monday at a mosque at the corner of Neptune Blvd. and Nightingale Ave. in Dorval. The intruders broke in through a fire exit door and stole a computer and fired steel bolts through a couple of windows. In 2009, the mosque was vandalized four times, usually with graffiti painted on walls. The last time it was vandalized was in September 2009.
BNP reported over Scots leaflets
The BNP has been reported to the Electoral Commission over a campaign leaflet that falsely claims there are more Muslims in the UK than Scots.
A pamphlet was put through letterboxes across Scotland which said the BNP would put an end to mosque-building and warning of a “flood” of Eastern European immigrants about to arrive in Scotland.
Campaign group, Hope Not Hate, has reported the party over its claims. There are an estimated 2.4 million Muslims in Britain and more than five million people in Scotland alone, 89% of whom declared themselves Scottish in the last census.
Aamer Anwar, human rights lawyer, said Muslims could be intimidated by the leaflets and they should call the police if they felt threatened. He said: “This could be considered breach of the peace. It’s racist nonsense which is totally inaccurate and trying to play on people’s fears.”
BNP Scottish organiser Gary Raikes said the leaflets were checked before going out and questioned whether the UK’s Muslim population had been accurately measured.
Racist leaflets delivered to residents of Cumbrian town
A leading anti-fascist campaigner has slammed a racist leaflet delivered to homes in Millom. The leaflet refers to the Muslim burka, a veiled dress traditionally worn by women, as a “black crow like tent” and describes the British Government as “treacherous”.
Paul Jenkins, chairman of Unite Against Fascism north west, said: “Whoever is getting this sort of thing out there is completely unacceptable. In the same way in the 1930s Hitler’s Nazis targeted Jews, now far right groups and others are trying to scapegoat Muslims. Muslims are not to blame for the cuts or other problems. Our communities are better united than divided.”
Sergeant Ashley Bennett of Copeland Neighbourhood Policing Team said: “We have been made aware of several leaflets being posted through doors in the Millom area over the last week. They read like they have been written by a person of Islamic faith however upon closer examination they appear to be spoof in nature.
“They have clearly been done on somebody’s word processor as they have not been professionally published and printed. That said we take all forms of racism very seriously and are investigating the matter.”
Anyone with information is asked to contact police on 0845 3300247.
Hague council rejects PVV demand for ban on building mosques
The Hague council on Thursday rejected a Freedom Party proposal to ban the construction of new mosques in the city.
All parties fiercely rejected the proposal which they branded as discriminatory because the Freedom Party is not opposed to the construction of new places of worship of other religions.
Green Left leader Inge Vianen said: “They are guilty of discrimination when they suggest that the council should assist all religious people in finding a suitable place of worship except Muslims.” The Green Left politician added that “the fact that this type of statement is increasingly considered normal, does nothing to change that”.
The local party Islam Democrats said if felt discriminated against and the Hague City Party (HSP) spoke of a “provocation, pure and simple”.
Alderman Marnix Norder (Diversity) called the Freedom Party proposal “completely unacceptable”. The Freedom Party proposal was prompted by a letter from the Mayor and aldermen proposing an expansion of the number of places of worship in The Hague in the coming 10 years.
So whose liberty, equality, fraternity is really at stake?
A decent article on the French veil ban, in the Daily Telegraph of all places (and no, it’s not by Peter Oborne). There’s a good editorial in the Financial Times too, which states:
“The ban’s defenders, who range across the spectrum of French politics, pretend the veil is a threat to France’s republican values. But this republican bigotry is in reality a cheap populist ploy, in large part dictated by the electoral calendar at a time when the xenophobic National Front is again scoring well in the polls.”
(The cartoon is from the Telegraph as well, via Inayat’s Corner.)
Store manager in Missouri refused to sell mattress to veiled Muslim woman ‘for security reasons’
Syeeda Hussaini has suffered from neck pain the past few years, to the extent that it’s difficult for her to drive and get a good night’s rest. So on a recent weekend, she, her husband, and their three kids loaded up the car and drove less than a mile to Mattress Firm. Her husband, Mohammad, encouraged her to lie on different beds to see which one felt best.
She said the store manager approached, but oddly didn’t want to help. He told the family that he wouldn’t sell them a mattress for security reasons, she said.
Hussaini, 27, who is Muslim, covers all but her hands, feet and eyes in public to show respect for femininity and her religion. She said the manager told her she needed to show her face for service. Mohammad, a pathology resident at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, tried to explain that his wife dressed this way to be modest, much like Catholic nuns. But the manager stomped off, they say.
Hussaini wrote a letter to a regional representative of the company after the March 12 visit to the store. An official at Mattress Firm headquarters in Houston said the company “has a zero tolerance policy on racial and religious profiling.” Spokeswoman Sunni Goodman would not comment specifically about the manager, but she confirmed the encounter happened. “As soon as we were informed of the incident, we took appropriate action to address the situation,” she said. The manager no longer works for Mattress Firm.
There have been other recent complaints in the region. Advocates said emotions are running high since a Muslim community center was proposed near ground zero in New York and since a Florida pastor burned a Quran, the holy book of the Islamic faith.
“It’s harder to be a Muslim in the United States now than at any time since 9/11,” said James Hacking III, a lawyer and head of the Muslim task force of the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri. On Monday, two of Hacking’s Muslim clients filed a lawsuit in St. Louis County against Bankers Life and Casualty Co., and Daniel Colvis, a branch manager in Chesterfield, alleging violations of the Missouri Human Rights Act.
Ali Badran and Warrad Warrad of Florissant, who were sales agents at the life and health insurance company, claim that Colvis “repeatedly made disparaging and defamatory comments” about their race, religion and ethnicity in front of other employees. Colvis is accused of making hostile comments to the plaintiffs including, “please don’t blow yourselves up.” He allegedly told Warrad to shave off a neatly trimmed beard and asked both of them if they were related to Osama Bin Laden and if they danced on 9/11.
Colvis fired Badran in 2009 and Warrad in 2010, even though they had stronger sales histories than non-Muslim agents, according to the lawsuit.
Norwegian Defence League’s anti-Islam demonstration flops
Lena Andreassen of the Norwegian Defence League addresses the masses
The failure of far-right Islamophobes in Norway to build a united organisation modelled on the EDL is covered in this month’s issue of Searchlight. And now Exposing the English Defence League has drawn our attention to a demonstration against the “Islamic occupation of Norway” organised in Oslo on 9 April by the EDL’s official sister organisation, headed by one Lena Andreassen. As Andreassen explained to Aftenposten, that specific date was chosen to mark the German invasion of Norway on 9 April 1940, in order to draw a parallel between the occupation of the country by the Nazis and the current supposed invasion by “extreme Islam”.
Alas for Andreassen, her Oslo protest turned out to be a farce. It drew between 10 and 15 participants, one of whom was Darren Lee of the EDL, and was reported in Dagbladet under the mocking headline “Søren, det er jo flere pressefolk her enn oss” (translated by Exposing as “Bugger! There’s more journos here than us!”). An anti-racist counter-demonstration, by contrast, was attended by between 700 and a thousand people.
EDL representative Darren Lee speaking at the Oslo demonstration
Anti-racists demonstrate against the Norwegian Defence League
Infighting wrecks attempts to form Norwegian Defence League
Searchlight, April 2011
By a special correspondent in Oslo
ATTEMPTS TO create a Norwegian version of the English Defence League have run into trouble. Far-right activists clearly thought that what seems to work in England would also succeed in Norway. Instead several factions and aspiring leaders have set up nine different Facebook groups, three with only one member, all claiming to be the true Norwegian Defence League.
The first attempt at doing more than creating a Facebook group came from Åge Strern Sundvor, a long-time loner on the extreme right who has tried to set up several mass movements and churches on the internet, all of which ended up with him and his dog, Garm, as the only members.
After securing the backing of the nazi group Vigrid, Sundvor called for a demonstration in Oslo on 26 February. Anti-racists responded by applying for a demonstration permit and took over the venue of the planned NDL stunt.
Another attempt at forming a Norwegian Defence League came from Ronny Alte from Tensberg, who with some friends created a Facebook group of more than 500 members, including convicted nazis and exiled Russians belonging to the banned Slavic Union.
One of the Russians is Vjoteslav Datsik, who earned his 15 minutes of fame last year when he walked into an Oslo police station and applied for political asylum while waving a handgun. Datsik is in custody awaiting extradition to Russia, where he is wanted by the police after absconding from a mental hospital.
After claiming to have thrown out all the nazis, Alte had difficulty explaining why his group still included Datsik, as well as the convicted nazi bank robber Werner Holm and violent nazi thugs such as Johnny “Light” Olsen”, Morten Andre Serensen and Dariusz Arnesen, all previously connected with the now defunct Norwegian Blood and Honour.
In western Norway, Remi Huseby from Haugesund sounded unconvincing when urging the followers of his NDL to support Israel, bearing in mind his past connection with the rabidly antisemitic Vigrid group. His fellow trade unionists were even less impressed and kicked him out of the Norwegian Transport Union.
Lena Andreassen from Oslo did better. Formerly connected with the circles around the defunct nazi Bootboys group, Andreassen has paid several visits to the EDL in Britain. Alte and Huseby stepped down after Andreassen produced a letter signed by Hel Gower, the personal assistant of the EDL leaders, stating that the EDL had chosen Andreassen’s faction to form a Norwegian sister organisation. The letter also appointed Andreassen’s friend Havar Krane to lead the NDL pending an election.
After this slap in the face, the Sundvor faction closed down its website, urging all its followers to join Stop Islamisation of Norway. Several leading SIAN members have joined Andreassen’s NDL at the same time as giving support to Huseby’s efforts to have his trade union expulsion lifted.
Krane and Andreassen also claim to throw out nazis and run a background check on everyone trying to join their latest Facebook version of the NDL, but this is a lie. The NDL’s “non-racist” alibi, Jon Rosenberg Hagen, a freelance photographer who was adopted from Korea, has been seen hanging out with the Slavic Union. As Hagen is allegedly responsible for security in the NDL, he might have a problem with his credibility.
Unluckily for him, his Russian nazi friend, Evgenij Dyakonov, has published a picture of himself in a friendly pose with Hagen in a restaurant. Dyakonov also poses as a journalist and has been seen around Oslo with his camera, most recently when he ended up in a brawl with anti-racist protesters outside a nazi tattoo studio.
With SIAN activists joining the NDL and activists from the different NDL factions flowing into SIAN, the stage is set for even more vicious skirmishes, even in SIAN whose leader, Arne Tumyr, is considered too old and soft by some of its younger members.
EDL to protest against ‘extremist Muslims’ … in Weymouth
Fears are mounting over a march through Weymouth by the right-wing English Defence League protesting at Islamic extremism.
The newly-formed Weymouth branch of the group organised the march following a TV programme that showed Islamic extremists on the streets of the town. They will be undertaking the protest in Weymouth on Saturday, April 30 at 1pm to protest the “entrapment of the youth of Weymouth by extremist Muslims”. A counter march by opponents of the EDL will take place at the same time.
Fox Nation promotes Trump’s Islam-bashing
Continuing its practice of shamelessly promoting and embracing controversial statements by Donald Trump, Fox Nation is hyping an interview Trump gave to Christian Broadcasting Network’s (CBN) David Brody, in which he said that “[t]here’s something” in the Quran “that teaches some very negative vibe” and defended the assertion that there is “a Muslim problem” in the United States.
Fox Nation may not realize it, but Trump’s charge that there is “a Muslim problem” originated with Fox’s own Bill O’Reilly. During an appearance on The View in October 2010, O’Reilly asserted that “Muslims killed us on 9-11” while discussing a proposed Islamic center in New York City. O’Reilly later apologized, saying, “If anyone felt that I was demeaning all Muslims, I apologize,” but pushed back against his critics by repeatedly insisting that “there is a Muslim problem in the world.”
O’Reilly continued to defend his remarks during an interview with Trump, who agreed that a “Muslim problem” exists, saying: “Absolutely. Absolutely. I don’t notice Swedish people knocking down the World Trade Center.”