Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Wilders delivers anti-Islam speech in Berlin

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In a speech in Berlin Saturday, Dutch far-right lawmaker Geert Wilders said Germany needed a political party that could defend against what he called the dangers of Islam. His visit sparked angry protests.

Populist Dutch politician Geert Wilders, known for his strident anti-Islam and anti-immigration views, has held a speech in a Berlin hotel amid protests outside the venue.

“Germany too needs a political movement that defends the national identity of the country. Germany’s political identity, its economic success, is threatened by Islam,” Wilders told an audience of some 500 people at a hotel in Berlin’s Tiergarten district. “Islam is a dangerous political ideology for everyone,” Wilders, who is facing prosecution in the Netherlands for incitement to hatred, said.

The 47-year-old was invited to Berlin by a party founded in September by Rene Stadtkewitz, a former member of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) who is also a critic of Islam.

The event sparked protests in front of the hotel. Police said some 80 left-wing demonstrators holding up banners reading “Berlin Against Nazis – it’s our Right to Stop Them” and “Send Geert Wilders home” rallied in front of the hotel.

Deutsche Welle, 2 October 2010

Berlin anti-Wilders protest3

New trial sought in Oregon Islamic charity case

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Prosecutors in the trial of the Oregon leader of an Islamic charity branch used appeals to provoke prejudice and emotion that included waving the Qur’an in the air and throwing it on the table in front of jurors, his lawyers say in a request for a new trial.

Pete Seda, of Ashland, was convicted Sept. 9 of conspiracy to defraud the government and filing a false tax return in what prosecutors alleged was a plot to smuggle $150,000 to Muslim fighters in Chechnya by using the Ashland branch of a Saudi Arabian charity, Al-Haramain.

Among the defense’s objections filed last week is that on the morning the verdict was reached, a juror was seen at breakfast in a Eugene hotel reading a front-page story in USA Today about the plan of a Florida pastor to burn a Qur’an two days later on the anniversary of the attacks.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Cardani was named in the filing as the prosecutor who waved “the Qur’an around and then tossed it down on the table directly in front of the jury. The defense motion argues that Cardani waved the Noble Qur’an as he spoke to the jury about its distribution to “violent people, serving time.”

The defense said the use of the Qur’an “had the effect of allowing jurors to act based on emotion and also profoundly disrespected the defendant’s religion.” The action was part of a trial “tainted with fear of Muslims, Islam and terrorism,” the defense said.

Associated Press, 29 September 2010

West Midlands Police apologise for spying on Muslim community

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Birmingham spy camerasBritish police apologized Thursday for a counterterrorism project that installed surveillance cameras in predominantly Muslim neighborhoods, saying that although the cameras had never been switched on, the program had damaged trust and caused anger in the community.

The surveillance program, which saw more than 200 CCTV cameras and number plate recognition devices put up in parts of Birmingham, central England, was conceived in 2007 after a series of terrorist plots were uncovered in the city.

Residents complained that they were not consulted about the program, and civil liberties groups protested that the measures were heavy-handed.

Protests from human rights groups led police to decide not to begin using the cameras after an installation program was completed. Some have been covered with plastic bags to reassure locals that footage or license plate details are not being captured.

An independent review conducted by Thames Valley Police, in southern England, criticized police in central England for the camera program. The review found “little evidence of thought being given to compliance with the legal or regulatory framework” before the cameras were put up.

West Midlands Police constable Chris Sims said authorities had made a mistake in not considering the impact of the cameras in intruding into people’s privacy. “I am sorry that we got such an important issue so wrong and deeply sorry that it has had such a negative impact on our communities,” he told reporters.

Associated Press, 30 September 2010

See also “Police surveillance of Muslims set up with ‘no regard for law'”, Guardian, 1 October 2010

North Carolina voters reject exploitation of ‘Ground Zero mosque’ controversy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Renee EllmersNorth Carolina isn’t exactly a bastion of liberalism but even there a majority of voters think it’s off base for candidates to exploit the proposed “Ground Zero mosque” as a campaign issue. 51% label doing so as “inappropriate” to just 37% who consider it to be an acceptable tactic.

This is particularly pertinent in the Triangle where Renee Ellmers, challenging long time Democratic Congressman Bob Etheridge, has run television ads about the mosque. Voters in that part of the state are particularly strong in their views that it’s inappropriate with 56% expressing that sentiment.

Invoking the mosque is seen as acceptable by the Republican base, with 60% of GOP voters saying they think it’s appropriate to only 29% who object. But for Ellmers to win she’s going to have to take an overwhelming share of independents and also capture a healthy level of Democratic support. With those key groups exploiting the mosque is seen as particularly inappropriate – 68% of Democrats and 50% of independents share that feeling.

Public Policy Polling, 30 September 2010

See also Huffington Post, 30 September 2010

Trade unions to freeze out Sweden Democrats

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Active Sweden Democrats will not be allowed to be members in one of Sweden’s main healthcare professionals unions, the chair of the labour group said on Wednesday.

“To be a nurse or a midwife is based on protecting people’s rights and equal value. You have to reflect on the fact that perhaps not everyone fulfills those guidelines,” Anna-Karin Eklund, chair of the Swedish Association of Health Professionals (Vårdförbundet) to the TT news agency.

According to a report in the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper, several labour groups are exploring various ways to shut Sweden Democrats out of their activities.

An elected member of the IF Metall industrial union is set to have his membership in the union put under review after he ran as a Sweden Democrat and won a seat on a municipal council. “The Sweden Democrats’ ideas stand in conflict with everything we stand for, but you can’t just throw them out automatically,” said IF Metall’s vice chair Anders Ferbe to DN.

The Swedish Transport Workers union (TransPort), which is part of LO, Sweden’s largest trade union confederation, has also given Sweden Democrats the cold shoulder. “We exclude active Sweden Democrats from membership. Their ideas aren’t compatible with our statutes and the fact that they’ve gotten some kind of legitimacy by getting elected to the Riksdag and local councils doesn’t matter,” said TransPort’s third vice-chair Martin Viredius to DN.

SKTF, a union representing salaried employees in the public sector, has previously made it clear that active Sweden Democrats cannot hold elected leadership positions within the union.

The Local, 29 September 2010

Bishop of Leicester calls for faith groups to unite against EDL

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Bishop of Leicester has led a call for faith groups to stand together in “solidarity” ahead of a protest by the English Defence League. Bishop Tim Stevens is a founder member of the Leicester Faith Leaders Forum, which yesterday issued a declaration condemning the English Defence League (EDL) in “the strongest terms”.

Bishop Tim said: “Over the years, the faith groups have said an attack on one is to be regarded an attack on us all. The EDL’s tactic is to single out the Muslim community and we are clear that will not be allowed to happen in Leicester because we are all standing together in solidarity.”

Leicester Mercury, 29 September 2010

See also “Why we need a peaceful city centre protest to oppose the EDL on the 9th October”, Leicester UAF, 28 September 2010

Mosques want to ‘destroy western civilisation from within’, claims Gaffney

Posted on by Bob Pitt

After testifying at a hearing about a proposed mosque in Tennessee, Sharia law “expert” Frank Gaffney went on Anderson Cooper last night to explain why, exactly, the mosque could be another victory for radical American Muslims who want to destroy the United States from within.

Imams’ agenda to impose Sharia law “ultimately winds up becoming a cancer inside a society,” Gaffney claimed. “No-go zones are typically associated with it where the authorities dare not go. Sharia law is practiced in those no-go zones. They are expanded in due course. And ultimately, you have the groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, with whom many of these mosques and for that matter, Muslim-American organizations of any note, are associated, pursuing a mission that we know, from evidence introduced into another federal trial, is to destroy western civilization from within. That’s really worrying.”

On Anderson Cooper last night, he argued with Akbar Ahmed, chair of Islamic studies at American University and a former Pakistani ambassador for the United Kingdom. Ahmed pointed out that only two percent of Americans are Muslim, and even if all of them wanted to impose Sharia law, they couldn’t.

TPM, 29 September 2010

US Muslim organisations play vital role in combating terrorism, report finds

Posted on by Bob Pitt

US flagWith the volume of Islamophobia on the rise in the United States, a recent report prepared for Congress and new law enforcement data are shining fresh light on the significant role American Muslims play in foiling terrorist plots, particularly those of the domestic “homegrown” variety.

The report from the Congressional Research Service, sent to Congress with little fanfare on September 20, contends that soon after 9-11, American Muslims “recognized the need to define themselves as distinctly American communities who, like all Americans, desire to help prevent another terrorist attack” and explores how federal, state and local law enforcement organizations responded by tapping into American Muslims’ language skills, contacts, information and cultural insights.

CRS is a branch of the Library of Congress that conducts research on a confidential basis for members of Congress and committees. Its report was obtained by the Federation of American Scientists and released on September 24, but a CRS spokeswoman would not say who in Congress originally requested it.

Meanwhile, the Muslim Public Affairs Council has crunched FBI data, information in government press releases, and media reports on potential al Qaida-related plots and determined that since 9-11, Muslim Americans have helped thwart 11 al Qaida-related plots, nearly one-third of all such planned attacks that threatened the United States. (A vivid example of an American Muslim warning authorities of a problem: a Muslim was the first to report to law enforcement last May the suspicious vehicle in Times Square which turned out to be a dud car bomb.)

Ironically, the American Muslim community is simultaneously facing what seems to be a swelling wave of Islamophobia, fueled, in part, by specious rhetoric that fuses terrorism and Islam.

Salon, 29 September 2010