Inayat Bunglawala reports on John Denham’s move to restore links between the government and the Muslim Council of Britain, and the backlash against that decision.
Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
Anti-Muslim racists arrested in Wales
Five men have been arrested after a Facebook site was set up declaring “all Muslims should be thrown out of Wales”.
Around 150 people joined the group on the social networking site claiming they would march through the Rhondda Valleys to make their feelings known. But South Wales Police have now stepped in and arrested five men for religiously aggravated public order offences.
It is one of the first occasions people have been arrested over comments posted on Facebook. The group has also been removed from the site. Police now believe the march will not go ahead, but they will be on standby in case anyone turns up.
Members of the group, which was entitled Rhondda March, said they would walk from Treherbert down to Pontypridd on February 28. And the organisers declared: “We Dont Want Musslims in our country move them out they are takeing over.”
The group’s message board was inundated with comments including “ai im in, gona put sum nails in a stick 4 the f******” and “Got my steel toe caps ready, wot a craking idea”. Another reads: “send the f****** bk. Join us u now u want 2 stand up tall”. A further message said: “Move these musslims back home”. And another read: “yeah support our local buissnes not forgin ones. Im in”.
Update: See “Hundreds join Facebook protest against Valleys anti-Muslim march”, Wales Online, 18 February 2010
Police chief blames Muslim community for failure to identify terrorists
Muslims in Britain must do more to inform police of potential terrorists, one of the country’s top officers will warn tonight.
Sir Norman Bettison, Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police, is to call for greater help from Islamic communities to identify suspects at home. He says: “I’m looking for the community to work much more closely with the police in identifying young people they have concerns about in terms of people they’re mixing with, the sort of websites they’re going on and the material they’re reading. That information can only come from the community itself.”
The police chief speaks out in a three-part BBC documentary, Generation Jihad, which begins tonight. It examines the threat posed by young Muslims who have been radicalised on the internet.
Ratna Lachman, director of JUST West Yorkshire, a project aiming to promote racial equality, said she was concerned that Sir Norman might be tarring “an entire community with a brush of non co-operation”.
But a spokesman for the Quilliam Foundation, a think-tank which aims to combat extremism, said: “Terrorism cannot be defeated by the police alone. It is important that all communities are alert to the dangers of extremism and help the police wherever possible.”
Attacks on City University Muslim students will not result in prosecutions
The three men arrested last November after attacks on City University Muslim students will not face court proceedings. According to a police spokesperson, charges have been dropped “due to insufficient evidence and a lack of witnesses coming forward.”
The three men, aged 17, 18 and 19, were arrested and released on bail until 4 January. The conditions of bail, stating the men were not to go within 100 metres of the university or to contact any City students or prosecution witnesses, are no longer enforceable as they have expired.
At the time the police said that they were treating the attacks against members of the university’s Islamic Society as racially aggravated.
It remains unclear whether the police continue to carry out extra patrols around campus. The incident on 5 November started near the university’s Gloucester Building which houses the Muslim prayer room. Fighting then continued on St John Street where the students were attacked with sticks and poles by a group of 30 white and black males.
Although the security services at the university were unaware of this development, Richard Mansfield, Security Services Manager, said that “there is no intelligence to suggest” that whoever was responsible for the attack would try to seek revenge. He added that he did not believe there was added threat to students.
For details of the November attacks, see Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: a London Case Study by Jonathan Githens-Mazer and Bob Lambert.
EDL cancels Bolton demonstration
The English Defence League has announced that it has postponed its planned demonstration in Bolton on 6 March, supposedly because it would clash with a Hindu festival. According to the EDL:
“We have received information that far-left groups were planning to attack Hindus whilst dressed in EDL clothing, which may be purchased freely from our internet shop. This cowardly attack, had it taken place, was to be blamed on our organisation with the intent of discrediting our stated aim of peacefully protesting against radical Islam. Due to the respect we have for the peace loving Hindu community, we deemed it only right and proper that we cancel our own plans to ensure their safety.”
Yeah, sure. A more likely explanation for the cancellation of the Bolton protest is that the EDL leaders recognise that the gangs of thick racists who are drawn to their intimidatory demonstrations would be unable or unwilling to make a distinction between Muslims and other brown-skinned minority communities. And the suggestion that “far-left groups” were intending to disguise themselves as EDL supporters is laughable. The left has little need to discredit the EDL’s “stated aim of peacefully protesting” when the EDL’s violent hooligans are quite capable of doing that for themselves.
Update: See Stephen Hall’s comments at Socialist Unity, 8 February 2010
And the UAF statement here.
French Council of the Muslim Faith calls for action against Islamophobia
A French Muslim organisation has condemned a weekend attack on a mosque north of Paris.
The phrases “Islam get out of Europe” and “France is for the French” were scrawled on the walls and entrance of a mosque in Crepy-en-Valois.
The mayor’s office of Crepy-en-Valois denounced what it called a “horrible, idiotic act”, while the French Council of the Muslim Faith said the attack was the latest in a long line of incidents that had targeted mosques in France. The organisation called on authorities to take action to end the “series of shameful and hateful profanities that target houses of prayer.”
The Council, whose members are elected by French Muslims, also called for French President Nicolas Sarkozy to back a parliamentary commission that would examine the rise of Islamophobia in France. The proposal was dropped from last week’s report that called for a ban on the full Islamic veil in official public spaces like government offices, hospitals or schools.
Last month a mosque in the southern town of Castres was targeted and had swastikas and the phrase daubed Sieg Heil on its walls.
Time for a Parliamentary Committee to investigate Islamophobia
“Bigotry, hatred and attacks against British Muslims are nothing new. But its unchallenged growth in our country can no longer be ignored.
“The half-hearted response by the government to this growing phenomenon has been far from adequate to date. The phase for window dressing is over. Now is the time to act.
“What is urgently needed is clear leadership from both our police and the government in policy directions in dealing with Islamophobia in all its forms.
“In 2005, in response to growing levels of anti-Semitism, a Parliamentary Committee was established to combat the threat. Likewise, at a time when British Muslims are now the new target for hatred and attacks, it is high time a dedicated committee is now set up to investigate Islamophobia in our country.”
Kawsar Zaman at Left Foot Forward, 1 February 2010
Is your professor an Islamophobe?
Satoshi Kanazawa is an evolutionary psychologist and professor at the London School of Economics. Although his research as a scientist has ruffled some feathers in the past, his attempts as a “public intellectual” are indisputably inflammatory. In a recent article entitled, “What’s Wrong with Muslims” published in his blog hosted by Psychology Today, Kanazawa wrote:
Major Nidal Malik Hasan is a native-born American citizen, trained military officer, and educated MD and psychiatrist. Yet none of these things matters for him; first and foremost, he is a Muslim…They are all united in their values and goals by their singular identity of being Muslims. It’s tempting to dismiss these observations by saying that [he and others implicated in terrorism plots] are all ‘extremists’ or ‘Jihadists.’ That would be politically correct and comforting, but factually inaccurate.
In his very next article he boasts:
No, not all Muslims are terrorists, but…half of Muslims worldwide are terrorists and active supporters of terrorism, who would encourage their sons, brothers, and nephews to blow themselves up in an airplane or in a crowded market.
Kanazawa is just one in a growing number of academics using his intellectual identity to promote intolerance and xenophobia against Islam and Muslims.
Abdulrahman El-Sayed in the Huffington Post, 2 February 2010
Is Britain a ‘cesspit’ for Islamist terrorists?
Mehdi Hasan replies to Wole Soyinka.
Cambridge University Israel Society cancels invite to Benny Morris
The Cambridge University Israel Society has cancelled a meeting at which the Israeli historian Benny Morris was to speak, after objections by the Islamic Society and others who drew attention to Morris’s record of anti-Muslim statements.
See the Facebook page “Cambridge protests Islamophobia on campus“.