Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

BNP incites hatred over St Albans mosque plan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Vicious leaflets aimed at keeping a mosque out of London Colney have been referred to the police’s harm reduction unit.

Police are now examining the British National Party (BNP) leaflets headed up “Do you want to live under an oppressive Islamic Sharia government?” as a possible incitement to racial hatred. The leaflets were delivered to homes in London Colney claiming a planning application to turn Cemex House in Barnet Road into a mosque ousewas part of a wider plot to turn St Albans into an Islamic city.

The man behind the leaflets is Danny Seabrook, 36, a divorced self-employed builder who lives in London Colney. He stood as a county council candidate for the BNP recently in Watford. He denies incitement to racial hatred saying the leaflets are “factual and to the point”. He went on: “A mosque would be out of keeping in the village. St Albans is a Christian city. You give an inch and they take a mile. They’ll have minarets up there next.”

Some of the propagandist language used in the leaflet includes accusations that politicians pander to Islamists’ every demand and the majority of residents want to keep the area as it is now.

County Cllr for London Colney, Chris Brazier, said: “This is detestable and I don’t think there would have been this reaction if the plan was to turn it into a Christian church. The BNP do seem to be targeting London Colney since they picked up 200 votes in the recent county council elections.”

Cllr Brazier conceded that he had received almost 100 letters from residents opposing the plans on legitimate planning grounds including traffic fears, narrowness of the access road, insufficient parking and noise. He maintained there was no suggestion of racism in any of the moderately-worded letters.

He said the application had aroused fears that such a large mosque would attract significant numbers of visitors from outside the area, raising traffic and parking issues for residents.

But Peter Trevelyan, acting for the London Colney Islamic Group which has submitted the application, said: “Having been frustrated in its search for suitable premises, the local community currently uses the parish meeting room on White Horse Lane once a week for Friday prayers. The main hall is small and inconvenient in shape and, with 50 people present, is cramped and over-crowded.”

He said prayers would take place five times a day but the principal focus for prayer would be at 1pm on Fridays when attendance varied between 40 and 50 men and a handful of women. The majority would walk to the site from homes and employment nearby.

But council officers have recommended to a planning meeting on Monday that the scheme should be approved because there would be adequate off street parking and no acceptable harm to highway safety or the free and safe flow of traffic.

Herts Advertiser, 28 November 2009

Via Lancaster Unity

Why Conservatives failed the test on Islamic schools

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Writing in the Independent, Richard Garner explains how the Tory leader’s attack on the Government has unravelled.

In the Sun, Ken Livingstone comments:

“Devious David Cameron blundered in smearing two Muslim schools as training grounds for terrorists. Encouraged by his swivel-eyed schools adviser, Michael Gove, he thought he could get a few votes by whipping up fear of Islam. What the Tories must realise is that the Muslims who left the villages of Pakistan and Bangladesh to come here and work did so because they wanted their kids to grow up with our traditions of democracy, law and fair play. All the opinion polls show British Muslims are as loyal to Britain and its values as those of us who have been here for 1,000 years. Our media should stop giving publicity to the few mad mullahs and their handful of followers. They no more represent British Muslims than 1999 nailbomber David Copeland represented the mass of decent and tolerant Brits.”

Muslim students beaten for defending woman wearing hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An 18-year-old Muslim student was attacked and beaten even after he lost consciousness by a gang of white youths on November 6. As they attacked him, they shouted “Where is your Allah now” and “Where is He to help you now.”

The first year business and computer undergraduate student had just left De Montfort University, Leicester, library with his friend at around 8.30 pm when they were attacked by around 10 white youths in Great Central Way, near the junction with Briton Street, Bede Island. The two students, Ahmed and Umar, (not their real name as they wish to remain anonymous) saw the gang taunting and abusing a Muslim woman wearing the hijab. She was with two other women who had gone ahead of her.

Ahmed told The Muslim News that he and Umar heard the gang tell the middle aged woman, “How do you like it if I walked in a balaclava. This is England. You should not be wearing a scarf.” They were concerned about what would happen to the Muslim woman and so they waited. One of the white youths turned towards them and asked them why were they were watching them. “I told them, ‘Leave her alone’.”

The woman tried to tell the white youths not to attack the students but they didn’t listen. The white youths assaulted Ahmed and Umar, and began beating them. Ahmed fell down and the gang continued to punch and kick him even after he was unconscious. They “jumped” on his head and kicked his body. He was picked up and thrown on to the ground.

Ahmed said the attack was “Islamophobic as they were talking about her scarf and also when they told me ‘Where is your Allah’ is to do with religion. How did they know we were Muslims? We could have been Sikhs for all they know.” Umar said the attack was both Islamophobic and racist as they had also shouted “Pakis”. He was “very angry” and said he never experienced racism in East London where he was from.

Muslim News, 27 November 2009

See also the comment piece by Kawsar Zaman, vice-chair of the MCB’s Youth Committee, “Can the BBC shirk its responsibility if anti-Muslim attacks increase?”

Media double standards over Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tabloid Watch examines two recent examples:

Yesterday, a man admitted 22 charges, including six under the Terrorism Act, after 54 homemade ball-bearing and nail bombs were found in his West Yorkshire home, along with guns, ammunition and weapons manuals. The charges included:

  • four counts of making explosives
  • four counts of possessing explosives
  • three counts of manufacturing prohibited weapons
  • four counts of possession of prohibited weapons
  • one count of possession of ammunition without a certificate.

Now it doesn’t take a genius to work out that if this man was Muslim, this would be all over the media. But he isn’t and so, apart from three Yorkshire papers, it hasn’t been mentioned at all. By contrast, this Muslim woman only had a memory stick with explosives manuals on and the Mail reported that. But they ignored this.

And the reports from Hope Not Hate and Searchlight that this bombmaker (Terence Gavan) was also a member of the BNP should only heighten the news interest. Or so you would have thought…

At the start of October, this blog noted the desecration of Muslim graves in Southern Cemetery in Manchester. Although covered by the BBC, it was ignored by everyone else in the mainstream media.

Now, the BBC are reporting the graveyard has been targeted for a third time, as 20 headstones were pushed over. The BBC says: “Det Ch Insp Steve Eckersley called it ‘mindless racist behaviour’ that was being treated as a hate crime. On 29 September, 26 Muslim headstones were vandalised and three days later 27 were targeted.”

So at what point does this become news to the newspapers? Or is it because the targets are Muslims that it never does?

More anti-Muslim hysteria in the Express

Posted on by Bob Pitt

113000 Aid to Fanatics“After yet another stupid health scare story yesterday (too much salt is bad for you, shock), the Express was back to one of its other favourite topics today: Islam. Or should that be anti-Islam hysteria?

“There is so much wrong with the Express‘ article that it’s hard to know where to start. But let’s try this: the headline ‘£113,000 aid to fanatics who want to kill us’ no longer exists on the Express website. They have changed it to a much less inflammatory David Cameron: Brown soft on Muslim fanatics, which strongly suggests they have backed away from their own ridiculous front page.”

Tabloid Watch, 26 November 2009

Tabloid Watch quotes the Express editorial, which is not available online. This states: “What these exchanges demonstrate is just how deeply in hock the Labour party is at every level to Muslim vested interests.” Under the heading “No funding for Christians”, the editorial quotes actor David Suchet as saying: “A charity I work for got turned down for Government funding recently because it was a Christian charity, even though it had been funded by the Government for several years.”

The Express comments: “It does not take a brilliant detective to work out what is going on here, just an ordinarily observant person: Britain’s cultural identity is being systematically dismantled by a government of traitors.” As Tabloid Watch notes, this directly echoes the language of the BNP.

The Express article reporting Suchet’s comments also quotes Alan Craig of the Christian Peoples Alliance as claiming: “Christianity is being marginalised by those who rule our society. Christianity can stand up for itself, but my concern is that it is not a level playing field. It seems everything is being done to accommodate the Islamic faith at the expense of society.”

Tariq Ramadan ‘a greater threat to Western civilization’ than Osama bin Laden

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pipes 9-11“To borrow a computer term, if Ayatollah Khomeini, Osama bin Laden, and Nidal Hasan represent Islamism 1.0, Recep Tayyip Erdogan (the prime minister of Turkey), Tariq Ramadan (a Swiss intellectual), and Keith Ellison (a US congressman) represent Islamism 2.0. The former kill more people but the latter pose a greater threat to Western civilization.”

Daniel Pipes in the Jerusalem Post, 24 November 2009

See also LoonWatch, who comment: “Ellison and Ramadan stand as a strong counter example against Bin Laden and his cohorts for Muslims, especially young Muslims. They see two Muslims, strongly grounded in their faith, belonging to their society and giving back on various levels from the social to the political; instead of deriding them Pipes should be encouraging them.

“As more examples such as theirs increase in the West it will enable Muslims to better fight those minority elements within their faith that seek to cause chaos and violence and that is what really threatens Daniel Pipes who seems to be motivated by the paranoid fear that the ‘enfranchisement of American Muslims…will present true dangers to American Jews’.”

Bolton Muslims condemn arrest of Asif Farooqui

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Asif Farooqui protestSenior members of the Muslim community in Bolton have condemned the arrest and subsequent release without charge of a 62-year-old community leader by counter-terrorism officers.

Four of the the five men arrested in dawn raids across the Greater Manchester area last week were charged with terror-related offences, police confirmed. But the arrest of 62-year-old community leader Asif Farooqui from Bolton was strongly criticised yesterday. Bolton Council of Mosques spokesman Muhammed Mangera said:

“The release confirms that there was in fact no evidence to support the allegation that he was involved in any activity related to terrorism. Indeed Shaykh Farooqui has always advocated peace, tolerance, harmony and respect for the law of this country. This ill advised arrest has had a huge impact on the communities’ confidence in all the agencies advocating the arrest.

“Bolton’s Muslims are deeply frustrated and disappointed in a system where innocent people, in this case a 62-year-old elderly, frail and faithful leader in the community, can be arrested and detained without even any provision of bail. There are without doubt issues of significant concern relating to the actual terrorism legislation.”

Greater Manchester Police declined to comment on the criticism.

Morning Star, 24 November 2009

See also Bolton News and ENGAGE.

Four arrested in protest against mosques in Wrexham

Posted on by Bob Pitt

WDL WrexhamFour people were arrested at an anti-Muslim demonstration amid a strong police presence in Wrexham. Around 40 members of a group calling themselves the Welsh Defence League (WDL) shouted racial abuse and gestured towards locals, saying they were protesting against plans for a new mosque.

Four people were arrested for public order offences, and North Wales’s Temporary Deputy Chief Constable, Ian Shannon said the day passed without “significant incident”. Meanwhile Unite Against Fascism held a counter-protest, near where the WDL gathered on Saturday.

And a Wrexham Communities Against Racism festival attracted around 200 people. Residents were joined by faith groups, the Wales TUC, Searchlight, Unison and members of Wrexham Council. Searchlight Cymru secretary Ian Titherington said none of the WDL protestors were Welsh, and they appeared to be members of the English Defence League (EDL).

He said: “This was the final humiliation for the EDL’s disastrous visits to Wales. The only way they could hold an event was to bus in 30 from Bolton, who on arrival went to the nearest pub, got drunk and bawled out racist chants. The EDL gathering did not exactly sell any local links, by displaying a Bolton Wanderers FC English flag and singing God Save the Queen.”

The WDL was formed in June 2009 as an off-shoot of the EDL, which claims to campaign against Islamic extremism. The group insists it is not fascist. But at a march in Swansea in October, onlookers were confronted by jeering men giving Nazi salutes, and one was arrested for a racially aggravated public order offence.

Daily Post, 23 November 2009

Detention of Shaikh Asif Farooqui condemned

Posted on by Bob Pitt

As the police are granted more time to question the five individuals apprehended on suspicion of inciting terrorism overseas, the family of Shaikh Asif Farooqui has released a statement expressing their shock and dismay at the arrest of the 62 year old preacher. The family’s statement reads:

“It is simply incredible to those that know him and his work to imagine he could be involved in the promotion or incitement of any kind of violence. It is particularly shocking that, having influenced so many, young and old, male and female, to live as law-abiding, trustworthy citizens, he is now being accused of actions which he has so openly opposed for so long. He has always gone out of his way to foster good relations with the local police in order to work together as a community and this makes his arrest all the more disgraceful and unacceptable.”

ENGAGE, 19 November 2009