ENGAGE has posted a further response to the Harry’s Place “expert” on the British National Party.
Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
How Phil Woolas plays into the hands of the BNP
“Just how many people were on the now-notorious al Muhajiroun-organised demo in Luton earlier this year, in which a small group of Islamists chanted anti-war slogans at British troops marching through the town? Just a couple of dozen, if memory serves.
“Yet the nationwide impact of the protest was out of all proportion to the numbers involved. This is presumably why immigration minister Phil Woolas thinks it is clever politics explicitly to recall the incident when presenting his plans for a points-based citizenship scheme in the media this morning.
“In practice, the stipulation will probably be pertinent to just a statistically insignificant handful of the hundreds of thousands of passport applications each year. But that’s not the point. The point is getting headlines such as ‘Immigrants who jeer at British troops in the street to be barred from gaining citizenship’.
“New Labour’s tactics to counter the inroads the British National Party is making into sections of its electoral base centre on tacitly conceding the BNP case, and then showcasing policies that seem to respond to BNP voters’ concerns.”
Stop the racist hooligans from marching in Birmingham on Saturday 8 August
Unite Against Fascism supporters in the West Midlands will be joining the local Muslim community in Birmingham city centre on Saturday 8 August to protest against an “anti-Muslim demonstration” planned that day by right-wing thugs linked to the fascist BNP and promoted on openly Nazi internet sites such as Stormfront.
The racist demo is planned by a group of football hooligans operating under the names “Casuals United” and the “English Defence League”. There was a spate of Nazi and BNP graffiti in the local area after their last outing in Birmingham on 4 July.
The English Defence League website was set up by Chris Renton, a BNP activist from Weston-super-Mare.
In May this year the same group ran rampage through Luton attacking Asians and Asian-owned businesses.
The counter-demonstration against the racists meets at 5pm, outside Zavvi/Waterstones, High Street, Birmingham.
Everyone in the area should come along and show these thugs that their brand of vicious racism is not wanted in Birmingham or the West Midlands.
Who is behind the anti-Islam protests?
Gerry Gable, Simon Cressy and Tom Woodson of Searchlight investigate.
News of the World in libel pay-out
The News of the World has agreed to pay £100,000 in libel damages to Shakil Akhtar for publishing a story and editorial in February 2008, “Evil on Benefits” and “Sick Parasites Spawn Terror”, accusing Mr Akhtar of channeling funds raised in the UK to terror cells abroad.
ENGAGE has the details.
Dudley Council loses mosque battle
A controversial £18 million mosque is set to be built in the centre of a Black Country town after the High Court threw out a council challenge. Dudley Muslim Association has won outline permission for the building in Hall Street, Dudley, following a five-year battle.
The scheme has attracted widespread criticism, with 20,000 locals signing a petition opposing the proposal. Dudley Council took its battle against the mosque to the High Court, costing taxpayers around £16,000, because it said the land had been designated for employment use and that the scheme did not fit this profile.
It could also still throw a spanner in the works because it is unhappy a land swap agreement made with the Association in 2001 has not been honoured. The deal stipulated the mosque had to be “substantially built” by the end of last year or the council could buy back the land at an agreed price. Dudley Council leader, Coun Anne Millward, is to hold talks with council chief executive John Polychronakis to see if the scheme can still be stopped on those grounds.
Breaking news: Muslim believes in Islam
Only 367 Muslim women in France wear full veil – report
Only 367 women in France wear Islamic veils that cover their faces and bodies, a newspaper reported on Wednesday, undermining the position of politicians who are pushing for a ban on the garments.
A panel of legislators is studying the issue of whether the number of women wearing such veils is on the rise and why. The panel is expected to say in coming months whether it backs a ban on the veils in public places, as advocated by some politicians.
The influential newspaper Le Monde said that in light of the tiny number of women concerned, the idea of a ban should be dropped. “Do we need to legislate for fewer than 400 people, legislate for an exception? … Given the risks, including the stigmatisation of Islam … the answer is no,” it said in an editorial.
The intelligence reports cited by Le Monde suggest that the reality of women who cover their faces in France, and why, is quite different from the description given by politicians.
The reports say most women who wear full veils are under 30 and do so to make a political point. Outraged by what they see as widespread anti-Muslim sentiment, they want to defy society and, in some cases, their own relatives.
French converts to Islam account for around a quarter of wearers, the newspaper said, quoting the reports.
Prosecutors press for action against BNP leaflets
Senior prosecutors are calling for the laws on race hate crimes to be strengthened to counter the threat posed by the British National party.
The threshold for securing a conviction is so high that far-right activists are able to evade prosecution for material that many people would consider to be threatening and racist, according to sources at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Several BNP leaflets have been referred to the CPS over the last five years – some by senior police officers and one by a judge – but no further action has been taken.
Peter Herbert, the chairman of the Society of Black Lawyers and a part-time judge, submitted a complaint last year over a leaflet called The Changing Face of London that had two pictures, one depicting an all-white street party from the 1950s, the other showing three Muslim women wearing a niqab, one of whom is making a V-sign towards the camera.
Under the law, it has been extremely difficult to mount a prosecution against extremism and hate speech,” said Herbert. “But with the rise of the BNP, and the subsequent rise in racist attacks and the fear the party’s leaflets can provoke, it is essential we are given the tools to deal effectively with this threat.”
Of course, the main obstacle to a successful prosecution of the BNP over its incitement of Islamophobic hatred is that Muslims are legally defined as a multi-ethnic faith group. They are therefore covered not by the racial hatred laws but by the 2006 Act dealing with incitement to religious hatred. The latter requires not only that the offending material should be explicitly “threatening” but that the prosecution should prove subjective intent, which in practice means that the religious hatred law is completely useless as a means of combating the BNP.
Sunny Hundal on the smearing of Mehdi Hasan
Sunny Hundal offers some further observations on the disgraceful witch-hunt of New Statesman journalist Mehdi Hasan by Harry’s Place:
“Using a 45 second clip from a 45 minute speech to imply that the guy is an Islamist and all sorts (just read the comments) is precisely the kind of politics and smearing that Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch has done for years.
“… this sort of tactic is designed to promote the racist notion that all Muslims, even the mainstream ones working at national titles, are closet Islamists. The word ‘taqqiya’, used to imply that a person is hiding their true beliefs, constantly pops up in the comments of that expose. It’s the ‘Islamists under your bed’ narrative that unfortunately Harry’s Place has descended into over the last few years….
“HP and their friend Martin Bright are essentially saying that the New Statesman should not employ such a person, which is a deeply undemocratic and censorious position to take. It’s also a character assassination to try and ruin someone’s career….
“If the New Statesman editor gives in to this hatchet job then it feeds into a debasement of our political culture, where witch-hunts like the kind constantly seen on neo-con hubs like FrontpageMagazine.com become the way our politics is conducted.”