“I have received emails from people asking how they can register to the Association. I was a bit surprised but very pleased by these enquiries,” says Salman Tamimi, the leader of the Muslim Association of Iceland, asked whether he had noticed an increase in the number of new registrations in the wake of the Reykjavík mosque debate.
Gunnar Smári Egilsson, the former editor of Fréttablaðið, made headlines over the weekend with his Facebook post saying that one does not need to actually become a Muslim in order to register with the Muslim Association of Iceland. He says he is therefore carefully considering joining the Association as an act of protest.
A fee is given on behalf of every taxpayer in Iceland from the national treasury to his/her registered religious association each year – while the money for those with no registered religion instead goes to the parliamentary budgetary committee. Gunnar Smári is not currently registered to any religious association.
He claims that the Progressive Party’s Vigdís Hauksdóttir is the architect of her party’s xenophobic lurch – and she is also chairman of the budgetary committee. “I doubt Vigdís will notice my ISK 9,000 a year, but I am still thinking of registering with the Muslim Association of Iceland so that its members can use these few thousand krónur to protect themselves from the attacks and lies of the Progressive Party and their supporters,” he writes.
A Tory clampdown on schools in Birmingham has unleashed a torrent of racist filth.
Nearly ninety-five percent of individuals on a Justice Department list of “terrorism and terrorism-related convictions” from 2001-2010 included some elements of preemptive prosecution, according to a study by attorneys which they say is the first to “directly examine and critique preemptive prosecution and its abuses.”
A far-right organisation is planning to hold a protest outside the headquarters of a major Egyptian political group in Cricklewood on Saturday.
“Over the past three months the pupils and parents of Alum Rock, the tight-knit, overwhelmingly Muslim community we serve, have become unwitting players in a vast game of academies, anti-extremism policy, Whitehall leaks and faith schools.
A Muslim school found to have books suggesting stoning and lashing as appropriate punishments says it is the victim of “hostility”.