Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Public prosecutor challenged to act on Wilders’ Moroccan comments

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Geert Wilders extremistMoroccan organisations in the Netherlands said they will make a formal complaint against the public prosecution department if it does not take action over Geert Wilders’s latest anti-Moroccan statements.

The chairman of the national Moroccan council LBM said on Saturday the “the ball is now in the department’s court”. Mohamed Rabbae, a former MP for the left-wing green party GroenLinks, said: “We will wait until Monday to see if the department put its own policy [to protect citizens against discrimination] into action.”

Wilders has stated several times in recent days there should be fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands. Several commentators have noted this is the first time he has referred to a nationality, rather than “Muslims” or “Moroccan criminals”.

“Wilders has crossed his own boundary,” the Volkskrant said in an analysis. “Until now, Wilders has always managed to balance on the dividing line between what is and is not discrimination in the eyes of the law.”

Speaking during campaigning for the local elections in Almere on Saturday, Wilders said: “I can’t formulate it any differently. Less immigration, less ‘Islamisation’ and fewer Moroccans.”

His comments have also been condemned by prime minister Mark Rutte, who nevertheless did not rule out the VVD forming a local government coalition in Almere or The Hague with the PVV. Wilders party is only fielding candidates in the two cities and may become the biggest party in both.

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Florida International University’s Muslim Student Association wants to know who bugged prayer room

Posted on by Bob Pitt

FIU MSAOver a year after a possible listening device was found in the Graham Center’s Serenity Room in 343, the Muslim Student Association is still waiting for someone to claim the bug students say was discovered burrowed in the carpet under a prayer mat on February 9, 2013.

Student Media contacted MSA President Farouk Shihab who directed all news inquiries to representative Rayid Sakib. “We have waited for over a year to get an answer from the investigation, and we haven’t received any solid explanation of this incident,” said Sakib, a junior engineering major. “We decided to bring it out and also we felt the students who use the room deserve to know about this.”

The MSA released a statement on its Facebook page on March 11 in response to an article published by Miami New Times, which coupled the investigation with an incident in New York where NYPD is said to have spied on MSA chapters in the area. “For reasons unknown, the placement of such a device evidently accounts for a form of espionage intended to take place in the room,” the statement reads. “However, we find it necessary to establish that these assumptions behind this finding will only lead to closed ends.”

Sakib said the association retained counsel from the Council on American-Islamic Relations and is waiting for an organization to claim it. Neither the University Police Department nor Miami Police Department have claimed the device as one they were using for an investigation.

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Anti-Muslim bigots freak out when Texas TV station warns of oncoming haboob

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Haboob comment

Texas television station KCBD kicked up a cloud of anti-Muslim bigotry Tuesday night by sharing an alert from the National Weather Service on its Facebook page. “Haboob northwest of Lubbock as seen from the Science Spectrum,” the NWS warned. “If you must drive west of Lubbock, plan for near-zero visibility in blowing dust and strong winds of 50+ mph.”

Although haboobs are more commonly known as “dust storms,” a NWS meteorologist said the Arabic word refers to a particular weather phenomenon. A haboob refers specifically to a wall of dust created by cool, dense air blowing away from a thunderstorm or along a cold front, said meteorologist Jerome James. But it signaled something even more threatening to some of the station’s Facebook fans.

“Never had a haboob until we got that muslim boob for potus,” said viewer Jeff Bertrand, referring to President Barack Obama, who is believed by some of this critics to secretly be a Muslim.

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Labour candidate condemns EDL’s campaign against Islamic centre in Clacton-on-Sea

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Clacton Gazette EDL front page

EDL’s Islamic centre protest condemned

By James Dwan

Clacton Gazette, 13 March 2014

THE English Defence League has been accused of trying to hijack the controversy over plans for an Islamic community centre in Clacton.

Tendring Islamic Cultural Association got the green light to convert a former beauty salon in Pier Avenue into an education and prayer centre last week. Clacton EDL members were in the town centre on Saturday and staged a small demonstration outside the empty building.

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Small Muslim community struggles with ‘terrorist’ rumors

Posted on by Bob Pitt

KHOU Mahmoudberg reportBRAZORIA COUNTY, Texas — A small community in Brazoria County has been causing a big stir over rumors that it serves as an Islamic terrorist training camp.

The community, called Mahmoudberg, sits along County Road 3 near the town of Sweeny. When an 11 News crew asked to see the property on Monday afternoon, the request was politely declined at the gate.

But Freeport Police Chief Dan Pennington was recently there. “The best description would be just a trailer park in the country,” he said.

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Islamophobic hoax exposed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Birmingham Islamic plot

Tahir Alam – who has been the target of an Islamophobic campaign, originating in the Sunday Times and subsequently taken up by a number of other media outlets including BBC News, which claimed that there was a “Islamic plot” to take over Birmingham schools and even that this was a case of “terrorism in the UK” – has issued a press release refuting the allegations.

Responding to the “leaked” letter outlining the supposed plot, Tahir Alam condemns “the baseless and false assertions that have been made in this anonymous, unsigned and undated document, the authenticity of which any decent and fair-minded person would question and quite quickly conclude as a hoax”.

Indeed, as even the most cursory read through the document will confirm, it is quite obviously faked. The fact that it has been taken seriously in the news media is a worrying reflection of the extent to which anti-Muslim prejudice in the UK today has destroyed journalists’ capacity for critical thinking when it comes to evaluating spurious Islamophobic propaganda.

Update:  See also “Times discovers that ‘Trojan horse’ letter is a crude forgery”, Islamophobia Watch, 11 March 2014

Montreal rally unites faiths against ‘secularism’ charter

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Canadians for Coexistence

With his fuchsia skullcap and sash, Catholic Bishop Thomas Dowd stood out in the crowd at Shaare Zedek Congregation on Sunday. Speaking to nearly 500 people at the synagogue in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Dowd said he purposely wore his most ostentatious outfit to the multi-faith rally against the Parti Québécois government’s proposed secular charter.

Bill 60, which would bar all public sector workers from wearing “ostentatious” religious symbols like the Muslim head scarf, Jewish skullcap or Sikh turban, died on the order paper last week when Premier Pauline Marois dissolved the National Assembly to call an election. But speakers, who included local politicians and representatives of six faiths, said that was no reason to stop protesting, since the PQ has vowed to adopt the charter if it wins a majority on April 7.

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Slough TUC condemns far-right bullying tactics over Legoland event

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Casuals United Legoland protestA trade union group has expressed disappointment after Legoland cancelled a controversial private event following threats of violence and protests.

An Eid family fun day organised by the Muslim Research and Development Foundation on Sunday was pulled by the Windsor theme park last week because it could “no longer guarantee the safety of guests and employees”. That followed staff being bombarded with threats from far-right groups including the English Defence League (EDL) because of the foundation’s association with controversial preacher Haitham al-Haddad.

The Slough Trades Council secretary, Anas Ghaffar, said: “It is a tragedy that an event such as this has been stopped as a result of the bullying tactics of groups such as the EDL.”

Slough Observer, 9 March 2014