About 40 supporters of controversial Islam critic Pamela Geller rallied outside the Cuttermill Road offices of the Great Neck Record Sunday, protesting what they described as the newspaper’s deceptive coverage of Geller’s speech at Chabad of Great Neck earlier this month.
Category Archives: Right wing
Missouri: Republican politician fires off anti-Islam email
Missouri State Representative Rick Stream fired off a bizarre e-mail to his House GOP colleagues this week that discusses the dangers of Islam…citing an 1899 quote from former British prime minister Winston Churchill.
“Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world,” writes Stream, quoting Churchill in a widely distributed e-mail that was forwarded to Daily RFT by way of a displeased recipient. “No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.”
UKIP member suspended over racist Facebook comments
Ukip has suspended a member from North Yorkshire who allegedly posted anti-Muslim jokes on Facebook, including one of US President Obama mocked up to look like a chimpanzee.
Police are investigating whether pensioner Tony Nixon [pictured] committed any offence on the social networking site.
It is understood Mr Nixon had been canvassing for Ukip in Stokesley, ahead of the local elections. His Facebook account listed pages he “liked”, including numerous English Defence League sites and ones expressing strong anti-Muslim sentiments.
Toronto: synagogue cancels Geller appearance after police intervention
York Regional Police threatened to remove a rabbi as one of the force’s chaplains if he hosted a controversial anti-Islamist speaker at his Thornhill synagogue.
Insp. Ricky Veerappan, of the force’s diversity, equity and inclusion bureau, confirmed he and officers from the service’s hate crimes unit met with Rabbi Mendel Kaplan of the Chabad Flamingo Synagogue on Tuesday.
They expressed concern about an upcoming talk to be given by Pamela Geller, a vocal critic of radical Islam. She protested past plans to build a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City, and has posted anti-Jihad messages in that city’s subway system.
Subsequent to his meeting with police, Kaplan cancelled Geller’s May 13 talk, which was sponsored by the Jewish Defence League (JDL) – a hard-line advocacy group that had rented space in Kaplan’s synagogue for the event.
California students pass anti-Islamophobia resolution
After approximately five hours of discussion, the ASUCD Senate passed Senate Resolution 21 on April 25 with a 7-4-1 vote. The resolution condemns Islamophobic speech at the University of California. The resolution defined Islamaphobia as “the irrational fear of Islam, Muslims or anything related to the Islamic or Arab cultures and traditions.” Authors stated that it was written due to the concerns for students’ well-being, safety on campus and the administration’s failure to address issues.
During public discussion, some members of the Muslim Student Association (MSA) and other students spoke in support of the resolution. Members of the Ayn Rand Society (ARS), the group that held the April 11 “Islamists Rising” event on campus, spoke in opposition of the resolution. The event held by the ARS, which featured panelists such as author Daniel Pipes, sparked a conversation about freedom of speech on campus and with the administration.
Middle TN commissioner’s threatening Facebook post
A Coffee County commissioner’s Facebook post suggesting Muslims are best greeted from behind a rifle barrel is prompting demands for an apology.
Commissioner Barry West’s post follows a string of anti-Muslim acts throughout Middle Tennessee in recent years, including at least four incidents of mosque vandalism. Opposition to a new mosque in Rutherford County was so strong it took federal Justice Department intervention to open it last year.
West played no active role in any of those incidents. He just put an image on his Facebook page, which shows a man aiming a shotgun under the phrase “How to wink at a Muslim.” But even that put a chill through Muslims in Middle Tennessee.
Muslim groups tweeted a screen grab of his post and it went viral. West, who lives in Manchester, removed it about an hour later. He did not apologize, instead questioning how his tweet had become the focus of attention. West responded with this email: “No I did not Twitter this … no I did not create this picture … yes I shared it … so why am I being singled out?”
Tory right resumes witch-hunt of Sayeeda Warsi
Last year, with assistance of the Sunday Telegraph, the Tory right waged an extended campaign to remove Baroness Warsi from her position as co-chairman of the Conservative Party. They succeeded in accomplishing that particular objective last September, but their victory was far from complete. Although he did replace her as co-chair, at the same time David Cameron gave Warsi a senior ministerial position in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and also appointed her as Minister for Faith and Communities.
This was probably enough to appease the reactionary membership in the shires who had been outraged that a Tory party chairman should be anything other than white, Christian and male, but the neocon-Zionist component of the anti-Warsi opposition was far from satisfied. It was obviously only a matter of time before the latter faction would make another attempt to remove Warsi from her position of influence in the party and government.
An opportunity afforded itself last month when Warsi appeared as a platform speaker at a conference in the House of Lords organised by the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, which was billed as a “critical discussion around the way Islamic societies and Muslim students are represented in the media”. FOSIS is the NUS-recognised representative organisation of Muslim students in the UK, and among those speaking alongside Warsi at the conference were Universities UK CEO Nicola Dandridge, NUS president Liam Burns and the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Hussain, who also hosted the event. This didn’t offer much of a pretext for relaunching a witch-hunt against Warsi, you might think.
However, Warsi’s participation at the FOSIS conference was seized on by the misleadingly titled group Student Rights, which in fact includes few if any students and functions as a front organisation for the right-wing propaganda organisation the Henry Jackson Society. They launched their attack on Warsi with a piece (“FOSIS conference at the House of Lords hides its promotion of extremists”) that appeared on the Student Rights website on 3 April. Tellingly, the first of their objections to Warsi’s participation was that “FOSIS openly endorse a boycott of Israel”, which Student Rights held to be an example of FOSIS’s “divisive methods”. They then went on to accuse FOSIS of associating with “extremists” such as Hamza Tzortzis of iERA, the Muslim group who were recently the victims of a stitch-up over a meeting at University College London, and of questioning the reliability of the conviction of Dr Aafia Siddique.
Australia: Local council threatened because it ‘supports Islamic jihad and sharia law’
A Gippsland council in south-east Victoria is receiving threatening letters from members of an anti-Islamic Facebook group over its halal program. The Facebook page uses the Baw Baw Shire official logo, contains anti-Islamic commentary and says the shire supports Islamic jihad and sharia law.
The group’s co-founder, Drouin resident Dianne Summerfield, says she set up the page because she is against the shire’s halal program, which helps local businesses become halal accredited. She says people are sending threatening letters to Baw Baw Shire councillors and staff because they are frustrated.
“To really look into … that having halal is the implementation of sharia law and once sharia law is instated into this country it brings on more problems than we know what to do with,” she said. “A lot of people are unaware in Australia of halal practices and sharia law and it’s to alert everybody … what this certification is all about … because this is Australia, we’re not a Muslim nation.”
The Baw Baw Shire Council declined to comment because it is afraid its spokesman will become the target of threats.
US Attorney General warns against Boston bombing backlash
Attorney General Eric Holder declared Monday that the Justice Department is on the lookout for acts of violence or discrimination that signal a backlash to the Boston Marathon bombings earlier this month in which three people were killed and scores wounded.
“Our investigation into this matter remains ongoing – and I want to assure you that my colleagues and I are determined to hold accountable, to the fullest extent of the law, all of those who were responsible for this attack,” Holder said, according to the prepared text of a speech delivered Monday to the Anti-Defamation League. “But I also want to make clear that – just as we will pursue relentlessly anyone who would target our people or attempt to terrorize our cities – the Justice Department is firmly committed to protecting innocent people against misguided acts of retaliation.”
UKIP branch chair invited ex-BNP ‘Burn the Koran’ man to stand for Farage’s party
EDL News provides an update on the case of Andrew Eccles, the former British National Party activist who stood as a UK Independence Party candidate in last year’s Bury council elections, despite UKIP’s ban on ex-BNP members joining the party.
Eccles has claimed that he was invited to join by the chair of UKIP’s Bury branch, Peter Entwistle. In response to the suggestion that this was hardly likely, given his past history in the BNP, Eccles stated indignantly: “I have known Peter for 20+ years and that is 100% how it happened.”