A group of residents living close to a planned Muslim prayer centre in Shrewsbury have signed a petition calling for the proposal to be scrapped.
A total of 25 people living in Wenlock Road close to the former register office at Column Lodge in Preston Street have signed the petition, which has now been sent on to Shropshire Council. They are objecting to the plans on the grounds that the prayer centre would create additional traffic and cause problems with parking.
Those who send British troops to shed blood in the Muslim world must share the blame for atrocities like Woolwich, Seumas Milne argues.
Four men have been charged with various offences after Monday’s English Defence League march on Downing Street.
About 1,000 protesters chanted “Muslim killers off our streets” and “There’s only one Lee Rigby” in tribute to the soldier killed in Woolwich, south-east London, last week. A massive police presence kept them apart from a smaller group of anti-fascist activists, with officers making 13 arrests in total.
Reyhana Patel offers some sound advice.
Over at the Daily Telegraph spy novelist and “security analyst” Alan Judd informs the paper’s readers that “the great majority of terrorists in Britain, unsurprisingly, have been Muslim males aged 16-34” (which of course completely ignores far-right terrorists and dissident Republicans in Northern Ireland).
But how to identify those Muslim males who may pose a terrorist threat? Judd explains:
Two more men have been charged by Dorset Police following an alleged attack on a Poole mosque. Windows were smashed at the Dorset Islamic Cultural Centre, Ashley Road, Parkstone, Poole, on Thursday afternoon.
Michael Manyweathers, aged 49, of Poole, and 34-year-old Jeremy Rochester have been charged with racially aggravated criminal damage. Rochester, of Bournemouth, has also been charged with assault.
Grimsby’s Muslim community has pledged to continue worshipping as usual, despite fearing somebody could have been killed during a vicious petrol bomb attack on the town’s mosque.
Three petrol bombs were thrown at the Islamic Cultural Centre on Sunday night as dozens of people – including young children – were leaving after evening.
Bricks had been thrown through the windows of the Weelsby Road building just three days earlier following the murder of solider Lee Rigby in Woolwich, London, on Wednesday.
Yesterday, as almost 300 people took part in a march from Grimsby to Cleethorpes in memory of Drummer Rigby – passing by the mosque – Imam Dr Ahmad M Sabik has pledged that the Muslim community will not be beaten by the attack.
He said: “Somebody could have been seriously injured or even possibly even killed by the petrol bombs. This attack has made us worried about our families and our children who come to the mosque.
“It is a place of love and worship where we teach people to respect one another and it is hard to believe that anybody would try to damage a site like this. We will continue to pray and use the centre as usual because we refuse to be frightened away from our place of worship.”
A racist graffiti attack in a back street in Burnley has been condemned by community leaders. And a councillor is in no doubt it was part of a misguided backlash after the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby, in Woolwich, last week.
Racist slogans were daubed on a security door, pavements and commercial bin, alongside the initials of the far-right English Defence League and British National Party, behind Cobden Street.
A man has admitted mocking a Muslim prayer ritual and hurling racial insults during a fundraiser for Help for Heroes that sparked a five-hour stand-off with police in St George on the weekend. Lee Cousins, 40, of Soundwell Road, Soundwell pleaded guilty to causing racially/religiously aggravated harassment or alarm following the unrest on Saturday evening.
Magistrates at Bristol heard that Cousins was amongst a group of men who had come out of the St George’s Hall public house in Church Road after initially barricading themselves in when police arrived. Cousins then mocked a Muslim prayer ritual by getting down on his hands and knees in the road before shouting racial slurs involving Muslims and Allah.
The English Defence League’s protest in London yesterday can hardly have boosted the organisation’s appeal to the wider public, even among those who share its general Islamophobic viewpoint and inclination to blame the Muslim community as a whole for the death of Lee Rigby.
Still, not everyone was put off by the sight of drunken thugs giving fascist salutes, shouting abuse, throwing bottles and fighting with the police. The Civil Liberty website today posted a report hailing EDL leader Stephen Lennon’s speech at the Downing Street demonstration and claiming an astonishing 5,000 participants at the earlier EDL protest in Newcastle.