Over at Left Futures Jon Lansman reports on a joint initiative between Unite the Union and the man Andrew Gilligan tells us is promoting “the politics of racial separation” in Tower Hamlets.
See also East London Advertiser, 13 May 2013
And “Lutfur Rahman: Tower Hamlets is not in disarray”, Guardian, 15 May 2013
Muslim students have lashed out at claims in a study that extremists are segregating and denigrating women, saying they are being “increasingly demonised”, while the NUS has condemned it as a “witch hunt”.
The study by Student Rights, which links extremism with gender segregation on campus calling it a “serious issue”, has been slammed by one anti-racism student officer.
Mohamed Harrath, a student union executive at the London School of Economics, told Huffington Post UK the pressure group was trying to “ramp up” the effects of Islamophobia on Muslim students.
Twelve months on the impact of the grooming scandal is still being felt by many businesses. Taxi drivers have complained of a rise in the amount of abuse they receive, while some takeaways have been boycotted or targeted by vandals.
Torquay road closed in January this year during terrorism search
A 20-year-old Torquay man has appeared in court charged under the Terrorism Act following an incident near the coach station earlier this year.
John Roddy, 20, of Babbacombe Road, Torquay, appeared at Exeter Magistrates Court on Tuesday morning. He was charged with possessing a document containing information useful to terrorism. The charge is brought under section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000. It alleges that on January 3 he possessed on a laptop computer ‘The al-Qaeda training manual’ and ‘2083 – A European Declaration of Independence‘.
He was also charged with distributing threatening material to stir up religious hatred between November 1, 2012 and January 4, 2013. A third charge is that between July 1, 2012 and January 4, 2013 he conspired to cause criminal damage
Far right group the English Defence League has announced plans to march through Tower Hamlets this summer. The group unveiled dates for a series marches on social networking site Facebook on Monday, with protestors planning to come to the East End on August 24. Demonstrators clashed with police during an EDL march in the area in 2011.
A new UKIP councillor in Worcestershire has sparked fury amid allegations he unleashed a series of racist abuse online. Eric Kitson, who won a seat in Stourport just 11 days ago, is facing the sack today over a whole raft of anti-Muslim, anti-Jewish Facebook posts.
Among the most shocking is a cartoon of a Muslim being spit-roasted on a fire fuelled by copies of the Koran. In one comment he said in reference to Muslim women: “Hang um all first then ask questions later.”
A Muslim group is accusing a Christian organization of defamation for publishing a book that accuses the Muslim collective of holding terrorist training in its enclaves.
The Christian Action Network refuses to back down, challenging Muslims of America Inc. to prove the allegations wrong in an upstate New York court.
The Muslim group has a community in Hancock, near Binghamton, N.Y., and others around the U.S. It calls the network’s accusations deliberate and damaging lies.
A teenager has been locked up for his role in a riot that saw demonstrators clash with police in Walsall town centre. The 16-year-old from Brownhills, who cannot be named for legal reasons, broke wooden pieces of pub garden furniture which thugs then hurled at police during a march by the English Defence League.
A hate crime victim has spoken out on behalf of a Muslim community whose mosque was smeared in dog faeces and pork meat.
Salman Lone from the Stevenage Muslim Community Centre features alongside fellow victims of hate crimes in a video released by Hertfordshire Constabulary last Monday to mark Hate Crime Awareness Day.
The mosque in Vardon Road was targeted earlier this year when offenders placed pork meat on the gated entrance to the building and over the handles of the front doors. The following day, dog excrement was smeared in front of the entrance to the centre, which was built in 2001 and is used by more than 1,000 people.
Bob Pitt reviews Unhitched: The Trial of Christopher Hitchens, by Richard Seymour, Verso, 134pp, £9.99.
Labour Briefing, May 2013
The secularists of the British Humanist Association launched a campaign last year to have a statue of the late Christopher Hitchens erected in Red Lion Square in central London. Although this proposal for a permanent tribute to the ex-leftist who evolved into an enthusiastic advocate of George W. Bush’s “War on Terror” came to nothing, it understandably generated fierce controversy at the time. Awale Olad, a Labour councillor in Holborn & Covent Garden who was approached by the BHA for his support, replied indignantly that he “would resign before I’d ever support the bust of a pro-war Islamophobe”.