The Institute of Race Relations provides an overview of racially motivated attacks perpetrated by members of the far right and convictions over the last few months.
Category Archives: UK
Birmingham man stabbed to death on way home from mosque
A 75-year-old man stabbed to death yards from his home may have been targeted in a racially motivated attack, according to police.
Mohammed Saleem, who used a walking stick, was stabbed three times in the back as he returned home from prayers at his local mosque in Small Heath, Birmingham, on Monday night. The blows were struck with such violence they penetrated to the front of his body.
The father of seven also had no defensive wounds in what has been described as a swift, vicious and cowardly attack by the man leading the murder investigation, Detective Superintendent Mark Payne of West Midlands police.
Officers want to trace a white man, aged 25-32, of medium height and build, spotted on CCTV footage running near the scene of the attack around the time it happened, just before 10.30pm.
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.
Call for opposition to further headscarf bans in France
One Society Many Cultures has issued a statement opposing further restrictions on the right of Muslim women in France to wear the hijab.
EDL to hold Yorkshire protest against ‘mosque’ plan
Graffiti daubed on the wall of the disused Lingfield pub last February
The right-wing English Defence League, whose members were the targets of an aborted attack by Muslim extremists in West Yorkshire last summer, is planning a rally in Leeds this weekend. Its leader Tommy Robinson tweeted that the Saturday demonstration against a planned mosque in the city would be a “lively one”.
Saturday’s rally is planned outside the old Lingfield pub in Alwoodley. A counter demonstration by Unite Against Fascism is also planned.
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.
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.”
UKIP candidate barred over his far-right links
A UKIP local election candidate was suspended yesterday after The Sunday Times exposed his support for the far-right English Defence League (EDL).
Chris Scotton, 24, faces expulsion from the party after repeatedly endorsing the EDL on Facebook and indicating that he has been an activist for the movement, which has gained notoriety for violent protests against Islam.
Scotton, who was due to stand in Leicestershire in Thursday’s council elections, also appears to trivialise racism on Facebook and “likes” a site called: “I hate [it] when I lose my black friend in the dark.”
His suspension will come as an embarrassment to Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, who admits his party does not have the resources to vet its 1,700-plus candidates properly.
UKIP is predicted to win about 40-50 council seats this week and seriously damage Conservative prospects.
However, the unsavoury views and backgrounds of some of its candidates threaten to jeopardise its chances.
Yesterday a UKIP candidate in Suffolk was forced to resign after admitting to being a former member of the British National party (BNP). It also emerged that a candidate in Kent, who previously acted as an election agent to Farage, was once a National Front (NF) activist.
Scotton, who says on the internet that he has struggled to find a permanent job since leaving school at 16, has endorsed, or “liked”, at least eight pages related to the EDL on Facebook, including the page for the movement’s Leicester branch.
In November 2010 he sent a message to the EDL in Leicester with a link to a Vanity Fair article highlighting the organisation’s violent anti-Muslim demonstrations. Scotton said in his post: “Duno [sic] if you guys have seen this, we get a little mention in it.”
Scotton also “likes” Facebook pages attacking mosques and halal food, as well as a site called: “Racism?? Naa Mate its just ethnic banter.”
Play spreads the word to dispel fear of Islam
A play set in ancient Mecca and Medina and about to tour West Yorkshire aims to tackle Islamophobia through educating while entertaining.
‘Spread by the Word’ from Islamic theatre company Arakan Creative takes the form of stories from the Quran – charting the holy book’s revelations and how they impacted on the society of the time.
Set in the 7th century, it goes right back to the beginnings of Islam and looks at the first anti-Muslim sentiments that emerged when the prophet Mohammed began preaching.
Leyton Sharia Council defends itself after Panorama exposé
An Islamic council which mediates on Muslim marriages has defended itself after a member of staff was secretly filmed telling a woman complaining of domestic violence to only go to the police as a “last resort”.
The Islamic Sharia Council, in Francis Road, Leyton, was investigated by the BBC’s Panorama documentary series this week following allegations it was ruling on cases it had no legal authority to get involved in.