Mainstreamed anti-Muslim sentiment creates the climate for attacks and harassment, argues Jon Burnett.
Category Archives: UK
Leveson on media misrepresentation of Muslims and migrants
The Leveson report into press standards includes a section on “Ethnic minorities, immigrants and asylum seekers”, which draws on evidence presented by ENGAGE, former Daily Star journalist Richard Peppiatt, Peter Oborne of the Daily Telegraph and others about the atrocious treatment of Muslims by the tabloid press.
Leveson writes that “the identification of Muslims, migrants, asylum seekers and gypsies/travellers as the targets of press hostility and/or xenophobia in the press, was supported by the evidence seen by the Inquiry”.
He concludes that, while much of the press has acted responsibly, “there are enough examples of careless or reckless reporting to conclude that discriminatory, sensational or unbalanced reporting in relation to ethnic minorities, immigrants and/or asylum seekers is a feature of journalistic practice in parts of the press, rather than an aberration”.
The relevant section of the report has been reproduced by the Electronic Immigration Network, or you can read it here.
Shotton Colliery: Muslims fear EDL demo
Worried Muslims are expected to flee the village they have made their home when far-right extremists stage a protest tomorrow.
Members of the English Defence League (EDL) are due to hold a demonstration in Shotton Colliery tomorrow from 2pm.
The march is in protest at Durham County Council’s approval of local businessman Kaiser Choudry’s plans to turn the former Melrose Arms pub, in the village’s Front Street, into a Muslim education centre.
Mr Choudry’s nephew, Imran Nadeem, 38, who works in the village’s Milco Store, said: “We are very scared. There has been a Muslim presence in Shotton for at least the last 23 years, there are about five or six families, and we have been a very peaceful community. We will be leaving the area for our safety tomorrow and we are worried about our business.”
Bigots scent victory in fight to halt Newham ‘mega-mosque’
Plans to build Britain’s biggest place of worship – a “monolithic, overly dominant and incongruous” mosque in east London – are set to be thrown out despite 25,000 letters in favour.
The mosque, which could take 12,000 people – four times as many as St Paul’s Cathedral – would be as big as Battersea power station and become the HQ of Islamic sect Tablighi Jamaat. However, officers for Newham council recommend the plan is refused.
Now here’s a surprise – Anjem Choudary’s conference in Pakistan won’t be going ahead after all
Earlier this month Anjem Choudary announced his latest publicity stunt – a conference at the Lal Masjid in Islamabad on 30 November, where fatwas would be issued against Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah, its current president Asif Zardari, and Malala Yousafzai, the young woman shot by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan last month.
Choudary of course has a long history of announcing provocative plans that he has no intention of actually carrying through, and then, having milked the resulting outrage for all the publicity he can, calling them off at the last minute. These non-events have included a March for Shari’ah in London in 2009, a demonstration at Wootton Bassett in 2010 where his followers were to carry 500 coffins to symbolise the deaths of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, a rally outside the White House the same year to advocate sharia law in the US, and a protest against the royal wedding in April 2011. So nobody had any excuse for falling for Choudary’s latest con-trick.
EDL leader charged with mortgage fraud
English Defence League leader Stephen Lennon has been charged with mortgage fraud, Bedfordshire Police say.
He was among six people to be charged following a fraud investigation by the force.
Mr Lennon, 30, also known as Tommy Robinson, is currently on remand in Wandsworth Prison for a separate, unrelated offence.
A police spokesman said he had been charged with three counts of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation in relation to a mortgage application.
Newham council officers recommend so-called West Ham mega mosque is rejected
Newham council officers have recommended that councillors reject controversial plans for a so-called mega mosque in West Ham.
The plans to erect the Riverine Centre, also known as Abbey Mills Mosque put forward by trustees following the Tabilighi Jamaat movement, are due to be heard by the Strategic Development Committee at Newham Council on Wednesday (December 5) of next week.
The meeting will be held at the Main Hall at the Old Town Hall in Stratford.
Jewish, Hindu and Muslim leaders condemn attack at Queens mosque
Jewish, Hindu and Muslim leaders from Queens gathered with lawmakers to denounce the possible hate crime committed at a Kew Gardens Hills Mosque earlier this month, and city Comptroller John Liu suggested some of the NYPD’s policies could make bias crimes more common.
“An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” said Imam Shamsi Ali, of the Jamaica Muslim Center, who gathered religious leaders from around Flushing in the wake of the Nov. 18 attack.
By-election candidate’s criminal past
An independent candidate in the Rotherham by-election is a member of the far-right English Defence League who has criminal convictions,The Star can reveal.
Clint Bristow, aged 39, of Cantley, Doncaster, is one of 11 people standing in tomorrow’s by-election caused by the resignation of Labour MP Denis MacShane over dishonest expenses claims.
Torygraph continues campaign against Tory politician (who just happens to be a Muslim)
The Daily Telegraph, whose sister paper the Sunday Telegraph waged a disgraceful smear campaign against Foreign Office minister and former Tory party co-chair Sayeeda Warsi, carries a report titled “Baroness Warsi rapped by Lords sleaze watchdog over undeclared Wembley flat income”.
The Lords Commissioner for Standards found that Warsi had omitted to register an interest as the recipient of £6,937 in rent during 2010-11 from a flat in Wembley, which she had been forced to leave for security reasons on joining the cabinet and was unable to sell due to negative equity. The rent she received was in fact less than the mortgage and other expenses she paid on the flat, but it exceeded the £5,000 threshold and should therefore have been declared.
The Commissioner accepted that Warsi’s oversight did not result in any financial loss to the taxpayer or additional monetary gain to herself, and that she had made no attempt to conceal the existence of the flat or the fact that she was renting it out. Indeed, Warsi herself pointed out that she had made the rental arrangement known to the Cabinet Office, the Leader of the House and HM Revenue and Customs.
In other words, this is pretty much a non-story. Which didn’t prevent the Telegraph from hyping it up for the benefit of Warsi’s enemies in the Tory party and the paper’s own readership of right-wing anti-Muslim bigots.