ENGAGE responds to the attack on Islam Channel CEO Mohamed Ali Harrath by the racist-promoting, terrorism-supporting Zionist blog Harry’s Place.
Category Archives: UK
Islamophobia Awareness Month launch event at the London School of Economics
Islamophobia Awareness Month launch event @ LSE
Tuesday, 20th November 2012, 6pm
At the Quad, East Building, LSE Students’ Union, Houghton Street, WC2A 2AE
With Islamophobia entering the mainstream of politics across Europe and with increasing concerns over the penetration of Islamophobia in universities, the LSE Students’ Union is providing a forum for discussion on the nature and extent of the problem and what can be done to challenge it.
Speakers:
• Myriam Francois-Cerrah: Journalist and Academic
• Dr Leon Moosavi: University of Liverpool
• Aaron Kiely: National Union of Students
There will also be an exhibition on Islamophobia in the Quad from Monday 19th November until Friday 23rd November.
TV chef attacks Muslim ‘ghetto’ in Leicester
A celebrity chef has come under fire after making “hurtful” comments about the city’s Muslim community. In her new book, Clarissa Dickson Wright describes a visit to Leicester “as one of the most frightening experiences of my life”.
The 65-year-old dedicates a chapter of Clarissa’s England: A Gamely Gallop Through the English Counties to each county in England, discussing their culinary, cultural and historical merits. On Leicestershire, she writes of the city’s “ghetto”.
She describes coming off the ring road to escape a traffic jam and becoming lost. “I found myself in an area where all the men were wearing Islamic clothing and all the women were wearing burkas and walking slightly behind them,” she wrote. She said the men would not talk to her “because I was an English female and they don’t talk to females they don’t know”.
Grooming: An open letter to Nick Lowles
Liz Fekete replies to Nick Lowles’ article on grooming in the November-December issue of Hope Not Hate:
The way you have broken down Ministry of Justice figures on convictions of sex offences as a whole (8 per cent of which were Asian) to isolate the specific offence of ‘on-street grooming’ so as to reveal a 28 per cent Asian conviction rate (which rises to a 45 per cent conviction rate three lines later in the article) filled me with dismay. It recalled for me the time in the 1980s when the media and the fascists were creating the spectre of the ‘black mugger’ and the Metropolitan police added to the moral panic by isolating ‘assault or threat of violence upon a person, especially with intent to rob’ from all street crime and then providing the ethnicity of the perpetrators. Then, young African-Caribbean men were being accused of racially-motivated attacks on ‘little white old ladies’ in much the same way as Muslims as a whole are accused of anti-white sex crimes. But would we have said, ‘yes the National Front has a point, young black men are muggers – it’s in Jamaican culture, to be violent. Look here are the stats.’ No, as anti-fascist/anti-racist educators, we tried to show how racialised moral panics were created and how statistics could be used to bolster them.
EDL thug is candidate in Rotherham by-election
On Tuesday the EDL’s Yorkshire division announced that an “EDL candidate” would be contesting the Rotherham parliamentary by-election. “Vote for him it’s the way to stop grooming gangs”, they urged.
Some on the extreme right expressed surprise that the candidate (at that point still unnamed) wouldn’t be standing under the banner of the British Freedom party, as EDL co-leader Kevin Carroll is doing in the Bedfordshire police commissioner election. According to one contributor to a British Democracy Forum discussion thread, the candidate had originally wanted to stand for the BFP but it had been “mutually agreed” that it would be “best if he stood as an independent due to a colourful past”.
The meaning of this cryptic remark became clear yesterday when the list of candidates was published. The EDL candidate (who can’t of course stand in the name of the EDL as it is not a registered political party) turns out to be one Clint Bristow.
Racist graffiti opposite Woking mosque leads to arrest
A 19-year-old woman has been arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated criminal damage after abusive words were spray painted in view of a mosque.
Surrey Police said the graffiti was sprayed inside a shop on the Lion Retail Park, Woking, in view of the Shah Jahan Mosque in Oriental Road. The words were sprayed between 19:00 and 20:00 GMT on Monday.
The teenager, from Woking, has been released on bail until 13 December pending further inquiries.
See also The Missing List, 15 November 2012
Fascists to hold another protest against Sunderland mosque
The Northern Patriotic Front demonstrating in Hartlepool last month
A Far Right group is to stage a further demonstration over the proposed opening of a new mosque.
The Northern Patriotic Front, formed in Newcastle by ex-members of the National Front in August, is to stage what it insists will be a peaceful hour-long protest in the Millfield area of Sunderland at noon on Saturday (November 17).
Police say they expect a counter demonstration by anti-fascist groups and have warned that anyone causing trouble will be dealt with.
ENGAGE launches Islamophobia exhibition
Muslims in Britain have urged the government to take seriously the threats they face as anti-Muslim hatred is reaching worrying heights in Britain and across Europe.
ENGAGE launched a unique exhibition and a month long campaign “Islamophobia Awareness Month“, highlighting the spread of Islamophobia in the British parliament where speakers included MPs Simon Hughes, Jack Straw, Peter Bottomley and Sadiq Khan.
‘There are gangs of Muslim men going round and raping white kids’ – Tory MP claims the way to oppose the BNP is to talk like the BNP
Tory MP Kris Hopkins has sparked a row in the Commons by claiming gangs of Muslim men are raping white “kids”.
The Keighley MP claimed police had felt they needed “permission” to go after abusers due to “political correctness”. He said MPs should not avoid talking about the issue or the BNP and others will hijack it.
But Labour MP Yasmin Qureshi warned about “playing into the hands” of far right groups with such accusations. The Bolton South East MP said senior police officers and judges involved in cases of abuse had said race did not play a part.
Residents vent anger at Stoke-on-Trent BNP leader over BBC show
Stoke-on-Trent residents hit out at Stoke-on-Trent BNP leader Michael Coleman’s ‘racial slurs’ aired on a controversial BBC documentary.
The second episode of the three-part series, The Year The Town Hall Shrank, shadowed the BNP during their campaigning.
But local residents who watched the programme were enraged and offended by BNP leader Michael Coleman. He is accused of insulting Islamic clothing and his fellow Stoke City councillors.