Category Archives: UK

Daily Star editor endures Leveson grilling for ‘anti-Islam’ coverage

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Daily Star Muslim ThugsThe editor of the Daily Star endured a bruising encounter at the Leveson inquiry today, facing sustained questioning over her newspaper’s coverage of Muslims.

Counsel Robert Jay repeatedly showed Dawn Neesom front pages of her newspaper and asked if she considered them “ethical”. “A journalist might feel the headlines we’ve been looking at stray way over the line of what’s ethical,” he said.

Mr Jay showed one front page featuring the headline: “Muslim thugs aged just 12 in knife attack on Brit school boy.” He branded the language “tendentious”, pointing out that the victim was described as “British”, but the perpetrators, who were also British, were described as “Muslim”. He also pointed out that the ‘attack’ actually referred to a comment on Facebook.

“It’s not good,” Ms Neesom admitted. She promised to pursue the issue “back in the office”.

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Nick Cohen smears Stieg Larsson

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nick Cohen4Nick Cohen devoted his column in yesterday’s Observer to attacking Stieg Larsson, using the Swedish novelist and anti-fascist campaigner’s views on honour based violence to reinforce the thesis that “The far left’s record on women’s rights would make the Vatican blush with shame. Its alliances with radical Islam make it, at best, a misogynist force and, at worst, an active agent of oppression.”

Cohen asserts: “Larsson wasn’t a feminist – or not a consistent one. He wrote with real anger about the oppression of women with white skins. When others tried to do the same about the oppression of women with brown skins, he denounced them as racists.” As evidence of this, Cohen offers Larsson’s intervention in “the debate about the ‘honour killings’ of two Kurdish women in Sweden”.

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EDL leader says Jeremy Clarkson posed for photo and discussed Islam with him

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Clarkson and LennonGobby Jeremy Clarkson stormed into another race row last night after making fun of drowned Chinese cockle pickers. And his latest outburst came after the Daily Star Sunday discovered he had posed for a snap with the leader of the racist English Defence League.

The 51-year-old was slammed after joking about dead Chinese immigrants in his regular newspaper column. He tastelessly compared synchronised swimmers to the 21 cockle pickers who were killed in rising tides in Morecambe Bay, Lancashire, in 2004. The Top Gear presenter was last night branded “out of touch” by anti-racism groups.

The latest outrage came as a picture of Clarkson and far-right English Defence League head Stephen Lennon emerged. Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, claims he talked about Islam with Clarkson.

The 28-year-old convicted thug, who also founded the anti-Islamic movement, said: “He knew who I was. We talked about Islam. I don’t want to say anything else because he will just get stitched up. But I’m a big fan of him.”

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Stopping the spread of sharia should be central to British foreign policy (it says here)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Last week ConservativeHome posted a lengthy piece by Martin Parsons urging that “combatting [sic] the spread of sharia enforcement across the world” should become “a central feature of British foreign policy”.

With articles like this it’s difficult to identify where ignorance ends and conscious misrepresentation begins. For example, Parsons tells us that in Egypt “the Muslim Brotherhood (al Ikhwan al Muslimun) and the radical Salafist Jama’a al-Islamiyya [Islamic Group] formed a political alliance to fight October’s parliamentary elections”.

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EDL uses Douglas Murray to deny accusations of racism and boost recruitment

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Douglas Murray (3)

The English Defence League have posted an article on their website urging support for their fight against “Islamic extremism”. It begins with the usual whinge about how they are falsely accused of being far-right racists: “The eagerness of some in the media to paint a group of patriotic people as some kind of extremists (when they’d never make such an offensive and blatantly untrue generalisations about more ‘sensitive’ groups of people) illustrates the application of a double standard reflective of what we’ve regularly referred to as a growing two tier system.”

However, not all the news is bad: “Luckily there are a few members of the middle and establishment classes who believe that the EDL at least deserve a fair hearing. One of these is the British writer and former director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, Douglas Murray.” This is followed by a video of Murray speaking at the One Law For All seminar last year where he welcomed the EDL as “a grassroots response from non-Muslims to Islamism”. The EDL applauds the fact that Murray “identifies ‘decent ordinary people’ with the EDL. Whilst he’s cautious of the need to ensure that the EDL is not hijacked by undesirable elements (so are we!), he recognises that most EDL supporters simply care about their communities and their countries”.

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Judge criticises sentencing powers for racist’s anti-Muslim tirade

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A judge has hit out at sentencing powers that prevented him from handing out a tougher punishment to a self-confessed racist who threatened to blow up a mosque. Judge Niclas Parry said he found it “quite staggering” a religiously aggravated public order offence could only attract a fine as a punishment for former soldier John Parkin.

Parkin, who was jailed for 10 months for being in breach of an earlier suspended sentence, escaped separate punishment on two charges of religiously aggravated public order offences following two separate outbursts against Muslims in Rhyl.

On one occasion, Parkin, 26, of River Street, Rhyl, was seen near Ellis’ public house in Water Street in Rhyl, where there was also a mosque, in a drunken condition and he was warned about his behaviour.

The licensee heard him say: “I have got guns. I want to shoot Muslims in the head.” He spoke about blowing up the mosque and the licensee found his remarks extremely racist and offensive, the court heard.

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Lib Dem’s anti-Islam rants: ‘Put pork restaurant next to mosque’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Liberal Democrat candidate has refused to apologise for a series of shocking Islamophobic comments. Sick Dave Stones suggested a pork restaurant and a topless bar – named after Islam’s holiest city – should be built next to a mosque.

The would-be councillor, who is the party’s candidate for a by-election in Redcar and Cleveland on 19 January, said:

“Regarding the mosque being built near ground zero. I say let them build it. But then, across the street we should put a topless bar called ‘You Mecca Me Hot’ … and next to that a pork rib restaurant … Then we’ll see who’s tolerant.”

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Three men sentenced over arson attack on Sussex mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Everley Smith & MorrisThree men have been sentenced for an arson attack on a newly-renovated mosque in West Sussex.

James Everley, 20, of Crawley, James Smith, 20, of Burgess Hill, and Joshua Morris, 20, of Haywards Heath, were all sentenced to three years at a young offenders institute.

The fire at the mosque in Wivelsfield Road, Haywards Heath, was started at about 02:10 GMT on 13 February. Police believe the attack was a religiously-aggravated hate crime.

The men had pleaded guilty at Hove Crown Court to arson, theft of paraffin and a public order offence, which involved racially or religiously aggravated fear of violence.

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‘Pollard and Bright’s Islamist fear betrays our community’s values’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The controversy unleashed by Martin Bright’s attack on leading figures in the Jewish community for co-operating with London Citizens continues in the Jewish Chronicle with a piece by Keith Kahn-Harris, co-author of Turbulent Times: The British Jewish Community Today.

The article is measured and balanced but Kahn-Harris’s criticisms of the JC‘s relationship under its present editorial regime to the community it is supposed to serve really are quite devastating.