Category Archives: UK

Telford: council calls for ban on EDL march, police claim there are ‘insufficient grounds’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

English Defence League ProtestTelford & Wrekin Council has called for the planned English Defence League march in Wellington on Saturday to be cancelled.

Council leader Kuldip Sahota said: “The overwhelming voice from the community in Telford – and in particular in Wellington – is that people do not want this march in our town. The council believes the march should not go ahead. We are in an environment now where there has been widespread violence elsewhere and we simply feel they should cancel the march.

“We do understand and appreciate the very difficult position that the police are in but as community leaders we have a duty to listen to our residents and protect their properties and businesses. It is therefore our belief that the march should be cancelled.”

Assistant Chief Constable Simon Chesterman, of West Mercia Police, said:

“The police overall strategic intention is ‘To work with Telford & Wrekin Council, other agencies, protest organisers and communities to ensure public safety including the safety of those people attending any protest and the football match’. The police have a duty to protect life and property and facilitate peaceful protest.

“Legal powers to seek a banning order are set out in the Public Order Act and any application for a ban would have to be within the confines of the legislation. There are insufficient grounds upon which to seek a banning order at this time.”

A number of business in Wellington are set to close at lunchtime on Saturday before the start of the march. Several have also taken the decision to board up their shop fronts. Frozen food retailer Iceland said their Wellington store would stop selling alcohol on Friday until after the march.

Shropshire Live, 10 August 2011

West Mercia Police have stated that they will impose restrictions on the EDL march under Section 12 of the Public Order Act. But Section 13 allows for the police to apply for a complete ban if “the powers under section 12 will not be sufficient to prevent the holding of public processions … resulting in serious public disorder”.

Presumably the police are arguing that there is no threat of serious public disorder. Yet the fact that shops are boarding up their windows and closing down in advance of the EDL march is surely a good indication that it does pose such a threat.

According to Nick Lowles of Searchlight, the police are even unwilling to apply for a ban on the EDL march in Tower Hamlets on 3 September.

‘Ayatollah of the RAF’: Mail on Sunday witch-hunts Joel Hayward

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Mail on Sunday has published an attack on Joel Hayward, dean of the Royal Air Force College at Cranwell (“Ayatollah of the RAF: Academic ‘university’ head is Muslim convert who claims Nazi gas chambers were British propaganda and criticises Libya air strikes”). The story has since been taken up by the Daily Star, under the bizarre headline “RAF pilot converts to Islam”.

The main source for the Mail‘s witch-hunt is a letter headed “The Air Force Ayatollah”, which was sent to the paper by anonymous RAF officers who would obviously rather have Robert Spencer running the college. Apparently students at Cranwell “are in fear” of expressing anti-Muslim sentiments in front of Hayward. Worst of all: “Anyone who fails to follow the line that Islam is a peace-loving religion is hauled into his office for re-education”.

The Mail concurs in finding it sinister that Hayward “has frequently challenged claims of Islamic aggressiveness”. In fact, his views on that subject are so off-the-wall that one of his articles, “The Qur’an and war: Observations on Islamic just war”, was published in the RAF’s own academic journal, Air Power Review.

Continue reading →

Media rush to blame Muslims for Norway attacks shows Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Miriyam Aouragh is the co‑author of Collateral Damage, a report into the response to the Norway attacks. She spoke to Socialist Worker.

When the news of the Norway attacks came out most people’s first reaction was deep shock. Whatever the context, the massacre of so many young people in cold blood was horrific.

But the first reaction of many commentators and the media was to rush to put the attack into a preferred political framework.

In our research on the aftermath of the attacks we studied the flood of online assertions about who the perpetrators might be. In the first 48 hours, media sources clamoured to denounce “Muslim extremism”.

Their blind assumptions, in the face of a vicious attack by an anti-Muslim terrorist, reflect how deeply rooted Islamophobia has become.

Even where reporters stuck to the facts, a more insidious message was seeping through.

It was that this massacre was, if not directly attributable to Muslim perpetrators, then somehow the responsibility of a tolerant immigration policy.

It is dangerous to suggest that unease about immigration is legitimate.

It leaves the mantra about a “native resentment” that continues to actively fan the flames of right wing parties across Europe unchallenged.

Muted, throughout, was the fact that the attack had been carried out by a right wing racist.

It is downright terrifying to think about what would have occurred had the perpetrator been Muslim.

So we cannot assume that the attack has exposed the danger of the far right and that will simply be enough to stop the rise of racist ideas.

Where I live, in Oxford, most people respond very positively to our local Unite Against Fascism campaigning.

But five days after the massacre one man came up, looked me in the eye and said, “This country doesn’t need Muslims, they are evil.”

There are consequences of allowing official politics to give credibility to racist ideas – of the mainstreaming of Islamophobia.

The response to Norway is a warning. We need to see it as a call to action.

Thugs who attacked Muslims and kicked over Qur’ans following EDL pro-Israel rally get two-week curfew

Posted on by Bob Pitt
Bryan Kelso with Kevin Carroll

Bryan Kelso with Kevin Carroll

English Defence League (EDL) members who kicked over Korans and traded punches with Muslims in Speakers’ Corner have been sentenced to a fortnight’s curfew.

Three men admitted public order offences at Woolwich Crown Court on Wednesday, August 3. Full-time carer Christopher Long, who lived in Kent Way, Surbiton, at the time of his arrest, held his head in his hands as prosecutor Eleanor Mawrey described the fight on October 24 last year.

Long, Brian Bristow and Bryan Kelso had attended a rally outside the Israeli embassy in Kensington, which ended in a confrontation between EDL members and anti-fascist campaigners in Hyde Park.

Continue reading →

Two arrested after missiles thrown at Newcastle mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Two teenagers have been arrested after missiles were thrown at a mosque. Officers were called to the mosque in Malvern Street, Newcastle, late on Sunday night after reports of a group of youths fighting.

A spokesman for Northumbria Police said objects were thrown at the building and a table leg and scaffolding were recovered from the scene. An 18-year-old man and a 16-year-old boy were arrested on suspicion of affray and are being questioned.

BBC News, 8 August 2011

Update:  See also “Appeal for calm after attack on Elswick mosque”, Newcastle Chronicle, 9 August 2011

More Sharia hysteria in the Torygraph

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Birmingham Central Mosque sharia councilYes, it’s yet another report on the dangers of “Sharia courts” – this one (“Sharia: a law unto itself?”) in the Sunday Telegraph by Jonathan Wynne-Jones, the paper’s religious affairs correspondent.

Wynne-Jones was given the opportunity to observe the workings of a Sharia council at Birmingham Central Mosque and he interviewed a woman member of the council, Amra Bone. In addition, Sheikh Faiz Siddiqi spoke to Wynne-Jones on the role of Islamic arbitration tribunals in settling commercial disputes. Which you might think would provide the basis for an objective report that would counter the usual anti-Sharia scaremongering. You would of course be wrong. The informed views of two individuals who can provide an insight into the actual operation of “Sharia courts” are predictably outweighed by those of a bunch of ignorant Islamophobes.

So, along with the obligatory reference to the “Sharia controlled zones” publicity stunt by Anjem Choudary’s idiot micro-sect, we are treated to a succession of quotes on the Sharia threat from Michael “no go areas” Nazir-Ali (who opines that the existence of Sharia councils “threatens the fundamental values that underpin our society”); from Geert Wilders fan Baroness Cox (who declares that her objective is to “stop parallel legal, or quasi-legal, systems taking root in our nation”); from right-wing Christian fundamentalist Alan Craig (who complains that “I can no longer walk to my local shops and find anywhere to buy conventional, non-halal meat … The pavements are crowded with women wearing not just the face-veil, but black gloves to hide their hands”); and from that well-known expert on Sharia law, Jim Fitzpatrick MP (who is concerned that Sharia councils “are creating a cultural stranglehold over their communities and leading to the Islamification of our society”).

Turkey join the EU? But we’d be flooded with backward Muslim immigrants

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Writing in the Evening Standard, Melanie McDonagh explains why it would be a mistake to let Turkey become a member of the EU. Partly, of course, the problem is that London would be inundated with foreign immigrants. But it’s worse than that:

The real objection, though, to Turkey joining the EU is more fundamental than that. Turkey isn’t really European at all, so much as Asian. Only about three per cent of its land mass is in Europe, on our side of the Bosphorus; 97 per cent is in Asia. Its accession would expand our common EU borders to Iraq, Iran and Syria. Is that honestly what we want?

The most common response by British ministers to objections to Turkish membership is that it encourages moderate Islam by showing that a non-extremist Muslim nation can be part of the European family. That, plus strategic considerations, is why the US is so much in favour of the idea.

Well, if we want to show that Muslims can indeed be part of Europe, let’s expedite the membership of those genuinely European countries with large or majority Muslim populations: Albania, anyone? Kosovo? Bosnia? If we’re so keen on outreach to Islam, let’s start there.

And moderation, when it comes to Islam, is pretty relative, after all. Turkey isn’t going to go for sharia law any time soon but a recent poll conducted by Istanbul’s Bahcesehir University suggested that 48 per cent of respondents would not want Christians as neighbours, more than half wouldn’t want Jews; four-fifths didn’t want homosexuals. Moderate Islam, eh?

But don’t get the idea that Melanie is one of those all-purpose religion-bashers. Not at all. She was very upset about the anti-Catholic vitriol unleashed by the pope’s visit to the UK. As it happens, I broadly agree with her on that. But she might perhaps reflect on the fact the pope himself is hardly a beacon of enlightenment on such issues as abortion, homosexuality and women priests. Moderate Catholicism, eh?

BNP sacks Nazi-saluting member … and smears Muslim community

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sun BNP Hitler saluteNazi thug Chris Hurst was booted out of the BNP yesterday after The Sun told how he gave Hitler salutes at a fascist rally. But incredibly, the far-right party tried to play down his shameful behaviour by spouting more racist bile.

Spokesman Simon Darby said: “He has been silly but he has not been caught dealing drugs or prostituting with underage girls, like some in the Islamic community.”

Sun, 5 August 2011

Roberta Moore says journalists like Andrew Gilligan ‘deserve our respect’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Andrew-GilliganWe’ve been a bit remiss in not covering recent developments in the English Defence League.

Just to bring you up to speed, if you haven’t been following this, the EDL leadership have broken links with their millionaire financial backer Alan Lake following an Observer exposé of Lake that quoted his notorious article proposing the future execution of pro-Islamic “appeasers” like David Cameron, Nick Clegg and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Jewish division of the EDL have since come out in support of Lake – and of the EDL’s Combined Ex-Forces (CxF) group who have also been expelled following an attack on a Plymouth kebab shop.

While scrolling through the discussion forum on Lake’s 4 Freedoms website in search of further information on these splits, one thing that caught my eye was an exchange earlier this week between a Paul Collings and one “Morrigan Emaleth” – a pseudonym used by former EDL Jewish division leader Roberta Moore.

Objecting to the way journalists have been pursuing Lake, Collingswrites: “when you think of the news storys they could report on, like the erosion of our freedoms, the deaths of child suicide bombers, the creation of muslim enclaves around europe. These are things they should, but are to scared to report on, so they instead chase their own tails. The media gives us with nothing but half truths and lies to read. All we,re left with is a choise of which lie to believe. Its hard to call them journalists.”

To which Emaleth/Moore replies: “Paul, There must be a very sinister reason why they are not reporting this. On the other hand I take my hat off to Andrew Gilligham and co. They report it. They deserve our respect.”

In view of the considerable assistance given by Andrew Gilligan to the cause of furthering far-right anti-Muslim hatred, you might have thought Moore would at least make the effort to spell his name correctly. It’s also a bit unfair not to mention the other journalists who are worthy of the “respect” of this vile Islamophobic bigot and her co-thinkers. Surely Martin Bright deserves a name-check too?