CAIR Chicago has posted an article by Ben Small which provides an analysis of the EDL for an American audience, making some interesting comparisons with the role of the Tea Party in the US.
Category Archives: UK
No surrender? EDL LGBT division calls off tomorrow’s Manchester protest
Liam Wood, the convicted drug dealer – and also, it turns out, football hooligan – who heads the English Defence League’s LGBT division, had planned to hold a demonstration in Manchester tomorow, including leafleting Canal Street to warn the LGBT community about the threat from “Muslim homophobia”.
Alas, it would appear that the fight against the “Islamafactation of this country”, as Wood describes it, has suffered a setback. The self-proclaimed “gay Tommy Robinson” has bottled it and postponed the protest.
Hate crime probe after pig’s head thrown at Southport Mosque
Police are investigating a hate crime against Southport’s Muslims after a pig’s head was thrown at Southport Mosque.
The dead animal was found lying outside the mosque on the night of Wednesday July 6. It had been thrown over the wall of the place of worship on Sussex Road.
Police confirmed they were treating the incident as a hate crime which was being investigated by their specialist SIGMA team.
A spokesman for the Sussex Road mosque told the Visiter the pig head attack was a one-off incident and they had not had any similar incident. “In general nothing of this nature has ever happened,” he said. “It was an isolated incident.”
And last night Southport’s religious leaders united to condemn the attack.
Reverend Rod Garner from Holy Trinity Church on Manchester Road said: “It is disturbing, disappointing and disgusting. We have to be vigilant so as to protect other religions and their faith.” He called on religions to learn from their own history and to teach tolerance.
And Reverend Richard Vernon from the Lakeside Christian Centre on the Promenade said: “I’m saddened to hear that such a thing would take place. It is disheartening to think people can behave like that. I’ve never heard of anything like that before. Whatever people’s religious belief that kind of behaviour is to be condemned.”
Merseyside Police is appealing to anyone who witnessed this incident, or who has information, to contact 0151 777 3165, or Crimestoppers anonymously, on 0800 555 111.
EDL drunks disrupt Muslim meeting in Reading
Drunken protesters disrupted a talk from members of an Islamic information group in Reading last weekend.
Police were called to Rivermead Leisure Centre after a group of men who said they were members of the English Defence League started shouting abuse at members of the Berkshire Islamic Information Group at around 12.15pm on Sunday.
Police dispersed the group because some of its members were drunk and their actions were considered to be committing a public order offence.
Officers remained at the event, which was a lecture entitled “The Purpose of Life” until it finished. No arrests were made and the rest of day passed peacefully. Around 400 people attended the talk.
Results of ComRes poll on Islamophobia
ComRes has conducted a poll on Islamophobia for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association. It produced some interesting results.
Asked who they thought was “most to blame for Islamophobia, fear of Islam, in the UK”, 29% of respondents replied that it was the media, while 14% blamed Muslims abroad, 13% far right political groups and 10% politicians and government.
Only 11% held Muslims in the UK to be most to blame for Islamophobia – which, considering the campaign of demonisation waged by the right-wing press against the Muslim community, is lower than you might have anticipated.
Unsurprisingly, given that they have been on the receiving end of that campaign, the poll found that a much larger proportion of Muslim respondents – 53% – believed that it was the media who were mainly responsible for Islamophobia.
There was also an interesting difference here based on age, with 40% of those aged 18-24 blaming the media, compared with 18% of those 65 or over.
Asked whether “the Islamic holy book, the Qur’an, justifies the use of violence against non-Muslims”, only 14% agreed, while 65% disagreed and 20% didn’t know. Only 9% of 18 to 24-year-olds agreed and 75% disagreed. Again, those results are reassuring, given the efforts made by the media, the far right and certain politicans to associate Islam with violent extremism.
Overall, these figures give the likes of the EDL little cause for optimism. Their campaign of abuse and intimidation against Muslims will no doubt continue, but most of the public – and an even larger majority of young people – appear to reject one of the central assumptions on which the far right’s anti-Islam offensive is based.
Nor does the poll provide good news for proponents of the view that Islamophobia is a myth. Only 1% of respondents replied that they “do not think that Islamophobia exists in the UK”.
EDL man gets suspended jail sentence for pig’s head and racist graffiti at mosque site
A man who was involved in placing a pig’s head on a pole outside the possible site of a mosque in Nottingham has been given a suspended sentence.
Christopher Payne, 25, from Beardsmore Grove, Hucknall, admitted racially aggravated public order offences after the incident on 23 June. Nottingham Magistrates heard Payne failed to stop others placing the pig’s head and had also left racist graffiti. He was sentenced to 6 weeks imprisonment, suspended for a year.
The court was told Payne had taken delivery of a pig’s head, that was later pinned on the pole outside waste ground on Collington Way, in the West Bridgford area. Payne also admitted writing “no Mosque here, EDL Notts” on the pavement near the site of the proposed mosque.
He admitted causing racially or religiously aggravated harassment, alarm or distress and racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage.
He was also ordered to pay a £250 fine with £85 costs, complete 100 hours of community service and stay out of West Bridgford for 12 months.
A letter from Payne was read out in court in which he said he regretted his actions, and now understood and accepted it was wholly irresponsible. He also told the court he had left the English Defence League.
In sentencing, District Judge Morris Cooper told the court he had reduced Payne’s sentence by a third because he pleaded guilty.
“Left the English Defence League” – whatever happened to “No Surrender”? How can the EDL hope to succeed in repelling the Muslim hordes if its members show such a lack of backbone whenever they appear in court?
EDL applauds Russian neo-Nazi murderers
Exposing the English Defence League draws our attention to this Facebook post by the EDL’s Wigan Division applauding the Russian neo-Nazi group who were recently imprisoned after being convicted of a series of racist murders in which they specifically targeted Muslims.
EDL protestors who armed themselves with stolen pool balls meant no harm (according to their lawyer)
Two English Defence League supporters who armed themselves with pool balls stolen from a pub have been ordered to do unpaid work.
Michael Riley, 23, and Peter Craven, 28, travelled to Halifax from their homes in Hull for the far-right group’s town-centre demo in April. They were arrested after the landlady of the Beehive and Cross Keys pub reported the balls stolen from the premises.
Prosecutor Niall Carlin told Bradford Crown Court the men were part of a group that had gone into the King Cross Street pub, near the predominantly Asian Park ward. They were chanting racial slurs and breaking pool cues, making the licensee and regulars nervous, he said. The men were stopped and searched after leaving the pub, and Riley and Craven were found with the missing pool balls.
Riley, of Binbrook Garth, and Craven, of St Aidan’s Way, both admitted theft and possessing an offensive weapon. Ian Brook, mitigating, stressed they were supporters of the EDL, but not members, and there was no evidence they had been involved in any public disorder or breaking of pool cues.
Mr Brook said a group of Asian males had come towards a police cordon near the pub but neither group had made any attempt to get to the other. He said: “The defendants and their group were moving away from them, and it would appear they had wrongly stolen the pool balls and taken them up as weapons in case they needed to use them. There was no suggestion they were going to use them offensively against any of the Asian youths.”
Recorder Amanda Rippon said: “Nonetheless it was theft, first of all, and you armed yourself with a potentially dangerous weapon.”
The men, who have no previous convictions, were each sentenced to a 12-month community order with supervision, and must complete 80 hours of unpaid work.
“Stressed they were supporters of the EDL, but not members”? The EDL has no formal dues-paying structure, so all of its members are technically just supporters. Why are EDL protestors so pathetically eager to dissociate themselves from their own organisation whenever they get hauled up in front of a magistrate? Perhaps from now on they should sign off their racist Facebook rants with “NFSE – unless of course we find ourselves in court”.
50 racist incidents in Plymouth a day as hate crime increases 60 per cent
Plymouth has seen an increase of 60 per cent in “hate crime” in the past five years and now suffers an estimated 50 racist or religiously aggravated incidents every day, a new report claims.
The city is one of three areas identified as experiencing particularly high levels of racist attacks which were analysed for the study, The New Geographies of Racism. Official figure show that the number of racist incidents reported to police rose from 224 to 359 between 2005 and 2010. However, according to experts working with people from black, minority and ethnic (BME) groups, under-reporting of offences means the actual number is much higher.
Author John Burnett, from the Institute of Race Relations, said: “Some of these incidents have left people seriously injured, permanently scarred and in need of continuous medical treatment. Others have involved burning or attacking people’s homes, work, or places of worship and others still have been part of concerted attempts to force people to flee the city.”
The research was conducted via interviews with a cross-section of people working with racism and racial equality in Plymouth. It draws on experience with asylum seekers, refugees, migrant workers, gypsies and travellers, students and victims of racial violence.
Ann Wilkinson, co-director of the Plymouth and Devon Racial Equality Council, said the issues were “complex and difficult”, adding that racism was “more overt” in Plymouth than places like London. “It is a very good report and I hope that institutions in the South West will read it and take notice of some the difficulties faced by people who live here,” she added. “Racism is more overt here – that’s not a personal view but one from victims of hate crime – and there has been a rise in Islamophobia, which is a worrying trend we need to keep an eye on.”
Tory MPs packed APPG on Islamophobia meeting to remove ENGAGE
Writing in the Jewish Chronicle Martin Bright provides an insight into how ENGAGE was removed as the secretariat of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia earlier this week. It was accomplished by “a highly organised phalanx of 50 backbench Conservatives” who packed the meeting that took the decision to remove ENGAGE.