The charred remains of the old Shotton Lane Social Club building has now been demolished – one month after it was torched by arsonists.
The community building had been earmarked to become an Islamic cultural centre under plans put forward by Flintshire Muslim Cultural Society (FMCS).
But before a buyout could take place the building was destroyed in an arson attack in the early hours of February 4, and about 100 nearby residents had to be evacuated from their homes.
Fire investigators are “99 per cent sure” that a blaze which ripped through a church in Ipswich was started deliberately.
The fire at St Michael’s Church in Upper Orwell Street has left the Victorian building structurally unsafe. An inspection of the remains of the vacant church by experts has revealed the roof is too unstable for fire investigators to enter the building.
A spokeswoman for Suffolk police said at this stage it is thought the fire started in the rear of the church shortly after 10pm on Monday. She said: “The roof is very unstable and so it is too dangerous to enter the building at this stage. It looks like the fire was started at the rear of the church and spread straight to the roof.”
Today the owner of the dilapidated Victorian church said the community’s “dream is over”, after 25 years of savings and fundraising “went up in flames”, revealing his has no insurance. Muhammad Manwar Ali, chief executive of Jimas, the organisation that owns the building, was at the forefront of plans to transform the church into a £1million Muslim-run community centre.
Dismayed, Mr Ali returned to the scene this morning as fire investigators and a building inspector assessed the extent of the damage. The roof is completely destroyed and parts of the church were still burning, according to firefighters.
Mr Manwar Ali is set to lose the £350,000 he paid for the church last year out of his own life savings, fundraising and loans from friends. And plans to spend up to £1 million over the next few years on transforming the run-down site have been shelved as the building teeters on the brink of collapse.
But incredibly, Mr Manwar Ali said that even if the police did manage to track down those responsible, he would rather invite them round for a cup of coffee than see them go to prison. He said: “The foolish things is we hadn’t insured it. Hopefully there is nobody who has been harmed or hurt – there could have been somebody inside. I will forgive them (those responsible) and let them know I don’t want to see them in prison. They can come and have free coffee in our shop.”
He stressed that the church would have become a community centre, not a mosque, and that it would have been open to everyone in Ipswich. He said: “We were not doing it for business or to make money for ourselves, even if people find that hard to believe. It wasn’t a Muslim or Asian thing – it would have been a fantastic place for Ipswich.”
Via ENGAGE
A Lincolnshire man whose racist abuse caused two children to “cling to their parents in fear” has been banned from attending any public meeting organised by right-wing group the EDL, police have said.
Shane Overton, 38, of Parker Avenue, Lincoln, was given a 10-year Criminal Anti-Social Behaviour Order (Crasbo) at Doncaster Crown Court on Wednesday. Lincolnshire Police said he was issued with the order after attending an EDL demonstration in Newcastle last year.
Sarah Posner investigates the “shari’ah conspiracy theory industry”.
Hugh Muir interviews Richard Peppiatt, the journalist who resigned from the Daily Star in protest at its anti-Muslim reporting.
See also “Ex-Daily Star reporter ‘gets hate messages'”, Guardian, 9 March 2011
Well, that’s the headline in the Pink Paper.
Meanwhile, over at his Torygraph blog Andrew Gilligan has resumed his lying about Qaradawi, once again accusing him of defending rape and the targeting of non-combatants by Palestinian suicide bombers. These two accusations have already been demolished here. Gilligan also cites Qaradawi’s 1960 book The Lawful and Prohibited in Islam as evidence that Qaradawi advocates wife-beating and has “called for gay people to be killed”. Those charges are refuted here.
One of Gilligan’s claims is, however, true. Qaradawi does regard homosexuality as a sin. As indeed do the Pope and the Chief Rabbi, among others. There is of course an ultra-secularist minority who adopt the consistent if misguided position that all faith leaders who hold the view that homosexuality is immoral should be boycotted. But somehow I doubt Gilligan is one of them.
One of the leaders of the English Defence League (EDL) will face no further police action after being arrested following their controversial march in Peterborough.
Guramit Singh (28), from Nottingham, was arrested on December 21 on suspicion of causing religiously aggravated harassment, alarm or distress.
The arrest came after a member of the public complained about the content of Mr Singh’s speech delivered outside Peterborough Magistrates’ Court during the EDL protest on December 11. Mr Singh’s speech was heard by around 1,000 EDL supporters, who took part in the protest, as well as hundreds of shoppers.
A spokesman for Cambridgeshire Police said: “Following a detailed police investigation and advice from the Crown Prosecution Service, he has been released with no further action.”
Mr Singh was not available for comment but fellow EDL leader Tommy Robinson said: “We are pleased the charges were dropped – there was nothing in them.”
Peterborough Evening Telegraph, 8 March 2011
The content of Singh’s Peterborough speech can be sampled here.
So, while Emdadur Choudhury, an idiot follower of Anjem Choudary, can be prosecuted and fined under the Public Order Act for burning poppies on Remembrance Day, it appears that a leader of the racist EDL can engage in foul-mouthed abuse of British Muslims without any legal sanction at all.
ENGAGE has commented on the double standards of the right-wing press who expressed outrage that Emdadur Choudhury was fined a mere £50. Can we now perhaps expect those same newspapers to condemn the failure of the police and CPS to take action against Guramit Singh?
WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The daily stroll had become routine for two elderly Sikh men in a Sacramento suburb, as well as for neighbors and friends accustomed to seeing the men walk by with their long beards and turbans.
But the traditional headwear might have singled them out late last week when they were gunned down, one fatally, in what police are investigating as a suspected hate crime. On Monday, local religious leaders pleaded for the community to come forward with leads but also said they will not be deterred by violence.
“Our community will continue to wear our turbans proudly,” said Navi Kaur (NA’vee Kar), the granddaughter of Surinder Singh, 65, who died from his wounds. His friend, 78-year-old Gurmej Atwal, remains in critical condition.
They were walking through their neighborhood in Elk Grove, just south of the capital, Friday afternoon when someone in what witnesses described as a pickup truck opened fire. Police said they have no suspects nor any indication the shooting was a hate crime, but said the turbans could have made the elderly men a target of extremists.
During a news conference Monday at a Sikh temple, a spokesman said the recent violence has scared some temple-goers into concealing any indicators of their religion.
Sikhs often are mistaken for Muslims and have been the subject of occasional violence across the country since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Sikhs draw particular attention because of their traditional beards and turbans, which are mistakenly associated with Islamic terrorists.
Anti-fascists and Muslim communities joined forces on Saturday to fight anti-Islam mobs in Greater Manchester.
Members of the white supremacist English Defence League (EDL) gathered in Rochdale town centre over the weekend, accusing the local Muslim population of child sex abuse. Anti-fascist activists Unite Against Fascism and members of the Muslim community turned out to counter-demonstrate, with police erecting a fence between the groups. Local media estimated around 500 EDL supporters and 100 Unite Against Fascism members in attendance.
But Unite Against Fascism co-ordinator Weyman Bennett said he believed many EDL members had been bussed in from out of town. The sheer number of localised EDL demonstrations made it difficult to mobilise counterdemonstrators every weekend, he said. But the Rochdale event saw “a very good turnout,” with closer to 250 counterdemonstrators once Muslim groups and trade unions were included.
The EDL had planned to march on a local Islamic centre but the counterprotest and police kettling had prevented this, he said.