A 30-year-old man has been charged with religiously-aggravated criminal damage to a Leicester mosque. He is also accused of a racially-aggravated common assault, and theft of flowers worth £75 belonging to the mosque.
All the offences are alleged to have taken place at the mosque in Churchill Street, Highfields, Leicester, on September 11, 2010. The man is due to appear at Leicester Magistrates’ Court on February 11.
Leicester Constabulary news report, 11 January 2011
Via ENGAGE
The British National Party reports on their latest demonstration in Bletchley against the proposed conversion of a disused former biker bar into a mosque and community hall.
They claim 150 supporters participated in the protest (no doubt an exaggeration) but apparently less than half of them followed the BNP’s Milton Keynes organiser Kieren Trent to a meeting in a local pub to hear a speech from Buckinghamshire sub-regional organiser Matt Tait.
After stoking the fires of Islamophobia over the Muslim veil in 2006, now Jack Straw endorses the right-wing myth of “Muslim grooming”.
Daily Telegraph, 8 January 2011
Update: Straw will be pleased to hear that his intervention over “Muslim sexual predators” has received the wholehearted backing of Melanie Phillips.
Stephen Tomkins crunches the numbers.
The British National party’s website, its logo still sporting a seasonal sprig of holly, is understandably triumphalist as it proclaims that the “controlled media” has admitted this week that “Nick Griffin has been right all along about Muslim paedophile gangs”.
The particular branch of the controlled media the BNP refers to is the Times, which has been running the results of a lengthy investigation into the sexual exploitation and internal trafficking of girls in the north of England. Specifically, the Times has marshalled evidence suggesting that these organised crimes are carried out almost exclusively by gangs of Pakistani Muslim origin who target white youngsters; and it quotes both police and agency sources who refer to a “conspiracy of silence” around the open investigation of such cases, amid fears of being branded racist or inflaming ethnic tensions in already precarious local environments.
This is not the first time that anxieties about the ethnic dimension of child sexual exploitation have been aired by the media. In 2004 the Channel 4 documentary Edge of the City, which explored claims that Asian men in Bradford were grooming white girls as young as 11, sexually abusing them and passing them on to their friends, was initially withdrawn from the schedules after the BNP described it as “a party political broadcast”, and the chief constable of West Yorkshire police warned that it could spark disorder.
Anecdotally, as far back as the mid-90s, local agencies have been aware of the participation of ethnic minority men in some cases of serial abuse. But what has not emerged is any consistent evidence to suggest that Pakistani Muslim men are uniquely and disproportionately involved in these crimes, nor that they are preying on white girls because they believe them to be legitimate sexual quarry, as is now being suggested.
Libby Brooks in the Guardian, 7 January 2011
See also ENGAGE, 7 January 2011
The current issue of the Times Higher Education magazine carries an article by one Matthew Reisz which asks whether college authorities should police the activities of Muslim students, given that “Islamic extremism and even terrorism have emanated from some of our campuses”.
The main sources cited are Douglas Murray and Hannah Stuart from the Centre for Social Cohesion, Lucy James from the Quilliam Foundation, Raheem Kassam of Student Rights, Anthony Glees and Nick Cohen. The only voices allowed to counter this Islamophobic chorus are those of Ruth Siddall, UCL’s dean of students (welfare), and FOSIS president Nabil Ahmed who is represented by one short quote. Some objective study!
In the comments, the Rev Stan Brown writes: “As a chaplain at a London University I would have to add a word of caution about the Quilliam and CSC documents cited in this article. Their research seems to be largely based on internet searches. I attend Islamic society meetings and have heard some of the ‘radical’ speakers cited in these reports. I don’t know what they said elsewhere but I do know what they said in my own institution.”
This has provoked a furious response at Harry’s Place from the appalling Edmund Standing, who claims that the Rev Brown is “all too typical of the kind of wooly-minded individuals who can be found on campuses up and down the country”. The speakers Brown heard at ISoc meetings were no different from neo-Nazis, according to Standing. And, as a clincher, Standing reveals that one of Brown’s colleagues actually sent a message of congratulation to the MCB when Iqbal Sacranie was awarded a knighthood. This is what passes for proof of extremism in the demented world of Harry’s Place.
A neighbour from hell who launched a four-year “race hate” campaign against a family has now been jailed for possessing child porn. Nigel Hesmondhalgh, 37, is beginning a nine-month sentence after a series of degrading photos and videos of children were found on his home computer.
Detectives have welcomed the punishment, imposed by Judge Simon Newell at Burnley Crown Court, on Hesmondhalgh, of Stanley Street, Accrington. The judge also ordered him to sign the sex offenders’ register for 10 years.
Hesmondhalgh was jailed at the Burnley court in March for an offence of racially-aggravated harassment. Police obtained a two-year Anti-Social Behaviour Order against him, before his release, to prevent him from throwing dog dirt into his neighbours’ garden, or using racist language towards an Asian family.
Local officials for a Muslim civil rights organization have filed a lawsuit to stop a conservative commentator from using the group’s name in a website.
Dawud Walid, the executive director of Council on American-Islamic Relations-Michigan, said his group today filed a federal lawsuit this week against Debbie Schlussel alleging she created the site cairmichigan.com. Walid’s organization’s website is cairmichigan.org.
“I’m not an attorney, but I do know it’s a violation of federal trademark (laws) to hijack the name of an organization,” said Walid today. “CAIR is one of the most visible Muslim organizations in these United States of America. I can’t speak to directly to her motivations but in our opinion, Debbie Schlussel is an extremely intolerant person … a well-known anti-Muslim, anti-Arab bigot.”
A leader of the English Defence League who was described as a “political prisoner” after being jailed for violence at a march had already been placed on the sex offenders register for downloading indecent images of children, The Timescan reveal.
The far-right group launched a campaign to free Richard Price, co-ordinator of the West Midlands division of the EDL, after he was jailed last month for violent behaviour. But Price, 41, had been convicted in June 2010 of making four indecent images of children, and possessing cocaine and crack cocaine. That conviction followed an earlier arrest in 2009 for public order offences believed to have been connected with EDL marches. Police were understood to have seized and analysed his computer, leading to the discovery of sexual images of children that he had downloaded. His home was also searched and the drugs were found.
Price admitted four counts of making indecent images of children and two charges of possessing cocaine when he appeared at Birmingham Crown Court. He was banned from owning a computer for a year, given a three-year community supervision order and ordered to sign on to the sex offenders register for five years.
Price, from Quinton, Birmingham, and Collum Keyes, 23, also from Birmingham, were among 12 people arrested when they surged through police lines during a protest in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, in May 2010. When that case came to court in December, Price admitted using threatening behaviour. He was jailed for three months and given a ten-year Criminal Anti-Social Behaviour Order banning him from attending marches outside Birmingham. Keyes, who admitted disorderly conduct, was fined £150.
When Price was jailed, EDL members launched a campaign urging supporters to write to the Prime Minister and MPs to try to “win justice for Richard Price, EDL”.
The Aston Villa supporter, who has also been linked to football hooliganism, was even likened by his supporters to a modern-day John Bunyan, the Puritan Christian preacher and author of Pilgrim’s Progress who was jailed for continuing his sermons without the permission of the established Church in the 1600s.
But today’s revelation that one of the EDL’s leading members has been convicted of sex offences will come as a huge embarrassment to a group that has struggled to shrug off its reputation as a new version of the National Front.
In recent months, particularly following the political demise of the British National Party, the EDL has begun to attract more support. Its leader, who had previously used the alias Tommy Robinson, was traced by The Times and gave his first interview using his real name. Stephen Lennon has vehemently denied that the group he started in Luton, Bedfordshire, is racist, saying that it has even set up a gay and lesbian division and given a prominent role to a Sikh supporter opposed to Islamic extremists.
Supporters of the EDL had claimed that Price became a political prisoner after he, along with Keyes, was banned from organising, controlling or travelling to any open-air protest outside Birmingham for ten years. It was the first time a Criminal Anti-Social Behaviour Order, sought by Thames Valley Police in conjunction with the National Domestic Extremism Unit, had been issued to a demonstrator connected to the EDL.
Last month, a database of EDL supporters was published on the internet. Hackers had attacked the group’s database of those who had made donations to the EDL and people who had bought clothing from its merchandise wing.
Times, 4 December 2011
Read the defence of Price by Stephen Lennon (“Tommy Robinson”)here. According to Lennon, “Mr Price has no idea what these photos are and how they where [sic] on his computer.” Yeah, right.
You’ll note, by the way, that “Tommy Robinson” claims that “although Pricey is a trusted member, at no time has pricey ever been a leader of the EDL”. This is the same “Tommy Robinson” who just seven months ago wrote: “The EDL has only this Leadership, just for the record….Myself, Trevor Kelway, Marshy, Jack Smith, Joel Titus and Richard Price. We are the earliest founding members.”
The number of Britons choosing to become Muslims has nearly doubled in the past decade, according to one of the most comprehensive attempts to estimate how many people have embraced Islam.
Following the global spread of violent Islamism, British Muslims have faced more scrutiny, criticism and analysis than any other religious community. Yet, despite the often negative portrayal of Islam, thousands of Britons are adopting the religion every year.
Estimating the number of converts living in Britain has always been difficult because census data does not differentiate between whether a religious person has adopted a new faith or was born into it. Previous estimates have placed the number of Muslim converts in the UK at between 14,000 and 25,000.
But a new study by the inter-faith think-tank Faith Matters suggests the real figure could be as high as 100,000, with as many as 5,000 new conversions nationwide each year.
That’s out of a total UK population of over 60 million. The article goes on to quote Inayat Bunglawala as saying that if Faith Matters’ figures are accurate, this “would mean that around one in 600 Britons is a convert to the faith”. It appears that the “Islamification of Britain” still has some way to go.
Update: See also the Daily Mail, which reports:
“The number of Muslim converts in Britain has passed 100,000, fuelled by a surge in young white women adopting the Islamic faith. The figure has almost doubled in ten years – with the average convert now a 27-year-old white woman fed up with British consumerism and immorality. The numbers, revealed in a study by multi-faith group Faith Matters, have led to claims that the country is undergoing a process of ‘Islamification’.”