Tabloid Watch has the details. See also Liberal Conspiracy.
Update: See also “UK papers incite anti-Muslim hatred over Stoke council’s Ramadan guidance”, ENGAGE, 13 July 2010
Category Archives: UK
EDL supporters in court charged with violent disorder and threatening behaviour
Three English Defence League supporters appeared at Aylesbury Magistrates Court on Friday over alleged offences on the day the group protested in May. Among them was Brian Price, 40, the EDL’s West Midlands co-ordinator.
Mr Price, of Stonehouse Lane in Quinton, gave no indication to his plea on a charge of violent disorder. Collum Keyes, 23, of Somerton Drive in Birmingham, pleaded not guilty to violent disorder. Prosecutor Shahreena Coker said the pair were arrested after EDL members surged through police lines after their Market Square protest on May 1.
Also in court was Daryl Hobson, 43, of Newland Road in Worthing, West Sussex. Wearing an EDL jersey, he pleaded not guilty to a charge of threatening and abusive behaviour.
Mr Price and Mr Keyes were told that their case would be heard at Aylesbury Crown Court, and were released on conditional bail – which prevents them taking part in EDL rallies – for a commital hearing on August 20. Mr Hobson was released on unconditional bail, with his trial at Aylesbury Magistrates Court set to start on November 8.
Postscript: Over at the Casuals United blog the EDL are boasting that yesterday they disrupted a meeting organised by the Islamic Association of Lincoln for the local Muslim community to discuss plans for a new mosque and community centre in the town. According to the EDL, they were confronted by “jihadists” and “politely asked to vacate the premises”. I mean, “politely asked to vacate the premises”. Are there no extremes to which these jihadists will not go in their efforts to oppress patriotic Britons?
Casuals United go on to claim that “Lincolns Mosque is due to be funded by Tablighi Jamaat the extreme Saudi sect behind 9/11”. In reality, the funding for the new mosque is being raised through an appeal to the Muslim community. As for Tablighi Jamaat, it is of course an organisation originating in South Asia that has no connection with Saudi Arabia, still less 9/11.
The EDL – not only violent but thick with it.
EDL protestor found guilty of religiously aggravated harassment
An EDL protester, Kevin Smith, has been given a suspended eight-week prison sentence for putting a pig’s head on the wall of Dudley central mosque in the Castle Hill area of the town on 29 May.
Police believe Smith, 52, of Brierley Hill, was on his way to the Newcastle demonstration when the act took place. He was arrested on 2 June and has been found guilty of religiously aggravated intentional harassment at Dudley magistrates court.
Smith was sentenced to eight weeks in prison, suspended for 12 months, and among the conditions imposed was an order that he stay out of the Castle Hill area.
Griffin recommends Wilders for Sakharov Prize
British National Party leader and MEP Nick Griffin announced this morning in the European Parliament that he wished to nominate brave Dutch MEP Geert Wilders for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
Mr Griffin nominated Mr Wilders for “his tireless commitment to freedom of speech and his continuous struggle against islamisation, mass-immigration and the leftish attacks on Western Humanist Judeo-Christian values that destroy Europe from within.”
Referring to the current attempts to prosecute Mr Wilders in his native Holland, Mr Griffin quoted another MEP who said it was a disgrace that in a European country, a man is being prosecuted for defending such a fundamental right as the freedom of speech.
“While our society is changing because of the Islamisation and mass-immigration the Dutch judiciary decided to go after a democratically elected representative for the use of his right of free speech,” Mr Griffin continued.
“The European Parliament should give a signal, by awarding Geert Wilders the Sakharov Prize 2010 that it will not tolerate such monstrous attacks on freedom of speech and the right for any citizen to defend the values that are the historical and undeniable cornerstones of the society they live in.
“Geert Wilders does not give up, even though he is continuously under attack by those who still believe in the multicultural dream and anyone who believes that the barbaric Islam is a contribution to Western society.”
Europeans approve, Americans reject veil ban
Days before French lawmakers are due to vote on a bill that would make it illegal for Muslim women to wear full veils in public, a US poll has found that a majority of Europeans back such a ban while Americans reject it.
The French overwhelmingly endorse a ban on Muslim face coverings, also known as the burqa or the niqab, as do majorities in Britain, Germany and Spain, a survey conducted by the Washington-based Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project found.
More than eight in 10 people in France said they would approve of a ban on Muslim women wearing full veils in public, including in schools, hospitals and government offices, the survey, conducted over three weeks in April and May, found. Just 17 percent of French people were opposed to a ban on the burqa.
Majorities in Germany (71 percent), Britain (62 percent) and Spain (59 percent) said they would support a burqa ban in their own countries. But in the United States, the opposite was true, with two-thirds of Americans saying they were against a ban on full veils in public.
Download the poll report (pdf) here.
The report finds that in Europe and the US “support for a ban on Muslim women wearing a full veil is more pronounced among those who are age 55 and older” and that “those on the right in France, Britain and Germany are more likely than those on the left to approve of a ban on women wearing the full Islamic veil in public places”.
Martin Bright (of all people) to lead discussion on Islamophobia
The Festival of Spirituality and Peace in Edinburgh on 16 August features a session on the subject of “Antisemitism and Islamophobia”.
And who is the main speaker at this session? The festival programme informs us: “Martin Bright, political editor of the Jewish Chronicle (and formerly of the New Statesman) and presenter of C4’s Who Speaks for the Muslims? discusses Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia – and other expressions of discrimination or hate crime – with members of the Jewish and Muslim communities. When does comment or criticism of a group become discriminatory and how much objection to the criticism is ‘crying wolf’?”
The programme omits to mention that Bright is also notorious as the author of When Progressives Treat With Reactionaries, published by the right-wing propaganda organisation Policy Exchange, which depicted the MCB and other mainstream Muslim organisations as extremists and called on the government to break all links with them. Indeed, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Bright was hired by the Jewish Chronicle precisely because of his record in attacking representative Muslim organisations.
Is Bright really an appropriate person to introduce a discussion on Islamophobia – particularly at a festival billed as “a celebration of diverse cultures and communities”?
British Muslims after 7/7
Ordinary Muslims have been stigmatised en masse since the 2005 bombings by parts of the media and government policies, argues Murtaza Shibli.
Bob Lambert on the government’s flawed response to 7/7
Britain’s fight against terrorism has been a disaster, because its “flawed, neo-conservative” direction alienated Muslims and increased the chances of terrorist attacks, a former leading counter-terrorism officer has told the Guardian.
Speaking to mark today’s fifth anniversary of the 7 July attacks in London, Dr Robert Lambert said the atrocity had led the Labour government to launch not just the publicly declared battle against al-Qaida, but a much wider counter-subversive campaign that targeted non-violent Muslims and branded them as supporters of violence.
Lambert, now an academic, served for 30 years as an officer in Scotland Yard’s special branch, dealing with the threat from Irish Republican terrorism through to the menace from al-Qaida. He was head of a counter-terrorism squad, the Muslim contact unit (MCU), which gained intelligence on violent extremists, and won praise from Muslims, even those who have criticised police.
Lambert said the Labour government adopted a “flawed, neo-con analysis to react to 7 July. The view was that this is such an evil ideology, we are entitled to derogate from human rights considerations even further.”
The effect of this, said Lambert, was to cast the net too wide: “The analysis was a continuation of the analysis after 9/11, which drove the war on terror, to say al-Qaida is a tip of a dangerous Islamist iceberg … we went to war not against terrorism, but against ideas, the belief that al-Qaida was a violent end of a subversive movement.”
Lambert said this approach alienated British Muslims, as those who expressed views such as opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, also held by non-Muslims, feared that holding such beliefs made them suspects. “The best way of tackling al-Qaida is to reassure the communities where it seeks support and recruits, is to show those communities that their grievances can be expressed legitimately,” Lambert said.
He said the fight needed to focus solely on the terrorists, and not on those who may share some of their political views, but who will express them peacefully. He said that British policies handed the terrorists propaganda victories. Such policies included the Iraq war, civilian casualties in Afghanistan, the torture of terror suspects at Guantánamo and elsewhere, rendition, the muted response to Israel’s attack on Lebanon and the attempt to hold terror suspects in the UK for 90 days without charge.
Banning the burqa compromises the very principles that we value
The European Convention on Human Rights is the basis for our rights and freedoms. Crucially, it provides for freedom of expression, the right to protest, to stage controversial political theatre or to write an independent article. It also protects the right of individuals to choose their religious beliefs.
For this reason, I cannot support calls in the UK and across Europe to ban Muslim women from wearing the burqa or other garments that cover the entire body in public.
Have we become so arrogant as to believe that every woman who would wear a burqa is necessarily oppressed? Or so fearful that we see a potential terrorist behind women who cover themselves out of religious belief?
Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, in the Independent, 7 July 2010
The other 7/7 victims: Five years on, British Muslims reveal how the bombings left them angry, ashamed – and afraid
Five years ago next Wednesday, on a day of horror and infamy, four bombs exploded on London’s public transport system, part of a series of coordinated suicide attacks. Some 52 innocent people were murdered, and hundreds more maimed or injured.
For weeks afterwards Londoners lived in fear, and rightly so. Two weeks later, four more bombs were detonated. Mercifully, this time none of the main explosive devices went off.
At this stage, it looked very much as though bombings might become a regular feature of British urban life, just as at the height of the war against the IRA in the Eighties.
Murtaza Shibli’s fascinating book of short essays by Muslims on their response to the 7/7 atrocities helps to explain why that has not come about.
Some might argue that focusing on Muslims is a myopic and self-indulgent response to an attack where the great majority of the victims were not Muslim. But Shibli makes the powerful if controversial case that Muslims, too, were the long-term victims of the 7/7 atrocities.
Society turned against them. Completely innocent people found themselves being blamed for a crime that they had not committed. Muslims were traduced, spat at and physically attacked.
Police stopped them in the street as terrorist suspects. Yaser Iqbal, a Birmingham barrister, recalls: “I can still vividly recall the menace and hatred in the eyes of almost every white face that stared at me on that day – and they all stared.” The atmosphere became so tense that one contributor to this volume came close to emigrating.
Peter Oborne reviews the new book 7/7 Muslim Perspectives in the Daily Mail, 7 July 2010