Category Archives: UK

Army removes mosques from Catterick firing range

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Firing range mosqueThe Ministry of Defence has taken down structures resembling mosques that were used on its training grounds.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said the mosque-like structures, which were put up at a firing range at Catterick to replicate the environment troops would be patrolling, were taken down prior to a meeting between a member of the military and the Muslim community.

He said: “A member of the military met the Council for Mosques in Bradford and had a discussion with them about it. What they claimed were the offending mosque structures were removed before that meeting.”

Prof Mohamed El-Gomati, of the University of York, who advises UK universities and charities on religious matters, complained toThe Press about the structures last week. He described them as insulting and said they were evidence of the army’s lack of consideration.

York Press, 12 April 2010

Stand by for right-wing denunciations of the “dhimmi” MOD.

What’s Islam got to do with it?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“An Islamic convert and a fellow gang member were today (Monday) found guilty of imprisoning, stripping and torturing two men with an iron.”

Thus the opening paragraph to a report in the Kingston Guardian. Read it through and you’ll find that the individual’s conversion to Islam has no relevance whatosever to the story. So why include a prominent reference to it?

Why I’ll vote for the fascists – a BNP supporter explains

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP dustbinThe Koranic verses are ringing out from a stereo on Hamza Myatt’s market stall on Barking’s pedestrianised high street. The 36-year-old ginger-haired and white-skinned Muslim convert swapped his life as a financial adviser in South Wales to proselytise for his new faith in the outer reaches of East London three weeks after the 9/11 attacks. He now spends market days noisily selling Islamic literature.

A few feet away from Mr Myatt’s stall, at a mobile snack bar selling tea and bacon butties, where customers are trying on keffiyeh scarves and checking through DVDs on Islam for children, stands a furious Derek Carlton. Pointing his finger towards Mr Myatt’s loudspeaker, now broadcasting an imam’s sermon, Mr Carlton, 46, a maintenance engineer, says:

“Yes, I will vote BNP and that is why. I have no problem with other religions. What I have a problem with is when it changes the character of your town and you’re not allowed to say anything about it. The BNP is saying what no one else will. Slowly but surely, people like me are being pushed aside in favour of outsiders. You can’t tell me it’s racist to be annoyed that my children can’t get a council house in the same place as their parents because they’ve all been handed over to Africans and Muslims?”

Independent, 10 April 2010

NF stages Halal protest outside Colne KFC

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Colne KFC protestPeople campaigning against the trial of Halal meat at KFC restaurants held a protest in Colne on Saturday afternoon.

Mr Steven Smith, who campaigns against ritual slaughter, led a demonstration outside the KFC outlet at the North Valley Retail Park. Mr Smith, who lives in Burnley, joined four more campaigners to raise awareness and hand out leaflets about the controversial trial, being tested at 74 KFC stores nationwide.

He said: “It was a very successful demonstration and we had a number of people supporting us. We campaign against ritually slaughtered meat – Muslim Halal – which involves cutting the throat of animals and is a cruel method of killing animals. It can take up to four minutes for the animal to die, rather than them dying instantly.”

Mr Smith also claimed the RSCPA has condemned the practice of Halal. However, a spokesman said the animal charity’s belief is that all animals should be stunned before slaughter as it lessens their suffering. While not all Halal meat is stunned before slaughter, KFC insists its poultry is stunned before slaughter, using a technique called “stun-to-stun”.

Nina Arnott, a KFC spokesman, added: “Our restaurants in Burnley and Colne are taking part in our Halal trial following great demand in the area. We’ve worked with the Halal Food Authority and animal welfare organisations to ensure our systems and processes fully comply with halal requirements while staying true to our strict standards of animal welfare, which have not been compromised as a result of this trial.”

Pendle Today, 8 April 2010

The report fails to mention that Steven Smith is a veteran fascist and currently Burnley organiser for the National Front, who were behind the protest.

Muslim couple say train attack was racial hatred

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Police are searching for a gang of about 20 Derby men after an attack on a Muslim couple on a train to Nottingham.

Abida Malik said the men called her and her husband Asif Ahmed terrorists. One man put Mr Ahmed in a headlock saying he was making a citizen’s arrest.

The gang boarded the train at Loughborough on Easter Sunday evening, after what British Transport Police believe was a drinking session.

Officers have described it as an “unpleasant and nasty” incident.

Abida Malik, who wears the hijab – or headscarf – was travelling home after a wedding in Leicester with her husband.

She said: “I was full of fear, my heart was beating really fast and I felt so helpless because there was so many of them.”

“Everyone seemed too scared to do anything… Now I don’t want to travel on the train by myself, and I don’t want him (Asif) to go by himself. They could have stabbed him”.

BBC News, 8 April 2010

See also FOSIS press release, 9 April 2010

UKIP reinstates candidate who denounced ‘Muslim nutters who want to kill us and put us under medieval Sharia law’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Paul WiffenA UKIP parliamentary candidate has been reinstated after posting racist remarks on a social care website. Paul Wiffen, who is campaigning to be MP for Ilford South in east London, responded to a criticism of the party on the Community Care site.

The remarks focused on Muslims, Romanian Gypsies and African and Caribbean communities. UKIP said he had been suspended but, following his apology and an inquiry, he was allowed back into the party.

The comment was made in response to a post by Community Care’s Outside Left blogger on asylum. Mr Wiffen, chair of UKIP London, said:

“You left-wing scum are all the same, wanting to hand our birthright to Romanian gypsies who beat their wives and children into begging and stealing money they can gamble with, Muslim nutters who want to kill us and put us under medieval Sharia law, the same Africans who sold their Afro-Caribbean brothers into a slavery that Britain was first to abolish (but you still want to apologize for!)”

BBC News, 8 April 2010

Army builds ‘mosques’ on North Yorkshire firing range

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Firing range mosquesA Muslim group has demanded an apology from the British Army after it emerged that replica mosques were being used on a North Yorkshire firing range.

The chairman of the Bradford Council for Mosques (BCM) said the structures at Catterick should be taken down immediately. The Ministry of Defence said it had “no intention” of causing offence.

The BMC said it was particularly angry as it had been assisting the army in its efforts to recruit more Muslims.

Saleem Khan, the chief executive of the BCM, called for the Army to apologise. “The first thing they need to do is remove this straight away,” he said. “They do owe apologies to the Muslim community and it is the mind set which needs changing.”

There are seven of the structures on the range at Bellerby, which have green domed roofs. Ishtiaq Ahmed of the BCM said that they were undoubtedly meant to resemble mosques.

“The shape of the structures, the colour of the dome – the green dome – symbolises an Islamic place of worship,” he said. “Anyone looking at it will think about mosques and Muslims and think about them negatively.”

He accused the Army of reinforcing negative perceptions of Muslims. “What angers me very much is that we are conditioning the young British to say that mosques are a place where you are going to find danger and a place to target,” Mr Ahmed said. “That is really disturbing.”

BBC News, 8 April 2010

See also MCB press release, 8 April 2010

Islamophobes – they can dish it out but they can’t take it

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Over at his Gauche blog, City University lecturer and former Tribune editor Paul Anderson recounts how he shouted and swore at journalists from the university’s student paper the Inquirer when they approached him over a story about his fellow lecturer Rosie Waterhouse, who had called for a ban on the niqab at the university.

What provoked Anderson’s fit of apoplexy was that “the key quote the Inquirer team had for their story, from the president of the student Islamic Society at City, Saleh Patel, was blatantly abusive a rsity.

Faced with Anderson’s ire, and no doubt fearful of future retribution, the Inquirer didn’t use the quote from Saleh Patel. So much for freedom of expression, eh?

This is par for the course with Islamophobes. Anderson has no objection to his friend Waterhouse describing the wearing of the niqab by students as “offensive and threatening” (what confidence can such students have that they will be welcomed at City University’s Department of Journalism?). And he thinks he has the right to accuse the City University Islamic Society of having “relentlessly pushed a separatist and intolerant version of Islam, repeatedly promoting apologists for terrorist violence and the most reactionary social attitudes”.

But Anderson furiously rejects the right of his opponents to criticise him harshly in return.

Islamophobe attacks Hindu shopkeeper

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A pig’s trotter has been thrown in the face of a horrified Wakefield shopkeeper. Fagu Patel was with her children Sai, seven, and Ram, four, at the counter in the shop she runs with husband Manish in Stanley, Wakefield, when the attack happened.

The couple say they have suffered eight years of racist abuse at Reehal’s Off Licence and News on Rooks Nest Road. Mr Patel, 38, said: “Before it was always verbal abuse or antisocial behaviour – but this is just too far. I heard a scream and saw my wife fall backwards. The pig’s foot slapped her straight in the face and knocked her sideways.”

Mrs Patel said her family are Hindus, but added: “He probably didn’t know we are not Muslim but he must have done it thinking we were.”

Yorkshire Evening Post, 3 April 2010