Category Archives: UK

EDL’s anti-Muslim provocation results in violent clashes in Birmingham

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL in BirminghamOfficers were trying today to identify more people involved in violent scenes at a right-wing protest which resulted in dozens of arrests.

More than 30 people were arrested in Birmingham city centre yesterday when anti-fascist campaigners fought with supporters of a rally against Islamic fundamentalism by The English Defence League (EDL).

The disorder involved around 200 people and spilled on to the adjoining Bennetts Hill, a street lined with a number of pubs popular with shoppers. West Midlands Police said a group of more than 20 men were arrested on a bus in Digbeth High Street. Later a “significant” number of people were also detained from buses that left the Bennetts Hill area. They were taken into custody at stations across the city.

Earlier this week the force, along with Birmingham City Council, obtained an order from the Home Secretary banning protesters from the Bullring area of the city, under section 14a of the Public Order Act. Under the same legislation, Chief Constable Chris Sims passed an order restricting the protests to two locations – Lancaster Circus and Old Square.

But after meeting on Broad Street in the city’s entertainment district, demonstrators proceeded to New Street, around half a mile away, and trouble ensued.

Mail on Sunday, 6 September 2009

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Mosque fear over pensioner attack

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Worshippers at a south London mosque today said they were living in fear after a brutal gang attack that left a pensioner fighting for life and two other men injured.

A 67-year-old Muslim, named locally as Ikram ul-Haq, is on life support in hospital after being attacked from behind as he stood with his five-year-old granddaughter outside the Idara-e-Jaaferiya Islamic centre in Tooting.

Today one of the other victims described how a gang of 20 teenagers in hoodies ambushed them outside the mosque, on Church Lane, as they emerged from a prayer session. Minicab driver Imdad Buhkari, 39, who was standing with another victim, who is in his 70s, said:

“They came down the road and about six of them broke off from the rest and surrounded the two of us. They asked me for the time. I said I don’t wear a watch and suddenly someone from behind punched me hard on the jaw. I was attacked from behind with no warning. Then they hit the old man, whose name is Atameer, and ran off.

“I went round the corner and I was shocked when I saw Ikram lying unconscious on the ground. He was bleeding from his mouth and ear. Now he is in a coma. The doctors want to turn off his life support machine but his family say no. It is terrible. Who would do such a thing?”

Evening Standard, 4 September 2009

Update:  See “Pensioner attacked in street dies”, BBC News, 7 September 2009

Fitzpatrick calls for ‘crackdown on extremists’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Ban HateBan Hate Meetings Meetings”. That is the front-page headline in this week’s East London Advertiser.

The subheading is “MP urges crackdown on extremists”, and the paper reports that Jim Fitzpatrick has called on Oxford House, a community centre in Bethnal Green, to stop hiring out meeting rooms to a youth group called Young Muslim Cooperation, which he claims is “a front for extremists”.

The report states that Islam for the UK, a successor organisation to al-Muhajiroun, has held a couple of meetings at Oxford House, and the suggestion is that YMC too is an arm of Anjem Choudary’s organisation.

As it happens, this contributor to Islamophobia Watch has a far from libertarian stance when it comes to al-Muhajiroun. I think Ken Livingstone was right to ban them from holding their provocative demonstrations in Trafalgar Square, and in my view their notorious protest against British troops in Luton earlier this year should have been suppressed under the Public Order Act. If Oxford House has indeed allowed Islam for the UK to book meetings there, I think that was a mistake (even though the East London Advertiser comes up with no evidence that any meetings at the centre were in fact used to incite “hate”).

If Fitzpatrick was genuinely interested in constructively addressing this issue, however, then the solution would have been to approach the management at Oxford House and raise his concerns with them privately. Instead he has gone running to the press in search of yet another scaremongering headline.

Anyone who was inclined to take the charitable view that Fitzpatrick’s recent much-publicised walk-out from a gender-segregated wedding at the London Muslim Centre was just an example of clodhopping cultural insensitivity was obviously wrong. It now seems clear that Fitzpatrick has consciously launched a campaign aimed at whipping up a moral panic over Islamism in the East End.

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Tory blogger defends Western values

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“I bloody knew it! I had a feeling that this story didn’t quite ring true and – surprise, surprise – we learn today that Noor Ramjanally lied when he said that he had been abducted by two men, was bundled into a car boot, driven to Epping Forest and ordered to stop his religious work.

“These self-styled, unelected community leaders only continue to wield the power that they do by perpetuating stereotypes in their communities. For them no level of division is too great if it advances their politically correct, anti-integrationist victimological agenda. We saw it in the US (with tales highlighted by Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter proving that supposed racist attacks on jihadists at Gitmo (the Koran down the lavatory lie) and on campuses are routinely faked by leftists with warped political agendas to advance). Now we see it here.”

Donal Blaney offers a characteristically reasoned response to the arrest of Noor Ramjanally.

Blaney’s Blarney, 4 September 2009

You might have thought that the “Western values” Blaney is so enthusiastic about defending (at the cost of other people’s lives rather than his own, of course) would include the principle of being presumed innocent until proven guilty, but apparently not. But then, what can you expect from a man who declares his admiration for right-wing fruitcakes like Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter?

Update:  Blaney replies: “He owned up and admitted his guilt, dumbass!”

What a charming man. But the Daily Mail article to which Blaney links doesn’t state that Noor Ramjanally has admitted his guilt, nor does any other report that I’ve read. So how could “we learn today that Noor Ramjanally lied”? The most we know is that he has now been charged with perverting the course of justice.

Scottish Labour accuses Scottish-Islamic Foundation of financial irregularities

Posted on by Eddie Truman

SIF

The right-wing blogosphere has been cock-a-hoop at news that the Scottish-Islamic Foundation “have been forced to repay” £128,000 to the Scottish Government for “an event that never took place”.

The news was covered by the Daily Mail and Express, peddled by Centre for Social Cohesion’s Douglas “Neoconservatism: why we need it” Murray and Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, and repeated by Harry’s Place.

The story is that SIF last year received £200,000 to organise IslamFest, a large event planned for this summer 2009 aimed at the public on Muslim culture, but which also had a Middle East trade expo as part of it. The original plans were to cost over £1m to hold, but there were difficulties in obtaining the remaining funding due to the economic crisis.

As a result, the plans were scaled back and pushed back. It has been split into two elements – Salaam Scotland and Etisal. The former is a four month festival of events taking place around Scotland from December this year, while the latter is the trade expo which will also take place this year.

The work is important given the level of Islamophobia in Scotland and the wider UK, and the project also has the potential to attract investment and jobs into Scotland – something you would have thought would be supported given the economic climate. The Scottish Government are still considering the new timetable.

Anyone with any knowledge of the voluntary sector knows that if a grant is given in a financial year, 08/09 in this case, and is underspent, the remainder is returned. This is not unusual. Perhaps what is unusual is SIF’s scrupulous approach to the money. SIF CEO Osama Saeed told the Express:

“Many in our position would simply have cobbled something together and spent the money. This would not have been good enough for the high standards we set ourselves”.

The full picture has not been reported anywhere. The event that “did not take place” claim is not the full story, and SIF’s critics know this.

If this was just a case of misrepresentation, that would be one thing. But SIF’s critics have had to add some spice to the story by claiming financial “irregularities”. The word has been repeated ad nauseam in quotation marks, but no one has been able to back it up.

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Muslim worshippers pelted with eggs near Epsom and Ewell mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A man pelted Muslim worshippers at a mosque with eggs in a racist attack.

The assault occured during the Muslim festival of Ramadan as worshippers entered the Epsom and Ewell Islamic Society, situated on Hook Road. The incident, described by police as a racially aggravated assault, took place at about 11.15pm on Sunday evening.

Visitors had been attending evening prayers in the build up to Ramadan when several vehicles drove by and hurled eggs as men, woman and children left the mosque.

After a tip off from the local community a 20-year-old man, from Epsom, was arrested on Tuesday yesterday and he remains in custody where police said he is helping detectives with their enquiries.

Epsom and Ewell Neighbourhood Inspector Ailsa Quinlan said: “We will not tolerate this behaviour and we always treat any form of hate crime as a serious offence.

“Following the incident on Sunday evening we increased our police presence at the mosque which enabled us to act quickly and robustly in making this arrest.

“I would like to encourage members of the Muslim community who have suffered a hate crime to report it to us.”

This Is Local London, 2 September 2009

Fitzpatrick calls for ban on gender-segregated meetings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

London Muslim CentreGovernment Minister Jim Fitzpatrick has called for segregation to be outlawed in Britain. The controversial East London Labour MP, who hit the headlines last week after walking out of a Muslim wedding for being asked to sit apart from his wife, insists segregation of men and women outside places of worship should be against the law.

Mr Fitzpatrick, the MP for Poplar and Canning Town, told the BBC that he does not oppose segregation in mosques, but believes separating men and women in halls such as the London Muslim Centre and other public buildings was “unacceptable.”

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Young British Muslims angry with police and media

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Seen and Not HeardMany young British Muslims feel demonized by the police and the media and say they have come under pressure to prove their loyalty since the September 11 attacks and the 2005 London bombings, a study has found.

The report for the Policy Research Center, an Islamic think tank, was intended to give young Muslims their own voice to counter assumptions made by outsiders.

It said young Muslims had been portrayed in the media as a threat to society and often struggled to convince people that they can be both British and Muslim at the same time.

Public debate over immigration, nationalism and integration has left them feeling under attack, while Britain’s role in Iraq and Afghanistan has only increased the pressure. “As well as facing questions and challenges to their loyalty, young Muslims … are being pressed to define their identity in light of national and international events,” the report said.

Young Muslims are too often asked to prove that their religion is peaceful and they are law-abiding, the report said. “This is especially damaging when myths and stereotypes surmount accurate information, resulting in young British Muslims being portrayed as a threat to the wellbeing of the wider British communities,” it said.

Despite attempts by police chiefs to engage with the Muslim community, the report found many young British Muslims did not trust the police and felt harassed. The report blamed a dramatic rise in Muslims being stopped and searched in the street after the July 2005 suicide bombings, which killed 52 people in London.

Reuters, 31 August 2009

See also Policy Research Centre website

Update:  See Sughra Ahmed’s piece at Comment is Free, 1 September 2009