Category Archives: UK

Father jailed over Walsall EDL rally violence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

He went out to protest on the streets of the Black Country, his face covered with a mask bearing the cross of St George, before hurling missiles towards police. But today father-of-two and English Defence League supporter Gareth Ballan was starting a 27-month sentence behind bars.

Ballan wore the mask as he joined hundreds of others for the English Defence League rally in Walsall town centre. As scenes turned ugly he was seen to throw two missiles, one a drinks can and the other an unconfirmed object, which may have been a brick, towards a police line. He was later seen standing at the front of a crowd of EDL supporters with his arms raised in the air, chanting and encouraging the crowd by pointing towards the police line.

At Wolverhampton Crown Court, sitting in Birmingham yesterday, he was sentenced to 27 months for violent disorder relating to the events of September 29, 2012.

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SDL member posted Facebook call for arson attack on Edinburgh Central Mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

SDL AberdeenA man has been warned he could face jail for posting a Facebook comment about burning down a mosque in the wake of Lee Rigby’s murder. Derek Phin, 46, appeared at Aberdeen Sheriff Court on Friday where he pleaded guilty to posting the threatening and abusive remark on the social network last June.

British soldier Lee Rigby was off duty in southeast London when he was attacked and killed on May 22 last year. Radical groups then tried to exploit the soldier’s murder resulting in attacks and protests against the UK’s Muslim community.

Phin, of Aberdeen, admitted posting on Facebook that Edinburgh Central Mosque should be burnt down on July 2 during a counter demo. The mosque was due to be packed at the time for a meeting organised by pressure group Unite Against Fascism in response to extreme right wing protests.

Fiscal depute David Bernard told the court that police had been tipped off to Phin’s comment which he put online on June 30. He said: “On July 13 police received information that a comment of a racially motivated nature and thought to incite racial hatred had been posted on Facebook social network site on a page pertaining to the Scottish Defence League.

“One of the comments had been from a user account in the name of Derek Phin and had been posted on June 30, 2013 as part of a conversation about a Unite Against Fascism campaign to be held at an Edinburgh mosque on July 2. The comment attributed to Phin read ‘burn the mosque down when the meeting is ongoing’.”

Police confronted Phin at his home in Aberdeen on September 4. He was taken to a police station where he admitted making the comment and stated he was a member of the Scottish Defence League. He was then cautioned and charged.

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Judge orders NYPD to begin turning over Muslim spying documents

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A federal judge has ordered New York City to begin a process to hand over investigative documents from the New York Police Department’s surveillance of Muslims as part of a long-running lawsuit.

In an order issued Thursday, U.S. District Judge Charles Haight, Jr. said there was a “manifest” need for further legal discovery, which could bolster the plaintiffs’ claim that the NYPD has engaged in discriminatory surveillance of Muslims. “The Muslim community is concerned about the attentions being paid to it by the NYPD. That concern is natural and reasonable,” Haight found.

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Maajid Nawaz, free speech and the hypocrisy of Quilliam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Maajid Nawaz and friends

Last week the Camden New Journal published a report on the campaign to persuade the Liberal Democrats to remove Quilliam’s Maajid Nawaz as their parliamentary candidate for the Hampstead & Kilburn constituency. I sent a letter to the CNJ in response, which was not published, so I reproduce it here:

I was amused to read the indignant complaint by Lib Dem parliamentary candidate Maajid Nawaz that he had been “censored and silenced” because many people in the Muslim community objected to his tweeting of an offensive cartoon (‘Jesus and Mo’ tweet Nawaz: ‘Calm down’, January 23).

Nawaz’s presentation of himself as a defender of free speech certainly conflicts with my own experience. It’s only a few years since I received a threatening letter from lawyers representing Quilliam, the organisation of which Nawaz is co-founder and chairman, demanding that I cease criticising it and remove all articles from the Islamophobia Watch website that Quilliam found objectionable.

The letter asserted that my criticisms of Nawaz and his colleagues “bear the natural and ordinary meaning that The Quilliam Foundation are hypocrites”. All I can say is – I rest my case.

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Anti-Quilliam protest at Plymouth University

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anti-Quilliam protest in PlymouthA protest against a speaker specialising in Islamism and counter-extremism has taken place at Plymouth University tonight. Around 30 people gathered to show their anger at Sheikh Dr Usama Husan giving a lecture at the uni. It comes after he failed to condemn an image from the online cartoon “Jesus and Mo” showing Jesus and Mohammed saying “hey” and “how ya doin” to each other.

Dr Hasan is a senior researcher in Islamic Studies at Quilliam was speaking at the Jill Craigie cinema tonight on the topic of Islam and democracy in the wake of the Arab Spring. The University cites Dr Hasan as a trained imam and a scientist with a PhD, MA and MSc from the Universities of Cambridge and London, and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Around 30 people from the university’s Plymouth Islamic Society protested at the event as he had not condemned the actions of Quilliam co-founder Maajid Nawaz, a Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn who retweeted the controversial image. They gathered peacefully in the lobby area of the Roland Levinsky building ahead of Dr Hasan’s arrival. A few “boos” were heard as he entered the lectured theatre.

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Asian Christian ‘stabbed as revenge for Lee Rigby’, then ignored by police

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An Asian teenager beaten and stabbed by a gang of youths in a racist attack claims he has been ignored by police.

Sonoo Yaqoob said he was assaulted by more than 15 people in Glasgow’s Queen’s Park on June 24, 2013 while he was walking with two friends. His assailants abused, assaulted and stabbed him before running when they heard police sirens, Mr Yaqoob said.

He told a media conference on Wednesday that his attackers told him he was targeted as revenge for the murder of soldier Lee Rigby. He was racially abused throughout the assault, he said.

Mr Yaqoob said police took him to hospital for treatment but then left and made no attempt to contact him. Mr Yaqoob and his father attended their local police station to find out what enquiries police were making. However, seven months later, he alleges that police have failed to act sufficiently on the crime.

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‘Let them go to Saudi … we are not a dumping ground’ – Kevin Carroll condemns decision to accept Syrian refugees

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Grudgingly, belatedly and on the eve of a Commons debate over a Labour motion that would very likely have resulted in defeat had they opposed it, the Tory-led coalition government announced yesterday that Britain would temporarily resettle up to 500 refugees from Syria.

The government has still not signed up to the United Nations programme that has seen Germany take in 10,000 refugees, and the tiny number it has agreed to accept must be seen in the context of the millions who have fled the civil war in Syria. The select few who are to be admitted to the UK will be only “the most vulnerable”, namely children, the elderly, the disabled and victims of torture and sexual violence.

You might think that nobody with a shred of civilised feeling would object to giving refuge to these desperate people. And you’d be correct. Vocal opposition this token humanitarian gesture has mainly been restricted to the scum of the far right. Here, for example, we reproduce a series of tweets and retweets by former English Defence League co-leader Kevin Carroll angrily denouncing the government’s decision.

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Islamophobes’ legal bid to stop planned mosque in Cambridge because it could be ‘front for terrorism’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A protest group has been criticised for a legal application to stop a £17.5 million mosque being built in Cambridge, in which they claimed it could be “a front for terrorism”.

Stephen Gash, of Stop Islamisation Of Europe (SIOE), and Sareeta Webra, founder of Sikhs Against Sharia (SAS), made an application for a Cambridge County Court injunction to prevent the mosque in Mill Road being built. The application calls for a “court injunction to be served against the Muslim Academic Trust for construction of a mega-mosque”.

The campaigners claim the planning consultation was not conducted “lawfully”. And the application adds: “It is well documented that many so-called Muslim charities are fronts for Islamic terrorism and that several of those cited are based in the United Kingdom.”

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Six teens charged with race attacks at Sandwell mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Six teenagers as young as 14 have been charged after mosque worshippers including pensioners and a schoolboy were slapped and kicked. Members of the Cradley Heath Mosque & Islamic Centre were targeted, sparking an investigation from officers.

Today, West Midlands Police revealed a sales assistant aged 17 had been charged with three counts of racially-aggravated assault. He is accused of punching and kicking men aged 68 and 70 in attacks on October 16 and 17, and slapping an eight-year-old boy outside the mosque on October 24. Two 16-year-olds, two 15-year-olds and a 14-year-old, all boys from Cradley Heath, have also been charged with racially-aggravated harassment and criminal damage to a motor vehicle.

The six, who cannot be named, have been bailed to appear at Sandwell Youth Court on Monday.

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No show by EVF at Croydon Islamic centre

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EVF Croydon mosque harassmentSupporters of two right-wing groups did not follow through online threats made against an Islamic centre.

Last week the Advertiser reported that three men had appeared in a video recorded outside Anjuman-e-Zaini, in Brighton Road, South Croydon, late on the evening of January 19.

The men, believed to be connected to the English Defence League (EDL) and its splinter group the English Volunteer Force (EVF), can be seen ringing the doorbell and accusing the licensed place of worship of being an “illegal mosque”. One then threatened to return on Friday to “have the place over”. The video was posted online and the men also took to social media to invite others to join in.

Anjuman-e-Zaini, which has targeted by the groups in the past, contacted the police after being informed of the video by the Advertiser. Secretary Shaukat Dungarwalla said that Friday, and the weekend, had passed without incident. He added: “Fortunately nothing happened, but then police have been excellent. They put the lid on the issue.”

Croydon Advertiser, 27 January 2014