Prague: Hundreds of Muslims protest police mosque raid

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Prague protest May 2014With prayer mats spread on the ground behind the Ministry of the Interior, hundreds of kneeling Muslims gathered today to protest last Friday’s police mosque raid.

About 300 men and several dozen women prayed, listened to speeches and made religious chants in a show of defiance against what a community leader described as an “entirely inappropriate” raid by officials.

There was a small anti-Muslim counter-protest in the area behind the Prague 7 ministry where the prayer gathering – Friday is the most important day of worship for Muslims – was held.

The action by the Czech Republic’s Muslim community comes after a raid by police on Friday last week of a mosque and of the headquarters of the Islamic Foundation. Officers detained a 55-year-old Czech citizen accused of organizing the translation of a book that, according to police, spreads racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia. Dozens of people were held at the mosque when the raid took place during Friday prayers.

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Farage dissociates himself from Harry Perry, but why no action against Magnus Nielsen?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Magnus Nielsen with anti-sharia placardIt would appear that the UK Independence Party may be about to suspend Harry Perry, the party’s candidate for Stockport Council whose offensive tweets and support for the English Defence League were exposed last week.

The Independent reports that UKIP leader Nigel Farage was asked about Perry and replied: “I’ve never heard of the bloke until last night. I’ve no idea who he is. I think he comes from the north west of England. Clearly his attitude and views are entirely inconsistent with being a member of UKIP. Simple.”

But what about Magnus Nielsen, the UKIP candidate for Camden Council whose offensive Facebook comments have received widespread coverage in the media? Farage can’t claim he’s never heard of Nielsen, who has a long history as a party activist. He stood for UKIP in the Barnet & Camden constituency in the London Assembly elections of 2000, 2004 and 2008. He was also the party’s parliamentary candidate for Hampstead & Highgate in the 2005 general election and for Hampstead & Kilburn in 2010.

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New Statesman warns of threat from Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

New Statesman 2 May 2014Following the publication of his 2005 book The Losing Battle With Islam, David Selbourne wrote a briefing paper for John Kerry. In the current issue of the New Statesman he rehashes its arguments.

Summarising the advice he gave to Kerry, Selbourne sets out a list of the West’s failures in responding to Islamic aggression:

“Among them are the failure to recognise the ambition of radical Islam; the failure to condemn the silence of most Muslims at the crimes committed in their names; the failure to respond adequately to the persecution of Christians in many Muslim lands; the failure to grasp the nature of the non-military skills that are being deployed against the non-Muslim world – skills of manoeuvre, skills in deceiving the gullible, skills in making temporary truces in order to gain time (as in Iran); and, perhaps above all, the failure to realise the scale and speed of Islam’s advance.”

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Man jailed for four years for mosque fire in Bletchley, Milton Keynes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bletchley mosque arsonA 30-year-old man from Bletchley has been jailed for four years after he started a fire at the mosque on Manor Road, Bletchley.

Richard Bevington, of North Street, Bletchley, admitted arson with intent to danger life and a racially and religiously-aggravated public order offence following the fire on March 8 2014.

No one was hurt in the attack on The Water Eaton Mosque.

Bevington was sentenced at Aylesbury Crown Court.

MK News, 3 May 2014

See also BBC News, 2 May 2014

Scottish Defence League members guilty of throwing bacon into mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Chelsea Lambie on IslamA teenage woman and a man have been found guilty of throwing bacon into Central Mosque and wrapping it round the door handles.

Chelsea Lambie, 18, from Paisley, and 38-year-old Douglas Cruikshank from Galashiels carried out the early morning attack in January last year.

Cruikshank originally denied the charge, but changed his plea after the Crown dropped its claim that the offence was racially aggravated.

A jury took just over an hour to return a majority verdict of guilty on Lambie. She was found guilty of behaving in a racially aggravated threatening or abusive manner likely to cause fear and alarm.

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UKIP election candidate probed over ‘disgusting’ homophobic and anti-Islamic Twitter messages

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Harry Perry UKIPUKIP is investigating after the Manchester Evening News uncovered ‘disgusting’ anti-Islamic and homophobic messages posted online by one of its election candidates.

Harry Perry, who is standing for the party in Offerton, Stockport, has published a torrent of extremist views on his Twitter account in recent months. He also sent a Facebook message to a Liberal Democrat candidate calling homosexuality ‘evil’.

Mr Perry, who is retired and lives in Hazel Grove, last stood for the party in the same seat in 2012, when he got 349 votes.

On his Twitter account, @harryperry15, he calls for Pakistan to be ‘nuked’, dubs David Cameron a ‘gay-loving nutcase’, Muslims ‘devil’s kids’ and homosexuality an ‘abomination before god’. Last June he also described multiculturalism as ‘evil’, earlier tweeting at the EDL leader Tommy Robinson to ask why he didn’t have a political party he could join.

He welcomed Godfrey Bloom’s controversial remarks on ‘bongo-bongo land’, replying ‘well said’ – and tweeted that Asian areas of the north west were now ‘third world countries’ thanks to immigration.

The revelations came as an embarrassment to his party as it launched its north west European election campaign in Manchester on Thursday.

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Dublin: Vandals tape bacon to posters of candidate with Turkish background

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Memet Uludag poster defaced with baconPeople Before Profit have condemned as “outrageous” the vandalism of a party member’s posters in north Dublin.

Memet Uludag — who is originally from Turkey, but has been living in Ireland since 1998 and is now a citizen — is running for a Fingal County Council seat in the Castleknock Ward in this month’s local elections. He says that as he passed through Blanchardstown Main Street yesterday, he spotted “strange objects” attached to two of his posters. On closer inspection, he discovered that large, raw pieces of bacon had been stuck on to them with Sellotape.

“This was a clearly racially motivated vandalism,” Uludag said. “I called one of my campaign members and we took pictures. We also reported the incident to the local Garda station. The vandals obviously wanted to make a very explicit and clear racist point. Obviously presuming I am a Muslim, they clearly chose the bacon as a symbol of anti-Muslim hate.”

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‘No such thing as a benign Muslim’ says UKIP candidate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Kevin O'DohertyA UKIP candidate has sparked controversy by posting an offensive comment on Facebook, saying ‘there is no such thing as a benign Muslim’.

Kevin O’Doherty posted the remarks on the social media website in relation to a story he shared about a Birmingham school at the centre of allegations of a takeover plot by Islamic hardliners. He is standing as a UKIP candidate in the Central St Leonards ward in the Hastings Borough Council elections on May 22.

The post, dated April 21, said: “There is no such thing as a benign Muslim, only a latent adherent of Koranic dogma.” It has since been removed from the internet.

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Texts read out to Edinburgh Central Mosque bacon attack jury

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A series of text messages were read out to a jury at the trial of two people accused of throwing bacon into the Central Mosque. Detective Sergeant Raymond Gray said the messages were from a Blackberry mobile phone found in the possession of 28-year-old Chelsea Lambie, from Paisley.

One message sent from the phone at 2.58am on January 31 last year read “Going to invade a mosque, because we go where we want”, the court heard. After receiving a text asking “What you do last night?”, the jury was told that a reply was sent from the phone reading: “Went to the mosque in Edinburgh and wrapped bacon round the door handles and opened the door and threw it in ha ha ha.”

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