Racism troubles French Muslim footballer

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Samir NasriFrench international footballer who plays in the English Premier League and the France national team has expressed concerns over growing Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiments in France, warning that it has become more difficult to be a Muslim in France.

“Nowadays, it is more difficult in France [being Muslim]. In the last three or four years people who come from a [Muslim] community feel like they are not being treated like they deserve. It is now about the extreme Right,’’ Samir Nasri, who plays for Manchester City was quoted by Morocco News as saying to The Telegraph.

Nasri, of Algerian origin, referred the phenomenon to the rise of the “extreme right” and the National Front of Marine Le Pen. “French people turned against the Muslims. That is a little bit scary,” Nasri added. “Ten to fifteen years ago, it wasn’t like this. I don’t like the way the mentality is in France now.”

Continue reading →

California: State asked to investigate religious discrimination claim

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Boomers! logoWhen 13-year-old Noorah Abdo went with her family in August to the Boomers amusement park in Livermore, the ride she especially looked forward to was the go-karts.

But when she got to the ticket window, she was told her head scarf, which she wore for religious reasons as a Muslim, violated the park’s no-headwear safety policy for that ride.

Her father, Nasir, protested, proposing to cover Noorah’s head with a helmet or a hoodie, but said a manager told him there were no exceptions. They were shown a policy statement, which read, in part, “If fashion, religious expression or your hair style is more important to you than safety, that’s fine. You can do what you want with your life. You just can’t do it at our park.”

Continue reading →

Teenagers ‘terrorised’ Muslim community in Cradley Heath

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Five teenagers are accused of being involved in an eight-day racially-motivated crime spree in Cradley Heath. The five, all aged 15 and 16 and who all live in the Sandwell area, are facing varying racially-aggravated charges following four incidents in Cradley Heath and Old Hill in October last year.

Prosecuting solicitor Miss Rachael Ward told Sandwell Youth Court yesterday that the spree included assaults on an eight-year-old boy and two elderly men, all of whom were Muslim, as well as the damage to a car belonging to a Muslim man.

Continue reading →

Israel: Mosque targeted in hate crime

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Fureidis mosque graffitiAnger gripped Fureidis, near Zichron Ya’acov, on Tuesday, after unidentified vandals sprayed graffiti on a mosque and slashed dozens of tires the previous night, in a suspected “price tag” attack.

Graffiti reading, “Shut down mosques, not yeshivot,” was sprayed on the outside of the mosque, and inside, the vandals spray-painted a Star of David. They slashed the tires of cars belonging to residents.

In surveillance camera footage shown on TV Tuesday night, three people can be seen slashing the tires.

In response to the vandalism, a general strike was called for Wednesday in the village of some 12,000 residents, and all schools and businesses will be shut down.

On Tuesday night, around 1,500 people took part in a protest march through the village, calling for an end to “price tag” attacks and for police to find the perpetrators. In addition, dozens of residents of nearby Zichron Ya’acov and other Jewish towns came out and protested in a sign of solidarity.

Coastal District police said the protests were entirely peaceful and that they have no indication that any sort of revenge attacks should be expected in the area.

Fureidis village chairman Yonas Marai told Israel Radio: “They wrote many things on the mosque wall. They wrote that we have to close down the mosques and build yeshivas in their place. We live here in the State of Israel, a democratic state, we do not live in the West Bank and not in the [Gaza] Strip.”

Continue reading →

‘Ban Islam and knock down all the mosques’, urges UKIP candidate who accuses Muslims of ‘ethnic cleansing’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jackie Garnett ethnic cleansing Facebook post

Ukip faced fresh embarrassment over the views of its local election candidates last night after one proposed that Britain should “ban Islam and knock down all the mosques” and another said that Mo Farah is not British because he is “an African”.

In a series of postings on her Facebook page, Jackie Garnett, who is standing to become a Ukip councillor in Oldham, proposed that all mosques should be destroyed and accused Muslims of carrying out “ethnic cleansing” against the English.

Describing her home town of Oldham as disintegrating because of “the immigrants”, she accused “the Muslims” of turning “many of the small areas of the town into ghettos”. She added: “Ethnic cleansing is going on in this country and its the english (sic) that are being diluted.”

Continue reading →

Wikipedia edit from government computer added Muslim insult

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The charity that represents Wikipedia in the UK has condemned edits made from government computers after more incidents of vandalism emerged.

The BBC has discovered that the phrase “all Muslims are terrorists” was added to a page about veils. Another edit deleted text in Cherie Blair’s entry about the flat-buying scandal that made headlines in 2002. The Liverpool Echo last week revealed that insults had been added to the entry for the Hillsborough Disaster.

Stevie Benton, from Wikimedia UK, told the BBC: “We find this kind of vandalism appalling.”

Continue reading →

Secularists assist right-wing anti-sharia hysteria

Posted on by Bob Pitt

OLFA Law Society protest

The hysteria whipped up by the Sunday Telegraph over the Law Society’s guidelines for solicitors drawing up wills for Muslim clients (see here and here) has predictably been endorsed by the One Law for All Campaign, who organised a protest outside the Law Society headquarters.

OLFA, needless to say, denied that the protest was anti-Muslim. They issued a statement saying: “The fight against Sharia is clearly a defence of individual rights and freedoms, not an attack on Muslims. After all, Sharia Law is fundamentally the demand of Islamic states and the political movement to limit citizens’ rights.”

Continue reading →

Israeli forces demolish West Bank mosque as peace talks deadline passes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Khirbet Al-Taweel mosque demolishedIsraeli forces demolished several structures, including a mosque, in a Palestinian village on Tuesday, the day a deadline for a deal in now-frozen peace talks expired.

A Reuters correspondent saw several hundred soldiers deployed in Khirbet al-Taweel, in the occupied West Bank, around daybreak. They guarded six bulldozers that reduced to rubble buildings that were constructed without Israeli permits. Palestinians say such documents are nearly impossible to obtain.

Palestinians saw a link between the demolitions and the passing, without a peace deal, of the April 29 deadline set when the talks began in July. Israel has also drawn Palestinian anger by continuing to expand settlements on land they seek for a state.

Continue reading →

Greater efforts needed to prevent and respond to hate crimes against Muslims, say participants at OSCE meeting in Vienna

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mohamed Abubaker at OSCE hate-crime meetingCommunity-law enforcement measures to combat hate crimes against Muslims were the focus of an expert meeting on 28 April 2014 in Vienna organized jointly by the Swiss OSCE Chairmanship and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). The meeting brought together government officials, community leaders, civil society representatives and academics from 26 OSCE participating States.

Muslims continue to experience violent manifestations of intolerance and discrimination in the OSCE region, the participants said, and governments need to do more to ensure the security of Muslim communities, including by enhancing their confidence in law enforcement agencies.

Referring to the findings of ODIHR’s annual hate crime report, Floriane Hohenberg, Head of the ODIHR Tolerance and Non-Discrimination Department, emphasized that day-to-day activities of Muslim communities are endangered by violent attacks. “We are concerned, however, that many of these incidents are not reported to the police because the victims believe that their complaints will not be taken seriously or that they will be victimized again,” she said.

Continue reading →