The English Defence League will be holding a march in Peterborough next Saturday. Peterborough Trades Council have organised a counter-protest. Details here.
Update: See “Anti-fascists demonstrate against EDL in Peterborough”, Islamophobia Watch, 29 March 2014
Des Dômes Et Des Minarets gives further details of a court judgement, reported earlier by the Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France, on a fascist convicted of a graffiti attack on a mosque in Alsace last May.
The 29-year-old man from Saint-Louis had sprayed the slogans “100% pig” and “France for the French” along with Nazi symbols on the wall of a mosque in Illzach. He expressed no regret for his actions and told the court: “To be white in France is to be a target.”
He was given a 6-month suspended prison sentence and a €500 fine.
This is the front page of today’s Sunday Telegraph. You can read the “Islamic law is adopted by British legal chiefs” article here. The basis for this shock-horror headline is the news that the Law Society has issued guidance for solicitors on “how wills should be drafted to fit Islamic traditions while being valid under British law”.
Predictably, Baroness Cox is quoted as saying that she finds this development “deeply disturbing” and will be raising it with ministers. “This violates everything that we stand for,” the indignant Cox declares. “It would make the Suffragettes turn in their graves.”
Hundreds of people marched in the streets of Montreal Friday evening to mark the International day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and denounce the Parti Québécois’s proposed secular charter.
While the protest stopped outside PQ Premier Pauline Marois’s offices downtown, many were critical of Quebec’s other political parties for not taking a stronger stand against the charter. They say no government should decide what women get to wear. “We cannot let the other parties off the hook, when they say hijab is okay, but niqab is not,” said Delores Chew of the South Asian Women’s Association.
Though the march was taking place in the context of an election campaign, protesters say the issue is bigger than party politics.
“People assume that there is a legitimate debate to be had about how we – presumably white people – are going to decide how immigrant people are going to integrate or participate in society. That’s profoundly racist. It’s as simple as that,” said protest organizer Joël Pedneault.
A group purporting to be on a ‘Muslim anti-grooming campaign’ are entering mosques and handing out inflammatory literature.
In the latest video posted on the Britain First website members of the group can be seen standing inside a mosque in Bolton. They then hand over inflammatory and anti-Muslim leaflets to a mosque member.
On the website it states the team visited mosques in Bolton, Oldham, Rochdale and Burnley. They end the video by visiting the home address of Gordon Birtwistle MP, Burnley MP who was quoted in an article earlier this month criticising the group.
As well as the Golden Mosque and Islamic Cultural Centre in Rochdale, members of the group visit the Jamiyat Tabligh-ul-Islam mosque in Oldham and the Madina Mosque in Bolton.
A German religious forum took an unexpected turn yesterday when three topless protesters had to be dragged out of the building. The Berlin Islam Week event, held in one of the city’s town halls, was stopped in its tracks by members of extreme protest group Femen, who charged into the hall with slogans attacking “religious oppression” and Sharia law daubed on their bodies.
Photographs from the moment the women were dragged out by policemen show a bemused-looking woman filming the event on her phone as unimpressed guests look on. Other images show the three on stage during a discussion, where speakers were confronted with the messages written on their bodies and also on banners which they waved above their heads while shouting.
A jury has been shown a video of a teenager accused of planning a repeat of the Columbine massacre throwing a molotov cocktail in an alley. Michael Piggin is accused of arming himself with guns and explosives as he plotted a terrorist attack on staff and pupils at his former school in Loughborough, Leicestershire.
The teenager, who was 17 when he was arrested but can now be named after turning 18, also identified his college, Loughborough mosque, a local cinema, Loughborough University and the town’s council offices as potential targets, the Old Bailey has heard.
The jury was shown a video of Piggin lighting a rag stuffed inside a bottle of flammable liquid and then throwing it. It explodes leaving a trail of flames on the ground and up an exterior wall. Piggin then inspects the small fire and pours cola on it before walking away swigging from the drink bottle.
A second video was shown to the courtroom of Piggin writing anti-Muslim graffiti on a wall. The teenager is seen spray-painting “No More Mosques!” in large black letters.
A group of Muslims from New Jersey is appealing a federal judge’s ruling that determined that the New York City Police Department’s surveillance of Muslims did not violate their civil rights.
Attorneys from the groups Muslim Advocates and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a notice of appeal on Friday in federal court in Newark, challenging the dismissal of a 2012 lawsuit brought by Muslim individuals and organisations who said the NYPD programs constituted unconstitutional surveillance based on religion, national origin and race. The suit had accused the department of spying on ordinary people at mosques, restaurants and schools in New Jersey since 2002.
Cousins who were born and brought up in Bristol were subjected to a verbal and physical racist attack as they shopped in Bedminster.
Both from Pakistani families, they were allegedly abused by a grandmother and at least one of her granddaughters in Poundstretcher on East Street. One was reduced to tears as she was said to be punched in the face, shoulder and neck as her attacker tried to pull her head dress off. Minutes earlier, the other cousin was called an “illegal immigrant” as she stood in a queue, minding her own business.
The crime took place between 9.30am and 10am last Thursday and Avon and Somerset police earlier released CCTV images of the prime suspect, a white woman aged in her late teens or early 20s, in a bid to track her down. The police have since asked the Bristol Post to remove the photo from this online article.
Both victims have spoken to the Post, but do not want to be named for fear of further attacks.
Hilary Aked reports on the latest developments in the campaign against the Henry Jackson Society front organisation, the misnamed Student Rights.