A possible arson attack was carried out on a mosque this week causing extensive smoke damage to the building.
The incident occurred at Stevenage Central Mosque, Vardon Road, sometime between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning when an extractor fan in the mosques toilets was smashed and flammable liquid was poured in and set alight.
The toilets had a tiled floor and walls so the fire was unable to spread but the smoke caused extensive damage throughout the building.
Nine men accused of rioting during a 2,000-strong English Defence League demonstration in Birmingham city centre have appeared in court.
They are accused of committing violent disorder at the demonstration in Centenary Square on July 20 last year.
CEJI: “Obsession with headscarf works negatively on the integration of Muslim women”
Brussels, 26 February 2014.
CEJI – A Jewish Contribution to an Inclusive Europe is deeply troubled by escalating racism and racial tensions in Belgium, highlighted in reports issued this week by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) (1) and by the Center for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism submitted to the United Nations Committee on Racial Discrimination (CERD) (2).
CEJI is deeply concerned about the division within the Belgian anti-racism movement today on the Muslim headscarf. CEJI believes strongly in the fundamental right of religious freedom and sees more harm than good coming out of this obsession with the Muslim headscarf. Not only has this obsession had negative consequences on the integration of Muslim women in the education and employment system of Belgium, but it also has had a serious impact on the freedom of Jews, Sikhs, Hindus and even Christians to wear religio-cultural dress and symbols. Neutrality is defined only by what is considered an acceptable norm, and we are challenged to re-consider how to make our public space effectively inclusive. Social coercion to wear or not to wear the headscarf is counterproductive to the goal of women’s emancipation.
Legoland in Windsor has cancelled a private event for a Muslim foundation after receiving threatening phone calls, emails and social media posts.
The Muslim Research and Development Foundation, a registered charity, had planned a family day at the Berkshire theme park on 9 March. Legoland said a “small group” had spread “deliberate misinformation” about the event to stop it going ahead. It decided to cancel the event after discussions with Thames Valley Police.
The force said it was investigating the offensive messages regarding the event. It has been reported that some of the messages had been sent by far-right supporters.
A man has been jailed for 22 months for vandalising a south Wales mosque and attacking a couple who challenged him.
Steven Davies, 22 and from Neath, smashed four windows at the St Anne’s Islamic centre, Tonna, and then head butted, kicked and stamped on the woman and punched her husband. Davies admitted religiously aggravated criminal damage and assault.
The Swansea Crown Court judge said Davies “acted quite disgracefully” and racial aggravation was “very serious”.
The court heard Davies carried out the late night attack on the mosque on Friday 13 September last year.
James Jenkins, prosecuting, said caretaker Mohammed Islam was inside the mosque checking the premises as he had been doing more regularly following a number of assaults. The caretaker heard stones being thrown and called the police, who told him to stay inside, Mr Jenkins said.
A neighbour watching television in his bedroom heard windows being smashed and then looked out to see someone attacking first one window of the mosque, and then another. Mr Jenkins said when the man saw someone trying to barge into the building he called the police.
The noise woke another resident, Kevin Thomas, and his wife Melanie who asked Davies if he was all right. The defendant turned and ran towards Mrs Thomas and began assaulting her, after first accusing her of being part of the Muslim community, Mr Jenkins said.
The number of radical-right hate and militia-type “patriot” groups in the United States, which peaked in 2012 after four years of explosive growth, fell significantly last year due in part to the mainstreaming of right-wing ideas, a civil rights group said Tuesday.
The Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center released its annual Year in Hate and Extremism report, which tallied 939 active hate groups and 1,096 patriot groups in 2013, for a total of 2,035, which the organization said remained a relatively high number historically. It represented a 14 percent decline over the 2,367 groups counted in 2012.
The drop came as mainstream politicians began co-opting more right-wing ideas into state legislation which face constitutional challenges, Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the center, said in a teleconference with reporters.
Nine men accused of rioting during a 2000-strong English Defence League demonstration in Birmingham City centre last year have appeared in court.
The men are accused of violent disorder at the demonstration in Centenary Square on July 20 last year.
Sud Ouest reports that on Saturday night graffiti protesting against a planning application for a Muslim prayer room and community centre was sprayed on a number of buildings in the Dordogne commune Montpon-Ménestérol.
A petition opposing the plan had previously been circulated, while more aggressive critics denounced a Muslim place of worship as an “invasion” and demanded that a church should be built instead.
The graffiti featured the sarcastic slogan “Vive la mosquée, merci Lotterie”. The reference is to the mayor of Montpon-Ménestérol, Jean-Paul Lotterie, who has refused to be intimidated by the Islamophobic campaign, stating: “Nobody will ever say that I am anti-Muslim. I would rather lose an election than my soul.”
Lotterie has lodged a complaint with the police. He condemned the “racist nature” of the graffiti and said that “the immense majority of the people of Montpon” reject such actions.
The English Defence League held a demonstration in the Lincolnshire town of Grantham on Saturday, in opposition to plans to build a new Islamic centre there.
It drew an estimated 160 protestors, though the EDL itself, with predictable exaggeration, claimed that the turnout was between 200 and 250. Around 100 of the EDL’s opponents joined a counter-demonstration organised by Grantham Solidarity Network.
The Grantham Journal disgraced itself by publishing what was little more than EDL propaganda, with reports headed “Mixed race woman on EDL march in Grantham says group ‘are like family'” and “EDL say Grantham protest rally was ‘brilliant'”.
The first legal challenge to the New York police department’s blanket surveillance of Muslims in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks has been dismissed by a federal judge in New Jersey in a ruling that lawyers acting for the plaintiffs have described as preposterous and dangerous.
Judge William Martini, sitting in the US district court for the district of New Jersey, threw out a lawsuit brought by eight Muslim individuals and local businesses who alleged their constitutional rights were violated when the NYPD’s mass surveillance was based on religious affiliation alone. The legal action was the first of its type flowing from the secret NYPD project to map and monitor Muslim communities across the east coast that was exposed by a Pulitzer prize-winning series of articles in 2011 by the Associated Press.
In his judgment, released on Thursday, Martini dismisses the complaint made by the plaintiffs that they had been targeted for police monitoring solely because of their religion. He writes: “The more likely explanation for the surveillance was a desire to locate budding terrorist conspiracies. The most obvious reason for so concluding is that surveillance of the Muslim community began just after the attacks of September 11, 2001. The police could not have monitored New Jersey for Muslim terrorist activities without monitoring the Muslim community itself.”
Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights that represented the plaintiffs along with attorneys from the civil rights group Muslim Advocates, said that the ruling was dangerous. He equated it with the now widely discredited US supreme court ruling in 1944, Korematsu v United States, that declared constitutional the blanket internment of Japanese Americans during the second world war.
“The dangerous part is that Martini’s ruling sets no limits on racial profiling of Muslims. You don’t have to deeply unpack this to see that it is wrong,” Azmy said.