Six youths in court over harassment of worshippers at mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Six youths have appeared before magistrates charged in connection with a police inquiry into alleged harassment of worshippers travelling to a mosque in the West Midlands.

Five of the teenagers, aged between 15 and 17, pleaded not guilty to causing criminal damage to a car during a lengthy court hearing in Oldbury. The sixth defendant, aged 14, denied a charge of racially aggravated harassment.

Sandwell Magistrates’ Court heard that the youths are alleged to have been involved in public order offences committed against members of the Muslim community over a 10-day period in October last year.

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Sikhs Against Sharia exposed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Over at the Tell Mama website Steven Rose has an interesting article on Sikhs Against Sharia, whose founder (and in all likelihood, sole Sikh member) Sareeta Webra has been co-operating with Stephen Gash of Stop Islamisation of Europe in waging a hysterical campaign against plans to build a new mosque in Cambridge. As Rose points out, Webra has a record of active involvement in the Islamophobic far right going back a number of years. Varinder Singh, from the Turban Campaign, emphasises that “Sareeta Webra’s views are not those of the British Sikh Community and have no mainstream support”.

East London Mosque condemns ‘Christian Patrols’ provocation

Posted on by Bob Pitt

ELM logo

Extremist Patrols Unwelcome in Tower Hamlets

East London Mosque press release, 3 February 2014

The East London Mosque is shocked to note the provocation and antics of a fringe neo-Nazi group claiming to carry out so-called ‘Christian Patrols’ outside the mosque last Friday evening (31 January).

Members of Britain First (BF), a tiny far-right organisation run by a former British National Party (BNP) councillor in Swanley, Kent, and ex-Nick Griffin protégé, Paul Golding, filmed themselves drinking cans of lager, harassing and intimidating passers-by, and handing out inflammatory leaflets for a so-called ‘Christian Patrol’.

Claiming they were looking for a confrontation with ‘Muslim Patrols’, most of their actions involved driving up and down Brick Lane in an armoured Land Rover and swilling beer, before unfurling a ‘Resistance’ banner outside the mosque.

Had they done their research, Britain First would have known that the Muslim Patrols they claimed to be opposing were in fact imprisoned last year, directly as a result of reporting and diligence by members of the local Muslim community (the mosque was also active in reporting and removing stickers for ‘Sharia’ and ‘Gay Free Zones’).

The Muslim Patrols were linked to the banned extremist sect al-Muhajiroun, whose members have been actively opposed by the East London Mosque for many years. In our view, Britain First’s patrol does not represent Christians, just as al-Muhajiroun’s patrols did not represent Muslims. Both are tiny, extreme groups, unwelcome in our community.

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How Quilliam used former EDL leaders to appeal for money

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hasan Lennon and NawazThe alacrity with which Quilliam embraced former English Defence League leaders Stephen Lennon (“Tommy Robinson”) and Kevin Carroll, and presented them at a heavily publicised press conference last October as men who had renounced their former extremist views, raised considerable suspicions among Quilliam’s critics. It has been widely suggested that Quillaim’s motive was to try and regain some of the lavish state funding they once enjoyed under Labour but which had been withdrawn by the present coalition government.

Sure enough, an FOI request has revealed that Maajid Nawaz, chairman and co-founder of Quilliam, immediately fired off two emails to Mark Carroll at the Department for Communities and Local Government asking for financial assistance to facilitate Lennon and Carroll’s supposed break with extremism.

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Two mosques in Amiens targeted with far-right graffiti

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Amiens El-Feth mosque graffitiAl-Kanz reports that anti-Islam graffiti has been sprayed on the pavement outside the El-Feth mosque at Beauvillé in Amiens.

The slogan reads “732, Poitiers… ils t’en ont pas parlé?” (“732, Poitiers… haven’t they told you about it?”). The reference is to Battle of Poitiers at which the Frankish forces led by Charles Martel defeated the army of the Umayyad Caliphate. Al-Kanz notes that this slogan has been promoted by a section of the far right, specifically by the Bloc Identitaire. Stickers with that slogan have previously been put up in Amiens by the Bloc’s youth wing, Génération Identitaire.

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Reports and comment from Islamophobia Watch 27 January‑2 February

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Reports and comment from Islamophobia Watch 27 January-2 February 2014

Anti-Islamic group moves to stop mosque in Ballarat, Victoria

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Restore Australia logoAn anti-Islamic group is mobilising against Ballarat’s first mosque. Restore Australia, which describes Islam on its website as a “aggressive totalitarian political ideology”, plans to letterbox people in Ballarat to “mobilise people to write to the council” to oppose the building of a mosque at 116 Elsworth Street East in Ballarat.

The Islamic Society of Ballarat has purchased the property and been granted a planning permit by the City of Ballarat. The planning permit required amendments to the original plan submitted by the Islamic Society, including changes to car parking to improve disability access and lighting.

Restore Australia chief executive officer Mike Holt said supporters of the group in Ballarat were being organised to protest the building of the mosque. He said Islam was incompatible with the Australian way of life. “Islam wants to bring in sharia law. It doesn’t matter (which branch of Islam) because they all believe in the same Islam, the same prophet Muhammad and the same God Allah,” Mr Holt said.

“A mosque is the thin end of the wedge to Islamise our society. They build a mosque and then more Muslims move in. We’re opposing the mosque on the grounds of a lack of parking, traffic congestion, pollution, and that property prices in the area will come down because of its presence.”

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CPS is ignoring racist motivation in murder and manslaughter cases, says damning report

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Investigated or IgnoredPolice and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) have “filtered out” allegations of racism from dozens of murder and manslaughter cases that have come before the courts in the last 10 years, a damning report has found.

Since 2000, judges have had a duty to hand down harsher sentences for any offence that can be shown to have been racially or religiously aggravated. But researchers from the think-tank the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) analysed 93 deaths with a known or suspected racial element since the new law came into effect, and found that in more than half of cases, evidence of the defendant’s motivation was stripped out during the investigation or prosecution process.

The report concludes that the criminal justice system still does not have a clear enough understanding of how racism is a contributory factor to serious crime and suggests it is too often being disregarded. “It [racism] has to be at its most overt and brutal – and uncontaminated by any other external factor – to be accepted by the criminal justice system,” the report concludes.

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Posted in UK

Far-right groupuscule engages in stupid provocation in Whitechapel

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Britain First Christian patrol leafletBritain First have been crowing over their latest idiotic stunt, namely the organisation of a so-called Christian Patrol in East London. (EDL News and Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion have the details.)

This involved handing out leaflets in Whitechapel on Friday evening asking passers-by to report any sightings of the so-called Muslim Patrols. In a video of the stunt, Britain First chairman Paul Golding explains that two of his members are openly smoking cigarettes and drinking cans of Stella near the East London Mosque in an attempt to “draw the Muslim Patrols out”. Given that these “patrols” involved no more than a handful of individuals and the ringleaders are now in prison, that was always going to be unlikely. The actions of Britain First amounted to nothing more than a crude provocation in an area with a large Muslim population.

Golding is currently on bail following an incident in which he and his friends harassed Anjem Choudary, and one of his bail conditions is that he should not enter the Greater London area, so you might like to ask the Metropolitan Police if they have any plans to arrest him.

Update:  See “Extremist patrols unwelcome in Tower Hamlets”, East London Mosque press release, 3 February 2014

Swiss Islamophobes use ‘mass immigration’ referendum to push anti-Muslim line

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Egerkingen Committee anti-Muslim posterOn 9 February the Swiss electorate will vote in a referendum on a proposal to reintroduce immigration quotas. The initiative, “against mass immigration”, by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party has been gaining ground, with an opinion poll last month finding 43% support for the proposal, up 6% since December. Le Temps has reported that other right-wing forces backing the initiative have seized the opportunity to promote their own rabidly Islamophobic agenda.

The Egerkingen Committee, which co-ordinated the successful campaign for a “yes” vote in the 2009 referendum over a proposed ban on minarets, is using the current anti-immigration campaign to denounce the threat of “creeping Islamisation”, warning against a “massive increase in the Muslim population” that would alter the “essence of Switzerland”. It has produced a poster that recycles the image of a woman wearing a full veil previously used in the anti-minaret campaign and predicts that there will soon be a million Muslims in Switzerland.

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