Men charged after racist attack

Posted on by Eddie Truman

Two men have been charged with racially aggravated assault and violent disorder following an attack on a Muslim man outside a mosque in west Wales.

The 30-year-old victim was punched, spat at and hit by a bottle in the attack at the Station Road Mosque in Llanelli on Sunday evening.

The two men charged appeared at Llanelli magistrates court on Thursday and were released on bail.

Eleven other people arrested and questioned by Dyfed-Powys Police in connection with the incident were released on bail pending further inquiries.

Detectives said men aged between 20 and 25 had hurled racist abuse as worshippers arrived for a gathering on Sunday evening.

A Muslim cleric, 60, who was inside the building, later died from a heart attack.

The worshippers and a group of clerics were reportedly abused as they arrived for the Islamic “family celebration” meeting inside the mosque.

One reportedly tried to pull a headscarf from a senior cleric outside the building on Station Road at around 1730 BST.

BBC News, 6 June 2002

Call this monster by its name

Posted on by Eddie Truman

The history of contemporary European Islamophobia starts with the fall of the iron curtain and the appearance of a new challenger to western capitalist hegemony. In a still self-consciously Christian Europe, this ideological competition has been grafted on to the legacies of the Crusades and Ottoman-Christian rivalries, and the perceived demographic and cultural threat posed by a growing Muslim population.

Intoxicated by this poisonous brew, Austrians swept Jörg Haider’s Freedom party into power in 1999. The party had campaigned on an anti-Muslim platform, drafting a political catch-all for its hate politics, Uberfremdung (“foreigner-swamping”) into the electoral vocabulary. But despite symbolic sanctions, no EU state took concrete steps to combat Islamophobia.

Faisal Bodi in the Guardian, 14 May 2002

Islamophobia ‘explosion’ in UK

Posted on by Eddie Truman

Muslim groups have agreed with a report by the EU race watchdog that anti-Islamic feeling has “detonated” in the UK since 11 September.

The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) said there had been a big rise in attacks – including physical assaults – on Muslims in Britain since the US terror attacks.

It monitored a period from 11 September until the end of December last year, and found numerous reports of attacks on Muslim people and institutions such as mosques.

They included women and children being harassed in the street, and one taxi-driver who was paralysed from the neck down in an attack in which 11 September was mentioned.

Muslim groups said anti-Islamic feeling was still running high in the UK even now – more than eight months after the attacks thought to have been masterminded by Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden.

BBC News, 24 May 2002 report

Pat Robertson describes Islam as violent religion that wants to dominate, destroy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson drew criticism Friday from Arab-Americans for describing Islam as a violent religion that wants to “dominate and then, if need be, destroy.” Robertson made the comment Thursday on his “700 Club” television program after watching a segment about Muslims’ views on terrorism.

Co-host Lee Webb asked Robertson why he thought Muslim immigrants would want to live in the United States “if they have such contempt for our foreign policy.” Robertson replied: “Well, as missionaries possibly to spread the doctrine of Islam.” He went on to say that Islam “is not a peaceful religion that wants to coexist. They want to coexist until they can control, dominate and then, if need be, destroy.”

Hussein Ibish, spokesman for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a Washington-based civil rights group, said: “The rhetoric is exactly the same as traditional anti-Semitism. All you can do is change the word ‘Jew’ to ‘Arab’ or ‘Muslim’.”

Associated Press report, 22 February 2002

Arrest every Muslim that enters Georgia, says chair of House Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) today wrote to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert asking that Rep. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security, be removed from his position because of bigoted anti-Muslim comments at a Nov. 19 meeting with local Georgia officials. Chambliss told 30 local officials in Valdosta, Ga., that to combat terrorism a Georgia sheriff could be turned loose to “arrest every Muslim that comes across the state line”.

ADC President Ziad Asali, wrote to Speaker Hastert that, in spite of Rep. Chambliss claims that this remark was a “joke”, and that “if anybody’s offended by it, I feel very apologetic toward them”, he should no longer continue as chairman. “ADC feels that Rep. Chambliss is unfit for the chairmanship of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security in light of these comments,” Asali wrote, “and we ask you to removed him from this position. Joking or not, they reveal a level of insensitivity and intolerance which is completely inappropriate given the concerns attached to this important position.”

Asali’s letter to Speaker Hastert points out that “Having the chair of this crucial House Subcommittee making remarks of this kind sends the worst possible message to the Arab-American and Muslim communities in the United States, to the Arab and Muslim worlds, and to society in general about the level of intolerance and anti-Muslim bigotry that is considered acceptable in the U.S. Congress.”

“We feel that the important work of this Subcommittee may well be undermined by the taint of Rep. Chambliss’ outrageously bigoted remarks,” Asali concluded.

Counterpunch, 21 November 2001

Muslims in the West

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Just as the rhetoric associated with Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ was dying down, at least in public, the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has reasserted the view that the underlying problem for the West is not terrorism or even Islamic fundamentalism, but Islam as a rival and inferior civilization.”

Tariq Modood in the Observer, 30 September 2001

Mosque attacks ‘going unreported’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

British Muslims are not reporting attacks on mosques because they fear that to do so could raise racial tension.

Imran Rizvi, the chief spokesman on race for Manchester City Council’s ruling Labour group, said mosques had been attacked and congregations had received telephone threats. In Greater Manchester there had been “at least half a dozen attacks” on mosques and Islamic centres since Tuesday of last week.

Three incidents have been officially reported to police – two of them in Manchester, the other in Bolton where a mosque was firebombed. No one has been injured. Mr Rizvi’s remarks indicate that attacks in other towns and cities are also going unreported.

“We are not giving details because that will create tension,” said the councillor. “But there have been at least half a dozen attacks in Greater Manchester. These have included telephone threats along the lines of ‘We are going to burn you down’. There have also been other threats, intimidation and graffiti.”

Mr Rizvi, who was speaking as the city council hosted a private meeting of civic, religious and community leaders, said he believed that threats had been issued by “a small handful of idiots” who may or may not be members of racist organisations.

“There is that level of fear. You have only to look at what is happening in Bradford, Glasgow, Birmingham and London, where a taxi driver has been paralysed. Issues like that are very frightening. We want people to be vigilant and to contact the police. We will not tolerate this behaviour.”

Daily Telegraph, 20 September 2001