After Google cut-off a Gmail account created by PVV leader Geert Wilders for his anti-Islam bumper sticker project, the politician registered a domain with Danish webhost One.com and used it to create a new email address for distributing the stickers. The hosting company says they do not have plans to follow Google’s lead and shut down the account for offensive content, a company executive said.
Sharp increase in anti-Muslim crimes in the Thames Valley Police area
The Thames Valley Police force area has seen a rise in anti-Muslim crimes this year. Thames Valley Police recorded 39 of the hate crimes from January to mid-November this year in Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, compared with 20 in 2012 and 31 in 2011. The force also recorded 75 anti-Muslim incidents this year, compared with 46 in 2012 and 63 in 2011.
Reports and comment from Islamophobia Watch 23‑29 December
Reports and comment from Islamophobia Watch 23‑29 December 2013
Vendôme: Turkish community targeted with racist and fascist graffiti
Des Dômes Et Des Minarets reports that on Sunday night a number of Muslim-owned buildings in the town of Vendôme, in the Loir-et-Cher department in central France, suffered graffiti attacks.
Swastikas and racist slogans (such as “I love Whites”) were sprayed in black paint on the walls of a mosque and Turkish restaurants and cafes. Around a dozen examples were found, all in the same paint and handwriting.
EDL to protest against Islamification of small Lincolnshire town with tiny Muslim community
The English Defence League is set to hold a protest rally in Sleaford close to a building that is set to be transformed into a Muslim prayer hall.
Lincolnshire Police have been contacted by the EDL who have expressed a wish to hold a protest in the town on January 11. The protest has been announced via Facebook and is planned to be held on the small North Kesteven District Council car park opposite the railway station on Station Road, starting at 1.30pm.
In November the district council decided to allow planning permission for Grantham and Sleaford Muslim Association to create a prayer hall in a redundant brick storage shed/workshop. Members of the EDL have not expressly stated the reason for January’s proposed action.
Google drops Wilders’ anti-Islam Gmail account
Google has deactivated the islamsticker@gmail Gmail account politician Geert Wilders was using to spread his anti-Islam stickers. The deactivation was probably prompted by the many complaints Wilders’ umpteenth anti-Islam initiative had prompted.
It was the politician himself who reported via Twitter on Boxing Day that his account had been closed. “Unbelievable; Google just blocked the account. It seems Mohammed Rabbae’s complaint was successful,” he tweeted. Rabbae had complained at Google that Wilders was abusing its service.
Haitham al-Haddad answers right-wing press witch-hunt
Last weekend the Sunday Telegraph (“‘Asbos’ to silence 25 hate clerics”) and the Daily Mail (“Dozens of hate clerics face being silenced by new anti-terror Asbos”) reported that “security officials” had drawn up a list of 25 Muslim preachers on whom it was intended to serve the “Terror and Extremist Behaviour Orders” (Tebos) proposed by the government as a result of the recent report by its Extremism Taskforce, which was set up in the aftermath of the murder of Lee Rigby.
As the Mail explained, the Tebos would “bar people from preaching messages of terror and hate, associating with named individuals thought vulnerable to radicalisation, and from entering specific venues, such as mosques or community halls – in a similar manner to the orders used to ban yobs from certain areas”. The Mail quoted David Cameron as justifying such repressive measures on the grounds that “there are just too many people who have been radicalised at Islamic centres, who have been in contact with extremist preachers” – although of course neither Cameron nor his taskforce provided any evidence at all that preachers at Islamic centres played any role in motivating Lee Rigby’s killers.
Both newspaper reports named Haitham al-Haddad of the Muslim Research and Development Foundation as one of the “extremist preachers” who faces a ban, with the Telegraph bizarrely suggesting that Dr al-Haddad is even more of a threat than Anjem Choudary (though Choudary, interestingly, is not on the list of individuals who are to receive Tebos). The paper claimed that Dr al-Haddad had been “banned from speaking at the London School of Economics after the university’s Jewish society requested that his event be cancelled because of his allegedly hostile view towards Jews”, while the Mail assured its readers that Dr al-Haddad had “heaped praise on Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, after his death”.
UK anti-Muslim hate crime soars, police figures show
Hate crimes against Muslims have soared in the UK this year, figures show.
Hundreds of anti-Muslim offences were carried out across the country in 2013, with Britain’s biggest force, the Metropolitan police, recording 500 Islamophobic crimes.
Many forces reported a surge in the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes after the murder of soldier Lee Rigby by two Islamic extremists in Woolwich, south-east London, in May.
But the figures could be much higher as nearly half of the 43 forces in England and Wales did not reveal how many hate crimes had targeted Muslims. Some forces admitted they did not always record the faith of a religious hate-crime victim.
Freedom of Information requests were sent by the Press Association to every police force in England and Wales. Of the 43 forces, 24 provided figures on the number of anti-Muslim crimes and incidents recorded.
Muslim association in Le Barp suffers second firebomb attack
Sud Ouest reports that on Sunday night a the premises of the Muslim association in Le Barp in Val de l’Eyre in south-west France suffered a Molotov cocktail attack, just a year since a similar arson attempt.
The building has also experienced repeated racist graffiti attacks, in August and September 2012 and in April this year.
(Picture: Demonstration in support of Le Barp’s Muslim community following graffiti attack in August 2012)
Judge rules against Geller, says ad campaign demeans Muslims
A federal judge rejected a pro-Israel group’s assertion that its free speech rights were violated when the MBTA turned down a subway advertisement on the grounds that the ad was “demeaning or disparaging.”
The ad is paid for by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, a New York organization that seeks to combat the spread of Islam in the United States. With bold, all-capital-letter text placed against a stark black background, the ad reads: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel; defeat Jihad.”
Officials with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority rejected the ad in November on the basis that it violated the agency’s advertising guidelines, which include rejecting advertisements that demean and disparage individuals and groups, promote alcohol or tobacco, and depict graphic violence.
On Friday, US District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton sided with the state’s transportation authority, saying in the ruling that “it was plausible for the defendants to conclude that the … pro-Israel advertisement demeans or disparages Muslims or Palestinians.”