Reports and comment from Islamophobia Watch 18-24 November 2013
Woman murdered and mutilated with cross symbols in Moscow – police
A woman from Russia’s predominantly Muslim region of Dagestan was found murdered in Moscow, with symbols of the cross slashed on her body, police said Sunday.
The woman’s body was found on a staircase in an apartment building in the southwest of the city on Saturday night, a police source said. “The dead woman was slashed on her arms, knees and stomach, with cross-shaped figures,” the source said.
Police ‘failing to investigate anti-Muslim abuse’
The police are failing to investigate hundreds of cases of anti-Muslim hate messages on the internet, according to a government-funded monitoring group.
Tell Mama, which records anti-Muslim attacks, says it recorded 1,432 cases of abuse in the last 22 months. But Tell Mama has told the BBC it has only had a response from the police regarding 70 cases. The Association of Chief Police Officers said it was working to address the concerns expressed by Tell Mama.
Wakefield: EDL heavily outnumbered by counter-demonstrators
Hundreds of people gathered in Wakefield today to oppose a protest by the far-right English Defence League.
Community group We are Wakefield staged a multi-cultural celebration as a counter-protest to an EDL demonstration in the city centre this afternoon.
Around 100 EDL members gathered on Brook Street amid a heavy police presence for around an hour from 2pm.
EDL anti-mosque campaigner admits assault and firing air rifle
A far-right activist has been handed a community order for assault and firing an air rifle out of his New Addington home.
Frank Day, 65, attacked Samuel Bartlett and later fired a Titan air rifle from his house in Arnhem Drive, New Addington, on September 3. He pleaded guilty to assault by beating and firing the weapon at Croydon Magistrates’ Court today (Friday).
Anne Marie Waters resigns from One Law for All
Anne Marie Waters seems to be making a habit of resigning these days. Last month she left the Labour Party – citing its support for multiculturalism, selection of Ken Livingstone as its London mayoral candidate, and imposition of legal restrictions on hate speech as reasons for her departure – and now she has resigned from her post as joint spokesperson for the anti-sharia campaign One Law for All.
Last week Waters’ co-spokesperson Maryam Namazie posted Waters’ resignation letter on the OLFA website. Waters says in it that she still believes the “fight against sharia and Islamism” is “one of the most important and urgent causes we face in the 21st Century”. But rather than conducting this struggle through OLFA she will be “working with other people and groups to speak out for democracy, liberty, and the right to freedom of speech and association”. No doubt she has in mind her friends at the Danish-Swedish “counterjihad” publication Dispatch International, to which she has become a regular contributor (her most recent article is entitled “Stoning to death is now a moderate position in the UK”).
Teenager posted ‘hate’ message on Muslim Defence League’s Facebook page
A teenager posted a hate message on a Muslim organisation’s Facebook page after seeing a video of a woman being stoned to death, York magistrates were told.
Aaron Hodgson, of Pinfold Avenue, Sherburn-in-Elmet, “took exception” after watching a video online showing two Muslim men stoning a Muslim woman, said his solicitor, Stephen Welford.
He posted the message on the Muslim Defence League’s Facebook page, said Christine Turnbull, prosecuting.
Hodgson, who is now 20, admitted sending a message that was grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing, and was fined £100.
Eight-year-old boy attacked outside mosque previously plastered with racist EDL graffiti
A sickening spate of brutal attacks on Asians in Cradley Heath has led to the arrest of a gang of local teenagers.
Asian pensioners have been beaten up, a young boy slapped in front of a mosque and a driver traumatised after the gang smashed his car up. Police launched a major hate crime investigation and arrested a five teenagers on suspicion of racially aggravated assault and criminal damage.
Moscow mayor: No more mosques in my city
No more mosques will be built in Moscow, despite the huge crowds that swamp the city’s four public mosques on Muslim holidays, because they are mainly used by temporary workers, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has decided.
In an interview with the daily Komsomolskaya Pravda on Wednesday, Mr. Sobyanin said that Moscow has about two million foreign residents, the vast bulk of them migrant workers from former Soviet Central Asia who are mainly Muslim. The city’s economy “could not manage without them,” he admitted.
But he insisted that the vast throngs of Muslims who fill Moscow streets and wait, often for many hours, to enter the city’s few existing mosques are mostly people who come from outside the city limits and therefore have no right to be catered to.
“Muslim believers who come on religious holidays come from other regions. Between 60 and 70 percent of them are outsiders. We cannot provide for all comers. I think it’s not necessary,” Sobyanin said.
One new mosque is presently under construction in Moscow, but that’s the end of it, he added. “No new building permits will be issued. I think that’s enough mosques for Moscow.”
English Defence League members jailed over mosque attack
Two men who set fire to a Gloucester mosque were former members of the EDL, a court heard.
Clive Michael Ceronne, 37, from Gloucester, and Ashley Henry Juggins, 21, from Cheltenham, had both been on the controversial group’s marches prior to starting the blaze at the Masjid-E-Noor in the city’s Ryecroft Street. Gloucester Crown Court heard today the pair had been driving around and shouting abuse at Muslims on the evening before the arson.
Ceronne was jailed for four-and-a-half years and Juggins for three-and-a-half for the arson.