Hainault: Muslim-run community centre that faced ‘racist’ opposition is under fire again

Hainault community centreA trustee of a Hainault community centre that is under investigation by Redbridge Council believes it is being unfairly targeted.

New North Road Community Centre in New North Road, Hainault, opened on September 1 as a multi-faith community centre. But last week, a group of residents submitted a petition to the council, as they believe it is being used as a mosque, making people of no or other faiths feel excluded.

Dr Sohail Hameed says the centre does provide for the whole community. He said: “Our main aim at the moment is raising the standard of education. The hall is mostly used by teachers. People do their daily prayers here but I am a GP and I pray in my office too. There is no breach of planning conditions.”

Continue reading

EDL-supporting teenager who ‘plotted massacre’ was photographed outside mosque making Breivik-style salute

A schoolboy plotted to carry out a Columbine-style massacre on the 15th anniversary of the atrocity, the Old Bailey was told.

The 17-year-old, accused of planning to launch a terror attack on his old school in Loughborough, Leicestershire, also downloaded and kept a photograph of the pair who murdered 12 students and one teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado, United States in 1999. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are pictured in the image after they killed themselves, surrounded by weapons, with blood and bullet wounds visible.

Continue reading

French smartphone app targets Islamophobia

A leading French organization which combats anti-Muslim behaviour and speech launched a new smartphone and tablet app on Monday, allowing users to report incidents of Islamophobia by sending photos and videos to the group.

The Collectif Contre l’Islamophobie en France (the Collective against Islamophobia in France) on Monday launched a smartphone app to enable members of the French public to report anti-Muslim acts and speech.

“In the face of Islamophobia, let’s all be witnesses,” CCIF said in a statement on Monday.

Continue reading

Far-right graffiti on two mosques in Besançon

Al Fath mosque graffiti

La Dépêche reports that two mosques at Besançon in eastern France have been desecrated with racist and fascist graffiti.

Three swastikas, accompanied by the slogans “France for the French”, “Vive la France”, “Arabs out” and “death to Muslims” were sprayed on the Al-Fath mosque. A swastika and the words “Long live the FN” (Front National) were also found on the wall of the Souna mosque.

Continue reading

Tory minister describes veil-wearing women as being ‘in a kind of bag’

Kenneth Clarke at state opening of parliament
The man who thinks the niqab is ‘a most peculiar costume for people to adopt in the 21st century’

Women should not be allowed to wear a veil while giving evidence in court, cabinet minister and former justice secretary Kenneth Clarke has said.

He insisted his comments “had no trace of Islamophobia” but said it was important for the court to be able to see a witness’s body language.

Continue reading

Sunday Times profiles EDL

Sunday Times Magazine on EDLThe Sunday Times Magazine features a lengthy report by Camilla Long on the English Defence League. The pitch is that it’s a study of the EDL after the loss of its old leadership, but most of the research was evidently carried out before the recent departure of Stephen Lennon and Kevin Carroll.

You do get a sense of the drunken racism and far-right views underpinning EDL protests, which the author clearly finds repellent. But the article is written by someone who doesn’t know a lot about the subject (Long is an interviewer and film critic). The original stated aim of the EDL may have been to “oppose the practices and effects of Islamic extremism”, but it very quickly revealed itself as a movement that was openly directed against Islam as a whole – and, by extension, against the entire Muslim community.

Long also gives some credence to the EDL’s Islamophobia, which is depicted as having some basis in reality. We’re told: “Nearly everyone in the EDL lives in what they describe as Muslim ghettos, places of no money and broken schools, where white people are the object of religious hate.” Not only that, but in Islam “there is some uncertainty on the matter of underage sex”.

There’s even a spin-off article by Long in the Sunday Times itself, based on an interview with an individual named Martin Sculpher that she did for the magazine feature, entitled “Hero of 7/7 bombings joins English Defence League”. Readers are told: “He denied that the EDL incited racial hatred and blamed ‘the media interpretation of what we are. From the start we have opposed radical Islam’, he said. ‘It is not racist to challenge a radical ideology of Islam.'”

I’ve reproduced Long’s Sunday Times Magazine article here for information, because it’s hidden behind Murdoch’s paywall.

Continue reading