The number of race hate crimes reported in South Wales more than doubled in aftermath of the death of Fusilier Lee Rigby in Woolwich, we can reveal. In the two weeks after the 25-year-old soldier died in May, South Wales Police recorded 60 racially aggravated hate crimes and 108 racially aggravated incidents. This compares to 26 racially aggravated hate crimes and 52 racially aggravated hate incidents logged by officers in the same fortnight last year. Hate incidents are defined by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) as any incident that is “perceived by the victim” to be racist.
Searchable database of EDL criminality now online
A new improved version of the excellent EDL Criminals document, compiled by Hazel Zebulon, Dave Hunter and John Goldstein of Exposing Racism and Intolerance Online, is now available.
Reports and comment from Islamophobia Watch 22-28 July
Reports and comment from Islamophobia Watch 22-28 July 2013
EDL anti-halal protest gets favourable coverage from ITV
Yesterday the English Defence League held a protest against a halal abattoir in Skegness. It attracted about 100 people.
ITV News has broadcast a disgracefully uncritical report of the demonstration, in which an EDL spokesman is allowed to claim, unchallenged, that there is nothing racist about the EDL, that their sole concern is with animal welfare, and that “no-one here has a problem with anyone’s colour, or religion for that matter”.
Reza Aslan’s book on Christ under fire from ignorant Islamophobes
Reza Aslan’s newly published biography of Jesus Christ has been viciously attacked by the Islamophobic right in the US.
See “Reza Aslan’s ‘Zealot’ has Islamophobes/Fox News outraged”, LoonWatch, 27 July 2013
And “Critics ignore content of book about Jesus, attack author for being a Muslim”, Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, 28 July 2013
Also “Reza Aslan to Fox News: Yes I ‘happen to be a Muslim,’ but wrote ‘Zealot’ because I am an expert”, Huffington Post, 27 July 2013
EVF heavily outnumbered in Croydon
Demonstrators clashed in central Croydon today as the English Volunteer Force (EVF) held its planned rally.
The roughly 40 English Volunteer Force demonstrators were outnumbered at least three-to-one by counter demonstrators. Angry chants were traded between the groups rallying in opposing pens outside the UK Border Agency offices in Wellesley Road, including chants of “scum” and “Nazi scum”.
Orléans: Racist who attacked Muslim women gets prison sentence
On Friday 26 July the Orléans criminal court sentenced a man who had carried out a triple racist assault to two years in prison, 18 months of which was suspended.
On 14 June in Saint-Jean-de-Braye near Orléans an individual assaulted three women, a mother wearing a headscarf and her two daughters, severely beating them and abusing them with shouts of “Dirty Arab” , “I hate your religion” , “You are a dirty race” and “You Arab women, you’re good for nothing”. It was an outburst of violence that the perpetrator explained by his hostility towards people of North African origin and the Muslim religion.
The Collectif contre l’islamophobie en France (CCIF), which was a civil party in the case, emphasised that it was important that the prejudice against the victim had been recognised. For the association, “the verdict must send a strong signal to all those who incite hatred or are tempted to translate this into action”.
Fait-religieux.com, 27 July 2013
See also Le Monde, 27 July 2013
NC Muslims hope Gov. Pat McCrory vetoes anti-Shariah bill
North Carolina Muslims hope they can persuade Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, to veto a bill that prohibits state judges from considering “foreign law.” “It’s going to be tough,” said Rose Hamid of Charlotte. “But I do believe there is a chance.”
Muslims across the state oppose the bill they think is motivated by intolerance and may potentially infringe on other religious groups. Bills against judicial consideration of “foreign laws” are believed to really be opposing Shariah, or Islamic law.
If McCrory signs the bill, North Carolina would become the seventh state to have an anti-Shariah law, joining Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. In May, Alabama lawmakers approved a like-minded constitutional amendment that state voters will consider in 2014.
Jewish organisations issue statements of solidarity with Muslim community
The Board of Deputies, senior rabbis and the Joseph Interfaith Foundation have together released a statement on behalf of the Jewish community expressing their “sadness and concern” at a recent rise in Islamophobic attacks following the murder of soldier Lee Rigby.
The statement said that recent bombings of mosques such as those in Walsall and Wolverhampton were “truly shocking”. It continued: “We utterly condemn and abhor these hateful actions against the Muslim community. It is particularly distressing that these attacks are taking place during the holy month of Ramadan, the month of fasting, praying, acts of generosity and charity from Muslims.”
France needs to start facing up to Islamophobia
Valérie Amiraux and Marwan Mohammed on the prevalence of Islamophobia in France:
It shows up in multiple forms: attacks on mosques, desecration of religious sites, the ban on the headscarf in public schools, making it impossible for certain veiled women to access public services, to accompany their children on school outings, the rampant insults, harassment, humiliation, physical and verbal aggression they are subject to, racial and ethnic profiling and discrimination, sometimes culminating in physical attacks, such as the recent one on a veiled woman in Argenteuil, who lost her baby as a result. But the principal characteristic of Islamophobia is that it remains, at least in France, very rarely denounced. It is consistently perceived as an exaggeration, the result of victimised posturing invented by troublemaking Muslims, who are incapable of integrating and bending to the requirements of French citizenship.