A lighted bottle of inflammable liquid has been thrown onto the roof of a Milton Keynes mosque, police have said.
The Zainabia Islamic Centre in Peverel Drive, Granby, was subjected to an arson attack on Thursday night when about 30 people were inside. Witness Fazilat Shivji said members of the community managed to deal with the flames before firefighters arrived.
Two men have been arrested after a mosque was attacked by four men in Ashley Road, Parkstone yesterday. Four windows were smashed at the premises around 3.50pm. The premises of the Dorset Islamic Cultural Centre were understood to be unoccupied at the time.
The attack has been condemned by members of the local community.
One man was arrested at the scene and is currently helping police with their inquiries. Another man was arrested later in the evening. Inquiries are on-going into the incident and two other men are still being sought in connection with the attack.
Police deployed officers to guard Morden mosque yesterday after extreme racist threats appeared on social media sites calling for it to be burnt to the ground.
The threats follow the murder of 25-year-old Drummer Lee Rigby by two men on Wednesday (May 22) in Woolwich which led to about 250 English Defence League (EDL) supporters rioting outside Woolwich Arsenal station.
The Baitul Futuh Mosque, in London Road, is the largest in western Europe and was targeted on a Facebook page named True British Patriots. Users on the page referred to Muslims as “f****** muzzies” and called for mosques in Watford, Braintree in Essex and Morden to be burned to the ground.
Following attacks on mosques in Gillingham, Kent and Bolton, one user, Steve Dungey, said: “We need more of this there is a mosque in mordon south london burn it down.”
Islamic associations in Germany have said that four mosques were attacked on 10 consecutive days after the trial of the terrorist National Socialist Underground (NSU) group began and called for stronger measures and a more determined fight against Islamophobic attacks in the country.
The issue of Islamophobia in Germany came to the surface once again with the trial in which neo-Nazi suspect Beate Zschäpe and four alleged supporters of the NSU terrorist group stand accused of 10 murders.
Eight of the victims were Turks, one was a Greek immigrant and the final victim was a German policewoman. The first session of the trial, was held on May 6.
Despite the trial, Islamic associations in Germany claim that attacks against the Muslims in the country have not ceased. The Coordination Council of Muslims in Germany (KRM) has announced that mosques in Bullay, in the Rhineland-Palatinate state, as well as its capital, Mainz; the town of Lengerich in the Steinfurt district and the town of Düren in the district of the same name in North Rhine-Westphalia were attacked between May 10 and May 20.
Two men have been released on bail after their arrest for allegedly making offensive comments on Twitter about the murder of a British soldier in Woolwich.
Complaints were made to police about comments that appeared on the social networking website, which were of an allegedly racist or anti-religious nature.
The men, a 23-year-old and a 22-year-old, were held under the Public Order Act on suspicion of inciting racial or religious hatred.
The Belfast Islamic Centre has had paint thrown over it. The police said they were treating the incident at Wellington Park as a hate crime.
Two teenage boys were seen running away from the centre after throwing a bottle of paint at it.
Belfast Islamic Centre is the largest institution of the Muslim community in Northern Ireland and acts as both a place of worship and a community centre.
Update: See “Police issue appeal over Belfast Islamic centre paint bomb”, Belfast Telegraph, 26 May 2013
Lincolnshire residents have been urged to remain calm and refrain from making incendiary comments online in the wake of Wednesday’s Islamic terrorist murder of a British soldier in Woolwich.
Police have stepped up patrols at Scottish mosques following the brutal murder of a soldier.
Drummer Lee Rigby, 25, who served in Afghanistan, was butchered by two men in Woolwich, London, in the name of “Allah”. Four people, including two men shot by police, have been arrested in connection with his death.
Chief Superintendent Grant Manders, Safer Communities, Police Scotland, said: “We are acutely aware that some extremist groups or misguided individuals may use this horrendous attack as an excuse to commit hate crime. We will have extra, high visibility patrols around Scotland’s mosques to reassure the public.”
The Woolwich attack has provided the scoundrels at Quilliam with a new opportunity to perform their usual trick of holding the British Muslim community (or at least a significant section of it) to blame.
Quilliam’s senior researcher, Usama Hasan, was on the BBC Breakfast show yesterday. In response to a question from Charlie Stayt as to whether the extremist ideology evidently adopted by the alleged Woolwich killers was promoted at mosques and university campuses in Britain, Hasan agreed that it was.
In a study, Assistant Professor Sonia Ghumman from the UH Mānoa Shidler College of Business found that Hijabis (Muslim women who wear headscarfs) encountered discrimination when seeking employment.
“We conducted a field experiment to investigate the extent to which individuals wearing religious attire encounter discrimination during the hiring process,” said Ghumman. “We asked students (ages 19-22) from several ethnic backgrounds to seek employment with and without the hijab (headscarf) at retail stores and restaurants in two shopping malls. The malls were located primarily in middle-income cities in the Midwest. The job seekers were paired with an observer and yielded a total of 112 trials.”
The study measured: 1) formal discrimination, marked by explicit negative behaviors such as outright refusal; 2) interpersonal discrimination, a more subtle expression of discrimination both in nonverbal and verbal behaviors; and 3) expectations to receive job offers.
According to Ghumman, the findings revealed that wearing a hijab had a negative impact in all aspects of the hiring process compared to Muslim women who did not wear a hijab. The field experiment tracked several areas of the hiring process, including the permission to complete job applications, job availability, job call backs, interaction time, and perceived negativity and lack of interest by the employer.