The Parti Quebecois government, already involved in a political battle to toughen the province’s language law, has placed another emotionally charged identity issue on the back burner.
The government has delayed its plan to set limits on religious accommodations until the fall and even begun referring to it in less contentious terms.
“We will have truly progressed as a society when Muslims no longer feel the need to distance themselves from the acts of terror performed by their supposed co-religionists. They bear no more responsibility for jihadism than Christians do for the Ku Klux Klan or the Westboro Baptist Church (or, more pertinently, than the English do for the EDL). To suggest, as Pauline Neville Jones, the former security minister, did on the Today programme this morning, that they have a special duty to condemn the attack is to perpetuate the myth of collective guilt.”
George Eaton at The Staggers, 23 May 2013
A man has been arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated criminal damage over an attack on a mosque in Gillingham tonight.
Kent Police said officers are providing a visible presence in communities across Kent after a man was murdered in a suspected terrorist attack in Woolwich, south London, today.
It has been reported that display cabinets at a mosque in Gillingham were smashed earlier this evening.
More than 100 supporters of the English Defence League tonight gathered at a train station near the scene of where a man was allegedly hacked to death by extremists and threw bottles at police.
Officers formed a cordon and the men left the immediate area after the brief incident. Some of the EDL supporters gathered at The Queen’s Arms pub locally, where they sang nationalistic songs.
The men had first gathered at Woolwich Arsenal station in Woolwich, south-east London. Riot police with shields stood guard outside for a short time, before moving back into their vans. The EDL group waved a flag of St George and chanted “no surrender to the Muslim scum”. Around 20 of the men wore black balaclavas with an EDL logo on the front.
A 43-year-old man is in custody on suspicion of attempted arson after reportedly walking into a mosque with a knife in Braintree.
Braintree MP Brooks Newmark tweeted tonight: “Local mosque in Braintree attacked by man with knives and incendiary device. Man arrested. No one injured.” Mr Newmark added: “Just met with leaders of local mosque in Braintree which was attacked this evening. Thanked local police for their swift response.”
A spokesman for the Al Falah Braintree Islamic Centre on Silks Way confirmed there had been an arson attempt near the property.
SAN DIEGO — Investigators sought Tuesday to determine who was responsible for several recent bomb threats directed at a Muslim school in Clairemont.
On Saturday, a woman left three menacing telephone messages on an office answering machine at the Islamic School of San Diego, authorities reported. Among other hostile statements, the anonymous caller said, “I’m going to throw a bomb in your (expletive) school,” according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which reported the incident to the FBI and the San Diego Police Department.
“My book Why the West Fears Islam: Exploration of Islam in Western Liberal Democracies (June 2013 by Palgrave McMillan) indicates a persistent predisposition in the West to link Islam to un-civic behaviour and to see assertive Muslims as internal enemies threatening national values and identities as well as external enemies at war with Western civilisation.
“Intriguingly, there is no empirical evidence based on behaviours of Muslims in European countries or the United States that supports this fear. Actually, Muslim political practices are not different from their average fellow citizens. My investigation shows that in Europe and in the United States, Muslims express a greater trust in national institutions and democracy than their fellow citizens and that mosque attendance actually facilitates social and political integration.”
The quarter-million Muslims live in the San Francisco Bay Area face ongoing, entrenched Islamophobia more than a decade after 9/11, according to a new study.
“The Bay Area Muslim Study: Establishing Community and Identity” found 40 percent of Muslims in the region have experienced personal discrimination and 23 percent have been victims of a hate crime. The discrimination against Muslims was particularly pronounced in school-aged children, the study found.
Hope Not Hate reports on the case of Alan Jesson, a newly elected UKIP county councillor in Lincolnshire, who has posted a series of racist comments on Facebook.
One comment reads: “How true it is that the biggest threat to the UK way of life was Islam and its followers.” Another: “Mosques need banning until they adopt sexual equality and gay relationships and conform to British culture.” Jesson also wrote: “No Mosques should be entertained in this country. Islam is anti Gay and anti women. It can never be part of English culture.”
He says he dreams of “a day when the migrants are persuaded or forced to return to their countries of birth” and predicts “I really do think soon there will be rivers of blood”.
These revelations follow the exposure of the foul-mouthed racist remarks made by another UKIP councillor in Lincolnshire, Chris Pain, along with equally bigoted comments by other prominent figures in the party, and the resignation of Eric Kitson as a UKIP councillor in Worcestershire.
Muslims around the world, particularly in Europe and Asia, are facing rising hostility and violence, amid restrictions on their right to wear religious outfits, a US report has found.
“Anti-Muslim rhetoric and actions were clearly on the rise – particularly in Europe and Asia,” said the International Religious Freedom Report cited by Agence France-Presse (AFP). “Government restrictions, which often coincided with societal animosity, resulted in anti-Muslim actions that affected everyday life for numerous believers.”
The report, released by Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday, May 20, sheds light on restrictions facing Muslims and other religious minorities around the world.
See also “CAIR welcomes State Department’s recognition of rising Islamophobia”, CAIR press release, 20 May 2013