Mosque objectors’ shock at SDL march

Posted on by Bob Pitt

SDL Glasgow February 2012(2)A horrified Dumfries couple yesterday slammed an anti-Islamic group which is using a story about them to promote a protest march.

Raymond and Eleanor Ingram opposed a neighbouring mosque’s planning application to transform a store into overnight accommodation. The Annan Road residents launched a petition against the move because they are fed up with people attending the mosque parking in their drive.

But they were “stunned” to find that their objections to the Dumfries Islamic Society plan were being used by the Scottish Defence League to rally support for a march in Dumfries on Saturday, May 18. The SDL copied a Standard story about the couple’s protest to its Facebook page.

Mr Ingram, 71, said: “We didn’t know who they were and we had no idea we were on this page until our neighbour told us to go online and look at it. We have absolutely nothing to do with this march and we don’t want to be associated to it. We want to make that clear to everyone.”

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Catholic soldier says her Muslim-sounding name made her a target for harassment in US Army

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Naida HosanSgt. 1st Class Naida Hosan is not a Muslim – she’s a Catholic. But her name sounded Islamic to fellow U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and they would taunt her, calling her “Sgt. Hussein” and asking what God she prayed to.

So before deploying to Afghanistan last year for her second war tour, she legally changed her name – to Nadia Christian Nova.

This did not solve her problems. Instead, matters escalated. Nova complained to her superiors about constant anti-Muslim slurs and jokes. She says they responded with a series of reprisals intended to drive her out of the Army, leading her to consider suicide.

“My complaints fell on deaf ears every time,” said Nova, 41, a member of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg, N.C. “Any time I would say something about it I was treated like I didn’t know what I was talking about or that I’m an idiot or that I was a Muslim sympathizer. It was just a very lonely feeling.”

Determined to remain in the service for at least eight years, until she is eligible for retirement, Nova recently re-enlisted. But she agreed to tell her story to The Associated Press because “I don’t want this to happen to anyone else if I can help it. It’s a horrible to feel like people are against you when you are supposed to be on the same team.”

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Pew survey of US attitudes to Islam published

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pew poll Islam violence

The public’s views of whether Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence have changed little in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings.

Currently, 42% say Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its believers, while 46% say Islam does not encourage violence more than other religions. These are similar to opinions about Islam and violence for most of the past decade. But in March 2002, six months after the 9/11 attacks, just 25% said Islam was more likely to encourage violence while 51% disagreed.

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Islamophobia on the rise in France

Posted on by Bob Pitt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfRXDDltCDQ

According to the Observatory of Islamophobia in France, the total number of registered cases has gone up by 28 percent in just one year.

The figures also show that the Internet has become the new battlefield. According to the Observatory, a rising number of hate mails are being circulated through internet, which describe Muslims as terrorists, extremists and a danger to other cultures.

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French ministers refuse to attend conference with Tariq Ramadan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem and Manuel Valls
Manuel Valls and Najat Vallaud-Belkacem

He is an Islamic scholar who teaches at Oxford University and a former member of a working group on extremism set up by Tony Blair. Time magazine once described him as the “leading thinker” among Europe’s second and third-generation Muslim immigrants.

Yet two French ministers have suddenly announced that they will not attend a conference in Florence tomorrow on the future of the European Union because of the presence of the scholar, Tariq Ramadan. He is due to be a panellist at the conference, entitled The State of the Union, speaking about “migration, identity and integration”.

The French Interior Minister Manuel Valls and Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the Women’s Rights Minister who is also a government spokeswoman, informed organisers on Monday evening that they were pulling out, saying they had “not been informed” of Professor Ramadan’s attendance.

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Queensland: CCTV of man who abused Muslim woman over hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bundaberg CCTV image

A city supermarket at the centre of a racially motivated verbal attack on an ethnic woman by another shopper has released CCTV footage of the confrontation.

The NewsMail ran a story in Saturday’s paper after speaking to Wendy Fay, who witnessed the woman being abused by a drunken man for wearing a scarf inside the Bundaberg Plaza Supa IGA last Wednesday.

Miss Fay said the man had repeatedly yelled, “you’re in Australia now, you can’t wear that sh*t on your head”, while other shoppers watched on silently.

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Boston Muslim attacked by drunks who called him a terrorist

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An Algerian-American from Cambridge was attacked outside a Back Bay restaurant Saturday night, say police and a Muslim advocacy group, the latest of several assaults on Muslims since the ­Boston Marathon bombings three weeks ago.

The assailants allegedly called the 23-year-old college student, Amine Hadjeres, a “terrorist” and told him he looked like Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the suspects accused of planting bombs at the Marathon finish line on April 15, who was later killed while trying to elude police.

The victim, a US citizen, said he was attacked by two tipsy men outside the Cafeteria Boston restaurant on Newbury Street in Boston about 10 p.m. Saturday night after he left to buy a pack of cigarettes.

Hadjeres said he initially tried to ignore the men, who taunted and shoved him, but wound up brawling with them in the street after they would not leave him alone. He said the fight left him with bloody knuckles and a bruised elbow and hip, but he successfully fought off both men and walked back into the restaurant, where he was greeted with applause.

“They messed with the wrong dude,” Hadjeres said. “Their faces were pretty banged up.”

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