A young woman has been given a suspended prison sentence for spray-painting racist graffiti near a mosque and at other properties in the Maybury area of Woking, causing £3,000 of damage.
Georgina Gontar, 20, of Queen Elizabeth Way, Old Woking, pleaded guilty to a breach of an Asbo, four offences of racially aggravated criminal damage and two of causing criminal damage when she appeared at Guildford Magistrates’ Court last Wednesday (April 17).
Fox News liberal Bob Beckel had some policy ideas about Muslims on Tuesday’s edition of “The Five.”
Beckel and his co-hosts were talking about the Boston bombing suspects, who are Muslim. The general consensus seemed to be that, by probing into their lives and their possible motives for the attacks, members of the media were avoiding the main issue.
“Contrary to what is alleged by bigots like Bill Maher, Muslims are not more violent than people of other religions”, Juan Cole points out.
Parents whose children are not allowed to wear Muslim headscarves to school in a southern Russian region have appealed to the Supreme Court, defense lawyer Murad Musayev told RIA Novosti on Monday.
Appearing on Fox News Republican talk show “Hannity” Monday night, right-wing columnist Ann Coulter said she’s sad that not only does she think the Boston bombing should shut down the nation’s immigration reform debate, she would like to see the alleged bomber’s widow in jail too, not for committing a crime but for “wearing a hijab.”
“I don’t care if she knew about this,” Coulter said. “She ought to be in prison for wearing a hijab. This immigration policy of us, you know, assimilating immigrants into our culture isn’t really working. They’re assimilating us into their culture. Did she get a clitorectomy too?”
Hannity seemed momentarily puzzled at the sudden citation of female genital mutilation, stammering his reply. “I, uh, I don’t know the answer to that,” he said before confidently adding: “But your point is well taken.”
See also Newshounds, 22 April 2013
Fox News hosted a series of discredited anti-Islam activists to smear Muslims during Fox’s coverage of the April 15 bombings at the Boston Marathon. Media Matters has the details.
On her show today, right wing radio host Laura Ingraham said that the United States should no longer allow immigrants from majority Muslim nations. Ingraham added that she didn’t think people from Central Asia should be allowed in at all:
“How do we give asylum to people from Islamic countries, or Islamic territories, who are claiming that they are somehow deserving of this? I don’t even understand that… I would submit that people shouldn’t be coming here as tourists from Chechnya after 9/11. Dagestan, Chechnya, Kyrgyzstan, uh-uh. As George Bush would say, ‘None of them stans’.”
Glenn Greenwald comments on the claim that the Boston Marathon bombing, allegedly carried out by the Tsarnaev brothers, was an act of terrorism.
The hijab should be as welcome as “bangers and mash” in England, a coalition of religious groups and campaigners have said, in an appeal for unity to mark St George’s Day.
Groups including the Muslim Council of Britain and inter-faith organisation the Christian Muslim Forum said the saint has been “hijacked” by groups on the “extreme right”, like the British National Party and the English Defence League, seeking to use him as a “symbol of triumphalism and division”.
“We want to promote a new, relaxed and confident, English national identity,” they said in a declaration. “A place where a hijab is as welcome as bangers and mash, and no-one is attacked for their race, religion – or lack thereof – or any other belief.”
The owner of a halal butchers said people sleeping in the flat upstairs were lucky to survive after suspected arsonists set fire to his shop.
Police were yesterday investigating the cause of a fire at Ummah Halal Butchers in Queen’s Park Road, Blackburn.
Firefighters were called to the scene at 3am yesterday and when they arrived they found smoke coming from the front door and a fire inside. Six people in the flat above the shop, including two children, managed to get out unharmed after a passer-by saw the fire and alerted the fire service.