A protest date has been fixed by a new right-wing organisation over “sexist and offensive” signs at a Crayford mosque. Members of the English National Resistance (ENR) are angry the North West Kent Muslim Association’s mosque in Crayford High Street has separate entrances for men and women.
A protest designed to spread fear
The Plymouth Herald condemns last Saturday’s anti-mosque protest by the English Defence League.
Boston bombing: Geller blames a ‘Jihadi’
The Islamophobic blogger does what we all expect her to do after the Boston Marathon bombing, Alex Seitz-Wald reports.
Knifeman ordered Bristol women to take off hijabs
A man racially abused a Muslim woman and demanded she took off her hijab before putting a kitchen knife to her throat. David Norris, 39, approached Farduja Jama who was with her eight-year-old son in Morton Street, Barton Hill at 9am.
Drunken Norris, who was brandishing a six-inch knife told her: “Take the hijab off. This is England, you are not allowed. Take the hijab off before I stab you.” He then pointed the blade at Miss Jama and put the blade to the left and right of her throat.
Later the same day Norris approached Iqbal Osman who was watching her four-year-old play in Barton Hill Urban Park. He asked her why she was wearing too many clothes and accused Muslims of “taking over” his country. He again brandished the knife before leaving.
Anti-Islamic hate-crime rate differs greatly among states, US study finds
Islamic hate crimes have increased significantly nationwide since 2009, but the trend is complicated to decipher at the state level.
An analysis by the Scripps Howard Foundation Wire found that states with the largest Muslim populations have broad disparities in anti-Islamic, hate-crime incidents.
French court ruling reignites ‘laicite’ vs headscarf debate
Myriam Francois-Cerrah analyses the background to, and fall-out from, the recent French court judgement in support of Fatima Afif, sacked from her job as a nursery worker because she wore the hijab.
Racist and Nazi graffiti at French mosque site
The building site of a future mosque in the city of Coulommiers, east of Paris, was defaced with racist graffiti – including Nazi swastikas – over the weekend.
“A pig’s head and Nazi tags were found inside the site,” Abdallah Zekri, president of France’s Observatory of Islamophobia told the AFP news agency.
“It’s the same thing every time,” Zekri said of the act of vandalism, calling for harder sanctions on those found guilty of racially-motivated crimes.
Inquiry launched after Islamic group holds segregated lecture
T
hat’s the headline to a report in the Guardian. Essentially, it’s just a repeat of the nonsense that was published about the iERA debate at University College London last month, although this story concerns an iERA meeting at the University of Leicester.
To the credit of the authorities at that university, and in contrast to their counterparts at UCL, they appear to have taken a stand against this ignorant and bigoted witch-hunting. Contrary to the headline, Leicester University has launched no formal inquiry into the allegation that gender separation was enforced at the iERA meeting.
A university spokesperson is quoted as saying: “The University will not interfere with people’s right to choose where to sit. If some people choose to sit in a segregated manner because of their religious convictions then they are free to do so. By the same token, if people attending do not wish to sit in a segregated manner, they are free to do so.”
Islamophobia and free speech in Denmark
The Copenhagen Post reports on the case of Martin Krasnik, a journalist on the Danish Broadcasting Corporation’s (DR) current affairs programme Deadline who is noted for his combative interviewing style.
Last month Krasnik subjected the notorious anti-Muslim bigot Lars Hedegaard to a grilling on Deadline, in the course of which he pointed out that there is an obvious parallel between Hedegaard’s paranoid fantasies about a Muslim plot to take over the West and the antisemitic conspiracy theory promoted in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Hedegaard was furious, claiming that he had been led to expect a friendly, sympathetic interview and instead was given a hard time by Krasnik.
Geller gets to speak at Long Island synagogue
Pamela Geller, an outspoken activist known for her anti-Islamic terrorism viewpoints, spoke before a packed crowd this morning at Chabad of Great Neck in Long Island.
Geller’s group, Stop Islamization of America, has been classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League.
Her speech was originally slated to be delivered at the Great Neck Synagogue, but was canceled. The synagogue claims the cancellation was due to security concerns.
“It is a sad day for Long Island,” said the Muslim Center of LI Bay Shore Mosque in a statement. “Ms. Geller is not an expert on Islam. We would not allow an extremist Muslim to speak at a mosque.”