Swedish Muslims have slammed the government for failing to combat discrimination, submitting a report to the UN with a list of proposed measures, such as setting up an inquiry into the abuse of Somali migrants in the tiny town of Forserum.
“Forserum really showed what proportions Islamophobia as well as Afrophobia can take when an entire town looks on as people have their human rights violated,” Kitimbwa Sabuni told The Local on Friday.
Sabuni edited the report submitted to the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) by the Network of Swedish Muslims (Nätverket Svenska Muslimer i Samarbete), a cooperation of several different associations, in which representatives said Sweden was failing to tackle discrimination against Muslims.
Pamela Geller has discovered the reason for her exclusion from the forthcoming Conservative Political Action Conference – CPAC has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
She claims that the conference organisers have always taken a negative attitude towards her “because of the influence of what can only be described as Muslim Brotherhood facilitators or operatives like Suhail Khan and Grover Norquist”. This is of course the same conspiracy theory that got Frank Gaffney banned from CPAC two years ago.
Geller continues: “I think at this point people need to know just how deeply we have been infiltrated. What are they doing at CPAC? Essentially they are enforcing the Sharia. Under the Sharia, the blasphemy laws, you cannot say, you cannot offend, you cannot criticize and you cannot insult Islam. That is effectively what they’re doing, they are enforcing the Sharia.”
Meanwhile, Geller’s partner in hate crime Robert Spencer reveals that he too has been banned from CPAC. Spencer was due to receive the People’s Choice Blog Award, sponsored by Right Wing News and TheTeaParty.net, having topped an online poll. But he says CPAC organisers told him he couldn’t attend the conference to accept the award unless he agreed not to attack Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan, which he refused to do.
So, well done to Geller and Spencer. Through their extremist views and crazed talk of Muslim Brotherhood infiltrators they have managed to get themselves denied a platform at one of the most influential gatherings of the US Right, where other more mainstream Islamophobes are made welcome.
A teenager spray-painted racist graffiti near a mosque and daubed the names Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden on flats during a booze-fuelled spree.
Laura Woodward, 19 of Byron Road, Addlestone, admitted four counts of racially and religious aggravated criminal damage and two of criminal damage.
Woodward, appearing before Guildford magistrates last Thursday, also admitted racially aggravated damage to the front door of an Asian man whom she knew.
A renewed attempt to pass a controversial “foreign law” bill proposed by Sen. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla, and Rep. Larry Metz, R-Yahala, was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday, after more than an hour of sometimes emotional public testimony.
The bill, SB 58, bans courts or other legal authorities from using religious or foreign law as a part of a legal decision or contract relating to family law. Florida law would supercede foreign law regarding divorce, alimony, the division of marital assets, child support and child custody. The bill is ready to be heard on the House floor but it has more committee stops in the Senate. Last year, the bill passed the House but died in the Senate.
Supporters say the proposal isn’t targeting religious groups, but the bill has been criticized as anti-Sharia, a Koran-based code followed in some Islamic countries, by Islamic groups as well as Jewish organizations and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Guelph police have their hate crimes unit investigating after racial graffiti was discovered on a mosque.
Numerous spray-painted graffiti markings were discovered on the outside of the Guelph Muslim Society’s mosque at 286 Water Street early Wednesday. The graffiti was painted between 9 p.m. Tuesday and 7 a.m. Wednesday. It contained derogatory references to Muslims along with inflammatory and threatening language.
The English Defence League (EDL) has made bizarre accusations that counter demonstrators used “violent language” and “terrified children”.
Leaders of the anti-Islamic group also claim 85 of its members turned up at a rally in Cambridge’s Christ’s Pieces and not the 30 estimated by Cambridgeshire police. They also turned on members of Cambridge Unite Against Fascism (CUAF) for holding a counter-demonstration on Saturday, February 23.
The group says it has now formed a Cambridgeshire Division after the rally claiming they had increased support from residents.
A spokesman said: “After speaking to residents on the day, we had many members of the public showing their support for us being there and have had many Cambridgeshire residents wishing to join in our campaign since visiting and have since set up a new EDL Cambridgeshire Facebook page for them to join. It was a local demo, of which, despite contrary reports we had 85 members who arrived and protested peacefully.”
He criticised the CUAF for its “long march around the city centre causing streets to be closed off with a huge police presence throughout”. The spokesman claimed he had received “many reports” of people being unhappy about the CUAF and of “children being terrified by them and the disruption they caused”.
It is of course likely that more EDL supporters turned up in Cambridge than actually joined the rally. Some of them reportedly stayed in the pub, embarrassed by the low turnout – and also no doubt by the antics of the few dozen drunken idiots who did participate in the protest.
Two exchange students attending school in Perham, Minnesota say they were kicked out of a church there when they questioned a nationally known speaker who says “Islam equals terrorism.”
The boys were kicked out of the Assembly of God church in Perham during a question answer period following a speech by Walid Shoebat. Shoebat says he is a former terrorist, and claims to be an anti-terrorism expert. He now calls Islam the devil and tours the country speaking to churches and schools – even collecting fees from Homeland Security.
CNN has exposed Shoebat, calling him a fraud. Today, the DC based Council on American-Islamic Relations contacted WDAY and said it is calling for a meeting with Assembly of God church leaders in Perham, in hopes of strengthening interfaith relations and promoting understanding.
The English Defence League is set to open a headquarters in Luton, says its leader, who has been released from jail.
Stephen Lennon, who calls himself Tommy Robinson, said the HQ would be at his tanning shop premises in Hastings Street.
“It will be like the Discover Islam centre but we will be telling the truth about Islam,” he said. “I will be in there every day. It’s going to be a nightmare for the police because it’s going to get attacked.”
Lennon said the headquarters would be run as a “charity”, as he was unable to run a business because the police had had his bank accounts frozen.
The EDL leader has a tag to ensure he obeys a curfew order after spending 18 weeks in jail for entering the US on a false passport.
Alleging defamation, France’s interior minister Manuel Valls is trying to shut down a website which gives a voice to the victims of police harassment. The site has become especially popular with France’s Muslim population, who often claim that police target, harass and even kill them with impunity.
A grassroots campaign aimed at countering hateful anti-Muslim ads in New York’s subway system has gone live, placing posters in ten locations across New York City.
Called Talk Back to Hate, the campaign first launched its crowdfunding appeal in January in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, seeking to raise the money necessary to post advertisements in major subway stations from among the citizens of New York.
“I started the project because, like many people I’ve spoken to, these ads feel like an attack on our most basic communal values,” Akiva Freidlin, the creator of the project, said in an interview with ThinkProgress at the time. “They’re doubly offensive, for both attempting to demonize and intimidate individual members of a particular religious group, and trying to exploit the city’s grief and anger.”
Talk Back to Hate’s poster message was chosen from various suggestions submitted by contributors to the campaign. The image depicts a pair of arms wrapped around the Big Apple that is New York and the winning words “Hatred is easy. It is love that requires true strength.” The poster also features the names of those who donated to make the poster a reality. The ad is currently running at some of the New York subway’s most-trafficked stops, including Times Square and Rockefeller Center, as well as eight other locations throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn. Fundraising for asecond round of ads is already on-going.
