A candidate for Bob Katter’s fledgling political party declared his preference for buying ”guaranteed non-halal meat” so his money does not ”go to the Muslim community”.
Jamie Cavanough, who is standing for Katter’s Australian Party in Sydney’s most marginal federal seat, Greenway, is under fire for the apparently divisive comments he made to a community forum in one of the city’s most ethnically diverse areas.
A new survey by Paris-based Ipsos research company on Thursday showed 74% of French respondents believe the Muslim religion is ”intolerant” and incompatible with their social values.
The survey, published on the Le Monde newspaper website, also showed eight out of 10 French people believe the Islamic religion tries to impose its views on others, 10% believe a majority of Muslims are fundamentalists, and another 44% believe a many but not all Muslims are fundamentalists. Most respondents did not know how to define fundamentalism, however.
The data varied across age groups and political affiliations, but represents a majority in each category of respondents.
See also “‘Too many foreigners in France’, French say”, The Local, 25 January 2013
Jak Beasley, Dean Spence and Christopher Caswell
Three men linked to a right-wing pressure group have had their convictions quashed for racially aggravated public disorder. The trio’s fines were also slashed for behaviour described by a Teesside judge as obnoxious, unnerving, disgraceful, drunken, anti-social and inconsiderate.
They were among six men, all associated with the English Defence League (EDL), convicted by Teesside magistrates of racially or religiously aggravated disorder last August. It was alleged the men sang a highly inflammatory religious chant at Middlesbrough railway station.
Jak Beasley, 23, Christopher Caswell, 32, and Dean Spence, 23, appealed against the conviction at Teesside Crown Court yesterday. This appeal was not opposed by the prosecution as a crucial witness had since emigrated to New Zealand.
The men accepted they committed a lesser disorder offence without the racial element, and appealed against fines imposed by magistrates.
The state-sponsored blackmail and harassment of a former Haverstock schoolboy and other Somalis living in Camden by MI5 is a “national disgrace”, according to one of the country’s leading miscarriage-of-justice campaigners.
Solicitor Gareth Peirce – who has represented the Guildford Four, Birmingham Six, the family of Jean Charles de Menezes and Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg – spoke in support of Mahdi Hashi at a packed public meeting inside the Town Hall on Friday night.
The 23-year-old was stripped of his British citizenship after refusing to spy on young Muslims in Camden, according to his family.
Mr Hashi, who lived in Gilbey’s Yard, Chalk Farm, was later arrested in east Africa and taken to New York where he has been charged with being part of an international terrorist network. He has told his legal team how he was threatened with outlawed torture by US officials shortly after his capture in Djibouti last September.
Ms Peirce, whose law firm is based in Camden Town, said:
“Blackmail is unlawful. Threats, harassment and rendition are unlawful. These are crimes. If hundreds of Somalis under suspicion for travelling to east Africa get in touch with us and say they have been blackmailed and harassed, how many thousands of police and security officers are being deployed for this purpose? It’s a disgrace, a national disgrace, a badge of shame.”
An outfit calling itself the Creative Zionist Coalition has announced that it is awarding Pamela Geller with the “Queen Esther Award for Jewish Heroism” and Robert Spencer with the “Shushan Award for Righteous Gentile”.
Loonwatch reports on the background of the CZC’s founders, Jessica Felber and Orit Arfa, and their links to the Zionist Organization of America.
The CZC’s stated aim is to “vigorously support and defend Israel without apology, taking principled positions based on reason, logic, ethics and history”. Quite what Geller and Spencer have to do with reason, logic and ethics, or indeed with any honest approach to history, is unclear.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Kamal Saleem, the self-proclaimed former terrorist whose multiple appearances in West Michigan have been marked by controversy, will talk at three West Michigan events next month.
Saleem is scheduled to speak about the “threat of Islam” at separate events Feb. 7-9 for the Fremont-based American Decency Association, according to the ADA’s website.
A Christian, Saleem has made waves for claiming he is a former member of Islamic militant groups in the Middle East, including the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Muslim Brotherhood.
A number of academics and groups, including a Calvin College professor and the Southfield-based Council on American-Islamic Relations of Michigan, have called Saleem’s claims dubious.
The American Decency Association, which did not return requests for comment this week, said on its website that Saleem was invited to talk about “a threat that is very real.”
“We at ADA are committed to stand against evil and we’re giving you an opportunity to become informed about a threat that is very real – radical Islam, Sharia Law, and the attack upon the American Constitution – so that you, too, can prepare yourself to oppose it,” the ADA wrote on its website.
“The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is being sued for religious discrimination. And for good reason. The government watchdog agency was created in 1998 to officially promote and protect religious freedom abroad, but it actually suppresses religious freedom, rather than supporting it. It should be shut down.”
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd examines the case of Safiya Ghori-Ahmad and attributes her treatment to a world view that embodies “a toxic combination of Christian supremacy and flagrant bias against Islam”.
In light of recent events in east London, Wais Islam, a former Tower Hamlets Labour councillor, says it’s important to remember the area belongs to people of all ethnicities, sexual orientations and religions.
A man who made hoax bomb threats against mosques in Southampton has been spared jail.
Timothy Bingham, 43 of Fairbairn Walk, Chandlers Ford, made calls to police giving false information about bombs in and around the city.
He was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment, suspended for two years at Winchester Crown Court. He was also ordered to complete 100 hours unpaid work and given a six month curfew.
Update: See “Hampshire man lied to police over bombs in mosques”, Southern Daily Echo, 27 January 2013
A new bill on the amendment to Poland’s animal rights law to make kosher and halal slaughter legal in Poland has been submitted for public consultation, a spokesperson for the Ministry of agriculture has announced.
Spokeswoman Małgorzata Książyk says the public consultation period will last one week, following a Constitutional Court ruling late last year which said that ritualised slaughter of animals for religious purposes was inconsistent with Polish animal rights law.
The court concluded that a 2004 amendment that introduced exceptions to an animal protection law that forbade the slaughter of animals without prior stunning was “unconstitutional.”
Last week, the new draft law, which would make Polish law compatible with European Union regulations, was considered by the Standing Committee of the Council of Ministers, and the bill has now been passed on to social and trade union organizations for consultation.