The Balearic Islands daily Última Hora reports that a mosque in the Mallorca town of Sa Pobla has been sprayed with graffiti featuring a picture of an explosive device accompanied by the word “bomb”. The entrance to the building has also been marked with an “X” on the ground. It is suggested that the graffiti may have been in response to a court decision to release two minors who had been accused of rape.
A security expert says Canada needs to go beyond screening for terrorists landing on our shores and consider the religious beliefs of some prospective immigrants.
Scott Newark says Canada should be concerned about “Islamist” immigrants.
Newark served as executive officer of the Canadian Police Association and also worked as a security and policy advisor to both the Ontario and federal Ministers of Public Safety.
“We need to think hard about what I would call ‘Islamism’, the political Islam that has absolutely no interest whatsoever in integration, that is intolerant and unyielding and absolutely committed to eradicating Western values,” he said in an interview.
Mohammed Ansar reports on how a charity called the Quran Project planned to place posters in five major London railway stations – Waterloo, Victoria, Liverpool Street, Marylebone and St Pancras International – over the two weeks of 10-24 December, with the aim of countering misrepresentation of Islam by offering free copies of the Qur’an.
Mohammed says that the campaign had been six months in the planning and the sites were reserved by the advertising company JCDecaux at a cost of £30,000, two thirds of which was raised online through the crowd funding site JustGiving.
However, by Monday 17 December the adverts had all been taken down. An email from JCDecaux to the Quran Project stated with regard to the running of the ads that “rail companies have pointed out that this is not acceptable and we should not have done so. As a consequence, we began the process of removing your posters from the rail stations over the weekend”.
Yesterday’s edition of Newsnight had a report by Paul Mason on how the economic crisis in Spain has assisted the growth of the far-right group España 2000.
He visited the town of Onda in eastern Spain where España 2000 organised an anti-mosque demonstration in November 2011 and the Islamic centre was the victim of an arson attack in September this year.
See also Paul Mason, “Amid scars of past conflict Spanish far right grows”, BBC News, 18 December 2012
It was only last May that the tiny British Freedom party announced with a loud fanfare that English Defence League leaders Stephen Lennon and Kevin Carroll had become its joint vice-chairmen. The BFP declared that this was a “historic development” which established the party as “a new force in British politics”.
Since then things haven’t been going too well for the BFP. In October, Lennon tweeted that he had resigned from the organisation in order to concentrate on building the EDL, and he told the Independent that he was intending to stand for election under the banner of the EDL rather than the BFP. Even Carroll’s 10.6% of the poll as the British Freedom candidate for Bedfordshire police commissioner in November failed to provide a boost for the party. Although this was in fact a worryingly high vote for such a notorious figure on the far right, the result inevitably had a demoralising effect after the BFP led its supporters to believe that Carroll had a serious chance of winning, only for him to finish a distant fourth behind the successful Labour candidate.
Hope Not Hate now reports that on 11 December the electoral commission de-registered British Freedom because the BFP leaders failed to complete the necessary paperwork or pay the fee required to renew its registration as a political party, despite repeated reminders. Acording to HNH, this development “spells the end for the short-lived religious and racial extremists”. Well, maybe.
Muslims in Greater Manchester are calling for changes to the Terrorism Act which allows passengers to be stopped and searched at airports. A letter signed by several organisations has been sent to the Home Office highlighting concerns over religious profiling.
Representatives from mosques and Islamic human rights groups claim some people are detained but never charged. They want shorter detention times and more intelligence-led policing. The campaign also wants no DNA samples to be taken from anyone who has not been charged with an offence.
The Jews Against Islamophobia Coalition has issued a strong statement condemning Pamela Geller’s latest anti-Muslim hate-ad.
Via Loonwatch
A third crime has been added to the charges filed against an Indiana man arrested for the arson fire at the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo.
Randolph Linn, 52, of St. Joe, Indiana, was charged in October with one count each of intentionally defacing, damaging, and destroying religious property and using a fire to commit a felony. Today, a federal grand jury also indicted him on a charge of using and carrying a firearm to commit a crime of violence.
The English Defence League (EDL) is to stage a demo in Newcastle after the city council approved plans to turn the Byker Grove building into an Islamic school.
The protest has been criticised by interfaith and anti-fascist groups, with plans already under way for a counter-demonstration.
The rally, the first to be organised in Newcastle by the organisation since 2010, has been approved on a national level and will take place in May next year, according to an EDL regional spokesman.
A Dundee man who hurled a sword at three Muslim men after they escaped from a fire has been jailed for almost two years.
Dundee Sheriff Court heard Grant Robertson also shouted racist abuse at the men as they waited for the fire service outside their flat on 26 January.
Robertson pleaded guilty to a charge of acting in a racially aggravated manner. The 28-year-old also admitted a second charge of assaulting the three men.
The court heard that when he was arrested Robertson told police: “I threw my sword out the window at them, I wish it got them in the throat.”