Kent Online reports that police have arrested Philip Horn.
Two anti-Sheepshead Bay mosque protestors boycott schoolbag giveaway
Two Sheepshead Bay residents still fighting the hopeless battle to stop the construction of a Voorhies Avenue mosque protested a school supply giveaway in front of the still-under-construction house of worship on Saturday – but were easily drowned out by the dozens of parents and children looking for free backpacks, notebooks, and pencils.
Walthamstow gets ready to protest against EDL thugs
With just a day to go before the racist English Defence League (EDL) tries to march in Waltham Forest, east London, anti-fascist activists in the local community are having a final push to build opposition.
“I don’t like it that a group of racists will be marching here tomorrow – no one needs or wants them,” Osman, a local market trader, told Socialist Worker. “But it has been really good to see people coming together to oppose them. Hopefully the EDL will be stopped.”
Mosques in Waltham Forest have been promoting the counter demonstration. The borough’s council of mosques has released a statement encouraging people join the We Are Waltham Forest demonstration.
CAIR calls for investigation of fire at Minneapolis mosque
The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN) today called on state and federal law enforcement authorities to investigate a suspicious fire outside a mosque in South Minneapolis.
On Tuesday, August 21, a car owned by a Somali Muslim parked outside the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center was set on fire. Mosque leaders say that video surveillance shows that the arsonist spent an hour throwing burning material in the direction of the mosque before setting the car on fire.
“In light of recent hate incidents nationwide, we urge law enforcement officials to review the surveillance video and determine whether the mosque was the intended target of the arson,” said CAIR-MN Executive Director Lori Saroya.
South African ‘lefty’ embraces anti-Muslim bigotry
Women24, which bills itself as South Africa’s largest online women’s community, has posted a piece by a Cape Town writer named Chris McEvoy (not a woman, judging by appearances) entitled “I’m Islamophobic”.
“And no, I’m not being ironic”, he assures his followers on Twitter. Anyone who follows McEvoy’s tweets would probably have guessed that already.
Given recent events in their country, you might have thought white South Africans would hesitate before publishing this sort of ignorant racist drivel. But apparently not.
Two police officers to appear in court over false charges against anti-EDL protestor
Two police officers are accused of perverting the course of justice over an incident which happened during the English Defence League demonstration in Bolton town centre. The charges relate to an incident involving one of the Unite Against Fascism counter-protesters, Alan Clough, from Radcliffe, who was allegedly attacked by police.
Now police officers Robert Cantrell and Alan Glover have been summonsed to appear at York Magistrates’ Court on September 11. They have both been summonsed to face charges of perverting the course of justice.
Extradition laws fail to protect British citizens
Reyhana Patel examines the case of Talha Ahsan.
National Front plan Skegness demonstration against halal abattoir
A nationalist political organisation opposing multiculturalism and immigration has planned a demonstration against proposals for a halal abattoir in Skegness.
The National Front has invited its members to walk through the town distributing flyers and displaying banners opposing the Muslim practice of slaughter on Saturday, September 15.
Australian Islamophobe smears Richard Bartholomew
Over at Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion Richard Bartholomew has been engaged in an argument with Joel Richardson, right-wing Christian fundamentalist author of various wacko books including The Islamic Antichrist. Richardson published an article at WorldNetDaily claiming that there is “epidemic of child brides throughout the Islamic world” and that there are today “approximately 51 million” such cases worldwide. Bartholomew does a good job of debunking these claims, much to Richardson’s annoyance.
In the course of this dispute the Australian blogger “Sheik Yer’Mami” – real name Werner Reimann and a deeply repellent individual even by the standards of the collection of racists, cranks and sociopaths that make up the “international counterjihad movement” – rallied to the support of Joel Richardson by posting a piece at his Winds of Jihad site in which he accuses Bartholomew of “whitewashing Mohammedan pedophilia”, and claims that it shows that Bartholomew himself “supports pedophilia”.
As it happens, Reimann himself has been accused by one of his critics of having had links to a paedophile ring in Australia. I’m sure Reimann would vehemently deny this allegation and argue that it is a vile slur on his character. So why does he think it’s acceptable to post a baseless charge of support for paedophilia against Richard Bartholomew?
Lars Vilks defends decision to join Geller’s hate fest
Swedish artist Lars Vilks has defended his decision to speak at an anti-Islamic conference in New York on September 11th, claiming he would also accept an invitation from the Ku Klux Klan.
Vilks, the Swedish artist who enraged Muslim groups with his depictions of the Prophet Muhammad as a dog, agreed earlier this month to speak at a conference organized by the anti-Muslim group Stop Islamization of Nations (SION).
Last week, however, an art gallery in northern Sweden booted him from a planned group exhibition because of his decision to accept the SION invitation. Several of the other participating artists pulled out in solidarity with Vilks, stirring up a debate in Sweden this week about artistic freedom and Islamophobia. The art exhibition, which was due to open on September 30th, has since been cancelled.
In a lengthy interview published in the Aftonbladet newspaper on Thursday, Vilks defended his decision to speak at the SION event. “If the Ku Klux Klan had invited me, I would have gone,” he told the paper.