EDL’s Tommy Robinson attracts Twitter hatred after racially abusing ‘underage’ user

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The leader of the far-right English Defence League has come under fire after racially abusing a girl who told him she was 15-years-old on Twitter.

Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, told Twitter user ‘Asianish’ “You’re pretty fit for a Muslim”. Defending herself, she wrote back “I’m 15 and you’ve got the cheek to call Muslims paedos.”

Robinson’s Twitter abuse comes after the EDL boss highlighted the race of the Asian men convicted in Rochdale grooming case, linking their Pakistani and Afghan origins to the sexual exploitation of under-age girls.

Huffington Post, 16 May 2012

See also EDL News, 16 May 2012

Brookfield aldermen approve mosque – construction set for summer

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Over objections of some residents who sought to table the project, the Common Council unanimously approved a mosque on Pheasant Drive intended to serve a growing Waukesha County Muslim community.

Brookfield aldermen unanimously approved plans for a nearly 13,000-square-foot mosque, to the joy of Waukesha County Muslims and chagrin of opponents who sought to table the project Tuesday.

The Common Council voted 14-0 Tuesday to grant a conditional use permit, with aldermen assuring residents the city had “thoroughly vetted” traffic and other site issues before green-lighting construction.

“We’re elated,” said Mushir Hassan, a Brookfield resident, physician and project leader for the mosque. “We live in a very sophisticated, educated community that understands that they’ve worked with, lived with, and dealt with Muslims and people of all different faiths and cultures on a regular basis,” Hassan said after the meeting.

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Class materials from military’s anti-Islam class repeatedly cite Islamophobic authors

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sharia and the Constitution cartoon
Slide from a presentation titled ‘Sharia and the Constitution’

A class taught by the military to officers at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, came under fire when a report on Wired’s Danger Room blog last week exposed it for teaching soldiers to engage in a “total war” on Islam and taking a war on Islam “to the civilian population wherever necessary.”

The full set of course materials, hundreds of documents and slide shows obtained by ThinkProgress, reveal just how deep Islamophobia ran through the military instruction. The material contained dozens of citations to the work of some of America’s best known anti-Muslim bigots.

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Legislation to ban veil is sweeping Europe like ‘political Swine Flu’, researchers claim

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Banning and criminalising the Muslim face veil tests the very foundations of modern liberal society, warn researchers from Queen Mary, University of London and the University of Sussex.

The paper ‘Reasons to Ban? The Anti-Burqa Movement in Western Europe‘ examines the move to legislate against, and to criminalise face-veiling which has swept across the EU recently.

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Children as young as 10 being groomed in Northern Ireland

Posted on by Bob Pitt

This is the headline to an article in the Belfast Telegraph, which reports that girls in the North of Ireland “are being sexually exploited in the same way as the girls in the notorious Rochdale grooming case, a leading charity has said”. It quotes Jacqui Montgomery-Devlin of Barnardo’s Safe Choices as saying that sexual exploitation is happening in “every town and city across Northern Ireland”.

However, given that Muslims number only 1,943 out of a total population of 1,685,267 in the North, 97% of whom are Christians, I rather doubt that the commentators who saw the religious affiliation of the perpetraors as a central factor in Rochdale will be arguing the same in this case.

MP urges EDL march ban on Bristol’s day of Pride

Posted on by Bob Pitt

English-Defence-LeagueA Bristol MP has written to police and the council urging them to scrap plans to allow a march by right-wing extremists to go ahead on the same day as the city’s Pride march.

The English Defence League (EDL) is allegedly planning on holding a march in Bristol on Saturday, July 14 – the same day as the city’s annual Pride celebrations.

Kerry McCarthy, MP for Bristol East, has said “many LGBT people will feel intimated by the proposed march and people will inevitably stay away from what is suppose to be a family friendly event”.

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California: EDL-supporting Senate candidate claims to defend ‘white Americans’ against threat of Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

San Mateo, CA — In the US Senate primary in California on June 5th, where 23 candidates vie to challenge Senator Dianne Feinstein in November, conservative candidates were recorded on video verbally attacking teachers, Muslims, and minority groups to excite their base at GOP and Tea Party venues.

The video was recorded at a “Get to Know Your Candidates” event hosted by the San Mateo GOP at the American Legion Hall here. Dr. David Levitt, the candidate who recorded the event, reports unmasked homophobia, Islamophobia, and racism in the Republicans’ speeches.

In the video Republican candidate Rabbi Shifren cries, “… I AM an Islamophobe, and everything we need to know about Islam, we learned on 9-11! I believe in peace and justice for everybody – but that’s not why they’re here…. We’re getting sucker-punched because we as white – yes I said it! – as white, Christian Americans are being taught that somehow WE are to blame for all the problems.”

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Rochdale grooming case: Add a few irrelevant facts, stir and let prejudice do the rest

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Spot the odd one out. Jewish politician urged not to insult atheist party leader. Man from all-boys school sends intimate texts to attractive redhead. Straight black man wants same-sex marriage. Pakistani Muslims jailed for sexual assaults on white girls. The first three are ridiculously loaded and leading headlines. The last was a real one.

You may need some assistance here. Labour’s leader Ed Miliband has been advised not to burn his bridges with Nick Clegg in case a Lib-Lab pact is needed after the next election. Our old Etonian Prime Minister has been texting “lots of love” to Rupert Murdoch’s henchwoman Rebekah Brooks. Barack Obama has come out in support of gay marriage.

Nobody nowadays would dream of calling Miliband a “Jewish politician” in that way. So why are the 11 men convicted of sex offences in Rochdale described as “Pakistani Muslims”?

Paul Vallely in the Independent on Sunday, 13 May 2012

Al Jazeera on the US military’s anti-Islam classes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Al Jazeera has obtained exclusive material of a course taught on a US military base implying that Hamas has influenced the US government at the highest levels.

The course is called “Understanding the Threat to America.” And in it are hundreds of slides that claim to link the Muslim Civil Liberties Advocacy Organisation (CAIR) and other American Muslim groups to the Palestinian group Hamas. It was taught to senior military officers at a base in the state of Virginia.

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