Basra Noor, 23, felt violated after a St. Louis County police officer and jail worker forcibly removed her head scarf, or hijab, after her arrest, and now wants an apology and pledge that it won’t happen to any other Muslim women.
See also CAIR press release, 17 April 2012
Update: See “Muslim’s arrest spurs policy review”, STLtoday.com, 18 April 2012
A man who had been drinking set fire to a woman’s hair and racially abused a passer-by, a court was told. David Lee Matthews, 23, of Windsor Road, Shaw Cross, Dewsbury, caused a disturbance outside Dewsbury Bus Station.
Matthews approached Charlotte Allison, who he knew, and singed her hair with a cigarette lighter. He then hurled racist abuse at an Asian man nearby, Kirklees magistrates were told. Miss Carole Lawford, prosecuting, told how Matthews approached Ms Allison near Heron Foods in South Street and began abusing her.
He then saw Mohammed Imran nearby and shouted racist abuse at him. He chanted the name of the English Defence League and yelled: “I am racist and proud of it.”
Aslak Sira Myhre argues that Norway has failed to learn the political lesson’s from Anders Breivik’s terorist atrocities:
… the debate on Islam and Islamophobia has hardened rather than softened after 22/7. In the aftermath of the killings, some anti-Islamic organisations and websites showed remorse, but that phase passed, and now the venom is even stronger.
Those who insist that Islam poses a threat to Europeans and Norwegians, and claim the past 1,500 years is a story of a never-ending clash between a Christian civilisation and Islamic barbary, are just as insistent as before. Instead of opening a door to decent debate, the terror has cemented divisions. Both rightwing politicians, and anti-islamic webpages sites like document.no has after some months of afterthought return to business as usual. Norwegian newspapers still have to shut down their web debates due to verbal abuse every time an article or comment on Islam or immigration is published.
This the sort of campaign literature the British National Party is putting out for next month’s local elections. The leaflet reproduced above is being circulated in Nelson, Lancashire, where the BNP has two representatives on Pendle Council, one of whom – Adam Grant – is up for re-election. His fellow fascist councillor, Brian Parker, has been in trouble before, in 2008 and 2009, over inciting hatred with anti-Muslim flyers.
The leaflet is illustrated with a photo of the annual Mawlid procession in Nelson and demands whether “a similar procession celebrating a Christian Saint’s day” would be allowed in Saudi Arabia. It seems to have escaped the BNP’s attention that until recently the celebration of Mawlid was itself banned by the Saudi authorities on the grounds that it is heretical. But then ignorance is the bedrock of bigotry, isn’t it?
Abhijit Pandya offers his insights into the controversy over the non-existent plan by London Metropolitan University vice-chancellor Malcolm Gillies to ban the sale of alcohol on campus:
“The promotion of this Islamic non-drinking culture is also contrary to general manner in which friends and social relationships are not only made at University, but also in the workplace and beyond to general life in our country. It is so contrary to the general social habits of our country, that it places Muslim students at risk of not enjoying superior British social habits.”
An attempt to whip up anti-Islamic sentiment by the leader of the English Defence League has spectacularly backfired on Twitter on Monday.
On Sunday night, EDL leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, tweeted a complaint about a picture of a “mosque” on the Twitter front page (it was actually the Taj Mahal), highlighting the image as another example of #creepingsharia.
However, rather than stoke far-right feeling, the Luton-based activist unintentionally started a comedy twitter trend.
Amid traffic about the start of Anders Breivik’s trial in Oslo, the Twitterati hijacked the tag, with #creepingsharia being blamed for everything from “algebra on the curriculum” to “no ham left in the fridge”.
Huffington Post, 16 April 2012
Update: See also “How Twitter users turned the tables on the English Defence League”, Comment is Free, 16 April 2012
The man who carried out bomb and gun attacks in Norway last year which left 77 people dead has pleaded not guilty at the start of his trial in Oslo.
Anders Behring Breivik attacked a youth camp organised by the governing Labour party on the island of Utoeya, after setting off a car bomb in the capital. He told the court he “acknowledged” the acts committed, but said he did not accept criminal responsibility.
If the court decides he is criminally insane, he will be committed to psychiatric care; if he is judged to be mentally stable, he will be jailed. In the latter case, he faces a sentence of 21 years, which could be extended to keep him behind bars for the rest of his life.
Dressed in a dark suit, Breivik smiled as he entered the courtroom and a guard removed his handcuffs. He then gave a closed-fist salute. He later told the lead judge, Wenche Elisabeth Arntzen: “I do not recognise the Norwegian courts. You have received your mandate from political parties which support multiculturalism.”
See also “Norway mass killer bent on turning trial into ‘circus'”,Reuters, 15 April 2012
It’s sometimes easy — too easy — to think, talk or write about the assault on civil liberties in the United States, and related injustices, and conceive of them as abstractions. Two weeks ago, the Editorial Page Editor of The New York Times, Andrew Rosenthal, wrote that ever since the 9/11 attacks, the United States has created “what’s essentially a separate justice system for Muslims.” That should be an extraordinary observation: creating a radically different – and more oppressive – set of rules, laws and punishments for a class of people in the United States based on their religious affiliation is a disgrace of historic proportion. Yet here we have someone occupying one of the most establishment media positions in the country matter-of-factly observing that this is exactly the state of affairs that exists on American soil, and it prompts little notice, let alone protest.
Glenn Greenwald puts some names – Maher Arar, Tariq Ramadan, Sami Al-Arian, James Yee, Gulet Mohamed, Kalifah Al-Akili among them – to the US state’s suppression of Muslim civil liberties.
A man wanted by police in connection with a racist attack on Kingston Mosque has handed himself in to police after a Surrey Comet story.
The man surrendered at Kingston police station just days after this newspaper published a front page appeal for more information on the people police wanted to speak to about the mosque attack.
The man, photographed on a mobile phone holding a long stick in East Road, near the mosque, was bailed to return to the police station at a later date while investigations continue.
With the big-name draw of Walid Shoebat, more than 200 people gathered at the Waukesha Expo Center Saturday night to hear the message that Islam is a growing threat to law and peace in the United States.
The rally was an especially strong draw for Brookfield residents who oppose a mosque proposed for the city by the Islamic Society of Milwaukee.
Shoebat, who says he is an ex-terrorist, has been confronted about his past by media outlets like CNN, who reported they could find no evidence to support his background story. But he stood by his case Saturday, saying the media were the real frauds.
“Heck, sometimes even FOX News doesn’t even like what I have to say, because I say Islam is not a peace-loving religion,” Shoebat told the crowd.