Arsonists are believed to have started a fire outside a mosque in Redditch on Tuesday evening (January 24).
Firefighters tackled a small fire at the front door of the building in Jinnah Road at about 10.20pm. No-one was injured and there was no major damage to the building.
Police were also called and said they were treating the incident as arson. An investigation is now underway and officers said the exact circumstances surrounding the fire were not yet known.
Asia’s football chief on Monday urged the game’s top law-making body to lift a controversial ban on headscarves, saying new designs can prevent neck injuries to Muslim women players.
“Many women footballers in Asia wear headscarves,” Asian Football Confederation acting president Zhang Jilong said ahead of a March 3 meeting of the International Football Association Board (IFAB) to review the ruling.
“I would like to request the IFAB to favourably consider FIFA’s proposal and review the rule and allow women players to play wearing a safe headscarf that covers the neck,” Zhang said in a statement. “My colleagues in the AFC Executive Committee strongly support the idea of reviewing the rule and I think it is in the interests of women’s football worldwide.”
New Yorkers have long put up with discriminatory ‘stop-and-frisk’ searches. Now, the NYPD is demonising us as fanatical jihadists, argues Debbie Almontaser.
Comment is Free, 30 January 2012
Update: See also Fahd Ahmed, “Truth behind NYPD anti-Muslim film makes clear Kelly must resign”, Huffington Post, 31 January 2012
Jon Soltz and Richard Allen Smith of VoteVets.org call on the West Point military academy to withdraw its invitation to the rabid anti-Muslim bigot, retired Lt. Gen. William Boykin, to speak at a prayer breakfast there next month.
A racist thug who punched a taxi driver and dragged him along a street, has been jailed for 18 months.
Lee Preston, 22, targeted cabbie Mohammed Rashid, leaving him with two black eyes, a bruised face and grazes to his shoulders caused when he was dragged to the ground.
Mr John Hallisey, prosecuting, said the cabbie received a call at 9pm on April 16 to collect five men from Chaddesden. He noticed they were carrying cans of lager and told them these could not be drunk in his vehicle. But after a few minutes, the men started drinking. “Mr Rashid told them to stop and the response was to start hurling abuse. The defendant was saying ‘we are EDL,’ referring to the English Defence League,” said Mr Hallisey.
Following on from his evidence to the Leveson Inquiry last week on behalf of ENGAGE, Inayat Bunglawala has a piece on the New Statesman‘s blog The Staggers calling for more effective regulation of the press, in light of its continual and intentional misrepresentation of the Muslim community. He concludes:
A Muslim airline pilot who claims his religion cost him his job has told an employment tribunal that his bosses feared he might copy the September 11 attacks.
The Heathrow-based pilot, who cannot be named for legal reasons, worked for a well-known British carrier but was judged a security risk after he was arrested over an alleged terror plot. According to the airline, he was “in a position to divert or sabotage an aircraft”.
Asked by his barrister what he thought this meant, the pilot, who is British, replied tearfully: “I felt they believed I was going to fly planes into buildings. I believe the basis they had for that was my race and religion, because of the actions of other people of a similar race and religion.”
Sheldon Adelson’s Super Pac funding has heavily backed Gingrich – and found him a firm pro-Israel and anti-Muslim ally, argues Arun Kundnani.
Comment is Free, 28 January 2012
See also Sarah Posner, “The Third Jihad, Adelson, and Gingrich”, Religion Dispatches, 27 January 2012
Once the burqa ban passed by the Dutch conservative coalition on Friday is approved by parliament, police will be obliged to enforce it, Security and Justice Minister Yvo Opstelten stresses.
“The minister expects police to enforce the ban in accordance with the law”, Mr Opstelten’s spokesperson emphasised. The statement comes in response to criticism voiced by the National Police Union and the central works council of the national police force that is currently being set up.
The chair of the police works council, Frank Giltay, had said there is no need for a burqa ban, which, he added, is unlikely to have any practical benefits. Burqas, he underlined, do not pose a threat to public security. He criticised the ban as a “symbolic policy”.
Green Left leader Jolande Sap also denounced the intended ban as a symbolic policy. Speaking on radio on Saturday morning, Ms Sap argued that women’s emancipation required different measures, such as education and language courses.
She also slammed the cabinet for going to such lengths to make the burqa ban acceptable by allowing a raft of exceptions, such as wearing balaclavas in winter or donning masks and veils during carnival. “Maybe I’ll wear a burqa for carnival,” the MP joked.
The coalition of the conservative VVD and Christian Democrats had previously agreed with Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam Freedom Party, which backs the minority cabinet on an agreed package of policies, to institute the burqa ban this term.
The cabinet adopted the ban on Friday despite grave reservations expressed by the Council of State, the government’s top advisory body and the country’s highest court, regarding its legality and feasibility.
A couple of days ago Sarah Annes Brown posted a piece on Islamophobia at the terrorism-supporting Zionist blog Harry’s Place which provoked the reaction you would expect from the crowd of bigots and racists who inhabit the comments section of that site.