ENGAGE takes up the latest exercise in anti-halal propaganda in the Daily Mail.
See also “Daily Mail whips up ‘no halal at Westminster’ non-controversy”, Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, 3 January 2012
Another Islamophobic rant from Abhijit Pandya
Over at the Mail’s Right Minds blog there is yet another raving anti-Muslim post from former UKIP candidate Abhijit Pandya. David Cameron is denounced for “failing to act” on his notorious Munich conference speech last year denouncing multiculturalism. This has supposedly resulted in a failure to resist forced marriages, honour killings and, in particular, sharia courts.
New York: Molotov cocktails thrown at Islamic centre ‘being investigated as possible hate crime’
Cops are investigating a rash of Molotov cocktail attacks in Queens late Sunday, including one on an Islamic mosque and another that set off a major house fire. Police are handling the four bottle-bombings as possible hate crimes, officials said.
The homemade explosives were hurled at a bodega, the Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Center in Jamaica and two homes between 8 p.m. and 10:15 p.m., cops said. All of the targets were in Jamaica, within two miles of each other, police said. “They definitely appear to be quite similar,” a police source said, “We’re looking into them as bias crimes.”
Obscuring a Muslim name, and an American’s sacrifice
He was buried after the Sept. 11 attacks with full honors from the New York Police Department, and proclaimed a hero by the city’s police commissioner. He is cited by name in the Patriot Act as an example of Muslim-American valor.
And Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, one of two Muslim members of Congress, was brought to tears during a Congressional hearing in March while describing how the man, a Pakistani-American from Queens, had wrongly been suspected of involvement in the attacks, before he was lionized as a young police cadet who had died trying to save lives.
Despite this history, Mohammad Salman Hamdani is nowhere to be found in the long list of fallen first responders at the National September 11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan.
Nor can his name be found among those of victims whose bodies were found in the wreckage of the north tower, where his body was finally discovered in 34 parts.
Murfreesboro Islamic Center has reasons to celebrate
Despite threats, courtroom allegations and even legislation aimed at their faith, the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro still had reason to celebrate in 2011. The congregation launched construction in late September on building the first 12,000 square feet of their new mosque and community center on Veals Road, southeast of Murfreesboro. S&A Constructors of Nashville estimates the work to be done in 10 months.
Getting to the historic moment almost didn’t happen. The congregation had to defend itself in Rutherford County Chancery Court against more than a dozen plaintiffs who challenged the county’s approval of its site plan in 2010 and questioned the real intent, as well as the very religion, behind the new worship center. It took a ruling by Rutherford County Chancellor Robert Corlew III to settle the latter issue.
“Those who are adherents to Islam are entitled to pursue their worship in the United States just as are those who are adherents to more universally established faiths (in our community),” Corlew wrote. “We are all very familiar with the legal principle that in the United States, all citizens enjoy the right to freedom of religion and freedom of speech.
“We have a duty equally to treat those whose religious beliefs are similar to the majority beliefs and to those whose beliefs are very different from the majority,” Corlew added in his ruling.
Anti-Muslim hate site removed after CAIR’s intervention
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced today that an anti-Muslim Internet hate site that contained a number of threats of violence targeting mosques, including the comment “I want [Muslim] blood on my hands,” has been taken down by its hosting company.
CAIR said visitors to “Bare Naked Islam,” hosted by WordPress.com, now see the message: “barenakedislam.wordpress.com is no longer available. This blog has been archived or suspended for a violation of our Terms of Service.”
BFP agrees with Spiked on defence of ‘freedom’
As its contribution to the end-of-the-year lists genre, Spiked has published a piece by Patrick Hayes entitled “The worst 10 assaults on freedom”, which has now been reproduced in its entirety by the EDL-linked British Freedom Party.
The BFP’s support is hardly surprising, given that Number 7 on Hayes’ list of “assaults on freedom” is the use of Crasbos against far-right thugs:
“In March, English Defence League (EDL) member Shane Overton received a Criminal ASBO banning him from attending or helping to organise any demonstration, meeting or gathering held by the EDL, and even from visiting its website for 10 years. Later in 2011, police tried to slap an ASBO on EDL leader Stephen Lennon that would have prevented him from having any involvement with his own organisation.”
It’s worth recalling that Overton, while passing through Doncaster railway station on his way back from an EDL demonstration, racially abused a Muslim family as they were waiting for a train, terrifying their children.
Dutch mosques defaced 117 times in five years
Between 2005 and 2010 mosques in the Netherlands were defaced 117 times, according to research by social researcher Ineke van der Valk. The acts of vandalism were motivated by a hatred of Islam, the researcher is quoted as saying on VPRO radio programme Argos.
In 43 cases, the mosques were daubed with offensive symbols or slogans. In 37 instances, the mosques sustained material damage. In 99 of the incidents the police failed to find any of the culprits. In the United States there were 42 similar incidents during the same period. Most of the vandalised mosques in the Netherlands are located outside the major cities.
Mail and Torygraph defend sacked workers
And that must be a first. However, the two workers in question are Malory Nye, who claims that he was dismissed from his post as principal of an independent college in Dundee “because its hierarchy viewed his race and religion as a threat to its Muslim values”, and his wife Isabel Campbell-Nye, who says she was dismissed as head of the college’s English language centre “because she brought in too many students who were not Muslims or Arabs”.
French women’s groups protest FIFA decision to endorse hijab
Three French women’s organizations have expressed concern and disappointment with world soccer body FIFA’s endorsement of a proposal to lift the ban on women players wearing a hijab, an Islamic hair dress, on the pitch.
“To accept a special dress code for women athletes not only introduces discrimination among athletes but is contrary to the rules governing sport movement, setting a same dress code for all athletes without regard to origin or belief,” the three organizations said in an open letter to FIFA president Sepp Blatter.