True Finns’ MP convicted of inciting racial hatred

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An MP from the populist right-wing Finns Party, James Hirvisaari, has been convicted for inciting hatred against an ethnic group by the Kouvola Court of Appeal.

The court ruled that Hirvisaari had published a text in his blog on the Uusi Suomi website that incited hatred against a religious, ethnic or similar group. The court said that Hirvisaari understood that the text was slanderous and likely to cause contempt and hatred towards Muslims. Hirvisaari will now have to pay 25 day-fines, which according to his income amounts to 1,425 euros.

Päijät-Häme district court threw out the charges around a year ago, saying that the text Hirvisaari published simply exercised his freedom of speech.

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Hind Ahmas faces prison sentence for refusing to remove veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hind Ahmas and Kenza DriderA 32-year-old woman, Hind Ahmas, has been sentenced to 15 days of “citizenship service” after she was caught wearing a full-face veil in public and refused to remove it.

Hind Ahmas says she will not obey the court’s ruling and refuses to remove her veil. She risks a two-year prison sentence and a €30,000 fine, if she does not perform her citizenship service, which includes classes on French Republican values, Le Figaro reports.

Ahmas heard her sentence on the pavement in front of the courthouse in Paris because she refused to remove her veil to face the judges.

Her lawyer Gilles Devers says Ahmas is going to appeal and said that the French ban on the veil was illegal, AFP reports. The judge however insists her lawyer cannot appeal her decision because it is not a fine.

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The problem with Gingrich’s simplistic attack on sharia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The epochs of Newt Gingrich’s public life are defined by the books that have revolutionized him – generally of the type that sell well at airports. There is Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy, Alvin Toffler’s “The Third Wave,” Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich,” Stephen Covey’s “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” and various foundational texts of Total Quality Management and Lean Six Sigma.

These idea crushes are mostly harmless. Sometimes they are not. Gingrich has recently been captured by the theory, developed in books such as Andrew C. McCarthy’s “The Grand Jihad“, that sharia law is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and the world as we know it.

Michael Gerson in the Washington Post, 13 December 2011

See also Eli Clifton, “The dangers of Gingrich’s war against Islam”,Think Progress, 13 December 2011

And “Read this before you support Gingrich (the bigot)”, Craig Considine’s blog, 11 December 2011

Canada: face veils banned for citizenship oaths

Posted on by Bob Pitt

LEBANON MPSThe government is placing a ban on face coverings such as niqabs for people swearing their oath of citizenship, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Monday. The ban takes effect immediately.

As a result, Muslim women will have to remove their niqabs or any other face-covering garments, such as burkas, before they can recite the oath of citizenship to become Canadians. Citizenship judges will be directed to enforce the rules at ceremonies over which they preside.

It’s a “public declaration that you are joining the Canadian family and it must be taken freely and openly,” he said, calling it “frankly, bizarre” that women were allowed to wear face veils while they swear their citizenship oaths.

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Daily Mail’s bigoted and inaccurate reporting provokes more right-wing anti-Muslim hysteria

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Over the past week we have seen a wave of right-wing hysteria over the case of Rhea Page, a white woman from Leicester who was assaulted by four women of Somali heritage – or a “Muslim gang”, as they are invariably described.

The version of events that has gained currency on the racist right is that the women subjected Page to a “savage beating” while screaming “kill the white slag” but escaped a prison sentence because the judge accepted the defence’s argument in mitigation that the accused were Muslims who weren’t used to drinking alcohol. The case has been presented as an example of double standards in the British legal system, which supposedly discriminates against the white majority population and in favour of Muslims and other minorities.

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Netanyahu backs law to ban loudspeakers at mosques

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday voiced support for a law that would ban mosques from using loudspeaker systems to call people to prayer. The so-called Muezzin Law, proposed by MK Anastassia Michaeli (Yisrael Beiteinu) applies to all houses of worship but the practice is prevalent only in mosques. “There’s no need to be more liberal than Europe,” Netanyahu said in reference to the law during a meeting of his Likud ministers.

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Mosque protest leaflet ‘is trying to whip up hysteria’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cambridge mosque designA campaign against a mosque planned for Cambridge has claimed its dome is deliberately designed to “dominate” the skyline.

Homes have been leafleted by opponents of the Mill Road Islamic centre – leading some residents to claim the leaflet is whipping up antagonism against the city’s Muslim community. The anonymous publication brands the centre a “megamosque” and claims it will cause massive traffic congestion, late-night noise and disturbance to residents.

It also says the mosque’s dome will “overshadow” nearby homes because it is “twice the height of neighbouring houses”. The leaflet claims the building is “intended to overbear its surroundings and to send a message of physical and numerical dominance”. The flyer asks: “Does Cambridge need a megamosque?”

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Posted in UK

Sharia law already devouring UK (it says here)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

PJ Media has posted a truly crazed comment piece by Paul Diamond. A British barrister who specialises in representing fellow fundamentalist Christians claiming to have been victims of discrimination, Diamond was a featured speaker at the Preserving Freedom Conference in Nashville last month, where he announced that the UK group Christian Concern would be linking up with the Tennessee Freedom Coalition.

It is worth reading his PJ Media article if you want an insight into the mindset of the most extreme elements within the evangelical Christian right. Some sample quotes:

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