The Daily Mail has a report on the police figures for “honour-based” violence released by the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation.
Some way down the article, a Metropolitan Police spokesperson is quoted as saying: “Honour-based violence cuts across all cultures, nationalities and faith groups – it is a worldwide problem.”
A French minister said there was no such thing as moderate Islam, calling recent election successes by Islamic parties in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia “worrying” in an interview published Saturday.
Jeannette Bougrab, a junior minister with responsibility for youth, told Le Parisien newspaper that legislation based on Islamic sharia law “inevitably” imposed restrictions on rights and freedoms.
The English Defence League’s North East regional organiser Alan Spence has been jailed for his part in an attack on a socialist meeting, along with several of his racist and fascist cohorts.
Spence is a leading figure in the EDL – and a key link between the EDL and the British National Party: he stood as a parliamentary candidate for the BNP at the general election.
He was sent down for seven months today, following the attack at the Tyneside Irish Centre, where the Socialist Workers Party was holding a meeting last September.
A Muslim woman was spat at and abused by a gang of six teenagers in Telford who pulled off her religious headdress in a racially motivated attack.
The gang, who were all male, surrounded the 52-year-old woman and started aggressively pushing and shoving her as she walked along a footpath by the skate park near William Reynolds Infant School in Woodside on Tuesday. Chris Ammonds, spokesman for Telford police, said the woman was abused between 6pm and 6.20pm.
Muslims are being urged to report hate crimes under a special disaster plan to deal with the fallout from terrorist attacks. Under the Muslim Emergency Management Plan, backed by the state and federal governments, Victorians will be given advice on how to react to anti-Muslim incidents, even if they are considered minor.
Muslim victims of abuse are encouraged to save evidence, take photos and report any incident to police and their local mosque or Islamic organisation. And in another initiative, Victoria Police is introducing new strategy to deal with violence and threats motivated by prejudice.
It comes amid growing concern over inter-racial tensions in Melbourne’s suburbs and against the backdrop of fears of further terrorist attacks that could strain relations further.
Police are being asked to develop databases on crime motivated by race or religion, so that offenders can be prosecuted. The “prejudice-motivated crime strategy” focuses on crimes linked to race, religion, sex, age, disability or homelessness.
Muslims told the Herald Sun they faced increasing abuse on the streets because of their religion. “A lot of women get yelled at and told ‘Go home’, or ‘There’s no place for you here’, especially women wearing the burqa,” a Muslim source said. “It happens in shopping centres, at the park or just when you are walking along in the street.”
Police investigating offences committed during an English Defence League demonstration in Halifax have arrested a 50-year-old man. The suspect, from Bolton, has since been bailed, pending further inquiries.
The arrest was made after officers trawled through hours of CCTV footage from earlier this year when the EDL protested in the town. As a result of their work, nine men were identified as wanted over public order offences, with officers believing they could be living in West and South Yorkshire, the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and Merseyside.
Tad Tietze, co-editor of the recently-published collection of essays On Utøya: Anders Breivik, Right Terror, Racism and Europe, has posted an excellent piece in response to the news that two court-appointed psychiatrists have found Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik to be legally insane and unfit to stand trial.
See also Simon Baron-Cohen, “Anders Breivik: cold and calculating, yes – but insane?”, Guardian, 2 December 2011
Cf. Bob Lambert, “Was Anders Breivik a psychotic spree killer or a calculating terrorist?”, RUSI, 29 July 2011
A Grimsby bakery – found to have discriminated against a headscarf-wearing Muslim woman on religious grounds – is asking top judges to block a similar case being brought by her husband.
Country Style Foods Limited was ordered to pay Latvian-born Anastasija Bouzir about £7,000 in compensation following an employment tribunal’s ruling that it failed to offer her a job at its bread factory in Wickham Road, after she wore a Muslim headscarf to her interview.
The FBI is using its extensive community outreach to Muslims and other groups to secretly gather intelligence in violation of federal law, the American Civil Liberties Union alleged Thursday.
Citing internal bureau documents, the ACLU said agents in California are attending meetings at mosques and other events and illegally recording information about the attendees’ political and religious affiliations.
Washington Post, 1 December 2011
See also ACLU press release, 1 December 2011
And “Big Brother, come clean: The FBI is misusing “community outreach” programs for intelligence gathering”, ACLU Blog of Rights, 1 December 2011
Also “CAIR concerned about FBI’s use of ‘outreach’ to spy on Muslims”, CAIR press release, 1 December 2011
We have already reported that Nick Griffin has been boasting about his role in assisting the successful campaign against a planning application by the Noor-A-Madina Mosque in Blackpool. It seems that the BNP is not alone in claiming credit for the council planning committee’s decision.
Another far-right organisation, the Law and Freedom Foundation (aka “Mosquebusters”), says that the “professional help” it gave to those objecting to the mosque was decisive in securing the rejection of the application. Not that this necessarily contradicts the BNP’s claim to have been centrally involved, as the Law and Freedom Foundation is enthusiastically supported by Nick Griffin himself.