San Diego: right-wing Christian cranks target school pupils with anti-Muslim leaflets

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Defend Christians leaflet

A religious organization’s campaign that focuses on passing out anti-Muslim literature to students is being criticized, but the group’s founder believes he is doing nothing wrong.

The organization Defend Christians has been passing out fliers to students at some local high schools, including Clairemont High School. But some say teenagers should not be the ones receiving the fliers.

Zac Patchett recently saw a flier sitting in his Clairemont home. The two-page paper shows a headline which reads “Ayatollah Khomeini had sex with a 4-year-old girl” and is critical of Islam for its beliefs. Patchett learned someone passed it out to his younger sister, a sophomore at Clairemont High School. When he saw what was on it, he said, “I was just personally offended. It goes against being an American.”

When asked whether the fliers are a form of racism, Gary Cass of Defend Christians said, “This isn’t racist at all. All it’s doing is telling the truth about a group of people that are organized around a religious ideology. It transcends race.”

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Academic study finds ‘striking gap’ between EDL’s official propaganda and violent racism of its members

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Containing Extremism Research Briefing has an interesting summary of an article by two academics from the University of Leicester published in the British Journal of Criminology. The study is based on interviews with three young men involved in the English Defence League. CERB reports:

Consistent with the main public image of the EDL, the involvement of these men as described here consists entirely of contributing to violent disorder. In one case, the interview material presented gives no indication of the sources of the gross and chilling racism which apparently drove his violence. In the other two, however, there is some narrative pointing to why they hate the ‘Paki’ and the ‘Muslim’, terms apparently used interchangeably. For one it is linked to feared violence, as represented by 7/7 and by an attack which this man had apparently been subject to. For the other, the hatred is of what is experienced as the invading and swamping ‘Other’, of those who have created a ‘Jalalabad’ where he lives. For both, taking part in EDL demonstrations and striking young Asian men brings some sense of pride and self-determination.

There is a striking gap between these states of mind and the reasonable tone of much EDL rhetoric on its website.

Lisa Valentine wins settlement: Douglasville courthouse screenings will now be adapted to accommodate religious head coverings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lisa_ValentineDOUGLASVILLE, Ga. — A Muslim woman who was arrested in 2008 after refusing to remove her hijab in a Douglasville courtroom has received a settlement from the city.

The settlement includes changes to the way people wearing religious head coverings are screened when they enter the courthouse, according to Azadeh Shahshahani with the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia.

Lisa Valentine spent several hours in jail in December 2008 after declining to take off her hijab while accompanying her nephew to a traffic hearing in Douglasville Municipal Court. She sued the city in December 2010, saying her free speech rights were violated when she was asked to remove the head covering.

“We are glad that the city of Douglasville has acknowledged that the way that Ms. Valentine was treated was inexcusable and awful,” Shahshahani said. “No one should feel singled out in a court of law simply for observing her faith.”

According to Thursday’s settlement, Douglasville has adopted a special policy that allows people wearing religious head coverings to be screened in a private area by an officer of the same gender.

“I am glad that Douglasville has agreed to formal policies to make sure this never happens to anyone else,” Valentine said after her settlement hearing.

WXIA-TV, 6 October 2011

See also ACLU press release, 6 October 2011

Former employee sues US security agency over anti-Muslim bias

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A former employee is suing one of the government’s most secretive security agencies, alleging he lost his security clearance because his wife attended an Islamic school and worked for a Muslim charity. Mahmoud Hegab filed the discrimination lawsuit this week in federal court in Virginia against the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency at Fort Belvoir.

The Alexandria resident worked at NGA as a budget analyst with a top-secret security clearance. But his clearance was revoked in November after he got married. NGA officials told him they were concerned about his wife’s schooling at the Islamic Saudi Academy, a private school in northern Virginia. Officials also cited her employment with an Islamic relief agency as a reason for revoking the clearance.

Associated Press, 6 October 2011

Bomb alert over Muslim jogging in weight vest

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A shocked student was stopped and searched by armed cops after he was mistaken for a suicide bomber – while out jogging in a WEIGHT VEST.

Stunned Goudarz Karimi, 25, was simply on a mission to get fit when he was forced to remove the 30kg personal training vest so it could be checked for explosives. Officers were called by a concerned member of the public who reported seeing a man wearing what he thought was a bomb suit.

The shocked Iranian was then advised by police to wear his coat over the outfit when using it in the future. He said: “I’m 100 per cent sure that if I was blond with Caucasian skin type nobody would have noticed and said anything about it, but I am of dark skin complexion and from Iran and I’m sure that is related to it.”

Oxford University student Goudarz, who was training in the city at the time, added: “I felt a bit like my rights were violated. The police told me to take my vest off and to go home and I don’t see why I should.”

Sun, 5 October 2011

Stephen Lennon denies links to BNP, claims EDL kicks out racists

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Stephen Lennon with Richard Edmonds
Lennon (left) listens to veteran fascist Richard Edmonds at a Luton BNP meeting in 2007

Claims in an academic report that the English Defence League has “sustained connections to the BNP” have been denied by the group’s leader, Stephen Lennon.

The report, by Dr Matthew Feldman and Dr Paul Jackson at Northampton University’s Radicalism & New Media Research Group, says that the EDL’s leaders and followers have “neo-Nazi methods” and connections to the BNP and other extreme-right groups. The academics also accuse the EDL of “engaging in doublespeak that powerfully questions their claim to be a single-issue, non-racist movement”.

But Stephen Lennon, who was last week convicted of assaulting a man at a rally in Blackburn in April, said he doubted the strength of the academics’ research. “All this academic research has been done on the internet and on Facebook,” he said. “They haven’t spent any time with the EDL, they haven’t come to any demos. If they want to get involved then fine.

“They haven’t got a clue at all. We’re not linked to the BNP. I was a member of the BNP for a year in 2004 but I left when I saw what it was all about. Yes we have members who are ex-BNP but they joined the BNP out of desperation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to say that there aren’t any racists in the EDL but we find out who they are and we kick them out.”

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Muslim superhero comics meet resistance in U.S.

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dan Merica reports on the difficulties faced by Naif Al-Mutawa in getting a TV series based on Islam-inspired comic book THE 99 aired in the United States.

CNN Belief blog, 5 October 2011

Pamela Geller, who has featured prominently in the campaign against THE 99, reports: “CNN, the crescent news network, is shilling for a particularly insidious form of cultural jihad that is targeting our children: comic books featuring Islamic superheroes.”

EDL Angels are not sick?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Angels demoThis Saturday the English Defence League will be holding a demonstration in Downing Street to protest against David Cameron’s attack on the EDL in the House of Commons last month, when he observed that he had described some sections of society as sick and added that “there is none sicker than the EDL”.

In an evident attempt to soften the EDL’s public image as a mob of violent Nazi-saluting racists, Saturday’s protest has been organised by the women’s section, known as Angels, who have been collecting signatures for an online petition headed “EDL Angels are not sick” that they will be handing in at Downing Street. As we have pointed out previously, the flaw in using the EDL’s women members to front the campaign is that the Angels themselves have a well-established record of violence, racism and fascist sympathies.

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