Bigots oppose Blackpool mosque – but they’re only concerned about parking problems, honest

Blackpool anti-mosque petitionA petition with 3,000 signatures has been handed over to council bosses as residents stepped up their protest against an “illegal” mosque.

Business owners on Waterloo Road, South Shore, believe the Noor A Madina Mosque is operating illegally as it was opened before planning permission was granted. Owners of the site, which was formerly a takeaway, have since applied for retrospective planning permission to change the use of the site. But local people think the mosque will cause huge problems with parking around the area.

Mike Rowe, landlord of the Waterloo pub, handed the petition in to Blackpool Town Hall yesterday. He said: “Local people feel very strongly about the mosque. We believe it is operating illegally and would like to see it closed down. There are also huge concerns about parking, it’s very busy already and we think the extra traffic will affect health and safety. Waterloo Road is a commercial area so it should be commercial properties which are being developed there.”

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US Islamophobes launch campaign to paint ‘Islamist’ Turkey as part of ‘enemy camp’

With deteriorating relations between Turkey and Israel, some of Israel’s staunchest backers in the U.S. have seized on the diplomatic crisis to push for the U.S. to abandon its partnership with Turkey – including kicking the strategically-located Eurasian country out of the NATO alliance. The campaign, spearheaded by neoconservatives, ramped up this week with attacks demonizing Turkey from several Islamophobic commentators. Over the past few weeks, these Islamophobes have been accusing Turkey of trying to create an Islamist empire, one that would put Turkey at odds with the West and make it an enemy of the U.S.

Think Progress, 30 September 2011

Judge backs schools in suit over ‘Islam is of the Devil’ shirts

Islam is of the Devil court rulingThe Alachua County School Board did not violate the free-speech rights of members of Dove World Outreach Center when students from the church were sent home from school for wearing T-shirts bearing the words “Islam is of the Devil,” a district court judge ruled Friday.

Senior District Judge Stephan Mickle wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently held that the First Amendment rights of students while they’re in school are not as broad as the rights of people in public forums.

Mickle wrote that school policies to prohibit clothing that can cause disruptions are not a violation of constitutional rights.

“‘Islam is of the Devil’ presents a highly confrontational message. It is akin to saying that the religion of Islam is evil and that all of its followers will go to hell,” Mickle wrote. “The message is not conducive to civil discourse on religious issues; nor is it appropriate for school generally.”

Gainesville Sun, 30 September 2011

Swedish anti-racist magazine releases report on anti-Muslim hatred

Den Antimuslimska MiljönExpo Research has released a study of the anti-Muslim milieu. The report shows how several Swedish websites incite violence against Muslims.

After the terrorist attacks in Norway on 22 July, awareness of the anti-Muslim milieu increased. Expo Research’s study analyses how hatred of Muslims is spreading.

Among other things, the report shows that violent comments and posts are a regular feature of the anti-Muslim blogosphere.

A comment on one of Swedish Democrat MP Kenth Ekeroth’s blog posts about Islamisation and multiculturalism draws the following conclusion:

“the only obvious consequence of these trends with immigrants is the long-term use of lethal force against all immigrants especially Mohammedans, or civil war between the old Nordic people and the new immigrants, it is not a question of if but when.”

The new study describes the influential sections of the international anti-Muslim milieu, and the key concepts and texts and comments in the Swedish blogosphere.

The report was prepared by Research Expo, part of Expo Foundation. Expo Research collects and analyses information about racist groups, networks and phenomena.

Among other things, Expo Research is responsible for Expo’s archives, which contain Scandinavia’s largest collection of right-wing propaganda, and publishes a regular report on the white power movement.

The report can be downloaded here

Expo, 25 September 2011

Cambridgeshire: residents ‘sickened’ by proposal to build small mosque in their village

Furious residents are accusing former council leader Fred Brown of trying to seek “petty revenge” after being voted out in the last election. People in Littleport say they are “sickened” that Mr Brown, former leader of East Cambridgeshire District Council, wants to create a miniature mosque in the village.

Mr Brown, who lives in Littleport and owns several properties in the village, says he has a property which would be “ideal” for Ely Muslims to convert into a prayer centre. Mr Brown, who lost his seat during the elections in May, said he wants to meet up with the group.

But David Leuty, of The Holmes, Littleport, said: “The only reason he is even remotely considering helping these people is to stick two fingers up to everyone who was determined not to see him re-elected. I hope the Ely Muslims have enough sense to ignore his help. I feel sickened by it.”

Janice Hunter, of Main Street, said: “We don’t want a mosque here in Littleport, the same as the residents of Ely don’t. Fred Brown is simply trying to seek petty revenge on us all.”

Ely Weekly News, 30 September 2011

Posted in UK

Understanding the EDL

This article is crossposted from Socialist Unity

When far right groups try to downplay their reputation for violent extremism and present a more respectable face to the public they always have a credibility problem. Claims that an organisation is merely expressing the concerns of ordinary patriotic British citizens are rather undermined when there is clear evidence that the organisation’s leadership and a large section of its membership consist of hooligans, racists and neo-Nazis.

Nick Griffin’s “modernisation” strategy for the British National Party repeatedly ran up against this obstacle and the English Defence League faces the same difficulty. In the EDL’s case the challenge of acquiring a cover of respectability is possibly even greater, as its leaders have rejected Griffin’s “suits not boots” approach in favour of a revival of the aggressive “march and grow” street politics of the ’70s National Front. As a result, the picture of the EDL lodged in popular consciousness is of a mob of lager-fuelled louts swaggering down the road chanting “Allah is a paedo” while throwing the occasional Nazi salute. Still, that hasn’t prevented the EDL from making a bid for political legitimacy.

One of the stunts the EDL is currently preparing is a march to parliament on 8 October under the slogan “Sick? Explain Why Mr Cameron?”. This is in protest at the prime minister’s condemnation of the EDL in the House of Commons last month, when he stated that “I have described some parts of our society as sick, and there is none sicker than the EDL”. The EDL’s response was to demand indignantly of Cameron: “Have you read our Mission Statement lately? We suspect not. No sane person could say it is sick to oppose terrorism, sexism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism whilst standing for integration and equality.”

No doubt reasoning that it wouldn’t exactly strengthen their claim to be pursuing this progressive agenda if they turned up at Westminster on 8 October with the usual gang of drunken football hooligans shouting racist abuse, the leadership has decided that the demonstration will be organised by the EDL’s women members, known bizarrely as “Angels”, who are collecting names for a petition (“EDL Angels are not sick”) that they intend to hand in at Downing Street.

But the EDL’s attempt cultivate a more moderate public image by placing women at the forefront of its campaign against Cameron is hardly assisted when the first name to appear on the petition is that of Hel Gower, PA to the EDL’s leaders and head of its admin team. In addition to holding the view that “Muslims are total scum bags” Gower is well known for her fascist sympathies, having declared her political support both for the BNP and for an openly Nazi groupuscule called the British First Party. And the record of other “Angels” is no better.

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Express website carries call for murder of Muslims

Sometimes the most obnoxious aspect of the coverage of Islamic issues by right-wing newspapers is the sickening online comments their articles provoke. Two days ago the Express published a short report on the Swiss parliamentary vote in favour of banning the veil. The one comment it has so far attracted openly calls for Muslims to be killed. Despite the comment being reported, the admins at the Express website evidently have no interest in removing it.

Express comment on Swiss veil ban

Publisher of ‘pro-Islam’ school textbook receives threats

Police are looking into a series of online threats made against a Georgia textbook publisher after a parent complained that one of the books promoted Islam and polygamy.

The controversy began last week when Hal Medlin, the parent of a student at Campbell Middle School in Cobb County, Georgia, complained to the school about an assignment that he said “slanted positively” toward Islam.

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the part of the assignment in question was called the “letter from Ahlima”: “The assignment by a teacher at Campbell Middle School, which asked students to write on the issue of dress codes, included a fictional two-page letter ostensibly written by a 20-year-old Saudi Arabian woman. In it, the character writes approvingly of wearing the Islamic veil – and of her fiance’s multiple wives and the law of Sharia.”

The letter is part of a unit in the textbook devoted to the Middle East, and according to the AJC is paired with a letter from an Israeli woman discussing her own life.

The story was picked up by anti-Islam blogger Pamela Geller, which she called “grotesque”. “Misogyny, homicide bombing, Jew hatred, packaged in multi-culti tolerance of Islam, is being spoon fed to our young,” Geller wrote.

And the publisher, InspirEd Educators, complained that a number of other bloggers made “terroristic threats” and that it has “received what the police have classified as hate email and phone calls, and the company and its staff have been threatened and discussed with threatening language on various websites and blogs.”

Local police say they are investigating the threats, which include one blogger’s comment that “there will be a blood bath,” according to WSB-TV.

An official for the publisher defended the lesson: “It’s important for kids to have some empathy for other people in the world. Some people think we’re trying to teach their children to be Muslims, and that could not be more ridiculous.”

TPM, 29 September 2011

Countering Al-Qaeda in London: City Circle book launch and discussion

Countering Al-Qaeda in LondonCountering Al-Qaeda in London: Police & Muslim Communities in Partnership (book launch and discussion)

Speaker: Robert Lambert

Friday 30 September, 6:45pm, at Abrar House, 45 Crawford Place, London W1H 4LP

Since the events of 9/11, the destruction of Al Qaeda became the main target of military, ideological and political efforts by numerous states and groups. However, little is known of the hard work at the grassroots level to counter its ideas and practices.

In this talk, the speaker presents an inside account of two pioneering projects in London where Muslim community groups worked in partnership with police to reduce the influence of Al Qaeda-inspired terrorism. One project empowered London Muslims to remove Abu Hamza and his violent hard-core supporters from Finsbury Park Mosque, while the other project bolstered long-term efforts by London Muslims in Brixton to challenge and reduce the influence of Al Qaeda inspired violent extremists including Abu Qatada and Abdullah el-Faisal.

The speaker will discuss how the two projects serve as exemplars for future community-based counter-terrorism projects that recognise that the hand of central government can often be counter-productive when countering the influence of Al Qaeda: not least when the UK is waging war in Muslim countries.

Robert Lambert is an academic with a police career in counter-terrorism. In the aftermath of 9/11 he established the Muslim Contact Unit to work empathetically and in partnership with London Muslims. For the bulk of his police service (1977-2007) Lambert worked in counter-terrorism. In June 2008 he was awarded an MBE for his police service.

Free entrance. All welcome.

For more information please contact Sid (sid@thecitycircle.com or 07786212486)

Posted in UK