The Sheffield Star has an editorial welcoming the 8-month prison sentence given to English Defence League supporter Daniel Parker who chanted racist slogans outside a South Yorkshire mosque.
US school bans ‘Kismet’ after complaints – because it’s about Muslims
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — A western Pennsylvania school district has decided not to stage a Tony Award-winning musical about a Muslim street poet after members of the community complained about the play on the heels of the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
The Tribune Democrat of Johnstown reports Richland School District had planned to stage “Kismet” in February but Superintendent Thomas Fleming says it was scrapped to avoid controversy. Fleming tells the newspaper that sensitivity is understandable in part because one of the hijacked planes crashed in nearby Shanksville.
Music director Scott Miller says the play has no inappropriate content but he and other members of the performing arts committee decided to switch to “Oklahoma!” after hearing complaints.
Associated Press, 20 September 2011
See also CNHI News Service, 20 September 2011
Dudley council committee rejects plan for new mosque as ‘alien feature’
Plans for a mosque and community centre on land in Hall Street, Dudley have been rejected by Dudley Council planners.
Members of the Development Control Committee unanimously refused the application for Dudley Muslim Association to build the mosque. Despite last minute alterations and changes to the design by the applicant, councillors still slammed the multi-million pound proposal, calling it “characterless”, “featureless”, “inappropriate” and an “alien feature”.
However councillors did agree to extend the time limit for the previous application, which means the DMA have a further three years to submit more plans.
Speaking about the decision following the meeting, DMA spokesman, Mushtaq Hussain, said he was “very disappointed” with the outcome. He said the DMA would now need to consider whether they would lodge an appeal against the decision, which he believed would be likely. But he added the architects would also be going back to the drawing board to look at further plans.
Dudley News, 19 September 2011
See also “Mosque plan refused amid wave of protest”, Express & Star, 20 September 2011
And “Plans for new mosque in Dudley rejected by council”, Birmingham Post, 20 September 2011
Update: Needless to say, the English Defence League are chuffed to bits about this further setback for the DMA.
Last year the EDL organised two demonstrations in Dudley against the proposed mosque – one of which ended in a riot, while the other resulted in an attack on a Hindu temple. In between, a rooftop protest at the intended mosque site was staged by two EDL members – UDA supporter Leon McCreery and raving antisemite John “Snowy” Shaw. Only a couple of months ago EDL supporters were posting comments on the EDL Facebook page threatening to bomb the mosque if construction went ahead. So you can see why the EDL are proud of their record.
Two EDL supporters jailed over attack on kebab shop
Two English Defence League protesters “bit off more than they could chew” when they caused a racist scene in a kebab shop. Turkish staff armed themselves with long knives used to carve meat and chased brothers Wayne and Darren Edwards out into the street. Wayne Edwards came off the worst and needed five stitches in a wound to his head.
The 36-year-old former soldier and his brother, 34, were each jailed for 14 months after a judge told them such racist aggression would not be tolerated.
An Orange Order march in Gillingham on the of a match at Gillingham FC had passed peacefully when the brothers and other EDL supporters went into Town Kebab House in the High Street. Judge Philip Statman was shown CCTV film showing the drunk brothers banging on the counter and chanting “EDL”.
Toronto: right-wing alliance tries to drown out supporters of Muslims’ right to school prayers
Tension was running high as two vocal groups, both for and against Muslim prayer service in schools, tried to out-shout each other. Toronto Police officers kept the groups apart and from protesting on the sidewalk outside the Toronto District School Board’s Yonge St. headquarters on Saturday because they didn’t have permits.
“I am here to support the board for letting us pray in school,” said Aayman Karin, 13, one of about 100 Muslim students who pray on certain Fridays in the cafeteria of Valley Park Middle School, on Overlea Blvd. “It is a good thing for us because we don’t have to leave the school.”
Karin said students feel more comfortable praying in school with their classmates. “There is too much fuss being made about this issue,” Karin said. “We have the freedom to do this and we are not doing anything wrong.”
Organizer Chris Andrewsen said the event was in support of the TDSB and brought together students from a number of Toronto schools.
About three metres away, a coalition of protestors demonstrated against religion in schools using a bullhorn to drown out the TDSB supporters. They used the bullhorn to yell about Allah and suicide bombers as the Canadian anthem was played.
“We are here because religion has no place in our schools,” said Ron Banerjee, of Canadian Hindu Advocacy. “We want religion out of all our schools.” His group was joined by the Jewish Defence League Canada, Costas Christian Mission, Evangelical Asian Church, International Christian Voice, and Canadian Egyptian Congress. Rev. Tony Costa, of Costa Christ Mission, accused the TDSB of showing “preferential treatment to Muslims”.
An uproar erupted earlier in the summer when it surfaced that board officials were allowing Valley Park students to hold prayer sessions with an imam in the cafeteria during school hours. School board officials have said they plan to continue the practice despite opposition.
Toronto Sun, 17 September 2011
See also CBC News, 18 September 2011
A second anti-prayer protest against was held on Sunday, organised by the Canadian Secular Alliance, who waved placards with the slogan “Stop faith-based bigotry!” See the Toronto Sun, 18 September 2011
Looks like divisions have emerged within the anti-TDSB campaign. The appalling Muslim Canadian Congress seems to have steered clear of the Saturday protest and supported the secularist demonstration on Sunday instead. Perhaps even the MCC had become embarrassed by its public association with the far-right racist Jewish Defence League. The right-wing coalition that staged the Saturday protest is also having difficulty agreeing a common line, with Banerjee condemning all forms of religion in schools and the Christians demanding greater recognition for their own faith. The JDL, for its part, has no objection to Jewish prayers in schools but wants to deny Muslims the same right.
EDL threatens to return to Tower Hamlets
The English Defence League are now threatening that unless the government agrees to their demands they will return to Tower Hamlets at the end of October to stage a protest outside the East London Mosque. The word “return” is of course used somewhat loosely. Last time they were penned in by the police across the border in the City of London and didn’t even get into the borough of Tower Hamlets.
In an attempt to present a moderate face, the EDL statement features the usual lying denials that the organisation consists of violent anti-Muslim racists. “We are not in any way opposed to all Muslims,” it assures us, “just Islamic extremism.” Indeed, the EDL piously declares that the reason it proposes to demonstrate against the ELM is because the mosque is supposedly run by dangerous radicals, “not because we wish to provoke or upset ordinary, decent Muslims”.
The same day that these laughable claims were published on the EDL’s main website the following post appeared on the EDL’s Facebook page.
And here is a selection of comments posted by EDL supporters in response to this. It consists of the usual vile racist abuse interspersed with the occasional death threat.
Christian Voice and the power of prayer
Christian Voice have announced that that on 1 October they will be holding another public prayer meeting in Newham against the building of a so-called “mega-mosque” by Tablighi Jamaat – a peaceful and non-political movement described by Christian Voice as “a controversial Islamic sect whose followers have been linked to a number of planned and actual terrorist atrocities”.
We are told that “Christian Voice members have been meeting for prayer on the Greenway overlooking the site on the first Saturday of every month without fail since January 2007”.
Back in October that year Christian Voice reported optimistically that “we believe our prayer is having results. It is being felt in the existing mosque, a collection of old industrial buildings, and our prayers for confusion have, we believe, already disrupted the megamosque plans. We have also prayed in support of local councillor Alan Craig, whom the Lord has placed in Newham’s council chamber for just such a time as this.”
Alas, in the 2010 local elections Craig lost his seat on Newham council and earlier this year Tablighi Jamaat won the right to operate their temporary mosque on the Newham site for another two years while they prepare plans for a permanent building. Christian Voice supporters will have to pray a bit harder. Or perhaps it’s just that God isn’t very sympathetic to the prayers of right-wing Christian bigots who whip up hatred against Muslims.
German far right loses out in Berlin state election
Coverage of the Berlin state election has concentrated on the remarkable rise of the Pirate Party, which won 8.5% of the vote and 15 seats in the state parliament. But it also worth taking time to celebrate the disastrous results for parties of the Islamophobic far right, who gained publicity during the election campaign with their provocative political posters but failed to attract the voters.
They didn’t win a single seat in the state parliament and the best any of them did was the 2.2% of the vote gained by the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, a more traditionally neo-Nazi party that did have the advantage of an established organisation and name recognition. Bürgerbewegung pro Deutschland, which is associated with the Austrian Freedom Party, got only 1.2%. And René Stadtkewitz’s Die Freiheit, whose founding conference was attended by Daniel Pipes and whose election campaign enjoyed the public backing of Geert Wilders, got less than 1%.
Pro Deutchland will no doubt take consolation from the fact that their main support lies in Cologne. But given that Stadtkewitz’s own political base was in Berlin, the humiliating wipe-out his party has suffered there surely indicates that it has no political future. A statement on the Freiheit website co-signed by Stadtkewitz tries to remain upbeat, claiming that the disillusioned 40% of the electorate who did not vote can still be won to his party’s Islamophobic, Eurosceptic programme. But Die Freiheit is clearly dead in the water.
As the popularity of Thilo Sarrazin’s notorious book Deutschland schafft sich ab indicates, there is a substantial section of the German people who are receptive to anti-Muslim propaganda. But so far, thankfully, no party of the extreme right in Germany has been able to translate that into significant electoral support.
No room for tolerance
The New York Times condemns a Tea-Party-inspired decision to block the conversion of a disused inn into a mosque in Bridgewater, New Jersey.
France’s burqa ban: women are ‘effectively under house arrest’
An informed article by Angelique Chrisafis on how the veil ban is playing out in France. So far no judge has handed out a fine, and the law will be challenged in the European Court of Human Rights as soon as a fine is imposed. Meanwhile, the ban has led to a rise in physical asaults on women wearing the niqab.