The Forward has a detailed report by Paul Berger on David Yerushalmi, the man behind the spate of anti-sharia bills in the US and co-author of the study “Shari’a and Violence in American Mosques“.
Lies, damned lies and statistics – misinterpreting the homophobic hate crime figures for Tower Hamlets
In an article published in yesterday’s Guardian, Jack Gilbert of Rainbow Hamlets, the Tower Hamlets LGBT community forum, writes: “In June, we obtained a month-by-month analysis of homophobic crime figures in the borough. It reveals that incidents in Tower Hamlets have risen by a third (33%) between April 2009-March 2010 and April 2010-March 2011, much more than the 21% widely reported in the media.”
The reported 21% rise over that 2009-11 period was based on earlier figures provided by the Metropolitan Police which showed that recorded homophobic crimes in Tower Hamlets had increased from 67 to 81. The Met’s statistics are being continuously revised, and if we look at the latest figures to which Jack Gilbert refers we find that the numbers now show a rise to 81 from 61, which does indeed give an increase of 33%.
However, as you can see, the reason for this higher percentage change is not that the Met’s figure for homophobic crimes in Tower Hamlets during 2010-11 has increased, but rather that the figure for 2009-10 has been revised downwards. Which means that the total figure for homophobic crimes over the period 2009-11 has also been reduced – from 148 to 142. Using these figures to suggest that homophobic crimes in Tower Hamlets are at a higher level than has been reported is disingenuous to say the least.
It would also be interesting to see the 2008-9 figure for comparison, because it seems possible in view of the latest statistics for 2009-10 that the level of recorded homophobic crime in Tower Hamlets might even have fallen over the 2008-10 period, or at least that any increase was lower than previously thought.
The reason why a longer time-frame would be useful in assessing the actual development of homophobic crime levels in Tower Hamlets is that over shorter periods the statistics often show sharp percentage changes for no obvious reason. This becomes clear if you break down the figures for the period from April 2009 to March 2011 into six-month rather than one-year segments.
Between April and September 2009 there were 38 recorded homophobic hate crimes in Tower Hamlets. Over the next six months, October 2009 to March 2010, the figure came down to 23 – a fall of almost 40%. In the following six months, April to September 2010, the figure rose to 46 – an increase of 100%. It then fell to 35 during the six months between October 2010 and March 2011 – a decline of 24%.
It seems highly unlikely that such wild fluctuations reflect the actual rise and fall of homophobia in Tower Hamlets. It’s just that when you are dealing with relatively low figures like these even small numerical changes produce dramatic-looking percentage shifts. Nor do the statistics show that the level of homophobic crime in Tower Hamlets at the end of the two-year period from April 2009 to March 2011 was any higher than at the beginning, as the figure for the final six months is slightly down on that for the first six months (35 as against 38).
The problem is that when people are intent on “proving” that there has been a dangerous increase in homophobia in Tower Hamlets they just interpret the statistics to justify their own prejudices.
The recent notorious Homintern statement denouncing rising homophobia in the borough gave headline prominence to the 21% figure. However, an earlier version of the same statement, published under Andy Tippetts’ name on the National Secular Society website, took the view that there might have been a fall in homophobic crime in Tower Hamlets – but argued that this was because “there are many gay people who have been forced out of the borough, unable to cope with the harassment”. So, according to this reasoning, if there has been an increase in anti-gay crime in Tower Hamlets, that shows a rise in homophobia, and if there has been a fall in anti-gay crime in the borough that shows a rise in homophobia too!
The purpose of exaggerating the level of homophobia in Tower Hamlets is of course to imply that Muslims are primarily responsible for anti-gay hatred in the borough. But the statistics that are available do not bear that out. The only figures I have seen are for violent homophobic crime in Tower Hamlets over the three-year period 2006/7 to 2008/9. These show that 36% of such crimes were committed by people of Bangladeshi heritage, who form 33% of the total population of Tower Hamlets according to the last available census figures. So there is no evidence that Muslims are mainly or disproportionately responsible for homophobic violence in the borough.
Now, it may be that over the past two years there has been a big surge in the proportion of homophobic crimes in Tower Hamlets committed by Muslims. But unless they can produce any evidence that this is the case, LGBT organisations would be advised to avoid giving credence to accusations that have a basis in Islamophobic mythology rather than facts.
And while we’re on the subject of statistics, it would be helpful if those who blame the East London Mosque for the supposed rise in homophobia among local Muslims could provide a figure for the number of speakers who have used the mosque as a platform to preach hostility towards the LGBT community.
In his Guardian article Jack Gilbert argues that the ELM “has accepted it has hosted at least one homophobic speaker, Abdul Karim Hattin, in 2007, whose Spot the Fag lecture was featured on Channel 4’s Dispatches programme”. This lecture was delivered at an event organised by an outside body who had hired a conference room at the London Muslim Centre. And, as Gilbert notes, the ELM’s website now states firmly that “those hate preachers who circumvented our bookings policy in the past are now barred; our vetting procedures for speakers and guests appearing at our mosque and centre have been significantly tightened over the past year”.
The basis on which Islamophobes like the signatories to the Homintern statement justify their charge that the East London Mosque is guilty of “allowing its premises to be used to promote gayhate campaigns” is to compile a list of preachers who have spoken at the mosque over the years, together with homophobic statements these preachers are alleged to have made. But nobody, so far as I’m aware, has claimed that any of these alleged statements, with the sole exception of Abdul Karim Hattin’s 2007 lecture, were actually made at the ELM itself.
In short, the answer to the question of how many speakers have used the East London Mosque as a platform to preach hostility towards the LGBT community would appear to be – one, four years ago, at an event booked by an outside body, and he’s now been banned.
Arson attack on Accrington mosque
Four blazes were started in Accrington today (13 July) in an arson spree which spread to a mosque.
Firefighters tackled the most serious fire at the Faizane Madina Mosque in Richmond Road after flames from a nearby shed containing three gas cylinders spread.
Dozens of firefighters from Great Harwood and Haslingden raced to the scene at just before 3.30am as crews from Accrington Fire Station were busy fighting another arson blaze in Fairfield Street.
The fire began to spread to the place of worship as crews fought to keep the propane gas cylinders cool with jets of water. Crews remained at the scene for more than four hours battling the blaze and the people living closest to the mosque had to be evacuated from their home.
And as firefighters began to breathe a “sigh of relief”, believing they had the situation under control, a mains gas pipe leading to the mosque ruptured. Engineers from the National Grid were called to the area and it was cordoned off immediately as they tried to bring the leak under control. The mosque suffered damage to its wall, roof and windows.
Nabeela Kashif, who lives next door, said she saw black smoke pouring in through her bathroom window. The 40-year-old, who was evacuated with her husband, Kashif, 39, and their five-year-old son, Ibrahim, said: “I woke up after I heard a noise and when I looked out of the window we saw a huge fire. It was a really scary experience and the firefighters told us all to leave the house.”
Update: Expose has a screenshot of EDL members’ responses to the attack.
Belgian veil ban comes into force on 23 July
Belgium will enforce a burqa ban from July 23 with a fine and possible jail time for women who wear it, joining France as the second EU nation to forbid full veils, Belgian media said Thursday.
The new law was published Wednesday in the kingdom’s official journal after deputies approved it unanimously in parliament in April.
Offenders will face a fine of 137.50 euros ($195) and up to seven days behind bars. An estimated 270 people wear the face-covering niqab or the full-body burqa in Belgium.
Gay magazine boosts English Defence League
The July issue of the gay magazine Out in the City includes a feature article on the English Defence League by James Montague, based on his participation in a couple of EDL protests back in November last year. Masquerading as a piece of investigative journalism, Montague’s article is little more than an extended puff piece for a gang of violent anti-Muslim racists.
The article is a rewrite of a piece that first appeared at the end of last year in a publication called Delayed Gratification, under the title “On the march with the English Defence League”. And even though it has been slightly updated – notably with the addition of a reference to the dispute over a planned East End Pride march earlier this year – much of it has been by-passed by subsequent developments. Which raises the question of why Out in the Citydecided to splash this piece of second-hand pro-EDL propaganda across four pages of its current issue.
Perhaps the answer is to be found in the standfirst to the article, which refers to the cancellation of the East End Pride march “amid claims that one of its organisers had links to the English Defence League”. It looks like Out in the City readers are being invited to conclude, on the basis of Montague’s largely favourable report, that the EDL aren’t so bad really and that the opposition to East End Pride because of its organisers’ far-right connections was an overreaction. (It is worth noting that Linda Riley of Square Peg Media, the magazine’s publishers, was a signatory to the notorious Islamophobic Homintern statement that falsely accused the East London Mosque of responsibility for a rise in homophobic attacks in Tower Hamlets.)
Montague’s portrait of the EDL centres on a leader of the organisation’s LGBT division, who is referred to only as Joe (presumably the individual who operates under the name Joe Bloggs and reportedly had a hand in setting up both the LGBT and Jewish divisions). He is allowed to spout his pro-EDL bullshit without challenge. Joe, we are told, “believes that what he sees as the growing Islamification of Britain is the biggest threat that the country’s gay community has ever faced”. Montague doesn’t bother to point out that the “Islamification” of a country in which non-Muslims make up 97% of the population is nothing more than a paranoid racist fantasy. In the section on East End Pride, Joe is provided with a platform to denounce the cancellation of the march and declare that “one of the biggest enemies to warning the gay community about the dangers of Islamic extremism has been the liberal gay community”.
Some of Joe’s claims are so outlandish as to provoke incredulous laughter. “We are standing up for tolerance, diversity and human rights”, Montague reports him as saying. A quick scroll through the endless stream of hate-filled rants and open threats of anti-Muslim violence that fill the EDL’s Facebook page would have shown Montague the absurdity of that claim. (See for example this selection of comments by EDL supporters in response to the TV programme Does Britain have a problem with Muslims?) But the nearest we get to an exposure of the EDL’s endemic racism is a reference to two of its supporters shouting “Pakis” at a group of Asian youths. Montague merely observes: “Occasionally, though, the self-aware political correctness slipped.”
Montague even uncritically repeats Joe’s assertion that fascists have been “weeded out” of the EDL. But it wouldn’t have taken any in-depth research to expose the spurious character of this claim too. In October 2010 Searchlight published a detailed analysis of the far-right background of prominent figures in the EDL. And earlier that year the BNP links of EDL leader “Tommy Robinson” (Stephen Yaxley Lennon) and his cousin, current EDL co-leader Kevin Carroll, had been exposed by Searchlight and Three Counties Unity. Indeed, at the beginning of November 2010, the same month that Montague joined the EDL at its protests in London and Nuneaton, Three Counties Unity posted a photo of Lennon at a BNP meeting in 2007 listening intently to a speech by veteran neo-Nazi Richard Edmonds. Yet Montague chooses to ignore all this.
Montague also provides a sympathetic profile Roberta Moore, the then leader of the EDL’s Jewish division and a friend of Joe’s (in December 2010 the two of them were among a group of EDLers who disrupted a One Society Many Cultures conference in London). Like Joe, Moore is allowed to recite her lies without any critical questioning from Montague. He quotes Moore as saying that the EDL are “fighting against the prejudice against women, Jews, Hindus, gays, anyone. It’s not Islam. We are against Islamists.” This is from a woman who is on record as stating: “We are anti-Islam, as everyone should be. Islam is not a religion, but a cult. It has all the features of a cult, like the religions of Jim Jones and David Koresh.” Needless to say, Montague has no interest in highlighting that discrepancy.
Nor does Montague think it worth mentioning that earlier this year Moore had a public falling out with the EDL leadership over her support for the Jewish Task Force, a far-right Zionist group in the US led by a convicted terrorist. The EDL papered over that difference but just recently the compromise collapsed when Moore resigned from the EDL to take up what appears to be a job offerfrom the SIOA/SIOE “counter-jihadist” alliance headed by Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and Anders Gravers. Moore justified her decision to leave the EDL by claiming that she was opposed to the growing influence within the organisation of the very Nazi elements that her friend Joe had assured Montague were being “weeded out” of the EDL.
One particular individual Moore had in mind was Hel Gower, the head of EDL admin and PA to the EDL leadership. Gower is an admirer of the British First Party, which is the political wing of an openly Nazi groupuscule called the November 9th Society (opinions differ over whether the date is a reference to Kristallnacht, the Bierhalle Putsch, or both). But who is Moore to come over all indignant about her opponents’ associations with neo-Nazism? She herself was a founding committee member and co-chairperson of another far-right groupuscule, the English Nationalist Alliance, which the EDL leadership proscribed earlier this year on the grounds that ENA chairperson Bill Baker has “links with Nazi groups like Combat 18 and Redwatch”.
Moore hasn’t just fallen out with the EDL leadership but with her friend “Joe Bloggs”, who sided with the leadership in the split. He has complained that he was denounced by a leading supporter of Moore in the EDL Jewish division as a “retarded, dhimmi, kapo, Nazi turd”, adding that “it is that type of insane response that leads others to be hostile to the Jewish Division”. So the picture painted by Montague of an EDL based on a stern rejection of fascism and featuring a cosy relationship between its LGBT and Jewish divisions rather falls apart, doesn’t it? The Jewish division now claims that the EDL has been taken over by Nazis and denounces the founder of the LGBT division in the most vitriolic terms, while the latter accuses the Jewish division of insanity.
Hopefully this will encourage the LGBT community to treat Montague’s disgraceful apologia for the EDL, along with the editorial team who decided to publish it in Out in the City, with the contempt they both deserve.
Muslims boycott Glasgow Airport over racial profiling
Glasgow’s Muslims are boycotting the city’s main airport and choosing to fly from Manchester because of perceived harassment from counter-terrorism officers, it was claimed last night.
The allegations were made at a public meeting called to discuss concerns held by parts of the Asian community that powers held by police, ports and immigration officials to question travellers at travel hubs were abused, with travellers singled out solely on the basis of their race or skin colour.
Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill told around 70 people at Pollokshields Burgh Hall in Glasgow that Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 was a necessary tool in fighting global terrorism. He admitted there had been occasions when the powers had been used inappropriately, but said it was not deliberately used to target people because of their ethnicity.
But lawyer Aamer Anwar said some Muslims had become so disillusioned at the way they were treated at Glasgow Airport they decided to take their business south of the Border. He said he would challenge police to deliver statistics on how much counter-terrorism intelligence had been delivered as a result of questioning travellers at the airport.
He said: “The questions are offensive, rude and intimidating in the way they are carried out. The police may like to claim they are collecting intelligence and they are like James Bond but I think they are coming across more like Austin Powers.” Mr Anwar said one Afghan man living in Glasgow returned from a trip home to be asked by officers if he knew Osama Bin Laden or had ever visited the Tora Bora mountains, where the al Qaeda leader hid out.
He added: “It seems as if there is racial profiling going on at Glasgow Airport and what the people from the community are doing is using Manchester Airport and other airports to fly out. Everything is not fine at Glasgow Airport. People do not accept the way they are being treated. They are not terrorists and they expect to be able to go about their business.”
Via ENGAGE
See also The Scotsman, 13 July 2011
Police appeal for photographic evidence of EDL violence in Halifax
Police are asking the public for their pictures and video of violence that erupted when the English Defence League descended on Halifax at the weekend.
Divisional commander for Calderdale Chief Superintendent Chris Hardern says they are investigating a clash between some of the far-right group and counter-demonstrators at King Cross and the break-out of EDL members from the Eureka car park. He urged residents who saw what happened, have footage or photographs, or who witnessed any other trouble, to get in touch.
Calderdale councillor Faisal Shoukat (Lab, Park) says he was assaulted after EDL supporters turned up at the counter-demonstration. He said he was speaking to organisers of the counter-protest as they were setting up when EDL supporters turned up and started damaging the gazebo and speakers.
“They started shouting racist abuse and opening up a banner with racist remarks on it and they chanted ‘EDL’,” he said. He suffered bruising to the back of his head and kidney area. He said one of the EDL members was filming the incident.
The EDL had been told they could hold their protest in the Eureka car park, and the museum shut for the day because of the demonstration, but some of the group came intent on marching on the town’s streets. Coaches are believed to have let some off in Sowerby Bridge, from where some marched into Halifax and others took buses into King Cross and the park opposite the William IV pub where the counter-demo was planned.
Police marched the protesters into the Eureka car park where the mob hurled glass bottles at police, shouted anti-Islamic chants and “Let’s go mental” before breaking fencing to get out of the car park and onto the Eureka grounds. Officers donned riot gear and escorted the EDL supporters to coaches and the rail station and out of Halifax.
Anyone who can help the police should call 0845 6060606 or CrimeStoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555111.
Russian neo-Nazis who murdered Muslims jailed for life
A court in Moscow has sentenced five members of a neo-Nazi gang to life in prison for the racially motivated murders of 27 people. Several other members of the outlawed Nationalist Socialist Society were also found guilty – including one woman – and given jail terms of up to 23 years.
The gang targeted Muslims and dark-skinned migrants during 2007-8.
The defendants in the dock joked with each other, taunted the judge and attempted Nazi salutes in handcuffs. As the verdict was read out, they shouted: “Our conscience is above your laws, we’ll be back”, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported.
The 18-month trial heard that the gang had hunted down people in Moscow who were or appeared to be from central and south-east Asia, Africa or the Caucasus region, and brutally attacked them. Ringleader Lev Molotkov, who pleaded not guilty, was described by presiding judge Nikolai Tkachuk as “an extraordinary danger to Russian society”.
In total, 12 people were found guilty of murder, inciting racial hatred, attempting terrorism and participating in extremism. At least one attack was filmed and posted on the internet. Molotkov and four others were sentenced to life, while a young woman, Vasilisa Kovolyova, was among those jailed for for between 10 and 23 years.
EDL could target Ely over Muslim community centre plan
The English Defence League (EDL) could target Ely following its march in Cambridge. Muslims want to build a “miniature mosque” at Paradise Centre fields, but the EDL could take to Ely’s streets against it.
Arbury resident Ross Ground, 32, a member of EDL’s Cambridge Division, said: “I cannot confirm there will be a march in Ely but members of the East Anglian branch who came on Saturday said they were looking into it if the plans for a mosque go ahead.”
The management committee of the Ely centre told the city’s Muslims it would lease them part of its land if they gained planning permission. The group has around 50 members who gather inside the centre on Fridays.
Mohammed Tahir, from Ely, said: “The EDL have threatened to march in Ely if the Muslim community of Ely go ahead with plans to build a mosque here.”
See also Ely Weekly News, 16 February 2011
Cf. the comments at Ely Online, 26 February 2011
Community support for Blackpool mosque
A community turned out in force to show their support for a mosque which has become the subject of an English Defence League campaign.
Members of the Noor-A-Madina mosque on Waterloo Road were joined by the North West branch of United Against Fascism, the Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre Trade Union Council and Blackpool Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT).
All of the people present were there to show defiance to the EDL, a group which one UAF member claims is “trying to whip up racism”.