The sharia myth sweeps America

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“If you are not vitally concerned about the possibility of radical Muslims infiltrating the U.S. government and establishing a Taliban-style theocracy, then you are not a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination. In addition to talking about tax policy and Afghanistan, Republican candidates have also felt the need to speak out against the menace of ‘sharia’.”

Amy Sullivan in USA Today, 12 June 2011

Update:  See also  “Muslim coalition asks GOP debaters to reject Islamophobia”, CAIR press release, 13 June 2011

And “Republicans debate Muslim loyalty tests and Sharia courts on CNN”, Mediaite, 13 June 2011

Bulgaria: chief mufti says state has failed to act against Islamophobic violence, calls on Muslims to organise self-defence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Volen Siderov, leader of Bulgaria's nationalist party "Attack", attends protest in front of Banya Bashi Mosque in central Sofia
Ataka leader Volen Siderov heads the protest against Sofia mosque on 20 May

Part of the Bulgarian society is plagued with Islamophobia, the Bulgarian Chief Mufti’s Office has declared in a special statement urging the Bulgarian Muslims to take measures to defend themselves against attacks.

Monday’s statement of the Chief Mufti’s Office comes a day after on Sunday the warden of the main mosque in downtown Sofia suffered a brutal assault at the hands of unidentified attackers just minutes before the start of the morning prayer on Sunday.

In it, the Chief Mufti’s Office refers to the incident of May 20, 2011, when extremists from the nationalist and far-right party Ataka assaulted praying Muslims outside the Sofia Mosque Banya Bashi when an Ataka rally against the loudspeakers of the mosque got out of hand.

The Chief Mufti’s Office, however, complains that numerous similar incidents have followed ever since, and that the Bulgarian state institutions have failed to protect the Muslims in Bulgaria and their temples.

“After this next case of violence against a Muslim and the desecration of a mosque, the Bulgarian Muslim community has received a clear message that the state is either unable to protect us, or doesn’t want to do that, which leaves us in a very hard situation as citizens of the EU who were still hoping that there are sufficiently good democratic mechanisms for preventing repressions against us,” reads the statement of the religious leadership of the Bulgarian Muslims.

“Unfortunately, our hope turned out to be illusionary, our expectations were not met, and we are now aware that we have to provide for our own security and rights. Nnumerous cases, some of them rather shocking, in the recent years lead us to assume that Muslims are unwanted in this country, and that pressure against us will continue… [They] show that part of the Bulgarian society is hostile and aggressive against Islam, Islamic values, and the Muslim community,” the Chief Mufti’s Office says stressing that the above-described incidents should not be treated as hooliganism or criminal acts “but as a common strategy and intolerance against the Muslims, which could probably lead to more large-scale operations.”

“This kind of islamophobia and pressure expressed as threats, insults, restricting religious rights, and physical violence should be treated as an attempt to instigate inter-religious conflicts, a civil war, and a threat to the national security,” the Chief Mufti’s Office declares.

The statement further explains that even though after the attack on the Banya Bashi mosque on May 20, 2011, the Bulgarian Muslims “received the support of the politicians, the intelligentsia, and part of the society”, similar incidents have continued to occur.

The Chief Mufti’s Office says that on May 30, 2011, it alerted Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov about several more cases of physical assaults on praying Muslims but that it did not see any reaction from human rights organizations, the government, the civil society, the political parties.

“Why? Probably because we are now used to such incidents and because some circles acquiesce to the violence against us?.. The National Assembly of the Republic of Bulgaria adopted a declaration stating that the Muslims do not need to defend themselves because the authorities can do that. It turns out that this is not really true, and it is an attempt to put out the problem, to win time, and to blunt our feelings,” says the office of the Bulgarian Chief Mufti.

It further calls upon the Muslims in the country to organize day and night guards as volunteers “in order to protect what the state fails to protect – the honor and dignity of Islam and Muslims.”

“These steps are the beginning of a self-protection campaign. We are going to inform you of your next steps depending on the development of the problems and the desires of the community. In conclusion, we turn to our state leaders, institutions, and authorities, to all evil-minded people, to all Islamophobes, to all attackers – do you think that we love Bulgaria less than you?”, concludes the Chief Mufti’s Office.

Novinite, 13 June 2011

EDL animals object to being treated like animals

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The leader of the far-right English Defence League has vowed to stage a large national protest in Dewsbury after complaining that supporters were treated like “caged animals” at a demonstration in the town on Saturday.

A protest by 400 EDL supporters passed off without serious incident but leader Tommy Robinson was angered that the protesters were contained within high steel barriers. He said the EDL should have been allowed to protest at Dewsbury Town Hall, rather than a tightly cordoned area of the railway station car park.

Mr Robinson said Saturday’s protest was a regional demonstration but the next one in would be national and “the EDL bandwagon will be coming back to Dewsbury in our thousands”.

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Harry’s Place applauds LSE for offering platform to anti-Muslim bigot who supports ethnic cleansing

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Benny MorrisOver at the Islamophobic blog Harry’s Place Michael Ezra can scarcely contain his excitement at the news that Israeli historian Benny Morris will be speaking at the London School of Economics tomorrow at the invitation of the LSE Middle East Centre. The organisers state: “The lecture will look at various aspects, some of them innovative, of the 1948 War, the first between the Arabs and Israel.”

Benny Morris is the man who, in a notorious interview with Haaretz in 2004 entitled “Survival of the fittest”, supported the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs in 1948 and only regretted that the Zionist leadership had not gone further.

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Nottingham University spies on students

Posted on by Bob Pitt

University of Nottingham logoConfidential documents relating to a suspected Islamic bomb plot have revealed that security staff from a leading university have been secretly filming students on campus as a method of monitoring potential extremists.

More than 200 university documents – along with material from the Met’s counter-terrorism command, Special Branch and the Crown Prosecution Service – detail the controversial techniques being deployed to monitor students.

The documents, published on the website Unileaks, follows the government’s publication of its Prevent -terrorism strategy, which is aimed at targeting radicalisation in universities but has sparked concerns that it could fuel Islamophobia.

The material charts the consequences of the May 2008 arrest by counter-terrorism officers of Nottingham student Rizwaan Sabir and of Hicham Yezza, who worked as an administrator at the university’s school of modern languages.

Sabir had downloaded an al-Qaida training manual as part of research for a dissertation, and had sought Yezza’s help in drafting a PhD proposal because of his position as editor of a political magazine. Although campaigners say the manual was available in the university’s own library and that versions are available from retailers Blackwell’s, Waterstone’s and Amazon, university officials alerted the police. Both men were released without charge six days later.

Even so, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the arrests were mentioned in a report, cited by the Home Office, called Islamist Terrorist Plots in Great Britain: Uncovering the Global Network.

They also reveal how university security staff kept a log of Middle East-related activities on campus, including details of talks and seminars revolving around Palestine and other issues. Nottingham University admitted that it “routinely” filmed students who protest on campus, and recorded a demonstration last month in connection with the arrests.

Staff and students who spoke out in support of Yezza and Sabir were logged by a Whitehall counter-terrorism unit called the Research, Information and Communications Unit, which is embedded in the government’s Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism. Shami Chakrabarti, director of pressure group Liberty, said: “Is it right that universities are taking on policing duties?”

Last month, Nottingham University lecturer Dr Rod Thornton was suspended for writing an article criticising the university’s treatment of Sabir. In a paper prepared for the British International Studies Association, he alleged the university “refused to apologise to the men” and attempted to smear them. He wrote: “Untruth piled on untruth until a point was reached where the Home Office itself farcically came to advertise the case as a ‘major Islamist plot’.”

The university responded by suspending Thornton, who lectures on security issues and is a former infantryman who served in Northern Ireland. That prompted an international outcry in which 67 academics, including the renowned US scholar Noam Chomsky,demanded his “immediate reinstatement”. The group described the original arrests as “indicative of a growing tide of Islamophobia”.

Thornton, speaking after his ninth disciplinary hearing on Thursday, said: “It’s about academic freedom, but also the wider issue of the way Muslim students are treated. Suspicions are being raised when they should not be.”

Observer, 12 June 2011

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Muslims call for action against hate crimes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MCB banner

Britain’s largest mainstream Muslim organisation will today call for “robust action” to combat Islamophobic attacks amid fears of growing violence and under-reporting of hate crimes.

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) will challenge the “ethnic profiling” of members of its community, claiming that minorities are 42 times more likely to be targeted under the Terrorism Act.

MCB secretary-general Farooq Murad will tell the council’s AGM in Birmingham that there must be more monitoring of anti-Muslim crimes in response to incidents including violent assaults, death threats and the desecration of graves. He will also complain that not enough is being done to encourage communities to report crimes to the police.

The calls, supported by leading academics, a counter-terrorist think-tank and Muslim groups, come as the Metropolitan Police confirmed a total of 762 Islamophobic offences in London since April 2009, including 333 in 2010/11 and 57 since this April. A spokesman said the Met was aware of “significant” under-reporting of hate crime, and acknowledged “missed opportunities” to keep victims safe.

Despite rising concerns about the impact of hate crime on all communities, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) said that data on such offences are not collated centrally as this would be an “overly bureaucratic process for local forces”. Assistant Chief Constable Drew Harris, who leads the police on hate crime, was unavailable for comment.

In his speech, Mr Murad is expected to warn that attacks are increasing. “Islamophobic attacks, on persons and properties, are committed by a tiny minority, but the number of incidents is increasing. Robust action is necessary and this means we must have a systematic manner of recording, monitoring and analysing such attacks. Only a small number of police forces record anti-Muslim hate crimes.”

He will claim that figures collated from only two police forces indicate 1,200 Anti-Muslim crimes in 2010, as opposed to 546 anti-Semitic crimes from all the police forces in the UK.

Muslims from across the country have reported attacks on imams and mosque staff, including petrol bombings and bricks thrown through windows, pigs’ heads being fixed prominently to entrances and minarets, vandalism and abusive messages.

Mr Murad will tell the gathering at the Bordesley Centre: “It is not a piece of cloth on someone’s head or face, the shape of someone’s dress, a harmless concrete pillar on a religious building or even not speaking a common language that creates alienation.”

Dr Robert Lambert, co-director of the European Muslim Research Centre and research fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, Exeter University, said a decade of research will report before the 10th anniversary of 11 September. His report will provide comprehensive figures on attacks on mosques, Islamic organisations and Muslim institutions, while avoiding confusion over race-related or random attacks.

Dr Lambert, a former counter-terrorism police officer, said problems over data collection stemmed from a lack of political will, rather than from the police efforts – and that the onus was on Muslim communities to emulate the “outstanding” data collection around anti-Semitic crimes conducted by the Community Security Trust.

He added: “When I was working in the police, some of the notable spikes in incidents came after terrorist events such as 9/11 and 7/7. We have more than 50 incidences of fire-bomb attacks and we have yet to reach the 10-year anniversary. But no leading politician has seen fit to stand shoulder to shoulder with mosque leaders. That is quite something.”

Some 40 to 60 per cent of the mosques, Islamic centres and Muslim organisations in the UK have suffered at least one attack since 9/11.

Independent on Sunday, 12 June 2011

‘Spooks unmask burka death squads’ – Daily Star announces a ‘world exclusive’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Brit spooks have stopped SIXTY terror plots involving Black Widow bombers. Many of the Muslim women who were pulled in were carrying explosives, we can reveal. Other radicals as young as 17 had bomb materials stashed in their homes across the country.

The operation started when a dozen women in the London and Greater Manchester areas were picked up in security sweeps but allowed to go free. They were put under surveillance and led the spooks to more than 30 terror group leaders. But it is feared there are at least 20 of the Black Widow bombers still at large and ready to carry out their deadly missions.

A senior security source said: “The terrorists rely on a woman in a black flowing dress not being stopped. They can’t be searched easily because of their strict rules and it’s hard to see what they are hiding under their robes. A lot of people would think twice about searching them for fear of offending religious rules or being accused of sexual harassment or indecency.”

A senior security source has revealed that in the past year between 50 and 60 attacks have been averted after spies infiltrated Muslim terror cells.

Female suicide bombers have been used by the Taliban and rebels in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and by groups including the Tamil Tigers and Hamas to target civilians and soldiers.

Last year, two women bombed two Moscow subway stations killing at least 38 people and injuring over 60. Chechen “shahidkas” or Black Widows attacked Russian troops in Chechnya and were among a group that took 850 hostages in the Moscow theatre siege in 2002. The stand-off lasted two-and-a-half days. Russian forces killed 38 attackers and at least 129 hostages.

Daily Star on Sunday, 12 June 2011

Yet another anti-Muslim scare story from the Star. Of course, they provide no evidence at all that the security services have uncovered “sixty terror plots involving Black Widow bombers”. And if you read to the end of the report, the only quotes the Star‘s intrepid reporter can get from the police give no support to the story at all.

You do wonder what point there is in Richard Desmond formally distancing the Star from the English Defence League when this sort of irresponsible journalism feeds the culture of ignorant bigotry in which the racist far right can thrive and grow.

Casuals United Daily Star burka death squads story

French court bars Muslim woman from wearing headscarf, judge insults her faith

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Collectif contre l’islamophobie en France reports on the disgraceful treatment of a Muslim woman in Béziers who attended a court hearing over the custody of her child.

She was told by a police officer that that she would have to remove her headscarf out of respect for the judge, by order of the court, otherwise the hearing would take place in her absence. When she tried to enter the courtroom wearing a headband rather than a scarf she was barred by the clerk who told her “no, no, veils are prohibited” and made her remove the headband before she was allowed in.

During the hearing the judge told the woman that she was a “bad mother” because she had allowed her son to convert to Islam, which the judge described as “an act of barbarism towards children”, adding “don’t tell me that the Muslim religion is better than any other religion”. Despite the evidence that the child wanted to remain with his mother the judge stated that it was not for the child to “choose and lay down the law in this court”.

The CCIF has condemned the the court’s treatment of the young woman and has called on the minister of justice to take disciplinary action against the judge.