Man who threatened Illinois mosque is jailed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

CIMICA 25-year-old Maryland man was sentenced to one year in prison yesterday after sending email threats to an Illinois mosque, demanding that the mosque close or else he would “eradicate Islam.”

The man, Ilya Sobolevskiy, pleaded guilty in August to obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs, a civil rights violation. He was sentenced yesterday in federal court in Illinois to 12 months in prison and a $3,000 fine. The judge who sentenced him called the threats “an act of terror.”

According to prosecutors, Sobolevskiy was a student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2008 when he visited a nearby mosque with a roommate. While there, he exchanged emails with a member of the mosque, who happened to be the webmaster for the mosque’s web site.

Prosecutors say that Sobolevskiy then began emailing the webmaster and posting on the mosque’s web site, demanding to know why the mosque was associated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations and why the mosque did not denounce Islamic terrorism. According to a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, his emails became “increasingly frightening.”

They culminated in an email sent May 4, 2008, demanding the mosque shut its doors: “Close down the CIMIC [Central Illinois Mosque and Islamic Center] by May 12th, or it will be closed for you. the muslims that attend it are not to be seen in public with their beards or hijabs. tell them to get rid of such things. failure to comply will result in much tribulations for you and muslims in the region. i am not afraid to do whatever it takes to eradicate islam. WHATEVER it takes.”

Mosque officials reported the email to the FBI, which investigated through its Springfield office.

TPM, 4 November 2010

‘Muslims tell British: go to hell’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims tell British go to hellThus the front-page headline in the Daily Express.

By “Muslims” the Express means Anjem Choudary’s minuscule extremist sect, and by “British” it means “non-Muslims” – or perhaps, more narrowly, “white people”.

For comment on right-wing press coverage of the Roshonara Choudhry case, see ENGAGE, Tabloid Watch and Five Chinese Crackers.

Update:  See also “SPECIAL REPORT: The ‘DIY jihadists’ paid for by us… Roshonara Choudhry supporters are living on benefits”, Daily Mail, 5 November 2010

The report has produced the intended reaction, judging by the comments that follow it:

“Cultural enrichment … don’t you feel so much better for it ??”

“The bleeding heart liberals are the cause of all this.”

“Only in Britain could this madness happen, where we are funding the source of our own destruction.”

“Perhaps this low life should get his benefits stopped for deceiving the authorities. Won’t happen of course, can’t be seen to be upsetting the non-integrating squallor-living supporters of terrorism”

“Well done Labour you most be so proud of your Multiculturalism.”

“And YOU who keep voting for the Lib/Lab/Con are to blame! – Joe Bloggs, In the hell that was once England”

“where are all the other ‘Moderate’ muslims (If there is such a thing) who we never hear speaking out against these anti-british lunatics?”

“Welcome to Islamic Britain. Land of the FREE. Well FREE Benefit anyway.”

“This is typical of modern Britain. We invite the dregs of the world to our shores, those that want to murder the citizens of this nation and we pander to their every whim. We house them, feed them but still we invite more and more….”

“If Islam is so fantastic they should take the first flight to the nearest Islamic Republic. Enough of appeasing these people.”

“In a strange sort of way, these people should be admired. Why? Because they stick rigidly to their beliefs. Unlike the Judge and Police, who through fear bend over backwards to please them. And that’s why the battle is already lost. So we must all get used to a future Islamic Britain.”

“These vile scum SHOULD have been arrested and brought to trial for their stinking little antics …….IF IT WERE WHITE ANGLO SAXONS RANTING IN THIS WAY YOU CAN BE SURE THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE CASE !!!!!!!”

“Sick people? sick religion yet they take money from us all.”

When Oliver met Mohammed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

So there we are then. The most popular boy’s name in the country is Mohammed. Or Muhammed. Or maybe Mohamed. But the official statisticians say it is Oliver. What’s that about?

This is very simple. If you look to the Daily Mail or the Daily Telegraph or, Lord help you, the Express, the most popular name in the land is one of the various variants of Mohammed, largely because you would like it to be.

This is not to deny that a lot of people – overwhelmingly devotees of the Muslim faith – call their children Mohammed/Muhammed/Mohamed etc. They do. It’s the prophet’s name and they like it. But if the Mail or the Telegraph or Dirty Des’s Express are your thing, it’s grist to your mill to bundle the various spellings together and declare it the most popular choice, because white people in suburbs and villages don’t often call their children Mohammed (etc). Thus it becomes yet more evidence of the extent to which the country is overrun by dark-skinned migrants, especially over-fertile Muslims.

But if things were really that simple, why did other outlets: this one, the Sun, the Times, the Independent, go with the boys’ name officially deemed most popular, Oliver. Well they listened to the ONS, which made the point that the names are listed on the basis of what is written on the birth certificate. The statisticians don’t aggregate the variants and privately, they’re aggrieved at those who do so to make a fairly cheap political point.

Hugh Muir in the Guardian, 3 November 2010

See also ENGAGE, Tabloid Watch and Five Chinese Crackers.

Sharia hysteria comes to Oklahoma: voters approve Sharia law ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Oklahoma became the first U.S. state to ban the non-existent threat of Sharia law yesterday. Nearly 70 percent of voters there approved ballot initiative “Question 755” – or the “Save Our State” constitutional amendment – which bans Sharia from being considered in Oklahoma courts. The ballot states that Oklahoma courts must “rely on federal and state law when deciding cases” and forbids them from “considering or using international law” and “from considering or using Sharia Law.”

The measure’s sponsor, Republican state senator Rex Duncan, called the result a “preemptive strike” against local judges whom he thinks might be “legislating from the bench or using international law or Sharia law.”

Think Progress, 3 November 2010

See also Weblog of Dawud Walid, 3 November 2010

And “Law professor: ban on Sharia law ‘a mess'”, CNN, 3 November 2010

Update:  See “Lawsuit expected Thursday challenging Shariah law vote”, Tulsa World, 3 November 2010

North Carolina: Muslim woman says man cursed, spat at her in Walmart

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Oxford, N.C. — A 66-year-old man is facing ethnic intimidation charges after he allegedly verbally abused a female Muslim-American customer at an Oxford Walmart on Tuesday. The woman is speaking out and says she doesn’t want this to happen to anyone else.

The 31-year-old woman, who asked not to be identified for safety purposes, said she went to Walmart to buy a carton of milk. Instead, she says, James Currin Jr., 66, confronted her and asked: “Hey, are you Muslim?” When she said yes, Currin began swearing, spitting at her and told her to go back “wherever you came from,” she said.

“I was frozen with fear. I was startled. I was frightened,” she said. “He’s actually there glaring at me, just going over me from head to toe, head to toe, head to toe. It was a blood-curdling stare.”

The woman says Currin followed her as she walked to the front of the store to find her mother and notify management. Store officials called Oxford police, who arrested Currin and brought him before a Granville County magistrate.

WRAL.com, 29 October 2010

What are the wider issues behind the shootings in Malmö? Liz Fekete reports

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Between August 1991 and January 1992, at a time of heated debate about immigrants, John Ausonious (now serving a life sentence) killed one man and seriously injured ten others, most of them immigrants – in shootings which occurred in and around Stockholm and Uppsala. He was dubbed the laser man because he used a rifle equipped with laser sight (which the current gunman does not). Some journalists are attempting to broaden the media debate, by pointing to lessons from this bleak period in Swedish history….

Back in the 1990s, the populist anti-immigrant party, New Democracy, was active, and members were elected to parliament. Today, the Sweden Democrats (an avowedly neo-Nazi party in the 1990s but now, following a makeover, presenting themselves as the Swedish version of the Danish People’s Party) have just won twenty seats in the Swedish parliament. In the 1990s, there was growing societal hostility towards refugees and asylum seekers with the view of the far-Right affecting national immigration and asylum policies – all set against a backcloth of racist violence against refugees and arson attacks on asylum hostels. But, today, in Sweden, the hostility is increasingly being targeted at Muslims – while the mainstream debate also tends to blame Muslims for failing to integrate into Swedish society.

The linked shootings have taken place in a number of districts around central Malmö where the sniper can hide or in more working-class areas where dense housing estates provide camouflage. Areas range from the multi-racial area of Vendelfridsgatan, and the working-class district of Lönngaten (where the Sweden Democrats are strong) to the more up-market district of Köpenhamnsvägen. Lisa Bjurwald is an investigative reporter on the anti-fascist magazineExpo. “What we do know,” she explains, “is that the climate is similar to that of 1991-92”. And today we “have a debate on integration that is increasingly crossing the line into Islamophobia and anti-immigration views”.

IRR, 1 November 2010

Australian senator says expansion of sharia finance is ‘wholly incompatible with Western values’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cory BernardiSouth Australian Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi says he wants to stop the expansion of sharia-compliant loans and financial products in Australia.

The national taxation board will this week start holding consultation meetings about how Islamic transactions should be taxed. Senator Bernardi says the financial products are incompatible with the Australian way of life and is seeking support from his Coalition colleagues for his idea.

“Sharia finance is one aspect of sharia or Islamic law and I reject it entirely,” he said. “This extends into a number of areas such as the freedom of religion. It extends into all people are created equal and the equivalence of men and women in society. We shouldn’t be changing our legal system or our legal framework to accommodate a system of laws that is wholly incompatible with Western values.”

ABC, 2 November 2010

See also “Islamic banking debate ‘playing on emotion'”, ABC, 2 November 2010