EXPOSE the BNP are hosting:
In Denial? Racism, Islam and the Media
With speakers:
Hugh Muir, Guardian journalist
Steve Bird, reporter for The Times
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, columnist and broadcaster
Guy Smallman, photojournalist
Weyman Bennett, joint secretary Unite Against Fascism
Monday 1st November, 7pm
Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
235 Shaftesbury Avenue
London, WC2H 8EP
All welcome!
The leader of Denmark’s populist Danish People’s Party, on which the government relies for support, said in a newspaper interview published on Sunday that pan-Arab television channels Al-Jazeera and Al Arabiya should be stopped from broadcasting to the country.
Pia Kjaersgaard, leader of parliament’s third-biggest party, accused the channels of sowing hatred against Western society in immigrant communities. The centre-right governing coalition said it did not support her views about the stations.
Kjaersgaard said she would look into reporting the TV stations to Danish regulatory authorities with the aim of getting their broadcasts blocked.
“My aim is merely to promote integration here which in certain residential areas has gone completely wrong, and that is to a large extent due to the inhabitants getting their news from these two TV stations only,” she said in an interview with the daily Berlingske Tidende. Their broadcasts are very full of hatred… They contribute to inculcating hatred against Western society.”
Update: See “Proposal to ban Arabic stations meets resistance”, Copenhagen Post, 2 November 2010
Forward reports on the controversy over the proposed new mosque in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.
CARLISLE COUNTY, Ky. – With a simple click of the mouse, an e-mail was sent on its way Sept. 16. It went from the high school principal to the elementary school principal, then to an entire school faculty. One of the readers, who declined to share her name, remembers reading it, “I was just appalled that school e-mail would be used to send something so hateful.”
It was a forwarded e-mail that read, in part, Muslim women were “slaves” who were “hit” by their husbands. It also claimed Muslims were planning an attack on Americans. “The Muslims are planning a great jihad against America. Arise, be viligant and don’t let it happen,” the woman shared, reading from the e-mail. She read it over and over, each time a new sentence catching her eye like this one: “They have an Army that is willing to shed blood in the name of Islam.”
The Carlisle County School District has anti-discrimination policy. But Superintendent Dr. Keith Shoulders said the e-mail did not violate school policy because the women in question were not the authors and had simply forwarded it. “The real thing it violates is our technology policy that school e-mail should be used for school work,” Shoulders said Thursday.
No disciplinary action will be taken against the two principals.
The woman we talked to has contacted the ACLU. The group’s William Sharpe confirmed they sent an open records request to the district to obtain the e-mail. Superintendent Shoulders said he had received the request. Sharpe told Local 6 the ACLU wants to investigate further before deciding whether to press on with the case.
Christian refugees coming to Finland should be given first preference over Muslims, according to Christian Democratic Party Chair Päivi Räsänen.
In a recent interview with Finnish university student magazine “Ylioppilaslehti”, Räsänen reasons that Christians adapt to Finland better than Muslims because of commonalities in religion and culture. Muslims are at greater risk of becoming isolated in Finnish society. This can lead to radicalisation, Räsänen says.
In response to the remarks, Green Party MP Jyrki Kasvi accuses Räsänen of discrimination against members of different faiths. Writing in his blog on the Green Party website, Kasvi sees Räsänen’s stance to be in violation of international human rights, which forbid discrimination on the basis of religion.
Members of the English Defence League travelled to the Netherlands in support of far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders. The European Freedom Initiative group organised a rally against what they claim is the “growing Islamisation” of Europe.
Authorities moved the demonstration from a central Amsterdam location to an industrial site on the outskirts of the city for fear of violence. Hundreds of people were expected to attend, but the rally drew far more police and journalists than marchers.
http://youtu.be/IBAG58aHwOo
Those who accuse the once libertarian Bill Maher of becoming too much of a liberal apologist might want to clean their ears. Maher made a Juan Williams-esque confession on his program when he apprehensively noted that Mohammed has just become the most popular baby name in Britain.
“Am I a racist to feel alarmed by that?” Maher asked his panel. “Because I am. And it’s not because of the race, it’s because of the religion. I don’t have to apologize, do I, for not wanting the Western world to be taken over by Islam in 300 years?”
“If you’re with NPR,” the conservative Margaret Hoover chimed, “You’d be fired.” Hoover further stoked Maher by claiming that the U.K is saddled with a “far bigger problem” than baby names: Sharia law, which she said is creeping into England.
“Then I’m right,” Maher said, taking her for her word. “I should be alarmed. And I don’t apologize for it.”
Jordan is furious after Far-Right extremists posted a picture of her on their Facebook site claiming she supported their views.
The 32-year-old unwittingly posed for the snap with a bloke she thought was a harmless fan while recording at the BBC. But the man was Tommy Robinson, the leader of anti-Islam group the English Defence League – which then uploaded the image to the group’s Facebook site, claiming Kate was a supporter.
She is said to be “horrified” and is fighting to take the snap down. A spokesman for Kate, in Boston, Lincs yesterday to promote her new book You Only Live Once, said: “She is not and will not be associated with the English Defence League. Kate had no reason to suspect he had any connection with any group.”
See Holy Moly for the full statement by Jordan’s PR company:
“Katie Price does not and will not be associated with the English Defence League in any way. Katie’s legal team are doing everything in their power to remove this picture from the website. She simply posed for a picture with someone who told her he was a fan, as she does on many occasions. She had no reason to suspect he had any connection with any group, and had she known she would have flatly refused.”
A string of 19 unsolved shootings – all of which appear to be racially motivated – are sending shockwaves through Sweden’s immigrant population.
Bejzat Becirov points to a large hole in the bottom corner of a window at the Islamic Centre, Malmo’s largest mosque. “It was last year,” he said, “New Year’s Eve, and there were people in there, drinking tea and writing greetings cards. Then one of them felt a kind of rush of air, and splinters of glass on the back of his neck. The police later found a bullet embedded in a piece of furniture.”
This is not the worst thing that has happened at the mosque. Mr Becirov, its director, also remembers an arson attack that caused severe damage in 2003. But the shot fired at the mosque late last year is now being re-evaluated. Could it form part of a wider series of unexplained attacks that the police in Malmo are now hoping the public can help solve?
The announcement last week by police that a string of unsolved shootings might be connected is causing deep concern in this city, where almost half the population has an immigrant background. The attacks that police are investigating have all taken place in the past year and have all been aimed at people who look as though they might be immigrants. Of those 19 shootings, one person has been killed and eight have been injured.
The New York blogger Pamela Geller, who believes America is being infiltrated by Muslim extremists, recently denounced Lutfur Rahman, the newly elected mayor of Tower Hamlets in east London, as a “vile Islamic supremacist”. Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips disapproves of Rahman too. She has declared that his victory provides “a platform for the progressive intimidation and silencing of British Muslims who do not want to live under sharia law, let alone the non-Muslim majority in the area.”
These large claims appear to be based on the uncritical embrace of a TV documentary of questionable worth and a vituperative anti-Rahman campaign conducted by its famous presenter. Nonetheless, the assertions are enlightening. Reaching an international market for tales of Islamist intrigue, they demonstrate how reducing the complexities of Tower Hamlets to a “sexy” narrative about alleged plotting fanatics obscures rather more than it reveals.
Dave Hill at Comment is Free, 29 October 2010
For another example of Gilligan-inspired Islamophobic ranting from the US right, see “London’s Islamic Republic” at the American Thinker, 28 October 2010