Police fear EDL plan to attack Leicester mosque

EDL No More MosquesPolice fear protesters plan to attack a city mosque before marching into the heart of Leicester’s Muslim community.

Concerns were voiced by Chief Constable Simon Cole in a report to Leicester City Council about the planned march by the English Defence League on October 9. The Chief Constable said that an intelligence and threat assessment indicated a “major threat” to public order.

His report said: “Intelligence dated September 8, 2010, indicated that the EDL intend to come to Leicester and attack a mosque before marching into the Highfields area, which represents the highest resident population of the Muslim community.

“This reflects previous intentions of EDL processions, such as that within Leicester, where actions were targeted to cause disruption to the Muslim community by provoking serious public disorder.”

Leicester City Cabinet yesterday agreed to apply to the Home Office to ban the planned procession under the Public Order Act 1986.

However, the EDL, in a statement, rejected the police claims. EDL event organiser Guramit Singh said: “We are coming to Leicester to peacefully demonstrate and we denounce attacks on any mosques. We are here to fight militant Islam, not moderate Islam. The intelligence provided by the police is incorrect.”

The EDL submitted an application to march through the city to police this week. If the Home Office agrees to ban the EDL march, the group could still hold a static protest, which the authorities would be powerless to prevent taking place.

Leicester Mercury, 25 September 2010

See also “Vote to ban EDL march in Leicester ‘unanimous'”, BBC News, 25 September 2010

EDL mosque placards

Police release CCTV images of EDL hooligans in Dudley

EDL Dudley July 2010 2

Detectives investigating disorder which broke out during an English Defence League protest in Dudley have released CCTV images of men they want to identify.

West Midlands Police said officers were continuing to investigate criminal damage and other offences committed during disturbances in the town centre on July 17.

The CCTV stills, taken on the day of the EDL protest and a counter-demonstration, show 22 individuals whom detectives wish to trace.

Homes in the Alexandra Street area of Dudley were attacked during the violence, which also saw damage caused to parked cars, restaurants and a Hindu temple.

Detective Inspector Carl Southwick, who is leading the investigation, said: “We are appealing to members of the public to look closely at these images.

“We are committed to identifying those responsible for the pockets of disorder and criminal damage that took place in Dudley town centre.”

Press Association, 23 September 2010

‘Say no to burqas’ mural is not anti-Islam says Sydney artist

Say no to burqas muralSecurity has been called in after tensions threatened to boil over a provocative mural to ban burqas at a Newtown workshop.

Following artist Sergio Redegalli’s painting opposing the Islamic face covering veils with the slogan “Say no to burqas”, security outside the premises has been called in after tensions threatened to boil over.

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36 Muslim graves desecrated in Strasbourg

Strasbourg graves vadalised

AFP reports that 36 Muslim graves in Meinau cemetery in Strasbourg were vandalised on Thursday night. Some tombstones were overturned, others smashed. Children’s graves were among those damaged. Three swastikas were drawn on the gravel paths. Abdelaziz Choukri of the Strasbourg Grand Mosque pointed out that the attack had taken place on the eve of a event organised by the far-right Front National in the city.

This is the latest in a series of such attacks. In July, 27 graves were desecrated in the Jewish cemetery of Wolfisheim near Strasbourg. In June, 17 Muslim gravestones were knocked over or damaged in the Robertsau cemetery, north of the city. In January, about thirty graves in the Jewish cemetery of Cronenbourg (to the west of Strasbourg) had been damaged on the day of the commemoration of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps.

Update:  See “Cemeteries desecrated in Strasbourg: three skinheads receive prison sentences”, Islamophobia Watch, 20 June 2012

Strasbourg graves vadalised (2)

 

 

Christian Democrat rift widening over anti-Islam PVV

Concerns among Dutch Christian Democrat leaders about cooperation with the anti-Islam PVV party are growing by the day. Today, caretaker Christian Democrat Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin voiced grave apprehension at the rift that is emerging in his party over a possible cooperation with the far-right PVV.

In recent weeks, several former Christian Democrat leaders, among them a number of former prime ministers and former cabinet ministers, expressed similar concerns. But now they are being joined by a growing number of current CDA politicians. Health Minister Ab Klink, who recently resigned as coalition negotiator, had so far been the only active CDA minister to voice criticism at cooperation with the PVV.

RNW, 24 September 2010

Texas education board adopts anti-Islam resolution

AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas State Board of Education adopted a resolution Friday that seeks to curtail references to Islam in Texas textbooks, as social conservative board members warned of what they describe as a creeping Middle Eastern influence in the nation’s publishing industry.

The board approved the one-page nonbinding resolution, which urges textbook publishers to limit what they print about Islam in world history books, by a 7-5 vote.

Critics say it’s another example of the ideological board trying to politicize public education in the Lone Star State. Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, which advocates for religious freedom, questioned why the resolution came at a time when “anti-Muslim rhetoric in this country has reached fever pitch.”

“It’s hard not to conclude that the misleading claims in this resolution are either based on ignorance of what’s in the textbooks or, on the other hand, are an example of fear-mongering and playing politics,” Miller said.

Associated Press, 24 September 2010

See also Texas Tribune, 24 September 2010

Man in St Louis standoff wanted war with Muslims

A man who held federal agents at bay with fake explosives wanted to start a war between Christians and Muslims and kill President Barack Obama, according to charges filed against him Wednesday.

He also may have been driven by an order of protection issued in St. Clair County Circuit Court on Tuesday to bar him from contact with his grandchildren, officials said.

The eight-hour standoff Tuesday night began when FBI and Secret Service agents, accompanied by police, went to the home of Roman Otto Conaway, at 9030 Summit Drive, to question him about a report that he had been making threats. He eventually surrendered on the promise of getting a mental health evaluation.

Conaway was charged Wednesday in federal court in East St. Louis with making false threats to detonate an explosive device and threatening the president. If convicted, he might face five years in prison.

According to an FBI affidavit accompanying the charges, and federal officials, Conaway called someone associated with a St. Louis-area mosque about 1 p.m. Tuesday and said he would burn a Quran that night and provide a video of it to TV stations.

Conaway allegedly said that he thought that Obama had threatened the Rev. Terry Jones, of the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida, into canceling his planned Quran burning on Sept. 11.

Conaway said that he wanted to start a war between Christians and Muslims, kill Obama and other government officials, end the war in Afghanistan “which (expletive) Bush started” and “start an Apocalypse,” court documents say.

The person who received Conaway’s call called the FBI with a phone number obtained from caller ID.

Three federal agents arrived around 6 p.m. Conaway’s door was open, but it slammed shut when he spotted them. A short time later, he emerged with his wife and son, wearing a wide mesh belt with two blocks of an “inert putty-like material designed and formed to replicate blocks of C-4 explosive” to a what was intended to look like a triggering device – a curling iron – FBI Special Agent Richard T. Box wrote in the affidavit.

Conaway told agents that the detonator was also wired to two 55-gallon drums full of combustible chemicals in the front yard and another in the rear. He also told agents that he had experience in ordinance disposal from the U.S. Army.

He eventually allowed his son and wife to leave the house, and surrendered at about 2:10 a.m., Box wrote. There were no real explosives. The standoff triggered an evacuation of the neighborhood that lasted into the early morning.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 23 September 2010

Obviously we are dealing here a man who is severely psychologically disturbed. But it is hardly accidental that Conaway’s threats of violence drew on the anti-Muslim narrative promoted by the US right. And you can imagine how different the media response would have been if Conaway had been a Muslim calling for a war against Christians. He wouldn’t have been dimissed as a single mentally ill individual but portrayed as a representative of his faith.

See also LoonWatch, 22 September 2010