Police appeal for witnesses after Stortford mosque attack

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Police are today (Thursday, June 11) appealing for witnesses and information following a racially aggravated assault and criminal damage at Bishop’s Stortford’s mosque.

On Monday, April 25 at around 9pm a group of about five men approached the Islamic cultural centre at Millars 2, off Southmill Road, and had a verbal altercation before one of them punched a community member and smashed a window. They returned shortly after and there was a further confrontation.

Sgt Keith Cassells, investigating, said: “We are appealing for anyone who was in the area at the time who may have seen these men or the altercation take place to contact police on 0845 3300222.

“This was an unprovoked incident which has been distressing for all those involved. Bishop’s Stortford Neighbourhood Team is working closely with the community members at the mosque and will be increasing patrols in the area.”

Alternatively, call Crimestoppers free and in confidence on 0800 555111.

Two men, a 30-year-old and a 26-year-old, both from Bishop’s Stortford, have been arrested and released on police bail until June 22.

Herts & Essex Observer, 11 June 2009

Are BNP voters racist?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rise_FestivalThere’s an informative YouGov opinion poll on the Channel 4 website which provides a useful basis for an assessment of the BNP vote.

Unfortunately, the analysis in the accompanying article by Peter Kellner is deeply flawed. Kellner plays down the racism of BNP supporters and claims that “depending on how the term ‘racist’ is precisely defined, our survey suggests that the label applies to only around a half of BNP voters”.

But the poll itself demolishes this assertion. It found that 94% of BNP voters thought “all further immigration to the UK should be halted” – way ahead of supporters of other political parties, with the exception of UKIP. 79% of BNP voters agreed that “even in its milder [sic] forms, Islam is a danger to western civilisation” – again, far higher than Labour, Tory, Lib Dem or Green voters.

Kellner sees it as a positive result that “just 44 per cent” of BNP voters “agreed with the party in rejecting the view that non-white citizens are just as British as white citizens”. However the question didn’t concern all British citizens, but rather “British citizens who were born in this country”. If the question had included people born abroad who have come to the UK and subsequently acquired citizenship, the percentage of BNP voters denying that non-white citizens are “just as British as white citizens” would undoubtedly have been even higher.

In that connection, it’s worth noting that 81% of BNP voters disagreed with the proposition that “Britain has benefited from the arrival in recent decades of people from many different countries and cultures”. Only 8% of BNP voters agreed with this proposition, compared with 63% of Green voters, 55% of Lib Dem voters, 53% of Labour voters and even 31% of Tory voters.

What the poll reveals is that racist attitudes exist among supporters of all political parties (which is what you would expect, given the migrant-bashing, Muslim-hating propaganda that pervades the popular press) but that people who vote for the BNP are much more racist than those who vote for mainstream political parties.

Yet, bizarrely, Kellner states emphatically: “most BNP voters do NOT subscribe to what might be described as ‘normal racist views’.” This is in line with the analysis of other pundits, who have strenuously denied that the majority of BNP voters are racists.

It is of course true that the vast majority of BNP voters are not fascists and that they would be shocked by the neo-Nazi views that Griffin and other BNP leaders actually hold. But the majority of BNP voters certainly do hold racist views, and if we’re to develop a strategy for resisting the BNP it serves no useful purpose to deny that fact.

Indeed, it was precisely in order to combat the racist ideology on which the BNP feeds that the annual Rise festival was held in London. And that is why Boris Johnson’s decision to cancel Rise was so utterly irresponsible.

FBI chief defends use of informants in mosques

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Robert MuellerFBI Director Robert Mueller on Monday defended the agency’s use of informants within U.S. mosques, despite complaints from Muslim organizations that worshippers and clerics are being targeted instead of possible terrorists.

Mueller’s comments came just days after a Michigan Muslim organization asked the Justice Department to investigate complaints that the FBI is asking the faithful to spy on Islamic leaders and worshippers. Similar alarm followed the disclosure earlier this year that the FBI planted a spy in Southern California mosques.

“We don’t investigate places, we investigate individuals,” Mueller said during a brief meeting with reporters in Los Angeles. “To the extent that there may be evidence or other information of criminal wrongdoings, then we will … undertake those investigations,” Mueller added. “We will continue to do it.”

He called relations with U.S. Muslims “very good,” but acknowledged disagreements without providing specifics.

The Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder after mosques and other groups reported members of the community have been asked to monitor people coming to mosques and donations they make. The FBI’s Detroit office has denied the allegations.

In the California case, information about the informant who spied on the Islamic Center of Irvine came out at a February detention hearing for a brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard, an Afghan native and naturalized U.S. citizen named Ahmadullah Niazi who is accused of lying on his citizenship and passport applications about terrorism ties.

Local Muslim leaders say they suspected since at least since 2006 that the FBI was trying to infiltrate Muslim organizations in the area.

“History disputes Mr. Mueller’s statements, at least in Southern California,” said Shakeel Syed, executive of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California. “It doesn’t alleviate anything. It only continues to show the sheer arrogance demonstrated by the bureau in holding Muslim community members, clerics, mosques, as suspects,” Syed said. He is among community leaders in court seeking government records of surveillance.

FBI agents and prosecutors say spying on mosques is one of the best weapons to uncover lurking terrorists or threats to national security, but it has posed a politically and legally thorny issue with Muslims who see themselves as unjustly monitored. “The FBI needs to do what it needs to do, certainly,” Syed said. But the agency is “trying to incite and entrap” law-abiding people.

Mueller also said that there will be no change in the FBI’s priorities in the new administration. “I would not expect that we would in any way take our foot off the pedal of addressing counterterrorism,” he said.

“My expectation is that we’ll see an uptick in terms of resources devoted toward our domestic criminal responsibilities, but we will not … relax our responsibilities when it come to counterterrorism or counterintelligence,” he added.

Associated Press, 8 June 2009

Quilliam and the ‘Muslim world’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The reality is that, despite the paranoia of the Quilliam Foundation, ‘Muslim world’ is not a phrase conceived exclusively by radical Islamists for nefarious propaganda purposes, which we have then been duped and deceived into using. Nor is it a phrase without real meaning, purpose or import. On the contrary, in a world of multiple identities, both individual and collective, to refer to the Muslim world is to simplify, clarify and identify.

“As someone who has often used the phrase ‘Muslim world’ myself, I take great personal offence in now being told by Ed Husain and his patronising thinktank chums that I for one am bolstering the repulsive and divisive ‘al-Qaeda narrative’ by doing so. ‘Muslim world’ is a perfectly valid, alternative description of the ‘Muslim majority countries’ and ‘Muslim communities’ so beloved by the Quilliam Foundation, and not an Islamist conspiracy theory in any shape or form.

“There is also an element of hypocrisy in this latest Quilliam position, as there are numerous references to the ‘Muslim world’ on its own website from, among others, its director Maajid Nawaz. Did he not get the memo?”

Mehdi Hasan at Comment is Free, 7 June 2009

MCB statement on BNP’s election to European Parliament

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MCB Alarmed Over Neo-Nazi victory

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) today joined other British people in voicing their alarm and concern as the British National Party (BNP) gained its first two seats in the European parliament. This is a party that has a history of whipping up hatred against black people, Asians, Jews, Muslims and immigrants and has described Islam as “a vicious, wicked faith”.

Unlike other European countries, the UK has, in the past, prided itself in refusing to send MEPs who belonged to the far-right. Today we have reached a sad and historic milestone where we can no longer claim that racism has no place on our political landscape.

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain said: “This is a sad day for British politics. The news of the election of far-right MEPs comes at a time when we mark the 65th anniversary of D-Day, celebrating the heroism of those who fought the same hatred and fascism and racism we are witnessing today”.

“They now have a platform and taxpayer resources to perpetuate hate. They now have the ability to join racists and fascists in continental Europe to create a coalition of racists and Islamophobes. I call on all mainstream parties, and all British people, Muslims included, to come together to ensure we challenge the far right. We must ensure that this is a mere blip, and not a milestone, in British politics”.

MCB press release, 8 June 2009

Mad Mel explains the BNP’s success

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Melanie Phillips Jihad in Britain“Anyone who objects to multi-culturalism is called a bigot; anyone who wants to curb immigration is called a racist; anyone who objects to the Islamisation of Britain is called an Islamophobe; anyone who wants to leave the EU and regain the power of national self-government is called a xenophobe; anyone, in short, who wants to retain Britain’s national identity rooted in the shared particulars of religion, law, history, traditions and culture and its powers as a self-governing nation finds themselves ostracised as a pariah….

“Working-class areas are particularly vulnerable to the BNP because they bear the full brunt of these policies. They are areas of very high immigration where the transformation of the ethnic, religious and cultural landscape has made indigenous inhabitants feel strangers in their own country…. The willed loss of control of this country’s borders, the blind eye to Islamisation, the refusal to allow the people to vote against the Lisbon treaty and the surrender of self-government to the EU – these are the things that have brought the BNP electoral success.”

Melanie Phillips’s blog, 8 June 2009

Not that Mel is exactly an expert on the BNP, of course. According to her, “they will not allow black people or Jews to be members”, which rather overlooks the fact that the BNP actually have a councillor of Jewish origin – one Patricia Richardson, who has sat on Epping Forest District Council for the last five years.

And as we’ve pointed out in the past, Phillips omits to mention one important factor in the rise of the BNP – the legitimisation of their racist politics by bigoted right-wing commentators like herself whose anti-Muslim tirades are often barely distinguishable from the sort of thing you might read in a BNP propaganda leaflet.

BNP wins two seats in Europe

Posted on by Bob Pitt

bnp-islam-posterThe British National Party on Monday won its first seats in the European Parliament, in a major breakthrough for a party reviled by mainstream politicians for its anti-immigration stance.

Party chairman Nick Griffin was elected an MEP in the northwest of England region with eight percent of the vote, hours after Andrew Brons won the BNP’s first ever European seat in the nearby Yorkshire and the Humber region.

Griffin had earlier hailed Brons’ win – with almost 10 percent of the vote – as “a huge breakthrough” for his party, and used the victory to reiterate his party’s anti-immigration and anti-Islam stance.

Griffin told Sky News television: “This is a Christian country and Islam is not welcome, because Islam and Christianity, Islam and democracy, Islam and women’s rights do not mix. That’s a simple fact that the elites of Europe are going to have to get their heads round and deal with over the next few years.”

AFP, 8 June 2009

See also ENGAGE, 8 June 2009

Update:  See Inayat Bunglawala’s piece at Comment is Free, 11 June 2009

Hate messages sprayed on California mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cypress mosqueA Southern California mosque was vandalized with graffiti including expletives and threats early Thursday, shortly after President Barack Obama’s address in Egypt to the Muslim world.

A police officer on patrol at 4 a.m. spotted the hate messages painted on the front wall of the Islamic Center of Cypress, said Sgt. Tom Bruce. The paint was still wet, he said.

Rusty Kennedy, executive director of the Orange County Human Relations Commission, said the graffiti was about 4 feet or 5 feet tall and spread over up to 30 feet of the wall.

In an e-mail to Muslim-American community leaders, Kennedy reported that the graffiti read in part: “We will kill you all” and “U.S. military is going to kill you all.”

Kennedy said it was likely the graffiti was prompted by Obama’s outreach to the Middle East. The vandalism occurred about an hour after Obama’s speech at Cairo University in Egypt aired live on the West Coast.

“I think that in the realm of hate crime you see there is often a reactionary element to it, so the Obama initiative … may very well have been what triggered this hate crime,” he said.

Associated Press, 4 June 2009