Modernising Muslims sign up as Scottish ambassadors to Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Scottish Islamic Foundation“Scottish Muslims are planning a radical campaign to play a greater role in the country’s civic life, to change the perceptions of their religion and to promote Scotland as an ideal country for Muslims to live and invest in.

“Members of the newly formed Scottish Islamic Foundation (SIF) are planning to launch the campaign, which will engage with issues such as the removal of nuclear weapons from Faslane and the environment. Women will also be given a voice within mosques and will be encouraged to form committees to decide policies specific to them.”

The Sunday Herald reports on the actual role played by the Scottish Islamic Foundation, in contrast to the ludicrous potrayal of the SIF promoted by the likes of Douglas Murray and Melanie Phillips.

How to defeat the far right – join them in attacking Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Bravo to Anne-Marie Keenan for drawing attention to the difficulty of effectively debating issues involving Islam. Any objective reading of Islam’s texts, or study of its founder, or observation of the conduct of its more enthusiastic devotees raises serious doubts about this ‘religion of peace’.

“Unfortunately, drawing attention to those doubts is very difficult. For example, for years I have been writing letters to newspapers. Letters that critique Christianity, its Bible and its historical figures often get published and, in turn, Christians get to make robust criticisms of us atheists. And so it should be.

“Letters that critique Islam, on the other hand, are routinely edited or dropped altogether. One can say what one likes about Jesus, but not Muhammed, it seems.

“Until the media overcomes its fear and ends this double standard, important issues that have very real, and damaging, effects on people’s lives will not be addressed.

“Meantime, the far right, who are not afraid to criticise Islam, will exploit this and continue to grow.”

Letter in the Scotsman, 30 August 2008

BNP to honour ‘martyr’ who waged racist campaign against Muslim neighbours

Posted on by Bob Pitt

bnp-islam-posterThe British National Party has said that it will hold a rally in honour of its first claimed martyr, whose Asian killer was jailed for eight years for manslaughter yesterday.

Keith Brown, a father of eight and friend of the party leader, Nick Griffin, was stabbed to death by his neighbour Habib Khan, a Muslim community leader. A judge said that the dead white man and his skinhead son had both been involved in acts of racial aggression towards the Khan family.

The BNP said that it will hold a rally in Stoke-on-Trent on September 20 to protest about the case and Staffordshire Police’s handling of the long-running neighbours’ dispute.

Khan, 49, had been cleared of murder but was found guilty of manslaughter after a jury heard that he stabbed Mr Brown, 52, with a kitchen knife during a row on the pavement. Judge Simon Tonking said that although Khan was acting in defence of his own son, his action in stabbing Mr Brown went beyond that which was reasonable.

The far Right has portrayed Mr Brown as the “first nationalist victim of Islamic jihad against Great Britain”. Stoke’s BNP councillors shouldered the coffin at his funeral, which is posted on YouTube.

Michael Coleman, a BNP councillor in Stoke, where the far-right party is now placed second only to Labour in the popular vote, said: “We have a man here who has been murdered in the street. It is an outrageous betrayal of justice. Staffordshire Police . . . go softly with ethnic minorities [unlike] the indigenous population. We won’t put up with being treated like this.”

The Khans were given a panic button after Mr Brown’s teenage son Ashley beat his middle-aged Asian neighbour unconscious. The police had attempted mediation between the two families but found Mr Brown “immovable”. The Browns claimed that the police ignored incidents where the Khans poisoned their puppy and cut their brake leads, but no records of such complaints were discovered.

Times, 30 August 2008

BNP is ‘using racism to divide Britain’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

By Paul Haste

Morning Star, 30 August 2008

ANTI-NAZI campaigners called for resistance on Friday to the BNP attempt to exploit the jailing of a Muslim man for the manslaughter of one of the fascist party’s activists.

Stoke-on-Trent community elder Habib Khan was sentenced to eight years in prison for the manslaughter in 2007 of his next-door neighbour and BNP member Keith Brown.

Mr Khan had been subjected to a four-year campaign of violent attacks and racist abuse by Mr Brown when a confrontation last summer ended with Mr Brown’s death.

He picked up a knife when he heard his son Azir being physically attacked by Mr Brown. Mr Khan said that the BNP member had then fallen onto the knife in a scuffle and fallen to the floor, fatally wounded.

Although a jury cleared the Muslim community leader of murder, the BNP tried to claim that the jailing of Mr Khan for manslaughter was proof of a “jihad” in Britain.

But anti-nazi campaigners Unite Against Fascism (UAF) slammed the BNP attempt to exploit Mr Brown’s death as a “white martyr.”

UAF national organiser Weyman Bennett said: “The fascists are trying to spread their poison in the Midlands. Trying to whip up a ‘crusade’ against Muslims is just a cynical attempt to use racism to divide us.”

“But the people of Stoke have made it clear they will do everything they can to resist this message of hate,” he insisted.

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Islamophobic vandal convicted

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A vandal who has been spray-painting racist and anti-Islamic graffiti all over Hanworth, Feltham has been jailed for two months.

Robert Whitehouse, 42, of Almond Close, Feltham, pleaded guilty in the Feltham Magistrates Court to charges of committing racially and religiously-aggravated criminal damage and going equipped to charge criminal damage and was sentenced to eight weeks in prison.

Whitehouse was caught by police on May 2 spray-painting an anti-Islamic message. He was found to be in possession of a spray can and stickers referring to the far right wing British National Party and National Front.

Muslim News, 29 August 2008

Fascists blame Muslims for heroin trade

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP heroin leaflet

North-West of England, primarily around Lancashire, are being treated to a BNP-produced leaflet that seems to have been penned by the ever-despicable Tony Bamber, the former fundholder for the now defunct Lancaster and Preston branch of the far-right party and a former candidate for the Tulketh ward in Preston in 2006. The leaflet campaign appears to be part of an attempt to get the branch up and running again in time for the Euro-elections.

Bamber, in keeping with the BNP’s long-established tradition of jumping on any available bandwagon, formed a fictitious group a couple of years back, which he called the “Preston Pals”, a reference to the company of volunteers from Preston who were eventually formed into “D” company, 7th Battalion, the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, to fight in World War I.

The Royal British Legion (RBL) has roundly condemned this misappropriation of the name by the BNP, with its spokesman Patrick Leavey saying; “[The Preston Pals] sacrifice should not be besmirched by people engaged in political campaigning for such an ugly cause. We condemn this leaflet, its contents, and those who are disseminating it”.

This is not the only reason for condemning this filth. The leaflet is headed “the heroin trade – a crime against humanity” and goes on at great length about how Muslims are responsible for the “heroin trade” in Britain, stating: “Before the Islamic invasion, it was almost impossible to find heroin in our land.”

The art of the sweeping statement is not lost on Tony Bamber. His current leaflet states: “For all intents and purposes, Muslims are exclusively responsible for the heroin trade.”

In its desperation to have a go at Muslims, the BNP – as it always has – ignores the facts or only produces half-facts to support its racism, its hatred of Islam, its lies and its fraudulent claims to being a real political party. It is not. It is nothing more than a rabid band of racist buffoons led by a con-man. The likes of Tony Bamber fit right in.

Our advice to anyone who receives one of these leaflets is to report it to the police as incitement to religious hatred. If we all do it, we can eventually get the vermin who deliver this rubbish off our streets.

Lancaster Unity, 29 August 2008

High Court gives Labour an extra week

Posted on by Bob Pitt

High Court gives Labour an extra weekBy Louise Nousratpour

Morning Star, 30 August 2008

LEGAL rights campaigners accused Britain on Friday of covering up US authorities’ “criminal act of kidnapping and torturing” Guantanamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed.

The High Court allowed the Foreign Office a further week to reconsider its refusal to disclose secret information about the British resident’s detention and torture.

Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones handed down their second ruling on the case of the Ethiopian national. Mr Mohamed argues that the material supports his case that the evidence against him was extracted through torture.

The Ethiopian national was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and has been held at the US concentration camp in Cuba for the past four years. He now faces a US military trial for terrorism offences and possibly the death penalty if found guilty.

Mr Mohamed’s legal team argue that the material is vital for his case and could prove his innocence. But Foreign Secretary David Miliband says that he has been “advised” that disclosure of the material would cause “significant damage to national security of the United Kingdom.”

The “advice” came in the form of a threat from the US State Department, claiming that any such move would cause “serious and lasting damage to the US-UK intelligence-sharing relationship and, thus, the national security of the UK.”

In a statement on Friday, legal action charity Reprieve revealed that the High Court judges had decided that Mr Miliband’s secret submission to court was “insufficiently supported in that he had not taken into sufficient account the torture suffered by Binyam.”

Director Clive Stafford Smith said: “The British government has the nerve to pretend that the British public interest is best served by covering up America’s criminal act of kidnapping and torturing him.

“It effectively says that a British resident’s right to a fair trial is less important than avoiding embarrassing the Bush administration and we’ll just gloss over the fact that he was tortured.

“But British national security cannot ever be enhanced by torture.”

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‘Muslim council chiefs ban tea and sandwiches during Ramadan’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tower HamletsCouncillors have been ordered not to eat during town hall meetings while Muslim colleagues fast during the holy month of Ramadan. All elected members at Left-wing Tower Hamlets Council in East London have been sent an email asking them to follow strict Islamic fasting during September no matter what their faith.

But some members of the Labour-run council say the demands favour one religious group over the others. Dr Stephanie Eaton, leader of the Liberal Democrat group, said she would ignore the restrictions. She said: “We object to the request that non-Muslim councillors observe the fasting rules for Ramadan. Our community consists of a huge number of different religions, all of which should be valued, and no one religion should be accorded more status or influence than others.”

This is not the first time the council, which has a broad ethnic make-up, has courted controversy. It has been criticised in the past for being “overly politically correct” after calling its staff Christmas meal a “festive meal”. And it has also staged a Bonfire Night party which featured a Bengal tiger instead of Guy Fawkes.

Daily Mail, 29 August 2008

See also World Net Daily, 29 August 2008

And, of course, the story has been seized on by the British National Party, who declare it to be “a dramatic example of how Britain is being steadily colonised by Islamic culture”.

Update:  You thought this was probably one of those”political correctness gone mad” stories, of the type that was pioneered back in the ’80s in order to discredit left-wing councils and is now used to encourage paranoid fantasies about a Muslim takeover of the West?

You’d be right. See “Tower Hamlets denies imposing Ramadan request on council staff“, which reports:

“The authority today strongly denied the claims that all staff had been told to follow rules governing Ramadan, including suggestions that councillors would be stopped from consuming drinks and biscuits during meetings. A spokeswoman said the memo had been intended to stop non-Muslims eating the Iftar packs. She said: ‘At no stage have we imposed Ramadan arrangements on all staff’.”

Nazi denies racist abuse

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Kevin QuinnA man set up a stall in a busy South Oxhey shopping parade, shouted that all Muslims were terrorists and called for their execution, a court has heard. Kevin Quinn is alleged to have taken to the streets and used a megaphone to shout racist abuse in an attempt to deliberately stir up race hatred.

A jury at St Albans Crown Court yesterday (Thursday) heard how on Saturday, December 1, last year, the 43-year-old organised a demonstration in South Oxhey. Along with several members of his British First Party, Quinn set up a stall in The Parade shopping precinct and proceeded to hand out leaflets while shouting his “manifesto” through a loudspeaker.

He shouted that Muslims were “bastards” and “terrorists”, prosecutor Laura Blackman told the court. She said: “Talking about the Government he referred to Tony Blair as ‘Tony Mohammed’. He said that Muslims were suicide bombers and should all be sent home. He referred to a case in which an English woman had been arrested in Sudan for naming a teddy bear Mohammed and said, ‘we should be executing the f*****g bastards over here’. Witnesses reported hearing him shouting that Muslims were terrorists and Muslims were bastards.”

Ms Blackman told Judge John Plumstead that Quinn, from Bedford, had several leaflets detailing his manifesto on him, as well as Nazi memorabilia and a picture of Adolf Hitler.

Watford Observer, 29 August 2008

Czech TV station fined for Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Czech TV Nova was fined 100,000 korunas by the Council for Radio and Television for broadcasting xenophobic and Islamophobic content.

The station broadcast a report about Syrian Mohamed Fahed, who had killed his Czech common-law wife in Zelesice, near Brno. Fahed had said that where he came from, the Kurdish areas of Syria, a man was allowed to kill his wife. The reporter said that in Syria there’s Sharia law, which allows a husband to kill an unfaithful wife.

The Brno Muslim community complained to the Council, which decided that the report was xenophobic and Islamophobic, misleading regarding Islamic law. According to the council Syria is not run by Sharia law, and in any case Sharia law does not allow a husband to take justice into his own hands.

Nova denies the allegations and will go to court.

Islam in Europe, 29 August 2008