Category Archives: Anti-Muslim violence

Demonstration will protest against EDL’s anti-Muslim violence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Markaz-ul-Uloom Al-Islamia vandalism

A mosque has been vandalised during a far-right protest march in Rotherham, south Yorkshire, as tension rises in the town after the grooming scandal. The glass front door of the Markaz-ul-Uloom Al-Islamia, a Deobandi mosque near the city centre, was broken on Saturday.

Muhbeen Hussain, a local Muslim community organiser, said that the English Defence League had paraded through the city with a banner reading “Muslim groomers”. He also claimed that demonstrators smashed the windows of a halal butcher and a corner shop owned by a Muslim.

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Vandals forced Cardiff mosque to shut

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rabbaniah Islamic Cultural Centre vandalismA Cardiff mosque has been forced to close after being smashed up by intruders. Police are investigating after the Rabbaniah Islamic Cultural Centre suffered thousands of pounds of damage after burglars pulled down the ceiling and ripped charity boxes from the walls.

The cultural centre in Grangetown was completely wrecked by the intruders who stole at least £4,000 of money stored in charity collection boxes and locked safes containing wages for staff.

The burglars first broke into the main hall but then rampaged through the mosque and cultural centre – tearing down the internal roof to get up to the office on the first floor. Computers were stamped on, CCTV cameras were pulled from the walls and doors have been kicked through.

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Anti-Muslim vandals strike Fort Saskatchewan prayer room

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Fort Saskatchewan anti-Muslim vandalism (1)

Members of Fort Saskatchewan’s Muslim community are once again cleaning up after a home that they use for prayer was vandalized with anti-Islam insults twice in the past week.

Waseem Akhtar, who lives in the home, awoke to the sounds of something striking the side of the building early Monday morning. “They hit some stuff outside of my bedroom. And then, I opened my window curtain…and they just ran away,” Akhtar said.

When he went outside to look, he found his home had been pelted with eggs; many of the bits of eggshells spread across his lawn had anti-Muslim insults written on them in marker.

Less than a week earlier, on the anniversary of the September 11th attacks in New York, vandals spray-painted a red cross on the side of Akhtar’s home.

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British Muslims fear backlash after David Haines murder

Posted on by Bob Pitt

British Muslims are bracing themselves for a backlash after the beheading of David Haines by Islamic State militants, leading community figures have said.

Harun Khan, deputy secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said a backlash was experienced virtually every time violence carried out by extremists who claimed to act in the name of religion received high-profile media coverage.

Anxiety among Muslim communities was already heightened this weekend before news of Haines’s murder, after a mosque in Rotherham was attacked in the wake of a protest by the extremist English Defence League.

Khan said: “Somebody somewhere is going to react, it’s been proven, it’s happened many times: after 9/11, after 7 July [2005 attacks on London] and after [the murder of] Lee Rigby.”

He said the greatest fear was of attacks on Islamic buildings such as mosques, and on vulnerable people, such as women wearing the hijab.

At the East London mosque in Tower Hamlets worshippers said the risk of reprisal attacks in the UK increased with each new report of violence. “Isis and the beheading is not something we recognise at all,” said Amir Younis, 42. “Everyone I’ve spoken to regards those people as complete lunatics. We don’t know who they are, they’ve come from nowhere, and all of a sudden they’re claiming to represent the whole of the Muslim community.

“But in terms of Islamophic reprisals, I don’t think things are going to get any worse than they already are. Islamophobia is something that the Islamic community needs to stop tolerating – we allow people to say the most ridiculous things.”

Two young women visiting the mosque, Aysha Islam and Shakila Hoque, said news of the beheading of Haines would spur on the EDL. “People talk about it a lot,” said Islam. “This area is more safe than places like Luton, but you never know what’s going to happen.”

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EDL supporters attack police during Rotherham sex abuse protest

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Rotherham September 2014English Defence League (EDL) protesters have attacked police in Rotherham while demonstrating over the recent revelations about child sexual exploitation in the town.

Three men linked to the demonstration were arrested ahead of the march on suspicion of possessing an offensive weapon and remain in custody. A fourth man from Rotherham was also arrested on suspicion of committing a public order offence.

Police erected 10ft (3ft) barricades around the town centre, while extra officers were drafted in from around the country.

South Yorkshire police said officers had been “confronted with missiles and barriers” but said no injuries had so far been reported. Some 1,200 protesters were expected to descend on Rotherham, in what has been described as a political exploitation of the recent abuse findings.

The shock report last month said that although the majority of perpetrators were described as “Asian” by victims, some councillors were nervous about identifying the abusers’ ethnic origins “for fear of being thought racist”.

Weman Bennett of Unite Against Fascism said: “We want justice for the victims, but we don’t want racists exploiting it.” Speaking from the organisation’s small counter-demonstration, Bennett said most of the violence had been between EDL members themselves.

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Another hysterical anti-mosque campaign in Australia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Currumbin anti-mosque protest

Gold Coast leaders say a radical anti-Islamic “redneck movement” is damaging the city’s reputation and putting its $4.2 billion tourism industry at risk.

State Tourism Minister Jann Stuckey last night black-listed the public outpouring against the background of an application to build a mosque in Currumbin. “I am deeply disappointed by this because this [protest] does not represent the people of the Gold Coast or the people of my electorate and are is not helping anyone’s cause,” she said.

More than 100 people yesterday attended the heated protest at Evandale yesterday, where the city’s planning committee recommended approving the application to build the mosque. Placards from the protest decrying Sharia law and invoking images of the beheading of US journalists in Iraq by members of Islamic State were beamed worldwide. The banners included: “Super mosque today, Sharia Law and ISIS tomorrow, beheadings the next”; “Team Australia Vs Team Terror: Aussies rule” and “burqua (sic) or bikinis – you decide”.

Protesters heard former Whitlam era political cartoonist and Gold Coast resident Larry Pickering argue that the dispute was not about town planning issues. “It is not about carparks or proximity to houses. It is about what we don’t want to be a part of Australian culture and until those bastards in there are honest about it then we will not take a step forward,” Mr Pickering said. “Sharia is the most evil of all laws. This is Australia for Christ sake. Why are we allowing this?”

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Five convicted over EDL Thatcham protest

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Thatcham flash demo

Four English Defence League (EDL) members have been convicted of a religiously aggravated offence following a Thatcham town centre protest.

The prosecution was brought after up to 20 people, some draped in St George Cross flags and one wearing a rubber pig mask, descended on The Broadway on the night on Friday, February 28. Their target was Hosans kebab van.

Chants of “Muslim groomers off our streets – go back to your own country,” and “no surrender to the Taliban” filled the room at Reading Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday as footage from police officers’ body cameras was screened. Naomi Edwards, prosecuting, said: “Protesting is fine and proper but this went beyond what’s acceptable.”

In the dock were 22-year-old Rory Rowbottom of Hartmead Road, Thatcham; Julie Anne Worthington, aged 35, of Russell Road, Reading; 50-year-old Simon Brammer of Haywards Close, Southampton, Hampshire and Gary Hazel, aged 38, of Forsyth Gardens, Bournemouth, Dorset. A fifth defendant, 44-year-old Edward Cullerne Scovell of Donnington Gardens, Reading, failed to turn up and was convicted in his absence.

They had been charged with a Section 5 offence of religiously aggravated harassment but a scheduled three-day trial was avoided after all but Mr Hazel – who denied the offence – admitted a lesser charge of using religiously aggravated, threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.

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Visitors to Islamic Centre say they are ‘living in fear’ after arson attack

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Newton Heath security cameras ripped offVisitors to a Manchester mosque targeted by arsonists say they are “living in fear.”

Two CCTV cameras were stolen from outside the NAFSAT Islamic Centre in Newton Heath at around 11:30pm last night. Just two hours later, shortly before 1:30am this morning, a minibus the centre uses to ferry young and elderly visitors to the mosque, was torched.

Police believe the culprits took the cameras in a bid to avoid detection. They are investigating whether the attack behind the building on the corner of Droylsden Road and Regent Street, was a hate crime.

The vehicle, which the centre bought two months ago for £6,000, has been left gutted by the blaze and is currently being analysed by forensic teams. Bosses at the centre say it is just the latest in a string of incidents since they moved into the former Methodist Church in April last year.

More than 300 people from across Greater Manchester, mainly of Nigerian descent, are said to use the centre, which houses educational facilities alongside a mosque. They claim they have had anti-Islamic graffiti daubed on the building, and had pigs’ heads thrown inside it, in more than a dozen separate incidents.

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Muslim councillor Aicha Mesrar flees Italy in fear for her life after death threats

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Aicha MesrarItaly’s first Muslim councillor says she is fleeing the country after a series of death threats, in the latest example of racism suffered by the country’s non-white public figures, from politicians to football players.

Aicha Mesrar, 45, resigned from her post as local councillor for the Democratic Party in Rovereto, in the northern Trentino province, saying she feared for her children’s lives.

The Moroccan-born politician, who has lived in Italy for 23 years, has been an active and effective community liaison worker, according to local media. She was the first woman to wear a veil in the city hall. The city’s Mayor, Andrea Miorandi, had hailed her appointment as president of the local Open City cooperative.

On announcing her resignation, however, she said: “I cannot always live under escort. I have no fear and it is not the fault of the people of Rovereto, but of some. I leave with pride, satisfied with everything I have done, what I did and what I received.” She has not said where she intends to move to.

The threats against her have come in the form of anonymous letters. The police, who have provided special protection for councillor and her family for two years, are investigating where they may have come from.

Mayor Andrea Miorandi, a political ally of Ms Mesrar, has also been threatened due to his backing for a Muslim cemetery and a mosque to be built in the city, according to Il Fatto Quotidiano newspaper.

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Racist letter bomb duo Bret Atkins and Jamie Snow tried to send explosives to solicitors

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bret Atkins and Jamie SnowTwo men who tried to send a letter bomb to a Halifax solicitors from prison have had several years added to their sentences.

Bret Atkins, 24 from Leeds and Jamie Snow, 27 from Humberside posted crude explosive devices and racist letters from HMP Full Sutton at York to solicitors in West Yorkshire and Lancashire. Officers from the Counter Terrorism Unit were alerted by prison officers after they intercepted a letter containing an incendiary device.

In July, a Leeds jury found Atkins guilty of Conspiracy to Send an Explosive Substance with Intent. Snow pleaded guilty to Sending an Explosive Substance with Intent and two offences of Threats to Kill.

Yesterday at Leeds Crown Court, Atkins was sentenced to seven years and Snow to six years three months.

Det Chief Supt Ian Wilson, Head of the North East Counter Terrorism Unit, said: “Bret Atkins and Jamie Snow waged a campaign of hate against innocent people, choosing victims purely on the grounds of their race or religion. They expressed deeply racist and anti-Muslim views and sent a series of threatening letters designed to instil fear in their recipients.

“Snow and Atkins took their hatred beyond threats to kill and even tried to post explosive materials in an attempt to cause harm or injury. Thankfully this mail was intercepted by vigilant officers within the Prison Service and was never able to enter the postal system.”

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