Category Archives: Anti-Muslim violence

Arab civil rights activists attacked, threatened with beheading in Brooklyn

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Linda SarsourAn Arab civil rights activist was attacked in Brooklyn Wednesday by a man who hurled slurs and threatened to behead her to “see how your people feel about it,” authorities and the victim said.

Linda Sarsour, 34, director of the Arab American Association of New York, was leaving the group’s headquarters on Fifth Ave. in Bay Ridge at 12:20 p.m. when Brian Boshell, 45, allegedly threatened her, called her an “Arab b—-” and insulted her in Arabic. Boshell, who is white, then allegedly chucked a trash can at her and a woman walking with her, Sarsour said.

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Two mosques attacked in Germany’s Lower Saxony

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Haci Bayram MosqueTwo Turkish mosques in Germany’s Lower Saxony state has come under attack by unknown assailants.

The molotov cocktail attack on the Haci Bayram mosque in Oldenburg over the weekend was an attempt of arson, police said.

German authorities have begun an investigation into the attack on the mosque, which is bound to the Turkish Religious Affairs department and serves as an official Turkish diplomatic mission for Turkish citizens abroad.

No one was injured in the attack, which was said to be politically motivated, and only minimal damage was reported.

Another attack on a Turkish mosque, again bound to the Turkish Religious Affairs department, took place in the city of Mölln. This was the second attack on the mosque in two weeks.

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Muslim woman attacked on Vienna train

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Zeliha CicekA 37-year-old Muslim woman from Vienna has complained to police after being attacked by a woman whilst travelling on Vienna’s metro.

She believes that the woman, who hit her in the face, did so because she was wearing a headscarf. Police said they believed the attacker was “disturbed”.

Zeliha Cicek is the third Muslim to have been assaulted in Vienna in the last month.

Cicek, a school teacher and mother of three children, is ethnically Turkish. She said she was talking to her sister on an U3 underground train on her mobile phone when the woman started shouting at her in English. “I calmly told her she could speak to me in German and suddenly she stood up and slapped me in the face. I dropped my phone and it broke, I was so shocked,” she said.

An English man came to Cicek’s aid but the angry woman scratched his face. She got out of the train at Stephansplatz – and despite Cicek screaming that she had attacked her the woman was able to flee without being stopped.

Cicek told the Kurier newspaper that she didn’t believe that the woman was drunk or mad. “The English man also thought that she had a problem with me wearing the headscarf,” she said.

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Faith leader defends Islamic centre plan, says ‘there will never be a mosque in Basildon, because of all the opposition’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sarfraz Sarwar (2)An Islamic group is hoping to set up a new centre in a former Basildon call centre office – but insists it would not be a mosque.

Brother Sarfraz Sarwar of Basildon Islamic Centre, has applied for permission to change the use of 17 Buckwins Square, Burnt Mills Industrial Estate, Basildon, from a call centre to a place of worship.

Nigel Cooper, planning agent for the Islamic centre, said: “The building would be used in the week for prayers about five times a day and as many as ten times at night. There would never be more than about 50 people there. At weekends, it would be used for teaching children. I think they have chosen an industrial estate, so it is not near to any homes, so there is less chance of objections.”

The group has used a community centre in Vange Hill Drive for Friday prayers since it was forced out of the former Triangle Community Centre, in Landon High Road, by an arson attack in 2006.

Brother Sarwar, who has also faced attacks on his Pitsea home, said: “It is not a mosque. You know there will never be a mosque in Basildon, because of all the opposition. All this will be is an education centre. It is an Islamic centre for British and cultural studies. The problem is everything to do with Muslims ends up being a propaganda war.”

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74-year-old man sentenced for shots at neighbors

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — A judge has sentenced a 74-year-old man to 30 years in prison for firing a shotgun at his southern Indiana neighbors who he had become convinced were Islamic terrorists.

Monroe County Judge Kenneth Todd said during Thursday’s sentencing hearing he believed Robert Walp of Gosport was delusional when he attacked the married couple and their 12-year-old son who were his longtime neighbors in the rural area north of Bloomington.

A jury convicted Walp in July on three counts of attempted murder for the May 2013 attack. The Herald-Times reports Walp’s neighbors weren’t wounded and mental health experts determined he was sane and able to understand events taking place around him.

Walp told the judge he didn’t commit the crimes and was considering whether to appeal his convictions.

Associated Press, 28 August 2014

Man charged over ‘racist’ mosque attack

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Warrington mosque attack CCTVA 20-year-old man has been charged in connection to a racially aggravated attack on a mosque in Warrington town centre.

Nathan Hancox, of Thynne Street, was arrested on Thursday, and has been bailed. He is due to appear at Halton Magistrates Court on September 16.

The arrest follows a CCTV appeal in the Warrington Guardian. Images of suspects were released after the mosque on Arpley Street was vandalised, with a window smashed.

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Kreuzberg: Police suspect arsonists were behind mosque fire

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Germany Mosque FirePolice had believed that the fire at the Mevlana mosque in Kreuzberg might have been caused by a technical fault or started accidentally, but both of those possibilities have now been ruled out.

“We never ruled out arson,” Berlin police spokesman Thomas Neuendorf told The Local. “There was no direct evidence of an arson attack, no traces of a break-in… but by a process of elimination it turned out that it was probably a deliberately started fire.”

Germany’s vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel was already speaking of an “attack” in the days before the police announcement on a visit to the mosque, describing arson on a place of worship as “an attack on the centre of society”.

The fire began in building materials stored in an unfinished extension to the structure and caused smoke damage to the facade and the interior of the mosque. Renovation and extension work has been going on at the site since 2013. More than 60 firefighters were deployed to put out the blaze.

Members of the congregation have been praying in the street since the fire on August 11th.

Neuendorf said that times of conflict in the Middle East can lead to an increase in violent crime in Germany. “When a mosque is burned, that has to be taken very seriously,” he said. “There is no evidence of what the motive might be… but the target itself suggests that it might be political. When there are tensions in other countries, that can also lead to political crimes here… graffiti will increase, physical attacks will increase.”

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Mosque fires in Germany trigger concerns of Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mevlana Mosque arsonA Turkish delegation comprised of officials from Turkish Parliament’s Human Rights Committee and head of Turks Abroad and Related Communities directorate of the Turkish Prime Ministry started a two-day visit to Germany yesterday to inquire about the extent of attacks and suspicion of arson.

Their first visit was to Berlin’s Mevlana Mosque. A fire broke out in a part of the mosque that was being redecorated on August 11. The cause of the blaze is not yet known but German officials said they found traces of a flammable liquid at the scene, pointing to arson. Located in Kreuzberg, a district of Berlin dubbed as “Little Istanbul” due to its large population of Turks – approximately 40,000 people – the mosque was partially open for prayers as reconstruction was underway on the 40-yearold structure.

One day before the attack in Berlin, the Süleymaniye Mosque in the German town of Bielefeld was set on fire by suspects who burned Qurans in the mosque. In February, the Central Mosque in Cologne, one of the largest mosques in Germany, was subject to attacks. Suspects crashed a car into the door of the mosque and attempted to set the mosque on fire.

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Complaint filed against politician for Islamophobic tweet

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jean-Luc AddorThe Islamic Central Council of Switzerland has filed charges against a Swiss politician for incitement to commit a crime after he appeared to welcome the recent shooting of a Muslim and called for more such shootings.

Minutes after a man was shot to death in a mosque in northeastern Switzerland on Friday, Jean-Luc Addor, vice-president of the rightwing Swiss People’s Party in canton Valais, tweeted “On en redemande!” (“Let’s have more!”)

The shooting in St Gallen appears to have been part of a family feud. Police arrested a man who was found in the mosque holding a handgun.

The central council said in a statement on Monday that Addor was well-known for his Islamophobic comments. The council said that on August 13, for example, he tweeted: “Islam is disgusting and is only supported by dirty pigs, traitors and collaborators.”

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Indiana: CAIR calls for attack on Muslim woman to be investigated as hate crime

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bouchra BahdaA leading US Muslim advocacy group has called for investigating a possible hate-crime attack against a veiled Muslim woman who has been struck in an Indiana store a few weeks ago.

“Without an alternative theory for the motive of the attacker, anti-Muslim bias based on the victim’s ethnicity and religious attire must be investigated by law enforcement authorities,” Ibrahim Hooper, National Communications Director for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a statement obtained by OnIslam.net on Saturday, August 23.

Bouchra Bahda, the Muslim mother of two, was attacked form from behind last Ramadan when a young man struck her with a hard downswipe on the shoulder outside a Wal-Mart store in Indiana.

The Muslim woman and her husband, both native Moroccans, were accompanying kids to shopping in the Wal-Mart in Avon where the assault happened.

“What was he thinking?” Abdelhakim Ejjair, the husband who moved to the US in 1998 told Indystar. “Does he hate Muslims? I just want know what was in his head. What was the reason?”

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