Category Archives: Anti-Muslim violence

France needs to start facing up to Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Valérie Amiraux and Marwan Mohammed on the prevalence of Islamophobia in France:

It shows up in multiple forms: attacks on mosques, desecration of religious sites, the ban on the headscarf in public schools, making it impossible for certain veiled women to access public services, to accompany their children on school outings, the rampant insults, harassment, humiliation, physical and verbal aggression they are subject to, racial and ethnic profiling and discrimination, sometimes culminating in physical attacks, such as the recent one on a veiled woman in Argenteuil, who lost her baby as a result. But the principal characteristic of Islamophobia is that it remains, at least in France, very rarely denounced. It is consistently perceived as an exaggeration, the result of victimised posturing invented by troublemaking Muslims, who are incapable of integrating and bending to the requirements of French citizenship.

Guardian, 26 July 2013

Gwent police step up patrols around mosques

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Newport cemetery graffiti(3)A senior Newport officer said police have been organising patrols for mosques in light of threats elsewhere in the country. The city’s Superintendent Mark Warrender said a recent attack on four Muslim graves in a Newport cemetery was despicable and that officers were working hard to find out who did it.

He spoke at a meeting of Newport full council in response to a question from Labour Victoria ward councillor Majid Rahman who asked what precautions were being made in relation to mosques in Newport.

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West Midlands Police chief hits out at mosque media reports

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dave Thompson West Midlands PoliceA police chief has accused the media of failing to give enough coverage to the attacks on mosques in the Black Country – and has questioned whether religious bias is to blame.

Dave Thompson, Deputy Chief Constable of West Midlands Police, has suggested there would have been more coverage if a different religion had been targeted in the attacks on mosques in Wolverhampton, Walsall and Tipton.

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Man who racially abused Muslim boy and threatened to bomb Livingston mosque escapes prison sentence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Garith WoodA man who threatened to bomb a mosque was today ordered to carry out unpaid work in the community. Garith Wood admitted behaving in a racially aggravated manner during his rant last May. The 27-year-old made racist comments about a 14-year-old Asian boy outside a mosque in Livingston. Part of his hateful tirade included threatening to bomb the Livingston Sunni Islamic Centre and Mosque, a court was told.

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Increase in Islamophobic incidents in France

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamophobic incidents in France saw an overall increase of 35% in the first half of 2013 compared with the same period in 2012, the president of the Observatoire contre l’islamophobie told AFP on Tuesday.

Abdallah Zekri stated that 108 Islamophobic acts – violence, assault, arson, vandalism – were officially recorded between 1 January and 30 June 2013, compared with 80 during the same period in 2012, an increase of 41.2%. Islamophobic threats – threatening gestures and abuse – rose from 63 during the first half of 2012 to 84 during the same period this year, an increase of 33.3%. Overall this represents an increase of 35%.

Zekri emphasised that the figures are only for incidents that have been the subject of an official complaint and therefore underestimate the real number of Islamophobic incidents.

He also pointed out that the figures are for the six months to the end of June and therefore “do not take account of a new and worrying phenomenon that arose during the month of July, namely attacks against women whose faces are not covered, who are not wearing the niqab but the simple headscarf”. Zekri told AFP that the Observatoire contre l’islamophobie had counted five such attacks in the Reims region, 3 in the Val d’Oise and one in Trappes.

Let us speak for ourselves: five women’s experiences of Islamophobic attacks

Posted on by Bob Pitt

What does it feel like to have your hijab yanked off your head by a man shouting abuse at you? Or to be chased down the street, shouted, sworn or spat at because what you are wearing identifies your beliefs?

These are examples of what are described as anti-Muslim incidents specifically against women. Tell Mama, the government-backed organisation which records anti-Muslim behaviour, has said Islamophobic attacks against women have increased in the aftermath of the brutal killing of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich in May. It says approximately 70 per cent of the calls it received since then have come from women. Of reported street attacks, 75 per cent have been against Muslim women wearing Islamic dress.

For Andrew Gilligan, who has criticised Tell Mama’s statistics in the Telegraph and accused it of exaggerating Islamophobia, incidents such as “hijab yanking” are “at the lower level of seriousness” because they do not result in physical injury. Nothing has been as critical as the latest incident in France, where a pregnant Muslim woman miscarried last week after two men attacked her, but to entirely dismiss what some women have been reporting in the UK is still deeply undermining to those who have found themselves at the receiving end of unprovoked assault, physical or verbal, simply because of their faith.

Muslim women and their clothes, their relationships with men and their place in British society are written and talked about and discussed and debated to death – but rarely are Muslim women included in those discussions themselves. That’s why I contacted five Muslim women who have experienced varying degrees of anti-Muslim incidents to find out how it has affected them.

Huma Qureshi in the New Statesman, 24 July 2013

Does anyone know who this man is?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL mosque tattooThis photo has been widely circulated over the past few days. It was taken at the English Defence League’s demonstration in Birmingham last Saturday.

I have to admit I was initially a bit dubious about whether the photo was genuine. However, there is another picture of the same EDL member, which would suggest that it is.

The photo appears in today’s issue of the Sun, who are asking anyone who recognises this individual to contact them.

Once in a while, even the right-wing tabloid press can play a positive role.